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Macs Still More Expensive Than PCs

According to market-research firm NPD Group, the gap in average selling prices between Macs and PCs has widened over the last couple of years. This June, Mac desktops cost an average of $1,543, up from $1,432 two years ago; meanwhile, PCs were essentially stable at $550. On the laptop front, the difference is smaller: $1,515 for Macs ($60 less than in June 2006) versus $700 for PCs (down from $877). Of course, it’s important to remember that we’re talking price here, and not value for the money.

Why Are iPod Accessories So Darn Pricey?

Ever wonder why a lot of iPod and iPhone accessories seem kind of, well, overpriced? Popular Mechanics reports that Apple uses a proprietary authentication chip in its portables that makes it impossible for third-party companies to create iPod- and iPhone compatible accessories without signing an often-costly agreement with Apple. For instance, I could go on eBay and buy a generic $2 video cable that would work just fine with my iPod video. New iPhones and iPods, however, require the “officially licensed” Apple cables, and these can run up to $50. Needless to say, the chip not only increases prices, but forces accessory companies to cut corners and cheapen production to pay for the Apple license while maintaining a consumer-friendly price point. Of course, it’s understandable that Apple would want to have some control over the quality of accessories designed for its products, but most of the manufacturers interviewed estimated that up to $20 of the retail cost of iPod and iPhone speake...

32 Cool Tips for Windows XP

Press Win+L to switch to the Welcome screen. Press Win+L to lock your workstation. You can switch users without going through the Welcome screen: From Task Manager, go to the Users tab, right-click a user, and select Connect. Hold down the shift key in the shutdown dialog to change "Stand By" to "Hibernate". Or just press H to hibernate instantly. You can even use the Power Control Panel to configure your power button to hibernate. To disable the password when resuming from standby or hibernation, open the Power Control Panel and uncheck "Prompt for password after returning from standby" on the Advanced tab. You can rename multiple files all at once: Select a group of files, right-click the first file, and select "Rename". Type in a name for the first file, and the rest will follow. Hold down the shift key when switching to thumbnail view to hide the file names. Do it again to bring them back. When dragging a file in Explorer, you can control the...

Firefox 3 Market Share | 24 hours After World Record Launch

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Courtesy: Market Share

Three Laws of Graduation

Circa 2108 Sir Icaas Tewnon, though famous for his seminal work in Mechanics, his theories on the prediction of graduation formulated during while still a grad student at the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology remain his most important contribution to the academia. First published in 2079, Sir Icaas Tewnon's "Procrastinare Unnaturalis Principia Mathematica" is often considered one of the most important single works in the history of science. First Law "A graduation student in procrastination tends to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to it" This postulate is known as the "Law of Inertia" and was originally discovered experimentally by Lagileo four years before Tewnon was born when he threatened to cut his grad student's funding. This resulted in a quickening of the student's research progress. Lagileo's observations were later perfected by Tescades through the application of " Weekly Meetings "....

BarCampDelhi4

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BarCamp is here! And its happening! When? Date: May 17th, 2008 (Saturday) Time: 0900 hrs - 1800 hrs IST Where? Amity Innovation Incubator Auditorium, Block C Amity University Campus Sector 125, Noida Ph: +91.120.465.9000, 465.9151 Click here for driving directions. Wait a minute! Jeeves.. What's a BarCamp? BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment with intense events and discussions, demos and interaction from participants. What about BarCampDelhi4? BarCampDelhi4 is the fourth edition of a BarCamp in the Delhi region. It is proposed to be a camp to get together and discuss/rant/brain-storm/share opinions/information/wisdom about anything. Be it web Te...

Art of Logo Design

Copyright January 2006: Niyam Bhushan. Inspired by the vision of Osho. Published under the Free Documentation License (FDL) 01: Must Be A Shape A simple, vector, shape. Exactly like a glyph. Imagine the alphabet with a new character-shape added to it. Thus, a logo has to be the most primal shape you can imagine. At times, a logo could also contain more than one shape in it. 02: Must Be Scalable As a shape, the logo must scalable from about 5mm mm in size, to about the size of a football field, without distortion. To test the scalability of your logo, start with a logo that is scaled to 5mm in size, make a copy double its size, and go on doing this until you fill an entire sheet. Then print it out and see if the shape loses any detail or suffers from any sort of distortion. Sometimes, a minimum scalable size of around 1 cm is also acceptable, though it does limit the use of the logo conditions where you have to use it less than this size, for example on a tie-pin, or printed on co...