?? Questions & Answers !!

    The following are a few questions that I've been asked either persistently or that I believe you might benefit from hearing. In my opinion Q&A are a great way to learn because the person took the time to ask someone that they trust for the answer. In Red are Questions and Blue are Answers immitating a web page I saw that was easy on the eye.

Q: I have a couple of quick questions, I've been told that if I assign my computer the Network Sever role instead of the Desktop Computer role that it will run faster. Is this the case? The place to make the change is the System Properties dialogue box, under the file system option. What will happen if I make the change and will my security while online be threatened if I'm acting as a server? I have a PII-350 w/128MB RAM and a Voodoo3. Thanks.

A: The only thing that changing your system to "Network Server" really does is that it forces Windows to put aside more of the empty space on your hard drive for virtual memory. This can help if you're running low on system RAM, but if you've got 128MB or above, the change won't likely be noticed. 

Q: Why is the bus bandwidth (of the board) on a PC so much harder to increase than the mhz of the CPU? Be nice if CPUs had even half the bandwidth it actually needed. 

A: I think there are probably a million and one reasons. For one, up until very recently, getting standard SDRAM running about even 100MHz was very difficult and expensive. For another reason, changing the system bus speed effects a lot of other parts of your motherboard: i.e. PCI and AGP speeds. Change the system bus speed, and you mess with them also. Additionally, it's hard enough keeping information moving at 1GHz on just a CPU, think how expensive it would be to have a motherboard that could run reliably at that same speed. You'd almost certainly need to go to copper connectors if such a thing is even possible right now. The good news is that things are changing for the better. RDRAM (Rambus), the recommended memory type for new i820 boards, runs as fast as 800MHz, and the Intel Willamette platform will allow for a bus that's 100MHz, quad pumped - meaning that it effectively becomes a 400MHz bus. Look for Intel's newest technology in the near future.

Q: I have a dispute to settle with my friend, he claims that DSL is better than cable but I disaggree I think that cable is better than DSl, could you voice your opinion please. 


A: All things being equal, if no one but you were ever on the Internet, cable would be faster. On average, however, DSL and cable tend to be fairly on par with one another since, as more and more people in your area get cable modems, your bandwidth diminishes when using cable while the same isn't true of DSL. 

Q: Please, can you let us mere mortals know the differance between a celron processor and a p2 processor e.g. how dose a celron 466 compare to say a p2 450 there are many people out here who would like to know the answer to this question? 


A: The short comparison: 

Pentium II: 512k Level 2 cache running at 1/2 of core clock speed 
Celeron: 128k Level 2 cache running at full core clock speed 
New PIIIs: 256k Level 2 cache running a full core clock speed 
Conclusion: when it comes to running games, level 2 cache size and speed isn't terribly important in most (not all) cases. If you're looking for an inexpensive CPU that's still very good for gaming, the Celeron is a fantastic choice. 


Overclocking (comming soon)

Q: What is the difference between DVD movie thing for tv, and the DVD drive on pc? Can you use DVD for one with the other? Last but not least is it worth buying one? 


A: DVD technology is composed primarily of two things: the drive itself and the decoding hard/software. A DVD player (say, one from Toshiba) that you put on top of your TV to play DVD movies has both a DVD drive that can read DVD discs, and decoding hardware that will take the information from the DVD drive and translate it into the video that appears on your TV and the sound that comes out of your speaker setup. If you get a DVD drive for your computer, it will read the discs, but it won't have the hardware to translate the data into sound/video. In order to do that, you will need to either get DVD player software (which will use your CPU to decode the information) or a DVD card (which has custom hardware that does it). I would not buy any DVD equipment in either case unless I wanted to watch movies. There are far too few DVD games out there to warrant the purchase for gaming. 


Q: Extreme Newbie Question: What does Megahertz mean? I know that it's millions of cycles a second, but what does that mean and why is it important? (I'm asking, of course, in regards to CPUs.) Thanks. 


A: Well, instructions calculated by your CPU take a certain amount of cycles (a cycle is the smallest unit of time recognized by your computer). The more cycles that can be executed per second, the more powerful (generally speaking) the CPU is going to be. That's a large part of the reason that having a processor that can execute 750 million cycles a second is better than having one that can only do 300 million. Of course, other features play a role in why one processor is more powerful than another, but this should give you the general idea. If you're still confused, think of it this way: a 750MHz processor can count 750 million donuts a second, while a 300MHz processor can only count 300 million. If you're a donut counter, whose job depends on his being able to count donuts quickly, which processor would you want helping you? Get it?

Q:What is Java Script

A: The best way for you to understand is to see some java script. These two are the most interesting I've come across and had to teaf it from the url te he he. Which I should also mention can be done easily enough on IE by right clicking and going to view source code finding where it wuz added and copying and pasting.