A common question that I get asked is what do hubs and switches do and what is the difference between a hub and a switch.

To help answer it I’ve put together a short article and video .. See Hubs and Switches 

Network Attached Storage allows you to place all of you data in a single location so that you can easily access and manage it.

It is currently only used by a small minority of home/home office users but it will grow considerably along with media servers and media centers as data storgae moves from dvd/cd to hard disks (Flash drives) .

You can find out more here.

Today many of us have several computer/laptops and often there is a need to use a file from one machine on another machine. So how can you copy a file from one computer/laptop to another.

Here we look at the three common ways that it is accomplished. Choose the one that suits you.

USB flash drives

This in the days of the floppy was affectionately known as
sneaker net. You simply copy the files onto a flash drive unplug
it and walk it over to the other computer insert it and copy it
from the flash drive. See USB Flash Drives in the technology section

Share Your Folders

You can share the folder that contains the files. By sharing
it you give other network users access to the files. If your
files are in multiple folders you can share each folder but you
may find it easier to create a dedicated folder for sharing and
place all shared files in that folder.

You can find out more about windows file sharing in ..Sharing Files on A
Windows XP Home Network.

Central Location

This requires one machine to function as a file server and
you place all files that you want to share on this machine. In a
windows network any machine (windows 95,windows 2000,xp,vista)
can be configured to work as a file server.

The advantage of using a single machine to host all of the
shared files is that the files are all located in one location
which makes it easy to backup the data.

The procedure for establishing the shares is identical to
that discussed in Sharing Files on A Windows XP Home Network .
However in this case you only do it on one machine.

The decision by Toshiba to kill off HD DVD has been greeted as a victory for the Blu-ray format but have Toshiba simply decided to exit a dying market anyway?

I remember several years ago reading that the DVD was going to go the way of vinyl and simply get replaced.

DVDs are used for movies and with many people moving to downloading movies from the internet the need for DVDs cluttering up the Lounge is probably coming to an end.

Blu-rays victory could turn out to be very short-lived.