Verbatim Colour Edition 320G HDD

The big selling point of Verbatim’s 2.5in portable USB hard drives isn’t so much their capacity, or even their speed; it’s the variety of colours that they’re available in – for the accessory-conscious, they come in red, blue, green, pink and a sleek 500G black model.

Pros: They are pretty decent-looking drives – my review sample was a very striking red – and they come bundled with Nero BackITup 2 Essentials for backup purposes. Data transfer speeds were very good, with an average read speed of 30.1Mbps.

Cons: Like a number of external 2.5in drives, a Y-headed USB cable is supplied for PCs that can’t supply enough power through a single USB port, which means you’re potentially sacrificing two USB ports to the drive.

Rating: 3.5/5 – Colourful and effective portable storage.

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A conference call or audio tele-conference is a normal telephone call which involves more than one called party listening in on the call; the called parties may be in different parts of the world. The call may be set up in such a way that the called party is allowed to participate in the call or just listen in on the call. Conference calls are very useful especially in businesses spanning the world – they help to save time, money and the environment because they are routinely used in lieu of travel.

In conference calling, the calling party can call the participants or the participants can themselves dial-in into the call. Conferencegenie provides high quality conference calling facilities at very reasonable prices. They cater to both individual and business needs. They offer extra features and subsidised rates for regular users and have specialised services for businesses.

Video conferencing is holding a person to person meeting right from your desk. You can view participants in the video conference, you can share your work and desk top with them. Participants can be from any corner of the world – they just need to have an internet connection. There are no special software downloads to be done in order to enable this facility. Conferencegenie has video conferencing facilities that are intuitive in nature and are very simple to use. They even offer a free one-on-one training for users to get used to the procedure involved. Video conferencing has reduced business travel to a large extent because they are virtually no different from personal meetings.

Iolo Drive Scrubber

Drive Scrubber is a drive erase utility – whether it be hard drive, flash drive or even a camera card – which securely deletes all the data on a drive in such a way that it can’t ever be recovered. It’s a good way to securely give away old drives – or even junk them if you must – without the risk of any of your private or sensitive information getting into the wrong hands.

Pros: Drive scrubber is nicely configurable – you can choose to delete just the free space from a drive, or even boot from the CD to wipe a virus-infected system completely – and it has plenty of warnings along the way about losing data, which makes it virtually impossible for you to ‘accidentally’ wipe your information.

Cons: As with most drive deletion utilities, even on small drives it can be quite slow. A test 32G USB drive took several hours to securely wipe, for example.

Rating: 4/5 – A secure but slow utility for protecting personal data and cleaning drives.

SanDisk Mobile Ultra 8G

SanDisk’s Mobile Ultra 8G looks rather like a chubby USB Flash Drive, but it’s actually two drives in one. The chubby part is essentially a USB reader for a tiny 8G MicroSDHC flash card, suitable for use in compatible smart-phones.

Pros: Data transfer speeds via USB were decent – roughly 16.1 Mbps read and 12.9Mbps write – and the ease with which you can switch the Micro SDHC card in and out of a phone makes data transfers particularly easy.

Cons: It’s very light and very tiny, two factors that make it incredibly easy to lose – I misplaced it twice just during my testing alone. The lightness also makes it a little less durable than many other USB flash drives, and users will need to be careful with it.

Rating: 4/5 – A great mobile data solution for smart-phone users.

Programmers the world over at some point or other stumble across a technical problem which they are unable to solve. Discussion forums come to their rescue during such times. Forums are meeting platforms online – where people in the same field share their ideas, problems and solutions.

A programming forum is a debating place for programmers who typically discuss intricacies in coding in various languages, issues they have faced and what can be done to overcome them. Programming forums are a great way to share thoughts with the programmer community. It pays to post queries and answer queries for which you know the answers because these forums provide exposure to a wide knowledge base. A programming forum will be easy to use when the various discussion threads are categorized under the relevant languages like C++, ALP, Java, VB, Perl etc. Databases and web development are also typically discussed in these forums as they are closely related to programming. Other topics could include Operating systems, engineering concepts etc.

A Java forum has discussion threads on Java related questions and answers. A person who has stumbled into a problem posts it on the forum explaining the scenario and seeking suggestions to solve it. Other Java programmers who do know the resolution will post their explanation/ answer on the same forum thread. Now, just by reading this thread, Java programmers around the world can understand the problem and the solution. Next time they face this problem, they will have a ready made solution. That is the benefit of being part of a Java forum.