0 7-Zip Review

Hello everyone, I will be reviewing 7-Zip today. 7-Zip is an open source file archiver for Windows. I stumbled upon 7-Zip after years of using WinRAR, and I can say I've been missing out for years.

First things first, I can easily say that 7-Zip is the fastest file compressor out there. I've compared it to the other popular file archivers such as WinRAR and WinZip, and it turned out that 7-Zip was significantly faster than both of them when it came to file compression.

7-Zip also offers the highest compression rate among all of its competitors which is the main reason that we all use file archivers nowadays.

It's also open source and completely free which once again puts it ahead of other file archiving software.

I would highly recommend using 7-Zip if you are using any other file archiver as this will be a significant change for your archiving needs.

You can read more about 7-Zip at http://www.7-zip.org/

or you can download it directly at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe

I hope you enjoyed this short but useful review!

0 The Essential of Keeping Your iPhone Safe and Secure

How much personal information are you carrying around on your iPhone? Contacts, text messages, e-mails, pictures - quite a lot, am I right? Because your iPhone phone holds a lot of personal information, it's important to know how to keep that information safe and secure.

The following are the 7 essential things you should to in order to keep the information on your iPhone safe and secure:

1. Password protect you iPhone and set the phone to automatically lock itself after few minutes of inactivity.

2. Use remote wipe application. There's quite a few remote wipe apps available for iPhone smartphones. I would recommend you to go with an app called Find My iPhone. With Find My iPhone, you can always find the location of your phone on a map as well as delete all data input from the phone remotely.

3. Don't sensitive data such as passwords, bank information and so on on your iPhone. I think this one is pretty obvious, isn't it?

4. Don't connect your phone to unknown WiFi networks, use 3G/4G instead. If you are connected to a Wifi network, somebody could possibly attack your phone and install malware on it.

5. Don't open shady links on social media networks and other sites. Your friend Bill shared a link of a teenage girl doing what on Facebook? Your friend Bill is 42, married and has children - do you really think it was him?

6. Use firmware and make sure that you always have the latest version.

7. Don't trust strangers alone with your phone. Yes, that nice young girl on the street only asked your phone to call her parents but are you sure she didn't actually install spyware on it?

If you are also concerned about how well your iPhone is running, then look here - it's a great guide on how to reset your iPhone. Resetting your iPhone can fix a ton of different problems and make your phone work a lot faster.

0 Exin Green IT Foundation Certification Exam

Hello everyone! Today's topic will be slightly different than what I talk about most of the times. In this post, I will be talking about Exin Green IT Foundation exam.

The Exin Green IT Foundation exam is an entry level professional certification test geared specifically for advancing the knowledge and abilities of IT personnel to contribute to corporately responsible and economically sound organizational IT initiatives. This Exin certification exam certainly has its benefits for IT professionals, including the acquisition of highly valued skills in the job market, skills which will only become more valuable in the future as more and more organizations recognize the importance of Greener IT on business success.

Candidates for the Exin Green IT certification exam don’t just include IT professionals. In fact, the exam is applicable in the professional development plans of individuals working in a range of other capacities, including business and sustainability managers and business and financial analysts, to name just a few.

Successfully completing the Exin Green IT Foundation exam increases your value with your current employer and provides you additional clout with prospective employers or clients as well. To achieve success, you’ll need to focus your studies on the testing materials, and ideally utilize practice exams for measuring your knowledge attainment prior to taking your exam. Training options are available with Exin approved training services, and there are full length practice exams, as well as tutorials and other self study materials, offered through online prep services like TestsLive.com.

There are a total of 40 questions on the exam and you’ll need to achieve a score of 65 percent or higher to pass. Exin recommends a minimum of one year IT experience prior to taking the test, and encourages candidates to dedicate at least 30 hours of study to their exam prep. 

0 Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro Review

Hello everyone! Today I will be reviewing the external sound card I bought lately, Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro. The reason I bought this card was mainly because I wasn't satisfied with my laptop's onboard audio. Now, I also use it with my desktop computer instead of using the onboard function. I can say it's easy to feel a difference.

When you open the box, you'll see the USB stick which is the card, a pair of headphones with microphone attached, (I must say, they're a lot better than the 30-40$ Sennheisers I often picked up for my iPhone) driver CD, (you can also install the drivers on the internet if you wish) and a USB extension cable. (since the card is bigger than a usual pen drive, it might block out other ports if you don't use this)

It's pretty straight forward to install the card on your computer and start using it. Just plug it into a USB slot, install the drivers, hook your headphones up and you're good to go. It shouldn't even take you 10 minutes.

The drivers also come with Creative Entertainment Console, where you can find EAX (environmental) effects, THX effects (such as virtual surround or crystalizer), a graphic equalizer, a sound mixer (it's connected to the Windows one), and microphone effects where you can change your voice into sounding really interesting and weird.

Although I am really happy with the card and it's definitely worth the pick up if you're using onboard and looking for something better, there are known issues about X-Fi cards (not just about this one, all the X-Fi cards) such as crackling and popping sounds which happened to me as well. It makes it impossible to use the card, so if you experience issues like this, here are a few advices.

- Update your BIOS (this solved my crackling issue, it was my last resort)
- Pull your other USB cords out to see if anything causes conflict with the card
- Download the latest drivers from the internet instead of using the CD

These are the things I can think of right now, and I think there are many other alternate solutions going on around the internet (which I tried with no help, but then again a different solution might work for someone else) that you should try. You can also try to mail Creative Support if you have tried everything with no success. I found the fix to my problem before I got a reply from them, but they still sent me a really helpful e-mail where the solution I used was also included.

All in all, ignoring the little drawback which took me 2 days to fix, I definitely recommend this card. The sound is much better compared to both onboard audio on my laptop and desktop. I picked the card up for around 60$ (electronics are expensive where I live), but you can pick it up at Amazon for 30$ if you have the possibility. Considering that it also includes a pair of headphones with a microphone, (like I mentioned, better than the low tier Sennheiser earbuds I've used) it's an amazing opportunity to take.

Thanks for reading!

0 Steelseries Sensei RAW

Hello! My old faithful Logitech G9X broke as of yesterday, so I decided to set sail for a new mouse. I ended up buying a Steelseries Sensei RAW since I'm a big fan of Steelseries products. I have to say, I really loved the G9X, and I always thought I would buy a new one if the one I had broke, but I just felt like I should go for a change this time.

First things first, I must say I'm really impressed with the product. It comes in a nice small box with its manual, a Steelseries sticker, and the mouse itself. It works as soon as you plug it in with no problems at all. I suggest you download Steelseries Engine from the website to fine tune your mouse. The mouse cable is braided like many other good mice, so that you don't rip the cable apart at some point.

There are two versions of Steelseries Sensei RAW, glossy and rubber. I picked the glossy one up since I don't really like the rubber feeling, but it's different for everyone I suppose. The mouse has 7 buttons, (LMB/RMB/MMB/M5/M6/M7/M8) where M5/M6 is placed at the left side, and M7/M8 is placed at the right side. The buttons are easily reachable without any problem even though the right side buttons look uncomfortable at first glance. There's also a button right under MMB, which allows you to toggle between 2 DPI modes. (you can set them in Steelseries Engine) You can also configure every button as you like, to execute some macros, or launch applications. I use my M7/M8 for Next/Previous song in Winamp.

The mouse has a nice LED Steelseries logo, which is also fully configurable via Steelseries Engine. You can change the intensity of the illumination, and make it blink if you want. I personally keep it illuminated all the time, since it looks quite good.

Technically speaking, the mouse is 5700 DPI, which is a lot more than enough. There are mice with over 10000 DPI now, and I just don't get why anyone would something like that. I think even 5700 DPI is a lot, and I doubt many people use it that fast.

I thought it would be hard to get used to this mouse after using the G9X for so long, but once I set the DPI to the value it was on my old mouse, I got used to it with no problem at all. I can even say that I like the glossy surface more than the surface of the G9X.

The mouse is quite lightweight, (lighter than G9X with no weights attached) which I like. As someone who plays games a lot during the day, a light mouse makes my arm feel like heavens. I would categorize it as a medium-large size mouse. If you have a small hand, you might not be so comfortable with it.

All in all, I recommend this mouse with my whole heart. I'm glad that I went for a change instead of buying another G9X. I'm not saying this mouse is better than G9X by any means, (I can't betray the old faithful this fast!) but I can say it's as good. If you're looking to buy a new mouse, and if it fits your budget (60$ in Amazon), make sure you give Steelseries Sensei RAW a chance!

0 Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Hello everyone! After a week, we are together with a new post again. Today's topic is Virtual Private Servers. First things first, as always, let's start with learning what a Virtual Private Server (VPS) is. A VPS is a Virtual Machine, hosted on the internet. It's like having your own computer which you can access remotely via the internet.

You can use a VPS for many things, such as hosting a (IRC, games, VoIP, web, email, etc.) server, using it to test software out without modifying your own computer, downloading & uploading, (if your internet is slow, you can download stuff on your VPS and use it instead) or just playing around on it.

A big advantage of using a VPS is that they're really cheap, and you can have plenty of them running different operating systems for full flexibility. That way, you'll be able to do everything you need without even touching your main computer. Virtual Private Server also come with disadvantages like anything else. They usually have really low resources since many Virtual Private Servers are being ran on one computer to reduce expenses. If you are looking for something with high resources, then I suggest you buy a dedicated server instead of a VPS. Although, buying a dedicated server will cost you a lot more than a VPS.

There's also a confusion between VPN and VPS which I would like to clear out. First of all, they aren't the same thing. A Virtual Private Server is a virtual machine, hosted on the internet like we've talked about before. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tunnel. Basically, it's an IP address which you can use to connect to the internet instead of using your own. This way, you can use country-specific services which you can't use in your country by using a VPN.

That would be all about Virtual Private Servers, at least for now.

See you later in a different post!

0 Managed Server

Hello there! Haven't been able to write lately because of New Year's Eve and all that stuff. Happy (late!) New Year to everyone to start with, I hope you had fun! Today's topic is Managed Server, also known as Managed Dedicated Server.

I want to share information about what a managed server is, since I talked too much about data recovery for long time, and it feels like it's a good time to change that.

A managed server is a server, as you might appreciate, where the hardware and the software is already included. They also have system administrators which are working on the servers all the time, and they are obligated with maintaining the server. In this case, of course, they are more expensive than unmanaged servers, for obvious reasons.

Although they are more expensive, I believe it's always better to choose managed over unmanaged, since you might have problems that you can't overcome on your own with an unmanaged server, and spend hours on it to solve the issue. In the other hand, the administrators in managed servers are always there in order to fix your problems.

Security is also a concern in unmanaged servers since there isn't anyone on the spot who can access the servers, and all you got is remote access. When you consider all of these things, it's a smarter move to choose a managed server over an unmanaged one.

This way, you won't have to worry about things like software & OS updates, firewall & antivirus services, backups, database management and server monitoring.

So, if you're looking to buy a server, make sure that you buy a managed one. Even the most experienced users & developers sometimes stumble upon problems which they can't solve on their own.

I will have to keep today's post short since I am really busy with other stuff at the moment. I will write more about this subject later on in a different post.

Until the next time, see you!