■ editorial

Apples and Oranges

I t just works. That’s the bottom line behind the success of the Macs.
Simplicity and ease of use coupled with flawless integration of hardware and
software are precisely the reasons why Macs are positioned to become the de
facto platform for home digital entertainment.
That’s right, when it comes to playing and creating movies, viewing your
digital photo collection or listening to MP3 music, there’s very little a Mac can -
not do straight out of the box. Now think of a PC and you’re sure to recollect
one harrowing experience after another.
Okay so we’re desensitised to driver problems, weird blue screen crashes
and system lockups, or trying to figure out how to use a particular feature in that
fancy multimedia application. But these ‘oversights’ are what make most peo - Vinit Aggarwal
ple techphobic in the first place. All PC users can’t be expected to invest hours Assistant Editor
of their time into exploring and working around these glitches. Most of them

“Apple boasts of
simply throw their hands up in the air and exclaim, “Bah, this is not worth
the effort!”
This is where Apple steps in. In fact their marketing campaign recites sim-
ilar experiences of frustrated PC users turned Mac converts. And they boast sim- simplicity and a
plicity and a cutting-edge digital entertainment experience as the topmost rea- cutting-edge digital
sons for shifting to a Mac.
But we all know that Microsoft hates being an innocent bystander. If any- entertainment
thing, their business philosophy can be summed up as, “If our customer is
experience as the
hooked onto something we don’t make, we start making it!”
Enter Windows XP Media Center Edition. Some might know it as ‘Freestyle’, topmost reasons for
but for the uninitiated, this new Microsoft Operating System defines the state
of things to come. Not only is Microsoft building a brand new user interface that
why you should shift
works seamlessly with a remote control for all digital entertainment needs, they
are also collaborating with hardware vendors in laying down the specifications
to a Mac ”
of the PCs that will drive this new OS.
Try connecting the dots. A new Microsoft OS based upon the Windows XP
kernel to specifically handle digital entertainment tasks, to turn a PC into a full-
fledged home entertainment device where watching TV, DVDs, playing music
or browsing your digital photo collection is possible at the flick of a remote con-
trol button. And it will come preloaded on a state-of-the-art system that’s built
under Microsoft’s supervision.
The writing’s on the wall—Microsoft is all set to hit Apple where it hurts the
most. And all Apple can do is to get back to the drawing board…once again.

[email protected]
index ■
■ magazine

FEATURES Data Watch.........................96

One for the Road.................32 We mark out the areas of peril for
These new-age mobile devices will your data—and show you how to
change the way you compute on the avoid them
move
Just for Fun ........................106
Broadband Blues.................38 The Net is one big playground—you
So you think you have a high speed just need to know where to look
Internet connection?
Driving your Graphics Card
TEST DRIVE Higher ..................................109
Storage City 2002................44 Upgrade your graphics card drivers
If data storage is your problem, we’ve the right way
▲ Can 3ds max 5 make a
got the perfect solution—storage ▲ splash in the 3D
devices to suit every need Foul Play..............................115
We’re sharing our little black book of modelling pool?
Maximum 3D........................78 game cheats and dirty tricks
Does Discreet’s new version of 3ds
max live up to the hype? ARCADE
Six Feet Under...................128
INSIGHT Find out why some games never
Simputer Simplified...........92 make it to your computer
The Simputer is all set to take
technology to the rural masses

Let us point
you to the
right recre-
ation areas Keep a lookout for
▲
online ▲ potential data disasters

Hard drives to CD-Writers, DVD-ROMs to Broadband in India: Big Bang or

▲ ▲
▲ Portable storage—you name it, we’ve got it! ▲ Bust?

4 NOVEMBER 2002
 index ■
magazine
■
78
Get the lowdown on
3ds max 5

32
Check out the next
generation of
mobile comput-
ing

96
These lifeguards will safe-
guard and rescue your
data from any catastrophe

44
We’ve got all your
data needs covered
92
Can the Simputer
with this 3-in-1 bridge the Digital
storage test Divide?

38
Are you living
the broadband
106
Your ticket to having
myth? fun on the Net

115
Win games the easy way:
cheat

Reviewed this month

HARDWARE DVD-ROM Drives 56 2000
Bazaar . . . . . . . . . . . 84 ■ ASUS DVD-E616 ■ Western Digital
NEWS FEED . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
■ AMD Athlon XP 2600+ ■ Benq DVP-1648A WD1000
LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 ■ Hercules 3D Prophet All- ■ LG DRD-8160B ■ Western Digital WD800
In-Wonder 8500 DV ■ LITEON LTD-165H Portable Storage . . . 72
DROOLMAAL . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 ■ Ingram Micro Magix ■ Pioneer DVD-106S/2 ■ Freecom FHD-1 60 GB
■ Mercury Wireless ■ Samsung SD-616 ■ Freecom Traveller II
START UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Internet Multimedia ■ Sony DDU1621-CO ■ Iomega HDD 20 GB

Keyboard Hard Disk Drives . . . 46 Portable Hard Drive

BAZAAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 ■ MSI KT4 Ultra ■ IBM IC35l080AV VA07-0 ■ Iomega Zip 250
■ TVS Proton ■ Maxtor 4G160J8 ■ Iomega Zip 750 MB
UNDERCOVER . . . . . . . . . . . .90
■ Zenith Portable Desktop ■ Maxtor 541DX ■ Plextor PXS88TU

Q & A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 CD-Writers. . . . . . . . 56 ■ Maxtor D540X-4K ■ Plextor PX-W2410A

■ ASUS CRW-4816A ■ Samsung SP2001H ■ Sony CRXP-90MU
OFF THE SHELF . . . . . . . . . . .132 ■ Benq 4012P ■ Samsung SP4002H ■ Yamaha CRW3200UX-VK
■ Iomega ■ Samsung SP8004H
DIGIT DIARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 CDRW55296INT-B ■ Samsung SV0602H SOFTWARE
■ Krypton BCE-3212M ■ Samsung SV1204H Bazaar . . . . . . . . . . . 84
BACKBYTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 ■ Krypton BCE-4012M ■ Samsung SV2001H ■ Busy Lite 3.0
■ LG 8320B ■ Samsung SV4002H ■ SuSE 8.0 Professional

■ LITEON LTR-40125 S ■ Samsung SV8004H Edition 7.0

■ LITEON LTR-48125 W ■ Seagate ST340016A ■ Word Perfect Office
To subscribe to Digit, fill out ■ Samsung SW204 ■ Seagate ST340810A 2002 - Professional
the subscription form available online at ■ SONY CRX-195A1 ■ Seagate ST380021A Edition
www.thinkdigit.com/subscribe ■ Yamaha CRW-F1 ■ Western Digital WD 3ds max 5 . . . . . . . . 78

6 NOVEMBER 2002
index ■
■ digit interactive

HIGHLIGHTS
ON THE CD KNOW YOUR CD
AstroMart 7.0 MINDWARE\RESOLVE
Size: 5.85 MB, Type: Trial
Mindware\Software\Home The Resolve section on your Digit CD whitepapers for those who yearn to
brings you answers to frequently asked know the grinding details of each
Backup Genie 1.5 questions on the latest technologies, technology and tips and tricks to use
Size: 615 KB, Type: Freeware technology better.
Mindware\Software\System This month we bring you
FAQs on the various facets of
Code-Genie 3.0 Storage Solutions and whitepa-
Size: 0.6 MB, Type: Freeware
pers on hard disk technologies,
Mindware\Software\Developer Tools
giving you a complete picture on
Delta Force : Black Hawk Down everything you need to know
Size: 47 MB, Type: Demo about storage media. The tips
Playware\Arena\Games and tricks help you to use your
PC at home to make those rou-
Helium2 Advanced Edition 1.2 tine tasks simpler.
Size: 6.8 MB, Type: Trial
Mindware\Software\Multimedia

Home Inventory 1.0 MUST-TRY SOFTWARE

Size: 4 MB, Type: Trial
Mindware\Software\Home Magenta II routed through electronic channels.
Multimedia Tools E-mail is gradually replacing paper.
Kaboom! Cola Magenta II is a professional authoring E-mail messages are just too easy to inter-
Size: 1.2 MB, Type: Demo tool for developers of front-end applica- cept and scan for interesting keywords.
Playware\Arena\FunZone tions, course- This can be done easily, routinely, auto -
ware and multi- matically and undetectably on a grand
mIRC 6.03
Size: 1.2 MB, Type: Trial media. It is scale. PGP empowers people to take their
Mindware\Software\Internet capable of pro - privacy into their own hands. PGPi is the
ducing high- international version of the most widely-
Microangelo 5.54 quality, reliable used and free public key encryption tool.
Size: 2.4 MB, Type: Trial applications for Size: 7.4 MB, Type: Freeware
Mindware\Software\Multimedia Windows operating systems. Its major Mindware\Software\Home
features include code-generating wiz-
NeoNapster 3
ards, event-driven programming, ready- Another War
Size: 0.9 MB, Type: Freeware
to-use components and Internet support Another War takes place during World War
Mindware\Software\Internet
for HTTP, FTP, SMTP and sockets. II in Nazi-occupied Europe. It is a colourful
Ricochet 1.3 Size: 10.1 MB, Type: Trial story of an
Size: 7 MB, Type: Trial Mindware\Software\Multimedia adventurer
Playware\Arena\FunZone who wants
PGPi 7.0.3 to save his
Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.15 It’s personal. It’s private. And it’s no one’s friend from
Size: 1.35 MB, Type: Freeware
business but yours. You may be planning the Nazis.
Mindware\Software\Internet
a political campaign, discussing your The plot
Windows XP Service Pack 1 taxes, or having an illicit affair. Whatever starts in a
Size: 135 MB, Type: Freeware it is, you don’t want your private e-mail small town
Mindware\Software\Internet or confidential in occu-
documents read pied France and goes on to Leningrad
Tips & Tricks Hottest chart- by anyone else. where he stumbles upon one of the most
Sponsored by buster games from More and more secretly guarded projects run by both, Sovi -
of our private et and German engineers.
c o m m u n i c a- Size: 232 MB, Type: Demo
tions are being Playware\Arena\Games

8 NOVEMBER 2002
index ■
■ online

taste technology at http://www.thinkdigit.com

WEB SPECIAL SEARCH

Make your PC Search for any article you want on the
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an Earning simple your query, if the article’s online,
Member you will find it. If you know which
Ten feasible ideas to make section the article is in, simply browse
your home computer pay for through the sections from menu on
itself! the left.

BY DEMAND WEB SPECIAL

You get to choose what goes on Small
Digit Interactive. This month, you
have chosen:
Wonder
WordPerfect Office 2002 Good things come in
(170 MB) for Mindware small packages. With a
PDA, you can hold
No One Lives Forever 2
infinity in the palm of
(158 MB) for Playware
Expect these on the December 2002 CDs. your hand...almost!

12 NOVEMBER 2002
 OPTION 2
index ■
■ colophon

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11 ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

Chairman Jasu Shah Write Back CLIENT PAGE

Printer, Publisher and Editor Got feedback on Digit or 3M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
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16 NOVEMBER 2002
pulse ■
■ news

hypethesis
Copying media for Google
Blue Laser Discs
■ What are they?
These are optical disks invent-
personal use legal? launches
news service
ed by Philips where up to
1 GB of information can be
stored on a disk measuring
I n reponse to Hollywood’s
aggressive anti-piracy issues,
a bill has been presented in
consumers’ rights,” said rep-
resentative Zoe Lofgren. The
state Assembly Committee on
Google has beefed up its
Web site using its search
just 3 cm in diameter—nearly Washington to protect the Arts, Entertainment, Sports, engine technology to add
twice the amount that can be rights of consumers to make Tourism and Internet Media ground-breaking news serv-
stored on conventional 8 cm will host an all-day hearing ices. Google News scans
CDs that hold 700 MB of investigating the impact of 4000 news sources in real
data. The disk also has special Internet music piracy on Cal - time, creating a dynamic
drives being developed for it, ifornia’s recording industry. page displaying top news.
to be used in portable The bills could balance the The front page offers
devices like digital cameras, political debate that so far has brief headlines and a synopsis
MP3 players, handheld favoured the entertainment of the stories with photo-
devices and even cell phones. industry. graphs. When you click on a
The bill would amend headline, you are taken to
■ How does it work? copies of digital music, movies federal copyright laws to the source’s Web site to read
The disks are fabricated using and books. Called the Digital extend consumers’ fair use the full story. If you choose a
blue lasers instead of the con- Choice and Freedom Act, the rights to copyright-protected related link, a list of stories on
ventional red lasers. Having bill will “help retard the entertainment that comes in the same subject from com-
smaller wavelengths, the growth of efforts to roll over digital form. peting news outlets is dis-
lasers can read data packed in played, allowing you to take
a denser format. Correspond- your pick. “People can now
ingly, the pit size and track
spacing is also lower than What’s in a name? pick a story and then decide
the source, instead of picking
conventional CDs and even a source and finding a story,”
DVDs. The prototype drive to
read these disks measures just
2.2x1.3x0.3 inches. Standard
T
open
he Free Software Founda-
tion (FSF), headed by
source evangelist
the system in 1984, years
before Linus Torvalds got
involved, and we also wrote
says Marissa Mayer, Google.
com product manager.
The service is complete-
sized CDs using this technolo- Richard Stallman, has called the largest part of the ly automated and relies on
gies feature capacities of up for Linus Torvald’s operating code. In fair- the same information-rank-
to 27 GB. system to be renamed ness, we ing technology used in the
GNU/Linux. ought to get Google search engine to
■ What does it mean Linux has rap- equal mention.” deliver relevant results.
to me? idly become a The FSF’s
Optical disks are far cheaper well-known demands have
than other forms of digital operating sys - split the open snapshot
storage and given their size, tem, and Stall - source com -
they are ideally suited to man argues munity. Some
Digital video
mobile applications in place that GNU’s role in its devel - have suggested that the recorders to reach
of technology like Flash opment is not getting organisation is just being 1.8 million by
end of 2003 and
memory, which is costlier. enough recognition. His doc - petty, while others back its
These types of storage media ument states his point say - argument but think that the
are also far more robust as ing, “This system is basically FSF is fighting an uphill bat- 19.1 million
compared to other solid-state a version of the GNU system, tle, as all GNU/Linux-based by 2006
memory implementations. modified to use the Linux systems will simply be short-
kernel. We started developing ened to ‘Linux’. Source: The Yankee Group

■ HP to bundle CD, DVD Writers on Pavilion desktops and notebooks ■ Intel launches 11 mobile CPUs up to 2.2 GHz and ups Celeron to 2 GHz

20 NOVEMBER 2002
Hard drive warranties lowered redalert
T hree of the major hard
drive makers have cut
down the length of warranties
The changes will only be
for drives sold for desktop
PCs and some consumer-elec -
“This should have no effect
on consumers because we
hardly ever get returns in the
Bugbear
Infections by the new Bug-
bear worm (also known as
from three years to one year tronics products, which tra- second or third year and Tanatos) have rocketed
on some of their drives, start - ditionally have one-year war - it frees up cash that we have overnight. In just the first day
ing October 1 2002. PC mak- ranties or less, according to reserve to cover the of the worm being released,
ers have been pulling to representa- warranties.” there were over 22,000 new
back the warranties tives from The companies will infections. Asia and the Far
on their comput- all three maintain three and five-year East have been the worst hit
ers in an effort companies. warranties for drives used in areas, with the US a close
to reduce costs, “We’re follow- large businesses such as second. The worm copies
and hard-drive ing the trend in banks. Western Digital will itself into the Windows sys-
makers Seagate, Max- desktop PCs, where offer extended warranties tem directory and startup
tor and Western Digital they’ve all switched to directly to customers, while folder as an EXE file with a
are following suit. These one-year warranties,” said Maxtor and Seagate expect random three-letter name.
three giants comprise 85 per Stephen DiFranco, vice pres- retailers to have extended Once installed, it disables
cent of the hard drive market. ident of marketing at Maxtor. warranty programs. anti-virus and firewall soft-
ware and installs a Trojan
keystroke logger as a DLL,

Need more space? FBI names top

security flaws
detected as PWS-Hooker.dll.
The worm also seeks to infect
all other PCs on the network

S W
anyo Electric has intro - Sanyo’s HD-Burn tech- ith an eye on taking via the address book and net-
duced a drive which can nology increases the data the ease out of hack- work shares. All major anti-
read and storage density ing, the FBI and SysAdmin, virus companies have provid-
write twice the by increasing the Audit, Networking and Secu- ed updates for their software
amount of data number of rity (SANS) Institute have to remove the virus.
onto conven - usable pits into announced two Top Twenty
tional CD-Rs. which data is Internet Security Vulnerabili - Opasoft
When data is recorded with burnt. The company plans to ties for 2002. This list out- Another worm that / targets
the new CRD-BPDV2 drive, a start mass production in Jan- lines the software features Windows 95, 98 and Me is
meagre 700 MB CD-R can uary next year, aiming at most often used by hackers to called Opasoft, W32/Opasoft,
hold 1.4 GB of data, thats up manufacturing 30,000 units a circumvent computer securi - or Opaserv. Unlike other
to 2 hours of video! month. ty and break into Windows worms that spread over the
and Unix systems. Internet through infected

statattack INFOGRAPHICS: Jaya Shetty

As part of the announce -
ment, federal agencies have
e-mail, Opasoft uses the NET-
BIOS protocol. Once it hits a
been urged to test their net- machine, it scans the network
works for systems with any for other machines to attack.
of the listed risks. When a vulnerable machine is
The SANS Institute was located, it checks if the C
also planning a weekly criti - drive can be accessed, places
cal vulnerability analysis a copy of itself on that
mailing list. This will rely on machine and then alters the
a committee of 15 security win.ini file so that the worm
professionals to decide which is run the next time the
of the dozens of vulnerabili - machine is started. Although
ties found each week should the damage it does is not
receive special attention. In known, it opens a back door
addition, it intends to devel - to www.opasoft.com, from
op a broader list of potential which updated versions of the
security problems to give worm and other script files
companies further guidance are downloaded. Anti-virus
on the security of their updates should be able to
networks. take care of the virus.

■ Microsoft recruits Xbox hackers to crack down on illegal mod chips ■ Fujitsu promises to replace 3,00,000 HDDs due to faulty semiconductors

21 NOVEMBER 2002
pulse ■
■ news

Porn company Kill spammers... literally! heroes

wants Napster
P rivate Media Group, a
pronography firm, offered
A n online game offering vir-
tual revenge on spammers
is gaining cult status as Neti -
its customers’ e-mail addresses.
Apparently, an ex-employ-
ee of SparkList.com, its mail -
Cyberlaws
A 28-year-old computer engi-
to acquire the Napster trade- zens queue up to take out their ing list host, sold a backup neer from UK was sentenced
mark and the Napster.com frustrations at receiving spam. copy of the list to spammers. to 18 months for hacking into
Internet address for 1 million Various icons represent a firm’s database. A Russian
shares of Private Media stock. different kinds of spam- hacker was sentenced to
The company said that it mers such as a blond in a three years in prison for a
planned to create a peer-to- red bikini for pornogra - computer crime. A 21-year-
peer network that would pro- phy, a purple and white old man has been arrested
mote the sharing of pornogra- pill for the Viagra e-mails and his equipment seized for
phy. It would also sell porno- and a man in a trench the creation of the Linux T0rn
graphic material on the site. coat as an online sales - virus.
“Along with Hollywood and man. Players can choose
the recording industry, we their method of attack P2P Services
have become increasingly If only this wasn’t a game! from gruesome punish - The operator of the KaZaA
concerned about the level of ments such as boiling oil music-swapping service
copyright infringement inher- Torture a Spammer was devised and flying killer monkeys. announced a partnership with
ent in free peer-to-peer file by a US company, Marketing- You can play Torture a Spam - one of Europe’s major Inter-
swapping services,” said Sherpa, after the theft and mis- mer at http://torturegame.email- net access providers in a deal
Charles Prast, president and use of more than 10 million of sherpa.com/. that underscores their mutual
benefit from a method of
exchanging songs that has
Vulnerability reporting guidelines raised the ire of record com-
panies worldwide.

E leven software makers

and security firms have
announced the formation of
there are no agreed-upon
processes for handling secu-
rity vulnerabilities,” the zeroes
chief executive officer of Pri- a group called the Organiza - group said. “The lack of any
vate Media. “We intend to use tion for Internet Safety (OIS, consensus procedures com- Advertising
the strength of the Napster www.oisafety.org), which plicates the process of fixing invading games
trademark to build a commu- intends to set down rules vulnerabilities, and ultimate - Electronic Arts has struck
nity for adults to share our regarding how the security ly increases the risk that all product placement deals
content.” The announcement community should responsi- computer users face.” with McDonalds and Intel
came less than two weeks after bly release information on OIS will only provide for Sims Online. Chipzilla and
a bankruptcy court judge software flaws. guidelines and Burgerzilla will feature in the
blocked Napster’s sale to The members no enforcement game, while players will be
German media giant Bertels- of the group mechanism will able to open a virtual
mann AG who offered over include security be advocated. McDonalds franchise and
$15 million, plus $85 million companies Earlier this year, eating there will give them
in loans to keep the file-swap- @Stake, Bind - a draft of such more points. Intel introduces
ping service in operation View, Found - guidelines was Pentium branding and the
while it was being pursued stone, Guardent, ISS, NAI, submitted to the Internet Intel Inside jingle.
through the courts for copy- and Symantec as well as soft - Engineering Task Force
right infringement. ware makers Caldera Interna- (IETF), only to be turned Storage technology
tional, Microsoft, Oracle and down as being outside IETF’s DataPlay, a start-up that
snapshot SGI. They hope to bridge the purview. The proposed rules developed a new secure
gap between security firms suggest that companies media format to replace the
Steve Jobs is the
and independent consultants respond to security CD, has shut down, at least
highest-paid execu- who release information researchers within a week of temporarily for new fund-
tive, collecting about flaws to grab media being notified of a potential ing. Major record labels had
attention and the software flaw and that researchers give supported the format and
$43.5 million companies that frequently software companies at least DataPlay expected to have
in 2002 find themselves with egg on 30 days to fix the flaw before discs on the market by the
their face over the holes in making information about end of October 2002.
Source: Economic Research Institute their applications. “Today, it public. ➜

■ Dell offers free processor upgrades on Latitude notebooks ■ Nokia unveils 3G phone that captures video clips ■ Sun to ship Solaris 9 for x86 at $99

22 NOVEMBER 2002
pulse ■
■ news

Global measures IDF 2002

M iles of fibre-optic cable
may answer a question
first tackled by the ancient
traceroute utility on any com-
puter connected to the Inter -
net can be used to record the
and to teach them about sys -
tematics in data.
Unfortunately, the Earth’s
W hile all of America was
mourning on Septem-
ber 11, San Jose, California was
Greeks: How big is the Earth? round-trip time for small topography hinders perfectly buzzing with activity as the
In a recent paper, Internet packets between accurate measurements Intel Developer Forum (IDF)
Youngstown State University major Internet traffic hubs,” because cables are not laid showed off some of the latest
physics teacher he explains. Cresci- precisely along great circles. technologies and develop-
Michael Cresciman- manno’s students Crescimanno has attempted ments from September 9 to 12.
no describes how have developed to find some means of error- Frank Spindler, vice president
computer signals the traceroute correction by comparing road of Corporate Technology
travelling under- experiment as an and straight-line distances Group, outlined the key sub-
sea through inexpensive way between eight Ohio cities. jects of the forum. The sched-
buried fibre-optic to involve intro- Traceroute-based measure - ule was tightly packed with
cables can be used ductory physics ments of the Earth’s radius briefings, conferences, demon-
to quickly and eas- students in yield errors similar to his find- stration of products and tech-
ily estimate the size hands-on use of ings of a 20 per cent difference nologies and special parties,
of the planet. “The scientific notation between the Ohio cities. but that didn’t stop Intel from
throwing in tennis and game

Never buy a game again

tables for people to relax. All
in all, the forum was a techno-
logical paradise. You can visit

Y ahoo!, always a
path-setter of one
kind or another, now
download the whole package,
and some of the biggest game
publishers have teamed up
the official site for the forum
at www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2002/
index.htm.
brings Yahoo! Games, with them.
which serves 4.5 bil-
lion minutes of game
Currently there are 40
titles available for rent at
snapshot
time to 8 million play- Games http://gamesondemand.yahoo IT spending
ers each month. The site On Demand .com , and all you need to do is worldwide expected
peaks each day with about
1,50,000 simultaneous players
service that
allows broadband
login to the Yahoo! Games On
Demand service and pay for a
$2.3
to total
and now Yahoo! hopes to PC users to rent titles at very rental. A three day rental for trillion in 2002
work around the troubles of competitive prices. Yahoo! has one game costs $4.95 (approx $2.4
and to rise to
renting games by doing it
online. On September 23,
overcome security issues by
using a custom client for play-
Rs 250). You can also get a
package deal at higher prices,
trillion in 2003
they launched their Yahoo! ing the games, so you never for as long as a month. Source: Gartner Dataquest

Apple teaming up with IBM

I
BM Microelectronics is is expected to run in the 1.4- than current PowerPC chips. GPUL processor provides dou-
working with Apple on a 2.0 GHz range and will dou- GPUL will be a multi-core ble the performance of a
64-bit PowerPC processor ble the Mac performance. chip, with two or four proces - 1 GHz Motorola PowerPC G4
for use in Apple’s high-end While the power-hungry sors in one package. Having processor. GPUL will support
desktops and servers. Apple is Power4 is designed the processors closer together Vector/SIMD Multimedia
testing the CPU, dubbed the for servers, and sharing the Extensions (VMX),
GigaProcessor Ultralite GPUL is report- same cache will a group of 162
(GPUL), on Mac OS X hard - edly cooler and make for faster instructions that
ware and making sure that the more compact, multiprocessing speed data process-
processor complies with a new comparing in environments. ing and algorithm-
bus architecture for future size to Intel’s However, it is not yet clear intensive tasks, such as multi-
Macs. In addition, IBM plans Celeron. However, GPUL will whether applications would media creation and display.
to offer the processor as the inherit many Power4 per - need to be rewritten to take VMX has been designed to be
centrepiece of future Linux- formance advantages, such as advantage of this architecture. compatible with Altivec mul-
based systems. GPUL, pro - being able to perform more Benchmarks and applica - timedia extensions currently
duced on 130 nm technology, instructions per clock cycle tions tests show that a 1 GHz used in the PowerPC G4. ➜

■ W3C proposes two methods to encrypt XML documents ■ Warner Bros to make movie based on DOOM ■ Foldable computers on the way

24 NOVEMBER 2002
 pulse ■
■ news

Hacker’s laptop
Mobile P2P quoteworthy
on auction
“Every new genera-
A n online auction of the
two laptops used to hack
major corporations could get
A French company called
Apeera reckons
mobile phones can act as
that
Technologies such as GPRS
and MMS can also be expect-
ed to get a boost, alongside
tion of consoles
increases the capa-
convicted cyber criminal nodes in vast peer-to-peer net- attempts by operators to
bilities of what we
Kevin Mitnick a tidy sum. In works and aims to supply use the network to boost can do by five times.
an effort to help finance a mobile subscribers marketing initiatives. That’s what we need
legal battle to regain his radio with a personal P2P networks to prepare for. We
operator’s license, the one- network-based bring with them a have to increase our
time hacker is auctioning the repository for host of issues skill-set.”
two Toshiba Satellite note - content such as ranging from
books seized by law enforce- ring tones, Digital Rights Bruce McMillan, executive
ment officers at eBay. “These games, etc. ILLUSTRATIONS : Mahesh Benkar Management to vice president of Electronic
were the laptops used to hack Apeera’s tech - mobile phone Arts’ Worldwide Studios,
into companies and Shimo- nology lets users share this batteries and bandwidth to which is responsible for sev-
mura’s computers,” Mitnick content and applications, support such services. Then eral of this year’s top games
said. Tsutomu Shimomura, a boosting traffic on service there’s security issues, especial- including Medal of Honor,
senior fellow at the San Diego provider networks and ly since mobile phones are sees the gaming industry
Supercomputer Center, helped spurring adoption of the lat- beginning to hold more and growing to be more and
track down Mitnick in 1995 est Java-based mobile phones. more data. more complex and even
after the hacker broke into the attracting some of Holly-

Jackpot!
computer scientist’s server the wood’s best talent
previous year.
The first laptop has a
486DX processor, 4 MB of
RAM and a 200 MB hard drive
with Windows 95 installed.
A new trend has people mak-
ing loads of money playing
games online. Mary Dion, a for-
big job to become a profession-
al online solitaire player at
WorldWinner (www.worldwin-
“We have the lowest
tariffs in the world
and they can fall
Bidding on the machine mer accountant, has given up a ner.com). Such sites call it ‘skill- (further) by up to
reached $9,200 (approx Rs based gaming’ to distinguish 20-30 per cent.”
4,60,000) at the time of going themselves from gambling sites.
to press. The second laptop The games are simple and the T.V. Ramachandran, director
sports an Intel 486SX proces - business model straightforward. general of the Cellular Oper-
sor and is marked with the Customers pay a small entry ators Association of India
dust used to lift fingerprints. fee, the site takes a cut from it, (COAI), on the growth of
This one has gone up to and the rest goes into a pot to mobile services in India
$6,000 (approx Rs 3,00,000). be claimed by the top player.
Both the laptops have
been signed by Mitnick and
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of
tomorrow’stechnology
Apple Computer and come
with a copy of the FBI evi -
Spinning a new technology
dence form listing the make,
model and serial numbers of
the computers.
O hio State University has
made inroads into a new
field of technology called
tics even at high temperatures,
thus jumping over this hurdle.
Experiments have proved
switched off. This would also
give rise to instant boot-up
computers, since the infor-
Spintronics, by dispensing that a magnetic field can be mation is already retained

snapshot with conventional chip-fabri-

cating materials like silicon or
used to polarise the spin of an
electron. This is the first step
and can be accessed rapidly.
While today’s inorganic semi-
gallium arsenide, for plastics. towards enabling plastics to conductors are fabricated
Number of broad -
Temperatures within a com- be used to store information. using multiple stages of vacu-
band connections in puter reach as high as 50 The advantage with Spintron- um deposition and etching,
UK doubled since degrees C, rendering this tech- ics is that an electron retains plastic semiconductors could

May 2002 to nology useless in the past. But

a new polymer called vanadi-
its spin until it is changed by
an external magnetic field.
theoretically be as simple to
produce as using inkjet tech-
reach 1 million um tetracyanoethanide This implies that data is nology to print chips on large
exhibits magnetic characteris- retained even after power is sheets of plastic.
Source: Oftel

■ MTV to make rags to riches movie on Napster's founder ■ Sharp's lab develops 3-D flat screen ■ Charles Simonyi, creator of Word, Excel leaves MS

26 NOVEMBER 2002
Readers Letter-Nov.qxd 4/29/2004 10:17 AM Page 28

pulse ■
■ letters

Dear Mrs Kinnariben,

Sounds like an interesting story. We’ll definitely explore the pos-
sibility of carrying it in an upcoming issue. In the meantime, you
could check out a similar article we’ve carried in our February
2002 issue titled ‘Make Your PC an Earning Member’. This article
is also featured at www.thinkdigit.com/connect/firsthand/
stories/38586.html.

Your vote counts

Q. What type of interface would you prefer on the This month’s question:
Digit CDs?
HTML Director Doesn’t matter “What do you think about Digit’s unique
49% 33% 18% half-flap covers?”
Watch out for a cool new HTML interface from January 2003! Log on to www.thinkdigit.com and vote on it

28 NOVEMBER 200
Readers Letter-Nov.qxd 4/29/2004 10:17 AM Page 29

Short Bytes
Filtered by Digit
Hi Guys,
I simply love Digit and
eagerly await the beginning
of the month when I can
get my hands on the new
issue of Digit. In today’s age
of hyped up marketing and
product peddling, Digit
helps in sorting through
the clutter. Keep up the
good work.
Aditya Kumar Sharma
Via e-mail

Free Linux
Hi Vinit,
Here is a tip for people who
don’t want to spend 11
grand on Red Hat Linux 7.3
(reviewed in the October
issue). Go to any bookstore
and buy the book titled
Hat Linux 7.3 Bible and
you’ll get the three installa
tion disks free! Okay, so the
book costs Rs 499, but it’s
still a bargain when com
pared to the retail box.
Anu
Via e-mail

Goof Ups
■ The Top Guns story on Page
122 (Digit, September 2002),
incorrectly credits the “What do
you need besides a miracle?”
quote from the movie The Matrix
to Trinity, when it was actually
said by Tang. Thanks to Manu
Ignatius for pointing this out.
■ It took Monish Prem’s eagle
eyes to point out that in the
graph on Page 78 of the Sys
tem Suites test (Digit, October
2002), we’ve interchanged the
defrag times taken by Norton
SystemWorks 2002 and
Ontrack SystemSuite 4.0.
■ In the Bazaar section of the
October 2002 issue, we wrongly
mentioned Visualan Technolo
gies as the contact for Mercury
MP3-VCD Player (Page 82) and
Mercury Pocket DV Camera
(Page 86). The correct contact is
Kobian India Pvt Ltd (Phone:
Send your letters marked ‘Readers Letters’ to the Digit office: 080-5566626)
D-222/2, MIDC, TTC Industrial Estate, Om Sagar Building, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400 706,
Notice any goof-ups? Write to
Phone: 022-7629191/9200 Fax: 022-7629224
E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]

29 NOVEMBER 200
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features ■
■ technology next

One for
the Road
Call them work buddies or play mates—the new generation of mobile devices will make you forget al
about pixellated screens, skimpy applications and arcane user interfaces

W
ith your assortment of integrate several functions into an all-in- taneously converting it into a searchab
portable devices—a PDA, one device that is also easy to use. and editable digital format. And t
a smart phone, a digital appeal to the professional in you an
diary—you think you are Take a tablet me, it features specially modified ve
the king of computing on the go, but You are on the way to work when the per- sions of Microsoft Word and PowerPoin
you often wish that you could do more fect idea for that new advertising cam - letting you make notes in the margins o
with these devices. That you could play paign flashes in your mind. You flip out the screen and save them as documen
more than chess or do more than read an your PDA and tap in the idea before you references.
e-book or listen to MP3 music when you lose it. It is cumbersome because the key- Acer’s Travelmate 100 is one suc
are bored with that in-flight movie. That board is cramped and the handwriting sub-notebook that can be converted int
you could go beyond just light editing of recognition software is rather basic. You’d a tablet PC by simply swivelling its scree
your Word and Excel files on your PDA. rather jot your idea on a sheet of paper, 180 degrees and folding it back down ove
That you wouldn’t miss your laptop but then you think that’s a small price for its keyboard. It features Microsoft’s new
so much. the convenience of having your jottings Table PC OS, an extended version of Win
Handheld devices already let you in a digital format. dows XP Professional that incorporate
take notes, schedule your day, catch up Take heart. The next generation of support for a touch screen and stylus pen
on e-mail messages or plug in head- Smart Phones and PDAs is going to do Numerous other brands such as Toshib
phones to listen to MP3s during your something your mother can’t—read your Fujitsu, NEC and Hewlett-Packard are als
daily jog. You can even use them as a handwriting and understand what you’re bringing out devices based on this OS
stand-in for times when you cannot or saying! Featuring handwriting and The Fujitsu Siemens LT P-600, for exam
don’t want to take your laptop with you. speech processing capabilities, these ple, is powered by a 600 MHz mobile P-I
But they fall just short of being the com - devices will be able to take down dicta - processor and features an LCD touc
plete companion for your computing tions and decipher little notes that you screen that can be detached from the bas
needs on the road. jot down and convert them into a digital station for true mobility. It also features
This void for a portable device that format on the fly. Smart Card port that saves your dat
is somewhere between a laptop and a One such device is the tablet PC. when the device is not in use.
desktop in its computing power and is First seen on the initial episodes of Star A more popular tablet computer i
still small, is being filled by a slew of Trek, what was once a far-fetched idea is Microsoft’s own Tablet PC, which run
futuristic portable computers. These new now manifesting into a practical gadget. Windows Tablet PC OS. It mimics the fe
devices incorporate technologies that It offers the most natural way to get of a pen and paper. The entire screen i
information into a device—by writing pressure sensitive—pressing the stylu
directly onto it. Quite like a digital slate, harder causes bolder screen strokes lik
this device can be carried around with- with a pencil. And to erase your writing

“ In 2001, only 3 per cent of the 111

million mobile-phone subscribers in
America used a mobile data service
but by 2006, 66 per cent of the
out the slightest inconvenience and used
for scribbling down your ideas and
diagrams.
Slightly larger than the A4 notepad
simply flip the stylus around and eras
away! There’s even a digital journal tha
allows you to scribble on an interface tha
resembles a journal page—and your jo
180 million mobile phone users will in size, tablet PCs incorporate advanced tings are completely searchable for late

”
rely on data services speech and handwriting recognition reference, all on the fly!
—Forrester Research technologies that decipher your scrawl The ‘Digital Ink’ is so versatile an
as you write on the screen, while simul- interoperable that you can select piece

32 NOVEMBER
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The
10.4-inch display
is about the size of an
A4 page and features a
resoution of 1024x768
with 24-bit colour support
driven by a SMI Lynx
3DM+ graphics
chipset

The Fujitsu
Siemens LT P-600
sports a 600 MHz
P-III processor with a
touchscreen—all in an 8-inch package

connectivity. They fit all the information

you need within the reach of a stylus an
all your documents inside your pocket
The PDAs run on a new breed of proces
sors, built specifically to ensure that thes
devices don’t skimp on the application
(see box ‘The brains behind the beauty’
Running at 400 MHz, the new PDA
have transflective screens that make them
as clearly readable in total darkness as in
The
swivel screen of In spite of its bright sunlight. With a resolution o
the Acer TravelMate size, this portable 240x320, 16-bit colour and 32 MB o
100 enables it to be used machine packs in a 700 memory, these devices can handle ful
as a notepad as well as a MHz PIII-M processor with motion (30 fps) video playback and MP3
tablet PC. And it also has SpeedStep technology audio. Such processing power, couple
touchscreen support helping you maximise with scaled down and optimised version
thrown in battery power while of operating systems, makes the respons
A single on the road time of these devices very fluid and
pushbutton on the speedy. Enhanced power conservation
screen lets you change methods ensure better powe
the orientation of the management and battery life (
display from portrait to box, ‘Power that lasts’).
landscape—ideal for Devices that embody thi
presentations amalgam of pocket computing
include the O2 XDA, the Hewlett
The Viewsonic View- Packard iPAQ 3950, the Fujits
Pad 1100 features Siemens Pocket LOOX and th
of your scribbling and copy them into 802.11b wireless net- Sony Clié PEG-NR70V.
conventional applications such as Word working, handwriting The O2 XDA is quite th
and even your messenger client! recognition and an 866 thing for those who need to sta
MHz P-III processor
connected at all times—it look
The rocket in your pocket like a conventional Pocket PC, bu
Maybe you are a sales executive, en route inside it lurk GPRS support, POP3 e-mail
to a client’s office. You receive a phone PowerPoint presentation—all on the trip Instant Messengers and even a cel
call saying that some specifications of the to the clients office! phone! The bright full-colour 240x32
product have undergone last minute Sounds too good to be true? Going resolution shows off rich multimedi
changes. If you have one of these new one step smaller, the next regiment of content and its connectivity option
handhelds, all you need to do is log into road warriors are represented by PDAs. never keep you away from your valuabl
the company network using the wireless These little handheld devices have information for long.
Internet access, pull down the latest spec- jumped manifold in everything, from Also impressive is the Fujitsu
ifications and integrate them into your processing power, to applications and Siemens Pocket LOOX, one of the firs

33 NOVEMBER
Feature-Tech next Nov.qxd 4/29/2004 10:10 AM Page 34

features ■
■ technology next

With full GPRS devices to use Intel’s new XScale proces

support, this device sor. Running at a speed of 400 MHz, thi
doubles as a cellular device. handheld device has everything yo
It also integrates Bluetooth
would need—applications, communica
for wireless connectiivty
tion and mobile entertainment. Beside
at your office or
airport! integrating GPRS support for high-spee
mobile connectivity, it’s also Bluetooth
capable, enabling you to tap into you
office network, without being anchore
to your desk. It can even be hooked up to
your laptop or mobile phone for enablin
wireless connectivity. And yes, its pro
cessing power lets you watch movie trail
ers right off the Web with TV-quality
imaging!
Another interesting device is th
Sony Clié PEG-NR70V, which features
compact QWERTY keyboard as a part o
its flip-screen design. With a 320x240
resolution, 16-bit colour screen and ful
audio support, this device runs the
The Palm OS. Most importantly, its func
240x320 touchscreen tionality can be supplemented with
displays 65,536 colours host of other devices such as a Web
and is transreflective, cam and MP3s that can be stored on
meaning that you can view Memory Sticks.
it in daylight with the
same ease as in total Powered by a 400 Phones get smarter
darkness MHz XScale processor Using the existing cell phones, you can
and 64 MB of RAM, this already access services such as WAP and
handheld has what it takes SMS-based movie schedules that som
to crunch through your service providers offer. But what if yo
applications could even book your favourite seat
through your cell phone itself? How
about even finding directions to the the
atre? Followed by recommendations of
Power that Lasts good North Indian restaurant close by?
When they first arrived on the scen
With all that increased processing power, mobile computers using Banias processors about five years ago, mobile phone
bigger and brighter screens and increased will consume a watt of power and have a served a single purpose: to keep you con
storage, the new-generation mobile devices battery life of between 3.5 to 4.5 hours for nected to the rest of the world via voice
need enough juice to survive on the road. machines with 14 to 15-inch screens. Today, with enhancements in portabl
Intel’s Banias, expected to surface in the There is also a low voltage (LV) version processing power and wireless technolo
first quarter of 2003, is one of the many of the chip that will be used on sub-note- gy, mobile phones are no longer restric
technologies that strive to minimise the books and tablet PCs and will consume ed to voice; they can transfer data
power usage of these mobile devices. just half a watt of power. One chipset run- through Short Mes -
Mobile processors based on Banias are ning these processors is codenamed saging Service (SMS)
capable of dynamically altering their clock Odem. It features DDR 266 support and is and with large,
speed depending upon the application. A expected to be released in early 2003. colour displays that
process called Advanced Clock Gating Another chipset supporting Banias is code- are touch screen
implements power conservation by shut- named Montara GM and will be targeted capable, broadband
ting off unneeded sections of the processor at mini notebooks, sub-notebooks and Internet access and
core, even when the rest of the processor is tablet PCs. robust processing
in operation. These chips will feature a minimal num- power, the new
Besides optimised power consumption, ber of interface points for easy integration.
Banias also intends to include dual-band The first Banias chips will appear in the first
With full MP3 sup-
802.11a and 802.11b chipsets for facilitat- quarter of 2003 and will offer speeds of 1.4
port, the Fujitsu-
ing wireless LAN support. Capable of run- GHz, 1.5 GHz and 1.6 GHz, using the
Siemens SX45 hand-
ning Windows XP and Windows 2000, Odem chipset. held even sports
GPRS for cellular connectivity

34 NOVEMBER
Feature-Tech next Nov.qxd 4/29/2004 10:10 AM Page 35

IMAGING: Neeta Wadiker

The Brains Behind the

Beauty
PDAs and Smart Phones will be capable
of handling full motion (30 fps) video as
easily as they would handle mobile gam
ing and 3G communication. Devices like
the HP iPAQ H3950, Pocket LOOX 600,
Toshiba Genio E550G and O2 XDA,
based on newer processors like Intel’s
XScale chips are redefining the meaning
of mobile computing power.
The XScale processors are available in
two variants—the PXA250 (400 MHz,
300 MHz and 200 MHz) and the
PXA210 (200 MHz and 133 MHz). They
consume up to one-third of the power of
their predecessors, the StrongARM
With processors. The PXA250 is aimed at
32 MB of handheld computers, while the PXA210
memory that is is tailored for entry-level handhelds and
expandable using a cell phones. These processors also incor
Memory Stick interface, the porate advanced power management
phone also integrates a
features.
camera that can capture
By integrating memory and LCD con
Running 640x480, 24-bit
images! trollers onto the chip itself, they reduce
Symbian OS 7.0, this the number of components in the hand
phone features a The stylus sits in a
helds they are used in. Both these
208x320 screen that can recessed groove right
processors come with 64 KB of cache
display 4,096 colours and behind the screen—you
can tap away at your and feature Intel’s Integrated Perfor-
is touchscreen capable
documents or Web mance Primitives (IPP), which provide in-
pages built functions for signal processing (for
speech and handwriting recognition),
MP3 codecs, MPEG-4 and H.263 video-
conferencing codes. They also feature
breed of cellular phones has graduated tiny stylus integrated into the phone. The Windows CE .Net support.
into truly smart phones. digital camera is integrated on the rear, Besides these processors, there are a
In some of the newer phones on the much like the Nokia 7650. Pictures are slew of other devices, like the Hand-
block, we see the convergence of cellular, stored on 12 MB of internal memory, spring Treo 270 based on the 33 MHz
PDA, as well as imaging technologies. which can also be supplemented with a Dragonball VZ processor and the HP Jor
Some even boast of an integrated digital 16 MB Memory Stick. It sports Bluetooth nada 928, based on the 133 MHz TI
camera, which is capable of capturing and infrared, and is capable of download- OMAP710 processor.
images and storing them on the inbuilt ing Java applications such as games. The All these enhancements indicate that
memory. For instance, the Nokia 7650 fea- phone is based on the Symbian 7 the new super-breed of handhelds and
tures a brilliant 176x208 pixel colour operating system. Smart Phones will enable users to run
screen with full PDA functionality. Another phone that com - applications that were never thought
Another phone that integrates a dig- bines funk with innovative fea - possible, at speeds never experienced
ital camera is the Sony Ericsson T68i, tures is the Samsung 500, whose before.
where the Web cam component can flip-open design conceals a full
be added on to the basic GPRS capa- colour screen and has full GPRS
ble phone—all this with a very small support—all in a surprisingly
sacrifice in size. small package. Phones blur the lines between cellula
Just rising on the horizon is a These new breeds of tablet communication and portable compu
smooth blend of PDAs and cellular computers, PDAs and Smart ing with full video, audio and applic
phones seen in phones such as the tion support. Armed with any of thes
Sony Ericsson T800. This phone is new devices, you can finally experienc
for work and for play—you can type The tiny Samsung SGH-T100 true freedom from the desktop. So g
in your reports, schedule meetings weighs in at 87 gms and sports ready to romp around the world, an
and play a game. Its keypad folds a 128x160 flip-top colour don’t forget to take your offic
over to reveal the 208x320 touch screen with you!
screen that can be navigated with a MARCO D

35 NOVEMBER
features ■
■ droolmaal

Mini-PC TX2 Small Factor PC

Size doesn’t matter!
At 156x146x56 mm and 1.1 kg, you won’t find too
many smaller PCs that pack such punch. Aimed as a
desktop replacement, the TX2 is powered by an Intel
1.3 GHz Tualatin processor, with up to 512 MB RAM, a
DVD/CD-RW combo drive and a 30 GB hard drive.
Every free inch of the Mini-PC is adorned with ports,
including an S-Video, two FireWire, four USB, an IrDA
and a 10/100 baseT Ethernet.
Web site: www.worldssmallestpc.com

You know you want them.

Yes you do. Go on, admit it!

Bose MediaMates Computer Speakers

Sing away those blues
With these cool blue speakers, Bose brings its trademark sense of
design and engineering to a new arena—the PC. The lack of a
dedicated subwoofer is not apparent as the MediaMates use a
proprietary 2.5-inch full-range driver, producing full bass and
clean highs. The patented spaciousness-enhancing circuitry
provides an audio experience that seems to come from a sound-
stage wider than the two speakers. And for those who tend to
multitask, the speakers’ dual inputs allow you to use another
source, such as an MP3 player, even while the speakers are
connected to your computer!
Web site: www.bose.com

36 NOVEMBER 2002
 Toshiba PDR-T10 Digital Camera
Look mom, no buttons!
With the PDR-T10 it’s possible to change the
appearance of your digital camera to your lik -
ing. The Toshiba PDR-T10 is the first digicam
to incorporate an interactive touch screen for
operations—there’s just one shutter button;
all the other settings are made through its
1.6-inch LCD screen. But there’s a lot more to
the PDR-T10 than just its looks—it has a
2.0 mega-pixel CCD sensor with all the bells
and whistles (4x digital zoom, white-balance
controls, multiple flash modes, USB connec -
tivity) and stores JPEG images at an impres -
sive 1600x1200 resolution using a Secure
Digital memory card.
Web site: www.toshiba.com

Terratec C.A.R. 4000 Digital

Audio Centre
The complete package
The C.A.R. 4000 combines a digital audio
recorder, CD player and jukebox in one nifty
package. The various audio inputs (two Line-ins, ▲ SanDisk Cruzer Thumb
two Mics, one Digital) record an audio signal from ▲
your PC or any other audio equipment, digitise it
Drive
and save it on the in-built 30 GB hard disk. It can
Flash in the pocket
Most Flash drives have fixed capacities, so
also play ordinary audio CDs and MP3 CDs or
if you need to carry more data than your
Winamp playlists (M3U). With CDDB support for
drive can hold, you’ll need to buy a larger
automatic detection of artiste, title and album
drive. But the SanDisk Cruzer uses a
information, configurable playlists, USB connec-
stamp-sized, digital camera compatible
tivity with a PC and MMC memory card support,
Secure Digital (SD) Flash memory, which
this wonder offers all that you would expect from
you can swap with other or higher capac-
an up-to-date Hi-Fi device.
ity SD cards. The Cruzer plugs in directly
Web site: www.terratec.net
into any USB 1.1 port, works without any
driver installation and is compatible with
both PCs and Macs. Its stylish, compact
design allows it to be dropped into any
pocket and it even offers basic encryption
via its bundled software to provide data
security in case you misplace it!
Web site: www.sandisk.com

37 NOVEMBER 2002
features ■
■ firsthand

Broadband Blues Dreams of high-speed Internet access wither in the face of reality

“
working speeds of approximately 30 Mbps; now compare it to the
You promised me heaven, measly 56 KBps that the best dial-up connection can offer and
then put me through hell the contrast seems bewildering; even a DSL line can touch speeds
—JON BON JOVI of up to 10 Mbps. A broadband connection is thus a good thing,

T
like a hefty bank balance; but as we will soon find out the analo-
he sentiment reflected in these words has touched our gy goes further—for much like a burgeoning wallet, a speedy Inter-
collective soul at one point or another. The reasons for net connection is also reduced to being just a pipe dream for the
crooning those lyrics can be many: Bon Jovi obviously most of us.
had an unhappy tryst with a heartbreaker, a situation
that might seem painfully familiar to most of us; while others find Fight the system
themselves humming the line as they surf the Internet. Shattered Our story begins with a broadband service that should theoreti-
hearts or pulled out hair, the source of the pain remains the same: cally deliver the most bang for the buck, Internet over optic fibres.
promises broken, potential unrealised. Like all sad tales, this one begins with a little flashback: A ‘last-mile
While we would love to delve into the world of romance and connection’ refers to the means by which a service provider deliv-
poetry, lets stick to the subject at hand. Broadband has become ers Internet to your home. Most providers rely on existing infra-
a household name, synonymous with high-speed Internet access structure and thus the last-mile consists of wires that belong to
and one that conjures visions of streaming movies while video- institutes such as BSNL and MTNL. Some providers, though, such
conferencing with your aunt in England, even as you download as BSES TeleCom Ltd (BTL) rely on their own cabling, thanks large-
the latest songs. Unfortunately, like most visions, this one too ly to the nature of the solution they offer. BTL thus delivers a last-
goes up in smoke when scorched by the unforgiving flames of mile as a combination of fibre and Cat-5 cable: optic fibres deliv-
reality. So what is this ‘broadband’ thing anyway, and do we, as er the Internet to a hub near you (typically a power terminal),
a higher species really need it? from where cables emanate and transport packets of data to your
Let’s get a little technical. Broadband refers to any type of home. BTL’s broadband service, termed Powersurfer, thus seems
transmission technique that carries several data channels over a to be the best of the bunch at first glance; it uses optic fibres after
common wire. A DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service, for exam - all. Practically though, the service has been marred by long instal-
ple, combines separate voice and data channels over a single tele- lation periods and slow access speeds.
phone line—voice fills the low end of the frequency spectrum Take the case of Rafique Ilani, a Mumbai resident. He signed
and data (which can in turn be audio, video and text) fills the up for Powersurfer by making a down payment of Rs 3,500 as
high end. While this might seem like a nice thing to do to a wire, installation charges and was promised a connection within a
what really excites is the speed that such a connection can deliv- month. Since BTL had to lay the optic cabling required, they
er. Consider Cable technology: it can theoretically achieve net- needed permission from both MTNL and the Municipal Council

38 NOVEMBER 2002
to dig up the road next to Ilani’s place. The month soon became
two, then three and much to his chagrin, the promised connec-
tion was still missing in action six months after he had paid in
cash. “Every time I called their franchisee, they would promise to
get back to me in a few hours; would then invariably explain that
the digging work is taking longer than expected and is expected
to get over in a few weeks.” So why did Ilani not ask for a refund
and get out of the service when he should have? He explains,
“Because, in the interim months, Powersurfer had increased the
installation charges by about Rs 1,000. I thought that I had a good
deal and I did not wish to give it up. After all, they promised a
Net connection over optic fibres, it was too tempting an offer to
pass up.”
As Ilani would soon find out, it was the last-mile connect that
was to be the undoing of his desire to get a fast connection to the
Net. “After a period that must have been close to six months, I
learned that I would have to settle for a refund since my residence
was situated too far away for them to supply the last-mile con-
nects. They had connected a cyber-cafe some 300 metres from my
place, a distance that was apparently ‘impractical’ for them to
cover with the requisite cabling,” he fumes.
While Ilani’s case reads like a typical botch-up job, those who
did get connected to the Net via Powersurfer experience various
levels of customer satisfaction: there are those who are content
with what BTL offers, while others are terribly disappointed by the
browsing speed, considering the fact that an optic fibre should

“ Lots of promises and assurances but

all potholed in unexpected
difficulties and problems—most of
them concerning lack of transparen-
1/2 page Ver AD

”
cy, miscommunication and above all,
no sense of responsibility
—Raja Sagar, a Powersurfer customer

deliver a blazing experience. “It’s the worst connection you could

ever have,” attests Vince Fern, a broadband user over an online
forum. “I tested it for speed on a regular day, in the evening and
found it to be just 16 Kbps. I can’t even listen to a 28 Kbps online
radio.” Fern then goes on to attack their customer service: “Their
helpline number has a peon who only speaks in Marathi and I am
supposed to interact with him about speed and non-responsive
pings! At the end of each complaint all this peon is programmed
to say is ‘mala kai mahiti nahi’ (I don’t know anything).”

Technology shmecnology
The idea of delivering the Internet over the same lines that bring
you TV channels is an appealing one. The concept goes some-
thing like this: the wire that brings you cable TV has lots of unused
room left on it. This unused bandwidth is used to deliver packets
of data, the source of which can be anything—in the case of a
broadband connect, the font being the Internet. The service
provider will either have a private gateway to the Internet or will
lease a line from another ISP such as VSNL. This Internet con-
nection is then brought to a modem that combines the data from
the Internet and the TV channel information onto a single cable,
to be transmitted to subscribers. This flow of information from the
service provider to an end-user is called the downstream data.

39 NOVEMBER 2002
features ■
■ firsthand

After the coupled signal reaches the users premises, another

modem splits the pair; the cable channels head to your television So you Think you Have Broadband?
and data from the Internet makes its way to your computer.
A segment of about 6 MHz is allotted to the Internet data, 1. How long does it take you to access a Web site?
and such a segment is termed as a channel. This fixed capacity is a. I just need to click my heels and the Web page
enough to support up to a thousand subscribers. Problems arise loads
when the number exceeds that mark. Aniruddha Gupte, a broad- b. A quick, two-minute noodle session and I am off
band hopeful, had subscribed to just such a service (7 Star Cable surfing
Network, which has leased lines from the ISP, NetMagic). He was c. I always find the time to do my laundry in between
promised browsing speeds around the 48 Kbps mark—not a true Web pages
broadband connection for sure, but Gupte took solace in the fact
that he would not have to pay monthly telephone bills and would 2. How long does it take you to download a music file from
be granted an always-on, dedicated line to the Net. He paid Rs the Internet?
1,000 as installation charges and then dished out monthly rental a. You shall be mine post-lunch, O MP3 file!
charges that came up to an equal amount. b. I have to keep the computer on overnight for the

“
file to download
c. Hey, I get the latest music albums before they are

”
I am ready to switch back to dial-up: officially released

talk about backward compatibility! 3. When was the last time you enjoyed a great action game
—Aniruddha Gupte, bemoaning the fact that his online?
a. Does a card game count?
broadband connection is slower than a dial-up line
b. My ping rate is longer than my PIN code
As is financially feasible, Cable modems are only seen at c. They call me a low-ping b******!
select installations and most of the throughput is via switches
and hubs installed on the terraces of buildings. Gupte found that 4. Do you frequently chat with your girlfriend in the
he was connected in a similar way: a hub sits on the terrace of US using a Web cam?
his building, connecting his and five other houses via a Cat-5 a. Yeah, but her mom keeps popping up
cable. The promised speed of 48 Kbps did make a brief appear- (spoilsport!)
ance, but as new users were added, the speed quickly degraded b. Yes, but she lives across the street
and things reached such a stage that hitting a measly 20 Kbps c. Hey, I'm grateful I can chat uninterrupted
mark (a dial-up connection offers twice as much speed!) was
looked upon as miraculous. Needless to say, Gupte is an unhap - 5. Quicktime.com, quick what pops into your head?
py surfer. “The connection is worse than a dial-up line. The band- a. Ewww, Apple! (The grapes are sour, the grapes are
width is so bad that one site takes 3 to 4 minutes to load!” To fur- sour, the…)
ther elucidate the fact that the bandwidth is being choked by b. Movies, masti, magic!
the number of subscribers, Gupte presents this case: “Like every- c. Why won’t they let me download those trailers?
one else, I like to chat on MSN when I am online. Sadly, just surf- Turn to page 41 for the score
ing the Internet takes up so much of the juice available that every
time I visit a Web page, MSN thinks that the connection is dead
and promptly signs off!” To ease the saturation of the allotted 6 and split the user base along the two. It is a solution that requires
MHz bandwidth, the service provider can add another channel additional monetary investment. Gupte did complain to the con-
cerned party but till date no action has
been taken. This is a problem that any
Cable modem based service will eventual-
ly experience. DSL lines also face inherent
problems. When you are closer to the
provider’s central office, the connection is
faster for receiving data than it is for send -
ing data over the Internet and is generally
the costliest solution in the offing.

Barbed wire
As if these intrinsic walls were not enough
to limit the user’s experience, some
providers put up barbed fences in the form
Squadron Leader Sanjay Sinvhal (Retd) is not the kind of man of bandwidth caps. Such a cap is an artifi-
to shy away from a fight. So when he thought that Power- cial limit on the maximum speed a cus-
surfer was being unkind to its customers, he promptly took up tomer can achieve. This is done by moni-
the cudgels on behalf of the aggrieved masses toring their current usage and throttling
network packets as and when necessary.

40 NOVEMBER 2002
Why is such an act practised? The most common reason is that
providers concerned about the capacity limits of their network
may implement a short-term cap so that they can accommodate
more customers without having to scale up their service
infrastructure.
Retired Squadron Leader Sanjay Sinvhal faces just such an arti-
ficial hurdle: “I acquired a Powersurfer broadband connection a
few months back from BSES Telecom, Mumbai. The browsing and
downloads were blazing fast for the first couple of months and
then suddenly I hit a roadblock. The speeds offered became
painfully slow. After a lot of follow-up and complaints, what came
out is that the download/browsing speeds will be between 48 Kbps
to 64 Kbps only.” This downgrading of speed formed what was
officially termed as a ‘Manageable network’. As Rajiv Sharaf, head
of Customer Support at Powersurfer explains in a e-mail to Sin-
vhal, the port speed was restricted to 48 Kbps “for fine tuning of
network and better bandwidth management”. Sinvhal failed to see
how this capped connection certified itself as broadband. “On a
dial-up modem, I get connectivity at 56 Kbps. An ISDN connec-
tion provides 128 Kbps; a DSL connection provides 128 Kbps to
2 Mbps of speed; streaming video needs 786 Kbps minimum,
streaming audio needs 64 Kbps minimum. A broadband consists
of streaming audio, video and data. I thus fail to understand that
if they have reduced the access speed to 48 Kbps, how can they
sell the service as a broadband connection? Charging the sub-
scribers for a broadband connection, without delivering is uneth-
ical, to say the least.”

Only in India
It is obvious that as far as home users are concerned, a broad -
1/2 page Ver AD
band connection is the proverbial white elephant in India. Inter-
net access speeds offered by the best service providers seldom
exceed 40 Kbps, when they should be touching the 1 Mbps
mark. The reasons are largely financial and to a lesser degree
infrastructural. Leasing lines from ISPs is an expensive deal and
few can afford to set up their own Internet gateways. Consider
a service provider that rents a 2 Mbps line with the intent of
providing Internet over Cable. The customers are promised blaz-
ing speeds, and initially everyone seems to be happy. Word of
their excellent service spreads and new users are brought under
the wing. What follows is a vicious cycle—to be profitable, the
service provider will not refuse the users who wish to sign on.
The increased user-base will overload the limited bandwidth and
pretty soon there
SCOREBOARD will be many dis-
traught customers. It
Question a b c is a scenario that is
1 15 10 5 not too uncommon,
2 10 5 15 one that forces us to
3 5 10 15 accept what is essen-
4 15 10 5 tially an always-on-
5 5 15 10 dial-up-connection
as a true broadband
25-40 Tsk, tsk. You got what techies term a solution. Perhaps
‘lemon’ for a broadband connection the best recourse
40-60 Hmmm. The signs are good, but is to grit our teeth
we wouldn’t hedge bets on your Internet and bear it. Who
connection amongst us, after all,
60-75 Wow, an Internet access God! Can has won against the
we be best friends? system?
AHMED SHAIKH

41 NOVEMBER 2002
Start-up November.qxd 4/29/2004 10:20 AM Page 42

test drive ■
■ start up

How we Test
It looks good and the technology is glitzy, but does it do the job?
In Test this Month

T
This month we bring you a
he Digital Media The Awards comprehensive, end-to-end
Test & Research Digit awards out - solution for your storage
Centre (DMTRC) standing products needs. We’ve benchmarked,
conducts a series by selecting a Best evaluated and tortured 18
of elaborate tests to eval- Performance and IDE hard disk drives, 7 DVD
uate the merit of each Best Value winner in drives, 11 CD-RW drives and
hardware and software each comparison a set of 11 external storage
product. To ensure that test. The winner of devices ranging from exter
our readers have all the the Best Perfor- nal CD-RW drives to Zip
information they need to mance Award will be drives and portable hard
make an informed buy- the product that
ing decision, engineers at scored the highest in
DMTRC evaluate and the performance seg-
review the latest hard- ment of our tests.
ware, software and technology services in accor- This award represents the best performing prod-
dance with the most up-to-date evaluation uct in our tests and doesn’t factor in any other
processes and methodologies used around parameter such as value for money, features, sup- disks. This includes some of
the world. port, etc. The winner of the Best Value Award the world’s fastest DVD and
will be the product that scores the highest in CD-RW drives, a 200 GB
Comparison Tests our value for money parameter which is derived monster hard disk and a
We use a dual rating system, the first of which is taking into account the ratio of host of USB 2.0 compliant
applied to the Comparison a product’s performance and fea- external storage devices
Tests in which we compare tures to its price. The product offering capacities ranging
the performance of products winning this award offers good from 250 MB to 60 GB! Find
within a particular category. performance at a great price. out which one is the best
Each product is evaluat- suited to your specific needs
ed under different parame- In Bazaar and applications.
ters such as performance, The second part of the rating system is used to In the Bazaar section, we
value for money, features, evaluate individual hardware and software prod- have the newest offerings
warranty and support, etc. ucts in the Bazaar section. The evaluation covers on the processor and moth
Weightages are then parameters such as performance, ease of use, erboard front with the
applied to the various test value for money and the build quality/features of speedy Athlon XP 2600+
parameters according to the product in question and then arrives at an and the formidable MSI KT4
their importance for overall rating. Ultra, featuring a host of
that particular category of Here each of these parameters is given a technologies such as Blue
products. weightage of 25 per cent and is rated on a scale tooth, AGP 8X and the blaz
These weightages are of 5, which is represented by arrows ( ). ing KT 400 chipset for
then used to arrive at an The greater the number of arrows, the better Athlon processors.
overall grade for each indi- the product. This simple five-point rating system On the software front,
vidual product. An overall is designed to give you an easy-to-interpret we review SuSE 8.0 Profes
grade of A+, therefore, indi- assessment of a product. For example, a product sional—find out if it gives
cates that the product is that receives an overall score of five arrows sig- you reason enough to ven
close to perfection. nifies an outstanding buy! ture into the world of Linux.
We also bring you an exclu
The 5-point Rating System used in Bazaar sive preview of the newest
version of one of the most
Excellent: a brilliant combination of price, performance and features—far popular 3D rendering appli
beyond expectations cations, 3ds max Release 5.
Good: a good buy, better than most products in its category We delve into its enhance
Average: reasonably competent but nothing spectacular about the product ments and embellishments
Mediocre: does not live up to expectations, needs improvement in many areas and give you the lowdown
Poor: has serious drawbacks and needs improvement before it can be on whether it is worth
used for its target application upgrading to.

42 NOVEMBER
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

E
ach year the performance and capacity bar and making VCDs of special occassions to share
of digital storage technologies is being with loved ones.
raised higher. And this is good news for
computer users as the need for larger and faster The storage subsystem has kept pace with the
storage solutions is imperative considering how bandwidth demands of today's applications and
resource-hungry today's applications and 7,200-rpm hard disk drives are now more com-
operating systems have become. Usage mon than before. Fuelled by vast advancements
patterns have also changed rapidly, and the in fabrication processes and interface technology,
home PC is being used for data intensive tasks hard disk drives are currently pushing the limits
such as ripping entire CD collections as MP3 files with regards to affordability and storage capacity.

44 NOVEMBER 2002
In the field of optical storage, an interesting situ- disk in a shade over 3 minutes!
ation has developed in the market—the prices of
DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives have plummeted And if you want to take your data on the road
dramatically. This has resulted in a situation with you, you've got your pick from external
where you can now buy a DVD-ROM or CD-RW CD-RW drives to Zip drives and the new range
drive for approximately the same price! Also the of external hard disks. With the arrival of high-
speeds of these optical drives are at an all-time speed interfaces such as USB 2.0 and FireWire,
high—DVD-ROM drives are maxing out at 16x portable storage devices today give you ample
speeds while CD-RW drives can burn data at 48x storage space with no trade-off in either speed
speeds—that's right, you can now burn a 700 MB or functionality.

45 NOVEMBER 2002
 We’re all looking for that sweet spot in storage devices where we get the
best of both the worlds of capacity and performance. Well, this hard disk
drive shootout will seek out just that!

T
oday, upgrading a hard drive has almost become a basis for calculating the overall score for each product.
fashion statement—gone are the days when an 8
GB hard disk was considered sufficient. Features: As part of the overall scoring of the hard disks, we
Everything from MP3 songs, DivX movies, 3D looked for different features of the drive such as the spindle
games, applications and even operating systems speed, data buffer size, type of interface and rated access time. We
place tremendous demands on hard disk space. also considered the documentation (manuals and quick start
These days if you own anything below 20 GB you are sure to guides) and accessories such as data cables, mounting plates and
run into that roadblock of a ‘disk full’ message! screws.
Along with just space requirements, there are increasing
demands on the performance of drives as well. Multimedia appli- Performance: We used the following benchmarks and appli-
cations (video and audio) place increasing demands on band - cations to evaluate the performance of the hard disks:
width. Besides, today’s operating systems allow smoother and HDTach 2.6: This is a synthetic test in which we recorded the
increased levels of multitasking, allowing you to work with sev- read burst speed and CPU utilisation. Here, data is read from the
eral applications simultaneosly—and hard disks have to be able disk and then written back to the disk. A graph is displayed as
to keep up with loading and running these demanding applica - the data is read and written in real time. During this test, the
tions efficiently. program calculates the total CPU usage of the drive and the burst
In keeping with all this, there has been a tremendous increase transfer rate of the drive under test. The burst transfer rate is a
in the performance and reliability of hard disks today. Buying a measure of the maximum possible bandwidth of the drive over
7,200-rpm 80 GB drive now certanly makes a value proposition, its interface.
whereas just recently most would have considered a 40 GB 5,400- SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro: This is also a synthetic benchmark. It
rpm drive a great value buy. evaluates the sequential and random read and write transfer rates
Let’s take a look at where things stand today. In this com- and the access time of the disk. The benchmarking suite contin-
parison, we compared the best of the crop of hard disks over two uously writes and reads the data to and from the disk and meas -
categories—let’s see which ones turn out top dog. ures these parameters using different data sets. We also recorded
the SiSoft Sandra 2002 index, which is an aggregation of the per-
Digit Test Process formance of the drive over these parameters.
The hard drives we categorised into two groups: Return to Castle Wolfenstein: This real world test is
those offering up to 60 GB of storage space and those In 1956, IBM a good indicator of how a hard disk performs under
with more than 60 GB capacity. introduced the first heavy stress when running one of the newer and
The test bed comprised a Pentium 4 running at storage system that demanding games. We loaded the retail version of
2.8 GHz on an Intel D850EMV2 board with 512 MB could store a maxi- the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein from the test
of RDRAM. The graphics card used was a GeForce 3 mum of 5 MB of hard drive and noted down the time taken to load
with 64 MB of DDR RAM and a 40 GB Seagate ATA/4 data and it featured the first map.
hard disk, which was installed on the primary IDE disks with 24-inch Photoshop 7: We installed Photoshop 7 on the test
channel. All the test drives were connected to the diameters! hard drive and a 200 MB TIFF image was copied on
secondary channel as a master. The necessary drivers, to it. We first recorded the time taken for Photoshop
nVidia Detonator version 28.32 for the graphics card 7 to load, which was part of the application load up
and the Intel motherboard’s INF Update version 4.00.1009 were time test. The TIFF image was then opened from the test hard
loaded after installing Windows XP Professional as the operating drive and the time taken for Photoshop 7 to open this file was
system. The benchmarking utilities were loaded on to the drive recorded. This test is a good indicator of random and sequential
and all drives were verified to be working in DMA mode before read speeds using a real world application.
running the test.
Warranty and support: Here we took into account the num -
Test methodology ber of years of replacement warranty provided by the manufac-
We evaluated the hard disks for features (10 per cent weightage), turer and the extent of the service centre network.
performance (50 per cent), warranty and support (20 per cent)
and value for money (20 per cent). These weightages formed the Value for money: While buying any product, value for money

46 NOVEMBER 2002
 Jargon Buster
Average seek time: The average time required for
the drive heads to move from one track to any other
track.
Burst transfer rate: The maximum speed at which the data is
transferred to and from the memory.
ESD (Electro Static Discharge): This usually occurs if you
pass static to the drive by handling it without grounding your-
self. The chips inside are sensitive and the damage caused
could be permanent.
G: This is a shock specification for hard drives. When drives
experience more shock than specified, they are prone to suffer
damage.
Head: This is the part of the drive which can write, read,
erase, record or play back data on a magnetic media.
Internal transfer rate: The speed at which the drive can
transfer data from the platter to the heads and vice-versa.
Latency (Rotational): The average time taken for a disk to
rotate to a desired sector.
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures): It specifies the reliabil-
ity of the drive. The higher the MTBF rating, the more reliable
is your drive.
Sustained transfer rate: The speed at which data can be
transferred for a sustained period of time. 1/2 page Ver. AD
plays a very important part. Therefore we calculated the value for
hard drives by determining the sum of performance and features
divided by the price.

How they fared

There has been a tremendous increase in the performance and
reliability in hard disks today and this has given rise to a new
level of functionality and usability in computers—video and
audio are applications that would run on any computer today
and the price per megabyte rating is forever spirally downward.
Let’s take a look at how the current generation of hard disks per-
form across different criteria.

Features
Most hard disks include adequate protection against shock and
damage during transportation and installation.
All the Samsung drives came in a shell plastic cover and
included a small single-page manual for jumper identification
and installation. These drives also sport
features such as ImpacGuard and
SSB. ImpacGuard protects the disk
from external vibrations, thus
enhancing its internal
resistance to shocks.
SSB reduces the
impact of external
shocks with the
help of a well-designed
casing.
The drives from Maxtor came in
Samsung drives incorporate tech- a box with plenty of protecting
nologies to shield them from foam to shield the drive during
internal and external shocks transportation. The 5400-rpm

47 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

marginally more than a 20 GB drive. A 40 GB drive is a good

How Much Space is Enough? starting point as it provides sufficient space for holding games,
general applications and even media files for home and non-
Depending on your computing needs, users can be demanding office uses. But if you store huge amounts of data,
classified into the following types: you need at least 60 GB.
Less is good… Surprisingly, we received just one 60 GB drive in this com-
…if your time on the PC is spent surfing the Internet and parison—the 5,400-rpm Samsung SV0602H. Other than this
maybe create a spreadsheet or two. A hard disk with the bare there were three 20 GB drives and four 40 GB drives. The Sam-
minimum capacity should be enough for you. The same sung SV0602H is priced just Rs 300 more than the SV4002H,
holds true for businesses where the PC is primarily used for the 40 GB drive of the same spindle speed from Samsung,
accounting and billing purposes, or for creating letters and though it was in the middle of the pack in terms of perform -
spreadsheets. A 20 GB drive should suffice your needs, ance.
though 20 GB drives are fast phasing out. Preferably, go for a The 20 GB drive from Maxtor, the 541DX, was the sleekest
40 GB hard disk—this is fast emerging as an entry-level solu- drive in this comparison, but it was also the noisiest.
tion. Given your frugal need for space, a 40 GB hard disk will If you are looking for something smaller and lighter on the
last you several years. pocket, then the Samsung SV2001H is a good deal. This 20 GB
Size does matter… drive is available for less than Rs 3,800, though the catch is that
…if you’re a typical home user who stores the latest applica- its performance is not quite up to the mark.
tions, MP3s, videos, movie trailers and even full-length The Samsung SP2001H, however, hits the sweet spot in this
movies, not to mention space-hogging games. No amount of category—this 7,200-rpm drive offers 20 GB space but showed an
space is ever going to satisfy you. Go for at least 60 GB of impressive performance, and will please those in search of per -
space. If you feel you might exceed that as well, then 80 GB formance and good price rather than capacity.
might be more appropriate. Space also matters if you use All the drives featured a 2 MB data buffer and they all sport-
CAD\CAM software, or are a graphics professional with a ed a single-platter design with an ATA/100 interface. None of the
penchant for 3-D animations. drives in this category included accessories.
Speed is your mantra… Over 60 GB capacity: For gamers and MP3 addicts, a drive that
…if you are a power user, but lack the purchasing power to buy has less than 60 GB storage could prove to be restrictive, espe -
a SCSI drive. Consider the 7200-rpm drives—the capacity you cially if you are forever downloading songs and movies—a sin -
can get would depend on how much you can afford, but an 80 gle DivX rip can take up 700 MB.
GB drive should suit you just fine. Since most games released today consume at least half a GB
of hard disk space, you need as much space as you can get if you
want the ‘I-have-the-most-number-of-games-installed’ boasting
drives from Seagate came with a leather cover to protect the rights. And, of course, if you are into graphics or video editing,
drive electronics and the sensitive internal chips. The 7200- you know you need as large a hard disk as possible.
rpm drives from Seagate too came with a screwed on back cover We received 10 drives that offered storage capacity in excess
to protect the drive electronics. Seagate calls this feature of 60 GB. Here, too, all the drives featured a 2 MB data buffer.
Seashell and it is of great help in protecting the drives during However, there was a wide variation in the number of platters
the installation and transportation process, especially from used to implement these drives—they ranged from the
static discharge. There were no manuals accompanying the two-platter design of the IBM 82.3 GB drive to a four-platter
Seagate drives. design sported by the Maxtor 160 GB drive. Interestingly, all
The Samsung SpinPoint drives use proprietary features such the Western Digital drives were based on an unusual three-
as NoiseGaurd and claims to run at 3-decibel noise platter design.
levels. Indeed, these drives were exceptionally The Maxtor drives come with mounting plates
quiet during the tests—a certain advantage if you The total amount and screws. Also provided is Maxtor’s proprietary
work at night or in an environment where any of storage space of disk management software called Max-Blast, which
small noise can be disturbing. the hard disks we allows you to manage your drives, partitions and pre-
As far as design goes—a factor that many users tested in this com- pare them for loading the operating system during
are not too bothered with—all Samsung drives had parison amounted to installation.
the same design. The only confusing part with Sam- 1.3423 Terabytes— The Samsung and Maxtor drives also feature
sung drives was the jumper setting—two jumpers enough to store installation documentation, unlike any of the other
are required for setting the drive as master and some about 312 full- drives in this category.
users might find this confusing. length DVD movies At 200 GB, the WD2000 from Western Digital
These general features aside, we also evaluated with Dolby Digital was the largest drive. Another mammoth was the
the drive specifications and bundled accessories. sound! 160 GB drive from Maxtor. This was also the only
Up to 60 GB capacity: Capacity is one of the major drive that featured the new ATA/133 drive inter -
parameters on which a hard disk is bought today. face—all the others in this comparison were based on
The decision to buy a higher capacity drive is based solely on the ATA/100 interface
what you are going to use it for. Judging by the current trend, 20 The 200 GB Western Digital WD2000 delivered excellent per-
GB drives will soon be phased out, as bigger drives get more formance and is a great buy for the user who demands mind-
affordable. Even if you don’t require too much disk space, it blowing performance coupled with oodles of storage space.
would be wiser to go in for at least a 40 GB drive—it costs just However, this drive tended to run really hot—it would be a good

48 NOVEMBER 2002
idea to ensure that the cabinet you use this drive in has good
cooling and airflow.

Performance
We tested the drives for their performance using synthetic
benchmarks as well as for their real-world performance char -
acteristics. We used the traditional drive benchmarking tools
and software for obtaining a drive’s raw speed in terms of data
transfers and access time. The access time was logged using
real world applications such as Return to Castle Wolfestein and
Photoshop 7.0. The overall score was based on a weighted
average of these two sets of scores.

HDTach 2.6: This is a synthetic test which records the read

burst speed and CPU utilisation. The program calculates the
total CPU usage of the drive and the burst transfer rate, which
is a measure of the
maximum possible
bandwidth of the
drive over its inter -
face.
Up to 60 GB capac-
ity: The read burst
speed is a measure
of the maximum
transfer rate that
the drive can sup-
port over its inter -
face and is there-
fore directly related to the IDE interface the drive is using,
1/2 page Ver. AD
coupled with its spindle speed. Six of the eight drives managed
to hit read burst scores of above 70 MBps. However, both the
40 GB drives from Seagate (the ST340016A and the
ST340810A) couldn’t make it past this level. The one drive
that really shone in this test was the Maxtor 541DX—it was
the only drive in this category to log a data transfer rate of
80 MBps.
At 3.1 per cent, the CPU utilisation of the Maxtor 541DX
was the second lowest in this category—the drive with the
lowest CPU utilisation was the 40 GB Seagate ST340810A drive
with a score of 2.7 per cent. The low CPU utilisation of both
these drives makes them suited to applications where you
would multitask many applications on your PC such as down-
loading applications over your broadband connection while
watching a DivX movie off your hard disk. This also implies
that these drives can be used in older computers with slower
processors. As they do not strain the processor much, they
would give a smoother operation. The drive that took a
beating here was
the Samsung
SP2001H—it logged
a CPU utilitsation
of 5 per cent.
Over 60 GB capaci-
ty: In this category,
the lone IBM drive,
both the Maxtor
drives, and two of
the three Western
Digital WD1000 and
WD800 showed an

49 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

Serial ATA: Hit or Miss?

With the upcoming ATA/133 standard ground pins—significantly lesser
pushing the limits of the maximum than the 80 lines that are used in today’s
transfer rates supported by the parallel ATA/100 and ATA/133 cables.
ATA interface, the next step to revolu- This standard will support transfer rates
tionise hard disk interfaces will be Serial of up to 1.5 Gigabits per second, which
ATA. It offers greater speed, easier fabri- translates into about 150 MBps. Also, since
cation and application. this is a point-to-point protocol, there will
The Serial ATA interface is to ATA be no place for master and slave devices on
what FireWire is to SCSI—the entire a single cable and therefore, bandwidth will
approach is to convert the parallel stan- not need to be shared between devices.
Conventional IDE cables vs Serial ATA: notice the
dard that is used by the existing ATA Another very big advantage with this stan-
difference (flat vs rounded)
interfaces to a serial format (where one dard is that it is backward compatible with
bit is transferred at a time) so that higher the existing parallel ATA standard at the
data transfer frequencies can be supported. Also, this approach driver level. Therefore, all existing applications in which the parallel
greatly simplifies the fabrication of cables and connecting wires ATA standard is used can be fully extended to support Serial ATA.
that are used by the interface since there are fewer signals to deal
with, facilitating a less cluttered cabinet. This translates into easier Specifications: 150 MBps maximum transfer rate (300/600 MBps
airflow within the system and subsequently, more efficient cool- envisioned for the future), hot-plugging capability, two power saving
ing. In fact, Serial ATA uses just four signal pins (there are a total modes: partial and slumber, overlapping (commands), tagged
of seven pins; the others are used for transmitting overhead com- command queuing, seven-wire data cable, connectors measure just
mands) that actually carry the data and include the power and 8 mm wide.

excellent read burst speed of 80 MBps, which is the highest speed sequential writes.
a drive can achieve across an ATA/100 interface. The drive that The 7,200-rpm
really disappointed here was the 80 GB Seagate ST380021A. It drive that did well
scored a very paltry 56.7 MBps in this test. This was surprising con- in this category
sidering the fact that this drive sported a 7,200-rpm spindle speed. was once again the
In the CPU utilisation test, the drive that broke barriers was S a m s u n g
Western Digital’s 200 GB monster (the WD2000), which logged SP2001H, with a
a stunning 0.5 per cent of CPU utilisation. The Maxtor 80 GB very respectable
drive also scored over the other drives in this category with a score of 41 MBps.
good CPU utilisation score of 3.7 per cent. If you use space con- Surprisingly, the
suming and CPU-intensive applications such as Photoshop or other 7,200-rpm
AutoCAD, the drives with least CPU utilisation should be your entry from Sam-
pick, especially when you are running these applications togeth- sung, the 40 GB
er and would be transferring data between them. SP4002H, trailed
in this test with a
SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro: This is a synthetic benchmark that score of just 28
evaluates the sequential and random read and write transfer rates MBps.
and the access time of the disk. In the random write test, there was a reasonably large variation
Up to 60 GB capacity: In the SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro sequential in score with the 40 GB Seagate ST340810A logging a very
read speed test, the 5,400-rpm drive that took the lead was the respectable 7 MBps in spite of being a 5,400-rpm drive. The drive
60 GB Samsung SV0602H. It logged a very respectable score of 38 that did badly here was again the 20 GB Maxtor 541DX with a
MBps. The highest scores in this test for the 7,200-rpm drives score of just 3.1 MBps.
was a tie between the two Samsung hard disks, the The access time determines the speed with
SP2001H and the SP4002H, both scoring 41 MBps. which the drive can locate the date you need, espe-
In the random read tests, the performance varia - A typical hard cially if it is scattered all over the hard disk. The
tions were not that wide. The scores ranged between disk drive today fastest access time was logged by four of the five
5 MBps and 7 MBps—in practical terms, the speed can be completely Samsung drives—the SP2001H, SP4002H, SV2001H
advantage offered by the upper value of this variation assembled from its and SV4002H each logged a respectable 8 ms, while
is insignificant. components in the Samsung SV0602H logged 9 ms. The drives that
Over to the write tests. When dealing with sequen- about 11 seconds— fared particularly poorly in this test was the 20 GB
tial data, the drive that did well in the 5,400-rpm the entire process Maxtor 541DX and the Seagate ST340016A—both
range was the Samsung SV0602H with a very is, naturally, auto- logged 11 ms.
respectable score of 38 MBps. The 20 GB Maxtor mated Over 60 GB capacity: The fastest hard disk in the
541DX managed to rake up a score of just 12 MBps for sequential read test was the Western Digital

50 NOVEMBER 2002
5 ■
■
Tips to Keep your Drive Shipshape

Protect the drive from shocks and jerks.

Always handle the drive by its side. Never touch the
underside of the drive or the drive electronics.
■ When installing the hard drive, take care to screw it firmly
to the chassis of the computer so as to protect the drive
from vibrations when using the PC. The maximum damage
that a drive suffers is usually due to improper handling
during installation. Also take care to use the screws that
come with the hard drive so that they match the bore size
on the drive.
■ Never try to open a hard disk if it fails to respond. Even a
particle of dust entering the insides of the drive can destroy
the platter on the disk.
■ Enable S.M.A.R.T. from the BIOS. This slows the drive down,
but the difference is hardly noticeable for most applications—
between 2 to 5 per cent. S.M.A.R.T. is a technology that
warns you when there is a problem and the drive is about
to fail.

WD2000. It logged
54 MBps—one of
the fastest scores
we’ve ever logged
for a 7,200-rpm
1/2 page Ver. AD
drive. The drive
that performed
poorly here was the
Western Digital
WD800. It logged
just 33 MBps—a tad
slow for a 7,200-
rpm drive. The
5,400-rpm drive
that did well in the
sequential read test
was the Samsung
SV1204H, with a score of 38 MBps.
The 82.3 GB IBM drive logged the fastest random read score
of 9 MBps. The two drives that didn’t do well in this test were the
80 GB Western Digital WD800 and the 100 GB Western Digital
WD1000. Both these 7,200-rpm drives logged just 6 MBps.
In the sequential write tests, the formidable 200 GB Western
Digital WD 2000 logged 52 MBps—the highest we have ever seen
in an IDE hard disk drive. The 82.3 GB IBM drive also did well
with a score of 46 MBps. Lagging in this test was the 80 GB West-
ern Digital WD800, with a score of just 33 MBps.
The drive that exhibited a very good random write score was
the 100 GB Western Digital WD1000 with a score of 14 MBps.
Lagging here was the 80 GB Samsung SP8004H with a score of
just 7 MBps. In the 5,400 range, the drive that did well was the
160 GB Maxtor drive with a score of 11 MBps while the two that
trailed in this test were the 5,400-rpm 80 GB and 120 GB drives
from Samsung, both logging just 5 MBps.
As for the access time test, the IBM drive delivered a stellar
score of 6 ms, while the 120 GB 5,400-rpm Samsung drive lagged
with a score of 10 ms.

51 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: We

Decision Maker
loaded the game on the test hard drive and
logged the time taken to load the first map. General computing Professional Entertainment and
applications gaming
This test therefore provided a real world
You need To surf the Internet and To work with applica- To download MP3s and
indication of the hard disk’s performance
perform basic tasks such tions such as Photo- DivX films and install
when running gaming applications. as working with a word shop, CAD/CAM soft- games, as well as be
Here surprisingly there wasn’t much of a processor and spread- ware, 3D animation able to play these with-
difference in the performance of the drives. sheets tools out hindrance
Almost all of the drives took approximately Look for A 20 GB or 40 GB, The largest drive you A 60 GB plus drive run-
the same time (15 to 16 seconds) to load the 5,400-rpm drive can find, running at ning at 5,400 rpm or
game’s first map. This was seen in both the 7,200 rpm 7,200 rpm
categories of the hard disk drives and across Our pick Samsung SP2001H 20 Western Digital 100GB Samsung SV0602H or
spindle speeds and capacities. GB or Maxtor 541DX or 200 GB drive Seagate ST340016A
Price Rs 3,750 to Rs 4,500 Rs 10,000 and above Rs 3,750 to Rs 5,800
range
Photoshop 7: In this test we recorded the
time taken for Photoshop 7 to load, after
which a 200 MB TIFF image was opened from the test hard What it all leads to
drive and the time taken for Photoshop 7 to open this file was Many tests and MBps later, we were left with a set of drives, some
recorded. of which astounded us with their performance, while others
Up to 60 GB capac- offered value on account of their affordable price. Let’s take a
ity: All the drives in look at the winners and see what gave them the edge over the
this category took others in the pack.
between 10 to 11
seconds for loading Up to 60 GB capacity: The Best Performance Award in this
Photoshop. Surpris - category is taken by the Samsung SP2001H. Though it offers
ingly, the drive that only 20 GB space, it posted impressive scores in the synthetic
managed to open tests and was on target in the real world tests
the 200 MB test TIFF too. It achieved the highest drive index in
file in the minimum the SiSoft Sandra test and makes a great
time was the 5400- buy if you require a speedy drive and do
rpm, 20 GB Maxtor 541DX. It executed the test in 14 seconds, not require too much hard disk space.
which was almost as fast as the best performer in this test in the The SP2001H also sports impres -
60 GB plus category! All other 5400-rpm drives took around 18 sive features such as Noise -
seconds to open the file. Guard, which ensures low
Samsung’s SV2001H, a 20 GB drive running at 5400-rpm, was noise levels while run-
the slowest, taking a sluggish 35 seconds to open the 200 MB ning, and technolo -
TIFF image—a consequence of its low sequential read speed. Sea- gies such as Impac-
gate’s 40 GB 5,400-rpm drive (the ST340810A) took 25 seconds Guard and SSB that
to open the image. aim to protect the
Among the 7200-rpm drives Seagate’s 40 GB 7,200-rpm drive from vibrations.
ST340016A took 15 seconds whereas, Samsung’s drives took The Samsung SP20001H: A great combi- The Best Value Award
around 17 seconds to load the test image. nation of performance and price was also bagged by the
Over 60 GB capacity: In this category, once again the 100 GB Samsung SP2001H.
Western Digital This drive makes a great
WD1000 and the 80 buy users looking for a multimedia system and who don’t require
GB Western Digital high disk space. What makes this drive an excellent buy for the
WD800 logged a ‘low is better’ user is that it’s priced just Rs 250 more than its
really fast time of 5,400-rpm counterpart.
just 8 seconds for fir-
ing up Photoshop 7, Over 60 GB capacity: The
while the drive that Western Digital
really struggled to WD1000 is undoubt-
load this application edly our pick for the
was the Samsung Best Performance
SP8004H—this 80 GB 7,200-rpm drive took 17 seconds. Award in the 60 GB plus
The 100 GB Western Digital WD1000 was able to open the category. This drive is your
200 MB TIFF file in just 13 seconds, while the Seagate 80 GB best option if you require a
7200-rpm drive took the longest (25 seconds) to open it. The 160 speedy and high capacity hard
GB drive from Maxtor was a decent performer in the synthetic drive. With 100 GB of space and
tests and therefore logged the best application load time which 7200-rpm rotational speed, the Western Digital WD1000: High
can be attributed to the excellent read burst speed of the drive. drive packs enough punch to capacity and speed

52 NOVEMBER 2002
5 ■
Things to Consider Before you Buy

Speed or space? If you need to store MP3s and

DivX films, or to back up heavy image files, buy the
largest hard disk you can afford. On the other hand, if
you extensively use applications such as image editing or
audio processing software, look for the fastest hard disk you
can afford—at least a 7,200-rpm drive—and buy the largest in
that speed range.
■ Research the market. Ask your friends or dealers you know,
or search the Internet for information about the manufacturer,
the reputation they enjoy and their after sales-service.
■ Check the warranty. Apart from the time frame covered,
also check the type of warranty. Some manufacturers will
replace the hard disk only in the first year, after which they
will only repair it. This is rather unreliable and can lead to
more problems in the future.
■ Confirm the time it takes to replace a faulty hard disk. This
is especially important if your business relies heavily on data
storage. Generally, manufacturers who run a service centre are
able to provide quick replacements, while those who don’t
have service centres could take weeks to replace a faulty hard
disk.
■ Check for accessories such as IDE cables, disk management
software and operating manuals.

keep power users happy. It performed exceptionally well in our

1/2 page Ver. AD
synthetic and real world tests. In the read burst speed (HDTach)
test, it hit a high score of 80 MBps. It also performed well in the
application load time test, completing the test the quickest
among this group of drives. If your time on the computer is spent
in storing huge files and if you work with bandwidth-hungry
applications such as Photoshop and 3DStudio Max, this drive
will answer your needs.
The Maxtor D540X-4K is our Best Value Award winner
with its good performance, features and competitive price. This
5400-rpm drive offers an impressive 80 GB storage space.
Though its performance was rather
average (which is attributed to its
5,400-rpm rotational speed),
its price gives it the edge.
This drive provides a
disk management
software called Max-
Blast and the package
includes mounting
plates, screws, data cables,
The Maxtor D540X-4K: Lots of a manual and a quick start
storage at a great value guide. It is a good choice if
you require a large capacity
drive without a very high level of performance.
We have yet again seen an iteration in hard disk drives over
the past year. 40 GB drives are now entry level and perform -
ance is increasing with 7,200-rpm drives fast becoming the de
facto standard. This, coupled with falling prices, will ensure that
we have drives that will let us power the next generation of
applications, operating systems and games, while not pinching
the pocket.
YATISH SUVARNA and MARCO D ’SOUZA

53 NOVEMBER 2002
CATEGORY 60 GB AND UNDER
Brand Maxtor Samsung Samsung Samsung Samsung Samsung Seagate Seagate
Model 541DX SP2001H SP4002H SV0602H SV2001H SV4002H ST340016A ST340810A

Features (10%)
Drive Specifications
Capacity (GB) 20 20 40 60 20 40 40 40
Spindle Speed (RPM) 5400 7200 7200 5400 5400 5400 7200 5400
Interface Type ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100

Data Buffer Size (MB) 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

No. of Platters 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Rated Access Time (ms) 12 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 9 8.9
Package contents
Accessories ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

Bundled Software ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖
Documentation
Manual ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Quick Start Guide ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖
Performance (50%)
Synthetic tests
HDTach 2.6
Read Burst Speed (MBps) 80 75.3 75 75.7 73.8 73.4 66 67.2
CPU Utilisation (%) * 3.1 5 4.9 4.2 3.3 3.6 4 2.7
SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro

Sequential Read (MBps) 37 41 41 38 29 31 41 29

Random Read (MBps) 5 7 7 6 6 6 7 5
Sequential Write (MBps) 12 41 28 38 29 31 39 29
Random Write (MBps) 3.1 8 8 6 5 5 8 7
Access Time (ms) * 11 8 8 9 8 8 11 10
Drive Index 21682 28337 26688 25610 19956 21357 27753 20069
Real world tests
RTCW
Map Load Time (sec) * 15 15 15 15 15 16 15 15
Photoshop 7
Startup Time (sec) * 12.77 10 10 11 10 11 10 10
Image Load test (sec) * 14 17 17 18 35 17 15 25

Warranty & Support (20%)

Replacement Warranty ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

No. of years 1 3 3 3 3 3 1 1
Overall Score
Features (10%) 2.50 2.90 2.90 2.90 2.90 2.90 2.50 2.50
Performance (50%) 27.07 31.56 30.71 29.45 27.04 28.38 30.38 26.81
Warranty & Support (20%) 10 20 20 20 20 20 10 10
Value for Money (20%) 17.52 19.15 15.56 14.98 17.74 15.45 12.60 11.94
Overall Product Rating 57.10 73.61 69.17 67.33 67.69 66.72 55.48 51.25
Overall Grade
Vendor Name Cyberstar Samsung Samsung Samsung Samsung Samsung NA= NA=
Electronics India Electronics India Electronics India Electronics India Electronics India
Information & Information & Information & Information & Information &
Telecommunicati Telecommunica- Telecommunica- Telecommunica- Telecommunica-
on Ltd tion Ltd tion Ltd tion Ltd tion Ltd
Phone 011-6235461 011-6322517 011-6322518 011-6322520 011-6322522 011-6322523 1600 331104= 1600 331104 =
E-mail yogi@ marketing@ marketing@ marketing@ marketing@ marketing@ NA= NA=
maxtor.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com
Price (Rs) 3,750 4,000 4,800 4,800 3,750 4,500 5,800 5,455

Disclaimer: Prices are indicative and are subject to change * Lower the better = Since Seagate India has a liason office, all inquiries are entertained through a toll
 OVER 60 GB
IBM Maxtor Maxtor Samsung Samsung Samsung Seagate Western Digital Western Digital Western Digital
IC35L080AV 4G160J8 D540X-4K SP8004H SV1204H SV8004H ST380021A WD2000 WD1000 WD800
VA07-0

82.3 160 80 80 120 80 80 200 100 80

7200 5400 5400 7200 5400 5400 7200 7200 7200 7200
ATA/100 ATA/133 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 4 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3
8.5 9.6 12 8.9 8.9 8.9 9.5 8.9 8.9 8.9

✖ Mounting Mounting plates ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

plates, screws and screws,
and data cable Data Cables
✖ Max-blast Max-blast ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖
✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

80 80 80 74.9 75.8 73.3 56.7 67 80 80

5.7 4.5 3.7 5.1 4.7 4.4 4.7 0.5 6.7 5

46 35 32 41 38 32 41 54 42 33
9 7 6 7 6 6 7 8 6 6
46 35 32 41 38 32 38 52 40 33
12 11 8 7 5 5 9 10 14 8
6 8 9 7 10 8 7 7 7 8
31949 24683 22481 28248 25553 21852 27659 36424 27298 22964

16 16 15 15 15 15 15 15 16 15

10 8.66 8.88 17 13 11 10 12 8 8
16 18.91 18 14 17 18 25 21 13 21

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

1 1 1 3 3 3 1 1 1 1

2.50 6.30 5.30 2.90 2.90 2.90 2.50 2.50 2.50 2.50
34.95 31.83 30.49 30.31 28.41 28.51 29.47 34.10 35.29 31.10
10 10 10 20 20 20 10 10 10 10
10.67 5.67 12.93 9.84 7.73 10.74 9.23 3.25 8.40 12.04
58.12 53.80 58.73 63.06 59.04 62.15 51.20 49.85 56.19 55.65

Wales Cyberstar Cyberstar Samsung Samsung Samsung NA= ACI Infocom ACI Infocom ACI Infocom
Technologies Electronics India Electronics India Electronics India
Information & Information & Information &
Telecommunica- Telecommunica- Telecommunica-
tion Ltd tion Ltd tion Ltd
022-3828100 011-6235460 011-6235462 011-6322519 011-6322521 011-6322524 1600 331104 = 022-8266031 022-8266031 022-8266031
mediaman@ yogi@ yogi@ marketing@ marketing@ marketing@ NA= ajay.kapure@ ajay.kapure@ ajay.kapure@
bom3.vsnl.net.in maxtor.com maxtor.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com samsungindia.com wde.com wde.com wde.com
7,800 14,950 6,150 7,500 9,000 6,500 7,700 25,000 10,000 6,200

free number
 Falling prices and enhanced functionality, be it for watching DVD movies or
burning CDs, have made CD-Writers and DVD-ROM drives a smarter buying
decision as compared to an ordinary CD-ROM drive

T
he digital age has brought with it the need to store also took into account the bundled software the nature and qual-
vast amounts of data, which has in turn created a ity of the manuals and other package contents such as audio
market that witnesses the spawning of bigger and cable, IDE cable, software CDs and the number of blank CD-R
faster storage devices with alarming regularity. and CD-Writer media provided. For DVD-ROM drives, we looked
The humble floppy drive is as good as extinct, and for the data buffer size, presence of audio and IDE cables and the
the CD-ROM is treading on similar grounds, with quality of the documentation and software included.
faster and more feature-rich CD-Writers and DVD-ROMs all set
to dominate the food chain. CD-Writers, for example, have Performance: We looked at the writing, rewriting and reading
reached a stage where they can burn 700 MB of data in less than performance of the CD-Writers. Here the scores that reflect the
three minutes, while DVDs not only promise an end to multi- core performance of the Writer are the ones in the writing and
ple-CD games and applications (and the irritant of ‘disk-swap - rewriting tests. For the DVD-ROM drives, we evaluated the per-
ping’ that invariably follows), but also bring with them the formance in terms of read speed and access time.
wonderful world of DVD movies—the concept of the home the- CD-Writers: We tested for ISO write speed by burning an ISO
atre was never a more likely proposition. Of course, all of this image created using Nero on the CD-R. Assorted data was writ-
would mean little if the devices in question weren’t accessible ten on a CD-R and a CD-RW using Nero 5.5.9.0. An Audio CD
to us mortals. The good news is that thanks to a very competi- was created by burning WAV files on a CD-R. Our test CD was
tive market and a demanding consumer, both CD-Writers and cloned using CloneCD
DVD-ROM drives are well within the bounds of even the most 4.0 and we noted the
meagre of budgets. Buoyant with this knowledge, join us as we time taken for this
evaluate 11 CD-Writers and seven DVD-ROM drive. Which one process. We also tested
will you take home to mom? the time taken to erase
the CD-RW. All tests
Digit Test Process were performed at the
The qualifying criterion for the CD-Writers was that they should maximum speed sup-
be able to burn a CD-R at 32x speed or above. For the DVD-ROM ported. We checked
drives, this was 12x and above. whether the drive per-
The CD-Writers and DVD-ROM drives were tested on an Intel formed the operations
Pentium 4 2 GHz PC with 256 MB DDR-RAM and a 40 GB successfully without SiSoft Sandra helps in determining the
ATA/100 7,200-rpm hard drive with Windows XP Professional as errors during the writ- theoretical sequential speeds that a drive
the OS. The drives in test were connected as secondary master. ing process. Our read can achieve
The CD-Writers and DVD-ROM drives were tested with DMA speed tests comprised
enabled for all IDE channels. the Nero CDSpeed v 1.0 test, which showed the average read
The CD-Writers under test were benchmarked for their per- speed of the CD-Writer. We also conducted assorted read tests
formance in reading information off a CD and in writing differ- where a combination of files ranging from 1 KB to 100 MB were
ent forms of data on to a CD-R and rewriteable CD (CD-RW). read using the CD-Writer and copied to the hard disk—we noted
The media used was Princo CD-R 700 MB, capable of writing at the time taken for this
48x. The media used for the re-write and erase test was 16x 700 entire process. The
MB ASUS CD-RW. Writers were also
benchmarked for
Test methodology sequential read, ran-
The drives were tested on four primary parameters: features (20 dom read and average
per cent weightage), performance (50 per cent weightage), value access time using SiSoft
for money (20 per cent weightage) and warranty and support (10 Sandra 2002 Pro. The
per cent weightage). disk registration time
(time taken by the
Features: We checked for the buffer size, buffer underrun tech- drive to display the
nology used by the CD-Writer, robustness of the CD tray, support label in the Explorer) Nero DVDSpeed is a great tool to check
for 8 cm CDs and whether the drive could be used vertically. We was also noted. DVD drive speeds ➜

56 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

DVD-ROM Drives: We used Nero DVDSpeed which showed the

seek time, CPU utilisation spin down time and the drive speed Taking Care of Your Optical Drive
of the DVD-ROM drives. The VOB file extraction test was car-
ried out using the software Flask MPEG and the time taken for ■ Never use poor quality detergents and sprays for
this was logged. We also used SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro for check- cleaning. Clean the drives using a soft, dry fabric.
ing the DVD-ROM drive’s sequential read, random read and ■ Keep the tray clean. Use a duster for thorough
average access time. The time taken for extracting the first, mid- cleaning.
dle and last track from an Audio CD was noted using the soft- ■ Use a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) for your computer
ware Exact Audio Copy. An assorted read test was carried out and the Writer. This will protect your system from any surge or
where a combination of file sizes ranging from 1 KB to 100 MB dip in power.
were read from the CD-RW and copied to the hard disk and the ■ Do not push the tray to close it; always use the eject button
time was noted. The disk registration time (the time taken by instead.
the drive to be recognised by the OS) was also noted. ■ Never try to force the tray out, if it doesn’t eject automati-
cally. Use the pin provided with the drive to manually remove
Warranty and support: We logged the period of warranty for the tray.
the CD-Writer and DVD-ROM drives. We also noted the type of ■ Use a good quality lens cleaner to keep the lens clean, as
support provided by the different brands. Some have a policy of this is one of the most important parts of the drive.
replacing the faulty drive within the warranty period, while oth-
ers only repair the drive.
Features
Value for money: Here we calculated the features and per- The CD-Writers we received fell in the 32x to 48x speed bracket.
formance delivered and at what cost. The best drive is that which The ASUS CRW-4816A, Iomega CDRW5529INT-B and LITEON
is not very expensive and at the same time delivers impressive LTR-48125 W offered the capability to burn a CD at 48x. While
performance and has a host of features. the models from LG and Krypton ran at 32x speed, which is the
entry level for CD-Writers today, five of the entries offered a write
Test Analysis speed of 40x—these were the Benq 4012P, Krypton BCE-4012M,
There’s a wide range of optical drives available in the market LITEON LTR-40125 S, Samsung SW204, and Sony CRX-195A1.
today. A DVD-ROM drive serves the purpose if you basically The Yamaha CRW-F1 offered a rather un-conventional speed
need an optical drive that will allow you to watch movies and of 44x.
don’t need to back up data. A CD-Writer on the other hand, is All the CD-Writers supported burn proof technology and we
what you should be looking at if you wish to archive and experienced no errors while writing CDs at the maximum sup-
swap data. ported speed. It basically ensures that data is fed to the CD-Writ-
Judging by the devices in this comparison test, all DVD-ROM ing application in a constant stream as an interruption in data
drives have low CPU utilisation while dumping data form a DVD flow during the writing process can cause errors.
to the hard disk. If you wish to compress a DVD movie into the Also important for error-free CDs is the buffer size—higher
DivX format, the VOB extraction test will give you a good indi- the amount of buffer, lower the chances of ending up with a
cation of a drive’s performance while doing so. A drive with a low coaster. The buffer is the memory on the CD-Writer. It tem -
CPU utilisation score and a low VOB file extraction score will porarily stores the data it receives from the hard drive or CD
thus be the best for converting those DVD movies into the DivX before it is passed on to the writing head. This ensures that the
format. We also found that the data seek times for DVD-ROM Writer is constantly supplied with the data to burn on the media.
drives are now on par with those of CD-ROM drives. The LG 8320B, Yamaha CRW-F1 and Samsung SW204 were the
If you plan to back up a lot of data using your CD-Writer, the only Writers to have an 8 MB buffer; the rest had a 2 MB buffer.
test that you should especially consider is the Assorted Write All the CD-Writers had adequate front panel indicators, but
Speed test, since the data that you are most likely to archive will the noteworthy ones were the ASUS CRW-4816A and the Kryp-
consist of small individual files and folders. Additionally, the CD- ton BCE-3212M—both had an extra Play/Forward button where-
RW is fast emerging as a replacement for the floppies and Zip as the other Writers only had the Eject/Stop button. The
disks; it is now the de facto means of swapping data with your CD-Writers from LITEON had two LED indicators, one each for
friends or colleagues. The performance of the Writers under the Read and Write.
RW-Assorted Write Speed test will give you a good idea of their Any device that has moving components needs to have espe-
capability to copy data onto a CD-RW. cially good build quality, else it will soon develop mechanical
snags regardless of how feature-rich and good the device is oth-
CD-Writers erwise. Most of the CD-Writers had a decent build quality, except
A CD-Writer works out to be an ideal backup solution since for the Yamaha CRW-F1—its tray was a little loose. The tray of
media is readily and cheaply available. A CD-ROM drive with the Samsung SW204 had a good build quality.
24x speed is now ubiquitous; moreover it is also capable of read- If a CD-Writer can be placed vertically, it gives you more flex-
ing a CD-RW medium. Thus, if you have a CD-Writer and use a ibility if desktop space is a matter of concern for you. Although
CD-RW to back up or swap data, you can rest assured that you it is not advisable to keep a CD-Writer in the vertical position
will be able access the same on almost any PC. while burning data, it’s all right if the drive is being used as a CD-
Writers now offer burning speeds ranging from 32x to 48x, ROM reader. Though all the CD-Writers could be used vertically,
which means that the time taken to back up essential data is only the Yamaha CRW-F1 had a locking mechanism to hold the
drastically reduced from 20 minutes to under 4 minutes. media in this position. However, when testing this feature on ➜

58 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

8
n’t make it slower. Krypton BCE-3212M (32x) and Krypton BCE-
Easy Steps to Burn a Perfect CD 4012M (40x) burned the ISO image at a really slow 261.44 and
255.61 seconds, respectively.
■ Turn the screensaver off while burning a CD so as to Assorted Write Speed: To test performance in writing non-
not hamper the flow of data to the CD-Writer. sequential data, we burnt a folder containing files ranging from
■ Defragment the hard disk before burning a CD. 1 KB to 100 MB onto a blank CD, at the highest speed support-
■ If you have a fast Writer but a slow processor and hard disk ed. Here, as expected, the fastest times were logged by the 48x
subsystem (ATA 33), it is safer to burn the CD at a speed drives. The CD-Writer from Iomega was the fastest, taking just
lower than the maximum possible. 181.19 seconds to burn the 700 MB file. Close on its heels was
■ Use Track At Once instead of Disk At Once to burn an Audio ASUS CRW-4816A, taking an insignificant 3 seconds more.
CD. This will make the Audio CD look more professional The slowest here was again the Krypton BCE-3212M, taking
because a 2 second gap will be inserted between each burned 343.76 seconds to finish the test—this makes it almost twice as
track and the CD can then be mass produced error-free. slow as the fastest drive. Iomega is the best buy for those who
■ Always ‘finalise’ a burned Audio CD to ensure that it plays take a lot of backups on CD-Rs and require a faster drive which
on your home music system. can do the task in minimum time.
■ Use branded CDs for burning critical data—cheaper media Audio Write Speed: We tested the speed with which the CD-
are prone to damage and can’t hold data for long. Plus there Writers could write audio on a CD by burning an 80-minute
is no guarantee that they will burn everything perfectly. Audio CD from WAV files. Here again the Iomega logged the
■ Shut down all other applications while burning CDs; do not fastest time by burn-
use the computer for any other tasks while a CD is burning. ing the Audio CD in
■ Try to simulate a burn process if the Writer has just presented 181.57 seconds—this
you with a coaster. Most CD-Writing software will allow this. time is practically the
same as the 181.19
seconds it took to
the Yamaha writer, the tray came out without the CD, which burn the assorted
forced us to keep the drive flat on its back to get the media out. (non-sequential)
This can be harmful for the media as well as the Writer if repeat- data, which indicates
ed frequently. that this drive will
The accessories included in the package add to the overall give consistent
value of the product. If the package includes the connecting results for different
cables, a variety of blank media and a good mix of software, it types of data.
saves you the expense and bother of buying these separately. Sony’s CRX-
The best combination of accessories was provided by the Sam- 195A1 took just 3 seconds more to finish writing the Audio CD.
sung SW204—the package included the audio and IDE cables, The Krypton writers performed poorly in this test as well. The 32x
one blank CD-R disk and one CD-RW disk, Nero 5.5.7.8 and Krypton drive took 340.16 seconds, while its faster sibling, the
InCD 3.0, and a manual. The ASUS CRW-4816A also comes with 40x writer, took 464.96 seconds.
the audio and IDE cables, a blank CD-R and CD-RW disk, Nero Raw Write Speed: For the Raw write speed test, we attached an
5.5.8.0 and a manual. Sony’s CRX-195A1 was meagre on acces- extra 48x CD-ROM as the primary master. Using CloneCD, we
sories—it included only Nero 5.5.8.3 and InCD 3.12.0. then created an exact replica of the Digit Test CD. We expected
the Writers to take longer here, since the data was being read
Performance from a CD-ROM drive, but the Writers did just fine and didn’t log
The proof of a CD-Writer is in its performance. Hence, we tested any extra time here. The Iomega Writer once again logged an
the speed and reliability with which the CD-Writers could burn impressive time of 182.89 seconds to finish cloning the CD. The
CDs, read data off CDs and rewrite data on CD-RWs. ASUS CRW-4816A was once again a close second, taking just
185.05 seconds. The slowest drive here was again the Krypton
Write tests (CD-R): Though a CD-Writer can double up as a BCE-4012M; it took 336.57 seconds.
CD-ROM drive, the main function obviously is to burn CDs.
Hence we tested this through various tests and benchmarks. Rewrite tests (CD-RW): We also evaluated the drives for their
ISO Write Speed: If you need a CD-Writer to back up large chunks rewriting capabilities via the RW writing and erasing tests. These
of data, such as 200 MB TIFF files, texture files or animation files, scores are especially relevant today as the RW media is slowly
then its performance in burning sequential data is what you replacing the good old floppy for everything from booting the
should look at. To test the sequential data-burning capacity, we system to just transferring data from one machine to another.
used a 700 MB ISO file. This was burnt onto a CD using Nero RW-Assorted Write Speed: We burned the folder containing files
5.5.9.14, at the highest speed supported by the CD-Writer. We ranging from 1 KB to 100 MB on a CD-RW. We tested the Writ-
were expecting the 48x writers to bag this test—the medium after ers using an ASUS 16x media. Although two of the drives, the
all was a perfect match for their class and the data was of a Iomega and Yamaha, were capable of re-writing data at 24x, the
sequential nature—but nothing of this sort happened. The slow- unavailability of appropriate media forced us to go with the a
er 40x Sony CRX-195A1 surpassed all others here, taking just 16x RW CD. The ASUS writer did wonderfully in this test; it final-
152.56 seconds to burn the ISO image. In fact, the runner-up in ly overtook its closest rival, the Iomega drive, by logging 322.95
test was also a 40x Writer, the LITEON LTR-40125 S. It took just seconds, beating it by 7 seconds. The Benq 4012P finished last,
2 seconds more to burn this data, which in practical terms does- taking 530.86 seconds to complete the task at a speed of 12x— ➜

60 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

this is at least 10-15 ton BCE-4012 once again logged the highest data transfer speed
per cent slower than of 1258 KBps, crossing the 1 MBps mark. This CD-Writer also
what you should returned the fastest average access time, hence making it an ideal
expect. candidate for use as a CD-ROM drive. This drive is best for those
RW-Erase Speed: In who want a good CD-ROM drive and also occassionally want to
this test, we erased be able to burn CDs. Benq too crossed the 1 MBps mark by log-
700 MB of data at the ging a random read score of 1100 KBps.
highest speed sup- Nero CDSpeed v1.0: The Nero CDSpeed v1.0 benchmarking suite
ported by the drive. tests the range of speed the drive can reach. It measures both the
Once again the ASUS fastest speed and the slowest, and also gives the average speed of
Writer logged the the drive. In this test, the best performer was the Krypton BCE-
fastest time (329.77 4012M. It reached a maximum speed of 49.94x, higher than its
seconds), just sec - rated maximum speed of 48x. The slowest speed it logged was
onds faster than the 23.33x, which is higher than the other CD-Writers. If you intend
Iomega drive (331.77 seconds). The drive which took the longest to use the CD-Writer to watch VCDs and play AudioCDs and
time was the Yamaha CRW-F1, logging 532.7 seconds. don’t mind a slower writing speed, you will find this CD-Writer
quite suitable.
Read tests (CDs): The whole point of installing a CD-Writer is
that it serves the dual function of burning data onto CDs and also DVD-ROM Drives
works as a regular CD-ROM drive. A DVD-ROM drive is ideal for those who wish to watch theatre-
Assorted Read Speed: To evaluate the capability of a CD-Writer quality movies from the comfort of their living room. Besides, it
to read a normal CD-ROM, we tried copying 700 MB of assorted also reads all optical media and is a better upgrade from the plain
data from the Digit Test CD to the hard disk. The ASUS CRW- CD-ROM drive, since it is a cheaper buy when compared to CD-
4816A completed this task in the fastest time, logging 138.73 sec- Writers.
onds—this translates to a data transfer rate of about 5 MBps. The
ASUS drive will be best suited for the kind of people who are Features
copying lots of data like images and important work related files The DVD drives did not offer much in terms of variety in speed—
on their PC like DTP house, and so on. The slowest here was the all the drives sported 16x read speed for DVDs, which is currently
LITEON LTR-BCE-4012M, which took 234.31 seconds. the fastest speed available, and a 40x to 48x read speed for CDs.
Disk Registration: This test measures the time taken by the OS All the DVD-ROM drives we received came with a healthy buffer
to recognise the CD. The fastest drive here was the Yamaha CRW- size, though the buffer space allotted was small compared to the
F1 with 8.71 seconds. The LG 8320B was really slow and took CD-Writers—not surprising, considering that these drives are not
14.7 seconds—long enough to be irritating. meant to burn CDs or DVDs. All drives offered 512 KB buffer,
Exact Audio Copy: Here, the first, middle and last track is ripped except the Pioneer DVD-106S/2, which had only 256 KB buffer.
from an Audio CD to WAV format. The best result was present- Build quality of the tray becomes important here too. The Pio-
ed by the Yamaha, which ripped all three tracks in 38.04 seconds, neer drive stood apart from the rest with its slot-in disk-loading
followed by the Krypton BCE-3212M (43.38 seconds). The slow- mechanism. This imparts a level of sturdiness to the build of this
est here was the Samsung SW240, which took 38.49 seconds just drive that is absent in its competitors. All seven DVD drives fea -
to rip the middle track; its overall time was 106.2 seconds. If you tured in this test allowed for vertical usage.
are planning to buy a There wasn’t much in the name of package content for the
drive mainly to rip DVD drives. Almost all provided an audio cable, but a few like the
Audio CDs and also Pioneer skimped on this. As for the IDE cable, only Samsung and
burn data occasional- Sony include this. Software bundling came in the form of Asus-
ly, the Krypton works DVD 3.0 with the ASUS drive, WinDVD3.1 with the Benq, while
out to be a better
choice as it is cheap-
er than the Yamaha. Region Locking
SiSoft Sandra 2002
Pro: The SiSoft San - As a part of DVD technology licensing arrangements,
dra 2002 Pro bench- the world has been divided into six geographic regions.
marking suite helps This means that movies from Region 1 (USA and Canada) will
determine the differ- not play on a DVD player designated for regions 2 to 6. Effec-
ent data transfer tively, Region 1 discs play only on Region 1 DVD players,
speeds and the drive Region 2 discs play only on Region 2 DVD players and so on.
access time. In the A region code is embedded in the DVD-ROM drive. The first
sequential read test, DVD disc inserted into a drive sets the region code for the
the Iomega Writer drive. The drive’s region can be changed four more times
and Krypton BCE- before it is permanently locked to a region. Inserting a disc
4012M logged 6 that has a different region code than the drive’s current code
MBps. In the random makes these changes.
read test, the Kryp- ➜

62 NOVEMBER 2002
CATEGORY CD-WRITERS
ASUS CRW-4816A Benq 4012P Iomega LG 8320B Liteon Liteon
CDRW55296INT-B LTR-40125 S LTR-48125 W
Features
Drive Specifications
Speed (Write\Rewrite\Read) 48X\16X\48X 40X\12X\48X 48X\24X\48X 32X\10X\40X 40X\12X\48X 48X\12X\48X
Interface IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE
Buffer Underrun Protection Used FlextraLink Seamless Link SMART-BURN Superlink SMART-BURN SMART-BURN
Front Panel Controls/Indicators Play/Fwd, Eject/Stop, Play/Fwd, Eject/Stop, Eject/Stop, Volume, Eject/Stop, Volume, Eject/Stop, Volume, Eject/Stop, Volume,
Volume, HeadPhone Volume, HeadPhone HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack,
Jack, Read and Write Jack, Disk Indicator Disk Indicator Read and Write Read and Write Read and Write
Indicators Indicators Indicators Indicators
Onboard Buffer Size (KB) 2048 2048 2048 8192 1984 1984
Tray Drive Build Quality (scale of 5) 4 3.5 3 3.5 3.5 3.5
Vertical Usage (y/n) ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Package contents
Audio Cable ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
IDE Cable ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
CD-R blanks provided 1 1 ✖ ✖ 1 ✖
CD-RW blanks provided 1 1 ✖ 1 1 1
Software provided Nero 5.5.8.0 Nero 5.5.7.1 Nero 5.5.9.2c Nero 5.5.7.6 and Nero 5.5.8.3 Nero 5.5.8.3
InCD 3.23.1
Manuals and Documentation ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖
Performance
Real world Tests (sec)
ISO Write Speed*** 155.64 195.98 157.46 205.39 154.81 158.97
Assorted Write Speed*** 184 237.9 181.19 234.33 222.71 197.62
Assorted Read Speed 138.73 145.38 143.9 170.81 234.31 149.07
Audio Write Speed*** 185.36 228.14 181.57 231.52 189.06 186.43
Raw Write Speed*** 185.05 225.84 182.89 230.89 188.25 189.16
RW-Assorted Write Speed*** 322.95 530.86 329.51 527.17 525.44 522.94
RW-Erase Speed*** 329.77 529.79 331.77 521.45 523.91 526.25
Disk Registration test*** 14.36 12.83 10.13 14.7 12.09 14.28
Exact Audio Copy (sec)***
Track 1 21.07 20.57 19.27 19.29 15.63 18.88
Track 2 13.54 14.58 13.04 13.88 12.62 11.62
Track 3 5.76 9.65 12.23 7.76 12.91 9.85
Nero CD Speed v1.0 (in X)
Minimum speed 22.26 19.21 22.74 18.59 22.57 22.71
Average speed 37.7 36.51 37.57 31.8 36.35 37.36
Maximum speed 49.72 48.65 49.57 41.94 49.04 49.27
SiSoft Sandra 2002 Professional
Sequential Read (KBps) 5120 3819 6144 3585 3217 3940
Random Read (KBps) 835 1102 903 908 691 834
Average Access Time (ms)*** 98 89 93 101 121 109
Warranty & Support
Replacement warranty ** ** * * * *
Period of warranty (Years) 1 1 1 1 1 1
Overall Score
Features (20%) 15.6 14.4 13.2 15.4 13.4 11.4
Performance (50%) 39.53 33.72 39.89 32.13 33.51 35.23
Warranty & Support (10%) 5 5 5 7 3 3
Value for Money (20%) 11.00 16.06 10.89 18.64 16.46 14.80
Overall Product Rating 71.13 69.18 68.98 73.13 66.37 64.43
Overall Grade
Vendors Name Neoteric Infomatique BenQ Neoteric Infomatique LG Electronics Media Tech Media Tech

Phone 022-4172600 022-5705230 022-4172600 0120-4560900 022-2396696 022-2396696

E-mail sales@ pankajpamani@ sales@ [email protected] sales@ sales@
neoteric-info.com benq.com neoteric-info.com mediatechindia.com mediatechindia.com
Webpage www.asus.com www.benq.com www.iomega.com www.lgindia.com www. www.
mediatechindia.com mediatechindia.com
Price (in Rupees) 6,680 3,995 6,500 3,400 3,800 4,200

Disclaimer: * The drives are replaced within warranty period ** Repair is carried out during warranty period ***Lower the better

64 NOVEMBER 2002
 the rest of the drives had different versions
Krypton Krypton Samsung SW240 SONY CRX-195E1 Yamaha CRW-F1
BCE-3212M BCE-4012M
of PowerDVD. The Pioneer drive did not
come with any DVD playback software.

32X\10X\40X 40X\12X\48X 40X\12X\40X 40X\12X\48X 44X\24X\44X Performance

IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE Our performance test covered all areas
Superlink Superlink JustLink PowerBurn SAFEBURN such as assorted read speed, disk registra-
Play/Fwd, Eject/Stop, Play/Fwd, Eject/Stop, Eject/Stop, Volume, Eject/Stop, Volume, Eject/Stop, Volume, tion test and VOB file extraction test from
Volume, HeadPhone Volume, HeadPhone HeadPhone Jack, Disk HeadPhone Jack, Disk HeadPhone Jack, Disk a DVD media.
Jack, Disk Indicator Jack, Disk Indicator Indicator Indicator Indicator We however did not get one drive
which performed well across the catego-
2048 2048 8192 1984 8192 ry—if it performed really well in assort-
3.5 3.5 4 4 2 ed read speed, it was average in the disk
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖
registration test and so on. This was the
case with all the drives and because of
✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
this we had to look at the overall figure
✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
to get a winner in the performance
✖ ✖ 1 ✖ 1
1 2 1 ✖ ✖
category.
NTI CDMaker 5.5.7 NTI CDMaker 5.5.8 Nero 5.5.7.8 and Nero 5.5.8.3 and Nero 5.5.8.17
InCD 3.0 InCD 3.12.0 Read tests (DVDs): Movie-watching
✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔ would be no fun if your DVD-ROM drive
is unable to access the data fast enough to
provide a smooth experience. Hence, the
261.44 255.61 192.51 152.56 250.08 drive’s read speed and access speed
343.76 297.76 283.13 192.63 330.58 becomes critical.
224.38 144.23 169.17 166.18 165.79 VOB File Extraction: This test helps eval-
340.16 464.96 251.54 184.69 331.16 uate the efficiency with which the DVD-
332 336.57 250.96 187.22 327.29 ROM drive can copy a DVD on to the hard
524.41 456.49 438.54 503.85 524.81 disk, so that you can play it off the hard
520 442.76 440.42 504.35 532.7 disk. We used Flask MPEG v0.594 for this
14.16 9.87 11.26 13.69 8.71 test, which determines the time taken to
extract a VOB file into the AVI format
16.38 19.57 40.54 18.84 18.96
using the latest DivX codec. The Samsung
15.35 16.27 38.49 14.06 12.51
SD-616 logged the fastest time—it took
8.04 7.64 27.17 12.53 6.57
74.38 seconds to complete the extraction
15.56 23.33 18.7 19.56 19.4
process. The Benq DVP-1648A wasn’t far
31.46 37.83 31.66 32.19 32.19
behind with 74.61 seconds.
41.53 49.94 41.36 42.44 43.45 The LITEON LTD-165H shocked us by
coming last, especially considering that
2879 6144 3501 3564 5120 this drive logged the best time in the
954 1258 791 867 804 assorted read test.
93 88 111 104 100 Nero DVDSpeed: This is a synthetic
benchmark that evaluates multiple param-
* * * * ** eters that affect the overall performance
2 2 15 months 1 1 of a DVD-ROM drive. The first parameter
evaluated was the ‘seek time’. This refers
13.4 13.4 16.6 9.2 13.8 to the average time taken by the drive to
28.95 33.46 29.42 34.37 31.06
access data from a particular location. It is
8 8 5 6 5
computed by dividing the time taken to
18.36 17.24 10.23 7.00 4.79
complete a large number of random seeks
68.71 72.10 61.25 56.57 54.65
by the number of seeks performed. If you
manage a lot of data either for yourself or
Priya Limited Priya Limited Samsung Electronics Rashi Peripherals Neoteric Infomatique
(SEIIT)
for the office on CDs or DVDs, you should
022-2663611 022-2663611 011-6322517 022-8260258 022-4172600 look out for this result whenever consid-
salesbom@ salesbom@ marketing@ [email protected] sales@ ering a DVD-ROM drive.
priyagroup.com priyagroup.com samsungindia.com neoteric-info.com The LITEON LTD 165H logged a seek
www.priyagroup.com www.priyagroup.com www. www.rptechindia.com www.yamaha.com time of 67 ms. This was an impressive
samsungindia.com show considering that the runner up, the
3,075 3,625 6,000 8,300 12,500 ASUS DVD E616, logged 169 ms (around
130 per cent more). The slowest in this test
was the Sony DDU-16210-C0, which took

65 NOVEMBER 2002
 test drive ■
■ storage solutions

CATEGORY DVD-ROM DRIVES

ASUS DVD-E616 Benq DVP-1648A LG DRD-8160B LITEON LTD- Pioneer DVD- Samsung Sony
165H 106S/2 SD-616 DDU1621
Features
Drive Specifications
Speed (DVD-ROM \CD-ROM) 16X\48X 16X\48X 16X\48X 16X\48X 16X\40X 16X\48X 16X\40X
Disk loading mechanism Tray Tray Tray Tray Slot-In Tray Tray
Interface (IDE/SCSI) IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE IDE
Data Buffer Size (KB) 512 512 512 512 256 512 512
Front Panel Controls/indicators Play/Fwd, Stop/Eject, Volume, Stop/Eject, Volume, Play/Fwd, Stop/Eject, Volume, Stop/Eject, Volume, Stop/Eject, Volume,
Eject/Stop, Volume, HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack, Eject/Stop, Volume, HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack, HeadPhone Jack,
HeadPhone Jack, Disk Indicator Disk Indicator HeadPhone Jack, Disk Indicator Disk Indicator Disk Indicator
Disk Indicator Disk Indicator
Package contents
Audio Cable ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
IDE Cable ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔
Software Provided AsusDVD 3.0 WinDVD 3.1 and PowerDVD 4.0 PowerDVD 4.0 None PowerDVD 4.0 PowerDVD 2.55
DOS driver v2.14
Manuals and Documentation ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Performance
DVD Test (sec)***
Assorted Read Speed 146.46 162.42 201.21 144.14 161.23 147.76 168.49
Disk registration test 12.08 8.89 7.6 12.76 9.76 15.13 11.71
VOB File extraction test - Flask MPEG 78 74.61 76.83 84.76 75.72 74.38 78.6
Nero DVDSpeed v0.53
Seek time (ms)*** 169 75 105 67 77 89 458
CPU Utilization (%)*** 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Spin down time (sec)*** 7.77 1.95 2.49 2.31 3.04 3.74 3.14
Average speed (X) 7.04 7.22 3.73 7.46 7.27 7.38 3.71
SiSoft Sandra 2002 Professional
Sequential read (KBps) 6144 9216 4096 9216 9216 8192 5120
Random Read (KBps) 625 1100 755 720 1119 1035 513
Average Acess Time (ms)*** 91 51 71 82 50 54 111
Exact Audio Copy (sec)***
Track 1 15.83 17.51 26.51 14.98 22.05 26.16 20.27
Track 2 13.07 13.05 31.74 11.86 25.07 32.71 15.68
Track 3 7.78 8.64 23.98 7.07 19.76 24.81 8.17
Warranty & Support
Replacement warranty ** ** * * ** * *
Period of warranty (Years) 1 1 1 1 1 15 months 1
Overall Score
Features (10%) 17 15 15 17 9 18 17
Performance (50%) 35.79 42.66 32.49 39.47 38.77 36.38 31.73
Warranty & Support (20%) 5 5 7 3 3 5 4
Value for Money (20%) 6.32 15.4 13.57 17.05 10.19 10.88 8.66
Overall Product Rating 64.11 78.06 68.06 76.52 60.96 70.26 61.39
Overall Grade
Vendors Name Neoteric BenQ LG Electronics Media Tech Mnemonic System Samsung Rashi Peripherals
Infomatique Electronics (SEIIT)
Phone 022-4172600 022-5705230 0120-4560900 022-2396696 022-8010871 011-6322517 022-8260258
E-mail sales@ pankajpamani@ response@ sales@ mnemonic@ marketing@ ho@
neoteric-info.com benq.com ezbuy.com mediatechindia.com vsnl.com samsungindia.com rptechindia.com
Webpage www.asus.com www.benq.com www.lgindia.com www.liteonit.com www.pioneer.com www. www.
samsungindia.com rptechindia.com
Price (Rs) 6,680 2,995 2,800 2,650 3,750 4,000 4,500

Disclaimer: * The drives are replaced within warranty period ** Repair is carried out during warranty period ***Lower the better

458 ms to seek out the necessary data. LITEON LTD-165H, which took 2.31 seconds. The ASUS DVD-
We also logged each drive’s CPU utilisation to get a handle on E616 disappointed us and took 7.77 seconds.
the amount of CPU resources hogged by a drive under usage. All A 498 MB VOB file was used for calculating the average speed
seven drives did well here, utilising not more than 1 per cent of of the drive. This score holds import because one would buy a
the CPU power, utilising DMA (Direct Memory Access) to new DVD-ROM drive or upgrade from an older 8x drive to get
the full. better performance. If a drive can’t live up to its rated speed, it
Many new drives save power by spinning down when the doesn’t make sense investing in it.
drive is not in use. This is essentially a power-saving feature and The winner in this category was the ASUS DVD- E616 with an
is designed to lighten the load your computer’s power supply has average speed of 7.04x, while the Sony DDU1621-CO and the LG
to carry. The drive with the fastest spin-down time was the Benq DRD 8160B with an average speed of 3.71x and 3.73x, respec-
DVP-1648A, logging 1.95 seconds. A close second was the tively, performed under par.

66 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

Read tests (CDs): Hybrid DVDs

Though all the
DVD-ROM drives Nine leading consumer electronics manufacturers
are rated between have jointly established the basic specifications for a
40 and 48x, we next-generation large-capacity optical disc video recording
observed noticeable format called Blue-ray Disc. These DVDs can hold six times
differences in per- the data as current standard discs. The new format will store
formance while more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit
reading CDs. of 133 minutes.
Assorted Read: This High Density-DVD no doubt, is the enhanced form of
tests the DVD-ROM current DVD format. Blue lasers have a much shorter wave-
drive’s ability to length than the red lasers used in current DVD players,
read an assortment allowing for much greater disc capacity. The new high defi-
of files that come in nition format allows a capacity of 4.7 GB to 15 GB on a sin-
varying sizes. This gle-sided, single-layered disc and a capacity of 8.5 GB to 30
test will interest GB on a single-sided, double-layered disc. Some feel be
those who often use more definite! that this provides a cost-effective upgrade
software CDs or CDs such as the Digit Interactive CDs, which path for media vendors and a backward-compatible solution
contain a lot data in varying sizes. for all those who’ve already built DVD libraries.
A CD containing assorted data in the form of files ranging Current DVD players use 650 nanometre (nm) red lasers,
from 1 KB to 100 MB was copied on the hard disk and the time while CD players use 780 nm diodes. It will not be possible
was noted. The LITEON LTD-165H was the fastest here, taking to play Blue-ray discs with existing DVD and CD players,
144.14 seconds to copy the data. The ASUS DVD–E616 and Sam- since these don’t contain 405 nm lasers. Blue-ray drives will
sung SD-616 were just seconds behind, logging 146.46 and 147.76 need to contain 780, 650 and 405 nm lasers in order to be
seconds, respectively. The LG DRD-8160B was the slowest DVD compatible with CD and DVD discs.
drive and took 210.12 seconds to copy the CD to the hard disk.
Disk Registration: The disk registration test shows how fast the
drive can identify a CD or DVD. This test will be especially inter- speed ability of the drive and is useful while reading large single
esting to those who share their drives on the network for others files such as ISO images.
to use. The winners in this category were the Benq DVP-1648, Pio-
We used the Digit Mindware CD (October issue) for this test. neer DVD-106S/2 and LITEON LTD 165-H with a read speed of
The Samsung SD-616 was the slowest, taking 15.13 seconds, where- 9.216 MBps each. These drives are thus ideally suited for those
as the LG-DRD 8160-B topped the test by taking only 7.60 seconds who copy a lot of large single files from optical media to the hard
to recognize the CD. The Benq DVP-1648A finished second by drive or are into image editing. The LG-DRD 8160 B performed
identifying the CD in just 8.89 seconds. poorly with a sequential read speed of 4.096 MBps—a slow solu-
Exact Audio Copy: We extracted three songs from an Audio CD, tion when compared to its competition.
such that the first, the middle and the last tracks of an 80-minute The random speed determines the ability of a DVD-ROM drive
CD were accessed. Since access speeds vary as we traverse the radius to randomly read data from an optical media. This test will inter-
of a CD, this test would give us a good indication of the overall per- est those who have a lot of clipart to be copied to the hard drive
formance of the drive. Exact Audio Copy was used to evaluate the from either CD or DVD media, such as DTP shops. The two drives
same. The overall winner of this test was the LITEON LTD-165H, in competition with each other were the Pioneer DVD-106S/2
which took just 33.91 seconds to rip all the three tracks. The slow- and the Benq DVP-1648A with a random read time of 1119 and
est however, was the Samsung drive, which performed quite poor- 1100 KBps, respectively. This was the only test in which the Pio-
ly with a score of 83.68 seconds. neer drive—which had won past DVD-ROM comparisons—
SiSoft Sandra 2002 shone. The poor performer in this test was the Sony DDU
Pro: The three tests 1621-C0, logging 513 KBps only.
carried out using The access time tells us how fast the drive can access a par-
SiSoft Sandra 2002 ticular track and start reading the information. Here, the Pioneer
Pro were sequential DVD-106S/2 won by taking just 50 ms. The Benq DVP-1648A
read, random read was a close second with 51 ms—a 1 ms difference that makes lit-
and average access tle practical difference. Sony was the slow respondent again and
time. This bench- probably was the only drive to cross the 100 ms mark by logging
mark gives an over- 111 ms as access time.
all view of how a
drive will perform What it all leads to
under different The competition between the CD-Writers was really tough. We
conditions. got some unexpected results, where drives with a faster rating
The sequential were overtaken by drives with a slower rating and older tech-
read speed is the nology. What this tells us is that 32x is still where it’s at—it not
continuous read only performs optimally, but also costs much lesser.

68 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

The winners!
Your Shopping Checklist Iomega CDRW55296INT-B CD-Writer: Iomega’s CD-Writer
came bundled with Nero 5.5.9.2c, which is not all that
CD-Writer old a version. This drive includes a 2 MB buffer.
✔ Make sure that the drive has a high spin speed and fast This would appear to be rather less
access times. Access time is more important if you need to for a 48x CD-Writer, but despite
read non-sequential data such as a game. this, the Writer logged the best
✔ Does it support over burning? performance scores in our tests.
✔ Does it support Multi-Session and Incremental Packet The writer includes SMARTBURN
Writing? burnproof technology to ensure that
✔ Does it support Raw writing? there are no errors during the write process.
✔ Does it include a CD burning software? Though it is rather expensive at
This 48x Iomega CD-Writer can burn
Rs 6,500, it delivers when it
DVD-ROM Drive a 700 MB CD in under 4 minutes
comes to performance.
✔ A DVD-ROM drive on the other hand should be able to
read dual-sided DVD media
LG 8320B CD-Writer: If you are looking for the best combina-
✔ Does it include DVD playback software? tion of price and performance, go for the LG 8320B. This CD-
Common Writer is not only inexpensive but is also feature rich,
✔ Can the drive’s firmware be upgraded for future sup- with a decent performance to boot. Though it is a 32x
port? drive, it has an 8 MB buffer which is an
✔ Are drivers for operating systems like DOS and Win 3.x attractive plus. The Writer incor-
included? porates Superlink burnproof
✔ Are the audio and IDE cables included? technology to eliminate
✔ Does it have at least a one-year warranty? CD wastage even on a
slower machine. The
Writer comes with a one-year
warranty and is supported by a
The LG 8320B offers an 8 MB
Our Best Performance Award winner was the Iomega vast network of service centres
buffer for error free burning
CDRW55296INT-B CD-Writer. Also worthy of mention are spread across many cities.
the Samsung CD-Writers—they were the most feature-packed
Writers and came complete with the requisite cables, software Benq DVP-1648A DVD-ROM Drive: The Benq DVP-1648A
and manuals. DVD-ROM drive gave the best results across the board.
The LG 8320B, a 32x CD-Writer, had the highest overall The drive had a 512 KB cache to enable an error
score, even though it did not win in terms of pure performance. free movie experience. The drive is
It wins our Best Value Award. good if one is going to use it
Looking onto our other match up between the DVD- more as a CD-ROM drive as its
ROM drives, we found that the overall as well as the Best Per - transfer rate is quite decent. The
formance Award winner was the Benq DVP-1648A—it best part is that the drive is so
offered the best of performance at a reasonable price of competitively priced that the competi-
Rs 2,995. tion will be forced to re-work
The LITEON LTD-165H drive, which wasn’t far behind in their pricing policy to com- The Benq DVP-1648A offered out-
any of the tests, is even cheaper than Benq and is an easy win - pete with Benq. standing performance in all our tests
ner of our Best Value Award. The Pioneer drive, which was the
winner in our last comparison, stood last here. This is really LITEON LTD-165H DVD-
shocking, as the performance of the drive can’t drop so much. ROM Drive: LITEON LTD165H DVD-ROM comes at a price that
Either Pioneer is not serious with their DVD-ROM business or will be a sure attraction for many—it is available for only
the competition is working overtime to make their product Rs 2,650. The drive has 512 KB cache and
the best in the world. comes bundled with PowerDVD
4.0 DVD
Decision Maker playback
software. It
You want To back up a lot of data An excellent movie Just a decent optical drive also serves as
experience you can upgrade to an excellent sub-
You need A fast and reliable CD- A DVD-ROM drive of A cheap CD-Writer or a stitute for a CD-
Writer good quality DVD drive ROM drive thanks
The LITEON LTD-165H
Look for A 32x or faster CD- A 16x DVD-ROM drive Any drive which can read to its fast data trans -
: great performance at
Writer, with 2 MB buffer with 512 KB buffer data at a speed of 48x fer rate. Overall, it
a great price
The models LG 8320B or Iomega Benq DVP-1648A or LITEON LTD-165H or offers a good blend
CDRW55296INT-B LITEON LTD-165H Krypton BCE-4012M of performance, features and price and is an
Price range Rs 3,400 to Rs 6,500 Rs 2,650 to Rs 2,995 Rs 2,650 to Rs 3,075 easy winner of our Best Value Award.
ALIASGAR PARDAWALA and AHMED SHAIKH

70 NOVEMBER 2002
 With a slew of funky and ultra portable storage devices, you now have
the freedom you need to take your data with you, no matter where you
go or what your applications

A
s the lines between our professional and per- continuously reads and writes data on to the disk and at the
sonal spaces blur, we feel a greater need to carry end, gives the separate as well as the overall scores.
our data from one sphere to another. So how do To test the time a drive takes to read data, we transferred a
you transfer data that’s more than a gigabyte? set of assorted files to the tune of 1.27 GB from the system hard
The answer lies in external portable devices. drive to the device under test. The assorted write time was then
These devices are becoming smaller and at the noted as the time taken to copy the same files back to the
same time their capacity to store data is increasing at a rapid system drive. The sequential tests (both read and write) of
rate. Portable devices such as hard drives, Zip drives, thumb the drives consisted of transferring a single large file between
drives and CD-Writers are also ideally suited to store your the portable and the fixed hard drive installed in the comput-
important data since they can reliably hold greater amounts er system.
as compared to the floppy disk. Add to that the fact that they
are compact, light in weight and support a plethora of inter- Warranty and support: Warranty and support is very impor-
face standards such as USB 2.0, FireWire, SCSI and so on. Even tant for any device, especially for a device meant to be used on
in a country like ours, where the floppy disk still rules, people the move. Here we took into account the number of years of
are slowly shifting to portable solutions. So say hello to these replacement warranty provided by the manufacturer.
new sleek members of the storage family—the external
portable devices. Value for money: The value for money quotient was calculat-
ed by determining the sum of performance and features divided
Digit Test Process by the price of the device.
We tested all the portable devices on our test machine com -
prising a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz processor on an Intel D850EMV2 How they fared
motherboard with 512 MB of RDRAM. The graphics card used In our test analysis, we looked into different features of the device
was a Visiontek GeForce3 with 64 MB of DDR memory and a such as weight, dimensions, storage capacity, interface and so
Seagate ATA IV. A 40 GB hard disk was installed on the on. The documentation provided with each of the drives was
primary IDE channel. All the test drives were connected to also checked. For evaluating performance, we conducted syn-
the appropriate ports (USB 1.1 or 2.0) and the necessary driv- thetic as well as real world tests and the performance figures were
ers and benchmarking utilities were loaded on to the drive calculated accordingly.
after installing Windows XP. The latest drivers for the main-
board and the IDE channel were installed for maximum Performance
performance gain. An external storage device should not only store data but must
also transfer the same at a fast rate. To gauge the transfer rates and
Test methodology evaluate the drives on a technical level, we ran synthetic as well
The drives were tested on four primary parameters: features as real world tests. SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro served as our bench-
(30 per cent), performance (40 per cent), value for money mark, while we transferred a set of files from the system drive to
(20 per cent) and warranty and support (10 per cent). The weigh- the device under test to paint a real-world picture.
tages allotted to each parameter was used to calculate the over-
all scores. SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro: Here we noted different scores such
as the sequential and random read and write scores, the drive
Features: Being portable, the device should weigh as less as pos- index and the average access time. These numbers give you a
sible, support all major operating systems and should not be probable transfer rate
bulky. Apart from this, the build quality also matters. We took all that the drive is
these factors into account as we monitored the devices through capable of deliver -
our feature analysis. ing. The sequential
read rate of a storage
Performance: We used the SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro bench- system, for example,
mark. It gave vital information about the drives such as the tells you how fast a
data transfer rates, the sequential and random read as well as drive can read large
write speeds, and the average access time. SiSoft Sandra 2002 single files, say the

72 NOVEMBER 2002
250 MB Photoshop file you have been working on. Similarly, Cost per MB: The total cost of ownership aspect must be kept
the random read rate will dictate its potential performance in mind while buying a portable solution. A device itself might
while reading randomly placed data, from a game CD or a frag - seem affordable, but the added costs of the media may be
mented drive, for example. Lets first glance at the external too high, making it a costly package on the whole. To evalu -
hard drive scores. ate this angle, we rated the devices on the cost that each MB
The Freecom FHD-1 20 GB posted some of the best scores in of storage space the user will have to pay for: the lower the
this test—it showed the highest random write score of 7 MBps cost per MB for a drive, the more attractive is the drive as
and was also able to achieve the highest drive index of 11866. a purchase.
The drive with the best access time was the Iomega 20 GB with CD-Writers
an average access time of 10 seconds. In the same test, the offered the best
Freecom 60 GB drive scored 7 MBps of random write and its drive price per MB in
index was also low at 11287. comparison with
Moving on to the Zip drives, they scored very low compared the rest of the
to the hard drives. The ZIP 250 managed to complete the tests devices; but it’s
with the lowest posting of a 624 drive index. Next come the important to note
CD-Writers. Here the drive with the lowest access time was the that portable Writ-
Yamaha CRW3200UX-VK at 108 ms. This drive also posted the ers themselves cost
highest random read score of 0.79 MBps. The drive with the quite a lot. This
best sequential write and drive index score was the ASUS CRW- brings us to the hard
4012A-U. It was able to score a sequential read speed of 3.8 drives. Here the
MBps and also an impressive drive index of 2625. So if you Freecom 60 GB
need a speedy external writer, your search ends here. external hard drive
gave us the great value of just 33 paise per MB. Both the Zip
Real world tests: This is where we get a picture of how effec- drives are not a good choice as far as value per MB is concerned.
tively a drive translates its potential greatness into real perform- The Iomega 250 MB will cost you a cool Rs 1.60 per MB and the
ance. Beginning with the portable hard drives, the Freecom FHD- Iomega 750 MB will set you back by 80 paise per MB.
1 20 GB completed the assorted read test in just 125 seconds,
whereas the other Features
Freecom drive and There are some features that are mandatory for a portable device
the Iomega HDD and these should be considered before making a buying deci-
20 GB took 23 sec- sion. Since portable is its essence, the weight, build-quality and
onds more. The form factor are of primary importance. It is also important that
Freecom 20 GB it supports all major operating systems. To see exactly how
gave impressive these features matter, we put the devices through our features
results in the analysis.
sequential read test The Freecom FHD-1 20 GB hard drive looked quite swanky
too, beating the with its eye appeasing indicator lights and two LED indicators
other hard drives on the power adapter to show data transfer. Apart from this, the
by a good margin of drive also featured a cool blue LED on the front panel, which
38 seconds. The indicated the readiness of this device. While aesthetically
Iomega drive beat appealing, the device is too heavy—a big no-no for any portable
some stiff competi- device. Another blow to the carry-anywhere nature of this
tion in the assorted device is its vulnerable outer shell made of plastic. The base of
write test by posting the device is also designed such that it
a score of 197 sec- cannot be placed firmly on a
onds. All the drives desk. Packing 40 GB
rivalled neck and more, is the
neck in the sequen- Freecom FHD-1 60
tial write test, but the Freecom FHD-160 GB won by scoring just GB drive that has
61 seconds. the exact same
Out of the two Zip drives that we received, the Zip 250 design. This sib-
took 229 seconds in the assorted read tests while the Zip 750 ling integrates a
MB took 480 seconds to get the same job done. The reason for PCMCIA converter on to the
this is that we used a larger file for testing the 750 MB USB data cable, saving you the
Zip drive. The ASUS CRW-4012A-U CD- trouble of carrying a PCMCIA
Moving on to the CD-Writers, the one drive that ripped Writer has rubberised foot pegs adapter to connect the USB
through the test was the ASUS CRW-4012A-U. This Writer took cable. It also has a one-touch
just 239 seconds to write a 700 MB assorted CD. Following close- sync button, which when pressed, automatically updates and
ly was the Plextor PX-W2410A, which did the job in 256 sec- synchronises data content across a portable or a personal com-
onds. The drive that took the maximum was the Plextor puter system.
PXS88TU, an 8x drive that took 694 seconds. If you want something that’s comparatively smaller in

73 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ storage solutions

size, try the Iomega 20 GB hard drive, which comes in a

manageable size and was the lightest of the bunch. This drive Maintenance Tips
has just one LED that doubles up as the power indicator and
the data transfer indicator, and it doesn’t score badly in the ■ Always handle the device with outmost care when
looks department either. However, the Iomega requires a on the move; even the slightest jerks could damage the
special converter for its power adapter to fit into Indian power drive.
sockets. ■ Carry the device in a cushioned pack or wrapped in a bub-
Shifting our focus to the Zip drives, the ice blue Iomega Zip ble wrap to absorb shock.
250 MB drive was the first to catch our attention. Rubber pads ■ Do not place the device on an uneven surface as this
on either sides of the drive give it a good grip on the desk and could damage the internal mechanism while the drive is
a stand enables it to be placed vertically—an excellent space- powered on.
saving feature. A feature that further enhances its portability ■ Always use branded media as it ensures better data integrity.
is the fact that it draws power from the USB port and thus does ■ While in use, keep the device away from high voltage
not require an external power supply. Although the Iomega devices such as monitors to protect it from Electro Magnetic
drive paints a pretty picture and features some nifty features, Interference (EMI).
its build quality could have been better. For instance, the
absence of a manual eject button means that if the Zip
medium gets stuck, you will be forced to open the drive up, body. But the characteristics that impart the drive sturdiness
causing the drive damage. Moving on to its elder brother, the also take away from its appearance, lending it a none-too-
Iomega Zip 750, this drive looks just pleasing boxy look. The power switch is non-intuitively
as good as its sibling and improves placed on the back of the drive. The bundled accessories
on the former’s weak build include one CD-RW disk and burning software in the form of
quality. But this drive too Nero 5.5. It disappointed us, however, by leaving out the
does not feature a manu - power cable.
al eject button and The Yamaha CRW-70 wears a retro look in eye-pleasing
requires external colours. An array of buttons on the drive’s front panel assures
power. ease of control and it provides inputs for the Line In and Line
Among the Out connectors. The CRW-70 also hosts an LCD screen on the
portable CD-Writ- front panel and the slide button provided underneath the drive
ers, the Plextor PX- provides a hassle-free solution, in case your CD gets stuck inside
W2410A is capable of burning the drive. However, a flip-open design for loading CDs increas-
The Iomega Zip 750 drive does- CDs at a maximum speed of es the chances of dust finding its way into the drive and col-
n’t feature a manual eject button 24x and comes in a compact lecting on its delicate lens.
and requires external power design and a durable metallic The ASUS CRW-4012A-U is an impressive 40x Writer with

Decision Maker
A portable CD-Writer A portable hard drive A Zip drive
What will I get Lowest cost per MB, easy of use, medi- Low cost per MB, high performance, cum- Low performance, low availability of
out of the um price, medium performance, high bersome to use, high purchase cost media, medium cost per MB, not very
portable device? compatibility, high availability of media easy to use
I work with CD-RW s are not known for their Hard drives are known for their high per- Go in for these drives only if a Zip disk
image editing speed and therefore not suited to formance. Opt for this solution if you need is the preferred medium of data
and page layout large-volume print applications. Opt high performance with no issues towards exchange amongst your clients
software for this only if price is a barrier price Solution: Iomega Zip 750 MB
Solution: Plextor PX-W2410A Solution: Freecom FHD-1 20 GB (Rs 10,700)
(Rs 12,950) (Rs 15,500)
I edit audio and If your work involves relatively smaller The best solution for large AV productions, Not recommended due to low per-
video files file sizes, CD-Writers are recommend- hard disks offer great performance but at a formance, relatively lower capacity of
ed as they are low priced high price media and rare availability of media
Solution: ASUS CRW-4012A-U Solution: Freecom FHD-1 60 GB Solution: None recommended
(Rs 12,500) (Rs 20,500)
I am a home or Highly recommended due to low cost Recommended only if price is not an issue Not recommended due to low avail-
a small office and wide availability of media and your work involves very large amount ability of media
user Solution: ASUS CRW-4012A-U of data Solution: None recommended
(Rs 12,500) Solution: Freecom FHD-1 60 GB
(Rs 20,500)
I have very basic Highly recommended due to media’s Not recommended due to high cost and Not recommended due to low avail-
backup needs inherently higher shelf life, and low relative frailty of medium ability of media and a relatively high
cost of media and easy availability Solution: None recommended cost
Solution: ASUS CRW-4012A-U Solution: None recommended
(Rs 12,500)

74 NOVEMBER 2002
rubberised foot pegs that go hand in hand with a great design.
Three LEDs on the front panel indicate the power, read and Buying Tips
write status of the device. This was the only external CD-Writer
that can be vertically mounted and lets you burn your CDs in ■ Choose a compact device that will fit into your lug-
this position. Again, the only thing that seemed wrong gage unobtrusively
was the power switch located inconveniently at the rear of ■ The device should be light enough for you to carry along for
the drive. long distances
One of the lightest and most compact Writers that we ■ Buying a device that offers a lower cost per MB is advisable
received was the Sony CRXP-90MU. A 24x Writer, the drive is ■ Choose a device for which the media is easily available
also capable of reading memory sticks and provides a button ■ Always investigate the details of the warranty and take them
underneath its body for rescuing jammed CDs. The Freecom down in writing
Traveler II, a 16x device, was also small in size and appropri-
ately lightweight. This drive comes with a handy rechargeable
backup battery, but its average build quality is prone to dam- What it all leads to
age on the move. The laptop-type drive loading mechanism The tests showed that external hard drives provide the best
might not be appreciated by all users, since one has to manu - portable solution in terms of performance and storage space. This
ally pull the tray out, even after pressing the eject button. The makes it an ideal choice for those who work with image and
huge, impractical size of the Yamaha CRW3200UX-VK made us video editing applications that require huge amounts of space.
doubt its capability as a portable device. Although the drive But the Zip drive, on the other hand, stores your data securely
features a good build quality, its average looks mar its overall for a longer period of time. And if you need to swap data fre -
aesthetic value, while a short USB cable takes away from ease quently between devices, the best choice would be a CD-Writer.
of use. Even though the initial price of the device may be high, the
media is cheap and easily available.
Warranty and support
Here we logged the period of warranty for each of the devices and The winners!
even noted down the type of support provided for this drives by The winner of the Best Performance Award in our test is the
different brands. All the brands in this shootout offer to replace Freecom FHD-1 20 GB drive. This drive managed to outrun
the faulty drive within the warranty period. every other contender in the comparison in terms of pure

1/2 page H AD

75 NOVEMBER 2002
CATEGORY EXTERNAL STORAGE DE
ASUS Freecom Freecom Freecom Iomega HDD 20 Iomega Zip 250
CRW-4012A-U FHD-1 20 GB FHD-1 60 GB Traveller II GB Portable Hard
Drive
Features
Drive Specifications
Speed 40\12\48X 5400 rpm 5400 rpm 16\10\24X 4200 rpm NA**
Dimensions (LxWxH in cm) 22x15.5x4.8 18.6x11.2x4.7 18.6x11.2x4.7 15x14x2.5 18.9x8.9x1.7 17x12.x15
Weight (kg) 2.02 0.65 0.65 0.6 0.4 0.28
Device Type External CD-Writer Portable HDD Portable HDD External CD-Writer Portable HDD Zip drive

Storage Capacity 700 MB 20 GB 60 GB 700 MB 20 GB 250 MB

Interface USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0
OS Support Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows XP/2000/
XP/2000/98 SE/Me XP/2000/98 SE/Me XP/2000/98 SE/Me 98 SE/2000/Me/XP XP/2000/98 SE/Me 98 SE/Me/NT /Mac Os
8.5.1 and above
Visual Indicators Power, Read and On/Off, Data On/Off, Data Ready, Data transfer, Power-cum-Data Eject button serves as
Write Transfer, Ready Transfer, Ready R ead and Write transfer the led indicator
Build Quality
Sturdiness of Movable Parts 4.5 4 4 3.5 4.5 3.5
(scale of 5)
Design Aesthetics (scale of 5) 4.5 4.5 4.5 4 4 4.5
Package contents
Bundled Software Nero Burning ROM Sync 1.0 Sync 1.0 Liquid Audio, Easy IomegaWare IomegaWare
5.5.8.0 CD Creator 5.1.1,
Direct CD

Accessories Power Adapter, Cables, Power Cord Cables, Power Cord Battery backup pack, Cables, Power Cord USB Cable
USB Cord 1 CD-R, & Adapter & Adapter power connectors, & Adapter
1 CD-RW 1CD-R, PEN
Documentation (Y/N)
Manual ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Quick Start Guide ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Troubleshooting ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Performance
Synthetic Test
(SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro)
Sequential Read (MBps) 3.8 17 17 2 17 0.84
Random Read (MBps) 0.79 4 4 0.67 4 0.64
Sequential Write (MBps) NA == 13 11 NA == 14 0.7
Random Write (MBps) NA == 7 3.5 NA == 4 0.72
Drive Index 2625 11866 11287 1518 11504 624
Average Access Time (ms) 110 11 11 109 10 12
Real World File Transfer Test *
Assorted Read (Sec) 249 125 148 389 148 229
Sequential Read (Sec) 312 38 47 372 44 89
Assorted Write (Sec) 239 213 228 399 197 291
Sequential Write (Sec) 298 62 61 406 63 289
Cost per MB (Rs) 0.03 0.76 0.33 0.03 0.60 1.60
Warranty & Support
Type of Warranty Replacement Replacement Replacement Replacement Replacement Replacement
Period of Warranty (Years) 1 1 1 1 1 1
Overall Score
Features (30%) 16.1 19.4 20.4 20 21.4 21.2
Performance (40%) 12.36 36.16 32.23 8.01 34.08 14.51
Warranty & Support (10%) 3 3 3 3 3 3
Value for Money (20%) 9.11 14.34 10.27 2.95 18.19 16.05
Overall Product Rating 40.57 72.90 65.90 33.96 76.67 54.75
Overall Grade
Vendor Name Neoteric Infomatique J.S. Equipments J.S Equipments J.S Equipments Neoteric Infomatique Neoteric Infomatique

Phone 022-4172600 022-3810713 022-3810713 022-3810713 022-4172600 022-4172600

E-mail sales@ [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] sales@ sales@
neoteric-info.com neoteric-info.com neoteric-info.com
Price (Rs) 12,500 15,500 20,500 38,000 12,200 8,900
Price of Media (Rs) 20 Not Applicable Not Applicable 20 Not Applicable 400

Disclaimer: Prices are indicative and are subject to change * Lower the better ** Information was not available during testing = Test failed to run with
CES
Iomega Zip Plextor Plextor PXS88TU Sony CRXP-90MU Yamaha
750 MB PX-W2410A CRW3200UX-VK performance. Its scores in the syn -
thetic as well as the real world tests
were pretty impressive. Although its
cost per MB was higher than the other
3676 rpm 24\10\40X 8\8\24X 24\10\24X (8X DVD) 24\10\40X
hard drives in the comparison, its per -
17x10.5x1.5 24.5x15.5x5 17x13x1.7 24x16x5 14x7.9x3.2
formance value cuts through the other
0.28 2.32 0.66 0.52 0.43
Zip drive External CD-Writer External CD-Writer External CD-Writer External CD-Writer drawbacks. If you require a sleek drive
and DVD-ROM
750 MB 700 MB 700 MB 700 MB 700 MB
USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0 USB 2.0
Windows XP/2000/ Windows XP/2000/ Windows XP/2000/ Windows XP/2000/ Windows XP/2000/
98 SE/Me/NT/Mac Os 98 SE/Me 98 SE/Me 98 SE/Me 98 SE/Me
8.5.1 and above
Eject button serves as Read-cum-Write Read-cum-Write Power-cum-Data Read-cum-Write
the led indicator transfer

4 4.5 4 3.5 3.5

Iomega 20 GB portable hard disk offers

4.5 4 4 4.5 3.5
USB 2.0 connectivity and comes with a
IomegaWare Nero Burning ROM Plextor manager, Nero Burning ROM, Nero Burning ROM, power adapter to fit into Indian power
5.5 Nero Burning ROM Bi Recorder B's Clip Neromix sockets
Retrospect, Retrospect
Express, Musicmatch,
Photobase and Power that is USB 2.0 ready and does not cost
DVD a bundle, go for the Freecom FHD-1 20
USB Cable and power USB 2.0 Cable Power Power Adapter USB Power Adapter USB 1 CD-RW & 1CD-R, GB drive.
adapter Adapter & 1 CD-RW cable cable Power Aadapter The Best Value Award is taken by
the Iomega HDD 20 GB Portable
Hard Drive. It weighs only 400 gm
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
and is ideal for those who travel with
✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Failed = 3.5 2.5 2 3.5

Failed = 0.7 0.52 0.47 0.79
Failed = NA == NA == NA == NA ==
Failed = NA == NA == NA == NA ==
Failed = 2473 1512 1413 2429
Failed = 119 137 149 108

480 267 712 351 363

The Freecom FHD-1 20 GB drive is sleek yet
72 326 864 452 398
421 256 694 338 341
heavy on performance
284 319 910 431 402
0.80 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 their storage device in tow. With
4,200-rpm speed and USB 2.0 connec -
Replacement Replacement Replacement Replacement Replacement
tivity, this is the ideal drive to lug
1 1 1 1 1
around. The package contents include
21.4 18.9 17.7 20.7 20.3 the IomegaWare CD, the data cables
8.69 11.53 4.73 8.53 9.10 and a power adapter to fit into the
3 3 3 3 3 Indian power sockets—this is an
11.25 9.40 7.51 3.90 7.35 important inclusion as otherwise this
44.34 42.83 32.94 36.13 39.75 would be a source of inconvenience.
Costing about 60 paise for each MB,
Neoteric Infomatique Zeta Technologies Zeta Technologies Rashi Peripherals Pvt Neoteric Infomatique
the drive offers great satisfaction as far
Ltd
as value for your money is concerned.
022-4172600 4102288 4102288 022-8260258/59 022-4172600
sales@ [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] sales@ The manufacturers provide a one-year
neoteric-info.com neoteric-info.com replacement warranty and its attrac-
10,700 12,950 11,950 30,000 16,000 tive price makes it the best value
600 20 20 20 20 winner.
YATISH SUVARNA and AHMED SHAIKH
this device == Not applicable for CD-Writers

NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ 3ds max 5

PHOTOGRAPH: Mexy Xavier, IMAGING : Mahesh Benkar

Is the latest version of 3ds max 5 worth migrating to?

I
n the nascent Indian graphics indus- The menu has also been revamped. Snap option easier to access from the
try, 3ds max is used as a stepping stone For instance, the Animation menu has menu bar.
by all those who aspire to make a all the controllers, hence, applying con- In version 5, the most frequently used
mark in this field. It has become a de trols to the objects is faster and simpler functions directly reside on the interface,
facto tool, used to introduce beginners to than in the previous version (version making them easier to access. An example
the vast world of 3D modelling and ani - 4.26), where you had to go to the would be the Curve Editor that resides on
mation. Yet, its great flexibility allows Motion Panel to assign a control to the Timeline. The Interactive Update
experts to perform incredibly detailed and the object. option available in this version allows
complex tasks. It can be easily stated that you to preview the changes made to the
no self-respecting graphics training insti - objects directly; you can also directly
tute would dare leave 3ds max out of its assign controls to the object. An all-new
course, nor would a designer neglect to Dope Sheet lets you change the timings of
master it. an animation without worrying about the
Most users would be familiar with 3ds animation curve (the path of an anima -
max Release 4, where it attained the peak of tion). You can also copy frames from one
its popularity. The question any user who object and paste them on another
is conversant with earlier editions would through the time select mode, a feature
ask is: “How far has it come from the pre- that will be appreciated by animators.
vious version?” We decided to take a look The Transform gizmos for Position,
at the enhancements of this newly released 3ds max 5 has a new intuitive interface Rotation and Scale have been redesigned,
product and also explore its worthiness. thus providing more flexibility and feed -
The menu bar also includes some addi- back: a red, green, blue colour scheme
User interface tions. You can now access Advanced helps you associate the gizmo’s compo -
In version 5 one can instantly notice the Lightning and Render to Texture from the nents along the XYZ axes; the size of the
effort taken by the developers to ensure menu bar itself, which makes the render gizmo changes as it gets closer or farther
ease of workflow. The change in the inter- process faster (the details of this are dis- away from the point of view of the cam -
face becomes apparent the moment you cussed under ‘Lightning and rendering era; the Scale gizmo now includes plane
start the program—hotkeys on the key - enhancement’). handles and scaling feedback through
board allow you to use the program much The Isolate function of the previous stretching of the gizmo itself.
easier and faster as objects can be manip- versions has now been renamed Isolate The new Lasso Selection tool allows
ulated without going through the menu. Selection and is located in the Tools you to select multiple objects at one go,
A new splash screen shows you a ran- menu. The Snap option is now a part of while the Material Editor has two new
domly chosen tip about default keyboard the toolbar and no longer resides on the options, viz. Ink and Paint for cartoon
shortcuts. Animation bar. This change makes the shading and Translucent Shader which can ➜

78 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ 3ds max 5

generate a translucent effect on objects within 3ds max, allowing for a more
such as leaves. The newly introduced View- interactive approach, without worrying
port Manager allows you to use hardware about junk or unwanted key frames that
shaders in DirectX mode, which will be generate unexpected results. There is also
helpful in creating content for games. the Auto Key button, which can be used
for generating keys automatically. It is
Animation equivalent to the Animate button in pre-
Animation has always been a tough job in vious versions of 3ds max.
3ds max and animators invest huge Morphing is commonly used for lip syn-
amounts of their time in creating and ren- chronisation and facial expressions on a 3D
dering animations. Version 5 introduces character, but can also be used to change
some new and enhanced animation fea- the shape of any 3D model. The new Mor- Spline IK Solver gives you greater control over
tures. Lets begin with Bone Tools, which pher Modifier supports Progressive Morph- animating bones
is a collection of time-saving tools for ing, which lets you specify intermediate
building and modifying skeletal struc- shapes, giving you more control over how cles and ropes. This solver uses vertices of
tures (bones) at any stage. In previous ver- the morph interpolation will take place. spline to animate, rather than individual
sions, working with bones was a tedious bones. It uses a spline to determine the
and complicated process. These tools curvature of a series of bones or other
have been made more accessible by plac - linked objects. Since a spline is a curve,
ing them under the Character menu. you can apply modifiers to it which allow
An all-new function named Skin Pose you greater control over the bones as the
allows you to pose a particular object in a vertices can be moved anywhere in 3D
specific position and rotation (a trans - space and the linked structure can be
form position) and then store that posed shaped in any way.
state for later use as with the Skin modi- Just like in the previous version, you can
fier. Skin poses can be used for any object save and merge animation but while the
to store its current transforms for later older version only let you merge anima -
use. For example, you can define a mesh Progressive morphing ensures smoother tions for one particular object, you can now
as a character’s skin pose and selectively morphing of objects merge an animation that is applied to one
return to that pose at any time during the object with another. Hence, there is no
animation process. Splines are object types such as lines, need to repeat similar animation steps for
In the previous version, one had to use rectangles, circles, ellipses, arcs, stars, text another object. Moreover, the animation
the Unhide option to detect Low Resolu - and helixes. The new Spline IK Solver is file that is being merged is still editable.
tion Objects—a tedious process that can an Inverse Kinematic (IK) solver that uses What also makes things easier for the
now be easily accomplished through the a spline as the basis for the shape of an IK animator is the Flex modifier. It can be
panel and you need not hide/unhide chain—it provides a more flexible ani- used to simulate soft dynamics for an
objects to do so. mation system than other IK solvers. object: a ball falling from a height can
Set Key Animation is a new animation Spline IK is suitable for animating thus show a characteristic wobble, mak-
mode, which supports pose-to-pose linked objects such as tails, snakes, tenta- ing the animation more realistic.
animation, especially for characters.
Unlike in the previous version (4.26),
artists can now set keys on only the nec - Third-party Extensions to Boost your Productivity
essary components of any character or Third-party extensions or plugins are a major versatile vector tools available for designers
animated object. Hence, animators can source for adding extra modifications to the to create or repurpose 3D content for use
now use multiple animation methods animation. with Macromedia’s Flash. Thus, you can cre-
Face Station (www.eyematic.com) is a pow- ate amazingly small files while ensuring all
erful application, which allows you to cap- the colours, lightning schemes and camera
ture facial animation by capturing facial views are kept intact for animations.
motion in real time in 3ds max itself. This If you want more audio tools inside 3ds
program is powered by Eyematic’s patented max, you should consider using FlexSound
facial recognition technology, which quickly (www.id8media.com). It allows you to add and
identifies facial features on a video stream layer unlimited number of WAV files to create
and tracks them continuously. Thus the facial entirely new composite sounds, which can
expressions and lip movements will be pre- consist of background noise, music, dialogue
cisely reflected on your animated models. or even special effects within 3ds max itself.
Swift 3D max (www.swift3d.com) enables Once you have loaded the sound files, you
you to quickly render models and animations can add and edit Flex Keys on the individual
to a variety of vector file formats including files from the Track View to compress or
Macromedia Flash (SWF), EPS, SVG and expand sections of the sound file for timing
The Skin Pose function makes character Adobe Illustrator. This is one of the most the existing animation.
animation much simpler ➜

80 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ 3ds max 5

‘mapped’ onto the object and whether it

is projected as a ‘decal’, or is tiled or mir-
rored. Mapping coordinates are also
known as UV or UVW coordinates. These
letters refer to coordinates in the object’s
own space, as opposed to the XYZ coor-
dinates that describe the scene as a whole.
A re-designed UV unwrap interface puts
common tools and tasks at the artist’s fin-
gertips. Three Unwrapping types (Flatten,
Reactor allows you to add dynamic properties Normal and Unfold) and a slew of selec-
to the object tion and navigation tools are now avail- Polygonal tools allow extruding polygons
able to make texturing more predictable along a path
Reactor, which was sold as a separate and easier to manage. A major benefit of
program, is now a part of 3ds max 5. A this feature is that automatic texture lay- Lighting and rendering
dynamic system now lets you assign outs can be created to save time painting The most painful process an animator
physical properties to an object. With so textures. faces is the rendering time. The process
many enhancements, generating anima- takes so long that most animators prefer
tions in this version is less tedious. Modelling to start the rendering process when they
Version 5 of 3ds max provides extended leave office, allowing it to render
Scene management polygonal modelling tools, with greater overnight. In version 5, we see a new fea-
The inclusion of Layers in this version is degrees of interactivity and better ways of ture called Render to Texture, also known
an excellent feature that makes it easier to selecting and managing polygons and as ‘texture baking’. This is the process of
manage the information in your scenes. selection sets. Building, connecting and creating maps of an object’s lighting or
Layers are like transparencies on which extending polygon meshes and their sub- other elements as they appear in the scene,
you organise and group different kinds of object components is a lot easier with and then applying them back to the
these enhancements. The Quick Slice tool object. This option can save considerable
allows you to slice objects which previ- rendering time as the lighting of the stat-
ously had to be done manually and the ic objects’ ‘baked’ textures need not be
introduction of the Inset function (which recalculated. More importantly, rendered
was earlier available as a third-party textures can be exported to other environ-
script) allows you to add another polygon ments such as game engines. Render to
over the object for better results when the Texture allows artists to build more surface
Mesh Smoother modifier is applied. details on their meshes and use low-poly
A new Modifier called Symmetry now objects to represent high-detail scenes,
allows you to automatically merge a mir- which is great for games, set designs, and
rored object to the original object. The film pre-visualisation.
Inclusion of Layers has simplified work flow Extrude Along Spline feature permits an Light also plays an important role
extrusion of a selection along the vertices in your scenes. 3ds max 5 has Photo -
scene information. The objects you create of a spline, due to which an extrude is no metric lights which are similar to stan-
can have common properties including longer always perpendicular to the face of dard 3ds max lights, but they use ‘energy
colour, visibility, renderability and display. a path, as was the case previously. based computation’, instead of the old
An object can inherit these properties
from the layer on which you create it. Decision Maker
You can place multiple objects and I use Bryce 3D Maya 3ds max 4
scene elements on layers with an easy-to- My work Creating Final inte- Hardcore animation Hardcore animation
use manager that enables quick reveal- involves basic object gration of which involves creation which involves creation
ing/hiding/freezing of scene data. This lets modelling animated of complex objects with of complex objects with
artists keep track of scene data while sequences the help of a lot of the help of a lot of modi-
building 3D elements with Compositing modifiers and then ani- fiers and then animating
Layers in mind. This feature also intelli - mating them them
Should I Don’t Don’t Upgrade. The Upgrade. It has several
gently groups scene data, provides com -
upgrade upgrade. upgrade. rearranged menus, the enhanced features.
monly used Layering commands and
to 3ds You don’t Maya is far new light features, and Besides, you can
offers the flexibility to render only select max 5? need the superior to inclusion of Reactor and upgrade to version 5 at a
objects from a scene, thus reducing the sophisticat- 3ds max in Skin Pose feature mere 22 per cent
rendering time and the animation file size. ed features terms of tremendously increases (approx Rs 32,000 for
offered by workflow productivity single user license; Rs 57,
Texturing 3ds max 5 and ease of 000 for Floating License)
Any object that is assigned a 2D material use of its original price if you
must have the requisite mapping coordi- are a 3ds max 4 user.
nates that specify how the material is ➜

82 NOVEMBER 2002
‘intensi ty based calculation’ to accurate- ‘bleeding’, where the colour of one object 3ds max 5 A-
ly generate the intensity, colour, and dis- can reflect onto another. Hence, now we Performance
tribution of lights, making lighting more have two new advanced lighting options: Ease of use
realistic. Because photometric lights use Light Tracer and Radiosity. When you Value for money
real-world intensity values, they rely on apply the Light Tracer option, it gives you Features
accurate scaling in a scene. You can also a natural look to the applied object. On OVERALL
download actual photometric data from the other hand, Radiosity, which was sold
lighting manufacturers and easily create as a separate product, is based on the Price: Rs 1,41000 (single user license)
real-world lighting in your work. Lightscape engine and gives you accurate Rs 1,66,000 (floating license)
Contact: Discreet
The advanced lighting support now reflections of the light. The only draw-
Phone: 022-6952000
provided with 3ds max 5 improves the back is you cannot preview the object Fax: 022-6952211
realism of rendered scenes. There are two while applying the Light Tracer function E-mail: [email protected]
advanced lighting options. Both of them and the rendering time is much higher.
SPECIFICATIONS
generate global illumination—illumina - New material features include an Ink Intel or AMD processor at 300 MHz, 256
tion that comes from light that bounces ‘n Paint material for cartoon shading. MB RAM and 300 MB swap space, graphics
off scene objects. Characteristically, This allows objects to be rendered with a card supporting 1024x768x16-bit colour,
global illumination can create colour cartoon look, called Toon Shading. The Windows-compliant pointing device (specif-
ic optimisation for Microsoft Intellimouse),
Toon Shader is a perfect starting point for DVD or CD-ROM drive
rendering cartoon-shaded or surrealistic
imagery, with specific controls for ink professional animators. We see no rea-
width and consistency, and paint style. son why you should not upgrade to this
Thus, with the inclusion of the new light- newer version. However, there is one
ning and rendering functions, it is now point of concern: in 3ds max 3 you
possible to give your objects the realistic could open multiple windows in an NT-
look which was difficult to achieve in the based operating system, but from ver-
previous versions. sion 4 this was suddenly discontinued.
Besides, backward compatibility is only
The verdict extended to the previous released
It is evident that a lot of pain has been version and not all the prevailing
Toon Shader will be much appreciated by taken by the developers to ensure versions.
those who do cartoon animation tremendous increase in productivity for MITUL MEHTA

1/2 page AD

83 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ reviews

We test the latest and the best hardware and software products available in the market

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ is comparatively inexpen-

SPECIFICATIONS
Thoroughbred core, 2133 MHz
sive. But sadly, it still runs
Pedigree processor core frequency, 266 MHz
hot (71 degree centigrade (133 MHz DDR) default FSB,

B uilt using a tweaked the P4. In practical terms, CPU core temperature) and 0.13 micron processing tech-
nology, 128 KB L1 and 256 KB
Thoroughbred core, this most Office applications the high rpm fans used
L2 cache, Socket A interface
2.13 GHz processor promis - wouldn’t make even a to cool it are a very noisy
es performance equivalent 1 GHz CPU sweat. solution. AMD Athlon XP 2600+ B+
to a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4! Heavy-duty, CPU-inten- Performance
sive video editing and Build quality
Price: Rs 17,820 Value for money
3D rendering is what Contact: AMD Far East Ltd Features
poses some challenge Phone: 011-6281364
OVERALL
to these multi-GHz E-mail: [email protected]
CPUs. We used the
SPECviewPerf 7.0 test
suite for the rendering MSI KT4 Ultra
tests and the XP 2600+
The ultra performer
returned scores to be

The processor was put

to test using MadOnion’s
proud of, beating almost
the entire range of P4
processors.
T his motherboard is
built around the
VIA KT400 chipset and
Bapco Sysmark 2002 and However, on the gam- is a top contender for the
Business Winstone 2001 to ing front, XP 2600+ logged newly launched Athlon XP
log its data crunching and lower frame rates than the processor. It supports FireWire
office application potential. P4 processors—in Quake III (IEEE 1394), Bluetooth, USB
It scored a low index of 169 the P4 2.8 GHz in normal 2.0, AGP 8x, Gigabit Ethernet at maximum resolution
in the MadOnion’s Bapco mode scored an amazing and Serial ATA (SATA) RAID. (1024x768x32), it scores
Sysmark 2002 test that eval- 434.2 fps, while the XP We tested the board with 294.3 fps. To check the moth-
uates its performance in 2600+ managed only about the Athlon XP 2600+ and 256 erboard’s thermal protection,
day-to-day tasks. A fair com- 353.2 fps. The difference MB DDR 333 specified RAM. we turned off the CPU fan
parison would be with the narrowed down when the It performed well in all our and the board almost instan-
P4 2.53 GHz which scores in game was played at the tests, showing no signs of taneously brought the system
excess of 180. Interestingly, maximum resolution sluggishness or instability. to a halt.
the XP 2600+ zoomed past (1024x768x32)—the XP The Athlon XP, when This motherboard offers
the P4 2.53 GHz in the Busi- 2600+ scored 294.3 fps paired with this motherboard, unmatched quality and per-
ness Winstone 2001 test, against the 300 fps logged zooms past the P4 2.8 GHz in formance and is recommend -
where it logged an impres - by the P4 2.8 GHz. the intensive SPECviewPerf ed to all AMD fans and
sive 76.8, a hairbreadth 3DMark2001SE is prob- 7.0 tests. The Business Win- performance enthusiasts!
short of the 76.9 logged by ably the only benchmark stone 2001 score of 76.8 is top
the P4 2.8 GHz. where the XP 2600+ comes notch and an index of 169 in SPECIFICATIONS
These seemingly con - close to the P4 in gaming MadOnion’s Bapco Sysmark VIA KT400 chipset, supports
FireWire, Bluetooth, USB 2.0,
tradictory scores can be performance—it scored a 2002 is as fast as the processor AGP 8x, Gigabit Ethernet and
explained by the fact that pretty neat 12,095 com- can crunch. Serial ATA (SATA) RAID
Business Winstone 2001 pared to the 12,595 logged The gaming scores were
uses older versions of by the P4 2.8 GHz. impressive too. In Quake III MSI KT4 Ultra A-
Office applications, while Overall, the XP 2600+ Performance
the newer versions used by is fast and performs almost Price: Rs 7,850 Build quality
Contact: Priya Ltd Value for money
the Sysmark 2002 suite are on par with its specified PR
Phone: 022-2663611 Features
slightly optimised for rating. More importantly, it Fax: 022-2664154
OVERALL
E-mail: [email protected]

84 NOVEMBER 2002
SuSE 8.0 Professional
An OS to suite your wallet

I f stability is what you crave,

then you should consider
SuSE 8.0 Professional. This
advanced users may find this
inconvenient if they have set
aside a partition specifically
SuSE 8.0 Professional has
decent multimedia capabili-
ties. XMMS (X MultiMedia
and KGhostView for viewing
PDF files. StarImpress is the
presentation application
version offers enhanced fea- for Linux. System), a substitute for within StarOffice 5.2, where-
tures and performance. The Upon starting, SuSE 8.0 Winamp, looks similar to as StarImage will be useful
improvements include KDE wasn’t able to detect the Winamp and is easy to oper- for those who need an
3.0, XWindow and GNOME GeForce4 MX 440 graphics ate. The ALSA Mixer is a image-editing tool. KMail is
1.4.1 RC1, latest kernel 2.4.18 card. The RPM for the card is sound mixer that you can use the mail application in KDE
available on the nVidia Web to create your own sound 3.0. It’s easy to set up and
site for this version of SuSE. effects and music. The aRTs is apart from the regular fea -
The network card (Intel the KDE sound server which ture of sending and receiving
Pro10/100) was detected lets you listen to MP3 tracks mail, it also allows you to
without any problem and while playing games. Broad- define filters to sort your
the machine was on the net- cast2000 is a utility that can mail. PGP and GnuPG mail
work the moment the set- record and edit audio and encryption is also incorpo-
tings were entered. video. rated in KMail to enhance
For accessing Windows StarOffice 5.2, which is security.
based machines on the net- capable of opening MS Excel All in all, SuSE 8.0 has a
work, SuSE 8.0 provides the and Word files, comes bun- host of features. Its price
Samba 2.2.23a file and print dled with SuSE 8.0. The pack- makes it a viable and robust
server. However, the network age is a bit heavy on the sys- solution for enterprise-level
access wasn’t as fast as on a tem and those with an older users and also for the home
Windows machine and there and slower processor will user who would not want to
and was a slight lag before the spend extra on
SuSE Firewall folder was displayed. Version features, which
2. The new YaST2 includes all 8.0 supports all major proto- are not built into
the winning features of YaST1 cols such as TCP/IP, IPX, the Windows OS
and incorporates other Samba, token ring ARCnet such as an Office
improvements such as clearer and ham radio. It also has suite, a Web serv-
splash and boot screens with a built-in support for DSL, er, multimedia
Web-style link menu for ISDN, PPP Dial-up and players and a
installation options. DHCP. All this essentially sound mixer.
We tested SuSE 8.0 on a means that you won’t need Besides these
P4 2.0 GHz based PC with to download any RPM or integrated fea-
256 MB DDR RAM, a 40 GB updates to get the machine tures, the installa-
Seagate Barracuda drive and on the network or browse the tion has become
Internet through The Printing Manager makes it easy to print very easy and the
a modem or the documents under SuSE 8.0 detail documen-
LAN. You can tation makes
even run a Web have to wait for a couple of even the new user comfort-
server using seconds for the application able with the knity gritty of
Apache, the to open. If you haven’t used the Linux OS.
default Web serv- StarOffice before, it will take
er built into SuSE some time to understand the
SPECIFICATIONS
8.0. You need icons and their functions. 8 CDs (including online docu-
some amount of Apart from this, the applica- mentation and three manuals)
expertise to con- tion works just fine, whether and one DVD containing the
figure it, but if you are creating formulas in entire application.
you’ve been using a spreadsheet or formatting Minimum System Require-
ments: Pentium class proces-
YaST2 Control Center offers a simple interface Linux for a while, text in the word processor. sor, 650 MB hard disk space,
to manage SuSE 8.0 this shouldn’t be Also included is the 32 MB RAM
too difficult. The Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0
an MSI MAX2 BLR mother- documentation provided SuSE 8.0 Professional B+
board. The installation was with the OS has scanty infor- Price: Rs 3,500 Performance
smooth with no prompting mation on setting up Contact: Seascope Infotech Pvt Ltd Ease of use
Phone: 022-6338484 Value for money
for the partition on which Apache; more detailed infor-
Fax: 022-6331074 Features
the OS should be installed— mation is available at E-mail: [email protected]
good for new users but /usr/local/httpd. OVERALL
Web site: www.suse.com

85 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ reviews

Zenith Portable Desktop IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connec- It logged 7303 in 3DMark
tor. The package includes 2001SE, which suggests a
Impressive switchover Ulead Video Studio 5.0, a good Direct 3D performance.

A t the heart of the Zenith

Portable Desktop throbs a
P4 1.6 GHz processor and 128
indicating that the perform -
ance will be smooth even
when running relatively
radio frequency remote con-
trol, a USB receiver and an
input adapter. This last item
All in all, this card offers a
good multimedia solution.
SPECIFICATIONS
MB of PC266 DDR SDRAM demanding applications can connect up to 10 devices ATi Radeon 8500 (R200)
that can be upgraded up to 1 such as Photoshop or to the card. chipset, 64 MB DDR RAM, built-
in TV Tuner card, hardware
GB. Its 14- Dreamweaver. As for the card’s perform-
DVD decoder, IEEE1394 con-
inch LCD In SiSoft Sandra 2002 ance in the tests, it logged 382 nector, Ulead Video Studio 5.0,
monitor can Pro, it scored a high 1817 fps in the normal mode in RF remote control, USB receiver,
be viewed and 1824 MBps in the ALU Quake III Arena. The score at input adapter that can connect
clearly even at and the FPU, respectively. high and maximum settings up to 10 devices to the card
a 45-degree These scores show that CPU was 204 and 126, respectively. Hercules 3D Prophet B
angle. Howev- intensive applications Performance
er, the Glide- will also run Price: Rs 19,950 Build quality
Contact: Mediatech India Value for money
pad buttons smoothly. The
Phone: 022-2396696 Features
feel tacky and laptop logged a Fax: 022-6044727
the keypad buttons sequential read speed of OVERALL
E-mail: [email protected]
too don’t give the perfect 20 MBps and a sequential write
spring back feel. speed of 17 MBps in the SiSoft
The laptop hosts a Mic-in, Sandra HDD benchmark. The Mercury Wireless Internet
Audio Out, FireWire (IEEE
1394), a LAN, a modem, S-
average access time was 12 ms,
which is quite comparable
Multimedia Keyboard
Video, parallel port and four with desktop PCs. Connect free!
USB ports. It also has a Kens - Overall, this is a decent
ington lock. At the time of pur-
chase, you can choose from a
range of OS such as Windows
mobile replacement for a
desktop PC. The only draw-
back is its weight—3 kg.
T his is a radio frequency
driven keyboard and
mouse combination, which
three of the five mouse but-
tons for any function using
the drivers provided.
XP Home, XP Professional or can be used within a 2 meter
Windows 2000 Professional. SPECIFICATIONS range in any direction and up
We ran the benchmarks Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor to 2.5 meters straight.
(Northwood, 512 KB L2 cache),
on Windows XP Professional SiS 650 chipset, 128 MB DDR It incorporates
after loading the necessary SDRAM, 14-inch XGA TFT mon- 18 extra func -
drivers and found that the itor with 1024x768 maximum tion keys for
laptop provides decent gam- resolution at 60 Hz, integrated Multimedia, Inter- You need to
4x graphics, AVANCE onboard
ing and onboard sound. In net and programma- initialise the keyboard
soundcard, onboard 56 K
Content Creation Winstone modem, onboard LAN ble functions. and mouse by pressing a small
2001, which measures overall The keyboard uses black button placed at the
performance, it logged 34.5, Zenith Portable Desktop B three AA batteries and has an base of the mouse, but this is
Performance indicator for the battery sta - not mentioned in the manu -
Price: Rs 68,500 Build quality tus. Ironically, there is no al, nor is there any marking
Contact: Zenith Computers Ltd Value for money indication for Num Lock, on the device.
Phone: 022-8377300 Features
E-mail: [email protected] Scroll Lock and Caps Lock, If you’ve been looking for
OVERALL though you can set the bun- an RF input device, this one
Web site: www.zenith-india.com
dled program to indicate their comes fairly cheap, but if
status in the System Tray. All you’re a gamer, you will find
Hercules 3D Prophet All-In- the features of the keyboard the mouse a tad heavy.
Wonder 8500 DV are available only after you
SPECIFICATIONS
Return of the prophet install the drivers bundled
Keyboard: 2.5 metres range,
with it. three AA batteries, standard key-

T he Hercules 3D Prophet
8500 DV is a feature-
packed graphics card, at
The mouse tends to feel a
little heavy because of the two
AAA batteries. It can be used
board, 18 function keys
Mouse: 1.5 metre range, two
AAA batteries, five buttons
the heart of which is the plete at a range of up to 1 meter in Mercury Wireless Internet B+
powerful ATi Radeon 8500 multime - any direction and 1.5 meters Multimedia Keyboard
(R200) chipset. It has 64 MB of dia solution straight. You can configure Performance
onboard DDR RAM. But what’s by featuring a Build quality
Price: Rs 2,000 Value for money
more interesting is that, apart built-in TV Tuner card, video
Contact: Kobian India Pvt Ltd Features
from providing a powerful capturing/output features, full Phone: 080-5566626
OVERALL
GPU, it also provides a com- hardware DVD decoder and an E-mail: [email protected] ➜

86 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ reviews

Word Perfect Office 2002 Professional Edition

The other Office suite!

I f you are looking for an alter-

native to Microsoft Office,
but one that offers a similar set
in Word XP. However, when
we tried to open the native
file format of Word Perfect
Flash, you can publish your
files on the Web. The inclu -
sion of Perfect Script and Per-
documents without using the
native program. Interestingly,
Desktop Application Director,
of features, Corel’s Word Per- 2002 suite in MS Office XP, it fect Expert allows you to cre- a tool for managing desktop
fect Office 2002 is worth a failed to do so, making this a ate macros, automate repeti- icons of the suite, places the
setback. Hence, if you create tive tasks and access Help to icons in the system tray in
a file in this suite and send it guide you through many the right hand bottom corner
to a person using Office XP, common tasks. instead of the conventional
Paradox 10 simplifies left corner, making it a bit
data management just like confusing to use in the
MS Access. It has plenty of beginning.
templates that help you The Corel Application
organise personal, business Recovery Manager, is similar
and corporate information. It to office XP’s Apllication
also allows you to publish Recovery utility, which helps
your reports interactively and you recover your work in
through ObjectPAL (a data - case any of the applications
base development language) crash.
as WordPerfect, Microsoft If you need your files to
look. This Office suite includes the file will just not open, Word, or HTML documents, be secure, Word Perfect Office
Word Perfect 10, Quattro Pro unless it is saved in a doc for- and also in other popular 2002 provides enhanced secu-
(a spreadsheet package), Corel mat. You can create PDF doc- formats. rity—you can set a password
Presentation 10, Paradox 10 (a uments from the program for allowing
database program), Corel Cen- itself. Besides, this version has opening of doc-
tral Day Planner and Corel greater compatibility with uments in older
Central Mail for checking your HTML, XML and SGML. The versions of
mail and planning your daily ‘Format As You Go’ feature Word Perfect.
tasks. The package also automatically formats text as Overall,
includes Dragon Naturally you type, thus saving you pre- this is an excel-
Speaking 5 with a special head- cious time. Corel Time Real lent Office
set parrot translator that allows Preview allows you to preview suite, but it
for hands-free communication formatting options when you lacks the power
with your PC. select Fonts, Columns, Under- of Microsoft’s
Word Perfect 10 has an line styles, etc. Office XP in
Oxford English Dictionary, Quattro Pro has enhanced terms of ease of
which takes care of spelling charting capabilities. You can Corel Presentation 10 allows you to create macros use and integra-
save files in to automate repetitive tasks tion with other
Microsoft Excel Office applica -
97 format and it The Corel Central pro - tions. And it is far more
has a large work- gram has a built-in e-mail expensive.
space consisting client with support for multi- SPECIFICATIONS
of 1 million ple accounts. It has support Minimum System Require-
rows, which is for Palm Pilot and also has ments (with Dragon Naturally
ample for all workgroup scheduling and Speaking installed): Windows
98/2000/NT 4.0 with SP6 or
types of users. task delegation features. higher/Me/XP, 64 MB RAM,
The Dynamic Another feature is the inclu - 300 MB hard disk space (425
Cross Tab Report sion of Net2Phone program, MB typical install), CD-ROM
is similar to Pivot which allows you to make drive, VGA monitor, mouse or
Table in Excel— calls abroad. tablet, 16-bit soundcard or
built-in audio input quality
A time-saving feature in Word Perfect 10 is that it lets you sum - Quick View Plus and equal to or greater than
it automatically formats text as you type marise, re-tabu - Quick Print are bundled with Sound Blaster 16, speakers
late and re- this suite—they save time by
and grammatical errors. If organise the data. letting you preview and print Word Perfect Office 2002 B
you need to share your docu - Corel Presentation 10 Performance
ments, they can be saved in allows you to attach MP3, Price: Rs 32,900 Ease of use
Contact: Trifin Technologies Value for money
Microsoft Word 2002 format, WMA and animated GIF files Phone: 011-6226777 Features
which will allow you to open to your presentations. Since it Fax: 011-6436447
a file written in this program also supports Macromedia E-mail: [email protected] OVERALL

88 NOVEMBER 2002
Ingram Micro Magix ture of text in different font off the mains power. There
sizes and graphics. It man- are only two buttons (for
Got no magic
aged to print with good clari- form feed and a standby

T he Ingram Micro Magix is

based on an Intel P4 1.5
GHz processor and has 128 MB
and its failure to run Evolva
Bump Mapped demo makes it
unsuitable for gaming. It took
ty; even 6 point text was
clearly readable. While print-
ing one of the graphic ele -
switch) which is a slight
handicap when it comes to
manageability.
SDRAM. It is sturdily built and 27.2 seconds for the Photo - ments (a circle with straight Overall, this printer offers
internally the cables are well shop filter test, proving to be lines inside), it managed to low cost of printing. It has
laid out. Housed a slow performer in office pro- print the circle clearly but some good features and an
ductivity applications. some of the straight lines excellent build quality.
This PC comes with a one- inside were jagged. SPECIFICATIONS
year parts replacement war - One shortcoming was 80-column dot matrix printer;
ranty and can be serviced in that it did not have a power supports printing on continu-
any of 16 service centres switch button. The only way ous sheet, A4 paper or on paper
roll of varying sizes; USB and
across India. But there is no to switch it off is by unplug-
serial interface
telephonic support or annual ging the cable or switching
maintenance contract. TVS Proton B+
inside a roomy ATX cabinet, Because of its poor show - Price: Rs 8,995 Performance
there’s ample space for adding ing in our tests, even its low Contact: TVS Electronics Ltd Build quality
Phone: 044-2325506 Value for money
extra IDE devices. However, price may not be an advantage Fax: 044-2327577 Features
there are no bundled applica- as there are better performing E-mail: [email protected]
tions. PCs available at similar prices. Web site: www.tvsproton.com OVERALL
We tested this PC with
Windows XP Home Edition.
The performance of its core SPECIFICATIONS
P4 1.5 GHz processor, 128 MB
Busy Lite 3.0
subsystem (CPU, memory, SDRAM, Seagate 40 GB 5,400- Light and easy
hard drive and the CD-ROM rpm Hard disk, Via PM4256

T
drive) was tested using SiSoft chipset motherboard, PS/2 his is an easy-to-use emulates the character-based
Sandra Pro, where it logged a interface keyboard and mouse, accounting software. We DOS print mode. It includes
Ingram Micro 15-inch monitor
poor overall score of 16.9. Its supporting 1024x768 at 60 Hz, tested it with Windows Me utilities such as a calculator,
extremely low 8.5 fps in Quake Philips 320 watts speakers and XP and the installation user-definable warning alarms
III Arena (at 1024x 768x32) was pretty smooth. The inter- if your account figures go in
Ingram Micro Magix B- face is simple and easy to negative sums, a unit
Price: Rs 31,200 Performance understand. converter and year-
Contact: Ingram Micro India Pvt Ltd Build quality We ran the wise data backup and
Phone: 0413-274956 Value for money
Fax: 0413-275387 application at restore.
Features
E-mail: preetha.g@ingrammicro 1024x768 resolution You cannot view
.co.in OVERALL
and found that it the balance sheet by
does not use the full specified date or peri-
screen, which is a bit od—it is displayed only
TVS Proton cumbersome. The for the whole month or
Beautifully strong data is created in the whole year.
MDF (MS Access) for- The final word: it is

I f you often need to print

small bills or an Excel sheet
with just a few columns, you
mat and is secured—
you need to provide a
password to access the data-
comparatively low priced
and its user friendliness makes
it suitable for small businesses
must have felt the pinch of base. However, the software and professionals.
wasting a full A4 size page. does not specify a minimum SPECIFICATIONS
The TVS Proton takes care of password length, which makes 25 MB download size, package
this—an 80-column dot and quick, it slightly vulnerable. includes installation CD, user
matrix printer allows you to thanks to the Busy Lite 3.0 has quite an registration card and mouse pad
System Requirements: Pentium
print on conventional con- USB interface. exhaustive list of features. To
200 MHz processor, Windows
tinuous sheet, A4 paper or on There’s an ink level make printing cost-effective 95/98 SE/Me/2000/XP/NT,
paper roll of varying sizes. It indicator and the printer has on a deskjet or a laserjet, it 800x600 monitor resolution
has a USB as well as serial inter- a unique ink bank technolo -
face and therefore, can be used gy—you can simply replace a Busy Lite 3.0 B
Price: Rs 68,500
with old DOS-based applica- small ink tube rather than the Contact: Zenith Computers Ltd Performance
tions and with the latest OSes entire ink ribbon when it gets Phone: 022-8377300 Ease of use
E-mail: mumbai@zenith- Value for money
such as Windows XP, on which fully used.
india.com Features
we tested the printer. We tested a few sample Web site: www.zenith-
The installation was easy test documents with a mix - OVERALL
india.com

89 NOVEMBER 2002
test drive ■
■ undercover

In Need of Consoling
Agent 001 takes a peek at the console market and walks away a satisfied gamer

A
fter you have stumbled by the bit For those of you who joined in late, come upwards of Rs 700. But do ensure
about the birds and the bees, the here is a brief on the gaming scene in that the games are the real deal.
next revelation to hit you is that India. The landscape is a desert, with just Moving on, I half-stumbled over the
‘A thing of beauty can be a pain to enough signs of life to keep you heading Sega Dreamcast. This 128-bit console has
behold’. Case in point: the big beige box. for the oasis that must surely be nearby. officially landed on our shores, sells for
As most of us find out sooner or later, The console market is no different; Sony about Rs 6,500 and has a healthy collec-
the computer is a beautiful gaming tion of some excellent titles from Sega
machine for sure, right up to the point and third-party developers alike.
when you wish to play something on Although Sega has ceased production,
it—like Grand Theft Auto III. The game there is enough stock left to keep the
insisted on displaying a garbled mess of Dreamcast in circulation for a while. Orig-
popping textures and running colours inal titles are a rare breed that sell for
on my PC—the PC with the GeForce3 Rs 500 to Rs 550; the pirated games are
Ti200 video card that I had more common, selling for as low as Rs 75.
poured five months of savings While the Dreamcast is an attractive
into, so that I could play the latest buy, Sony’s boys are hog-
games… like Grand Theft Auto III. ging all the limelight.
Patches be damned! I was getting The PSOne sells for
sick of this mess and was ponder- about Rs 4,000, with
ing over the likely course of games available both
action to take (introduc- officially (priced between
ing my PC to a Rs 499 and Rs 1,499)
healthy supply and illegally (from
of explosives, Rs 35 to Rs 50).
crossed my The PS2 mean -
mind more than while, has the
once) when a largest game
friend interrupted library, beautiful
my reverie. He asked graphics, sports
me to come over to his perhaps the best game
place to check out his Sony controller, holds a seem -
PlayStation 2. He demonstrated his ingly unassailable lead in the console
‘beautiful baby’ with the help of ‘this race and is super-chic to boot. All that at
really cool game’: Grand Theft Auto III! has made some headway into this seg - a hefty Rs 18,000! Alas, it is a grey mar-
Life was trying to tell me something. It ment with its PlayStation and now, the ket commodity, and is often sold with a
was time I listened and set out to check PlayStation 2 (PS2). The best selling con- mod chip: something that lets you play
out this whole console scene. soles, however still reside in the era of 8- illegal or pirated versions of a game. The
bit gaming—the Nintendo NES (Ninten- games themselves come in both the orig-
do Entertainment System) clones, with inal form (Rs 1,499 and above) and the
■ If you are into gaming on the
libel-attracting names like PolyStation illegal kind, selling at Rs 80 to Rs 250.
move, look no further than the and a price tag that ranges from Rs 200 to Racing alongside the PS2 is the Nin-
Game Boy Advance. Rs 700, depending upon the peripherals tendo Gamecube and the Microsoft
■ The best console to buy would
that you buy alongside. The games that Xbox. While my sources reveal that the
currently be the Sony PlayStation 2. For run on these machines come on car- Gamecube has been recently sighted in
a cheaper alternative, nothing beats tridges for Rs 30 and above. Delhi, it is still a pie-in-the-sky for the
the PSOne. As I delved deeper into this under- most part. The Xbox, however is here to
■ As far as possible, make sure that
ground scene, the PolyStations slowly stay—priced at Rs 20,000, also a grey
the game titles you purchase are the gave way to more attractive options like market buy and modded to go, its
real deal. Pirated games are an unreli- the Game Boy Advance (GBA). Thanks presently-limited stable of games are sold
able buy. to a vividly coloured screen and a bevy illegally at around Rs 450.
■ Most consoles are bundled with at
of excellent games, the GBA is a pocket- So which one did I buy? With a hum-
least one controller; ensure that you are sized haven for the fun-loving types. The ble budget of Rs 5,000, I pocketed the
not short-changed on this aspect. console itself sells for around Rs 3,600, GBA, plus a few games to go. Grand Theft
while the games, sold on cartridges, Auto III will have to wait.

90 NOVEMBER 2002
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insight ■

S
■ simputer

IMPUTER
IMPLIFIED
Will the brainchild of a small team of educationalists and technologists in Bangalore hold the solution
to the Holy Grail of computing for the masses? We take apart the Simputer to see if it has what it
takes to bridge the Great Digital Divide

A
n amber sun casts its final rays Under the hood While its specifications are like a typi
over sleepy golden fields of To face the rigours of rural India and cal handheld’s, it’s interesting how th
mustard. A few wandering almost constant use, the Simputer uses components have been handpicked to pac
cows call out to their choco- some of the most proven technologies of the highest levels of computing power a
late-coloured calves. Lambs skip mobile computing. It beats with the heart the lowest of prices, while still maintainin
through meadows under the watchful of a 32-bit Intel StrongARM SA-1100 a rich set of features. On the interface front
eye of their pigtailed mistress, the set - processor, which features a clock speed of it packs speakers and microphone jacks, a
ting sun reflected in her eyes. Under 200 MHz and is still low on power con- RJ-11 telephone jack, a Smart Card reade
the haystack, her father sits holding sumption. There is 32 MB of DRAM along and even an IrDA wireless port. Keeping i
something that looks uncannily like a with either 16 MB or 32 MB of external mind the unreliability of our electricity, th
PDA, scribbling in some numbers with Flash RAM for permanent storage. It fea - device is powered by three AAA NiMh
a stylus. tures an integrated 56 K V.90 modem and rechargeable batteries. The lack of externa
Engineers from the Indian Institute of can be linked to a computer using its USB storage is also taken care of by the numer
Science (IISc), Bangalore, along with interface. Finally, it has a 320x240 resolu - ous USB based external Flash devices tha
Encore Software Ltd conceptualised the tion colour or monochrome LCD touch offer capacities ranging from 16 MB to
Simputer (derived from the ‘Simple Com - panel display. 1 GB of storage.
puter’), a Community Digital Assistant
(CDA), to send technology to even the
most inaccessible rural areas, where it Can I Buy One Yet?
could be used to perform applications as
varied as village accounts management, Officially unveiled in April Besides developing the
crop budget maintenance and even edu- 2001, the Simputer is system software based
cation. Given the vast number of potential now ready to reach on Linux under GPL
application areas, there are stringent mass-production. Bharat (general public license),
demands placed on its design, construc- Electronics Limited (BEL), PicoPeta will also market
tion and usability. one of the manufacturers the Simputer. Vinay
Quite like the PDA, it operates of the device, is going to Vishwanathan, Director
through touch, sound and simple visual roll out 1,000 units to of PicoPeta, aims to pro
icons, dispensing with the keyboard begin with and in due mote the device as an
entirely. It incorporates support for Indian course, expand to 5,000 units per month. evolving platform for social change—“Ini
dialects and uses special speech process- M.P. Mohammed, BEL’s AGM (EM and tially we will target educational institu
ing technology to read the content out. D&E division) said BEL would manufacture tions and e-governance projects in the
The Simputer is made for multiple users, the Simputer based on the specifications country. Once the volumes pick up and
and individual settings can be retained by given by PicoPeta, which would be target- the prices come down from the present Rs
each user through the Smart Cards that ed at OEMs. PicoPeta is a consortium of 13,000 and Rs 15,000 for 16 MB and 32
the device supports. Using a non-propri - technologists and the Simputer Trust, and MB, respectively, we will look at retail
etary operating system, software for spe- plans to harness the potential of this sales.” PicoPeta hopes to sell around
cific applications can be developed for this device for the benefit of the society. 50,000 units this year.
device quickly.

92 NOVEMBER
Insight_simputer.qxd 4/29/2004 10:14 AM Page 93

The 240x320
backlit screen is
available in colou
or monochrome
depending upon
your budget

Running Linux Kernel 2.4.18,

navigation through the inter
face is simple with the direc
tional button and touchscreen

Weighing just 250 gm, the Simpute

integrates USB, Infrared, modem
and Smart Card interfaces

Power is delivered through two AA

rechargeable NiMH batteries and it is
also capable of working on external
power through an adapter

Packing in a 32-bit Intel StrongARM SA-

1110 processor running at 206 MHz and
The Simputer has full support coupled with up to 64 MB of memory, this
for MP3 playback through its device offers commendable power for a
integrated audio system portable device

The Simputer runs GNU/Linux oper- applications is one called Dhvani, a text- XML. Known as IML (Information
ating systems, which coupled with the to-speech tool that generates intelligible Markup Language), its main aim is to pro
Perl scripting environment means that speech from a phonetic description in vir- vide a consistent and lucid front end fo
applications can be easily written for it. tually any Indian language. It can also all users—even those who are illeterate. I
The software has been created keeping the convert any UTF-8 text in Hindi or Kan- uses simple icons and the text-to-speech
application development cycles in mind, nada to this phonetic description and engine and can communicate with user
so that the whole process can be worked then speak it out with the integrated Pho- in their local language. Therefore, on th
out quickly and economically. Being an netics-to-Speech engine. PicoPeta, the Simputer, a simple and uniform interfac
open source platform, it is relatively easy developers of the Simputer, claim that is presented for running applications.
and quick to develop application-specific given their developmental tools, they can One of the most critical devices tha
tasks. The device also features a Web develop front ends for any other language, ensures that the Simputer can be used ove
browser, an e-mail client and a host of even non-Indian ones. a variety of applications is the Smart Card
other applications that further enhance its The application interface used by the reader. The Smart Card makes the Simput
functionality, especially in rural areas. Simputer is based on a variant of the er safe for all kinds of transactions, even fo
One of the most impressive integrated already popular and universally accepted financial and banking purposes. It store

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Simputer vs the World

While the Simputer was conceptualised to serve a completely different purpose compared to
the current range of handheld devices from Palm, Compaq and Psion, this comparison table
highlights the differences in features and physical characteristics of the Simputer vis-a-vis
other handhelds
.
Simputer Palm m105 Compaq iPAQ H3850 Psion Series 5MX
Processor 32-bit Intel Strong- 32-bit Intel Strong- 32-bit Intel Strong- ARM710T RISC
ARM SA-1110 at ARM SA-1110 at ARM SA-1110 at CPU at 36 MHz
206 MHz 206 MHz 206 MHz
RAM 16 to 64 MB 8 MB 64 MB 16 MB
ROM 8 to 32 MB 2 MB 32 MB 8 MB
Screen 240x320 160x160 240x320 640x240
resolution
Screen type Colour/Mono- Monochrome LCD Transflective TFT, 64 K 16-level greyscale
chrome LCD colours LCD
Dimensions 6x3.75x19 inches 4.65x3.11x0.7 inches 5.3x3.3x0.62 inches 6.7x3.5x0.9 inches
Weight 250 gm 125 gm 185 gm 355 gm
Operating Linux Kernel 2.4.18 Palm OS 3.5 Microsoft Pocket PC EPOC (32-bit multi-
system 2002 tasking)
Connectivity USB, IrDA, Modem, Infrared, Serial USB, Serial, Infrared Serial, Infrared
Smart Card
Price (approx) Rs 13,000 to Rs 9,625 Rs 33,500 Rs 8,750
15,000

user profiles, applications and settings, so and updated on a regular basis. In addi-
different groups with individual Smart tion, the e-mail and Internet access capa-
Cards can use a single Simputer. bilities make it a cheap and efficient route
of communication.
Forward march The frontiers that the Simputer opens
The Simputer is built in the image of a per- are immense. Besides the obvious advan -
sonal computer and can be used in varied tages of communication and education,
sectors. It can be used for e-governance traders and farmers can also find out the
where the Smart Card stores information newest prices of goods, keep stock of their

“
inventories, get information
on bank loans and schemes,
and maintain records of
Poor or no use of their harvest cycles and
technology in the yields. The barter system,
rural market can be still practiced in some
places, can be digitised and
exploited with a converted into a regularised

”
certain degree of format with secure transac -
Vinay Deshpande innovation tions using the Smart Card
support. With the ability to
ENCORE SOFTWARE LTD
take on external storage, this
device can hold additional
regarding voter registration, ration distri- information such as remote healthcare
bution, survey and census data, education assistance and information, health sched-
and even health care. For rural banking, ules and administration of vaccines, advice
Smart Cards can be used as digital pass - on livestock and farming practices, etc. Last
books, for synchronisation of transaction but not the least, with its multimedia capa-
details between agents. One of the most bilities, it can also be used as a mobile
prolific uses of this device could be in the entertainment device.
field of education where it can be used as With such a vast array of applications
a mobile kiosk for teaching languages, at such ease and affordability, the Sim -
reading and writing—and this is further puter, when mass produced, may just find
extended, given its multimedia capabili- itself in places where clean drinking water
ties. Newer courseware and training mod - hasn’t reached yet.
ules can be downloaded into its memory MARCO D ’SOUZA

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There are tools available to
recover lost data, whether it’s
files you deleted or a format-
ted or corrupt partition
Turn to page 101 to see how you can
recover lost files

W
hat is the single most important thing
you have on your computer? Plans for
the new venture? Your company’s profit
projections for the coming year? E-mail
from clients and friends? The address book? The
travel journals you’ve been maintaining? Your con-
tacts list? An electronic greeting card from your
best friend?
Failed hardware can be replaced and software
reinstalled, but the loss of data hurts the most.
Even something as simple as an address book
would take the better part of the day to key in again
and that’s assuming you still have an address list
to key it in from. This is where backups come
handy—they are your insurance in case of a data
disaster.
Let’s run through the common causes of data
loss, what you can do to prevent it and ways of
recovering lost data where possible.
MODEL: Parmita Katkar, P HOTOGRAPH: Umesh Aher,
ILLUSTRATION :Mahesh Benkar

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Sharks are lurking every-

where—either you keep an eye
on your data at all times or
make sure it’s locked up safely
Techniques to secure your data on
page 103

Whether you lose data due to a

hardware crash or human error,
having a ready backup will alway
be invaluable
Turn to page 98 for an easy backup guide

Everyone loses data. If

you've got your backups,
you can recover the lost
files pretty easily
Learn how to restore your backups
on page 100

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fit into your budget—the more you back the amount of space you have on the
up, the less time you will have to spend backup media and its importance to you
redoing. Check the integrity of your data; Organise all your files in one top-leve
mirroring corrupted data is obviously use- folder, such as My Documents. This wil
less. Test the backups regularly—the back- reduce the effort needed to hunt down al
up media could wear out over time, or the the data you need to back up. You should
backup files may get corrupted if the also look at data files of other applications
backup process is interrupted. such as Internet Explorer Favorites, mail
Take backups as frequently as the data boxes, etc.

Safety first changes. Some data files need to be backed

up more frequently than others, but for Using Microsoft Backup
any changes that you can’t redo, back up You don't need to look far for backup

T he high reliability of
modern hardware makes
backups seem pointless, but
at least once a day. Maintain more than
one backup if your budget allows it and
keep them in different places—this pro -
software. Microsoft Backup is a free too
that comes with Windows 98. If you don'
already have it installed, open Control Pane
tects the backup media from physical > Add/Remove Programs > Windows Setup
there is no shortage of rea- damage. Retain some old backups—this Select System Tools and click Details
sons for data loss—viruses, will come in handy if a newer copy gets Check the box next to Backup and OK
hardware failures, software corrupted. Depending on the volume and your way through the dialog boxes
type of data, this could be anything from Microsoft Backup is a scaled-down version
errors, carelessness or plain
a couple of weeks to a few months old. of Seagate's Backup Exec. It supports back
bad luck. There is no sure- Finally, make sure your backups are as ing up to SCSI and IDE devices such a
fire way of preventing an secure as your original data. This applies to tape drives and CDs and to network
accident, so taking backups work environments as well as at home—if shared folders on another computer. I
there’s something you don’t want others can compress backups, reducing their
religiously might just save to see, they should not be able to get hold space requirements and verify them for
the day. If you don’t back of it from your backups. integrity after it’s done. It supports full
up, you will learn its value Before you start taking backups, iden- incremental and differential backups.
tify what to back up. For businesses there On launching the software ( Start > Pro
the hard way.
is a simple answer—everything. In a net- grams > Accessories > System Tools > Backup
Think of how easy life can worked environment, a virus can wreak it presents you with three choices. Selec
havoc with entire departments. When 'Create a New Backup Job' and follow the
become if you maintain reg-
every minute of computer downtime can wizard. If you want to choose which files
ular backups. Should you be measured in money, a backup system is
lose your data, all you have a safety net you can’t ignore. Of course,
to do is launch the backup this level of backup may be overkill for
most individuals and small businesses.
software and hit restore! You should still try to back up anything
Depending on how often that you can’t otherwise replace. This
you take backups, the copy eliminates Windows and most application
programs. While reinstalling and recon-
could be as recent as a few
figuring these can be a long and arduous
changes old. job (see Digit, October 2002, ‘For a painless
reinstall’), their loss is not irrecoverable.
There are some cardinal
Of all the data on your hard disk (some
rules of taking backups. hiding in places you wouldn’t expect) Choose the files and folders you want to
Back up everything you can what you choose to back up depends on backup

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whether the backup should be Full,

Incremental or Differential. If you select
Backup Utilities
Full Backup, every single file from the There are numerous backup software
source is copied to the destination. With that work at different scales and manage
Incremental Backup, only the files that backups in different ways. Small offices
have changed (those that have the and home users can make do with free
archive attribute on) since the most software that simply copy files to a dif
recent backup are copied and the archive ferent location. Large businesses usu-
attributes are turned off. If you select Dif - ally have complete backup manage-
ferential Backup, all files that have ment solutions that work with sev-
changed since the last full backup are eral servers and hundreds of tapes.
copied, but the archive attributes are SecureDat
left on. www.pa-soft.com
Take more control of your backups Under Exclude, you can specify certain SecureDat monitors specified directo-
types of files (for example, .tmp) to not be ries and automatically makes several
or folders to take backups of, select this copied. You can select reporting options backups of files, whenever the files are
option. You will see an Explorer-like win- under the Report tab. modified. This is particularly important if
dow where you can tick the files and fold- you work with several files and often
ers you want to mirror. Using SecurDat modify some of them. It also allows
Once you have selected all the files, In Microsoft Backup that is included with compression and encryption, making it
click Next and choose whether you want a Windows 98, there are no options for an ideal backup solution for most users.
complete ('All selected files') or incremental automatic backups. But there are several BackupGenie
('New and changed files') backup. If this is other software, some of which are free (see www.backupgenie.fr.st
the first backup, choose the former. Next, box, ‘Backup Utilities’ ). One application BackupGenie is a free utility that can be
select where you want the backup and save worth mentioning is SecureDat, which easily configured to backup many fold
the job. The next step gives you the ers and subfolders at specific frequen-
option to compress the backup and cies and maintain several versions. It
verify it for integrity after it is com- takes backups in a standard Zip format.
plete. Save the job and click Start Additionally, there are options that
to start the backup. You will be send backup files via e-mail or FTP. You
notified when the operation is can also launch a program such as a virus
complete and if there are any errors scanner after the backup is complete.
while taking the backup. The next No Hands Backup
time you run Backup, choose to http://hem.spray.se/anders.peterson/
make incremental backups. No Hands Backup simply copies files from
If you do not click Start, but the source directory to the backup direc
simply save the job, you can con- tory, maintaining the folder structures. Be
figure a lot more options for it careful though—in its efforts to maintain
before running it. Click the an exact mirror, it also deletes files and
Options button on the main Back- folders from the backup that have been
up window. On the General tab, Continuously monitor folders to backup changed files deleted in the source directory.
you can choose the kind of com- with SecureDat Backup Easy
pression to be used and whether www.liquid2k.com/hinx/
the backup should be overwritten if it quietly runs in the system tray and mon- Backup Easy is a free, cross-platform utility
already exists. Under the Password tab, you itors specific folders. Every time a file that takes backups of directories and files t
can set a password for the backup file. changes, it takes a backup, ensuring that a designated directory automatically,
Under the Type tab, you can select you always have the latest backups. It according to selected weekdays and time.

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Managing Backups maintains several versions of the backups,

making it very useful when working with
72) have become quite popular in recen
years. However, these media do not offe
Once you start taking backups on a regular important documents. The software may extremely high levels of reliability and ar
basis, the multiple copies become confusing detect even a corrupted file as a modified best suited for shuttling data between loca
to manage and deciding on a rotation one and take a backup, but you can always tions, occasional ad-hoc backups and fo
scheme to reuse the backup media is essen- amend that by using an earlier backup. short-term storage.
tial. Several backup strategies have evolved Once you run SecureDat, click File > For an optimum balance between cos
over the years. The simplest scheme is to New entry and select the folder to be mon - and performance, you should use a com
have two or more media—hard disks or itored under the Source tab. Choose to bination of storage solutions for differen
CDs—and rotate them every day. For include subfolders if you want. Under the kinds of backups (see box, ‘Managing Back
example, if you have two CD-RWs, you Target tab, click ‘Other backup directory’ ups’). Thus, you can use a hard disk fo
could use CD1 on Monday, CD2 on Tuesday, and select where the files should be mir - daily backups, CD-RWs for weekly back
again CD1 on Wednesday, and so on. This is rored. Under Options you can set how ups and CD-Rs for monthly backups. You
fine if you don’t have much data, but doing many versions of the backups to maintain can even use just a hard disk for all back
a full backup everyday of hundreds of and on what criteria the backups should ups. It’s prudent to keep the original and
megabytes of data (on a 10 GB+ hard disk) be made. You can enable encryption for the backups in different places, in case th
gets tedious. Also, if you do this, you don’t security and compression for space under hard disk fails and you lose both.
have any backups older than a day. If your the Advanced tab.
files got infected by a virus a week ago, you
wouldn’t be able to use any of your backups. Lifeboat or rubber tube?
A commonly used scheme called the When taking backups, the kind of media
Grandfather-Father-Son scheme is efficient you choose is very important. You would
and easy to implement. Here, you maintain want a storage solution that can be relied
three levels of backup files. This uses many on for many years. How you choose your
more CDs, but is a good compromise media depends on the amount of data
between reliability and speed. To illustrate you need to backup, its importance and
this strategy, let’s work with a period of of course, your budget.
three months, where you take backups six
days a week (Monday to Saturday). Thus,
Every media type has dramatically dif-
ferent characteristics such as life span, Jumping back
A
you would have a separate hard disk just for storage capacity, re-usability and cost.
taking backups, where you would take daily Tape drives are the standard in the back -
s with backups, there
incremental backups. Every weekend, you up systems of many businesses. Tapes are a few cardinal rules
would take a full backup on a CD-RW. offer extremely high capacities, average to restoring, too. One of the
Maintain at least two such CD-RWs, though data transfer rates, and a reasonable life rules of taking backups is to
it would be better to have four, one for span, but allow only sequential access
each week of the month and reuse the discs to data.
check the integrity of each
every month instead of every fortnight. For small businesses or home users, backup on a regular basis.
Finally, you would take a full backup every hard disks, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and even DVD- If you do not do this regu
month on a CD-R, which will last you for a Rs would be a more viable backup option.
larly, you could be in for a
very long time. The real advantage of a CD-Rs, CD-RWs
With professional backup software such and DVD-Rs is their long life spans—if shock when you need to
as Veritas Backup Exec (www.veritas.com), maintained well, these are estimated to last restore some files. As with
such strategies can be fully automated. For as long as 30 years before oxidation starts your primary storage media
home users and smaller organisations, it is affecting them.
not too tedious to do this manually, since Another option is to use removable
backup media can also get
the quantum of data would also be com- drives. Zip drives and other external storage corrupted—CD-Rs can get
parably very less. solutions (see, ‘Walking Gigabytes’ on page scratched, hard disks may

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crash and the backup software may fail files you want to restore and click
while mirroring the files. Restore. You can also delete files from th
There are ways to recover deleted backups. If you did not enable compres
files, formatted disks and, sometimes, sion or encryption when taking the back
data from failed disks (see section, ‘Back ups, you can simply browse to the restor
from the grave’ ). Of course, this depends folder from Windows Explorer and cop
on how important the data is and how the relevant backup files to where yo
recent the backup is. Next, you should want them restored.
ensure that your restore media is intact,
too. There’s no point restoring to a
failing hard disk or one that has poten-
tially bad sectors. If you are sure about
the reliability of your backup and Choose how the files should be restored
restore media, proceed with retrieving
the files. from, in an Explorer-like view. Just like
with backups, you can tick off the files or
Restoring Microsoft Backup files folders you want to restore. Click Next
If you take backups using Microsoft Back- and Backup will ask you where you want
up, here’s how to go about restoring your to restore the files. You can choose Orig-
files. Unless you’ve turned the option off,
the software will present you with three
inal Location if you are sure that the orig-
inal files here are irrecoverable and the
Back from the grave
D espite all precautions,
choices when launched. Select ‘Restore media is reliable. Otherwise, you can
backed up files’ and click OK. If you had restore them to an alternate location. On
earlier turned off this option, click T ools > the next screen, the wizard will ask you
important files some-
Restore Wizard. On the next screen, choose what it should do if it already finds the times do manage to find
the file or tape drive you want to restore same files in the restore location. If you their way out of your reach.
from. On clicking Next, Backup will show are sure that those files are corrupted or Data could be accidentally or
the backup sets on the media, along with not useful, select ‘Always replace the file
the date and time of the backup, and you on my computer’. This will ensure that intentionally deleted, maybe
can select the one you want restored. all files will be from the backup set only. you forgot to copy some
Click OK and you will see the tree struc- Next, you will be shown a warning that important information
ture of where the files were mirrored the backup media is required to be able to
before formating your hard
complete the restore operation. Just click
OK and then Start to restore the files. You disk, or maybe the files are
will be notified when the operation is lost due to hardware failure
complete. or a virus.
Restoring SecureDat backups If you can figure out how
If you use SecureDat to take backups, you the file got lost, it becomes
can restore your data by clicking the
Restore icon on the toolbar. The software easier to recover. Remember,
will display a complete list of all versions however, that file recovery,
of the backups, along with the time and especially without profession
date stamp, the original folder and the
al help, is almost never guar
backup file name. If this list gets too
large, you can filter it using one of the anteed and success depends
Select the files you want to restore filter options available. Just select the on a number of factors.

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Recovery Tools Hard disks store data in sectors and

clusters. Think of sectors and clusters as a
the Windows swap file is also on the sam
drive and all your data (including e-mai
GetDataBack hotel with floors and rooms. The guest list browser favourites, etc.) is on drive D
www.runtime.org is stored at the reception and any one at the chances of recovery would be the highest
GetDataBack helps recover data when your desk is able to tell you the room in which a because no program is transparently writ
drive’s partition table, boot record, FAT or particular guest is staying. Hard disks store ing to drive D.
root directory is corrupt or lost due to viruses, information about each file in a similar
power failure or by accidental deletion. It way. The ‘address’ of each file is stored in a Recovering lost files
may even recover data when the drive is no separate area of the hard disk that is not The minute you realise that you want to
longer recognised by the OS or when all accessible with common tools. When a file recover a file, stop using the PC—do no
directory information is lost. Its main advan- is requested, the disk looks up this ‘register’, close any programs, shut down Windows
tage is that it runs in a read-only mode, locates the file and passes it on. On FAT and hit [Ctrl] + [S] or even chat. You don’t wan
which means the program will never attempt FAT32 partitions, this entry is stored in the any application to write anything to th
to write to the drive you are about to recover. FAT (File Allocation Table). hard disk. Then, take a step back and pla
Active Partition Recovery When a file is ‘permanently’ deleted, out exactly how you want to go abou
www.partition-recovery.com only its entry from this ‘register’ is recovering the file. Usually, there is no
Active Partition Recovery is a DOS tool that removed. The actual file is still stored on room for experimenting. Also, when
helps recover deleted partitions and logical the disk until some program requires recovering files, save them on a drive othe
drives by restoring the information from a space to write to. Thus, it may still be pos- than the one you are recovering from—
backup of the Master Boot Record, partition sible to recover the file. you don’t want any data to be written to
tables and boot sectors. The sooner you realise that a required the drive until you finish recovering.
Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery Software file has been deleted, the better. The further
www.stellarinfo.com you need to go back in time, the more luck
Stellar Phoenix analyses and recovers data you need. Basically, the more the hard disk
from inaccessible disks that have been cor- is used, the less the chances of recovery,
rupted by virus attacks and accidental for- since the probability of the clusters being
mats. It supports FAT16 and FAT32 file sys- overwritten with fresh data is higher.
tems and has been known to have high suc- The nature of the applications you use
cess rates. determines how the application modifies
Zero Assumption Recovery the registry or uses dependant files. A
www.z-a-recovery.com browser, for example, is the worst enemy of
This tool extracts data from damaged hard data recovery—it saves hundreds of files as
disks. It works from within Windows and can cache, tremendously increasing the proba-
recover files from FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS bility of clusters being overwritten. E-mail
partitions. It supports long filenames and is a much lesser cause for fear—as you
NTFS compression. download e-mail, only a few kilobytes File Rescue displays a list of deleted files with
PC Inspector File Recovery would be used up every time. A word their condition
www.convar.com processor doesn’t write to any dependant
This data recovery program supports the files, but if any application settings are There are several tools available tha
FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. changed, it would modify the registry. If can help you recover the lost file(s). Fil
It’s one of the few free file recovery software. the registry size increases because of this, it Rescue (www.softwareshelf.com) is a small and
FILERECOVERY for Windows may look for a free cluster to write to. useful tool that works with FAT, FAT3
www.lc-tech.com Another criteria for higher chances of and NTFS drives. When you launch thi
This software can undelete accidentally successful recovery is the location of your program, it asks you for the drives to sca
deleted files from various file systems under stored data, again amounting to how the and what kind of files to look for. Mak
Windows. It can be run from a floppy to hard disk is used. For example, if all your your selections and click OK. It scans th
avoid overwriting any files on the hard disk. applications and Windows are on drive C, disk and shows up a list of files that i

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finds on the disk, but not in the FAT. It As we have seen, using Easy Recovery Encryption
also shows the chances of recovery. If it is pretty simple, but it runs under Win - Encryption involves scrambling of data so
says Poor, it means that some parts of the dows. If your hard disk fails, you can that it becomes indecipherable until it i
file have been overwritten and will not be attach it to another Windows machine to unscrambled again. Simply put, it is lik
recovered correctly. If the condition is stat- recover data, but this may not always be breaking a picture into a huge jigsaw puz
ed as Good, the file will be recovered cor- possible. The software allows you to make zle—as long as the pieces are scattered,
rectly in most cases. Select the files you floppy disks with the software, so that it is impossible to figure out what the pic
want to recover and click Undelete. can also be run without Windows. Just ture is. You can do the same with all you
If your hard disk got formatted acci- boot from a Windows Startup Disk and documents and communication, so i
dentally or you realise later that you need run the software. This means that you someone should get a hold of your data
some data from it, the chances of recover- should have the disk handy though—as it would be useless they can decrypt it.
ing the data would be much lesser, but not with backups, create these floppies before Cryptography enables you to stor
impossible. A Quick Format affords a high- disaster strikes and check them often sensitive information or transmit it acros
er chance of recovery than a Full Format. for integrity. public, open, insecure networks so that
Easy Recovery from Ontrack cannot be read by anyone except th
(www.ontrack.com) is a very good software intended recipient. One of the simples
for recovering from such disasters. Using encryption systems was developed by th
Easy Recovery is pretty simple. The soft- Roman emperor Julius Caesar about 200
ware starts with a wizard that guides you years ago. The cipher involved replacin
through the data recovery steps. Click Next the alphabets in the original text by letter
and the disks on the computer and parti- that are a fixed number of places away. Fo
tions on them will be listed. Select the par- example, A would be substituted by D,
tition that you want to recover files from by E, and so on. Hence the word ‘secre
and click Next. You will now get a confir-
mation of your selection and you can Secure your data would be encrypted to ‘vhfuhw’. At th
most basic level, this is what encryption
optionally click Advanced to further con- involves. Over the years, very stron
figure the software. On clicking Next, the
software will start scanning the drive for
deleted files and list them in an Explorer-
T hieves are everywhere.
It’s not just your money
they may be after. Your
encryption algorithms have been deve
oped and many of them are in use today
Encryption can become a very advanced
like interface. Check the ones you want to topic if you want to learn about all the dif
business plans, profit proj-
recover, select a destination folder and click ferent kinds of encryption and how the
Next. You will be notified when all files ects, even your address book work. We can safely leap to just using it.
are recovered. can mean a lot to some peo-
ple. Recent worms have Encrypting your data
We will use a free software called PGP
been known to send out (Pretty Good Privacy, www.pgpi.org
lists of e-mail addresses to encrypting files and e-mail. PGP is known
the developers who use to provide very secure encryption and i
widely used across the globe. During setup
them to send out spam.
be sure to select the plugin for your mai
Also, pranksters and viruses client. On installing the program, the Ke
can potentially destroy all Generation Wizard will guide you through
your data. It becomes very making a private key. This will be used to
encrypt your e-mail. Enter your name and
important to lock up your e-mail address, a passphrase (password) fo
Easy Recovery displays deleted files that can data away from the reach the key, and the key will be generated.
be recovered of others. The way the public key algorithm

103 NOVEMBER
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insight ■
■ workshop

Secrets to a Good bonus—there is always some time lag

between the time the virus is released and

Password a cure is developed. If the vendor can aler

you of the virus beforehand with tips on
Any level of encryption is useless unless avoiding it, you can secure your data
secured by a strong key. The following accordingly. Ensure that the anti-viru
guides may seem like common sense, but software is always running and monitor
very few remember to adhere to them. ing your system. With the increased pen
Firstly, don’t stick your password on etration of the Internet, and the changin
your monitor and don’t give it out to any- nature and attack methods of viruses, thi
one else, no matter how much you trust Encrypting files on your PC using PGP is very important.
them. You then need a password that is dif- AVG Anti-Virus (www.grisoft.com
ficult to guess or crack. The best passwords works, keeping your key to yourself is of pretty good free virus scanner. It continu
are a combination of eight or more upper no use. Those who need to send you secure ously monitors all disks and even ensure
and lower case letters, numbers and sym- messages need to use your public key to that your e-mail is safe. The developer
bols. Don’t choose a common phrase and encrypt the message. Run PGPKeys from also provide regular updates that you ca
never use the same password as your the PGP system tray icon, right-click your download from their Web site.
login. Most fraud cases are inside jobs, so key and click Export. It will be saved as an
names and birth dates of loved ones are ASC file and can be distributed to others. Great walls of fire
out as well. Be careful to never send out your private A standard advice from professionals fo
Apart from names, nicknames and key. Similarly, to be able to send secure the highest possible security is to not con
dates, the most commonly used pass- messages, you will need the recipients’ nect your PC to any network, even th
words are god, sex, password, angel, public keys. Import the key from PGPKeys Internet, and never share any files! This i
trustme, one's address or hometown and and you are ready to send encrypted mes- too extreme and unpractical, but it doe
complicated-looking, but easy-to-remem- sages. When using Outlook or Outlook highlight the fact that as long as you ar
ber key combinations such as z1x2c3v4. Express, click Tools > Encrypt using PGP. connected, you are vulnerable to viruse
The characters may be upper or lower To encrypt files, right-click the file in and hackers. Just like you use an anti-viru
case, but don’t use any of these for Windows Explorer and click PGP > Encrypt. software to prevent viruses, you can use a
passwords. PGP will bring up a window where you can firewall for monitoring network traffic.
It is also important to vary your pass- set encryption parameters. Choose Con - At the most basic level, a firewall sep
words. Having the same password for ventional Encryption and click OK. You will arates an untrusted network such as th
everything is dangerous—if one password is be asked for a passphrase for encrypting the Internet from a trusted network or jus
discovered, all your files and accounts are file, after which the file will be secured. The your PC. The firewall works like a recep
at risk. Also, change your passwords on a file can also be decrypted by right-clicking tionist who directs visitors to the correc
regular basis, but don’t use a standard poli- from Windows Explorer. people and makes sure that intruders do
cy to build your passwords—change the not hinder the work. A good firewall mus
strategy too. Don’t let the bugs bite analyse all network traffic and allow onl
Passwords are normally cracked in three Viruses can wipe out all data on your PC or authorised data to pass through. Also, th
ways. The most common is guessing. corrupt the files internally, making recov- firewall itself must be immune to pene
Names, or combinations of names and ery impossible. In a networked environ - tration. It may also log network informa
important dates have often given way past ment, they can be even more dangerous. tion for user analysis.
all security schemes. Second is a dictionary Anti-virus software are aplenty today Many types of firewalls exist as both
attack, where words and word combina- and many are very effective in controlling software and hardware. Hardware fire
tions from a dictionary of commonly used deadly viruses. When choosing an anti- walls are usually implemented in larg
names and words end up forming the right virus software, your primary concern organisations. Software firewalls functio
password. Thus, don’t use common words should be effectiveness. It should be able just like proxy servers, but instead of sim
and phrases. Lastly, the brute force attack to reliably trap all known viruses and pre- ply connecting networks, they also
tries every possible combination of letters, vent them from infecting your files and analyse the data packets passing through
numbers and symbols to find the right applications. It should also transparently their origin as well as the intended desti
password. The more complicated the pass- monitor all activity on your computer and nation. These firewalls also provide mor
word, the longer it will take to crack. In check every new file that’s coming in. A detailed reports than hardware firewalls
fact, some good passwords have been esti- good virus scanner understands the Firewalls can prevent Denial of Servic
mated to take years to crack on very high- nature of viruses and prevents not only (DoS) attacks to your PC or network
end systems. known viruses, but also identifies viral Though it is fairly easy for pranksters to
A computer-generated random pass- behaviour so that it can detect new, as yet find out your IP address (this is even eas
word is usually very good, but difficult to unknown viruses. ier on broadband connections where PC
remember. There are several software Finally, the software vendor should could have fixed IPs) and send out an
available that can maintain password lists provide regular updates for new viruses. attack, most such attacks are a result o
in an encrypted file, so you would need This is critical to securing your system as random practices, without any particula
to remember just the password to access new viruses are being let loose every day. machine in mind. On an unprotected sys
this list. Alerts of new viruses via e-mail is an added tem, a DoS attack can freeze the OS, caus

104 NOVEMBER
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severe lagging of the Internet connection,

and will force you to restart Windows at
When prompted, check the option to cre-
ate the appropriate rule and click Permit
Encryption Tools
the risk of losing unsaved data. to allow the connection. Crypto-Lock
To exploit weaknesses on your system, When you run TPF with the Internet www.rtsoftware.org
a hacker first has to learn what software connection on for the first time, you Crypto-Lock is a free file encryption program.
you run. Data is exchanged from your PC should disable all the Internet software. The password you enter for encryption is not
through ports. Figuring out which ports This way, you can identify any software stored within the file, but undergoes various
are open and what kind of data they processes to prevent it from being cracked.
accept gives a good clue about your sys- Also, even if you use the same password with
tem. Port scanners are often used by every file, random values are used for each key
attackers to find out whether a backdoor making it that much more difficult to crack.
is running and if it accepts connections to AdvaCrypt Suite
your system. Firewalls close and lock ports www.advacrypt.cjb.net
that are not required and open them only AdvaCrypt Suite is a strong encryption appli
when required. Hence, with a firewall run- cation. The software supports all Windows
ning, it becomes difficult for a cracker to versions and is free for personal use.
fingerprint your system. DPcrypto
Many users suffer due to backdoors. www.dpaehl.de
These software accept connections and This is a high security encryption program
allow anyone to take complete control of that supports several encryption algorithms.
your system and all your data. Backdoors This program is giftware—you can make a
are difficult to detect unless their nature is donation to the developer or offer to trans
already known, and firewalls can help by Allow only connections that you authorise late it to other language.

Anti-virus Tools
blocking all ports except those specifical-
ly opened for trusted applications. that tries to automatically connect from
your computer without your knowledge. F-Secure Anti-Virus
Using Tiny Personal Firewall Start each program one by one, and allow www.f-secure.com
Firewalls are available at varying prices, each one as it tries to connect to the Net. F-Secure Anti-Virus regularly downloads new
some even free. Lets have a look at how to It is a better practice to wait till the soft- anti-virus definitions transparently and is
install and configure Tiny Personal Fire- ware reports a connection failure, and available in several versions for home users
wall (TPF, www.tinysoftware.com), a firewall then re-attempt connecting after granti - and corporate networks. For offices, the cor
that doesn’t hog system resources and ng it access. This way, you increase the porate version allows management of the
runs quite fast. Installation and configu- chances of preventing spyware from send- anti-virus across the network from a central
ration is also fairly straightforward and ing data out from your machine. server, a very useful feature for administra
the level of protection is appreciable. Right-click the TPF icon in the system tors. You can also sign up to receive regular
Upon installation, TPF will be active tray and click Firewall Administration to security alerts from the F-Secure team.
and will scan your PC for potential weak- enable or disable the firewall and access Norton AntiVirus
nesses and existing Trojans. With default advanced configuration options. You can www.symantec.com
settings, the firewall is set to medium add or delete trusted address groups and Norton AntiVirus provides reliable protection
security with pre-set filter rules. The fire- set up filter rules. A filter rule lets you against application viruses of various kinds,
wall will throw dozens of alerts the first define the protocols (UDP, HTTP, etc) document viruses and even e-mail worms.
few times it runs, to learn what network used, the ports through which access Security alerts from the Symantec task force
transactions to allow and what to block. should be allowed, the applications keeps you abreast with the latest breaches.

Firewalls
The more network applications you run, allowed and when the rule should be
the more alerts you’ll see until TPF has valid. TPF also displays a dynamic list of
built its database of allow and deny rules. open connections. Sygate Personal Firewall
Permanent Internet access through www.sygate.com
Backup Genie 1.5, No Hands cable and optical fibre connections are on Free for personal use, Sygate Personal Fire
Backup 2.0, SecurDat 2.1 the rise. It is very important that you use wall is pretty good at protecting your PC
Pro, Active@ Partition Recov- a firewall on such connections, as the PC from hackers, Trojans and DoS attacks. It
ery, FILERECOVERY for Win- is almost always on the same IP address. If creates detailed logs of network traffic and
dows, GetDataBack for FAT, you are not using the Net connection keeps information on your PC safe and
PC Inspector File Recovery, Stellar Phoenix when the PC is connected, you can set the private.
8.0 Data Recovery Software, Zero Assump- firewall to shut off all Internet transfer. Agnitum Outpost Firewall
tion Recovery, AdvaCrypt Suite 3 3.40s, There are a number of ways you could www.agnitum.com
Crypto-Lock 2.01, DPcrypto 1.05, PGP lose data—through accidental deletion, A personal firewall for Windows, Outpost
7.03, Agnitum Outpost Firewall, Sygate hardware failure or malicious intent. But Firewall prevents threats from cookies,
Personal Firewall 5.0.1137, Tiny Personal if you’ve backed up important data and banner ads, e-mail viruses, spyware,
Firewall 2.0.15 secured it the correct way, you’ll never crackers, adware and other Internet dangers
Find them on the Mindware CD face a data disaster. It sports a plug-in architecture, making it
VEER KOTHARI highly scalable.

105 NOVEMBER
insight ■
■ netreturns

A journey away from boredom

W
hen your work starts give away that I’m goofing off. Well, time
creeping into your 11.30 am and the brain to get back to earning my bread and butter!
dreams and weekends is already dead…
mean boring yourself I can’t find a better place to start 2.00 pm and that heavy lunch is making
with the TV, you need to take a break my journey than www.bored.com. I me drowsy…
and hang loose. Studies show that our put on the online radio from here I could revisit some of the sites I went to
concentration levels on any task begins and check out the list of new earlier, but last night’s dream is still on my
to dip after every 45 minutes. A short wacky sites they’ve dug up. Now I’ve mind and I am curious about what it
break can be fun in many ways and is got a roadmap for my little excursions means. I dreamt I was alone in a forest.
definitely better than staring blankly at from work. Heavy mist was swirling around me and I
the monitor, forcing your mind to make First stop, a little intellectual stimula - could hear some weird sounds. I think I
sense of those crowded worksheets. You tion with crosswords at www.webcross- even saw a ghost. I head to www.freaky-
don’t need to plan a holiday or even words.com. Most of the clues are about dreams.com. I describe my dream and the site
spend too much time on your break. movies, so they should be easy to solve— gives an interpretation based on a few key-
Here’s what I do for a bit of relaxation I don’t need to call out to my Thesaurus- words it finds in the text. It’s not really
when the boss isn’t looking. quoting colleague every 5 minutes. worth hanging on to, but fun nonetheless.
I’ve finished one crossword and decide Here’s something you can slip in as an
to give another go at that project propos - excuse for management training—at
al. But the words are still a jumble, so I www.lemonadegame.com you manage a
want to look for something even more lemonade stand and depending on the
invigorating—maybe a little philosophy weather conditions, decide the price of
will wake me up. I set the co-ordinates of each cup of lemonade and how much
my astromobile to www.crazythoughts.com to
look up some of life’s unanswered ques -
tions. Now here’s a thought-provoking
one: If you stick stickers on non-stick
pans, do they stick? I’m going to find the
answer to this one the moment I reach
home! There are more such brainteasers at
www.straightdope.com. This one sounds
funny: if all 1 billion Chinese jumped at
once, would the earth be thrown out of its
orbit? The answers are even funnier.
Webcrosswords: Crosswords to relax your mind I suppose the grin on my face is a dead Emode: Know thyself

106 NOVEMBER 2002

sugar, ice and lemons you would use per 7.00 pm. I am waiting for my colleague to Signs You are Wasting
cup. I’m sure I can come up with a very finish work so we can go home together…
Too Much Time
profitable business model! I need to kill some time while my friend
Enough of time pass. I should be wraps up work for the day. Maybe I should ■ What you read on the Net becomes the
doing something productive now. I have try my hand at building robots! Sodacon- subject of most of your social
a meeting lined up, and I start gathering structor (www.sodaplay.com) gives me a neat conversations.
all the reports for it. But my secretary has little lab where I can do just that. It’s all ■ You spend most of your free time build-
just told me that there’s a slight delay— pretty simple and I can spend hours ing up strategies for solving games and
too short for me to start with work, so I watching my creations crawl and float puzzles.
log on to www.emode.com to find out a bit around under different conditions of ■ You get bored by what’s supposed to kill
about myself. There is a huge collection gravity, friction, etc. boredom.
of tests that can reveal a lot about my IQ ■ The language from these Web sites finds
(I think I’ll skip those), my personality, its way into your monthly reports.
lifestyle, the right career path, even my ■ Forum members and Webmasters
relationships! There’s one that catches become your heroes.
my eye—it’s a test to find out which car ■ You start ignoring nature’s calls to get
matches my personality. The test scores more time at these sites.
show that I’m a practical person and the ■ You start looking forward to the daily
perfect car for me would be a Toyota, joke more than the e-mail from your girl-
Honda or a Ford Escort. Now if only they friend/boyfriend.
would provide the required funds as well! ■ The number of jokes you receive by
I want to try out the other tests too, like e-mail crosses the amount of spam you
the one which determines whether I’m Sodaconstructor: Lazy bum to Einstein in minutes receive daily.
in the right job and the matchmaker, but ■ You’ve already bookmarked most of the
I’ll hold them for later. PsychTests sites in this article.
(www.psychtests.com) also has a truckload of ■ Your Favorites are neatly organised into
personality tests. 11.30 pm. I’m waiting for Puzzles, Jokes, Quotes… and you have just
sleep to take over... one folder called Work.
4.30 pm. Whoa! That meeting looked like It’s been a typical hectic day at
it would never end… work and there’s nothing interest-
My head is spinning with all the ideas that ing on TV. I really do need some- car being crushed by Raymond Kalitrey,
were thrown up in the meeting and the thing that will help me relax. I the back window of the car smashes. A lit-
things I need to do. At this moment I think I’ll just dig up some easy reading. tle later, it smashes again!
would give anything to be able to do some- OxymoronList.com (www.oxymoronlist.com) While I am surfing for more enter-
thing that doesn’t require much thought! seems like a nice spot to visit. It claims to taining reading, I stumble across News of
Snap Bubbles (www.snapbubbles.com) have the largest collection of oxymorons the Weird (www.newsoftheweird.com). It has a
seems like the perfect place to do practi - online. Ever thought of how someone can collection of bizarre but true news items
cally nothing—all you do is keep snapping be ‘awfully nice’? Or why they call it the from the United States. Reading one news
the bubbles on virtual bubble wraps! The ‘Peace Force’? Maybe I can use a few for item a day from here will surely keep bore-
Reflex Tester Game at www.reflexgame.com is my next report. Here’s another feel-good dom away. I read one about a 34-year-old
quite addictive. The deal is that when I destination that never fails to cheer me woman from Texas who was attacked by
click Start, the background colour changes up—www.goodquotes.com. My favourite sec- three lions in a pen at a game park in
after some time and I have to click Stop tions are Famous Last Words and Bumper South Africa when she started petting one
the moment it does. I have at times spent Stickers. The Answering Machine mes - of them.
close to half an hour just hitting Start and sages are quite entertaining too, but the Confessions from people at www.daily-
Stop. I blame the caustic remarks that fol - pickup lines are quite silly. confession.com are more fun—these are per-
low for egging me on! If I take more than Bloopers have been my all-time sonal accounts of people’s doings. There’s
a second to respond, the damn thing asks favourite. Bloopers are mistakes that find this confession from a person who loathes
me if I fell asleep, and even at 0.28 sec - their way to the public. Usually they get jaywalkers and has a deep-seated urge to
onds, it asks me to get better! recorded in movies and TV shows, but can hit them! There’s another from a poor guy
I think I’ll go play some more intelli - be found in print too. Slip Ups who hates wearing glasses in public
gent games at www.sandlotscience.com (www.slipups.com) has a huge collection of because one of his ears is slightly higher
instead. The slider puzzles are very bloopers and www.eeggs.comhas a whole list than the other! Even funnier are other
engrossing—one tile is missing from a of Easter eggs—amusing items hidden in people’s responses to these confessions.
square and you have to slide them software, movies, music, etc. There are My journey through cyberspace in the
around till they form the correct thousands of them and they can be quite quest for the interesting and the puerile
picture. Fortunately, the ones here are entertaining. I’ve seen ET several times, takes me to www.elibs.com. This site has a
quite simple. but I completely missed this blooper—the very interesting concept: I type a few words
A little nagging voice in my head is refrigerator in the film repeatedly changes and it spins an amusing story using them.
telling me to get back to work. I must heed colour! Nor did I notice that in Gone in If you don’t want to sit about typing words,
it, else I’ll land in trouble! Sixty Seconds, when Kip Rennes is in the you can just read some of the stories

107 NOVEMBER 2002

insight ■
■ netreturns

never needed to know but your life

would be incomplete without! Yes, my
life really was incomplete till I found out
that the island of Manhattan was sink-
ing into the Hudson Bay due to the
weight of its buildings! Oh, and I already
knew this one: David Rice Atchison is the
only man in history to have been Presi-
dent of the United States for just 24
hours. Here’s another interesting tid bit:
Daily Confession: Up to no good when Pearl Harbor was bombed, one
ingenious scientist came up with the idea
created by others. The stories are quite of getting a million bats, cooling them
amusing, but even more entertaining are down to hibernation, attaching incendi- Useless Information: Knowledge is power
the words that some people have entered! ary bombs to them and releasing them
Metaspy (www.metaspy.com), a similar over Japan. The bats would reawaken and jokes of all genres. A special tip: don’t for-
site, lists out the words and phrases peo- seek shelter in the dark nooks and cran- get to visit the Microsoft jokes.
ple search for at the MetaCrawler search nies of homes and businesses and a few What can be more fun than watching
engine. Who would have thought that minutes later, the whole country would others squirm! It’s time to send out some of
people actually search for haircut styles, be ablaze. those practical jokes from www.strangere-
old truck guides and…fun Web sites! Well, all this reading has done me ports.com. Wondering why they call them-
The best stop so far has been at Use- good and I am ready for bed. selves StrangeReports.com? That’s because
less Information (http://home.nycap.rr.com/ they can make up really funny news arti-
useless/index.html)—stuff, as they put it, you 10.30 am, chilling at home… cles about people, which will have them
It’s a Saturday and there’s no work. Lets begging for mercy while you laugh your
see if I can find more sites to cut the tedi- head off. Try the one about the Man
The Goofer’s Guide to
um of a long, dull day. But this time I’ll try Caught Peeping In Toilet and see how
Looking out sites that will give me some serious many of your friends turn beetroot-red.
■ Keep a Word document or Excel spread- education—might as well make it pro - ForwardGarden (www.forwardgarden. com)
sheet open. Switch to it using the quick ductive time pass! claims to have the largest database of jokes,
[Alt] + [Tab] combination every time A site called SoYouWanna.com stories and opinions on the Internet. It’s
someone passes by and if possible, say (www.soyouwanna.com) teaches you how to actually a collection of funny stories and
something insightful. do all the things nobody taught you in
■ If you have to switch to the document, school such as avoiding traffic police, how
scroll down a few sheets or open another to talk with the dead and how to lose
document in case the same person weight. Ah! Here’s an interesting one: how
passes by. to ask your boss for a raise. Hmmm… here
■ Use the [Win] + [D] combination liber- are some handy tips, but they won’t work
ally to minimises all windows and show if he finds me loafing around. I think I’ll
the desktop. not spend so much time looking for breaks
■ Mute the sound on your computer. in office then!
■ Keep a straight face when reading jokes,
look intensely into the screen and rub
your chin every few minutes. 2.00 pm and looking for Jokes.com: Looking for some fun
■ Don’t look frazzled while solving puzzles more fun…
lest someone offers to help. If you need to Enough of learning new tricks! chain mail that people have been sending
ask others for clues, make it sound like It’s the weekend after all! At each other. They even have SMS forwards.
you are talking about cricket or world home, relaxing with a chilled This is the site to turn to when you are in
politics. glass of orange squash is a good search of a quick laugh. I’ve been checking
■ Keep a lot of important-looking paper time to catch up on some jokes. And no it out for a few months now, but still
strewn on your desk. better place to start than www.jokes.com. haven’t been able to read through all the
■ Discuss work at lunch; it makes you look They have everything: blonde, lawyer, jokes. However, I prefer sending out jokes
sincere. medical, office, bartender and yes, adult and funky animations from www.sending-
■ Keep a Tom Sawyer excuse ready. If jokes, too. They’ve even got the classic fun.com, since the items on ForwardGarden
someone does catch you loafing, explain “Horse walks into a bar and the bartender have probably been forwarded more times
the importance of taking a break and get asks, ‘Why the long face?’” joke. than you would care to count.
them to do the same. From here, I navigate to www.funky- It’s evening and much cooler now.
■ If any of your bosses shares your copy of pages.com. I could use up my entire Inter- Time to go out to town and have some
Digit, tear out these pages before passing net account right here, just clicking all the real world fun with my friends. So this is
it on. links! The site has videos, optical illusions, where my journey ends...for now.
games, card tricks, poems and of course, VEER KOTHARI

108 NOVEMBER 2002

Quick start-November.qxd 4/29/2004 10:16 AM Page 109

insight ■
■ quick start

Driving your
graphics card higher
I
n the quest for a better gaming experi- all hardware’. At this point, the Hardware
ence, the route one often takes is that Wizard will scan your system. Scroll to the
of buying a new feature-packed graph- ‘Standard display types’ in the left pane and
ics card. But just upgrading your graphics select ‘Standard PCI Graphics Adapter
card and monitor drivers can give you (VGA)’ from the right pane. Click Next and
increased stability, more features and push the driver will load.
those Quake III frame rates a couple of After rebooting, you will notice that
notches higher. And you don’t have to the system uses the SVGA driver, since
spend anything to get these benefits you have only a 256-colour palette. Choose the correct driver for your montior
through a driver update. However, if not
approached in the right manner, this can Loading the new video driver do not have the disk, select an appropr
make you susceptible to bottlenecks. Lets Run the setup file for your new driv- ate monitor from the Standard monito
walk the route of upgrading and see how ers. During installation, if asked to over- types (e.g. Super VGA 1024x768 at 75 Hz)
this can be done the right way! write any files, click Yes. When the This driver works with most monitors an
As an example, we are using an nVidia installation is complete, it will prompt will allow you to run your monitor at
Riva TNT2 graphics card on Windows 98 comfortable refresh rate and resolution.
SE, but the steps are pretty much applica-
ble to all cards and operating systems. Setting your resolution an
refresh rate
Revert to the standard driver After loading the drivers, you need to se
First, you have to revert your graph- the refresh rate—go back to Display Prop
ics card to its original driver. Doing this pro- erties, click the Settings tab and set thi
vides the smoothest upgrade path and min- to 1024x768. Click Advanced and selec
imises the chances of any clash between the Adapter tab. Here, set your refresh rat
to 75 Hz (or higher, if available) and clic

Run the setup for your new graphics driver

you to reboot the system. After restarting,

open Control Panel > Desktop > Settings .
The new driver will be listed here and you
can set a higher screen resolution and
colour depth.

Select the Standard VGA graphics driver Loading the monitor driver Set your refresh rate to at least 75 Hz
Unless you have the correct moni-
the old and the new drivers. One driver tor drivers, you will not be able to run the Apply. If your monitor does not accep
that works with all types of graphics cards monitor at an optimum refresh rate and this change (the screen goes blank), lowe
is the Standard VGA (SVGA) driver found resolution. To install the monitor drivers, your resolution one notch and try again
in all versions of Windows. go to Control Panel > Desktop > Settings > When you find a setting that gives a sta
To revert to the original driver, in Con- Advanced and click Monitor. If the mon- ble display, click OK.
trol Panel > Device Manager, access the Dis- itor is listed as Default Monitor, you need Congratulations! You’ve successfull
play Adapter and right-click on your to load the drivers for your monitor. Click upgraded your display card’s drivers an
graphics card listed there. Under Properties Change and browse to the location of the are all set to experience better feature
> Driver, select Update Driver. Select ‘Dis- driver—it will probably be on the floppy and smoother graphics performance.
play a list of drivers’ and then select ‘Show disk accompanying your monitor. If you MARCO D

109 NOVEMBER
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insight ■
■ troubleshooting

Printing problems, tackling viruses, connecting PCs,

a forgetful BIOS and much more—find your answers here

XP Startup disk then works properly. Please give me the

I have installed Windows XP solution to this problem.
Professional on my PC and want to create Navin Kumar
a Startup Disk, but there is no option to Via e-mail
create it. Please tell me how I can create a
boot floppy. This happens when Windows encoun
Suman Saha ters an internal overflow of stacks used b
Via e-mail 32-bit Windows-based drivers—usuall
due to a fault in the driver itself. Driver
To create a boot floppy for Windows are allocated 4 KB of memory to be used
XP, format it first from Windows XP by as a stack and if it uses more than that, a
typing format a: at the command prompt. stack overflow occurs. By default, Win
Copy the Ntldr, Ntdetect.com and dows sets aside two spare stacks to be used
boot.ini files from the root of the boot temporarily so that the computer doe
drive. If you are using a SCSI hard disk, not hang. If Windows detects that it ha
copy the driver for the SCSI controller to run out of spare stack pages, you receiv
the floppy and rename it Ntbootdd.sys. the aforementioned error message.
You can now start your computer by To solve the problem, add MinSPs=
booting from this floppy disk. Browse the Internet without logging on to the to the [386Enh] section of th
network C:\Windows\System.ini file. You can
I’m DUN for continue increasing the spare stack page
When I connect to my ISP using a dial- able to use the Internet without any prob- from here by increasing the number. You
up connection, the username and pass - lems. Also note that if you leave this option will have to restart the computer afte
word gets verified, but the ‘Logging on to enabled, you can start surfing as soon as editing the file for the changes to tak
network’ dialog box remains on the the modem connects, without waiting for effect. However, you should get updated
screen for over a minute. Can you help me the ‘Logging on to network’ dialog box drivers for all your hardware to make sur
out with this? to disappear. that you are not using buggy softwar
Buzz that could be harmful in the long run.
Via e-mail Stacked
While working with Internet Explorer, I Corrupted e-mail
All you have to do is disable the ‘Log on get the following error message quite fre- I have been using Outlook Express 5 fo
to Network’ option in the dial-up connec- quently: ‘Terminating thread due to stack the last two years. I had around 6,000 mes
tion’s settings. To do this, open Start > Pro- overflow problem. A vxd consumed too sages in my inbox, but due to power failure
grams > Accessories > Communications > Dial-Up much stack space. Increase setting of it got corrupted. It is now showing only fou
Networking, right-click the connection and MinSPs in System.ini or remove recently messages. The size of the file (inbox.mbx)
click Properties. Under the Server Types tab, installed vxds. There are currently 6 SPs 150 MB. Can my messages be recovered?
disable this option. Windows will no longer allocated. Hit any key to proceed.’ The Yash Garg
try to log on to the network and you will be computer seems to hang for a while and Via e-mail

110 NOVEMBER
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Your mailbox file seems to have been

corrupted, but the file that you checked DOS printing however a few devel
does not seem to be the right one. How can I print from DOS opers have created
Microsoft gave up the MBX file format to a printer connected to emulators that
after Outlook Express 4. However, if this the USB port? I can print allow you to
is really the file, you are in luck—you can to the parallel port print to any
retrieve at least the text part of all your using the command port mas
e-mail by opening the file in a text edi- copy <filename> lpt1 querading as the
tor. Notepad will not open such a large /b. What is the printer port. You can use
file, so use a better software such as command for the the DOSPrint utility
NoteTab Light (www.notetab.com) or USB port? (www.dosprint.com) to print from
EditPlus (www.editplus.com). Note that Kishore DOS to any output, including
while opening such a large file, the sys- Jethanandani USB printers, fax-modems, etc.
tem may seem to hang, but let it open Jaipur The software is completely com
the file nevertheless. mand-line based, but does the job
In Outlook Express, open Tools > USB ports well enough.
Options > Maintenance > Store Folder to are not available You will find some similar tools to
determine where the mailbox files are from DOS and you emulate the Epson Dot Matrix printers
stored. Outlook Express 5 stores e-mail cannot print directly to them. Microsoft at www.filelibrary.com/Contents/DOS/102
in the DBX format. If this is also such a claims that there is no solution for this, /5.html.
large file, try importing it to another
identity or in another program such as
Outlook. However, since you have shared folders after typing Windows. Enter a name and pres
already opened and closed Outlook \\ipaddress\sharename. When I open [Enter]. Now, when you connect, yo
Express several times, it may be impossi- Network Neighbourhood and click Entire should be able to browse each other’
ble to retrieve the data and the file size Network, it shows a message that says shared resources. The other way to
may be just wasted space, which will ‘Unable to Browse Network’. Ping receives achieve the same is by enabling the ‘Log
reduce when you compact the folder (File a successful reply. on to Network’ option in the Dial-u
> Folder > Compact). Kuldip Modi Connection’s properties, as describe
Via e-mail under ‘I’m DUN for’ (page 110).
Landscape printing
I have a Pentium III with 256 MB RAM Both, you and your friend may need Capturing movies
and a 40 GB hard drive with Windows to be logged on to the network to be able I have a Pentium 4 1.5 GHz machin
2000 Professional, Service Pack 2. I have to browse the shared resources. There are with a 20 GB hard disk, 256 MB RDRAM
an HP Deskjet 670C printer installed. two ways to do this. Open Control Panel > 32 MB video card, a TV tuner card and
While printing any document in land - Network. Set Client for Microsoft Net- 12x CD-Writer. I captured a movie usin
scape orientation and draft mode, the works as the ‘Primary Network Logon’. the TV tuner card and the size of the fil
printer prints from the right edge of the The next time you start Windows, it was 30 MB for a 10-second clip! If I wan
paper, irrespective of the right margin will bring up a dialog box to log on to to capture a two-hour movie, it woul
set. However, this does not happen with occupy around 20 GB of space. Withou
portrait orientation, or with normal and extra hardware, can I convert the movie
best modes. directly to an encoded format?
Koyande T. Gopal
Via e-mail Madurai

This seems to be a problem with the Raw movie files are indeed very space
printer’s drivers. You can find the relevant hungry, and unless you compress them
drivers at http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/ while capturing, you can rarely hope to
eng/software_drivers.htmIf. If this does not record more than a few minutes’ worth
solve the problem, download the drivers of video. If the software bundled with th
for a printer from the same family (e.g., capture card does not allow you to use
660C or 690C) and try those instead. Also, compression codec while capturing, yo
when printing in landscape orientation, can use other software such as VirtualDu
try using the Landscape (Rotated) option. (www.virtualdub.org) to do so. When cap
turing with VirtualDub, click File > Captur
Modem network AVI to switch to capture mode. Click
After reading your article on connect- Set capture file to specify where the fil
ing two PCs using modems, I tried it out should be saved. Click Video > Format
with my friend. Both of us have Motorola set the frame size and format. Open
SM56 PCI Internal Modems. The PCs con- You need to be logged on to browse shared > Compression and select a codec for th
nect successfully, but we cannot see our resources captured video.

111 NOVEMBER
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insight ■
■ troubleshooting

is copied to the System folder as ker

Networking two PCs nel.dll or kernel32.dll. Microsoft ha
I have two computers and issued a security patch, which secure
two network cards. Is it possi - against such vulnerability a
ble to connect them without http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bul
modems or hubs? letin/MS00-075.asp.
Sawma Lunglei To remove the virus, first delete a
Via e-mail Temporary Internet Files (Control Panel
Internet Options and click Delete Files)
To be able to connect two Next, delete the following registry key
PCs directly using LAN cards, for each user who ran the virus:
you will have to use a cross- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\<
crimped network cable—it’s d>\Software\Microsoft\Outloo
not as complicated as it STRAIGHT- CRIMPED CROSS -CRIMPED Express\<Version>\Mail\Compose Us
sounds. All network cables are Stationery
made of four pairs of wires, connected one connector would be in the opposite HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities
to RJ45 connectors. For a standard net- direction to the wires at the other end. <Id>\Software\Microsoft\Outloo
work, you would ensure that the You can have such a cable made by any Express\<Version>\Mail\Stationer
colours of the wires at both ends are in hardware engineer. Just plug this into Name
the exact same sequence. For a direct the network cards and your network HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities
PC-to-PC network, one pair of wires on will be up. <Id>\Software\Microsoft\Outloo
Express\<Version>\Mail\Wide Stationer
Name
VBS/Redlof is a VBScript virus that You should check all the identitie
infects HTM, HTML, ASP, PHP, JSP, HTT present and all versions of Outlook. Fo
and VBS files by appending a script that each user, a registry key unde
contains an encrypted copy of the virus HKEY_USERS stores their personal infor
mation. For each user, locate the follow
ing keys and delete them:
HKEY_USERS\<id>\Software\Microsof
\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Pro
files\Microsoft Outlook Internet Set
Choose the codec for the captured video tings\0a0d020000000000c0000000000
0046\001e0360
Outlook password HKEY_USERS\<id>\Software\Microsof
Whenever I start Outlook, it opens my \Windows NT\Current Version\Win
account by default. How can I protect dows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles
Outlook with a password so that every time Microsoft Outlook Internet Settings
it is launched, it asks for authentication? 0a0d020000000000c000000000000046
Gaurav 001e0360
Via e-mail HKEY_USERS\<id>\Software\Microsof

In Outlook, you can protect the data

file with a password. To set the password,
click File > Data File Management > Settings >
Change Password. Enter the password and Protect your e-mail in Outlook
disable ‘Save this password in your pass -
word list’. Now every time you open Out- code. Viewing an infected HTML docu-
look, you will be asked for this password, ment activates the virus. It usually tar-
without which Outlook will not load the gets the file folder.htt (used as a template
message store. for viewing folders as Web pages) stored
as a hidden file in the Web folder under
Virulent PC Windows. It will also be copied to
I have a Celeron-based computer kjwall.gif in the same directory. Like
with Windows 98 SE. My computer is many of the worms found today, it prop-
infected with the VBS/Redlof virus. I use agates via e-mail by infecting blank.htm,
AVG anti-virus with the latest updates, the default stationery file for Microsoft
but it cannot remove the virus. Please Outlook or Outlook Express. The registry
provide a remedy for this. is edited to ensure that the infected user
Dinesh includes this default stationery file when Prevent infected stationery from being used fo
Via e-mail composing e-mail. An infected VBScript e-mail

112 NOVEMBER
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FAQs \Office\10.0\Common\MailSet
tings\NewStationery
HKEY_USERS\<id>\Software\Microsof
60 going on 200 one drive to another while in Windows \Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\.dll
I have a GeForce4 Ti 4400 Deluxe 98, it takes a lot of time as compared to HKEY_USERS\<id>\Software\Microsof
128 MB graphics card on an Athlon XP the same copy operation while in XP. For \Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\dllfile
1700+ system with 256 MB DDR RAM example, if I copy a movie of size 1.5 GB, Also delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
and 40 GB hard disk on an ASUS A7V it takes 25 minutes in 98 and 4-5 min - Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
266-EX motherboard. I have the latest utes in XP. The second problem is that rentVersion\Run\Kernel32 if it exists.
nVidia and VIA 4 drivers installed. I have when I play games in 98 SE, the images Restart the computer and delete al
run many games such as Quake III Arena jerk and sometimes the system hangs, HTT files and Kjwall.gif from C:\Win
and Return to Castle Wolfenstein—in but while in XP they work properly. dows\Web. Start Outlook Express an
all of them, the frame rate is stuck at Please suggest a solution. open Tools > Options > Compose. In the Sta
60 fps at 1024x768 resolution. Even Nitin Mishrauliya tionery section, uncheck Mail or selec
at lower resolutions, it hardly gets to Jodhpur your own stationery
100 fps. The 32 MB GeForce2 MX card
I had earlier was better. I have seen The hard disks could be working in Setup problem
many of your tests where the fps is PIO mode while in Windows 98. DMA I had created an Address Book appl
more than 200. Please tell me how to mode for storage drives is enabled by cation in Visual Basic and using the Pack
get that. default in Windows XP, but not in age and Deployment Wizard, I created it
Shikhar Windows 98. To enable DMA for your setup files. I tried installing the applicatio
Via e-mail hard disk, open Control Panel > System > on my office PC. It went fine till the fo
Device Manager. Double-click the hard lowing message appeared: ‘C:\Win
disk under the Disk Drives branch to dows\System\ MSVCRT.dll. An acces
bring up its properties. Under the Set- violation occurred while copying the file.
tings tab, check the box next to DMA. It gave three options, viz., Abort, Retr
On rebooting to Windows 98, you and Ignore. Retry didn’t work, so I trie
should be able to notice the difference Ignore. It then gave another message say
in performance. For the same reason, ing, ‘If you ignore a copy error, the file wi
games also do not respond well in not be copied. The application may no
Windows 98. function properly as a result. Do you wan
to ignore the error?’ On clicking Yes, th
Bad timing rest of the application installed smoothly
I have Windows Me and Windows It also runs correctly. Can you tell me wha
XP installed on different partitions. the above error means and how I can ge
When I start the computer, its clock rid of it?
shows the wrong time every day. It Prashant Patel
shows 1/1/1999 and displays a Via e-mail
message, ‘CMOS checksum error’.
Please tell me the cause of this error The error message is being displaye
Turn off Vertical sync for higher frame rates and the solution. because the file is currently in use. Win
Vishal dows programs use shared libraries fo
The problem is that the card’s driver Via e-mail common functions, thus reducing th
is limiting the number of frames per sec- number of files for each application an
ond, based on the monitor’s refresh rate. The CMOS battery seems to have also allowing developers to reuse func
You can turn this off by opening Control died. This little battery, about the size tions and APIs. This is why you shoul
Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > of a 50 paise coin, is located on the always close all open programs befor
GeForce4 Ti 4400 > OpenGL Settings . Here, motherboard itself and powers the installing any software. Your softwar
look for ‘Vertical sync’ and change its CMOS while the mains are off. If this tried to overwrite a file while it was bein
value to ‘Always off’. If this does not battery is dead, the CMOS will no used by some other application, which
help, download a utility called NV longer get power and will lose all infor- caused the error and your softwar
Refresh Tool 2.0 (www.nvmax.com) and use mation in its memory every time the worked perfectly because the file wa
it to set all refresh rates to the maximum power is switched off. When this already there.
supported. happens, the CMOS loads the default
configuration from the ROM, which
Send your computing
Slow hard disk would have only a particular date
problems to
I have a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz system set. All you need to do is change the
[email protected]
with 128 MB RDRAM. I have dual-boot - battery to solve the problem. The
or write to Digit,
ing operating systems, Windows 98 SE battery (CR2032) is readily available in
D-222/2, Om Sagar, MIDC, Nerul-400
and Windows XP. When I copy data from the market. 706, and we may answer it here!

113 NOVEMBER
insight ■
■ tips and tricks

Foul Play
Written in invisible ink on page 456 of Sung Zu’s The Zen of Gaming is the
golden rule that has rescued many a gamer from the throes of insanity:
If at first you don’t succeed, cheat!
contents
82 Diablo II
83 Need for Speed: Porsche
Unleashed
83 Colin McRae Rally 2.0 81
84 Aliens vs Predator 2
84 FIFA 2000
85 The Sims
85 Starcraft
85 SimCity 3000
86 Age of Empires II: Age of
Kings
86 Max Payne
87 Half-Life
87 Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
87 Unreal Tournament
87 Quake III Arena
88 Half-Life: Counter-Strike

IMAGING : Ashwin Boricha

115 NOVEMBER 2002

 insight ■
■ tips and tricks

Diablo II mean and undead and

should be looked upon as an
army general who lets others
do all the dirty work while
he meanders in the back-
ground casting spells and
cursing away. Amplify Dam -
age, Confuse and Attract
(especially when used in Salvation. To further aug -
conjunction with Confuse) ment his defence, a Paladin
are some of the curses that should not miss the Herald of
along with spells and skills Zakarum, the best shield that
like Bone Armor, Corpse this holy avenger can hold.
Explosion, Bone Spear, Bone
Spirit, Golem Mastery, Clay The Sorceress
Golem, Iron Golem and The Sorceress can be quite a
Revive, should be part of challenge to play with—she
your Necromancer’s reper- should avoid direct contact
The bosses are a piece of cake when you are the Barbarian. Just keep toire. The Homunculus is by with enemies and hone her
your quickslots filled with health potions—hack, gulp and repeat far the best shield any Necro- skills in specialised magic.
mancer could hope to find. Blizzard, Glacial Spike,
The Barbarian excellent dexterity gives her Frozen Orb, Fire Ball, Blaze,
The Barbarian is the best high Attack and Defense rat - The Paladin Static Field, Nova and Chain
melee fighter. His brutish ings, which when combined The Paladin is an aura dude. Lightning are some of the
strength allows him to hack While hacking your way spells that will go a long way
through hordes of enemies through the single player in improving your chances
much like a hot knife glides mode, Offensive Auras are a of survival as a Sorceress.
through butter. must (Concentration and No monster-hating caree

82 Holy Freeze, for example).

Multiplayer romps demand
woman should be caught
without the Oculus, which
investment in Defensive in conjunction with a good
Auras like Defiance, Medita - shield, will see you through
tion, Redemption and most bad days.
with the skills that she can
unlock at higher levels,
makes her one mean killing
Getting There
machine. Temper her char- The Secret Cow Level To Kill a Beast
While playing as a acter with these skills: Cold You can moo your way to a Fire resistance is highly
Barbarian, some good skills Arrow, Multiple Shot, Immo- Secret Cow Level after finish- essential in the final show-
to invest your points in are lation Arrow, Freezing Arrow, ing the game. Get back to down with the menacing
Bash, Double Swing, Leap Critical Strike, Penetrate, the Rogue Encampment, put Diablo. You can use the
Attack, Concentrate, and Decoy and Evade. Titan’s Wirt’s Leg and a Tome of Horadric Cube to transmute
Whirlwind. Look out for the Revenge, Lycander’s Aim and Town Portal into the Horadric a ring of fire resistance. To
Face while playing as this Lycander’s Flank are the Cube, transmute it and a por- do this, you will need one
character. unique weapons that you tal leading to the bovines will ring, one ruby and four vials
should keep an eye out for appear. Once you kill the of Exploding Potion. This
The Amazon while playing as an Amazon. Cow King, you cannot return will give you the Garnet
The Amazon lets her bow to these green pastures. Keep Ring that offers a boost
and arrow do the talking; The Necromancer him alive and milk the place of +21-30 to your fire
and she isn’t half bad with The Necromancer is the for items and gold. resistance statistic.
the spear either! Her summoner of all things

116 NOVEMBER 2002

 Need for Speed: Porsche NFS: Porsche Unleashed Cheats
Unleashed Go to the main menu and click ‘Create Player’. To enable a
cheat, type in the appropriate code for the player name. Click
‘Done’ to hear a confirmation sound. You can then choose
your regular profile to play the game with the enabled cheat.

freewill Drive twice as fast in the single player mode

Gulliver Burn the tracks racing in radio controlled
Porsches
Smash Up Destruction Derby fun, thanks to the skidpad
Dakar Changes car physics and tracks to a style more
akin to Rally racing
Fuzzyfuz Cops will now bug you in the Quick Race mode
yraGyraG All cars will handle like the Porsche 993
fetherw8 Changes the car’s physics by making them heavier

Stick to the bumper view. It offers the best frame rates and angle for
handling corners and the speed feedback is unbeatable
Colin McRae Rally 2.0
Brake it down mission, follow the AI con-
Never brake in the middle of a trolled cars to get an indica -
turn, especially when driving tion of the best route to take—
older Porsches—they have a sometimes an alternative way
tendency to roll over. Instead, will cut your time almost in
brake early, turn smoothly half; you might also discover
and accelerate on the exit. that what you thought of as a
shortcut, is in fact the tortu-
83
Touch and go ous way to the finish line.
Rid yourself of those med-
dling cops by nudging them Torque it up
ever so lightly into oncom- If you find yourself on a
ing traffic or the roadside track where you can use a
obstacles. higher gear ratio with a
lower RPM or a lower gear
A different route ratio with high revs, go with
When befuddled by a track or the latter every time.

Need for Speed: High Stakes Use the handbrake to slide into corners and as far as possible slow
down before tackling a sharp turn
Accessing the mini game keeps high score, so you can
Select the ‘Credits’ icon after always come back to it. Feeling cornered throttle to control your slide
the game loads and change Rally cars tend to slide and gain grip. You can use
the display from text to pho- Fireworks around corners. To avoid the handbrake to slide into a
tographs. Repeatedly click Set the system date to July 4 this, always speed coming sharp turn. When you skid,
on the pictures that appear and sit back to enjoy the out of a corner rather than turn into the direction of the
until a ‘Click The Photo’ mini colourful fireworks during while going into one. Brake skid to correct it; once your
game begins. The game the game. to slow down before turning car is pointing in the right
around a corner and use the direction, hit the gas pedal.

117 NOVEMBER 2002

 insight ■
■ tips and tricks

Gearboxes, the weather

and everything in between
differences in the surface of
the tracks—a tarmac stretch
FIFA 2000
Once you feel comfortable will require drastically differ-
with your car, switch to a ent techniques and wheels
manual gearbox that will than driving on a mud track.
give you greater control over The weather can dramatical-
your vehicle. Pay close atten- ly alter both the handling
tion to the directions that conditions and visibility.
your co-driver deals out but Check the weather forecasts
do not be afraid to on the stage information
improvise. Understand the page and adjust your tires.

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Cheats

Enter the following codes at the 'Create New Driver Profile'
screen to activate the corresponding cheat:
ALLTHEBUTTONS Unlocks all cars
GREATNEWS Unlocks all tracks
MINIME Unlocks the Mini Cooper S
TURNONTHEICE Lets you play the car stereo
MORRISMODE Unlocks the Escort mk1 Jumping up and down and acting like a monkey is just one of the
SHINYBUTTONS All cars become new and shiny essentials to a healthy lifestyle
GOFASTERSTRIPES Makes the cars go faster
CURRYFORME Gives you turbo boost Black and white scheme Finding Pele
NUTTYNETS Makes the opposition aggressive Select two classic teams and Pele is jersey no 10 and plays
BOUNCYBOUNCY Makes the collisions bouncy start a match for a black and for the Classic Brazilian team,
WHEELYBIG Gives you monster truck wheels white colour scheme. Santos ‘62-‘63, and the Clas-
BOINGBOINGBOING Bouncer mode sic Brazilian national team

84 WAWEYOURLEFTS
EATTHIS
Mirrors the tracks
Press the handbrake to shoot fireballs
The colour orange
For a change of hues, select a
(Brazil ‘58 and Brazil ‘70).

in arcade mode classic and standard team Finding Romario

GARYWILDASS Unlocks the Ford Puma and start a match for an Romario wears jersey no 11
EVILEVO Unlocks the Lancer Road orange colour scheme. and plays for the Brazilian
LETMEWIN Opens all game options team side, Flamengo.
Finding Ronaldo
Ronaldo can be found in the Finding Youri Djorkaeff
game playing as jersey no 9 Youri Djorkaeff may be found
Aliens vs Predator 2 and plays for the Italian side, in the game as jersey no 14
Inter Milan and the Brazilian and plays for the German
While in game, press [Enter] and type <cheat> x (note that national team. side, Kaiserslautern.
there is a space after <cheat>). The x should be replaced with
one of the codes below. The press [Enter] to enable the code.
mpcanthurtme Turns God mode on/off
FIFA 2000 Cheats
mpschuckit Adds weapons and ammunition Enter the following at the Cheats menu:
mpsmithy Gives you full armour MOMONEY Gives you unlimited funds
mpkohler Gives you full ammunition SIZZLE Lightning mode
mpbeamme Beams player to level start with DIZZY Alien mode
initial conditions HOOLIGAN Unlocks Bonus teams
mpsixthsense Walk through walls (on/off) BURNABY Unlocks the EAC pitch
mpicu Third person view (on/off) LIGHTSOUT Glow mode

118 NOVEMBER 2002

 The Sims Starcraft
Press [Enter] during the gameplay, type one of the following
codes and press [Enter] again to activate the corresponding
cheat function. The message ‘Cheat Enabled’ will confirm that
the code is activated. To disable the cheat, repeat the process
with the same code:
operation cwal Faster building and instant
upgrades
the gathering Unlimited psionic ability
power overwhelming Indestructible buildings and ships
war aint what it used to be Remove fog of war
show me the money Minerals and gas increased by
10,000
whats mine is mine Minerals increased by 500
breathe deep Vespene gas increased by 500
something for nothing Everything upgraded
food for thought Ignore supply limit when
You need to keep yourself abreast of your Sims’ wants and needs. building units
Seemingly mundane tasks like socialising and picking the kids from black sheep wall Full map
school have to be dutifully performed noglues Opponent has no psionics
modify the phase variance Build anything
I wanna rock DJ bills. Then pay the original medieval man Free upgrades to units
If you want new music for unpaid one. This will cause staying alive Continue after mission completed
your radio, why not play the new bills inside the mail- man over game Win game
your own MP3 songs? Find box to disappear. game over man Lose game
the directories titled latin, special warriors for nothing Free Special Hero
rock, country and classical in Personality test
your Sims game folder. Copy When you create a Sim, do
85
your favourite MP3s and put
them here.
not give it a personality. Pro-
ceed to buy a chemistry lab
SimCity 3000
and create a yellow potion for
Bills begone your Sim to drink. This will Hold down [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Shift] + [C] to bring up the cheat
Keep an unpaid bill until the reverse its personality and window. Type in these codes and press [Enter] to activate them:
mailman delivers a new set of give it points on everything! i am weak Everything is free
call cousin Vinnie You’ll be offerred some cash in the
‘Meet’ window
The Sims Cheats zyxwvu Use the above cheat, but decline the
While playing, press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [C] to bring up the cheat cash, then enter this cheat to get
window. Now type in one of the following: the SimCity Castle
Rosebud/klapaucius Gives you 1,000 simoleons (for garbage in, garbage out All garbage buildings available
patched version) power to the masses All power plants available
WATER_TOOL Puts water around your home water in the desert All water plants available
SET_HOUR (1 to 24) Sets time of day nerdz rool All industry becomes High Tech
SET_SPEED (-1000 to 1000) Sets game speed pay tribute to your king Gives all rewards
AUTONOMY (1 to 100) Changes how much the Sims salt on Makes all water salty
think on their own salt off Makes all water fresh
INTERESTS Changes interests and personality ufo swarm Set ‘Disaster’ to UFO for tons of UFOs
SIM_SPEED (-1000-1000) Sets Sim’s speed the birds Flock of birds fly over the city
SIM_LOG BEGIN/END Creates a log of your Sim’s history stop forcing advice Makes Advisors stop advising

119 NOVEMBER 2002

 insight ■
■ tips and tricks

Age of Empires II: [R]

[I]
Repair
Set Gather Point
Age of Kings [S]
[L]
Stop
Unload
[U] Unpack

Shortcut keys for military units:

[A] Aggressive
[D] Defensive
[F] Flank
[C] Follow
[X] Guard
[W] Box
[Q] Line
[E] Staggered
[Z] Patrol
[N] Stand Ground
[O] No Attack

Max Payne
Building your structures close to the coastline is asking for trouble.
Avoid falling into this trap Bonus Level
Beat the game on the Dead on Arrival mode
Age of Empires II Cheats to play at the bonus level. You will be put in
a room with weapons and two doors. Pick
Press [Enter] to bring up chat box, then type: any door. After you kill all the enemies who
ROCK ON 1,000 stone come towards you, go to the end of the
LUMBERJACK 1,000 wood room to find a passage that leads to a room

86 ROBIN HOOD
CHEESE STEAK JIMMY'S
1,000 gold
1,000 food
filled with pictures of the game developers.

MARCO Reveals the entire map War of the Rats

POLO Removes fog of war In Part I: Chapter 2, you can cause the rats to war amongst
AEGIS Fast build
themselves. In the subway level, when you first get to the old
NATURAL WONDERS Control Nature
RESIGN Makes you lose closed down station, you will find a hole in the wall. Throw a
WIMPYWIMPYWIMPY Destroy yourself bunch of grenades and molotov cocktails into this hole. This
I LOVE THE MONKEY HEAD Gives you a naked villager will cause the mission objectives to change to ‘I had declared
who makes an excellent scout war against the rats’. As you progress through this level, you
HOW DO YOU TURN THIS ON Gives you a Cobra car will come across two factions of rats with Desert Eagles. If
TO SMITHEREENS Gives you a Saboteur your group of rats wins, they will join forces and follow you
BLACK DEATH Destroys all enemies
through the rest of the level. If the other rats win, they'll turn
I R WINNER Lets you win
their remaining forces against you.
Shortcut keys for unit commands:
[T] Attack Ground Soldier of Fortune
[C] Convert After you confront Vinni Gognitto, he flees to the rooftops
[Delete] Delete Unit and leads you to a place with pipes that take you across the
[B] Economic Buildings rooftop to a room with a window and a TV. Follow the side of
[V] Military Buildings the building you just came out of and look for a narrow, black
[G] Garrison
window at the end. Take out your bat and break the window
[E] Heal
[P] Pack to reveal the Soldier of Fortune II room, packed with shotguns
and one painkiller.

120 NOVEMBER 2002

 Half-Life Quake III Arena
For these cheats to work, start Half-Life using the com-
mand hl.exe -console or hl.exe -dev -console . You can now
access the console using the [~] key. To enable cheats,
enter Sv_cheats 1 in the console. Type the following to
enable the corresponding cheats:
/god God mode on/off
/notarget Your enemies will ignore you
/impulse 101 All weapons and ammunition
/impulse 102 Spawns giblets and blood
/impulse 103 Shows monster statistics when looking at a
monster
/impulse 203 Delete monster or NPC from the world
/thirdperson Third person view
/firstperson Return to first person view
/noclip Abitlity to walk through walls

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast In open maps (like The Longest Yard) use the Quad Damage power-
up in conjunction with the machine gun, for best results
To enable the cheats, bring down the console by pressing
[Shift] + [~] and type ‘devmapall’. You can then enter any Movie time A fix for dial-up blues
of the following codes into the console: To unlock all cinematics, If you are stuck with a dial-
god God mode access the command up connection and lag is
noclip No clipping mode prompt, go to your Quake your permanent unwanted
notarget Your enemies will ignore you directory and type: guest, you can simulate a
kill Kill yourself quake3.exe +seta g_spVideos laggy-single-player-experi -
give all
give health
Maximum weapons, health and armour
100 per cent health
"\tier1\1\tier2\2\tier3\3\tier4
\4\tier5\5\tier6\6\tier7\7\tier
ence™ to get better at frag -
ging your opponents online.
87
give armor 100 per cent armour 8\8" To do this, access the console
give ammo 100 per cent ammunition and type cl_timenudge xxx,
Colour me silly where 'xxx' is the ping time
Unreal Tournament If you want to be an elite in milliseconds. Thus, if you
Quaker, complete with a generally experience pings of
Press [~] to bring up the console. Type ‘iamtheone’ and press multi-coloured name tag, use 200 ms while multiplaying,
[Enter] to enable cheat mode. Now type in the following codes these mystical mantras: practice offline with
and hit [Enter] to activate them. Note that these cheats work ^1=Red cl_timenudge 200.
only in single player. ^2=Green
god God mode ^3=Yellow Eye candy vs speed
loaded All weapons ^4=Blue ■ The tweaks mentioned in
fly Flying mode ^5=Cyan the box, ‘Command and
ghost No clipping ^6=Purple Conquer’ can be applied
walk Deactivate no clip and flight ^7=White to your q3config.cfg but
addbots Add indicated number of bots So if my name was, say the best route would be to
allammo Full ammunition ennui_13, I would enter, create a custom file for the
killpawns Kill all opponents ^1e^2n^3n^4u^5i^7_^61^73 game. To do this, create a
behindview1 Third person view into the console for a multi- new document, enter the
behindview0 First person view coloured rendition or just requisite settings from the
playersonly Stop time ^6ennui_13 for a single table and save the file as
colour. autoexec.cfg (or give it

121 NOVEMBER 2002

 insight ■
■ tips and tricks

another name, say, cus-

tom.cfg). Make sure that
console and type /exec cus-
tom.cfg and hit [Enter].
Half-Life: Counter-Strike
you save the .cfg file in ■ If you insist on appending
the baseq3 folder. these settings to the
■ To load your custom set- q3config.cfg file, remem-
tings (in case you did ber that these need to
not name the file autoex- be preceded by a seta tag
ec.cfg) bring down the followed by a space.

The Fast and the Furious

Commands I want to Quake pretty I want to Quake fast
(use these values) (use these values)
cg_drawGun 1 0
cg_gibs 1 0
cg_draw3dIcons 1 0
r_picmip 0 3
r_colorbits 32 0
cg_brassTime 1250 0
r_vertexLight 0 1
r_primitives 1 0 While guarding potential targets, make sure that your team is
r_fastsky 0 1 covering all points of possible attack
r_dynamicLight 1 0
r_nocurves 0 1 Pack behaviour Of sneak attacks and
r_subdivisions 0-100 999 Always attack in groups— the safe rears
greater amount of firepower Try to attack your foe from
that this method deals out is behind. This invariably pres-
sure to overwhelm your foes. ents you with a large target

88 Quake III Arena Cheats Some weapons in Counter-

Strike are more effective if
area. The fact that the oppo-
nent will lose precious sec-
In order to use the following cheats in multiplayer mode, used within a group—for onds turning to retaliate,
the server must have cheats enabled. To enable cheats, instance, an M249 Para will more often than not
pull down the console window by pressing [~] and enter wielder that supports a group ensure a kill. To prevent get-
/spdevmap (map name). The name of a map could be q3dm1, of SMG users or an assaulter ting nailed by this tactic,
q3dm17, or q3tourney2, and so on. During play, press [~] with an M3 that is backed always attack with a
to bring down the console and enter the following: with support fire from the buddy—an extra pair of eyes
M4A1. to spot interlopers and an
/iamacheater Unlocks all levels at Skill 1 additional gun to cover your
/iamamonkey Unlocks all levels at Skill 100 Breathing space back.
/model sarge/krusade Hidden Sarge Skin Although moving and
/god God mode attacking in packs is a com - Attack as the best
/give all Unlocks all weapons mendable tactic, make sure defence
that your teammates do not If you doubt your enemy’s
If you prefer to change your Railgun to be more Quake II- crowd each other. Leave position and status, or if you
like, type the following into the console, or add them to ample amounts of space are well and truly cornered
the config file. between teamsters: this will with nowhere to run but for-
r_railwidth 25 prevent snipers from getting ward; grit your teeth, knuck-
r_railcorewidth 2 multiple-kill shots and le down with an assault gun
r_railsegmentlength 20 will also give each team and charge! That’ll give you
cg_railtrailtime 2000 member enough room to something to tell your
manoeuver. grandkids about.

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arcade ■
■ games

Six feet under

We dig up a few games that died even before they were released and conduct an autopsy
to discover why some developers bury their beloved creations alive

I
n the fictitious Chicken Soup for the Game Developer’s Soul, Bills have to be paid, Web sites need to be maintained, comput
just before the philosophical discourse on the ‘When it’s ers need to be bought and upgraded with painful regularity. An
Done’ policy, lies the ‘Hype Manifesto’. It reads thus: ‘Hype then there is that little detail of sending out the salary slips. A
your creation to the sky. Glorify each diminu- this and a billion other places that mone
tive aspect of your game. Let your Web site finds its way into, haunt game developer
be an endless source of screenshots and pre- both big and small. The source of this ener
production artwork—learn from the success gy is usually the publisher, who thu
of Diablo II.’ becomes a demigod of sorts—sermon
In all seriousness though, within the that dictate the course of a game ar
game development business, ensuring routinely delivered from boardrooms
visibility for your creation is an absolute the brains behind the game mean
must. Publicity and hype are the evils while, have little choice but to lis
that every development studio with ten and to obey. Even if you are a
the intent of making a profit, must independent game develope
attend to. As much as we hate the (a rare breed), you need eithe
hype machine that is put into a good bank account, or a
overdrive before the release of a generous spouse.
game, what reduces us to a fren- It should thus come as n
zied mass of nerves is the termi- surprise when a game projec
nation of the project that was is cancelled because of lack o
moments ago touted as the next funds. Take the case of Westk
best thing to sliced bread! The Interactive, a German gam
surest way that a development stu- development house that ha
dio can rub off a fan the wrong way licensed the Unreal Engine t
is simple: generate enough hype to create, what they hoped, woul
reduce a gamer to a mindless zom- be a good blend of action and rol
bie, wherein the said soul praises playing elements— The Y Projec
your game morning, noon and The company found itself in trou
night—across message boards and bled financial waters and despite
pubs alike—then just as the doomed very positive feedback on thei
one’s eyes start glazing over with that games from the international pres
crazed, worshipping look, terminate the a sustainable source of funding coul
game! Much pain and anguish will fol - not be ensured. With no other choic
low. Why would a gaming company do left, Westka filed for insolvency. Mor
this to their fans? than 44 employees were laid off an
There are a number of reasons why a the company had to eventually ceas
game is terminated—unrealistic cost cal - its business operations on October 1
culations, shifting market trends, pro- 2002. Although not officially declare
longed development processes and dead, The Y Project now shows zero sign
technical woes. A game might even be of life.
shelved simply because it didn’t match up to Glance through a veteran gamer’s list o
the developer’s expectations. Let us take a favourites and chances are that you will hi
look at the reasons involved, in the hope of upon a little gem titled X-Com: UFO Defense
gaining a new perspective into the game The game has an army of dedicated follow
development process. ers. Even venerable game developers swear b
the title. It was thus surprising to learn tha
It’s the money, honey Mythos Games had to abandon work on it
Most of the problems in life can be traced to the IMAGING : Solomon Lewis
sequel, Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge,
absence of little green pieces of paper. Like every- ing monetary reasons. “It is with great regre
thing else, creating a game requires a healthy that I have to announce that Dreamland has bee
dosage of this green energy, that is, lots of money. cancelled. We have been looking for anothe

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publisher for a while

now, but no agreement
has been reached and we
have run out of cash.
This means that there
will be no further devel-
opment on the game,”
thus wrote Julian Gol-
lop, a Mythos program-
mer. This time however,
the ending need not be
a bitter one. For the
allure of the X-Com
license soon saw the ULTIMATE SHOW: Origin terminated the development HALO GROUND: Widely hailed as the game to change
project change develop - of Ultima Online 2 as they thought that the sequel PC gaming forever, Halo jumped ships, got cosy with
er hands and a Czech would dilute the market of their primary cash-cow— the Xbox and is not expected to revolutionise compute
gaming house, Altar Ultima Online games for some time to come
Interactive, took over

“
the task, changing its
name to UFO: Aftermath. The game
shows a healthy pulse and will hopefully
soon see the light of day. I don’t look upon it as failure but as a very
Another high-profile project that
found itself on a sinking ship was the
long learning experience. It’s a failure if
you just keep doing the same thing over and

”
sequel to the highly acclaimed action/
adventure game, Outcast. Fans and critics over again. But it was an expensive lesson
alike were distressed to learn that Outcast
2 was in development limbo as its creator,
to some extent Bill Roper, Producer, Warcraft Adventures,
Blizzard North
Appeal, was forced to file for bankrupt-
cy. Speculation that the game was dead,
forced the company to issue an apolo -
getic statement, “Sometimes these kind of things happen. Unfor- and decided to unveil their creation on the Gamecube. For sim
tunately, we cannot disclose much about the situation, but please ilar reasons, Soul Reaver 2 abandoned its PlayStation roots i
keep in mind that Outcast 2 is not cancelled—it has been sus- favour of its more capable sibling, the PlayStation 2.
pended for an undefined period of time.” One hopes that the Now picture yourself in the shoes of a gaming fan who owne
‘undefined period of time’ does not stretch for long, since games the ditched platform… feelings of betrayal and angst shou
have a very short shelf life—what was a fresh concept not too course through your veins right about now. Owners of th
long ago can be as stale as yesterday’s Dreamcast were bombarded with ju
news in the blink of an eye. such emotions when Sega decided t
Games We Wish Never Were! discontinue its production. Game
Of moving platforms and maths that were to appear on the Dreamca
Another malady that forces a game to DAIKATANA: switched platforms, leaving a dejecte
go off the radars of hopeful fans and John Romero’s favourite bunch of gamers in the lurch. Amon
critics has been duly studied, recorded child turned out looking the heartbreakers were Valve Software
and labelled as ‘The Strange Case of more like a nightmare Half-Life and Crystal Dynamic’s
Jumping Platforms’. Platforms, refer to kid for everyone else Reaver 2.
consoles such as the Sony PlayStation, A more common reason for dump
Microsoft’s Xbox, the personal com- ing a game stems from its very natur
puter even. It so happens that when a TOMB RAIDER a game is a difficult beast to maste
game is being planned, certain features CHRONICLES: The technical expertise required to se
become difficult to implement, thanks Even after Lara Croft’s a project to the finish line and th
largely to inherent limitations of the death, the sequels just artistic touch needed to fuel its ride
destined platform. If these features won’t stop often not simultaneously presen
form the essence of the game, the Thus a symbiosis of sorts has evolve
developers find it more apt to intro- in the gaming pond—the guys wh
duce their game to a more suitable TRESPASSER: did well in maths make a great gam
hardware. Case in point, Silicon The digital sequel to engine, sell it to the literary and art
Knights’ Eternal Darkness. Originally The Lost World—a mon- types, who then attach a beautiful an
slated for Nintendo’s N64, the devel- strosity that should have aerodynamic chassis and a great gam
opers found that the console was not stayed lost rolls out of the assembly lines of
powerful enough to handle the game development studio. It is a process n

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arcade ■
■ games

without risks, as the developers behind the role-play- Blizzard North decided to release an adventure title
ing game, Torn, found out. which would delve deeper into the Azeroth universe
Black Isle Studios (BIS) had licensed the LithTech The game was titled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the
engine to power their ride to fame. It was then a Clans. After over a year of development, which saw
solution undergoing birthing pains since several a whole lot of animation work completed and a
versions of the engine were being released with good amount of voice acting done, Blizzard
alarming frequency and BIS had a hard time choos- realised that the game quality was not up to their
ing one version and sticking to it. Version changes standards and the product was shelved.
at this stage of growth often force relearning of Bill Roper, producer of the game puts it best
tools and this of course played havoc with time- “I think the fatal flaw in the project was that we
lines and the development cycle. The studio also were a little too nostalgic. We definitely identi
faced technical difficulties while implementing fied a lot of very strong things from classic
a suitable path-finding algorithm and a flexible adventure games, like strong characters, strong
camera system, causing further slippage in storyline, excellent vocalisation and acting…
NOT FOR KEEPS: Dungeon Keeper 3
the likely release date of the game. “Pathfind- and interesting, fun puzzles that tied into the
was shelved, as developers Bullfrog
ing was a huge, huge problem. We had a pro- storyline. I think that by that point we had real
shifted their focus to the consoles
grammer working on pathfinding for ly fallen behind a certain technology curve. I
probably four months, and it never really worked the way we the game came out, I think people would have bought it and
wanted. It got better, but it never worked well, which consistent- said, ‘this is really fun, but this would have been great a couple
ly killed the morale of the team. They could usually break the of years ago’. And so it was an incredibly tough decision. But we
pathfinding within a few minutes of getting a new knew that it wasn’t going to meet the expecta
build,” explains Feargus Urquhart, director at BIS tions of anybody here and certainly not the
in a Gamespot.com interview. What did not help expectation of our fans.”
were the financial woes that Black Isles’ parent Symptoms of The work that the company did on the
company, Interplay, was experiencing. A re- a Dying Game adventure game was not completely wast
evaluation of the game project followed and ed though, some of the background story
Torn was scrapped. A rule of thumb and characters found their way into the
When the developers of a game hugely successful sequel, the real-time
Would you like some franchise keep gushing, “...its too good to be strategy game, Warcraft III.
with that? true!”, it probably is.
Killing a game in its infancy, rather The parting shot
than letting it grow into something Will it be done? Besides all the fun and party, game
that a studio would not be proud of The developers have been chanting, development is big business. It
is quite justified. The big names in “When its done!” for the past three involves huge risks and major
the gaming industry are built on fran- years. heartaches—the industry moves at a
chises and are more comfortable frantic pace that blurs everything in
dumping a product that might Engine jumping sight, making even the near future
adversely stain a best-selling series. There is no game engine in the indus- unforeseeable. There are many things
3D Realms shot down Prey because try that the developers haven’t tried. that can go wrong during the devel
they thought it was not up to their stan- opment of a game, a sad fact that lends
dards. So was the case with Maxis’ Frequent changes in staff credence to the industry joke tha
Simsville. The game was designed to offer members ‘behind every successful game lie 10
an experience somewhere between The Most of the original development that did not make it’. What was perhaps
Sims and SimCity. It was to retain some of team of the game has quit and now a good idea to execute two years ago
the voyeurism of The Sims with more of the posts flaming messages on the might not be as good today. If developers
planning of SimCity along with some adult game’s Web site. push their out-dated titles simply because
content in the form of crime, liquor stores they have hyped it, not only will the
and general seediness. Maybe the producers Public assistance games end up holding coffee mugs, they
of the game thought that the direction in The Web site of the game also risk scarring the developer’s reputation
which the game was headed would have had encourages you to make gen- We can thus find some solace in the fac
a negative impact on this hottest of franchis- erous donations to the `Save that it is better to have witnessed the exe
es (The Sims is the largest selling game on the the Developer’ fund. cution of a promising game, rather than
personal computer) and the game was can- watch the game grow into a mass of bugs and
celled after more than two years into the devel- The vanishing bad design decisions.
opment cycle. A spokesperson for Maxis stated act After all, which is the better of the two
that the game “wasn’t up to the standards of the The developer Web cam evils—a developer that releases a sub-par game
company, despite which, the team did a great has ‘Out to Lunch’ for that empties your pockets and then sends you
job and is being reassigned to other products like the past six months. scurrying after patches, or a developer that feeds
The Sims Online and other future projects.” you with hype and then pulls the plug on a proj
Not living up to the mark also saw the demise ect that had you craving for it?
of a Blizzard title. After the success of Warcraft II, AHMED

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arcade ■
■ digit diary

Wild things
From red Ferraris to fire brigades, all in a day’s work

A
fast expanding group of fanat- toys he wanted to bring back. But what made its way to the cafeteria. Now we al
ics calling themselves ‘The he didn’t know was that there are some like Mother Nature, but a snake in ou
Techies’ have found their haven things you just can’t fit into a backpack. purely vegetarian canteen was just a we
in the small city of Singapore. The hotel where Marco was staying bit unnerving. So John, our cafeteria con
With its Sim Lim Square and Funan Cen- owned a bevy of beautiful cars—every- tractor, swiftly called the fire brigade
tre filled with every conceivable kind of thing from a Mercedes S320 to a Jaguar
XJ12 to a couple of BMW 7-series—
enough to give any car enthusiast like
Marco a cardiac arrest. But what really
stopped the blood in his veins was the
sleek Ferrari 360 Modena—Sachin’s car!
When he got his breath back, he crept
up to the car, half expecting the prox -
imity alarm to go off. But the feline pred-
ator didn’t attack, so he quickly whipped
out his camera and took pictures of it
from every conceivable
angle—even managing to
get an under-the-hood
shot! As he finally got out
of his shutter happy mode, Say Cheese! (watch that tail please!)
he let out a huge sigh and
wondered how it felt to be while the rest of our colleagues shoute
Sachin. out for Jiten, our in-house photographer
Singapore has many forms of ‘hardware’ Never one to miss an opportunity for th
Snakes at four perfect picture, Jiten clicked away as th
gadget, the island of Singapore is Our Nerul office had a surprise visit this firemen caught the unwanted visitor an
enveloped in a Digital Droolmaal fog all month from one of our animal friends. secured him into a bag.
year round. So when our Head of Writers, During the lunch hour when everyone Will the animal activists please not
Marco, found out that he had to go on a was herding down towards the canteen, a that we had bhelpuri for tea that Monda
three-day press visit to the Lion City, he six-foot long grass snake slipped out from and it contained no non-vegetarian con
quickly made a shopping list of all the the dispatch section in the basement and tent, at least none that we knew of!

Looking Within!
Ask anyone for a first impression of the peo- of personalities and how they affect a team. though it was the weekend. While there was
ple at Jasubhai Digital Media, and you will Virdi was a mostly silent observer and found a liberal dose of gyaan, there were some sur
invariable hear comments like ‘bunch of the conversation extremely interesting. But a prising revelations too. One of the exercises
youngsters’, ‘technology zealots’, even voice whispered deep inside him: “What type consisted of an exhaustive questionaire
‘rogues’. But sometimes, even as we are on am I?” Always the one to convert thought to (along the lines of the Myers-Briggs Type
a do or die mission to catch those ever-elu- action, Virdi discussed this with others in the Indicator). Almost everybody stated they
sive deadlines, deep existential questions office and seeing that quite a few were inter- were of the ‘seriously intellectual’ type (even
occur to some of us. One such question ested in knowing more, urged Louis and those who rarely let go an opportunity to
occurred to Virdi, a coordinator with our Anurag to hold a formal training session that monkey around)! All save Virdi, who meekly
Content Services team. would help people understand their entered that he was the ‘laid-back’ kind.
Before you think this is a plot for a Hindi strengths and weaknesses and use them to That was it. Now when anything goes
potboiler, lets recap a bit. Louis, head of our the advantage of the team. Thus 14 volun- awry, there’s always Virdi to put the blame
magazines & Web sites division, and Anurag, teers picked a Saturday for the personality on. Ask Virdi and he’ll tell you that’s the
the brand manager of ZDNetIndia, were hav- development camp. Everybody arrived at 9 last time he’ll ever walk the path to self-
ing an informal discussion on different types am sharp for the daylong workshop, even discovery!

137 NOVEMBER 200

arcade ■
■ backbyte

Digitawali

ILLUSTRATION: Mahesh Benkar

Your chance to
bite back!
Highlight the lighter side of computing. Mail your contributions to: Backbyte Digit,
Plot D-222/2, TTC Industrial Area, MIDC, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400 706
or e-mail us at [email protected]

138 NOVEMBER 2002