2007 Updates

New Guides Content

USB Flash Drives: not drives at all, the misnomer was gained as they replace old portable drive technology. Offering massive storage and access fast enough for boot facilities, the USB Flash Drive is arguably the best current portable RAM for PCs.

New Guides Content

Sony Memory Stick: Sony have stuck with their memory stick despite other manufacturers giving up proprietary memory card formats. Sony may be softening to other brands recently, but after almost ten years the Sony Memory Stick lives on.

xD Picture Cards: While it's clear that portable RAM formats provide the ability to store and transport any file you like, the digital camera market probably has found the greatest use for memory cards to date. So, clearly Fuji and Olympus knew exactly what they were aiming for when they got together to create the xD Picture card.

New Guides Content

Kensington Slot: As mobile devices have become more prevalent, so has mobile device theft. Mobile device manufacurers Kensington came up with a nifty solution that is now often referred to as the Universal Security Lock, the Kensington Secure Slot.

SmartMedia: With the look at feel of a 3.5" floppy disk, Toshiba released the Solid State Floppy Disk Card in 1995. With a little thought and rebranding they came up with the SmartMedia Card, but the format has long since been overtaken by other portable RAM formats.

New Guides Content

MultiMediaCard (MMC): The late 90s saw the era of solid state RAM opening up, especially when SanDisk and Siemens collaborated to produce the leaner, faster MultiMediaCard.

SSE4: In the second portable RAM article this week, a look at the offering by a major industry consortium: the SecureDigital (SD) format.

New Guides Content

Portable RAM: Various portable RAM formats now provide a stable, viable storage option for data transfer between PCs. Beginning a new and insightful series for the PCTechGuide, an overview of portable RAM technology is followed by a closer look at Sandisk's CompactFlash.

SSE4: Intel's SSE instruction set has consistently delivered enhanced multimedia performance from CPUs. With the biggest processor instruction set development in 5 years, the Penryn processor delivers vector processing at 40% greater speed thanks to SSE4.

New Guides Content

Barcelona Quad Core: AMDs first outing in to quad core architecture lags behind Intel, but boasts a native implementation that offers significant advantages. Will the Barcelona chip pick up AMDs fortunes?

Solid State Hard Drives: Solid state drives have no moving parts, no latency, and no fragmentation issues, so are faster and more reliable than traditional disk based hard drives. At last, the longstanding performance bottleneck caused by hard drives may be ended by solid state technology.

RSS Feed added

You can now keep up to date with the PCTechGuide's main site updates through an RSS feed.

New Guides Content

UMPC: UMPCs are not just mobile, they're ultra mobile. Carrying full desktop operating systems in a device little bigger than a PDA, powerful connectivity is the key to the UMPCs considerable handheld power.

GreenPower: With energy efficiency increasingly important, Western Digital are the first hard disk manufacturer to brand innovations in power saving technology.

New Guides Content

High-k Gate Dielectrics and Metal Gate Electrodes - Intel have now moved to high-k materials in their chip manufacturing process. Read this guide to learn what it means, and the advantages it brings.

New Guides Content

Core 2 Quad - The development of hyperthreaded processors has changed the way that processor power is developed to meet the inexorable demands of Moore's Law. Intel's Core 2 Quad technology gives the raw power, but needs software to catch up to be able to use it.

Penryn - High-k 45Nm die have allowed Intel to squeeze even more from their core processors.

Blog Closed:

To allow focus on the development of the site's core content, it's with a little sadness that the PCTechBlog is now closed. Interactivity can still be achieved on the site through the site's forums.

Author Submissions Opened

The PCTechGuide has now opened its doors for submissions from outside authors. Details can be found in the Submission Guidelines page.

Tutorials content updated:

A new tutorial added outlining how to set up a home Digital Music Management System. From file organisation through to music databases and MP3 players, a comprehensive plan for getting the most out of your music collection.