Boons and Banes of Internet

Boons:


1. Communication: a. Video Conferencing: Corporates are having their AGMs and general body meetings through video conferencing now a days. This has removed the geographical barriers and helped to cut costs and time in travel. b. Internet Telephony: This has tremendously helped to talk to your beloved ones living anywhere in the world with the help of a headphone (with mike). Now a computer can have voice chat with another computer. c. IP Phones: You install IP Phones on your internet backbone in offices in various countries and then talk at a cut throat price by dialing static IP number. No need of telephones and landlines for the purpose. d. Chat: Chat with your friends residing anywhere with the help of a PC, a messenger and internet. No cost involved. e. Email: Be it corporate of an individual, everyone lives with emails. No survival without this area of communication. f. Webcasts: Companies launch their products or conduct seminars from a single point and people all over the world can attend to it. WOW! g. Webcams: Video Cameras or webcams are being used for chat, telecast, demonstration of products or locations.


2. Publishing: a. Ebooks: who is not familiar with ebooks now a days. Websites are selling books in two versions – hard copy (costlier) and ebook (cheaper version). And beauty is that in case you buy ebook version, pay the money and instantly download the book, read and enjoy. Zero delivery period. b. Enewspapers: All newspapers – be it national or international are available on internet in real-time. as the things happen, they get published in the on-line version. c. Online albums: Your all relatives, friends can share photo albums on internet at a common place. 


3. Business: a. Banking – money transfers, payment gateways, online status of your accounts and what not. All is available at the click of a button. b. Bill alerts: You subscribe to the service and you get alerts as and when they get generated. You view your bill online and pay online. No postage, no delivery delays, no missing bills. c. Shopping: Buy anything over the internet through secure gateways, and plastic card. 


4. Career: Jobs, resume posting, resume sorting: Finding a right candidate and finding a right employer has become much easier and scope has become much-much wider. 


5. Search: You seek any information, go to a global search engine and you get that in no time. Only time you need to spend is in selecting and sorting the huge information. 


6. Storage: You get MBs and GBs of space on net servers at no cost with higher reliability in the shape of Briefcase, mails storage servers. 


Banes: 1. Pornography 2. Frauds 3. Hacking 4.  Virus, spam, fisching, worms, bugs

Improving Your Computer's Performance: Five Trusted Companions For Your PC

1. Operating System: Run your PC with latest OS be it MS, Linux or Mac. If you have a legal version, upgradations will not cost much (Linux is free but then you need to be extra smart to operate it as windows is more user friendly). Don’t forget to connect to their websites to download latest critical patches/updates. You can use auto-update feature if you are using Microsoft OS. Prefer to have a legal OS as it is the driver of your vehicle 


2. Office Suite:  Select an appropriate Office Suite based on your needs. You have a number of free Office Suites available on the net but then support and compatibility becomes a hiccup. And moreover the ease that we have with Microsoft is unbeatable. 


3. Internet: Today’s life is not possible without internet. You have to go for it for any purposes out of – chat, email, browsing, net banking, internet telephony, e-shopping etc. etc. etc. so you need to have a good powerful browser like IE or Netscape. 


4. Antivirus: A big no-no for running internet on your PC without an appropriate antivirus. You have many available over the internet for free. Online scanning also is possible but will be time consuming. A regular update and upgradation is very-very important. Never run your PC without a proper antivirus active with latest signatures/patches/updates. 


5. Email Software: If you are not worried about the time spent on internet, you can read, write your emails online without configuring any software on your PC. As these accounts will be on internet server. All your mails will reside out of your computer. This account you can have from any service provider like Yahoo, Google etc. at no cost. But if you want to download your mails on your PC, want to read them off-line, want to reply off-line then you need to have a suitable software installed in your PC. Microsoft outlook comes with MS Office. Outlook express is bundled with MS Operating System. There are plenty available on net for download at no cost but then question comes is of friendliness, reliability, usability, features…..