Free Online Storage : ADrive, SkyDrive, Gmail – features, comparison and their Desktop clients.

If you are unaware or new to file sharing/storing online, the first question that will arise is “Why should I store online and how will it benefit me?”

• Whenever your local storage like  PC  Hard drive fails or external storage is damaged or lost, files stored online in some reliable servers would serve as effective backup .
• Protect your files from viruses attack.
• You can access your files anywhere , anytime in the world.
• Share files online  with your friends/Team mates for some collaborative work.
• Uploading  files like photos, documents or some daily work done  time to time  will be  fond memories of your development.

Options

So what are Options ? There are a lot of paid and free services online and I will discuss  free  storage services more than 5GB.The features of these services are discussed and compared in a table later in this article.

Using Gmail Space

The first option can be using the ~7GB Gmail inbox space as virtual Hard drive. This is accomplished by using a Firefox add –on called Gspace or a windows shell extension  named Gmail Drive.

Gspace integrates with Firefox giving a FTP kind of interface for file transaction.

This operates in four modes as explained here.

Gmail Drive Shell extension for windows makes Gmail’s Inbox space as a drive in your PC.

This storage is not legal and is accomplished by cheating Google like sending own mails with attachments to the Inbox with specific labels. This service may get terminated or may not work if Google makes technical changes in Gmail configurations.

SkyDrive

http://skydrive.live.com/

It is part of its live services and needs a live account. Though the service is from Microsoft, it  is free! and and being web based, its platform independent. So,  Linux and MAC users can also consume this “Microsoft” service for free!

 

ADrive

http://www.adrive.com/

This service from ADrive LLC., is free at basic level with a 50gb massive storage. Other paid services from this player includes higher storage capacity and many other facilities which can be compared here.

 

Feature	Gspace/Gmail Drive	SkyDrive	ADrive
Space	~7GB  (varies with Gmail inbox size)	25GB	50GB
FTP connection	No. But the interface is similar while using Gspace with Firefox	No	No. Available for paid Members
Official Desktop client	No. only 3rd party add-on/shell extension	No. Upload tool with Drag and drop facility only for IE from Microsoft	No
Account	Gmail account	Windows Live account	ADrive Registration
Folder Level Transaction	No	No	Yes
File Sharing	No	Only Public Folder	Yes, with permissions
Interface	Local. Depends on the tool used	Web. Catchy and colorful but not navigation friendly.	Web. Explorer Kind of Interface.
Reliability	Not Guaranteed
Extra Features	4 Operation modes (mentioned above)	Completely integrated with Windows Live services like Photo gallery	File searching, Zoho Editor.

 

 

 

Though these seem to be attractive, there is a major issue called Privacy. We cant just sit back and enjoy keeping our personal files somewhere in a unknown server. But every firm has its own privacy policy and can hope that they will follow it at least to cope up with emerging competitions.

Gladinet Desktop Client

http://www.gladinet.com

A decent desktop client providing cloud computing services. It supports SkyDrive, ADrive, Google Picasa, Google Docs, Amazon storage for free at basic level.

 

It creates a network drive with folders of names with services we choose. Copies files we transact to a local cache and uploads files in background. Folder level transactions are possible with this client  even in SkyDrive.Only move and cut operations are not allowed

 

Hope the article was useful!

Download Free Engineering Video Lectures : NPTEL – An IITs/IISc Joint venture

National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning – NPTEL is a joint venture of the 7 IITs and IISc, Bangalore funded by the Ministry Of Human Resource Development , Government of India.

This program is to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum based video and web courses.In the first phase of the project, content for 129 web courses in engineering/science and humanities have been developed.

This is really a boon for self learners and engineering students who have less efficient technical resources for teaching and guidance.

There are many video lectures delivered by experienced IITs/IISc lecturers which are concept oriented and are of industrial importance. For instance the Electrical and Electronic engineering branches have lectures on Embedded systems, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, VLSI design,Power electronics etc.

Details about obtaining these courses can be found here

• Individuals
• Institutions

Collaboration with Google/YouTube:

The best part of the program is if you are connected to Internet, then you can view all the courses online in YouTube. There are about 3629 lecture high quality videos online, each running from 40 to 60 minutes. Each topic has a complete set of 35 to 45 videos organized as Playlists.

Downloading these lectures

These videos can be downloaded individually from sites like downloadyoutubevideos or can be mass downloaded using software like Free FLV converter or Internet Download Manager (IDM).

I will show how to download maximum of 10 videos simultaneously using IDM. It does this by capturing series of YouTube urls from Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox (Recommended). You can buy IDM or crack it to use it as a full version.

Just load some lecture videos (max 10) continuously in a window allow them to run at least 2 to 3 seconds. After this right click in the same window select “Download FLV video with IDM”---> “Choose from 10 last requested FLV videos”.

A selection window opens and select the videos which you like to download.

Comment those videos if needed and add it to the IDM download list by pressing OK.

Downloading 10 videos simultaneously in a 2 Mbps BSNL broadband connection takes 3.5 to 4.5 hours.

Hope the information was useful!

Multi-core Processors, Difference between Core 2 Duo and Intel Dual Core

Google returns ~7,340,000 search results for “Intel Core 2 duo Dual Core difference”. None of it gives a complete or satisfied answer after reading. Most of them are forums, where people have discussed about very specific ideas about the topic. So, I thought of giving some kind of detailed but a plain explanation in my first post.

Processor

Lets first see what a processor means in a digital system. In simple tech terms, it is a collection of transistors (in millions or billions) working together embedded on a silicon chip doing a large number of mathematical calculations per timing unit (technically known as frequency of the processor). To do these calculations it consumes some amount of power and dissipates considerable amount of heat.

Multi-core Processors

Performance and speed of a processor is enhanced by increasing the embedded transistor count or increasing the frequency rating. But at higher frequencies this transistor collection consumes a lot of power and dissipate greater amount of heat making them impractical to integrate into a single chip.

A simple automobile analogy is, just doubling the horsepower in car doesn’t double its top speed! Factors like friction, wind resistance make it unfavorable.

As transistors got smaller it became possible to pack more transistors on a single chip. So, to enhance the performance, chip designers decided to be more practical by placing several processors , each operating at lower frequencies on a single chip. Thus Multi-core Processors came into existence.

Intel’s Multi-core Processors

Intel introduced its first dual core processor in 2005 based on Pentium brand named as Pentium D comprising of two dies (silicon chip), each containing a single processing core residing next to each other on a multi-chip module package. It had less efficiency suffering from high heat dissipation problems.

In 2006 it introduced its brand Core 2 processor Core 2 Duo based on Core micro-architecture.

Intel core 2 duo is the non-Pentium brand of processors with high efficiency and performance with a slightly elevated cost.

Pentium Dual core is Pentium brand low cost, relatively low performance dual core processor released by Intel in competition with AMD’s low cost dual core processors.

In terms of features, price and performance at a given frequency, Pentium Dual-Core processors are positioned above Celeron but below Core and Core 2 microprocessors in Intel's product range.

Core 2 Quad processors were also introduced later in the Core 2 series.

AMD’s Multi-core Processors

The well known Intel competitor AMD has also released its Dual-core Processors like Athlon X2 (64Bit).AMD Processors are known for their gaming efficiency due to their native graphics support from ATI.

Price

Intel

AMD

Hope I was able to give you some overview about Multi-core processors and their variants.