If you're thinking of building your dream machine and calling it the computer of the century, then you may want to avoid a common judgment error made by many such enthusiasts. Many people invest large sums into the biggest and the best that money can buy when it comes to hard drives, processors, video cards and all the wonderful extras that make their computer unique, but forget to apply the same reasoning to the power supply. Unlike Frankenstein, your new baby won't jolt to life if your power supply cannot deliver the constant stream of power needed to run such an invention.

If you think about it, the power supply is one of the most important aspects of building your new computer. Without it, all of the parts are just parts and nothing more. Really, it's the equivalent of placing a 62 inch flat screen, high definition television in a home with no electricity and expecting to be able to watch the television without a problem. It won't work unless you provide the television with power. How well the television works once power is supplied depends heavily on the quality and size of the power supply.

As with all things computer (and the world, really), there are choices for power supply. You can choose linear or switching power supplies for your needs depending upon what you envision your computer to be when finished. Then, you need to consider voltage regulations and power ratings. Don't forget to include the math for ensuring efficiency, operating conditions, corrections in usage, and a backup for any power interruptions.

I know this must sound like you need an entire power plant in your home. It's not that bad and you won't need to make any additional trips to the gym to beef up in order to pick up the best quality power supply for your PC that you can. Instead, consider getting the help of a professional if this all sounds like nuts and bolts to you and not currents and waves. Often, by gaining the opinion of the local guru on computer building 101 (i.e. computer tech, or the nice guy down at the computer hardware store), you will find that your needs aren't difficult to accomplish. It's simply a matter of discovering the scope of those needs in a realistic manner that can make a difference in a computer that only looks cool and one that really is cool.

In short, consider your power supply as important as your computer's video capabilities and processor when building your dream machine. If you wouldn't skimp on having that dual core processor that's all the rave of the gaming community and a top of the line video card in order to have the most extreme graphics, then don't shortchange yourself in the department of power supply. It is your power supply that is the true heart of your computer as your computer cannot run without it. Give it a healthy heartbeat by choosing a power supply that won't need a transplant any time soon.

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Choosing a power supply is one of the most important steps when building a customized computer. Since the building of customized computers have risen in popularity due largely to the gaming community as well as computer enthusiasts, it is important to understand how to choose a power supply for the ensuing stroke of genius that is created as a portal to the Internet. Without the heartbeat of electricity, and a steady stream that can handle the power built into a custom computer, even the best designed customized computers fall into the land of permanent rest.

Linear and switching power supplies are options as well as the uninterrupted power supply variety. The choice comes down to what you need for your particular computer and the amount of voltage necessary to run your new source of pride and joy.

Linear power supply is seldom the answer for customized computer. These types of energy supply require very large transformers and are extremely heavy. Unless you are a body building champion with a need to prove yourself, linear power is probably not what you want at approximately one pound per ampere. Add to that the necessity of large heat sinks to dissipate energy loss and an efficiency of about 50%, linear power options are simply too cumbersome and inefficient to meet the needs of most home computer building purposes.

Most enthusiasts choose something in the switching power supplies category since they want a computer-not a weight lifting championship. There is higher production costs involved, but these options are lighter weight and smaller-meaning they will fit in your house. Another advantage is that these power supplies are about 70-90% efficient. Since the efficient running of your computer is generally the goal, this increase in efficiency has a big pull for power supply choice.

While this sounds confusing, it really isn't. Switching power supplies use AC voltage-120V or 220V-which is generally what a house is equipped to handle anyway. There isn't any sophisticated equipment that you have to have wired into your house for its use. The main difference in the power supply needed comes in choosing the power factor correction and not in changing your plugs and house wiring to be able to use a switching power supply.

You may, however, have to increase your breaker capacity if you already have too much depending upon them when you plug your newest creation in, but that is to be expected with anything you add that uses the electrical circuits available in the average home. Another necessity is protecting your computer from power surges with a properly designed surge protector. Otherwise, there isn't much you have to do to prepare for your power supply choice.

If you are still confused, simply call up your local computer store and ask. Many of the employees in the stores can help you decide and find what you need. Always consider asking a professional computer tech who has experiencing in networking and other hardware areas of computers for the added security of getting the correct information and helpful recommendations that can make your experience with powering your computer an enjoyable one.

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You can help the environment by making one simple decision. By going green with your computers. This is done by choosing notebooks computers that are environmentally friendly and long on charge. New "green laptops" take the idea of an environmentally friendly notebook computer even further. They are smaller than other notebooks, last longer on a charge, and comply with most environmental regulations. These ultraportble, small footprint, lighter weight notebooks are inherently "greener" than heavier, larger footprint products for a few reasons: They are designed to deliver the desired performance while consuming fewer materials for manufacturing and less energy for shipment and distribution. Packaging requirements are also reduced, saving materials and energy. Laptops don't use as much power as a desktop, mostly because the processor is only drawing about 35W or less, compared to about 65W or more for a desktop CPU. The added benefit is that your electrical bill won't be as high either.

Less Hazardous Components

Although notebooks are typically much more energy efficient than desktops. They are, however, no greener than desktops in other regards. They typically contain the same hazardous components, and they are not easily recycled. However, a few "greener" notebook computers are now on the market.

Lenovo's Thinkpad X300 is the company's first EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Gold certified notebook. Only 15 notebooks have achieved this rating to date. The X300 uses mercury free LEDs to illuminate its display. This saves energy, and allows for a thinner display. It uses a solid state drive, which is much lighter, more reliable and faster than a conventional hard drive. It also contains a low voltage processor and has improved "battery stretch" software for energy savings. It meets the Energy Star 4.0 criteria and is 25% more efficient than Lenovo's previous generation notebooks. The packaging materials for the X300 are 90% recyclable, and the use of toxic materials such as cadmium, lead, and arsenic have been reduced.

The MacBook Air is one of Apple's greenest computers. The Air's display was the first from Apple to be mercury and arsenic free. The all aluminum case was also a good choice as aluminum is easily recyclable and highly desirable by recyclers. The Air qualified for a Silver EPEAT rating (all the circuit boards are bromide and PVC free). It's also Energy Star 4.0 certified. On PC Magazine's energy consumption tests, the 14 Watts it produced while idle is consistent with Energy Star's 14 Watt (and under) requirement. The reading was taken while the system was running Leopard after 15 minutes of idle time. You can get the Macbook Air fitted with a 64GB solid state drive, which will further reduces its power requirements. Apple paid attention to the retail packaging of this machine, and reduced it by 50%.

Green Computing Is Here To Stay

Any way you slice it, green computing is here to stay. Laptops will get more efficient, smaller, and safer for the planet. EPA estimates that in the next five years purchases of EPEAT registered computers could reduce hazardous waste by 4 million pounds and save enough energy to power two million homes.

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There are lots of different ways of making money online, but one often overlooked is making money through domain names themselves. The domain name is the address of the website - for example Microsoft.com, or coca-cola.com.

Domain names are commodities like any other, and so are valuable and tradable. These two examples given are trademarked, and so are valuable for that reason in itself, but there are many generic domain names which still have great value.

An extreme example is diamond.com, which recently sold for $7.5million. Obviously, not all domain names fetch that sort of money, but on a more down to earth level, there are lots of domain names which have some value.

So, how do you actually make money from domain names? There are 3 ways to generate income.

1. Parking the domain, and using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising

Parking is a very simple strategy. It relies on natural traffic from people who just take a chance that there's a site called, for example,'florist.com', or books.com, and type it into their browser.

If there is, and it's yours, you'll get that natural traffic, or 'type-in traffic' coming to your site. About 10 to 20 percent of Internet searches worldwide are done this way, so that's adds up to a lot of traffic every day. Park your domain name at a domain parking network, and all this natural traffic will be sent straight to a site full of relevant pay per click ads, and that's where your money comes from.

2. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketing can be very profitable if you have natural traffic, but here you have a slightly more active role than in PPC Parking.

Rather than having adverts placed for you, you sign up to affiliate programmes. You, as an affiliate, then advertise other peoples' products and for each actual sale, you get paid a percentage of the sales proceeds. Your share will vary a lot from one product to another, but some pay up to 75% commission. A good starting point is clickbank.com.

Of course, you can always sign up to place pay per click ads on your affiliate site as well.

3. Buying and Selling Domain Names

This strategy probably requires the most time and effort, but it can be the most lucrative. Domain names are the 'real estate' of the Internet. Being able to locate a website 'store' on a prime domain name that gets natural traffic is like having the best spot in every high street.

It is difficult to get the very best spot (most of them are gone), but you'll still be able to find a lot of lower value domains, and many of them will be worth something to someone. In the meantime, you can increase the value of the domain using the first 2 strategies.

If you hold on to a domain for some time, you can develop it and make money from affiliate links or PPC parking. This revenue shows a potential buyer how desirable it is, putting you in a stronger negotiating position. Higher traffic volumes to any particular domain will create higher earnings, and therefore make the domain more valuable.

A domain name business can be very profitable, provided you pick the right domain names, and if the above strategies are implemented correctly.

Ethernet was developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs with Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson in the early 1970s. Xerox filed a patent application for Ethernet in 1975. Today, Ethernet is based on IEEE standard 802.3 (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). Metcalfe left Xerox in 1979 and founded 3Com to promote local area networks and personal computers. He persuaded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Intel to work together with Xerox to promote the DIX (Digital/Intel/Xerox) Ethernet standard. Ethernet is named for the invisible, massless substance that 19th century scientists believed filled the universe. Ethernet was originally based on the same rules as those for polite conversation. Each computer wanting to transmit data waits until there's a lull in network traffic before attempting to transmit its data. That technology was called CSMA/CD for Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Detection and used coaxial cables as a transmission medium. Today, Ethernet uses full duplex transmission over unshielded twisted pair copper cables or fiber optic cables with a system of hubs and/or switches.

Ethernet operates at layer two of the OSI reference model. Layer two, also known as the Data Link Layer, is subdivided into the Logical Link Control (LLC) layer and the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. Ethernet nodes use a globally-unique 48-bit address called the MAC address to communicate within a network. Datagrams at layer two are called frames. The frame structure used by modern Ethernet is the same as that used by earlier coaxial-cabled Ethernet networks, thus providing a level of backwards compatibility.

The original Ethernet operated at a speed of three megabits per second. Today, typical transmission rates for Ethernet are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 1000 Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet). 10,000 Mbps (10 Gigabit Ethernet) is now starting to emerge. Faster data rates are always under development.

Ethernet Cable Standards

10-Base-2, also known as thinnet, uses coaxial cable, is limited to 10 Mbps, and a maximum segment length of 185 meters. 10-Base 2 is falling into disuse due to the lower cost and greater simplicity associated with UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cabling.

10-Base-5, also known as thicknet, uses coaxial cable, is limited to 10 Mbps, and a maximum segment length of 500 meters. 10-Base-5 is rarely seen anymore.

10-Base-T uses unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable over a maximum of 100 meters (328 feet) at a data rate of 10 Mbps. 10-Base-T uses only two of the four wire pairs in the cable.

10-Base-FL uses fiber optic lines up to 2000 meters with a maximum data rate of 10 Mbps.

100-Base-TX uses UTP cable over a maximum segment length of 100 meters with a maximum data rate of 100 Mbps. 100-Base-TX also uses only two of the four wire pairs in the cable.

100-Base-FX uses fiber optic cable over a maximum segment length of 2000 meters with a maximum data rate of 100 Mbps.

1000-Base-FX uses fiber optic cable over a maximum segment length of 2000 meters with a maximum data rate of 1000 Mbps (one gigabit per second).

1000-Base-TX uses UTP cable cable over a maximum segment length of 100 meters with a maximum data rate of 1000 Mbps (one gigabit per second). Unlike 100-Base-TX, 1000-Base-TX uses all four wire pairs in the cable.

Copper Cable Categories

Although there are a total of nine categories of unshielded twisted pair (UTP) copper cable, there are really only three that you're likely to encounter in your local area network. The others are either obsolete or designed for use in backbone networks. The three categories are:

Category 5e: Provides performance of up to 100 MHz, and is frequently used for both 100 Mbit/s and Gigabit Ethernet networks.

Category 6: Provides performance of up to 250 MHz, more than double category 5 and 5e.

Category 6a: Provides performance of up to 500 MHz, double that of category 6 and is even suitable for 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks.

What should you use in your network?

Build your networks with the fastest cable you can afford. Your bandwidth demands will increase over time and retro-fitting your cable plant is disruptive, time-consuming, and expensive.