TECH

2 minute tech: BIOS

Sven Krumrey

Your little helper

A friend of mine who works as a computer teacher refers to the "BIOS threshold" when asked to judge the competence of his students. Those who know about BIOS („basic input/output system“) have already had deeper experience in dealing with PCs. Since a BIOS is an integral part of most computers yet unknown to many users, here's a short introduction for you.

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TECH

2 minute tech: Solid State Drive

Sven Krumrey

Open Solid State Drive

Is your PC too slow? Back in the days, you'd go for a coffee while the PC was booting up but this is 2015! With most computers, it's no longer the processor that's the performance bottleneck but the hard disk. Since conventional hard disks have their limits SSDs may prove a worthy alternative. Read on to learn about their strengths and weaknesses.

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LIFE

The struggle for survival

Sven Krumrey

Advertising can be annoying

Possibly everyone uses free, ad-based services on the Internet. Whether it's email, sports results or current news, nearly every free offer relies on ads for financing. This shouldn't be a problem, it's simple give-and-take and no-one would offer a service out of charity alone. But that's just pure theory as long as an essential element is missing: common sense. In this case that means a reasonable dose of advertising.

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BUSINESS

Manager’s Corner: Did you know different websites consume different amounts of power?

Sebastian Schwarz

This could be the way

Did you know different websites consume different amounts of power? Neither did I.

For years, one topic has been in the focus of the world: How do we reduce our enormous energy footprint in favor of our environment? The dynamics of this global issue has brought about an energy revolution with many recent useful discoveries - solar fields, electric cars and wind turbines, the latter of which can be easily spotted rising into mostly rainy skies here in the northern part of Germany by the dozen. But that's another story.

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TECH

5 forgotten Photo Commander gems

Sven Krumrey

A two minute collage

I'll let you in on a genuine Ashampoo secret: Whenever a new Photo Commander release is on the horizon, testers and technical writers sigh in unison. Because what's in store for them will be - daunting. You may feel tempted to gently stroke them on their foreheads and offer words of courage while they're hunting down bugs or come up with extensive explanations for the myriad of features in this mighty beast. Here's another confession: Aside from Nikolaus, the creator and lead developer, no-one really knows all of its features because there are just so many of them. This is why there's an awkward silence whenever someone praises a feature found in a competing product and somebody else replies: "Photo Commander had this since version 7."

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