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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TECH

Ruthlessly calculated failure

Sven Krumrey

That’s was the look I had on my face.

One day, my printer acted up. With my blood pressure spiking, I went on Google and quickly discovered that I had just been the victim of what is considered a classic error that would appear roughly after two years on the dot. I phoned the hotline and spent about 30 minutes in hold music limbo until I finally reached a noticeably tired support agent. In these moments, I like to remind myself not to blow my top but to stay calm and explain my situation with facts. Maybe it was because she was so tired but she was surprisingly blunt and honest. "The error occured in the warranty period? That's not supposed to happen!"

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