When your Windows operating system reads a file off a hard-disk, it’s reading a file stored in lots of little bits -usually 512-bit chunks in NTFS. Your operating system doesn’t always, in fact rarely does it, write to the disk putting all of the separate 512-bit chunks next to each other. Sometimes different chunks get put far away from one another, in fact. A file could end up getting spread all over the hard-disk at random.

When you run a defragmenter, it puts all those little bits of file closer together, usually consecutively, so that the heads take less time finding them. Moving the read-write heads takes time and with the electromechanical hard-drive being the slowest component and greatest bottleneck for data in the computer as it is, the last thing you want it to do is go any slower. (The standard hard-drive is the only component with moving parts: All other devices - except for fans - are solid-state.) The defragmentation process ensures that the file data is contiguous so that the head doesn’t require so much movement, and thus the read time is faster.

Flash drives don’t have a read/write head. In fact flash drives don’t have any moving parts. The flash drive’s electronics present the drive to the computer as a standard hard-drive by mimickery, but the data-storage is accomplished by so-called “flash-cells” which consist of a number of transistors each, rather than a set of spinning platters.

Defragmenting a flash drive will get you very few, if any, performance increases other than perhaps a slightly increased write-time on certain drives. As there are no read/write heads to move, there is no additional time spent retrieving data from any separate flash-cells, no matter how far apart they may be. What defragmenting will do though is wear the flash-cells out faster.

When a write is made to any given flash-cell, it causes a tiny amount of degradation in the components of that cell. This might not be true to such an extent much longer, as the underlying technology is constantly improving, but nevertheless, at present and probably for a long time into the future, it will be the case to some extent. The more you write to a flash-device, the shorter its life will be. Normal usage is OK; but it still won’t last forever. (What does?)

Regularly defragmenting it unnecessarily, however, will add many thousands of write operations whenever you do it, and might even halve its lifespan.

Defragment your electromechanical (standard) hard-drives regularly and it will improve file performance. Defragment a flash or SSD drive, though, and you’re just wearing it out for no good reason.

Since the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 there have been issues with the Adobe Flash player (currently at release 9), particularly with Flash video. What happens is that you’ll attempt to watch a video (say on YouTube) and the first 2 seconds will play and then stop. And you’re left with no choice but to restart the browser and sometimes that doesn’t even work.

There is a Flash 10 beta available right now if you want to use it. It’s recently been updated for both Windows and Mac. Personally speaking I won’t be using it because all I have to do is that if Flash bugs up on me I just go into Internet Explorer 7 and everything is okey-dokey. I figure if I want to view a Flash video that bad, going to another browser just for that video doesn’t bother me.

So if you’re a Firefox user and have been experiencing that maddening 2-second-and-stop issue, it’s not your fault. When version 10 of the Adobe Player is officially released it should resolve that issue.

There are more than a few people out there who would find it quite handy to be able to run Windows XP off a USB stick (or hard drive in a caddy). I was also interested to know if this was possible to do.

The Big Question: Is it possible?

Answer: Yes.

However it is a humongous pain in the butt to get working.

The best write-up I found on how to get XP running off a flash drive is from Ngine.de, appropriately titled How to install and run a FULL Windows XP from a USB drive. It is very thorough.

The biggest hurdle to cross is the TXTSETUP.SIF file (as well as a few INF files). What XP does is attempt to load USB stuff on boot which in effect "kills" any USB-based installation, so you have to dig into a text editor and "correct" it manually.

If you’re determined enough, you can get this to work. I was going to try this myself, but after seeing all the b.s. involved I said "Nah".

There are other guides available on how to do this (including those that recommend using BartPE), but no matter how you look at it, it’s just a long laborious process.

I only recommend trying this to those who have time to kill.

Solid State Drives (SSD) are inevitably what are going to replace our existing hard disk drives. For those not aware of what the difference is between the two, traditional hard drives have moving parts on the inside while SSDs so not. You can consider them "big flash drives".

SSD is above and beyond superior to HDD in every way except space for the time being. The biggest one you can get within a reasonable price point is 128GB for just a tick over 400 USD.

However the single largest problem is that SSDs don’t exactly "agree" with BIOSes from several manufacturers. One of the more popular drives at present is the OCZ Core Series 128GB Sata II, however the customer feedback is less than stellar on this product. Some are reporting slow access times, spotty write methods and a whole host of other bad stuff. But it also should be noted some have had no issues at all.

OCZ has been on the ball with this product (as you’ll see from the link above) and has been responding as best they can to this evolving technology, urging people to discuss the product in their forums whether you think it’s good, bad or indifferent.

For those thinking about SSD, I do recommend reading up on what people have been saying about it. It’s still an expensive tech and is a good read for those thinking about plunking down a few hundred smacks just to be on the bleeding edge, so to speak.

When the first consumer-grade portable video recording systems were introduced they were humongous and had extremely poor battery life. In addition to that they were heavy and gave you "camcorder shoulder" in short order.

As camcorders progressed in technology they started to become smaller but suffered from the same fate as their predecessors - they were stuck using linear recording mediums (VHS, Hi8, VHS-C, miniDV, etc.)

Further down the line, optical media was introduced in the form of direct-to-disc DVD both full-sized and 8cm-size.

For professional videographers, you still can’t escape tape. Not cost effectively anyway.

For everyone else, you can ditch your tapes and discs now by using a camcorder with built-in flash memory. No tapes. No discs.

Most people have seen the Pure Digital Flip camcorder. I have used one of these myself and can honestly say that yes, you will instantly love this thing compared to a traditional tape or optical media camcorder. First of all, it’s cheap (just over 100 bucks). Second, it’s stupidly easy to use. There is zero learning curve with one of these things. Third, everyone has USB and fourth (the best part), it runs on just 2 AA batteries. No need to hunt around for expensive proprietary camcorder battery nonsense.

For those interested it records up to 1 hour of video and yes it does have a zoom feature.

I know what you’re saying.

"I want HD in the palm of my hand!"

Ask and ye shall receive:

Above is the Sony Xacti HDTV tapeless camcorder. And yes it’s true-blue HD. The cost of this unit was last known to be $468. Yes, it’s a good coin for this but it is HD in the palm of your hand. Rock on, flash memory.

Flash (in my opinion the worst thing that has happened to the Internet, but that is a subject for another day) is now another vehicle for malicious software attacks. According to this article (which is highly technical) by merely visiting an site which has an infected Flash banner ad you are subject to an exploit. For an example, check out this particular case of one on USA Today’s site.

It seems to be debatable as to whether or not the latest Flash client addresses the problem (the exploit is embedded to the file on the server), but regardless the safest measure is to simply disable Flash on your browser. Using IE7Pro for Internet Explorer or Flashblock for Firefox, you can selectively enable when you want Flash content to be displayed.

Not only do we have to deal with the utterly worthless “Flash intro’s” (who watches these anyway?), but now malicious exploits. Surely something else can come along and replace Flash for the only use it has which is a web video player.