Question: Why does my 120 gigabyte hard drive only show up as 111 gigabytes?
Answer: As it turns out, a basic computer unit, the kilobyte has two definitions. The most accurate definition is 1024 bytes. Memory manufacturers and most others use this definition. A less-precise definition is used by hard drive makers that says a kilobyte is 1000 bytes. When you figure in the overhead that formatting adds, there's your difference.
Cool Site: www.opendns.com Last week's It's All 'Geek' To Me segment focused on how DNS is the Directory Assistance of the Internet. This week's cool site is OpenDNS.com. Like most non-gadget things we talk about here, what the site provides is absolutely free. What do they provide? They provide content filtering, can protect you from phishing sites, they can block so-called adult content sites, gambling sites, and several other types of objectionable material.
Cool Gadget: The Voice Interactive Alarm Clock � It's not Star Trek, but this $50 clock will respond to ten different spoken commands: Set Alarm, Set Time, Check Alarm, What time is it?, What is the date?, Temperature, and yes, Stop to snooze it. It answers your question vocally, and sounds good for folks who need glasses. You can use 3, triple-A batteries to power it if you'd like to take it with you, and it has a 2� LCD backlit screen. If you have trouble sleeping you can tell the clock to turn on the sounds of a brook, birds, or the ocean.
It's All �Geek� To Me: Cache � Spelled C-A-C-H-E, this term generally refers to a temporary storage area used to improve the performance of whatever is using it. Suppose you need to mow the lawn, for instance, but your mower is on the fritz, so you end up borrowing your neighbor's mower down the street. Sure, your neighbor would let you borrow his mower, but if yours is working, it's quicker to just get it out of the garage. Why? Because it's right here. It's closer at hand, you don't have to go down the street. Cache is like borrowing your neighbor's mower the day before you plan to mow. It's right there. A cache in a computer uses something fast to speed up something slower. Space on your hard drive is used to cache web pages because it's faster. RAM Memory is used to cache hard drives, and processor cache is used to cache RAM memory for the same reason.