Q. In the next few months, my family is going to be upgrading our Packard-Bell 200 mHz computer. I am tending toward the AMD line of processors rather than the Intel chips.
Is there any real difference between the two?
I have read that the AMD chip, running at a slower clock speed, is faster than a comparable Intel.
William Raffensperger, Ottawa, Ill.
More Top Picks Chainsaw
A. I hope this is going to be good news, Mr. R., but a spate of recent developments in the microprocessor industry underscores dramatically that just about everybody in the computer industry has concluded that chip speed no longer makes or breaks decisions.
Instead of the once-familiar speed wars, America’s always-warring duo of chipmakers–AMD and Intel–now clash over issues like security, the ability to handle features like wireless Internet access and CPU overheating issues.
In broad strokes, just about everybody agrees that the industry recently passed the point where additional chip speed has very little impact on how fast a computer can do its stuff.
Whether it’s recording movies onto a hard drive or crunching the budgets for Fortune 500 companies, today’s chips running in the 3-gigahertz range all can handle the work with horsepower left over.
You clearly did some serious homework to ferret out recent benchmarking studies by hard-core techies in which the winners from AMD used Memory Absent Drivers for the basic operations known as BIOS rather than the traditional Memory Present Drivers. This usually is done by folks involved in overclocking schemes to make chips run faster than they are rated.
Comparing speed impacts of Memory Absent Drivers versus Memory Present Drivers might be likened to the impact on your Porsche’s speed if you leave a pair of pliers in the glove box or leave them in the garage.
It’s far better to focus on overall costs and what features one wants–like DVD burners and video cards and memory card readers–and let the propeller heads worry about speed issues over using the CPU’s own registers instead of dedicated BIOS memory.
In this writer’s opinion buying whatever is a bit below the hottest current model is the best strategy when shopping for machines based on AMD’s Athlon chips or Pentium 4s from Intel. These companies historically have charged several hundred dollars more for their leading-edge chip at any given time while slashing the price of the chips they replace.
Since speed is no longer the issue, it’s clearly best to set your sights at least one tick below the latest and hottest and most expensive.
Before basing your decision on speed, consider that Intel’s current top-of-the-line products–chipsets called “Grantsdale” and “Alderwood”–focus on things like maximizing digital audio and file security instead of speed.
Likewise, AMD’s biggest push is to offer 64-bit chips capable of accessing far more memory than 32-bit chips.
Finally, it has become a cliche to say this, but the only people who should care about relative speeds of new microprocessors are those involved in high-speed game playing and high-end graphics creation.
For the rest of us, computers have become akin to automobiles. They all go fast enough.
Q. How can I make a copy of a CD-ROM? I have an HP Pavilion 7855 computer and I could not find information on copying a CD–only for copying 3.5-inch floppies.
The disc I want to make a copy of is all separate photographs; no text.
Vera Green @aol.com
Thank you in advance if you can help me.
A. Your HP is getting a tad long in the tooth, but it does have both a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-R/RW burner. So your solution in this limited case is to simply put the photo disk in the DVD drive and then give its icon a right-click and select Copy.
Then put a blank CD-R or CD-RW in the burner drive and use Windows XP to open it as a writable disk. Then you can give the mouse a right-click in the window for the CD-R/RW drive and select Paste. This will copy all of the data on the disc in the DVD drive onto the blank CD. You also can simply use the mouse to paint all of the files on the CD in one drive and then drag them onto the CD-R drive.
This is not the same thing as making an exact duplicate of a CD, but only a way to save all of the data on one. Additional software is required to make exact copies of CDs, and not all CDs can be copied because some of them contain copy protection schemes. So, naturally, there are programs that often can defeat copy protection schemes, and a kind of arms race ensues between those who try to thwart copying and those who crack their efforts.
That said, Ms. G., most of us can get all of the disc duplicating tools we need from just about any of the CD/DVD burning programs available–such as Roxio Easy Media Creator, Nero Burning ROM, Sonic DVD Maker and others. All of these programs can create an exact image of a CD in what is called an ISO file and then use that image to make one or more duplicates of a disc.
Also there is a wealth of shareware programs that will create an ISO mirror of a CD or DVD and then let one burn it onto a blank disc. Some are free, and others cost in the $30 and up range. Don’t expect these programs to outwit the copy protection schemes developed by big-time media companies, but they are an excellent way to make multiple copies of things like family photo CDs and music.
You can find these programs using ISO as a keyword search at places like Download.com and Tucows.com.
Let me add for other readers that most music-playing software such as Microsoft Media Player, Musicmatch and Apple’s iTunes can be used to make copies of most store-bought music CDs simply by recording all of the songs as computer music files. You can then use the music software itself to output the tunes on a regular music CD.
Q. My last computer had Windows 95, and when working in Microsoft Word I could set the default for Page Setup so whenever I went into Word the margins, font size and bold type would always come up the same way I had set them.
On my new (eMachines) computer with Windows XP, I cannot figure out how to set these same defaults. In Word 95 there was a Default box to check. What do I do now?
As you have probably figured out by now, I am a neophyte when it comes to computers. Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated.
More Top Picks Best Climbing Helmets For Mountaineering
Melvin L. DeBroux, Kaukauna, Wis..
A. You are, indeed, asking a neophyte’s question, but I suspect that there are plenty of folks well beyond the neophyte stage who hate the default format settings that come up each time they open Microsoft Word but don’t know how to change them permanently.
I know from experience, these folks just keep on firing up Word and then click on Format in the toolbars and pick the same typeface and size they want and then click on File and Page Setup to set the margins–each and every time.
Here’s the drill to automate it, Mr. D.
Do that same old dance one more time. Then stop before typing in a single character and click on File and Save As. Look at the text entry box in the Save menu that says File Type and click on the little arrow and go down to the type called *.dot, or Document Template.
This brings up a list of files including one called normal.dot. Type normal.dot in the save box and then say OK when asked if you want to overwrite the earlier file.
This normal.dot file is where default settings are stored, and so each time Word opens it will check your rewrite to get its settings.
Anytime normal.dot is explained it is crucial to show folks how they can back out of things if they pick settings that they can’t stand and want to go back to the way Word was when it came out of the box. If you go to your new normal.dot file and rename it or delete it, Word will automatically create a new normal.dot file with the factory settings.
You can find the location of the normal.dot file by going back to the Save As menu and checking to find which folder holds it. Better still, click on Start and Search and then pick Find Files and Folders. Type normal.dot as a search term.
When it comes up put the cursor arrow over it and give a right-click and select the Rename command. Type a new name of old normal.dot and then restart Word. You’ll be back to where you started even if you hate being there.
———-
Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.