CRT & LCD

CRT and LCD are visual display units, they are also called monitors or displays. They display images generated from the video output of computer. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube and LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. The CRT is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen, they are used to create images in the form of light emitted from the fluorescent screen but the LCD is shaped into a thin panel filled with liquid crystals and arrayed in front of a light source (backlight) or reflector. CRT and LCD are different in terms of size, performance and price. I will compare them point by point.

The most notable difference is size. CRT and LCD are very different in size. This is one of the major concerns for people who want to buy a monitor. From above, the CRT contains a vacuum tube and an electron gun so it has a big size, and uses more space. However, based on its size, it is heavy. The CRT is hard to move. On the other hand, the LCD is smaller than CRT because it is replaced with liquid crystals. This makes it possible for users to have larger screens for their computers and makes it more convenient to move than a CRT. Furthermore, the LCD is light and portable.

Performance is another difference to be considered. The primary advantage that CRT holds over LCD is its color rendering. The contrast ratios and depths of colors display of CRT are much greater than LCD. Many graphic designers still use the very expensive large CRT monitors in their work because of the color advantage. The disadvantage of CRT is that it generates excess heat. On the other hand, the biggest advantage of LCD is less eye fatigue. The LCD tends to produce less eye fatigue to the user because the LCD has lower refresh rate than a CRT. The disadvantage of LCD is their fixed or native resolution. An LCD screen can only display the number of pixels in its matrix and no more or less.

Moreover, price also marks a big difference. In 1972, The LCD can cost over twice as much as a CRT. Later, the price of LCD is decreased so much and it is still more expensive than a CRT. However, it is not too hard to buy it. It is up to your requirement. For example, if you want a fresh display, you should buy the CRT because it has higher refresh rate than an LCD or if you want small and light monitor, you should buy an LCD.

In conclusion, I always spend almost all the time staying in front of the monitor so I think the LCD is better than a CRT because it looks beautiful, easy to relocate and causes less eye fatigue. I do not care too much about native resolution of LCD and there is not too much difference in price, thanks to production improvements in LCD and the reduction in the production of CRT. In my opinion, the best choice is an LCD.

Data Storage Device

A data storage device is a device for recording information. The first data storage device is floppy disk and it was released by IBM. It was popular from 1970 to the late 1990 but floppy disk has less capacity. Later, there were many data storage device with increased capacity such as CD-R, Flash drive and Hard disk drive. Now, you can store your file easier and you can choose the device that is appropriate for your file to store. So it is very convenient to store files and they are not too expensive to buy. The data storage device can be classified into CD-R, Flash drive and Hard disk drive by capacity.

The first category is CD-R. It stands for Compact Disc-Recordable but the first name is CD Write-Once. It was released by Sony and Phillip in 1988. CD-R has a storage capacity of 700 MB and it can write only one time. So, it is usually used to store files that do not have to be updated such as images, music or videos. In the present, CD-R is not popular for storing files because it has less capacity, for example, movie has at least size of 1 GB so it can not write in CD-R and another example is if you want to write music you can write a few music, per CD-R.

The second category is Flash drive. It is integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface and it is typically removable. The first USB flash drive was released by Trek Technology and IBM in 2000 and had a storage capacity of 8 MB. Nowadays, it has a storage capacity typically ranges from 512MB to 16 GB. Flash drive is suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping it readily at hand because it implements the USB mass storage device class so that most operating systems can read and write to them without installing device drivers. It is very popular because of the medium capacity and it can rewrite data so you can store files without worry to edit your files but the weak point is the flash drive has many viruses because it does not include a write-protect mechanism. Write-protection makes a device suitable for repairing virus-contaminated host computers without risk of infecting the flash drive itself.

The third category is Hard disk drive. Hard disk drive was introduced in 1953 as data storage for an IBM accounting computer. It was originally developed for use with general purpose computers. Hard disk drive is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Hard disk drive has high capacity storage between 120GB and 1 TB and also Hard disk drive can rewrite data. Hard disk drive is usually used to store a large amount of music or movies but it is too expensive so it is not as popular as its capacity.

In my opinion, I decided to buy Flash drive because it is not too big to carry and I do not have enough money to buy the hard disk drive. If I have enough money I will buy Hard disk drive because it has high capacity and it is suitable to transport files to every computer that I use.

Web Browser

The most popular activity of Computer Science student is surfing the Internet. Internet is very important and close to our life nowadays. You can find everything in the Internet such as images, music or information. You will agree with me that the Internet is very useful but the first thing you do before you surf the Internet is opening the web browser. Web browser is a software application that allows user to display and interact with texts, images or videos on the Web page. It allows you to surf the Internet. In the present, there are many web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.

The first example is Internet Explorer. This one is the most widely used web browser because it comes with Microsoft Windows. The first version of Internet Explorer was released on August 1995 with Windows 95 and the current version is Internet Explorer version 7.0. In this version, there are many features, for example, tabbed browsing which is a popular feature for web browsers competitor. Another example of feature is quick tabs. It will display a thumbnail preview of opened tabs and it can rearrange tabs by dragging and dropping them and also they improved the graphic user interface of this version too.

Another example is Mozilla Firefox. This one is a free and open source web browser and the second most popular web browser after Internet Explorer. It used to be named Phoenix but it is the same as Phoenix Technologies, so they changed it to Firebird and again it is the same as Firebird free database software project. Therefore, they changed it to Mozilla Firebird but it is still confusing with the database software name. Finally, they changed it from Mozilla Firebird to Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox has many features such as tabbed browsing, spell checker and search engine. Mozilla Firefox can run on every operating system, such as, Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux.

The final example is Safari. This web browser was developed by Apple and released on January 2003 for Mac OS. Later, it can be used in Microsoft Windows and other Apple product, such as, iPhone and iPod Touch. The features in Safari are quite similar to other web browser, such as, Tabbed Browsing, Pop-up ad blocking, Text search, spell checking and web-search box in the toolbar Google on Mac and either Google or Yahoo! on Microsoft Windows.

I do not care too much about web browser and I do not like to use tabbed browsing. I use Internet Explorer version 6.0 because I used Windows so I do not need to find other web browsers. Most of my friends use Firefox because it has add-on tools but in my opinion, it is meaningless because I just want it open the Web page without any error. That is enough for my Internet surfing.