The whole market is shifting and just as everyone is thinking of getting ahead in the tech race, why would anyone assume that Samsung will stop. Recently the company acquired a new company called Proximal Data, which is a software developer related to the server market.
Proximal was one picked for the honor by Samsung’s ownership, because the software is unique in the way it caches Input/Output in the virtual part of the server and thus helps in boosting the SSD market response. Seems samsung is really excited to earn its name in the solid state device market along with Servers.
All the other financial details of this deal were kept private. Proximal which is centrally based in San Diego, California has really developed something new here. According to a product briefing, the software works in collaboration with other server virtualization softwares like the VMware. Its AutoCache service program attatches itself into the softwares and keeps a constant eye on all the input and output. Out of these, the most used ones are cached directly in the local PCIe flash card or the SSD, to provide faster access to data.
But jst doing tht is not enough. Now the hot I/O are stored, there is the need of an intelligence embedded in the circuitry to read and thus provide the server with required data streams directly from cache without any storage access permissions.
CEO of Proximal Data, Rory Bolt is taking the high road with this deal as he positively hopes that the this deal will enhance the Autocache software in the future along with more products on the enterprise storage side. Rory is a big name in the storage and software market, as he has been previously involved in three startups including the enterprise class data protection software company named Avamar technologies, sold to EMC in 2006.
There is no doubt that this deal with help Samsung expand its SSD business since the software mainly addresses to the I/O Bottleneck problems which is a very big problem in virtual server environments. AutoCache very efficiently manages all the cache I/O with minimizing the use of Guest OS resources, which is really good thing in the business. Proximal works with standard flash cards or SSD in the virtual servers such as Microsoft Hyper-v or VMware ESXi.
This is not allegedly the first time that Samsung has applied the same strategy as other tech giants are using like Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. which simply includes buying out the companies and services who could be used for company’s future. Samsung bought “Nvelo”, another company based in Santa Clara, California in 2012 which is specialized in SSD caching and for the better part of the year all its new SSD have been using its technology.
For Samsung, as the history shows, all the other software seem like a big key factor in differentiating which company is better than others, as basically Samsung belongs to the hardware market, and yet the company is also focusing at the same time on newer chip level technologies.
It even made it clear that they have started the mass production of its 3 dimensional vertical NAND flash memory to be used in the SSDs, which provided much higher storage density (32 vertically stacked cells) almost up to a total of 128 GBs per chip.
Awesome! seems not that much of a surprise with the way the company is looking forward to newer and newer technologies. What comes out of this new deal, time will sure show us, till then Good luck to Samsung.
Share what you think about this new advancement, we are eager to hear. Comment below or post at www.facebook.com/digitfreak
Today anonymity is the rational factor — there is no such thing as 100% privacy on internet. People like Edward Snowden and Jullian Assange has warned us about the current privacy state of a normal person and what “Privacy” actually means to our country.
If someone is monitoring your every move, you must take the primary precautions to get you off the radar. There are multiple methods that makes sure you stay off the grid, but not all of them are equally effective. Also, it should be noted that efficiency of a given method varies according to the service provider and the way you implement them.
For example, if you are using a VPN service from Provider X and Provider Y – you may end up with different service quality and most importantly, the security of your identity over the internet. As mentioned earlier, not all service provides are honest and give you the total value for money.
You don’t need to be worried about any fraudulent websites, because we constantly test these websites and review their services so that you don’t end up being one of their victims.
By now most Internet users are well aware of the fact that pretty much every step they take on the Internet is logged or monitored.
To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping. For instance, you may live in San Francisco, but with a VPN, you can appear to live in Amsterdam, New York, or any number of gateway cities.
We reviewed a popular VPN provider “VPN4ALL” – which offered tunneling your data through their secure military grade network and offering the anonymity of your IP address, both on your computer and mobile phones.
We also got our hands on the Smart DNS service “Unotelly” – which effectively unblocked all the websites on the internet, which couldn’t be accessed otherwise, due to restrictions incorporated by different countries.
Both of the services mentioned above are effective and secure. Smart DNS is fairly new technology, which is capable of unblocking websites, that is inaccessible otherwise. Whereas, VPN is the masking service which hides your original IP address, which is almost untraceable. You’ll usually have to subscribe to two different service providers if you want both of these services (VPN and SmartDNS), specially because popular websites like hulu.com started blocking all the IP addresses registered by these VPN service providers.
What if you can have both of these services under one roof? Yes, the VPN company that we are going to review in this article does exactly that. CactusVPN is one of the emerging company that I came across, when I was searching for the new VPN service providers with good reputation. Usually, new VPN companies provides better service because they have less crowded servers – which is why I always subscribe to these new companies to avail the best service quality while its still available.
I know cactusVPN is a established company and thousands of users are being benefited by their quality service, but despite of that they never clog their servers to overcapacity. I noticed unnoticeable speed drop while using either VPN service or Smart DNS service.
Lets jump to the in-depth review of the company and my experience with their services:
How I found CactusVPN:
When I first searched for a new and emerging vpn service providers, I got a list of dozens of websites. Most of them were established and most popular companies, while others were a internet buzz. I already used many of them, but I wasn’t so pleased with their services. I was looking for a new VPN company, because they are the one who has less crowded servers and thus, providing faster internet speed than its competitor.
CactusVPN is not actually a new company. It was established in 2012 and it has thousands of subscribers, who are satisfied with the service they provide. Given that other top VPN companies has been around since a decade now, we can obviously keep the CactusVPN under the “newbie” category. I was little confused, if I should spend my hard earned cash on a comparatively new company but, I can assure you it was one of the best thing my money was spent on. I can confidently use their service for my subscribed period, which is “1 Year.”
I quickly went to their website, to see how good they actually are. I was about to subscribe to their annual plan, but roaming through their website I picked up on their Customer reviews. I was amazed to see that most of them were positive reviews but, there were some negative feedback as well.
Some customers complained about the speed drop when connected to CactusVPN server, while most of them stated that the service was perfect and delivered the expected quality of service. The speed variation may occur depending on how far you are from the servers. The VPN service cannot be same, depending on the geographical variations.It is true that you cannot figure be 100% sure if they are actually the genuine comments. There is only one way to find out — “Test it yourself!” Don’t worry, I got you covered here. I went straight up and registered to their service for 1 year.
Registration:
CactusVPN is simple and robust service that provides traditional VPN mechanism to hide your online identity and keeps your “privacy” safe from the intruders. The first thing you would need is to get an account on their website. The registration process is simple and you won’t find any hassle while performing it. To make things clear, it is not a free service — you need to subscribe on the monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. (Register here).
Plans and Pricing:
CactusVPN offers several exciting packages to choose from. You’ll find that they sort their subscription options based on the country their servers are located. For US, UK and NL servers, it’s $4.99/mo each. You can go for any of the package, based on your personal preference and why you want to get a VPN service at the first place. If you want to unblock websites based in US, you would go for “US VPN,” if it is something related to UK or NL, you would go for other packages.
NL VPN package is quite popular along with US VPN, because CactusVPN allows torrent downloads over p2p network on NL severs only. If you are looking for a VPN service providers mainly because you want to unblock certain websites, you should go for their SmartDNS service. It unblocks dozens of websites, including popular US and UK based websites – Netflix, Hulu, Spotify etc.
There is a special package which includes US, UK and NL VPN servers + Smart DNS service all packed in one plan. The VPN+Smart DNS services costs $6.99/mo and if you ask me, it is total value for money. I have been using this package since 15 days now.
If you want to browse internet anonymously, but want to unblock websites as well — you don’t have to lookout for two different service providers for VPN and smart DNS service. You can simply opt for their combined package, which is designed for users like us.
Moving forward to the registration of the account, you will be prompted to choose the billing cycle during the registration process. There is 4 billing cycle – Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually and Annually. The company accepts almost all possible digital transaction methods. It is often very difficult for non-US resident to make online transactions outside their country. Fortunately, unlike other VPN companies CactusVPN is partnered with many payment gateways other than paypal and general credit card payments, like —CashU, Alipay, Webmoney, Yandex.Money, Boleto Bancario, and Qiwi. If you live in any country where cashU is available, I’m sure you already know how this works. If not – it’s really simple and you can find out how to use it on their websie.
Here are the lists of payment options available on their website:
Credit Card – All over the world
PayPal – 193 countries and teritories
Alipay – China
Webmoney – Russia
Yandex.Money – Russia
Boleto Bancario – Brazil
Qiwi – Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Romania, Panama, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, Vietnam, Argentina, Colombia, Serbia, Latvia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
cashU – Middle East and North Africa region
After successful payment, they sent several emails, which includes — payment confirmation, welcome email and my account details. There are 2 methods you can use to implement the anonymity on your system — manual implementation, or software based implementation. The account details I received, mentioned the easiest way to access their service, which turned out to be their VPN software.
Downloads:
I found account details in my email, which helped me log into client area. You’ll find details about your subscribed package and license key in your account. The email sent by them has full detailed information about the service and how to use it.
You can download the setup files and android application on their download page.
Using CactusVPN software:
The setup process is anything like installing other software — you just need to agree to the terms, click “next” several times and “Finish” at the end. There nothing you will have to take care of while installing the software. When installation completed, the VPN software will initialize. Click Yes, if prompted for administrator authorization.
You can manage your VPN as well as Smart DNS service through single software, which is very convenient and easy to use. The CactusVPN software is really easy to use and hassle free.
There are two tabs for VPN and Smart DNS, which is used to manage or connect to the service you need to use. If you subscribed for VPN+Smart DNS package, you can use either of the service at a time. The account details are provided in the emails sent by the company, when you first registered on the website. You can also find these details in client area when you sign in to their official website.
Please Note that Login details for client area and VPN service are different. Also, to access Smart DNS service you must have a unique key to login to the client area. You can find all these details in the client area.
VPN Service:
To access VPN service on the CactusVPN software you have to provide username and password. These information can be found on your Client area, as shown in snapshot above. Once logged in, you’ll be greeted by a sleek user interface, which will help you secure your internet connection and flip off intruders and snoopers.
Since, I subscribed for all three servers, I can connect to any one of them. To test our website accessibility, I connected to the US server and tried to access hulu and Netflix. I could easily use these websites, regardless of my geographical location.
Maybe a late launch into the market has helped them understand the issues and pitfalls faced by existing VPN clients while accessing blocked content over the net. This is clearly evident in the way the CactusVPN platform runs and works.
As is the case with other VPN service providers, CactusVPN offers PPTP, SSTP, L2Tp/IPSec and OpenVPN security protocols. No surprises here, but what is outstanding to note is that CactusVPN has gone ahead and implemented a new VPN protocol.
The SoftEther VPN protocol is new in its concept and offers high speed connectivity over extra layers of security. SoftEther VPN protocol is only offered by a handful of VPN providers, and CactusVPN is one among them. Unfortunately, you cannot implement the softEther technology using their official software. If you want to use the latest softEther protocol to secure your network, you have implement it manually. To help you do so, there is a knowledge base that outlines the detailed step-by-step information to implement the protocol on your system.
There are also a handful of settings, which comes really handy while using the software to connect to the VPN servers. You can manage the startup behavior and connection settings on this tab, which governs the behavior of the software under these conditions.
The truly useful feature of the software is the new revolutionary App Killeroption, which is built into the application. You can add the software on this tab, which makes sure that the software included here are terminated when connection to VPN server drops due to some reason. The CactusVPN application will terminate the software included in this list and restart them once reconnected to the server. This is really useful feature for those who take security very seriously.
It is true that it is only a matter of time, when other VPN companies will implement the similar feature to their software as well. But, until then CactusVPN is one of the first company to introduce the App killer to protect you from any possible security exploits.
Speed is another feature that truly works in favor of CactusVPN. Time and again, we have faced streaming issues with various VPN service providers. We couldn’t really complain about the loss of speed, because we understand that speed and bandwidth will be lost while rerouting traffic through different servers located around the world. But CactusVPN has given us what we had always hoped.
Instead of the standard 40-80% customary drop in available ISP speed with other VPN companies, CactusVPN was able to tap into almost 80-90% of the available ISP speed. Even we were surprised to find this was possible. This ensured that all streaming media could be viewed without trouble.
CactusVPN also offer unlimited bandwidth across the board, and there are no bandwidth restrictions. Good speed and unlimited bandwidth mean users with P2P traffic preference will certainly choose CactusVPN over other service providers. This does have its own disadvantages, as the NL server faces a few serious downtime issues, and at peak hours, there are issues of server outages. This trouble is not really that prevalent in the servers from US and UK. Adding a few servers will certainly solve this issue.
SmartDNS:Using smart DNS to unblock websites is a noob friendly process – you just need to provide the unique key you received after subscribing for the service and then you can enable smart DNS service from the sleek interface. There is nothing much here — it is more like a connect and play kind of thing. On settings tab, you can change the website region to be blocked. For instance, if you want to unblock UK websites, you need to select UK from the drop down menu.
Smart DNS is comparatively new technology, which is unused to unblock website by changing the default DNS provided by your ISP, which makes your internet connect appear as the one of those country you are trying to access the website from.
Customer Support:
This is the area I would say is prompt and user friendly. I faced some issues while using their VPN and SmartVPN service. First, I couldn’t Unblock hulu.com using their VPN service, as hulu detected my VPN IP address and blocked the access to the website. It turned out that you can only access hulu and hulu plus on their “Los Angeles” server.
It is not something you should be really worried about. You can access all other websites on any US servers. Hulu.com has been blocking the anonymous IP addresses recently and they implemented the script that detects the VPN tunneling.
Second, I couldn’t get Smart DNS working on my computer. The customer support team asked for the log that you can save within the software they provided and within few minutes they came to the conclusion that my ISP is using transparent DNS, which prevents us to use any other DNS other than default one implemented by the ISP.
On their suggestion I tested the service on different ISP and I could connect to the DNS service without any problem.
During the resolution period, I found the customer support to be prompt and friendly. They always tried to help me as much as possible, which gave you an expression that you mean something to them.
Speed Test:
I tested my internet connection before using the CactusVPN and after connecting to their US, UK and NL servers. The result was really impressive and there were minimal speed drop compared to other VPN services I used. If we had to give some sort of stars or ratings, we would give them 8/10 for fabulous speed. Here are the test results:
1. Before Connecting to CactusVPN service (My normal Speed):
As you know, DigitFreak has been and always will be the supporter of p2p Community. Torrent downloads has been a real concern recently, specially when agencies like NSA and PRISM are tryng to monitor your every move. There is no privacy on the internet anymore. I was little concerned about the copyright issues and how the company will comply with the government, when they ask for their customers details. So I went forward and asked them directly about these points of concern. Here are the reply, that I received from their end:
1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?
For our VPN and Smart DNS users we keep only connection logs* for 3 days for troubleshooting. But we assure you:
we do not track and do not know about what you’re uploading/downloading while using our services, and there are no logs including this information;
we don’t know or register sites you are visiting;
we do not track which applications you use.
All our customers personal data is totally confidential and is not shared, shown, used or given to any other party under no condition and no exceptions.
* Connection logs is information about your connection time and does not contain anything about what kind of traffic did you do and what did you visit.
2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?
Our company is based in Republic of Moldova as it offers pretty good level of Internet security and nice business opportunities. We respond to subpoenas, court orders or legal processes which require us to disclose information. But as we don’t keep the logs there is no much we can disclose.
3. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?
We send them a standard reply that we cannot identify the client who downloaded the torrent as all our clients share the same ip.
4. Do you support p2p protocol transfer? If no, why? If yes, how it can be accessed and what security mechanism you have in place to protect your customers?
We allow torrents downloading only on our NL servers. If you use P2P applications with our service on US or UK servers you will be warned and if you continue to ignore our TOS we reserve the rights to suspend your account without any refund. CactusVPN offers unlimited bandwidth across the board, and there are no bandwidth restrictions. Good speed and unlimited bandwidth mean users with P2P traffic preference will certainly choose CactusVPN over other service providers. we have an app killer which shuts down any software you choose when the VPN connection drops.
5. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service?
Never happened something like that before.
6. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
OpenVPN and Softether VPN protocol.
7. You Emphasize on SoftEther protocol. Can you explain how a normal user can be benefited by this protocol and what it really means for end users when security and anonymity is concerned.
At this moment you can set up this protocol just manually. We have tutorials for that. The real advantage of this protocol is that it is not only as safe as open VPN but also very fast and stable.
Verdict:
The simple and robust service provided by them works well on windows and android atmosphere. Both platform has simple user interface and lets you switch between VPN and unprotected connection easily. You can access restricted and geographically blocked internet services within minutes — protecting your online identity.
This is a no-brainer. For under $5 and with an all-inclusive package available, this is certainly something that will get all the anonymous web users excited. It is true that this small fee cannot guarantee your 100% security over the internet, but it is definitely a concrete wall infront of the intruders to break into your house of sensitive information.
It isn’t as if CactusVPN were conservative with their features. There are unique and standard features on offer, and for this price, CactusVPN is a good choice. We can certainly ignore a few shortcomings, and seeing the way CactusVPN are making changes to their services, we expect most of the issues to be sorted out at the earliest.
If you are looking for the anonymous and secure internet access, you should go for it.
HP released a new series of laptops that comes in between the ultrabooks and Notebooks. The new design is not too slim as an ultrabook, but it doesn’t come any closer to the Notebook when it comes to the thickness. Hardware configuration and build quality seems to be value for money, but are we looking at the best buddy in the category? Lets find out.
Build Quality
When we first grabbed HP Pavilion 15-no12TX (Part No. – F2C09PA) out of the box, we were really amazed to lay our eyes on the slim build of the laptop. It is fairly slim for the mid-range category and certainly isn’t too bulky or thick. The laptop still weighs 2.28 Kg, which is slightly heavier than other laptops in this price range (for eg. – Dell Inspiron 15R 5521 which is 60g lighter), but I guess it isn’t that significant.
The mineral black lid with horizontal brush pattern dominates the plastic case, which doesn’t feel cheap. The laptop is firmly built and features some design improvements over the previous HP pavilion series. The new batch of laptops by HP are sleek and beautiful.
The palm rest area and polycarbonate casing along the display bears the black horizontal brush pattern that we saw on the back panel. I really like how HP pavilion is built and packed with premium casing.
The laptop appears to be a rectangular slab, which feels good to work on. The corners are slightly curved with silver bezel at the sides and it looks sleek and beautiful. You might not feel the difference in the images, but, believe me, it is one of the thinnest mid-range laptops. The nonvisual parts (rear, front and back) of the laptop is plasticky and it feels cheap, but again they did well at the sections where you spend your most of your time.
I know, nobody actually care how their laptop appears at the back, just like the rear of your Brand new Television. — You got to admit that HP has really worked on every aspect of its new Pavilion Series.
DigitFreak Rating: 8/10
Hardware and ports
HP pavilion 15 e012TX (believe me I hate it to call it by alpha-numeric code myself), is packed with 4th Gen core i5 4200U processor, which is clocked at 1.6 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.3 GHz, which is optimized for performance.
It has 1.00 TB SATA Hard disk Drive with max 5400 RPM (could be 7200 RPM). The read-writes speed when we copied/moved the files from one partition to another is really great considering the lower RPM (thanks to the Intel Rapid Storage Technology) — We got average 50MBps for the transfers within HDD.
The laptop sports 4GB DDR3 RAM and 2GB Nvidia 740M graphics card out of the box, which is sufficient to play high end games on your system. It can handle the multitasking pretty well, without stressing your processor for post calculations.
It has HP TrueVision HD webcam for video conferencing or video call with built in mic. The test shots from the webcam was considerably good enough and video output was bright and clear during our test call.
The gadget has an awesome port management, which is distributed at the side (left and right) panels. Everything is squeezed at these two side panels and you won’t find anything on the rear or front side panels.
The Gadget features SuperMulti DVD RW Drive with Dual layer support with 8x Read/Write speed. The DTS Sound+ produces High Quality audio and appears to be loud enough for entertainment purpose. The dual speakers boosts the sound output and provides considerable volume for usual requirements.
It has basic/standard communication ports – Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth v4.0.
It has 1xUSB 2.0 and 2xUSB 3.0, RJ45 LAN, 1xHDMI port, 1xVGA port, Multi-Card slot and 1x Headphone out/Microphone-in Combo Jack.
There are two USB ports on the left panel and one USB port on the right. I felt that there should be one more USB port because if you are using one of the two USB ports on the left, you end up with the other one unusable as there is very dramatically less gap between the ports. But, I guess you can still manage to carry out your work just well with two USB ports at a time.
DigitFreak Rating: 7/10
Keyboard and comfort
The laptop has standard Island keyboard, that you can find in any modern laptop. The chicklet keys are plus feature because it is really helpful for cleaning and maintaining the latoptop’s keys. I am composing this article on this laptop and I never felt any discomfort or noticed any misplaced keyword. The key spacing is perfect for both small fingers and a fat one.
You might find the navigation keys a little awkward because the up and down keys are one single key split into two. If you are a gamers you better stick to the A,W,S,D key system for navigation while playing the game.
This is the keyboard layout you will find in any new HP laptops. The HP Envy series has the same keyboard layout and it is 25% cheaper than them. The keys are well spaced and feel comfortable while typing. The only thing that I wished there should have been being a — backlit keys. If you are like me, who prefer to work at night – then you might wanna consider a better alternative that offers backlit keyboard, Otherwise it should be fine for general usage.
The Multitouch gesture touchpad is real wonder, You can pinch to zoom, scroll pages at the edge, slide page with three fingers and zoom-in ot zoom-out using two fingers. — but, the awesomeness ends at the software tweaks, I find the touchpad in-resposive at some points making, while trying to move the cursor to small distances. If I swipe the touchpad quickly, it would response just fine – but it is not the same when I try to make little movements.
By turning off “palm-Check Enhacned” and decreasing the pointing sensitivity in synaptics touchpad properties, I was able to sort the issues.
I am using this laptop since last 8 days and it always felt perfect for general usage. The display is bright enough for both indoors and outdoor usage. HP Pavilion 15-n012TX sports 15.6-inch HD BrightView Backlit Display with 1366×768-pixel resolution. We cannot expect Full HD display for the mid-range segment, but you don’t need to be worried about it, you can carry out your personal affairs pretty well.
It has Intel HD Graphics 4400 for desktop usage and usual software rendering. It is powerful enough to obtain the best output for display while you are not playing games or carrying out heavy graphic hungry tasks.
The display is bright enough to be used under the sunlight and looks good at 10-30% brightness indoors. We didn’t experience and issues with the screen brightness while working on it. Playing games on the big screen is fun and it performed well.
HP bundled 2GB DDR3 dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 740M graphics card for casual gaming needs. You can play almost all current and upcoming modern games without any issues. The only things that I noticed are Laptop heating issue — Laptop gets pretty heated if you play high-end games. I had to use the cooling pad to play Crysis 3 and Need For Speed Rivals at the moderate settings, otherwise you will notice gaming lag due to high core temperature.
I installed additional 4GB RAM to measure the performance of the system while playing the game — it turns out that the system handles games pretty well on extended RAM as well as the default configuration.
You need to manually tweak your on board graphics card and dedicated graphics card because they are initially optimized for a balance between the battery life and performance.
HP Pavilion 15-n012TX comes bundled with Latest Microsoft Windows 8 Operating system and HP software goodies. The system is stable and OS works perfectly all right with the system configuration. HP default goodies makes sure that all the hardware are aligned properly for best performance.
HP offers automatic system backup and restore points — which means you can restore your laptop to the original state without reformatting your laptop from the scratch. You just need to follow the Windows 8 System Troubleshooting options and you can re-install Windows 8 on your system without any external setup.
It’s also worth noting that this laptop comes without too much bloatware which manufacturers usually fill their machines up with. I uninstalled Norton, a games app & was good to go.
If you are not so intended to use Windows 8 on the laptop, you can switch to Windows 7 or other operating system you prefer. Just make sure you get all the drives and necessary software for the operating system. I installed Windows 7 on the Laptop and searched for all the Drivers on the internet and everything went perfectly smooth.
Windows 8 is not bad either, specially if it is your first personal computer. You will find Windows 8 little more easier to use, but advanced users still prefer windows 7 because they know every bit of it.
DigitFreak Rating: 8/10
Verdict
HP Pavilion 15-n012TX is packed with the best hardware configuration one can have for this price range. The 4th Gen processor consumes less power, which provides good battery backup (up to 5 hours with minimum brightness).
The display is bright enough, 4GB RAM and 2GB dedicated Nvidia Graphics card ensure optimal gaming experience. HP manages Windows 8 with it’s software goodies, which provides smooth transition and makes you like your new laptop even more.
Laptop’s cooling system is very effective — thanks! to the HP Coolsense technology, you won’t notice any heating issues while using it for hours. It get little heated when you play games and you will have to use the cooling pad to play high-end games effectively.
The laptop is good at delivering performance and peace of ming when we talk about multitasking and high end tasks that requires high-end hardware configuration. 1.00 TB Internal Hard Disk read/write speed is a breeze and manages files pretty well.
The material used in laptop’s external body components doesn’t feel cheap and appears to be durable for daily usage. The only drawback we noticed is its touchpad and USB ports being too close to each other. There is no separate Mic-in and Line-out ports and there is no VGA port.
For Rs 45 to 50K, this is the best laptop you can have among any other premium brands. It is a value for money. The only competitor of this Laptop in Home brand is HP Envy 15-J049TX, which costs more than 60K.
Overall Rating: 8/10
In the Box
Sales Package
Laptop, Battery, AC Adapter, User Guide, Manuals and CD
General
Brand
HP
Model Name
Pavilion
Lifestyle
Casual Gaming
Color
Imprint Mineral Black with Horizontal brush pattern
libre office was started in september 2010 and since then it has got many supporters wordwide, along with the famous linux SUSE. But even though in these tough times people are moving over from one company to the other they are still covering up fpr the great piece of spoftware called libre office.
The people over at the collabora productivity are quite happy with the overall performance of the office suite and the increasing popularity has made the situations even better for them. So the company is providing it a financial support so that there could be more developements in this ongoing project.
Collabora’s representative said the following words –
“That will include an enterprise-enabled, long-term supported Collabora LibreOffice release, along with bug fixing and security updates, For those clients requiring customization and fine-tuning, Collabora will offer consultancy services.”
Now ain’t that something really good going on for the open source company, open source really does makes wonders possible. Some might add the current boost claimed by the upcoming Ubuntu Edge might be the reason why the software is gaining much more popularity than Microsoft’s office itself. Till now one needs to buy license to run MS Office on their computer whereas Libre office or Open office are free of cost, with small bundle size and the special ability to save files as a pdf, for which you surely need to pay in all other cases.
Collabora also added that they are quite interested in meeting up with those who have already invested in the company and together they will be powerful enough to support all the company’s needs. Other companies who might be seen investing in Libre office could be AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and even though everyone has something to gain from this, some might be seen getting more profit than others. Well thats what open source is, if you don’t get something its nice, and if you start getting something back, then its all well and good.
Lets hear to what Collabora has to say about its gain in all of this –
“We’re aiming for steady, organic growth both of ourselves and the wider LibreOffice ecosystem. Collabora Productivity is here for the long term, and we have plenty of runway to build a sustainable business that delights customers.”
Now we download stuff almost daily. New products pop out so often. You can use any software forever you want. You can download trial version, right. Trial version expires after some days. You can stop that expiration. You can tell trial version of the software to not count days or do not bother about time. The software will stay and keep working like original software forever and will not expire or cease to work. You do not have to change your system clock. This little software does it all.
Time Stopper is the software which can stop the time for try out version software. When you stop the time you can use your try-out versions forever. When you stop the time of a try-out version using this Time Stopper it works via this Time Stopper. Real time and date run normally on your system. You can use any number of try-out version software with this software.
How It Works
Open Time Stopper
Browse and select .exe of required trial software
Choose the new date (Any date which occurs in between your trial software time period before expiration, suggestion: set it to two days before trial software expiration date.)
Choose any time
Click open software on your selected date
If you wish to create an icon for your modified trial software and do not want to open Time stopper every time then use last button in software to create new icon. open that trial software after that from that newly created icon always otherwise it can expire. Size: 844 KB
Installing software in Ubuntu is a piece of cake. Just launch the Ubuntu software center and type in the name of the software in the search bar; click on ‘Install’ and you have it. This all seems and sounds so easy. The part we miss is : there is an Internet connection involved. If you do not have an Internet connection, installing software on Linux machine does not remain easy. In most cases, you cannot simply download a .DEB (or even a .RPM) file and double click to install it! There are a lot of dependencies to be resolved. Unless dependencies are resolved, the software will not behave well. Even it’s running is under question.
However, it is important to understand how to install software on Ubuntu without an internet connection.
Compiling programs from source code
This is the way preferred by geeks because there is no other way which can give more control over software installations. However, it is also complicated because of the technical details involved. If you have never compiled anything, maybe this method is not for you. To follow this method, you must have the source code of the package you want to install. Let us take the example of compiling php on our computer.
Download the source package. In our case we need to go tohttp://www.php.net/downloads.php and select the package we want. We assume the php-5.3.6.tar.bz2 package is being used for the installtion.
Now open a shell and go to the directory where the file gets downloaded
cd ~/Downloads/
Then unpack the file using the tar command. This will create the required files in the firectory php-5.3.6 and come back to prompt.
tar -xvf php-5.3.6.tar.bz2 <- Note:please replace the version number with the one you downloaded from the link above.
Now change the directory to php-5.3.6 by using the cd command. Now run the command.
./configure -help
This will list down the options which the software supports. You can add as many parameters as you want from the list (you should understand what they mean). Once you have done that, run the ./configure script again with the parameters you have selected beofre. Let us assume that we want to enable support for PostgreSQL. Since ./configure –help says :
–disable-ipv6 Disable Ipv6 support
so we will run the command
./configure –disable-ipv6
The command checks whether the system meets the requirements or not. In the end it throws the error:
configure: error: xml2-config not found. Please check your libxml2 installation.
Now, we have a problem. This command is a part of the package libxml2-dev. So we have to install that first. Only then shall we be able to compile the php program. Now, this is the most annoying part. The configure script does not report all errors in one go but stops at the first one. If you resolve the first one and then find another, it becomes much difficult.
A bigger problem comes when you are trying to install a dependency (in this case libxml2-dev) and you find that it too needs some other package. Now think of the situation when you hae multiple dependencies (say 7) and each dependency further relies on 4 other dependencies. So there are in total of 28 dependencies which you need to install, one after another. Since, we are talking about installing software on a machine with no Internet connection, and it is possible that you might be using the nearest cyber cafe or a friends’ computer to download packages (searching the right version is another problem rooted within this all), it will easily drive youmad!
However, for sake of simplicity, let us consider for the time being that we have to deal with only one single dependency – libxml2-dev and that we have installed it.
Now run the command again and you should have a long output and the end of it should say “Thank you for using PHP.”
This indicates that the PHP package is ready to be installed .
Note: At this point of time, it has been verified that PHP can be installed on any system because the package was most probably tested by the developers). The only job the configure script does is to check whether the system satisfies the requirements and create other files called ‘makefiles’. A makefile is once again a type of configurationfile. It contains instructions for the compiler.
Now we have to actually compile the package. So call the program ‘make’ by typing the same at the command line. This will call the compiler for every file individually and compile the whole package. Make should produce a lot of output and then get ready with the command line once again. Do notice the last few lines though. If they mention that there was an error then you should ask the community for help (make help). If make did not report error, it’s time to finally install the package. Just say :
sudo make install
Your software should be installed after ‘sudo make install’. But wait do not delete the php-5.3.6 directory. If later on, you want to remove PHP from the machine, you can go back in to the same directory and run ‘sudo make uninstall’ and the software would get removed from your system in an easy way. Otherwise, removing files individually is a real tough challenge, and one with no benefits in almost all cases.
While all this might seem quite easy, the most difficult part of installing software by compilation is where you have to resolve dependencies. It is this part which make the task challenging and geeky. Keeping that part aside, there is almost nothing to be afraid of when it comes to installing software by compilation.
Also, you might be wondering why we are providing with all this extra bit of information and getting you all confused and scared of the steps involved. The main motivation of doing this? We want you to know your Ubuntu better. However at the end it’s you who are going to use it and if you don’t know how Ubuntu works and how to make it do things it’s hard for a user to adopt it. At first it might be look like a little fuss but at the end it’s you who will be benefited the most.
But jst doing tht is not enough. Now the hot I/O are stored, there is the need of an intelligence embedded in the circuitry to read and thus provide the server with required data streams directly from cache without any storage access permissions.
There is no doubt that this deal with help Samsung expand its SSD business since the software mainly addresses to the I/O Bottleneck problems which is a very big problem in virtual server environments. AutoCache very efficiently manages all the cache I/O with minimizing the use of Guest OS resources, which is really good thing in the business. Proximal works with standard flash cards or SSD in the virtual servers such as Microsoft Hyper-v or VMware ESXi.
It even made it clear that they have started the mass production of its 3 dimensional vertical NAND flash memory to be used in the SSDs, which provided much higher storage density (32 vertically stacked cells) almost up to a total of 128 GBs per chip.![Use CactusVPN to surf anonymously and unblock media websites! [In-depth review]](https://digitfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cactusvpn.png)
It is true that you cannot figure be 100% sure if they are actually the genuine comments. There is only one way to find out — “Test it yourself!” Don’t worry, I got you covered here. I went straight up and registered to their service for 1 year.
The company accepts almost all possible digital transaction methods. It is often very difficult for non-US resident to make online transactions outside their country. Fortunately, unlike other VPN companies CactusVPN is partnered with many payment gateways other than paypal and general credit card payments, like —CashU, Alipay, Webmoney, Yandex.Money, Boleto Bancario, and Qiwi. If you live in any country where cashU is available, I’m sure you already know how this works. If not – it’s really simple and you can find out how to use it on their websie.
After successful payment, they sent several emails, which includes — payment confirmation, welcome email and my account details. There are 2 methods you can use to implement the anonymity on your system — manual implementation, or software based implementation. The account details I received, mentioned the easiest way to access their service, which turned out to be their VPN software.
I found account details in my email, which helped me log into 
VPN Service:
Maybe a late launch into the market has helped them understand the issues and pitfalls faced by existing VPN clients while accessing blocked content over the net. This is clearly evident in the way the CactusVPN platform runs and works.
There are also a handful of settings, which comes really handy while using the software to connect to the VPN servers. You can manage the startup behavior and connection settings on this tab, which governs the behavior of the software under these conditions.
Using smart DNS to unblock websites is a noob friendly process – you just need to provide the unique key you received after subscribing for the service and then you can enable smart DNS service from the sleek interface. There is nothing much here — it is more like a connect and play kind of thing. On settings tab, you can change the website region to be blocked. For instance, if you want to unblock UK websites, you need to select UK from the drop down menu.
![[Review] Hp Pavilion 15-n012TX Laptop – 4th Gen Core i5, 4GB Ram, 2GB Nvidia 740M Graphics Card and more](https://digitfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/20131201_142123-1.jpg)
I know, nobody actually care how their laptop appears at the back, just like the rear of your Brand new Television. — You got to admit that HP has really worked on every aspect of its new Pavilion Series.
DigitFreak Rating: 8/10
DigitFreak Rating: 7/10
This is the keyboard layout you will find in any new HP laptops. The HP Envy series has the same keyboard layout and it is 25% cheaper than them. The keys are well spaced and feel comfortable while typing. The only thing that I wished there should have been being a — backlit keys. If you are like me, who prefer to work at night – then you might wanna consider a better alternative that offers backlit keyboard, Otherwise it should be fine for general usage.
DigitFreak Rating: 7/10 (Keyboard) & 6/10 (Touchpad)
