The world is turning virtual and all the physical mediums of communication are fast being replaced by more efficient electronic mediums. Computers have now become an integral part of our lives whether that be our personal lives or professional ones, we simply can’t imagine a day without these machines. It would be right to say here that computers now serve as essential lifelines for human species.
But what about computers, while they look after us, who looks after them. What ensures protection of your computer’s equipment, what ensures safety of the data that you are working on at a particular moment. One power failure and your whole work can go for a toss, one day of system failure can halt all your operations and leave a damaging influence on your company’s credibility. This is where UPS comes into play, UPS or un-interrupted power supply protects your equipment in case of unexpected power failures and provides your system with enough battery backup that lets you save your data before shutting your computer down.
UPS saves your computer from power surges and spikes due to sudden shortage of electricity flow. Each UPS has a predetermined backup time that lets you run your computer operations even at the time of a power failure. A UPS contains rechargeable batteries that supply power to your computer at the time of a power failure. As soon as a power cut takes place the UPS is turned on automatically and starts supplying electricity to your machine, an unusual beep sound informs the user that his computer is now running on UPS power and that he should finish all his important work before the UPS power backup expires.
Here are some of the most important uses of UPS:
Protects your data: In today’s time, data holds invaluable value. Having an efficient UPS lets you save your data in case of a power failure.

Protects your equipment: UPS protects your computer from sudden power surges that could harm your equipment. Having an efficient UPS goes a long way in ensuring a healthy life for your computer.

Ease of use: There are no technical jargons involved when it comes to using a UPS. It is automatically turned on in case of a power failure and can be used by any Non-technical person too.

Maintains continuous running of operations: In today’s time credibility and satisfaction are the two most important factors that determine a company’s success. A UPS ensures continuous running of your company’s operations in case of a power failure and ensures that your company’s image never takes a blow ever.
No wonder why a UPS is termed as a lifeline for your computer, this is surely one piece of equipment that you can’t do without and with its economical cost it doesn’t hurt your purse either.

layer developed and marketed by Apple Inc., an American consumer electronics multinational corporation. During their research, Apple found that in comparison to available camcorders, digital cameras, and organizers; digital music players recorded poor sales, primarily due to their awful user interfaces. Apple wanted to do something about it and so Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s hardware engineering chief brought together a team comprising of Tony Fadell (who dreamed of a hard disk based music player), Michael Dhuey (hardware engineer), Jonathan Ive (design engineer), and Stan Ng (marketing manager). In less than a year, they designed a hard disk based music player, that had a 5 GB hard drive and capable of storing 1000 songs.

Apple’s iTunes software is utilized to operate the iPod (m3 / mp4 player). The software is compatible with all Mac systems. The operating system is stored on its hard disk. A boot loader program is contained in a NOR flash ROM chip (either 1 MB or 512 KB) which instructs the device to load the operating system from the hard disk. The iPod has a 32 MB of RAM, a portion of which is used to hold the operating system from firmware, and the rest is used to cache songs from the hard disk. Apple also invented a technology whereby the hard disk of iPod could spin up once and about 30 MB of upcoming songs could be cached into the RAM. This did not require the hard disk to spin up for every song and thereby saved battery power. Apple also introduced a Windows version of iPod, at a later stage.

The audio files that iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) supports are MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio file formats. MIDI and WMA files can be played only after a convertor accomplishes conversion, for non-Digital Rights Management (DRM). Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and other open-source audio formats are not supported at all.

Apple wanted an extremely user friendly interface and thus adopted the minimalist interface, which features only five essential buttons, namely, Menu (to access functions and to toggle the backlight); Center (for menu item selection); Play/ Pause (this also works as an off switch when held for few seconds); Skip Forward/ Fast Forward; and Skip Backwards/ Fast Reverse. An additional Hold button is provided for accidental button pressing prevention, and it can reset the iPod if it has frozen or crashed. Functions such as volume control, scrolling are handled by the usage of the rotational click wheel. Later models have some minor changes in the functions of the buttons but overall the number of buttons has remained at five.

To market this path-breaking mp3 / mp4 player, they needed a suitable futuristic name and so they hired a freelance copywriter, Vinnie Chieco, and other writers to give a name. Inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the dialogue “Open the pod bay door, Hal!” with reference to the context of the Discovery One spaceship and its white EVA Pods, Vinnie Chieco proposed the name of the product as iPod. The management of Apple accepted the proposed name and on 23 October 2001, the iPod was officially launched. The rest they say is history.

To enable customers to access songs of their choice, Apple opened up an online media store The iTunes Store on 29 April 2003, where individual songs could be downloaded at prices less than a U.S. dollar per song. The purchased songs can be played only on iPods. Subsequent versions of this iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) also featured video capabilities, and thus iTunes Store started selling short videos from 12 October 2005. From 12 September 2006, full-length movies were also available at the iTunes Store.

iPods have come a long way from their inception, and now the latest fifth generation iPods possess multimedia capabilities and are available in both Mac OS and Windows OS versions. Usually, if a new iPod is plugged into a Mac OS computer, then the hard disk of this mp3 / mp4 player is formatted as per the HFS+ file format, and if it plugged into a Windows OS computer, it is formatted as per the FAT32 file format. From being a digital music player, the iPod has now transformed into a digital media player.

http://www.articlegeek.com/computers/hardware_articles/8287-briefhistoryofi.htm