Month: April 2007

A New Computer with A DVD Burner

Not all computers came with a DVD burner years ago, but recently the new trend is to have a DVD burner in new computers, similar to cd-rom drives become standard hardware years and years ago. While a DVD burner is not exactly a most-used feature of the personal computer, more and more people are getting into making home movies and getting into illegally copying their DVDs. The first one is a completely legitimate use of the DVD burner in computers; the second use is fraudulent, but none the less becoming more and more common.

The Hardware

In past years, people who wanted to use a DVD burner with their computer added a DVD burner that connected by a USB port to the main hardware of the computer. This was a viable option and worked well as a first version of DVD burners. However, just like anything else in the computer world, eventually, the device should become an interior part of the computer. Now, a lot of computer DVD burners are built right in to the computer tower.

Is There A Difference?

Some folks continue to use the old USB-connected DVD burners because they work just fine, and really there s no hardware difference between an internal and an external DVD burner. On the other hand, having five external pieces of hardware connected to one s computer can clutter up a workstation pretty quickly. An internal computer DVD burner neatens up the computer work area and ensures that everything is always connected since an internal burner does not have to be connected to the computer via USB, it just is internal all the time. This reduces the chances of having a loose connection to the burner and having it work improperly or not at all.

A lot of new computers are now coming with a DVD burner inside the computer as a standard feature. A few years ago, having a CD burner became an almost standard feature on new computers, and now the pendulum is swinging even further into new technology being standard on a new computer.
DVD burners can be used for many things, everything from data disks (which hold more than a CD) to burning home movies and burning illegal copies of commercial DVDs. While some of these uses are more reputable than others, the market is rising all over for more and more DVD burners; controlling the usage is another story altogether.

Learning About Homemade Ethanol

Although homemade ethanol can certainly be a dangerous thing, it can also be a rather intriguing thing, and so in order to be able to understand everything about homemade ethanol in general, one must learn about how to make it, what is involved in the process, and more, as well as what the dangers are of homemade ethanol; only when all of these matters are discussed can a proper viewpoint be taken on the subject matter.

About Homemade Ethanol

In regards to the matter of homemade ethanol, basically there are several facts that should be taken into consideration, such as: the level of interest in using alcohol as motor fuel has followed cycles of fuel shortages and/or low feed-grain prices; alcohols burn more completely, thus increasing combustion efficiency; and that there are many disadvantages to using alcohols, particularly methyl and ethyl alcohol.

As well, ethanol, which is grain alcohol, can be made out of straw; and in fact the ability to make ethanol from straw rice straw, wheat straw, oat straw, etc.- is truly the modern day equivalent of the Holy Grail or the Philosopher s Stone, as in a time when barely any new oil fields have been discovered in the past ten years, and a war in Iraq rages with such madness that it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to pump oil for the next several years.

As well, intensive research on cellulose conversion to ethanol previously focused on that of mechanical, heat and acid hydrolysis techniques, all of which are expensive, and as well, it should be known however that cellulose ethanol truly has two unique advantages over conventional alcohol.

The first is that the greenhouse gas emission reductions from cellulose ethanol are three times greater than those from grain based ethanol on a life cycle basis, and second, cellulose ethanol is made from a plentiful and renewable resource, which is the non-food portion of agriculture crops.

The ethanol industry in general is truly growing at an incredible pace, and in fact, production was up nearly 23 percent compared to just last June when 180,000 b/d of ethanol was produced; the ethanol industry is also expected to produce more than 3.3 billion gallons in 2004, up from 2.81 gallons in 2003.

Overall it is quite easy to see that there is much to know about ethanol in general, and also that in order to be able to have a proper viewpoint on it altogether, we need to try and understand as much about it in general as we can.