Specifications

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Presidents Message
By Steve Dela
Last month’s general meeting proved to be a hit with
Winners members as the Digital Photo Guy, Lee Otsubo,
explained in simple language how to select and use digital
cameras and get more out of digital photos. Lee offers three
different discussions outlining how to purchase digital
cameras, display digital photographs, and advance
techniques of digital photography. This was the first in this
series. From the response from the membership we hope to
invite him back in the near future to do the second session in
his series.
Lee’s approach clearly explained the importance of mega
pixels, resolution, digital and optical zoom, and how to make
the best use of a digital camera for the layman and
experienced photographer. It’s not necessary to have the
most expensive camera to take really great photographs and
share them with your friends. Member’s interest in the
presentation was so great that Lee spoke for two half hours
without a break. A record endurance for our audience.
There’s been such a keen interest in digital photography
and digital video by the membership we plan to hold more
sessions focusing on these areas in the future. Let Terry
Currier know if you have any other special interests that
could be covered in a meeting presentation.
On another note, the next generation of DVD writers will
soon appear on the market. Both Phillips and Sony have
preannounced faster DVD writers along with new double
density capability. Write speeds of 12 and 16X, along with
the ability to store over 9GB of data on newly designed
DVD disks should be of interest to power users needing the
capacity. According to the announcements, only the+R
format will be supported in the first release of high-density
disks. The -R format is still being discussed within the
standards committee and should be an available later in the
year. Many users find the current 8X writers suitable for
their needs, and with the recent drop in prices, a good buy.
With higher capacity DVD’s or use of conventional CDs,
most users have abandoned traditional tape backup for data
protection. Make sure you’re using some form of backup, as
you never know when disaster will strike. Making a mirror
image of your hard drive is also a good way of backing up
your data, considering the price of large capacity hard
drives. We’ll explore the topic in future meeting at Winners.
Be sure to join us.
Steve
Cheap is not
always costing less
By Terry Currier
One of the things I
learned while doing the
PowerDirector review
is that cheap is not
always costing less. I
brought some DVD
discs for what I
thought was a bargain.
I had used cheap CD discs with no problems, but
for DVDs, I found I was better off buying good
quality. CDs cost all the way down to 10 cents
apiece. DVDs cost $1.00–1.15 apiece. Buying
some on sale, a no-brand name brought it down to
80 cents each. Only problem was, the error ratio
was higher with them. Never mind that the drive
has under-run-protection—it still failed too many
times. So the overall cost was not so good.
I saw Verbatim at CES (Consumer Electronic
Show) and really liked the designer discs they had.
They sent me a pack of them for review and I
really liked them. I used them with complete
success. I had a tape of my daughter doing the Girl
Scout Olympics back in 1987 (when she was cute
and listened to me). Some of the girls in her troop
we are still friendly with. I imported the video
from the VCR tape and after editing with
PowerDirector burned it onto the Verbatim
DigitalMovie DVD. They look like movie reels
and the people I gave them to were very impressed
with them.
You may have heard that the DVD industry is
headed for new Dual-Layer DVD+R disc that will
take the storage of recordable discs from 4.7GB to
8.5GB. Verbatim will have those discs out for the
new drives in spring 2004. The new media is fully
compatible with the DVD+R DL standard
endorsed by the DVD+RW Alliance. The first
recording layer of the Verbatim DVD+R DL disc is
semi-transparent, providing enough reflectivity for
writing/reading data on the first layer, yet
transmitting enough laser power to read/write on
the second layer by refocusing the laser. In addition
to optimizing layer reflectivity, new Metal Azo
recording dyes were developed for each layer to
optimize parameters such as signal amplitudes and
power margins and ensure full compatibility with
current DVD standards.
http://www.verbatim.com