How To Purchase Diamond Jewelry

If you're a man, you're probably thinking of giving your bride-to-be a diamond ring and would like to ask her to marry you. The idea seems simple enough; you'd go to a jewelry store, select a diamond worthy for your beloved, pay for it and you're ready to go. In reality however, this is not always what it feels like especially if you are able to get a hold of the price tag of your chosen sparkler and you would soon realize how intimidating it is to purchase diamond jewelry gifts. If you have the intention to purchase a diamond in the near future, it is important that you know the tricks of the trade for you to take charge of your transactions and get a run for your money.

According to Fred Cuellar, gemologist and one of the world's top diamond experts, there are basically four things that a consumer has to remember when he or she intends to purchase diamond jewelry gifts, and these could be summarized as BEST: B-budget, E-expectations, S-savvy, and T-timetable. In terms of budget, you should try to figure out first how much you intend to spend on buying diamond, and you should stick to that budget outlay; a month's salary could already be a good starting point. For expectations, it is important that you know and understand the needs and wants of the person to whom you are going to give the diamond so that you will have an idea what to look for and what to pick out from the bunch. Being savvy requires you to know the given cost of diamond in the market and the best designs available, as they say knowledge is power; and for the element of timetable, you must have a laid plan about when and where you intend to give the diamond, do not haste things and be sure to give yourself enough time to analyze things.

Now that you have a crash course about making diamond purchase, you should also know where to buy your sparklers. You have two options where you could get your diamond jewelry gifts, first is for you to go online and second is to check your local jewelry shops. Buying online is probably one of the most practical means to buy diamond gifts because you don't have to break a sweat and everything is just one click away; however, the drawbacks with this are you cannot appraise the diamond and the possibility of scams are high but if you really want this option, be sure to do a background check on the online stores where you intend to purchase. The latter option of buying your diamond gifts on you local jewelry store is a better choice because you would be able to appraise the diamond personally and long time jewelers could help you out with your questions, which would assist you in arriving at the right decision.

As for the diamond, always remember the 4Cs: clarity, color, cut and carat; all of which are important elements that determine the real value of sparklers. Clarity is what determines how free from blemishes and inclusions a diamond is. Different types of diamond are assigned with clarity grades that may range from flawless to obvious inclusions. Sometimes, due to quality issues there are diamond pieces that are treated to reduce their imperfections by irradiation, filling imperfections, or laser drilling, these are known as clarity enhanced sparklers which are usually lesser in value.

When it comes to color, diamond pieces are available in virtually all colors; however, colored sparklers are rare and truly expensive so chances are, the sparklers you would see during your shopping are either white or yellow in color but between the two, it would be better to go for whiter diamond pieces. This is because the yellow coloring of sparklers came from nitrogen which affect their sharp and sparkly features; hence, as a rule of thumb, the yellower the diamond, the cheaper it becomes. When it comes to cut, diamond pieces could be cut in different ways, the most common of which is the round brilliant cut. More than indicating the shape of the diamond, a cut also determines how sparkly such gemstone will be.

It is never enough for a diamond to be clear and white, because your diamond will not sparkle unless it is cut properly. As cut is extremely hard to analyze, the three things that you should look at are brilliance, fire and scintillation; however, if you really want to make things easier, the standard round brilliant cut is probably the most preferable choice compared to other cut. Lastly, the carat refers to the unit weight of a diamond. Majority of diamond pieces used for fine jewelry often weight one carat or less; this is because a fraction of a carat can make a big difference on the value of diamond.

Purchasing diamond jewelry gifts is a daunting task. Hence, it is always best to be an informed buyer in order to get the most out of your money. Not because a diamond is round brilliant cut doesn't mean it's already a good purchase. Remember that there are still three remaining Cs that you have to consider. A clarity enhanced diamond might be inexpensive but also consider the quality. Educating oneself is a good way to make the right purchasing decisions.

USB Flash drives

Advertising is all about exposure and few places offer more powerful exposure than the realestate around your desk or computer. Promotional USB flash drives are impressive, practical and appreciated promotional gifts. Custom USB flash sticks are a terrific way to create strong brand recognition and make for great giveaways especially when you pre-load them with your marketing material.

Custom USB Flash drives are available in a wide range of memory capacities to suit your business needs and a variety of styles and colours to best complement your company's logo and image. USB flash drives store documents, pictures, presentations and other media effortlessly. Tech gadgets offer everyday usability, so you will be guaranteed daily brand exposure with quality promotional IT products.

Make sure your company's message is reinforced!

Pre-load information to auto-run when the flash drive is inserted into a users computer. Not only has your client received a functional pocket size hard drive displaying your logo, but they can have access to your company's catalog of products or a description of your services. Take advantage of today's hottest promotional items and order your customized USB  drives pre-loaded to auto-run your organisations presentations and advertisements.

Unleash your creativity and create a unique USB Flash drive to match your logo or advertising campaign in as little as 3 weeks.

Custom USB Flash drives

Custom stress balls are useful

Promotional stress balls come in hobby form, too. Whether you love sports or like to bowl, there are custom stress balls for you out there. Promotional stress balls can come in handy for the professional baseball player in the form of a baseball before a big game. Bowlers can find comfort in customized stress balls with their league’s name in bowling ball or bowling pin form before league night at the local galley.


Personalized stress balls can feature the logo for your team, league, or group and encourage members to relax in a fun way. Finding stress balls that coordinate with your group or company isn’t hard because there are literally thousands of different molds to come by. Being able to relieve stress before a big game, meeting, or other gathering should be left to customized stress balls with your group’s logo or league’s name and not just by relying on other means. Customized stress balls have been known to relieve stress just before a big performance or presentation so they’re worth sticking with.

Clients are always swayed by innovative advertising. While stress balls first made their appearance years ago, they are a breath of fresh air from the normal type of advertisement that is going around full circle nowadays. Personalized stress balls have come a long way since their first appearance and now come in all sorts of shapes and sizes fit for a company’s marketing needs. As a potential consumer being able to see that a business thinks outside of the box and provides more interesting means of advertising like customized stress balls is a good thing. A company that invests in smaller marketing schemes like custom stress ball lets a consumer know that they're not interested in heavy, expensive advertising; they are interested in spending their money on doing the job right and providing for their consumers whatever the cost might be.

LCD Monitor v/s CRT Monitor

The demand of LCD (Liquid crystal display) monitors is rapidly growing in the market. With the advancement of technology LCD are quite familiar to computer user and we can see most of them are using LCD. It would be a challenge for LCD manufacturing companies to fulfill the growing demand of LCD in the market.

Some comparison between LCD monitor and CRT monitor is given below

1. LCD panels are only an inch thick without including the stand. These consume less power and don’t radiate a lot of heat when used, unlike CRT monitor.

2. Their digital display is sharper and produce good quality picture as compare to CRT monitor.

3. An LCD monitor is slim and comes in a very compact configuration. They can be fit easily into any less vacant part of the room or any where. They are very suitable for small offices or homes

4. But its difficult for everyone to afford LCD display because LCD display screens or monitors are quite expensive as compare to CRT

5. LCD screens or displays are very sensitive and should be handling with care. They are not suitable for minor used.

6. As far as moving images or 3D images are concern, LCD screen are blurry and unclear. Hence, someone prefers CRT over LCD screens. Graphic designers also prefer the CRT over the LCD. Not only that, the color gradations are not clear in the LCD panel, and it causes problems in differentiating between darker shades, creating practical problems for graphic designers.

The Desktop Computer Isn't Dead Yet

According to news articles in the past year or two, the desktop computer is beginning to cry "I don't want to go on the cart." According to this article, the arrival of real tablet PCs is going to take a slice of the computer market, and it won't be coming from netbook or laptop sales.

I won't deny that laptops are everywhere these days, and getting more powerful all the time. Currently, I use a laptop as my main computer, and have a 10-year-old desktop kicking around used to play YouTube videos and such on my TV. I, for one, plan to buy a desktop computer as my next major computer purchase, for several reasons.

Firstly, my laptop hardware went obsolete REALLY fast. I bought it in July 2007, and by the fall there were far more powerful models out for the same price. I bought a model with a decent-enough video card in hopes of playing a few games, but even games of several years earlier than 2007 had to be run with minimal video settings. As far as 2010 games go, the situation is hopeless.

Secondly, I dislike very much that for my laptop's processor to run at full advertised speeds, the bottom of the computer gets hot enough to cook pizza pops on. If I hadn't bought the 12-cell battery that lifts the bottom of the computer off the desk, providing extra ventilation, the computer would be hot enough to cook two pizza pops on. It's possible that newer laptops are better now and don't run as hot, but I've always found myself running in power saver mode at 600 MHz just so I didn't scald my lap.

Thirdly, one of the main arguments against desktop computers is that they are chained to your desk. While it's nice that laptops have batteries and can go anywhere, they still need to spend some amount of time chained to a wall outlet every so often. Until wireless power is brought to the consumer market, laptops will still partially have the same chained problem as desktops. After a few years, your laptop battery goes and you have to stay chained to the wall all the time anyway.

Desktop computers have much more longevity than laptops for several reasons, meaning that they're more worth the money you spend on them in the long term. First and foremost, desktops are super upgradeable if you buy a system with future upgrades in mind. You can always pop in more RAM, another hard drive, another video card, etc. Laptops are almost always not so. Also, the hard drive in a desktop will last much, much longer than that of a laptop, because it remains stationary all the time. Laptops bounce around all over the place, and usually the hard drive will give out in a few years' time at most. My current 10-year-old desktop still has its original hard drive running fine. When your laptop eventually does need repair, one needs to either send it away to a manufacturer for weeks, or attempt to dismantle the entire computer, just to tinker with whatever is broken. When a desktop computer is opened up, everything is easily accessible and within reach.

It used to be that you could make a valid argument against desktops and their space requirements. You need room for that giant CRT monitor, and someplace to put your tower. These days, you can buy compact desktops that are about the size of a laptop standing on its side, or even smaller if you look at the Home Theater PC market. LCD monitors are the standard these days, so they don't require much space either.

I can't speak for the rest of the computer user world, but when I need to sit down and focus on work on the computer, I work more productively if I'm sitting at a desk. If I'm sitting at a desk, I enjoy having a big screen to spread out all my windows on, and a mouse and keyboard. I could use all these accessories with a laptop, but it seems more practical to me to have a dedicated desktop hooked up, rather than plugging and unplugging from my comparatively underpowered laptop all the time. I can especially see this situation if I ever found a job doing computer work from home, as I imagine is the case for a significant portion of the working population in the computer industry.

In the past year or two I've seen home servers come out on the market for the average computer user. Regular users are beginning to realize the importance of file backup and the convenience of central media servers. Combine this market with the home theater market, and you have one desktop-dominated market area. Laptops just don't make sense to be run as always-on servers.

Desktops can clearly offer more performance power than laptops if you are willing to pay for it, and it's not just hardcore gamers that need the power anymore. Users of CAD software, graphical design software, video editing and encoding software, and virtualization software all need a large amount of RAM, processing power, and storage space. Even software developers would enjoy faster compile times for development projects, even if it means less time to use as a valid slacking-off excuse.

In short, if desktops are losing share of the PC market, it will stop losing and eventually stabilize. The desktop computer is not going away any time soon.

Computer Servers For Dummies

To begin with, servers are defined as computers that are configured in such a way that they are able to provide specialized services to a specific client user or machine. They serve as task masters that manage a variety of services such as files, system jobs, network requests, and other various processes. Although they can be used for a myriad of purposes, servers primarily function as web hosting solutions.

The Wonder of Web Servers

Servers have become a very versatile solution for a variety of user needs. May it be file storage management, a network firewall, an email server, or simply as a web hosting solution, servers are the answer to almost every need. In fact, it would be very difficult to find any type of contemporary business or company that does not make use of some sort of server.

One of the biggest misconceptions about web servers is that they might be too complicated for the average Joe. The truth is, they are quite simple to manage and so long as a user has some level of technical knowledge, he should be good to go. In fact, setting up a server for one’s own website isn’t too much of a daunting task. Although it will still require a certain level of computer know-how, it is no Herculean feat at all. With a little research, some patience, and a whole lot of resourcefulness, one could very easily set up a personal server for one’s own site. This is also made possible by the fact that most server providers equip their users with easy-to-use tools to make the entire process much more user-friendly.

The Basics Types of Web Servers

When it comes to the configuration of web hosting servers, they generally come in three different offerings. First is shared web hosting which is the most common type of web server today. This immense fame is brought about by both its affordability and simplicity. Websites that run on shared servers will (obviously) share the same IP address as well as make use of the same system resources.

The second web hosting option for users is dedicated servers. As its name implies, websites that make use of a dedicated server will have full rights and control of the whole system. Because of the fact that they do not share their servers with other websites, this also means that they will have exclusive access to all the resources of the system.

The Keys to Success

Because of websites’ growing need for more hard drive storage space and bandwidth, servers have become more and more of a requirement rather than an option. Each individual or business will have a different set of requirements and needs which means there is no one-size-fits-all sort of web hosting solution for everyone. However, the good thing is that it isn’t that difficult to set up a specific type of server that will fulfil the needs of one’s own website. Doing a little online research will definitely be helpful in this regard as there are a multitude of websites that provide information and tips on how to set up a server for all sorts of business website.