PC As an Entertainment Center

Except for the occasional beep, computers were once silent machines. And they were not much to look at, with their black-and-white screens displaying nothing but rows of text. But the increasing demand for multimedia has made color, graphics, animation, full-motion video, and stereo sound important capabilities for nearly every new computer and many software applications.

With the introduction of sound cards in the late 1980s, computers could play recorded sounds and music (from an application or a compact disk) and even synthesize sounds. Thanks to recent innovations in computer audio, sound has become an integral part of everyday computing, and computers have become an integral part of the audio industry.

The same is true with graphics and video. The PCs of a decade ago could barely display menus, let alone graphics with millions of colors, animation, and video. As video technologies have improved, however, users expect their computers to function like a television. The advent of graphically rich programs, multimedia events, the Internet, and DVD has made the PC a video-on-demand resource. For a growing number of users, the PC is part of the home entertainment system or is replacing some home entertainment components entirely. Here are just a few examples of entertainment options that you can access with a typical multimedia PC:

Music on CD. If your PC includes a CD-ROM drive, a sound card, and speakers, you can play music from any audio compact disk. Most multimedia PCs include simple audio-playback software that lets you start, stop, pause, and random-play songs from a CD. Many audio-playback programs let you create favorites lists and log your CDs to identify artists and tracks.

Movies on DVD. Many newer model multimedia PCs include DVD drives rather than CD-ROM drives. DVD drives can play audio compact disks just like CD-ROM drives but can also play digital video disks. You can watch full-length movies with stereophonic sound at your PC.

Watch Television. If your PC has a television tuner card (a special video card that can accept a broadcast signal through television antennae or cable), you can use your PC as a television. Special services like WebTV enable users to access program listings, set reminders to tune in, and more.

Listen to Radio. Around the world, hundreds of radio stations are now Webcasting their programs over the Internet. Multimedia players, such as Windows Media Player, RealPlayer G2, and others, enable you to tune into traditional broadcast stations and dozens of net radio outlets, which distribute their audio exclusively over the World Wide Web. Most of these stations broadcast live, in real time, on the Internet. Some also provide prerecorded programming. Formats include music of all kinds, news and sports, talk, call-in, and more.

Watch Streaming Video and Audio. With an Internet connection and a player like RealPlayer G2, you can tune into The Weather Channel, CNN, and other cable television channels without connecting cable TV or an antenna to your PC. These services use streaming audio and video technology to transmit programming to your PC so it plays smoothly. For best results, you need a fast PC and a broadband Internet connection, such as a cable modem or an ISDN line.

Enjoy Recorded Music Over the Internet. Using technologies like RealPlayer, LiquidAudio, and others, you can listen to prerecorded music over your Internet connection. Using newer multimedia file-compression technologies like MP3 or a2b, you can download songs to your computer and listen to them any time. If you have a CD-ROM drive that records compact disks or a portable MP3 player (such as Diamond Multimedia's Rio player), you can take your recordings with you anywhere.

Utility Software

A utility is a program that performs a task not typically handled by the operating system or that enhances the operating system's functioning. Some of the major categories of utilities include file defragmentation utilities, data compression programs, backup utilities, antivirus programs, and screen savers.

Using a file defragmentation utility like the Disk Defragmenter (built into Windows 95, 98, and 2000), you can rearrange the fragmented pieces of data so your files are stored in contiguous sectors.

Data compression utilities such as WinZip, StuffIT, and others use special algorithms to search files for unnecessary bits, which are stripped out. The process can significantly shrink some types of files. In this collection of compressed files, some files have shrunk by more than 80 percent.

Backup software can help you copy large groups of files from your hard disk to another storage medium, such as tape or a CD-R disk. Many newer operating systems feature built-in backup utilities, but feature-rich backup software is available from other sources. These utilities not only help you transfer files to a backup medium, they also help organize the files, update backups, and restore backups to disk in case of data loss.

A virus is a parasitic program that can delete or scramble files, or replicate itself until the host disk is full. Computer viruses can be transmitted in numerous ways, and users should be especially vigilant when downloading files over the Internet or reusing old diskettes that may be infected. Antivirus utilities examine specific parts of a disk for hidden viruses and files that may act as hosts for virus code. Effective antivirus products not only detect and remove viruses, they also help you recover data that has been lost because of a virus.

Screen savers are popular utilities, although they serve little purpose other than to hide what would otherwise be displayed on the screen. A screen saver automatically displays when the system has been unused for a specified period of time. Screen savers display a constantly moving image on the screen and were originally created to prevent constantly displayed images from "burning" into the monitor. Today's monitors do not suffer from this problem, but screen savers remain a popular utility because they add personality to the user's system.

Processor and Memory