Giga disks     

The processor or CPU is the heart of any computer and is what actually does the work within the computer. This is what truly divides the PC world as Apple and Windows computers use totally incompatible chips. Windows CPU come from a number of different manufacturers, the main ones being Intel and AMD, and in a number of different formats, for example Celeron, Pentium I, II, III etc. The chip designations are a source of confusion because some chips are designed with specific purposes and all can be run at different clock speeds. The clock speed is a reflection (though not an absolute guarantee) of the speed that the processor executes instructions. It is usually stated in Mega Hertz (MHz), therefore a 650MHz is slower than a 850MHz processor. Today we are seeing the advent of processors running in excess of 1GHz.

Click here for Tennis Tickets.

The US Open was once known as the U.S. National Championships and was as a men's singles tournament. The first in match in 1881 wasn't for money of fame, it was held purely for entertainment purposes. The US Open as we know it today arose when the five major championships were consolidated in 1968. The first modern day US Open was held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, N.Y. It has since moved to Flushing Meadows and has emerged into the richest professional tennis event in the world. The prize money is always the largest in professional sports. In recent years the purse surpassed the $17 million mark.

The 1-hour, 49-minute match was the most lopsided final since Sweden's Stefan Edberg held American Jim Courier to six games in the 1991 final. The last time two shutout sets were recorded in an Open championship match was in 1884.

"It's always important to play well in the matches that count the most," said Federer, 23, who also won at the Australian Open and Wimbledon to join Rod Laver (1969), Jimmy Connors (1974) and Mats Wilander (1988) as the only men in the Open era to win three Grand Slam titles in one season.

Federer, who is the first player in modern history to go 4-0 in major finals, came out swinging with his full arsenal of shots. Hitting lethal forehands and serves, cutting wicked slices and occasionally attacking the net, Federer kept 2001 Open champ Hewitt wondering what hit him. Hewitt didn't win a game until he was down 6-0, 2-0.

Typical was the sixth game of the second set. Threatening to fight his way back into the match, Australia's Hewitt set up his first break point with sharp cross-court backhand pass. But Federer, as he has all season, lifted his game when he needed it most, smacking three consecutive aces so that the Hewitt didn't even touch a ball in the game.

"It's an incredible effort what he's done this year," said Hewitt, who lost to Federer in all three Slams he won in 2004. "I don't think people realize how hard it is."

On match point, Federer ripped a forehand up the line, then did a somersault on the concrete court at Arthur Ashe Stadium before laying flat on his back in disbelief.

"I still can't believe what I have done this year," he said.

Hewitt, 23, can take consolation in that, as the U.S. Open Series leader, he was guaranteed a 50% bonus on top of his $500,000 runner-up check for a total payout of $750,000. Federer took home $1 million.

"I couldn't have hoped for more. I got the start I wanted, I was dreaming of," Federer said. "It's a very demanding sport. The season's long. There's not much time off. This is why I'm grateful every tournament, every Grand Slam I win. You never know which is your last."

No one is thinking this will be Federer's final major title. With his fluid, all-court game, cool demeanor and win-the-big-ones determination, Federer already is inspiring talk about whether he can challenge Pete Sampras' record of 14 major titles. Sampras got No. 4 at age 22; Federer turned 23 last month.

"He's always going to have a chance going into every major. You like the chances of him picking up at least one out of four every year for a few years," Hewitt said. "After Pete's left, then Roger comes in, and that helps tennis in the big picture."

Here's what is particularly remarkable: Top-ranked Federer's opponent was no pushover. Federer dominated every facet against pugnacious, backward-cap-wearing, "Come on!"-yelling, fist-pumping Hewitt, a former No. 1 and owner of two major titles.

"When he plays like he did today, he's in a different league than the other players I've played the last two weeks," Hewitt said. "He's such a big-time player. He plays some of his best tennis in the big matches."

Is there a player who could have defeated Federer on Sunday?

"I don't think anyone in the actual tournament," Hewitt said. "Maybe Pete Sampras."

Federer led the fourth-seeded Hewitt in winners (40-12), aces (11-1), and service breaks (7-1), and won the point on 31 of 35 trips to the net.

He never before made it beyond the fourth round at Flushing Meadows, leading some to wonder whether the wind, wild fans and roaring airplanes overhead might provide too many distractions for the fastidious Federer.

"To me, not even in my wildest dreams I would have thought, 'I'm going to win the U.S. Open.' Now that I did it, it's still tough for me to believe," Federer said. "At the end of the year, I'll be looking back and thinking, 'How did I do this?'"

There are all sorts of impressive accomplishments Federer can lay claim to:

  • including Wimbledon in 2003, Federer is 4-0 in major finals, the first man in the Open era to start a career by winning his first four;
  • he's won 11 straight tournament finals overall;
  • he's won 17 straight matches against players ranked in the top 10, including Andre Agassi in the quarterfinals and Tim Henman in the semifinals;
  • no one had won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open back-to-back since Sampras in 1995, and Federer's run of four of the past six Slam titles is the best since Pistol Pete won four of five in 1993-94.

    "It's an incredible effort, what he's done," Hewitt said. "I don't think people probably realize how hard it is."

    Poor Hewitt. The Australian lost to the eventual champion at each major this year, including to Federer in the fourth round of the Australian Open and the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Federer lost eight of their first 10 meetings as pros, but he's 4-0 against Hewitt in 2004.

    The question you need to ask is how much this will affect your work. If you can type at speeds above 1GHz then you are superhuman, whereas some applications such as photo-retouching require alot of processing power and the speed of the processor will have an impact on how much work you can do.

    Typically in adverts you will see the processor as the first line of any spec, for example:

    bullet Intel Pentium III Processor 866MHz
    bullet AMD Duron Processor 800MHz
    bullet AMD Duron Processor 800MHz

    The type and speed of processor you require is difficult and you should look at the package as a whole, for example it is not worth buying a very fast processor at the expense of having a smaller amount of RAM.

    RAM stands for Random Access Memory and is what the computer uses to work with information, for example if you open a letter from a storage device (e.g. a disk) it will be copied to the machines RAM so that it can be worked on. RAM is installed into a PC using chips that contain a certain amount of RAM, which is why the amount of RAM you can install is governed by the size of chips that are compatible with your PC, i.e. if your PC accepts 64MB chips you can have configurations in multiples of 64MB, up to the maximum allowable number of chips.

    As a guide 32MB is not enough, 64MB is just about acceptable for general office tasks, 128MB is recommended for most applications, 256MB is about as much as can usefully be used for many applications.

    Hard Disks

    Any PC needs a hard disk to store your documents and the applications that you use to create them. The bigger the disk, the more you can store. Most PCs now come with hard disks in Giga bytes (100MB) increments, for example a basic PC will have a 6GB hard disk. As a guide a letter in word format may take 20Kb to store whereas as an A4 picture could take up to 25MB of storage. The bigger the disk the more you can store. The cost of these storage devices is incremental, so only pay for what you need - and remember that if you have a huge disk and it breaks down, you will lose everything - so think about removable storage as well.

    Removable storage refers to any media that can store information but can be physically removed from the computer. In the early days this was basically the floppy disk, but now a number of other options are available and some come as standard on new PCs. The most popular devices are made by iomega and are the Zip drives that come in 100MB and 250MB formats (this refers to the size of the removable disk). The advantage of these devices are that they can be used to regularly back-up your hard disk or transfer files to others (although they will also need a Zip drive). The other increasingly popular method of removable storage is the CD writer. These come from a number of manufacturers and allow you to create your own CDs that can be sent to others and used for backups. The downside of CD writers is that they are quite slow and are less flexible as you can typically only "burn" or write the CD once. There are also a number of different formats and this can lead to incompatibility with certain CD readers. The main advantage is that the media is very cheap. Typically a blank CD, purchased in bulk works out at below £1 for 650MB of storage, whereas a Zip 100MB cartridge may cost up to £7.

     

Home
Super Bowl Tickets Tennis Tickets
NFL Tickets NASCAR Tickets
Las Vegas Tickets Olympics Tickets