Free or Low-Cost Downloads

There is a resource of utilities and add on elements available on the internet that would complement almost any computer users day to day practices but most users are not aware of the availability or benefits of these wonderful little elements. These downloads are Freeware Applications and Shareware Applications. Freeware is software, available for download, which is given away by the author. Although it is available for free, the author retains the copyright to prevent downloaders from reproducing it and selling it. Shareware is usually offered for a small fee. Once purchased you are registered with the producer and provided service assistance and updates. Both shareware and freeware depend on a user honor code to not resell the product or copy and distribute the applications that do require a small fee. Freeware and Shareware are able to cost next to nothing if they cost anything at all because they are offered directly to customers and do not carry along packaging or advertising costs with them.

These applications cover a broad spectrum of uses. Some are helpful with office type applications, some prov

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1Mb shareware with a cost of $30, could be a helpful utility for you. 92Mb application with a shareware cost of $20. It is a violation of privacy and goes on without most users consent. This application sports a simple easy to use interface that allows the user to convert MP3 files to wav files that are used to burn cd’s that can be played in any cd player. com for a current list of downloads that incorporate adware and spyware into their applications. If you browse the internet frequently there is nothing in the world more frustrating than pop up ads, with this download you can take back control of web browsing and look forward to hours upon hours of unobstructed surfing. Once familiar with this application and it user interface the user can set parameters and modify it usability. It will create mailing labels, print envelopes, send faxes, and even generate certain types of reports. This application also adds a menu command to you Microsoft Word application. You can investigate software before you download and reference user testimonials or professional product reviews. Another application to complement AntiVir Personal Edition is AntiVirus Fire Drill, a 68kb freeware with zero cost.



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Original CD-A8T Valve CD player

There is obviously a joker working at the Original Company Ltd. Despite the company's name, all the CD players in its range echo the styling of more expensive players made by some of the world's most famous hi-fi manufacturers. The CD-A8T looks eerily similar to a model made in the US by Mark Levinson. The S version could almost have issued from Arcam's factory in Britain. Original's Leonardo 9.3 is nearly a dead-ringer for Denmark's legendary ZZ-Eight, from Bow Technologies.

Any similarities are only skin-deep. Inside the CD-A8T is a disc transport designed by Philips, but now manufactured by China's Cosmic Co, along with a VAM12 laser assembly and various chip-sets made in China by Burr-Brown and Philips. There are two Russian imports: a pair of Electro-Harmonix 12AU7 thermionic valves that, according to Original, "give a warm, beautiful and brave sound". These internal components don't represent the state of the art in electronics but they are very high quality, and the printed circuit boards into which they're inserted are built to exacting standards.

All the CD-A8T's digital circuitry is solid-state, using conventional transistors and diodes. It's the analog stages that are different.

There are two completely separate audio outputs. One is solid-state, using Burr-Brown ICs. The other uses the valves. Plug one of these outputs into the CD input of your amplifier and the other into the auxiliary input and use your amplifier's Source switch to alternate between the two to establish whether you prefer the warmer sound of the valves to the cleaner but distinctly colder sound of the ICs.

It's difficult to compare the two directly, because the voltage levels are different, and the valves invert the polarity of the audio signal, but we gradually came to prefer listening to the valve output. If you're interested in the sound quality of valves but don't want the hassle of owning a valve amplifier, Original's CD-A8T could be the perfect compromise



http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/original-cda8t-valve-cd-player/2007/04/14/1186857411773.html

Rega Apollo CD player

You've heard it said that the early bird catches the worm, which is all well and good if you like worms. If you're more interested in music, you might want to follow the lead of Roy Gandy instead: He's the managing director of Rega Research, a 33¹/₃-year-old audio company that was the very last of its kind to enter the CD market. Rega's first CD player, the Planet of 1996, was a success in virtually every way.

The world has moved on since then, for better and for worse: better in the sense that digital sound has continued to improve, worse in the sense that the major corporations with the technology for making integrated digital control systems—the basic servo and data-control chipsets—have shifted their focus toward DVD and away from the humble music-only compact disc. That state of affairs has prompted Gandy and company to tap a different technology source, and to launch an entirely new player: the $995 Rega Apollo.

As Gandy puts it, "If we go back three years, that's when 'the big five' stopped supplying kit to specialist manufacturers. And all of them rely on chipsets or transports or whatever from Sony, Philips, and the rest. Around the same time, CD-player sales were decreasing. So Rega got together with two other specialist manufacturers in the UK, and we eventually found a company near Cambridge that had foreseen this hole in the market, with all the Japanese companies pulling out. They predicted, correctly, that a number of people would continue to want to make boomboxes in China, so they developed their own chipsets, and not just the software."

Gandy can't name the UK company in question—his relationship with them involves a confidentiality agreement—but he says that both they and Rega stand to benefit. "We agreed to work with them at the debugging stage, to help work out various problems—which their Chinese clients are in less [of] a position to do—and in exchange Rega gets to buy chipsets in small quantities."

Small in amount—but hardly small in power. Gandy says that the Apollo incorporates more than 20MB of memory, along with true 32-bit processing capabilities. That's several times the power of early digital control systems, and Gandy suggests that this newer level of technology was needed all along to attain the performance goals set for "Red Book" digital playback in the first place. "This isn't at all like working with the old CD chipsets," he says. "For the first time, we've got a CD operating mechanism that is so good, all we've had to do is avoid messing it up. Now, for example, we can design a better power supply and it makes the player better instead of worse: We don't have to worry that we're taking out something that was masking a flaw."

From puck to chuck
The Apollo is built into the same casework as the Rega Planet, with one key difference: The new player's transport holds the disc with a three-point ball chuck instead of a magnetic puck. That means the motor has less mass to spin, so the disc can accelerate and decelerate with greater ease. It also means that Rega's already elegant transport lid is now a single, undisturbed expanse of smoked Plexiglas—which looks very nice indeed.

The Apollo's transport, manufactured by Sanyo, is compliantly suspended from the upper portion of Rega's standard chassis of cast aluminum alloy. The D/A converter is Wolfson's top-of-the-line WM8740, a dual-differential chip that operates in sigma-delta mode and supports word lengths of up to 24 bits. The output section, which is said to apply class-A amplification to a digital source component in an entirely new way, is Rega's own design.

Apart from all that, the Apollo is a straightforward thing, with a front-mounted board for the logic bits and a single main circuit board for all the rest, fastened to the bottom of the chassis alongside the smallish toroidal mains transformer. RCA and optical digital output jacks are on the rear panel for those who wish to use an outboard DAC, as well as the usual pair of phono jacks for line-level analog output. In addition to the mains switch, the front panel has only the most basic start, stop, and track-advance buttons, while those and a full brace of other user controls appear on the nicely styled remote handset—including a button that can be used to kill the display lights. To jump ahead just a bit: As with the same feature on recent CD players from Naim Audio, that last one really did make an audible difference for the better; all of my comments on sound quality below refer to the Apollo's performance with its display dark.

http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/606rega/