Is your browser a spy?

"You can be traced on the Internet through Facebook and new web technologies—but there are still things you can do in such cases."

Your browser is a constant companion online: it knows what news sites you read, where you shop and in which communities you spend hours participating in. Your browser probably knows you better than your best friend. But Firefox and its friends don’t keep this information to themselves; they disclose private and even juicy tidbits about your life to those who have the right kind of access. We will show you where and how you reveal more about yourself than you’d think, and how you can protect yourself from such software

Social networks lead the assault

The fact that online communities contain a lot of information about a person is not new. But one leaves traces behind not only on Facebook, but also on the rest of the Web. The reason for that is the ‘Like’ button on Facebook, which can be found on hundreds of websites outside of the actual social network. Facebook provides website owners with the option of integrating the button on any site on the Internet, and it’s remarkably easy to do. Users can then click on it and inform their friends on Facebook that they like the particular site. This is done voluntarily of course, but what many don’t know is that if one is logged in as a Facebook user in one tab and simultaneously surfs on a site with the ‘Like’ button in another tab, Facebook can track the surfing behaviour—irrespective of whether one clicks the button or not. Professor Dr Mario Fischer, editor of the magazine ‘Website Boosting’ says "It is not known if Facebook traces the surfing behavior, but this can be expected in light of the settings announced by its founder."

             Other social networks have their own quirky behaviors. Users of Xing, a professional networking site, can be tracked easily. A simple trick can help members fi nd out which other logged-in Xing users have visited their profi les. To do this, they have to embed the bogus HTML line

<img.src="http://www.xing.com/

profi le/Firstname _ Lastname">

in their website, which essentially pings their own profile page. The person whose profile was specified now sees the name, profession and further information about surfers who have visited the site, under the ‘Visitors’ log. 

             To save yourself from this kind of tracking by networks that you are a member of (including mail, chat, social networks etc), always specifically log out of them. It’s not enough even to close the respective browser tab. This is often easier said than done, since many users prefer staying permanently signed in to their communities, but it ensures that your surfing behaviour cannot be linked to your profiles. Firefox users can use an add-on called Prism that loads websites like self-contained applications that run in parallel to the actual browser. Not only is this convenient, but it also protects your privacy, since you are eff ectively using a different Firefox profile. Even the new IE9 comes with this function; an add-on is not required. You only have to pin the site’s shortcut to the taskbar using drag and drop.

Finger print The site panopticlick.eff.org shows that your browser is as
 unique as a fingerprint—and you can be identified through it.

Supercookies act as homing devices

If, for example, you are currently searching for information about a new hard drive on an electronics store’s website, chances are that the entire web will soon know about it. In the most intrusive situations, the item in question is suddenly advertised with alarming frequency no matter which other websites you visit. Cookies left behind by the shop on your computer make this possible. You will notice that the advertising pattern goes back to normal once you rid your browser of these cookies—at least in a normal scenario. However, hacker Samy Kamkar wants to prove that this supposition is outdated. Kamkar is not an unfamiliar name in

security circles; he caused quite a stir in 2005 by publicizing a MySpace bug, using which he cheated a million other users in just 18 hours. 

           This time he has caused turmoil with a bit of JavaScript code that he calls Evercookie. The snippet is supposed to be able to set a persistent cookie that the user cannot easily detect or remove. Kamkar's trick uses 13 individual components that are saved in diff erent locations using diff erent protocols and storage techniques, including everything from  standard HTTP to Flash to HTML5 storage data. Each piece of the puzzle is enough to completely restore Evercookie. If you delete all cookies from the PC, there is still information embedded in an additional PNG file that Kamkar (or anyone with the right knowhow) can read using HTML5 techniques. Kamkar provides Evercookie’s technology for free to anyone who wants it, on his site www.samy.pl. He is not scared of companies using it. The hacker tells CHIP "I am not afraid that programmers will use Evercookie. What worries me most is that many companies have been using similar techniques for a long time. I only want to expose what many companies try to hide." Tracking occurs without anything being noticed, without installation, and across all browsers, so long as Flash is installed. The new HTML5, which is already being used on some sites, makes anonymous surfing even less easy (see box). If you really want to surf incognito on the web, use a portable browser (such as Portable Firefox), even on your own computer. Designed for USB pen drives which can be moved anywhere, these browsers do not retain information from websites, and don’t save anything to the computer’s hard drive. In our tests, evercookie could not restore any user data here. According to Kamkar, even Safari in private mode leaves no traces behind.

Browsers in Private Mode are still untrustworthy

The private mode, which is now available in all browsers, does not provide any magic guarantees that you can’t be snooped on. Though the browser leaves behind fewer tracks, Flash and other plugins such as Adblock Plus are not affected by such settings, and continue to divulge more information than most people realize. While browsers delete HTTP cookies, history and search queries in private mode, they have no control over Flash, which also collects its own cookies which remain on the PC. To make it even worse, these files cannot be managed by the browser; only the Flash plugin itself has access to them, and that too only via Adobe’s own website. If you surf through a site with Flash content in private mode, anyone with access to the same computer can read the history through Adobe's ‘Website Storage Settings’ panel. You can find the web tool at Adobe’s website and delete any Flash cookies that might be tracking you.  Adobehas released a new version of its Flash plugin; version 10.1, which now supports private browsing. However, not everyone upgrades to the latest version in time!

         Even the Firefox ad blocker Adblock Plus needs to be patched. If one allows a site to display ads in private mode, they can be tracked in the normal mode at all times: the filter lists, in which these exceptions are entered, can be accessed in both the modes. To stay safe, always update Flash player; this will improve your privacy. In Adblock Plus, it helps to disallow all sites from showing ads in the private mode. Alternatively, under ‘Tools | Adblock Plus – Settings’ in Firefox, check the list to see if it contains sites that you don’t want seen, and then delete these manually.

ARE CHEAP QWERTY PHONES REALLY GOOD?

Nokia X2-01, cheapest among NOKIA

QWERTY phones by big brands like Blackberry, Nokia and Samsung have been around for a very long time. A few years ago, the choices were limited, but the market is now fl ooded with offerings by smaller brands like Karbonn, Lava and Micromax, which are giving the giants a run for their money. These Java-based phones offer a lot more than their reputed counterparts — dual-SIM support, answering machine, TV, FM radio with antenna, optical trackpad, and so on. And the best thing is that they cost only a few thousand Rupees. Topend models with Wi-Fi cost around Rs 4,500. Considering only the feature set, are these phones value for money? Yes, absolutely! However, the feature set is not the aspect that makes or breaks a phone. Build quality, ergonomics and performance are also important and go a long way in adding value. Fine details like hot-swap for memory card, dedicated volume control buttons and shortcuts add to user comfort. For a QWERTY phone, the size, spacing and tactility of buttons is important. Tiny and stiff buttons are frustrating, whereas, large buttons with good tactility help composing messages effi ciently. The budget QWERTY phone roundup was a very good opportunity to fi ndout how good the  models by smaller  brands are and whether any of them can defeat the Nokia C3 or X2. The ones I found most fascinating were the Fly Circle B436, Lava B8, and Videocon V1676. Other phones had some issues or the other. Some had poor build quality,while others lacked good ergonomics. Some phones had a sluggish UI and most phones shot horrible photos. The Fly Circle B436 has an excellent keypad, dedicated volume control and secondary camera for self-portrait. Its key feature is its speaker, which is loud… really, really loud. You’ll have angry eyes staring at you if you play music at full volume on this phone in public places. The Lava B8 looks great and reminded me of the Nokia E71. It was the most feature-rich phone, but it scores low on ergonomics. Its keypad isn’t very comfortable and typing messages with the T9 dictionary active was painful. The Videocon V1676 has everything except Wi-Fi, which is forgivable because it offers very good ergonomics and performance. It has dedicated volume control, hot-swap for memory card, excellent keypad and separate keys for commonly used punctuations like period and comma. Other phones had punctuations combined with the alphabet keys, requiring the user the press the shift/function key in combination; I’ve observed this in QWERTY phones by Nokia. Out of all brands, only Videocon has got the keypad correct. And yes, it’s a C3 killer. It offers more features than the Nokia C3 for a lesser price and the overall performance is impressive. When buying a budget QWERTY phone, I strongly suggest you get a feel for the device and pay good attention to ergonomics. Don’t base your buying decision only on the feature set.

Are high-end Android phones really worth it?

"These phones take the user experience to a whole new level!"

My journey with Android phones started with the Samsung Galaxy 3, which I’ve been tinkering with for a long, long time. Initially, it took a little time getting used to the touchscreen, especially while composing emails and messages. But after a few weeks of extensive use I was very happy with certain features, such as out-of-the-box support for DivX and MKV files and good quality. At the same time, I wasn’t too happy with small things that impacted productivity. Firstly, the screen was too narrow to type on the virtual QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode, and also the built-in dictionary of the stock Samsung keyboard wasn’t too intelligent to autocorrect mistyped words. The gaming performance also wasn’t too great. With even a bit of eye candy or 3D graphics appearing in games, frame rates used to go for a toss. I tried multiple ROMs and overclocking the phone's CPU from 667 MHz to a crazy 1200 MHz! It did help to quite an extent, but the battery life took a nosedive. I’m now considering investing in a high-end handset to satiate my needs for comfort and eye candy. This month’s comparison of high-end Android phones was a nice chance for me to get a hands-on experience with some of the best phones on the market. I started off with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, which I was very scared to use because it felt too feeble. The display also didn’t have Gorilla Glass for protection against scratches. However, the user interface was good and gaming on it was fun. The screen was also wide enough for typing messages in portrait mode without any strain. The big thing that turned me off was its 8 megapixel camera, which I expected to be excellent. The images came out quite grainy and some highcontrast night shots that I took were quite disastrous. I used it for almost a week, until I found it drab after getting the Samsung Galaxy SII in hand. You have to check out the quality of its Super AMOLED Plus display to believe how gorgeous it looks. It’s overly vibrant, but videos, games and photos look awesome. Paying Rs 4,000 over and above the price of the Xperia Arc is completely justified for a dual-core processor, 16 GB of built-in storage, sexy display and the sleek form. However, the camera performance isn’t quite up to the mark. The third and the last phone I used for quite a while was the HTC Incredible S. Hats off to HTC for the excellent Sense UI they’ve designed. It looks great, it’s extremely fluid, and the provision of quick access to the important functions has been paid a good deal of attention, which makes the phone a breeze to use. Overall, the phone is excellent, but it’s quite expensive. The sheer power and design of these high-end phones takes the user experience to a completely different level, but they come in at a hefty premium. Be careful and make wise decisions – you may get something much better by spending a few thousand Rupees more, and you won’t regret.

The Death of the Netbook

Once the most exciting category of tech products, netbooks have been out-glammed by tablets and outclassed by cheap portable laptops. We take a firsthand look at the state of the mobile computing world.

Is there still space in the world for netbooks? Four years ago, the entire world fell in love with the idea of

cheap, lightweight computers that could do almost anything. Netbooks shot to the top of the popularity charts so fast that every single PC maker jumped aboard and a whole new device category was born. Today, though, there might not be much reason for that category to exist anymore. Netbooks are good at being cheap, portable, and simple to use, but they aren’t good at satisfying the needs of users as they grow beyond basic tasks. They might be convenient, but it’s hard justifying the cost today when a much more capable laptop can be had for just a few thousand rupees more. The hardware is underpowered, the preloaded Windows Starter Edition just looks anemic, and no single model has yet managed to work a comfortable keyboard and trackpad into package only large enough for a 10-inch screen. In fact, netbooks never did take off in way they were intended to. For all the reasons above, they never gained much foothold as entry-level PCs for low-income buyers. It’s only because they caught the public fancy as inexpensive secondary gadgets that they ever sold in large quantities. The iPad and its various competitors, however, are much more suitable as portable entertainment gadgets, so even that appeal is lost. Today, it all boils down to what you want to use your tablet or netbook for. Netbooks are cheaper than tablets, and are often more versatile, although many people get quickly accustomed to the ways in which tablets are limited and therefore don’t mind this so much. There’s no sense in comparing the two types of devices spec-for-spec, since they’re designed to be used in vastly different ways. For all the convenience of iOS or Android, a tablet cannot provide the kind of experience that a Windows or Linux based netbook can. I decided to spend equal amounts of time with an iPad 2 and an Asus Seashell, giving them equal opportunities, and seeing which turned out to be more suitable in each situation.

By 2015, the US PC market will break down as such
 (based on percentage of units sold in 2015):

The experiences

The first situation in which I had to choose a netbook or tablet was while traveling. If I had to choose only one device to put into my backpack, it would have to be a tablet. The netbook weighs 1.25 kg, while the iPad 2 weighs half as much, at 600 grams. The difference is noticeable, but if you’re willing to put up with a netbook, also keep in mind that today’s ultraportable laptops start at around 1.4 kgs. I took both for a spin during Computex in Taipei earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, the iPad proved to be an excellent choice for entertainment and web surfing, but in situations where I needed to dash to a computer, it was frustratingly limited. The iPad was undoubtedly easier and more handy to use while waiting in airport lounges and sitting in cramped economy class seats. I watched videos, read ebooks, and twiddled around on the web whenever Wi-Fi was available. However when it came to things like previewing and uploading photos, replying to email and putting together articles, I found myself stashing the iPad back in my bag and heading for the public terminals provided for the press. The netbook also came in handy when checking out press materials handed out on pen drives, and in several situations, the only available Internet access was via cellphone tethering—I would have had to go hunting for a microSIM for the iPad and spend extra money on it, but could simply hook up the netbook via a USB cable. Lesson learnt: when travelling for work, you can’t beat the versatility of a full computer, even if it’s a small, weak one. If you’re used to the way things are done on a desktop or laptop computer, you’ll find that multitasking, mouse-and keyboard input, and even the variety of software available will influence your decision. There’s no substitute for having a real filesystem, being able to organize things across drives, connect to networks and projectors, back up digital photos and videos, and of course multitask with the flick of a wrist. Of course these things are PC-specific, not netbook-specific. The tablet loses out on flexibility, but a laptop is still better than a netbook in every work-related situation. Back at home, I found the netbook pretty much never came out of its bag. For every possible use situation, the iPad proved more comfortable and fun. There are tons of brilliant free ebooks available online, and I found myself reading more in a month than I had all of last year. With a home media server and Wi-Fi everywhere, there is literally an app for everything. There were of course times when I needed to multitask more, with browsers and chat windows running, but in those situations I always walked over to my PC rather than taking out the netbook. There was no advantage left for the netbook—the tiny  screen and keyboard make it worthwhile only when a desktop or laptop isn't available. If I ever have to choose only one cheap device at home, it would have to be a netbook, but if I wanted a secondary gadget for my own entertainment, I know now that the iPad wins hands down. Which brings us to the budget question. If you already have a PC or laptop and are looking for a companion device or gadget, a tablet will give you more choice and flexibility. If you’re buying a netbook or tablet because it’s the only thing you can afford, you’d be better served by the netbook, but you should still seriously consider saving some more and buying a cheap laptop. So tablets are great if you can afford an indulgent lifestyle, but netbooks still have a place in the world. Laptops far outclass netbooks in terms of power, and tablets trump them when it comes to weight. The purpose of the exercise was to figure out whether netbooks still have a place in the world, and with this kind of competition on both sides, it’s clear that they now appeal to only a narrow section of the buying public. The only advantage they have left is their low cost. That might be enough reason for some, but it’s a shrinking target group.

Should you really care about memory in graphics cards?

Getting the most bang for the buck is what everyone looks out for, and this holds true especially when you’re spending a lot of money for something that you’ll use for a few years. You want the latest and the greatest gadgets and hardware that won’t get outdated too soon. But the decisionmaking process that goes behind what to look out for is the trickiest bit. It’s all the more challenging when there’s a swarm of brands and model variants in the market. 

Radeon HD 6670

                       
              Going by the questions that I come across from my friends and CIS’s readers, choosing the best graphics card given a certain budget is one of the most challenging decisions. It’s easier to choose a mid-range or a premium graphics card because there are very few variants. The memory sizes and types don’t differ much. The only things to consider are the design and quality of the cooler in the case of custom design cards. However, things are completely different in the case of the mainstream segment (under Rs 10,000), which has the largest user base. For example, consider the Radeon HD 6670, which is available in DDR3 and GDDR5 variants. Further, you have 1 GB and 2 GB memory size variants. I’ve come across people who are unaware of memory types and feel that the higher the amount of video memory the better. So they overlook cards with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and settle for a card with 2 GB of DDR3 memory for the same price and think they got a good deal. What one should ideally give first priority to is the type of memory and completely ignore the amount of memory. 
                      
                           This month, I came across two very interesting graphics cards, which gave me an idea for this month’s topic – the HIS Radeon HD 6670, 1 GB GDDR5 and the Powercolor Radeon HD 6670, 2 GB DDR3. I tested both the cards on our test rig powered by Intel Core i5-2500K CPU and 4 GB Corsair XMS3 -1600 memory. The Powercolor HD 6670 logged an overall score of 1199 points in 3DMark 11. At 1920x1080 (very high), Just Cause 2 and Mafia II were stuttering at 15 fps and 10 fps respectively. Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark reported a measly 7.1 fps at 1920x1080 with tessellation disabled. The HIS HD 6670 was way better with a 3DMark 11 score of 1871 points. With settings kept the same, Just Cause 2 and Mafia II ran at 26 fps and 20 fps respectively. Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark reported 17 fps. 
                      
                         The Radeon HD 6670 by both HIS and Powercolor are priced at Rs 5,500, and the former is obviously better bang for the buck even though it has half the amount of memory. Now that you have an idea about the performance with DDR3 and GDDR5 memory types, make the smart choice. A small note about the Radeon HD 6670: While being perfectly suited for home theater PCs, the HD 6670 also addresses the entry-level segment, where users need a discrete graphics card for casual gaming, accelerating video playback and transcoding. It’s extremely power-friendly and doesn’t need a PCIE power connector to draw extra power.



“The type of memory is important and not the amount”

If Looks Could Control

After touchscreens and gesture recognition, eye tracking is the next step for completely intuitive control of PC and gadgets

Communication help: Thanks to
special software, a computer can
be controlled just with the eyes

Listening to those who can‘t speak: The tracker recognizes
where the baby is looking and what interests him.

Intuitive and direct control of computers is the new frontier for technology. The keyboard and mouse require a lot of movement and dexterity from users, which is not always possible and leaves a lot of room for improvement. Apple achieved a milestone step in the evolution of intuitive interfaces by developing the multitouch surface for its iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s Kinect, has sold millions of units, and presented another approach that frees users from physical contact with a device. The next level is going to be introduced in the market soon: thanks to eye tracking, you might not need to control the computer with deliberate actions at all. Instead, it will recognize where you are looking, understand what you want to do and react accordingly.
                  A computer controlled by the eye will scroll down when you reach the end of a page while reading. It will offer definitions of words or translations if your eye lingers on a particular word for some time. You will get real eye contact with characters in 3D video games. Such levels of control are possible because of the way the eye functions. Humans see well enough only in a part of their vision range to be able to read and perform similar activities. Moreover, the eye has to focus on an object for at least 50 milliseconds to recognize what it is. This phenomenon is called fixation, and it can be detected by a machine.

Support: People with disabilities can
use eye trackers for communication

How the devices work

In order to grasp fixations, a webcam which is built into a notebook or a specialized camera accessory like the Microsoft Kinect, has to emit an invisible infrared pattern that is reflected by the eyes. The eye tracker captures these reflections and analyses them. There are two lighting methods that give good results depending on the color of the user’s eyes and ambient light: either the light source is set close to the lens of the tracker so that the pupil seems lighter than the iris (like a red-eye photo), or the light source is placed far away from the lens, whereby the pupil appears darker than the iris. The method that will best suit each user can be determined automatically by a simple calibration process. The eye tracking device also needs to know about the dimensions of the display screen and the position of the eyes relative to certain points on the monitor. During operation, the device records the area directly in front of the monitor. Currently available devices that help physically disabled people to control their computers can capture an area of around 30x40 cm at a distance of 50 to 80 cm in front of the screen. Using a sampling frequency of 120 Hertz, the camera generates an image every 8.3 ms, through which the device recognizes the reflection pattern of the eyes. Thus it knows where they are placed. 
                    The eye tracker device then determines the direction of eyes from the vector between the differently refracted reflections of the pupil and the iris (see diagram). Together with a time stamp, the device reports the eye position and direction to the eye-tracking software that runs on the computer. The program filters out irrelevant eye movements and winks in order to determine the fixations—the actual points on the monitor that you are focusing on. At a distance of 70 cm, the device can recognize visual focus points of around 6 mm in diameter. In combination with the current content of the screen, the software deduces which word or picture you are looking at. The computer then uses a visual pattern database to determine whether an action like scrolling is necessary.



Eye control: New possibilities

Eye control is not going to completely replace current input devices like mouse and keyboard, but add to them. For example, a user could control the mouse pointer with his eyes, while his hand rests on a button and just clicks. That works very fast and reduces micro-movements of the arm muscles that often lead to shoulder and back problems. Eye tracking technology is ready for use even today, but the components are bulky and expensive, which means they can be used only in specialized areas. Eye tracking makes it possible for physically disabled people to interact with a computer. 

                    The introduction of an eye-controlled computer in the mass market is not very far away. “Our eye tracking technology is already so mature that it can be used in PCs. In a few years it will small and cheap enough to be fitted into average computers”, says Nicolas Pezzarossa, German CEO for Tobii Technology, a provider of eye tracking software and hardware. Tobii showed a new notebook prototype at CeBIT; one of the test programs was the game Asteroids, in which visitors at the fair could shoot down asteroids. In the near future, Doctors will be able to call up specific information with their eyes, such as X-ray images, without having to interrupt their work—or they can examine the cognitive abilities of children who are yet to start
talking but can tell what they want by focusing their eyes. Researchers are even analyzing how and what we read, using this technology, leading to enhanced consumer behaviour studies. Beyond that, eye tracking will add new life and realism to our business, entertainment and educational software.

Speed Thrills!

Want to give your PC a steroidal speed boost?  Use a high speed SSD as the primary drive and enjoy blistering performance.

The Most powerful SSD available in the market, that have terrific performance

High-end hardware calls for blazing fast storage devices to output results at blistering speeds. Using a conventional hard drive as primary storage without bottleneck performance in scenarios where speedy read and write operations are critical-for example, audio and video capturing/ editing, 3D modeling, image editing, and so on. In such cases, using a high-end SSD works wonders. Older generation SSDs with SATA 3 Gb/s interface are more than twice fast as regular hard drives. The new SATA 6 Gb/s interface and with high-speed controllers have changed the ballgame yet again.

             Plug a SATA 6 Gb/s SSD to a 3 Gb/s pot on the motherboard and then connect it to a 6 Gb/s port–you’ll see a vast difference in transfer speed. We tried it and noted a difference of 45 percent in speed within the same drive with the same drive. The average read and write speeds of a 6Gb/s port around 510 mb/s and 490 mb/s respectively. When connected to a SATA 3Gb/s port which has half the bandwidth the average read and write speeds dropped to 270 mb/s and 260 mb/s respectively.

            SSDs are available in capacities ranging from 64 GB to 256 GB. The ideal capacity for your PC depends on the amount of storage space required by the operating systems and applications you use. For example, a 64 GB SSD is ideal for a basic home PC, whereas, as a 128 GB is good for a gaming PC in which a lot of storage space is required to install games. Nowadays, with even entry-level motherboards featuring SATA 3GB/s interface, opting for a SATA 6 Gb/s SSD is a smart choice.

           If you want plenty of storage without compromising performance and blowing up too much money, you can use an SSD as a primary drive and a high-capacity hard drive has the secondary storage. Such a setup would be ideal if you want to store your entire collection of music and movies in your PC where you just need to store documents and files related to work, the even a 64 GB SSD should suffice.

           Upgrading your laptops storage by replacing the hard drive with an SSD is a very smart upgrade. You’ll find an improvement is the boot time and the speed at which applications load. Also, Battery life also improves because SSD consumes less power than hard drives due to the absence of moving parts.

In this comparison we compared high-performance SSDs with SATA 6 Gb/s interface. We tried our best to roundup all the brands in the market, and we go our hands on 10 speed demons.

UEFI: The Super BIOS

The end of the old BIOS is imminent; UEFI is faster, safer and more efficient. We explain why.

The bluish, confusing menu of the BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) has been a feature of every PC for the past 30 years. It’s function is to detect installed hardware and provide the necessary interface for the boot process of Windows and Linux. The BIOS was developed for PCs in the early eighties, and has remained virtually unchanged in recent years. Since 2000, Intel is working on a new firmware interface, the EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). 

                             Since 2005, the United EFI Forum is responsible for developing, managing and promoting UEFI specifi cations. Big companies such as Intel, AMD, Apple, Dell and Microsoft develop product in accordance to UEFI standards. UEFI has a faster, more stable, easier-to-use and secure interface. Nevertheless, there are hardly any systems that use UEFI as of now. We show you how your computer will boot up in the future using UEFI. 

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" By 2015, more than

90percent of IA*-Systems

will boot with UEFI " -  Vincent Zimmer
                                                                            Principal Engineer
                                                                        Software and Services group, Intel



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Faster: UEFI integrates the drives

 You can observe the boot process carried out by the BIOS once the PC is switched on. For a few seconds, until the Windows boot screen appears, the BIOS executes the so-called POST (Power-On Self-Test). It’s a diagnostic testing sequence which checks the functionality of the CPU, memory and various input/output devices. The BIOS works at an abstraction level so that the operating system doesn't have direct access to the hardware. However, the correct drivers are loaded as the operating system is loading. Finally, the BIOS scans the master boot record or partition table, which resides in the fi rst sector of a partitioned drive. If the boot loader is present on the active partition, the operating system takes control of the system from the BIOS and starts up. The BIOS has two fundamental weaknesses. Firstly, it is based on 16-bit assembly code and cannot directly address the latest 64-bit hardware, and secondly, there are no set standards for specifications, so manufacturers come up with their own versions. The participants of the UEFI Forum wanted to set this straight. From the outset, each process has been precisely defined. Thus, the boot process or platform initialization (PI) is clearly described in phases. Immediately after powering up the PC, the Pre-EFI Initialization (PEI) is executed, which initializes the CPU, memory and chipset. This is then followed by the Driver Execution Environment (DXE). At this point, the rest of the hardware is initialized. This process saves the time required for booting because UEFI can integrate various drivers that need not be reloaded during booting. Thanks to these drivers, the user already has access to network card, including features such as network booting and remote assistance at the early stage of the boot process. With the graphics processor enabled, a fancy user interface is also presented. 

                            However, biggest time-saving feature of UEFI is the fact that not all the installed hard drives will be scanned for the boot loader, since the boot drive is set during the installation of the operating system in the UEFI. The default boot loader is run without consuming much time searching the drives. 

                            The faster boot time is not the only advantage of UEFI; applications can be stored on virtually any non-volatile storage device installed on the PC. For example, programs and diagnostic tools such as antivirus or system management tools can be run from an EFI partition on the hard drive. This feature will be very useful to original equipment manufacturers (OEM), who can distribute systems with extra functions in addition to the standard EFI firmware stored on the motherboard’s ROM. 

UEFI fully supports 3 TB hard drives

 Due to delayed transition to UEFI over and over again, new hardware could be addressed by the BIOS by means of extensions. The classic BIOS can access only up to 232 sectors of 512 bytes in size, which translates to a total of 2 TB. So the upcoming 3 TB variants of Western Digital Caviar Green and Seagate Barracuda XT won’t be fully compatible with the current BIOS. Seagate uses larger sectors to make the full capacity usable on Windows, butthe BIOS cannot boot from  this drive. UEFI, on the other hand, works with GUID partition table (GPT) with 64-bit long addresses and can handle up to 264 sectors that address up to 9 Zettabyte (1 zettabyte equals 1 billion terabytes). Since Windows Vista can handle GPT disks, booting works with only a few UEFI motherboards in the market, such as the Intel DQ57TM. However, in 2011, Intel will sell more motherboards with UEFI than standard BIOS, followed by all the other manufacturers