Have you ever read an eBook before? Ebooks are short for electronic books which are full-length literary publications that are in digital form which can be read in computers and other compatible reading devices. Lots of traditional books are now translated into eBooks so as to cater to highly modern and technological readers. Aside from digitalized or electronically translated traditional books, you can also find books that are originally published and distributed in online or eBook means. This strategy gives authors the opportunity to try self-publishing.

If you’re asked to choose one type only, would you go for the traditional or electronic ones? This question would be better answered if you consider its ups and downs or plusses and minuses first. Here are some points which you might want to acknowledge:

eBook Plusses

1. They provide for effectively mobile reading opportunities.
With eBooks, all you need is your portable reading device and the eBook files that you need to use. You don’t need to lug lots of heavy and thick books around anymore. This means you’ll have an easier time carrying all your stuff around like office or school supplies and other personal belongings.

2. They are more “readable-friendly” to users.
Ebooks give you the chance to adjust the settings of the gadget to your reading pleasure. You can adjust the font size, type and even the background of your gadget as you please. You can use electronic bookmarks to help you track your reading progress. You can even add some music to accompany you on your reading time if you prefer.

3. They can be more economical than traditional books.
Lots of eBook versions are cheaper than their printed counterparts. Thus, you would do well to buy this version. Another thing to consider is that a lot of books or literary writings are available in digital copy only, so you really have to get it through that means.

eBook Minuses

1. They can be a cause of potential eye-sore.
Not all people are used to reading from a screen so this method may prove to be stressful to them. In addition to that, reading from a computer or gadget screen may cause eventual eye defects, so you might want to be aware about that.

2. They can be source of hassle in accessibility.
You have things like computer and gadget viruses to worry about when downloading, playing, or accessing these eBooks. These can cause potential hassle to the readers.

3. They can make you spend even more than you bargained for.
The use of eBooks is good for people who have laptops, tablets, and other electronic reading gadgets. What about for those people who have no means to buy or get these devices? How can they access references or reading materials that are available in electronic means only?

So before you claim that eBooks are the best things that ever happened to the print or publishing industry, consider these plusses and minuses first. Do you think eBooks are the ones for you or not? It is up to you to decide.

Niña Angeli Pilapil is expert in cheap promotional items and a writer who loves reading books and novels. She works for Promopeddler, a promotional products company. Visit her Twitter page at http://twitter.com/ninsbonita.

15 years ago Intel had two processor families available for desktop systems: the Pentium (a fifth-generation processor) and the PentiumPro (sixth generation). Arguably, these processors were subject to improvements. Soon after the launch, Intel has introduced MMX, which, they said, is the first extension of the x86 instruction set since 10 years. MMX refers to 57 MultiMedia eXtensions. Included in the MMX instruction set are special commands for vector and matrix calculations. These allow, for example, a powerful MPEG decoder to be realised. The multiply-accumulator instructions endow this processor with features which are currently only found on DSPs. Thanks to MMX, the software developer also gets a number of instructions at his disposal which will help him increase the speed of games and many other applications in which video has an important function.

The P55C, a fifth-generation CPU from the Pentium family member, was the first to feature the MMX instruction set. Not forgetting a clock speed increase to 200 MHz, these were the essential developments on the Pentium front.

Another, equally interesting, development was the design of a PentiumPro derivate which also featured the MMX instruction set. At its introduction, the processor was produced in 0.35-micron technology, and operated at a clock frequency of 200 MHz. Later versions run at 300 MHz. An important difference with the Pentium Pro was the absence of the costly on-chip level-2 cache memory. The integrated level-1 cache, on the other hand, was said to become larger. The successor to the PentiumPro, called the P7, was not introduced before the summer of 1998. This processor, co-developed by Intel and Hewlett Packard, was aimed at introducing a new 64-bit wide instruction set consisting of VLIWs (Very Long Instruction Words). It was, however, intended to maintain compatibility with the x86 instruction set as well as the set for Hewlett Packard’s PA-RISC. Thanks to the VLIW concept, instructions may be coded in a constant, partially parallel, form, which makes the process of decoding the instructions much simpler as well.

Today we use processors that run at frequencies close to 4 GHz. However, the race for the highest CPU frequencies has stopped. Now we are talking about the number of CPU cores.