PC World Names The 25 Most Innovative Products of The Year

PC World has put together a top 25 list of the most innovative products of the year 2007, noting the “Innovation”, the “Benefit” and a brief overview of each. All entries on the list are somehow tech-related and all are available either in-store or online right now. I personally can’t wrap my head around how the order of this list was devised, or how some products even made it on the list, but I’m sure the reasoning is clear to someone. Have a look at the list and let us know what you think of it, and what your top 25 would be!

1. Google Gears
2. Apple iPhone
3. One Laptop per Child XO
4. Time Machine, in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
5. Amazon Kindle
6. NetGear Digital Entertainer HD EVA8000
7. HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC
8. AT&T Tilt
9. Facebook API
10. DeviceVM Splashtop
11. Toshiba Portege R500
12. Data Robotics Drobo
13. Hybrid Hard Drives
14. Eye-Fi Card
15. Panasonic TH-42PZ700U
16. Yamaha Tenori-On
17. Zoho Notebook
18. 'In Rainbows' by Radiohead
19. IOGear Wireless USB Hub and Adapter
20. Mint.com
21. Microsoft Popfly
22. Sprint Airave
23. Ask.com
24. eXpresso
25. Kodak EasyShare All-In-One Printers

Source

Windows Registry : Introduction and Structure

The Windows registry is a directory which stores settings and options for the operating system for Microsoft Windows 32-bit versions, 64-bit versions and Windows Mobile. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, users, preferences of the PC, etc. Whenever a user makes changes to Control Panel settings, file associations, system policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry.

Structure

Keys and Values

The registry contains two basic kinds of elements: keys and values.

Registry Keys are similar to folders - in addition to values, each key can contain subkeys, which may contain further subkeys, and so on. Keys are referenced with a syntax similar to Windows' path names, using backslashes to indicate levels of hierarchy. E.g.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows refers to the subkey "Windows" of the subkey "Microsoft" of the subkey "Software" of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key.

Registry Values are name/data pairs stored within keys. Values are referenced separately from keys. Value names can contain backslashes which would lead to ambiguities were they referred to like paths. The Windows API functions that query and manipulate registry values take value names separately from the key path and/or handle that identifies the parent key.

Hives

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

Abbreviated HKCR, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT stores information about registered applications, such as Associations from File Extensions and OLE Object Class IDs tying them to the applications used to handle these items.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Abbreviated HKCU, HKEY_CURRENT_USER stores settings that are specific to the currently logged-in user.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Abbreviated HKLM, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE stores settings that are general to all users on the computer.

HKEY_USERS

Abbreviated HKU, HKEY_USERS contains subkeys corresponding to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys for each user registered on the machine.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

Abbreviated HKCC, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG contains information gathered at runtime; information stored in this key is not permanently stored on disk, but rather regenerated at boot time.

HKEY_PERFORMANCE_DATA

This key provides runtime information into performance data provided by either the NT kernel itself or other programs that provide performance data.

[Wikipedia]