Please ask us you computer questions and problems, we will list common ones here. Send email to help@potterne.net
What is ADSL?
What is Broadband?
What is Scanning?
What is ADSL?
ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Basically you phone line is converted into a digital line; this allows it to transfer data over 10 times faster. Your computer is always connected to the internet and there is no dialing needed to send emails of surf. You pay a fixed monthly fee (currently around £27) and you can use you phone as normal, even when you are using the internet. When people refer to broadband they generally mean either ADSL or DSL the difference being Asymmetric! All this means is that the send speed is slower that then receive speed, this is fine for nearly all uses except for some companies.
All modems that are faster than 28,000bps are Asymmetric anyway!
The drawback is that it doesn't work over long phone lines, about 2 to 3 miles from the exchange is the maximum, there is however an adaptive rate system that allows it to work at longer distances but at slightly slower speeds, however details of B.T.'s use of this are sketchy.
Here's B.T.'s explanation of ADSL.
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Scanning
Scanning photographs is a very simple process that creates a digital image of a real photograph. The process only takes about a minute and does not harm the photo at all. Once the image has been scanned it can be saved onto CD where it will not fade anymore, in some cases the scanned photo can then be enhanced and restored to previous glory, high quality prints even up to A3 in size can then be made of the scanned photo, it is also easy then to put the photo on the website or email a copy to relatives anywhere in the world.
The Potterne.net computer club has all the equipment necessary to scan photo's available on a Monday night, so come along and try it if you want - we would particularly like to see photos that might be of interest to the website.
If you can't make a Monday evening and have a great picture for the website our scanner and laptops are mobile, so let us know and we can come to you! Please don't be worried about your pictures as it only takes a few seconds and you can take your picture home with you!
There is also another scanning technology called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This is used to avoid having to type in text that has been printed before but is not stored a computer. For example, the Walks Around Potterne by Leslie Turner was scanned in using a scanner, the letters and words were then "OCR'ed" by the computer and could then be easily reformatted to put on the web site - this avoided having to type in the entire book.
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