In the world there is crime everywhere, and with the current growth of the information age it has brought a whole new range of different crimes that can be committed but yet also can be prevented, I will talk about how ICT prevents crime mainly. ICT has been a godsend to help prevent crime mainly for the Police, but we can also use ICT to help prevent crime against us.
The Police use ICT to help prevent crime, but yet also store lots of information about other criminals on their computer database (Police National Computer) . This database stores names, which contains a large amount of information about people who have previously been cautioned, arrested or convicted. Not only does it just have names on it but it also has fingerprint and DNA technology inbuilt into the device. Criminals who are wanted or missing are also stored on this database. The Police National Computer also stores million of vehicle files which contain the usual details of the registered keeper, tax, insurance and whether its stolen or wanted. This is a great feature of using technology in our current world because if a driver is uninsured then it can automatically be picked up by the PNC with the use of ANPR software.
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and it’s basically a mass surveillance method, which is used by police cars, security cameras and toll roads. When the ANPR scans a cars number plate, that number plate is then scanned against the Police National Computer, and if everything is fine then nothing will happen but on the other hand if that car is stolen an alert will pop up on screen and alert the operator that there is something wrong with that car. In my opinion this is a great bit of software that helps stop crime, although I don’t really think that it prevents crime because it needs something to be wrong with the car before it will actually pick it up, although some can say it does prevent crime because it can also act as a deterrent as people will be too scared to drive around with no insurance or tax. Bearing all of this in mind I still think that it’s a great bit of kit that is used by the Police today. Below is a picture of a typical ANPR van that is used by the police today.
In this current day and age we are being watched nearly all the time but do not know it, the main type of surveillance are CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras. These types of cameras are usually placed in busy areas such as shopping malls, busy streets but yet also quiet ones because crime can occur where people think it is quiet as well. These cameras are constantly filming the area that they are placed in. baring all of this in mind I think it is a great system that can capture critical evidence to a crime, although some complain that they are being filmed way too much but you hardly notice it when you are out shopping because the cameras are becoming much smaller and being put in more discreet places. Below is a picture of a ordinary CCTV tower, they can be grouped together or placed on their own.
With all the use of online shopping and people doing online banking there is bound to be someone trying to take advantage of innocent people, the most popular crime on the internet is probably fraud and identity theft, these usually occur from someone logging into a phishing site. A phishing site is a way of attempting to acquire a person’s private information such as passwords, credit/debit card details etc. the list goes on. The main way people try and phish your details is by creating an email address and sending you an legitimate looking email claiming to be your bank and you must verify your details with them for some reason, if you then click on the web link and enter in your details you’ve had it! They will have all the information that you have just entered in. There are a few ways to prevent phishing, the main one being is being able to educate yourself for example when you receive an email address check the email address it has come from etc. that would be the first step, if you don’t notice that and you actually click on the link, some anti virus software’s have a web checker. This would actually check your web page to see if it’s a ‘https’ or just a bog standard ‘http’ these types of software help prevent crime a lot because since everyone is jumping on the band wagon to do online banking people are becoming a lot more vulnerable and software like this is helping prevent it.
People stealing clothes from shops have always been a problem, now most valuable items are tagged inside a shop. This stops people from stealing them because if they try to exit the store without paying for it (this is also where the tag gets removed) the stores alarm will go off and alert a security guard. Sometime people try and take the tags off in store so they don’t set the alarm off, but nowadays tags are usually fitted with an ink device of some sort. For example if you try and take the tag off then the tag will release ink and you will literally be caught red handed. Below is a generic security tag with an ink device fitted.
Entertainment has revolutionized the way we used technology, nowadays there are so many different devices, which can actually entertain us. We have a massive range of technology which can store information and actually entertains us, ranging from portable handheld devices that can fit in your pocket to 60” plasma 3D TV’s, I will talk about the different ways that we can get entertained in each particular genre today.
Games
There are lots of different platforms that we can play games of, the most popular is probably the dedicated gaming system such as Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo, which ultimately dominate the games market rivalling Hollywood blockbusters in terms of money made. Games that mainly dominate Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo are usually big names ones such as Call of Duty, FIFA and rock band on the Xbox. Most people play games just for the fun of the game, although some people play it purely to play with their friends online; this in my opinion is not really enjoying the game properly. Some people prefer using different platforms e.g. Xbox Playstation and Nintendo simply because what suits their family the most, in my experience I think that Xbox suits the full gamer, whereas Playstation suits the family that likes to watch HD DVD’s and then on the other hand Nintendo suiting the whole family which also gets the kids involved. This also tend to relate to the age of the players, teenagers tend to get what ever platforms that their friends have so they can play with them etc. Ages of the players tend to vary, but the majority of the players tend to lie in the 14-30-age bracket. Some people may argue that playing games is a major time waster, but to what extent is it? Personally I think that a few hours a week is acceptable, and then if you go outside a few hours then it starts to become a real time waster.
Recently games have moved over to the iOS and android platform which is great, because we can now play good free games in a spare 5 minutes while waiting for the bus or something. Having games on our iOS and android devices have been great because of the versatility of them.
In my opinion games have changed the way we can entertain our self, for the better.
Music
Music is a key source of entertainment and has been for a while now; MP3s have modernized the way we listen to music on the go. In the old times people used to buy CDs from shops and have a CD player on the go, nowadays we can store thousands of songs on a little iPod. The iPod was first launched on October 23rd 2001, and as of October 2011 apple has retailed over 300,000,000 units of the apple iPod. Below is a retail chart of the apple iPod history.
Portable music has transformed the way we can actually listen to music, all for the good. I store all my music on my iPhone, and without that I don’t know what I would do, because I certainly wouldn’t walk round carrying lots of my favourite CD’s. All of this is an advantage, the only disadvantage that I could imagine happening is that people damaging their ears through loud music, because it can. In my experience I know my friends who listen to really loud music and I don’t think that it is doing them any favours personally.
Digital Cameras
Digital cameras have contributed massively to ours entertainment, because when we want to go out we would want to capture the good memories. All of this can be done with a digital camera now. The first commercially available digital camera was released in the 90’s and has shaped what digital cameras can do today. The majority of people have a camera with them most of the time, whether it is a camera phone, a small compact camera or a digital SLR. The best advantage of digital cameras in comparison to the old film cameras is that you are able to review the photos as soon as you take them on a small screen, they tend to be about 3” which is still fairly small but better than nothing. Along with digital cameras has come photoshop; Photoshop allows people to digitally enhance photos and manipulate them into something that there not. Most big name women’s magazines actually digitally enhance their photos to make them look like something their not, this is a major disadvantage because it’s branding that it’s the ‘perfect’ look when they don’t actually look like that. Below is a great image that I found on the Internet of something called Photoshop cream.
This image clearly shows what Photoshop can do to a hi-res image, and in my opinion it is not right for magazines to digitally enhance their photos to an extent, which is not reality.
eBooks
Books have always been a source of entertainment for many avid book readers, but lately their have been numerous releases of technology which allows you purchase books of the internet and store them on your device and have access to all the books you purchase, where ever you are in the world. The main players in the genre of eBooks are Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad. The Kindle from amazon is a dedicated portable eBook, which runs on e-Ink, which is a massive advantage that it holds over Apple’s iPad; e-ink is great because it doesn’t require a backlight screen and when something doesn’t require a backlight screen it is much nicer on the eyes. You can purchase books for the Kindle from Amazons website directly, the eBooks are always cheaper than the actual book because there is no packaging involved what so ever. The bog standard Kindle retails at a cheap price of £89, which is a great price for such a great item. The iPad from apple is not just an eReader, but it does practically everything, but the main disadvantage is that it is a backlight screen and after about 30 minutes of reading you will develop a headache. The other main disadvantage is the price in comparison to amazons kindle, the cheapest iPad retails at a whopping £399, and this is a huge amount of money compared to amazons kindle.
Overall I think that if you just want an eReader for books then amazon is hands down the way to go, but on the other hand if you want other great awesome features like surfing the internet and being able to play games then definitely get an iPad.
Information has changed the way that we get educated from being registered in school to actually learning. I will talk about how the information age has changed the way that we get educated from the start of the school day to the end of the school day.
First of all start of the school day, you usually get registered at the4 start of the day. A couple of years ago you used to have a paper register that had to be ran up the school office after every class, nowadays you can get programs that electronically register children programs such as SIMS do this with lots of other features.
SIMS – School information management system
SIMS is the leading school and local authority administration software which is used 21000 schools and over 150 local authorities across the United Kingdom and boasts an amazing 80% of the market share of administration software within schools and local authorities. SIMS is built on the Microsoft SQL Server which stores and receives information which is requested by other applications such as SIMS.
SIMS manages to store so much information on any individual pupil; it stores information such as; Personal details e.g. address and emergency contact details, the pupil’s attendance to their lessons and coming into school, the pupils behaviour e.g. if they have any behaviour issues that need to be warned to a teacher in case anything kicks up not only does it do it for behaviour it also does it for pupil’s achievements that they get throughout the school term which can be tracked by any teacher, it also includes the pupils full timetable so that they can be traced from anywhere in the school if an emergency happens and they can be alerted easily and last but not least a school photo so they teachers and other members of staff can identify the pupil if they don’t know what they look like.
In my opinion it is a great bit of software that teachers can use because its all in one place and it very convenient for them to use, not only is it much easier for them to use it also saves the schools resources that would be used on paper registers so it is also good for the environment at the same time.
Smart Boards
Smart boards are created by Smart Technologies; they were originally released in 1991 and have developed a lot since then. Smart boards are a great bit of kit that is used in basically every single classroom in my school, they are basically an electronic version of a blackboard, but allow interactivity with the kids. The developers have also managed to create software that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux which is great, because in my school at the art rooms we have iMacs and it means that the smart boards can be hooked up to those and you don’t even need a windows pc in sight! The interactivity of the smart boards provides so many convenient uses for the classroom, for example with the software that you are provided with when you purchase one it contains lots of cool and interesting features that can be used to benefit children within the classroom. The software contains a great but simple feature called smart notebook, which allows teachers to record each step of the lesson on the program, and then if a student gets stuck they can review the notebook at a later time. Having an electronic version of a notebook is a great feature because, it can’t be lost, no one can steal it, and you can provide your notes to your friends without any hassle.
In my personal experience smart boards have been great to use within the school because when I was doing GCSE maths, the teacher used to have interactive games that she would put p on the board and pupils would come up to the front and actually use the smart board to answer questions. As you can see from the picture below, it is a classic example of the use of interactivity that it provides to a classroom.
Information can be transferred over anything, although the most popular one is probably Computers, at my school we have at least 1 computer in every single room, and at an approximation we have at least 600 computers in my school. This is great! A few years ago you used to only get 4 or 5 computers in each room, nowadays you have a room, which is full of about 35 computers! Our life really is evolving around technology, and the way technology is developing we will have to be educated a lot more.
Recently in the news, a school located in Colchester actually gave 1200 pupils and iPad 2 each to use for their school study’s etc. It is reported that Honywood Community Science School in Colchester actually spent over £500,000 on iPad 2’s but only asked the parents to pay £50 for insurance for the device itself. This in its self is a clear sign how modern technologies are a great asset to help children in the twenty first century learn.
Saying all of this I wonder, are we going to loose that skill of writing in the future. With all this new technology developing and being introduced into children’s life at such a young age, will they stop learning on how to actually write? Some people prefer to write down notes with a pen and note pad, the majority would prefer to use a electric device of some sort, although there are pros and cons against this. The biggest con I think is that if you write using an electrical device you might not actually get it in your head, because people can touch type so quickly now that they don’t even have to think about what they are actually writing. On the other hand it is so much quicker and easier to take notes with a computer, but they just might not get into your brain.
In my opinion we are slowly loosing touch with the paper and pen side of things, because at my school we have eBooks. This means that instead of text books that we are given, all the books are hosted on our schools server, doing this they automatically assume that we have access to a computer at home, and to be quite honest the majority of UK home have at least 1 computer in the household.
The main thing that really helps in schools and technology is that when you tend to use technology for work you can usually get instant feedback which is great compared to handing work in and waiting a while to receive it back. This is a great advantage of information age in education because the pupil receives interactive and instant feedback.
Overall I think that the information age is great when we use it in our education system, although I still think that something’s still need to be hand written otherwise we will loose touch with writing things, and although there are computers that can do the majority of things they cant do exactly everything for us in this day and age.
Over the past 50 years, computers have changed dramatically, for the better. They used to be humongous and take up a whole room without a monitor. Nowadays you can get a computer that’s as thick as a notepad. This evolution has dramatically changed the way people work inside the office, it has made jobs a lot easier and it has freed a lot of space that used to be taken up by paper and other accessories.
Below is an example of a timeline that the world has evolved around, it is a very simple but good example that shows just the simple landmarks in the world that we live in today.
Source: clemson.edu
What would life be like if we did have no information? It wouldn’t be functioning, in this day and age information is transferred from computer to computer, computer to person, person to computer, person to person; there are lots of different variations of information transferring. Information is also like a currency, because if we know something that someone else doesn’t know then we have power and we can sell that information.
If we look at a typical working office, you can see the developments throughout technology. For example if we look at a 1960’s office you would expect to find type writers and lots of filing cabinets, then as we move onto 1970 we start to get electric typewriters introduced to the office scene. Then when 1980 came alone, most offices would have a computer by then which would include a big CRT monitor and would be running MS-DOS, you would also have the bonus of a computer mouse!
Then along came the 1990s, most offices still had fairly big CRT monitors, but you can also see that they had filing cabinets still but also photocopies and printers dashed around the room.
Throughout all of these changes, working styles have changed for the better, it has become much much easier and quicker for people to get jobs done in their workplace, with the evolution of computers for ever updating and big manufacturers bringing out new ones every year, things can only get better! Especially nowadays we have smart phones, which can do much much more than what a computer used to be able to do. We have all that information packed into a little device. We can access social networks where ever we are in the world, create and reply to emails when ever we wish, this has obviously had a massive impact on the way people work, making it a lot easier but maybe a bit more stressful for them, especially getting to grips with all this new technology.
Overall I think the way technology has revolutionised and developed has created a basic work ethic for the modern society today, for the better of course. Over the next few years new technology is bound to come out and make jobs even more easier for us.
In today’s modern society, nearly everyone uses their computers for entertainment. There are lots of different online services that can be used to catch up on your entertainment which are normally available on your TV/Radio and podcasts. There are dozens of sites that allow you to be entertained online; the biggest one is probably YouTube.
Online TV
The most popular online entertainment catch up services are the services that allow you to catch up on national TV for example iPlayer, ITV Player and 4OD (4 On demand) there are also purely online services such as http://www.tvcatchup.com/ , which operates over your computer, iPhones, iPods, iPads and also games console. They host over 50 channels which consist of the most popular channels that are on TV.
Source: Slideshare.net iPlayer statistics 2010
It is a great advantage to be able to watch programs that you have missed online, because lets be honest nowadays nearly everyone has a PC/Laptop, and being able to catch up on programs you have missed online makes it much more easier. Channel 4, who run 4 on Demand were launched November 2006, have been growing ever since they started; on the 31st august 2011 4oD was relaunched, making the user experience so much better. It allowed users to create ‘My 4oD’ which allowed registered users to create playlists, save their favourite programmes, keep a record of what they have watched and schedule shows.
Not online do channel 4 have their own website to stream and watch shows, but on the 15th October 2009 the biggest online entertainment website YouTube signs a deal with Channel 4 which allows Channels 4 shows to be screened on YouTube. YouTube now has over 3,000 hours of Channels 4’s programmes archived on their site allowing anyone to watch it at anytime.
As you can see from these jaw dropping statistics, lots of people use YouTube for lots of different uses, the biggest use is probably entertainment value. There have been lots of funny videos that have been put on the site. YouTube also allows users to create and upload their own videos, of any sort! You can also integrate google adsense into your videos and earn some money of your own videos!
In my own experience watching TV online has been great, although I own a Sky+ box in my house which I can record things on, but if I forget to record something I can easily hop onto one of many different online websites and watch the show that I missed.
Advantages:
You can catch up on almost every show online!
Some videos can be very entertaining
Free to watch
Lots of different genres online
If you make you own videos on youtube you can also earn some extra money
You can watch videos in HD online, instead of standard SD if you don’t own a HD TV
Disadvantages:
Legally you have to have a TV Licence to watch programs online
May experience loading time/lagging issues due to slow internet connection
Usually have to create a account to experience their full potential
iTunes & Spotify
iTunes is a great bit of software from apple, it allows you to download lots of different media items from it. These media items being music, podcasts, apps and films. Some items are free, some are not, for example podcasts, some apps and some remixes may be free whereas on the other hand you will be required to pay a small fee usually under £1 for music, and a fee for films usually under £5. Not only can you buy films, you can also rent films from iTunes, which allows you watch films for a fraction of the price. The rental system works by you first of all downloading the film, after that you have 30 days from the time of the rental to watch it, then 48 hours after you’ve started watching to finish it. Not only can you buy and rent all types of media on your PC, once you purchase something it will automatically get transferred to your apple product, whether it being iPod, iPhone or an iPad. In my opinion this is a great marketing feature to apple.
In my personal opinion iTunes is great and I use it everyday to sync music to my iPhone and iPods. I have also bought films via iTunes and I have been very impressed with the quality that I get.
Advantages:
Massive range of downloads!
All digital, so no more CDs piled up in the corner of your room
Prices are usually better than in store because there is no packaging involved.
Disadvantages:
Must always be connected to the Internet to access the store
Have to make a special account which some people might not trust
Spotify
Spotify is a music streaming service, which offers music ranging from major and independent record, labels. Three people going by the name of Daniel EK, Martin Lorentzon and an Internet marketing company called TradeDoubler launched it in 2006. As of September 2010 the company reportedly had ten million users, and about 1 million of those users were actually paying for subscriptions. Spotify currently has three different membership accounts, first of all is the bog standard free one which just allows you to listen to tracks on your PC. Secondly you have the Spotify Unlimited membership, which at £4.99 is a great bargain if your are only going to listen to music on your PC and don’t want to buy songs, for £4.99 a month you will gain access to unlimited streaming of music and no advertisements within the music. Last but not least you get Spotify Premium, which is for the ultimate media user, at £9.99 it is great if you compare it to buying songs via iTunes, £9.99 a month will allow you to access all Spotify songs on your mobile, you can also play songs when your not connected to the internet which is a great bonus because if your on the move, you don’t have to be connected to the internet. Along with those features you also get no adverts and unlimited streaming. If you compare both uses you will find one that suits you best, if you like to have your music on your iPod or other apple peripheral then sure go ahead with iTunes, but if not go with Spotify.
In my personal experience, I used Spotify before I used iTunes. During my time with Spotify I found it great, I could create my own playlist and listen to songs whenever I want. And not have to pay!
Advantages:
You can listen to anything without paying
Very wide variety of music, including the old school classics
Don’t have to be connected to the Internet!
Disadvantages:
Have to create an account
May get advertising in-between songs if not paying
Piracy
You wouldn't steal a car, You wouldn't steal a handbag, You wouldn't steal a television, You wouldn't steal a movie.
Downloading pirated films is stealing, stealing is against the law, PIRACY IT'S A CRIME.
Those are the famous words for a TV ad that swept across the nation trying to increase awareness on piracy. Recently in the United Kingdom a students website which helped people watch films and television shows for free was merely operating in the same way as Google, a court has heard. Richard O’Dwyer from Sheffield is facing a extradition to the united states of copyright infringement, ultimately he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. His website was called TVShack, and the US authorities claims that the films accessed via TVShack were pirate copies. But his lawyer merely claimed that his site operates like Google and yahoo do, just linking to other sites, you were not able to watch a film from TVShack directly. The site ultimately generated all its income from advertising, the same way Google does.
In my personal opinion Richard O’Dwyer is right in what he is saying, but the moral of it is just not right, these actors, singers, directors and any one else involved in the production of something should get what they deserve.
Advantages:
Getting things for free
Disadvantages:
Could get caught
Could end up in jail over a song costing 99 pence
Not very clever
Online Gaming
Online gaming has been on rise every since the creation of Flash and Java, which led to simple basic online games. Not only can you play games just on your PC, you can now play online via a Console such as an Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo Wii, you can connect with your friends over them and you can also get headsets which allow you to talk to your friends whilst you play. There are simple online games such as the classic 8-ball pool, Tetris and the classic racing game and then on the other hand you can get much more advanced ones which require a fee to play, such as World of warcraft and Final fantasy XI.
World of Warcraft was originally released November 2005, and nowadays it has over 10.3 million subscribers whom pay to play. It is currently the worlds most subscribed MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) and also holds a Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers. World of Warcraft allows your to create a personal character ‘avatar’ and allows you to fight various monsters, complete quests that you have been set, explore the landscape and most of all interact with other online players.
In my personal experience I have only ever played Console games, but that was still fun because I was enjoying a challenge whilst interacting with all my friends.
Advantages:
Allow you to interact with other users
Can make friends and meet new people
Disadvantages:
Can end up being very costly
Can get addicted
Online Gambling
There are lots of different ways to do gambling online; you can play online poker, go into casinos, place bets for sports, online bingo and horse race betting. The most popular one is probably online poker with the most popular type being Texas hold ‘em, which can end up being very addictive. There are sites that specialise is just online Texas hold ‘em poker such as partypoker.com which is the leader site for online poker. The website has a very large selection of different tournaments and different tables which you can navigate and find the right one for you.
According to pokerpages.com which hosts a list of top 100 poker millionaires, and the number 1 winner being Erik Seidel who has won approximately $17 million us dollars, which is a very large number for just poker!
In my personal experience I have never played online poker because I am to young, although I know people who have played it once or twice and won a fair bit of cash; but say they don’t want to risk it again.
There are lots of things that can be downloaded from the Internet, from entertainment to manuals. There are becoming more and more things now that can be downloaded via the Internet. As well as being able to download things straight from the Internet, users can also share files between each other with programs such as BitTorrent and uTorrent, although if you do use them you have to be very careful with what you download because some files could contain virus’ or other malicious software.
Software
Instead of the old fashioned way of going to a computer store and purchasing your software in a big packed box, software creators usually give you an option if you want to have a digital download instead of a CD-ROM. Lots and lots of company’s out there offer digital download but the most known is usually Microsoft office, which works on both windows and mac. Here is a print screen from the Microsoft office website, as you can see you it also gives you the additional option to purchase a backup cd.
There is of course advantages of this, and one of the main ones is allowing people to purchase and download software anywhere in the world simply because its just so much easier. Other advantages are the environmental impact that this has because it is saving packaging and there fore saving the software company money, this is usually why they usually tend to be cheaper online. While everything has its advantages it must also have disadvantages as well, the only disadvantages that I can think of would be if the user doesn’t have a speedy Internet connection because you could get frustrated with the lengthy downloads some of these programs are because they may be big file sizes. The only other disadvantage that I can think of is that some of these software company’s like Adobe, require you to have a Adobe ID, which you could forget your details to.
In my personal opinion being able to purchase and download software over the Internet is a great feature. When I was look to purchase Microsoft Office Student Suite, I looked at in store prices then I compared them to prices from the Microsoft website, and the prices were at least 20% cheaper than the in store price.
Not only can you get software over the Internet, you can usually download software updates which are a really good feature, a update will usually tend to enhance a users interaction with it, or fix bugs. In the past to get updates you used to have to take your computer to a specialist store or not get them, nowadays your computer will usually tell you when its time for updates, because computers usually automatically check for updates every week, and if there is one a box will pop up and say “do you wish to download this update now?” or something along those lines. This is an absolutely fantastic advantage because it can improve your experience with the software and you don’t even have to move out of the comfort of your own home. The only disadvantage I can think of for download updates is some of the file updates might be a large file, and it could take a while to download if you have slow Internet. But other than that they are a great feature that manufactures have incorporated into the software.
My personal experience with software updates have always been a breeze, when ever they pop up I agree to install them and it usually only takes 10 minutes max. It is also quiet satisfying knowing that your computer has been ‘fixed’ of a problem.
PDF (portable document format) files can also be downloaded via the Internet, they allow you transfer document of information between different operating systems etc. There are millions of different things you can place in a PDF file, although one of the main ones with the best uses I think is User Manuals, there are loads of advantages because instead of getting a massive block of paper from the box of your product with about ten different languages in it, you can download a manual for just your language which is a huge advantage, not only does this save a heck of a lot of paper but it also saves you the time flicking through the manual trying to find your language. The only disadvantage is that I don’t think all of the companies currently allow you to download PDF versions of the manuals, either because they haven’t got round to it or are just plain silly! Not only can you get manuals from there you can also get also get PDF files for public transport, this is also great because PDF files can also be imported onto iPhones, iPods and lots of other things. In my personal opinion I think PDF files were a great invention and Adobe really did do a great job. For me they have been great, I downloaded answers for texts books from them to check answers that I did for homework, it really improved my confidence knowing that they were right. As you can see from the print screen below, you can get any type of manuals online. Here is a manual I found via google is a quick search for "camera pdf manual"
Device drivers allows programs to interact with a hardware device, you can get programs which will automatically check all your device drivers for you and will tell you if you need to update them. This is great, because over time new operating systems will come out and a certain device might not work with that particular operating system, but with updates for it you automatically get it to work with your new operating system. Not only will it allow you to do that but some updates will also enable new features for your device. In my personal opinion driver updates are a really good feature, not only does it update your hardware, you also know that the company is still sticking with it and updating their devices to work with all the latest operating systems which is great!
