If you are a frequently download torrents, you know how long you have to keep your computer on till a download completes. Sometimes you will have to keep it on even when you are not at home. Worst part, if you have a poor broadband connection or torrent is not healthy it will take even longer time.
Even after all those hard work you have no way to share the downloaded file among your friends. All you can do is share the torrent file or magnet link, and then they also have to go through the whole torrent downloading process. In the torrent is not healthy, this is a nightmare.
As a solution to all of the above problems there is an interesting online tool you can file at www.put.io. It’s giving you an online storage and online torrent downloader. Using them you can let them to download the torrent file and store it online even when your computer is switched off. Best part here is they let you to stream video file without downloading and share it among friends. Let’s take a closer look to put.io and try to figure out what you can do it with it.
How to Use Put.io?
Put.io is not entirely free service but it’s letting you to have free accounts with limitations. It will give you only 1GB of space and you can store one or 2 movies in it. As the first step you have to register with Put.io.
Go to Put.io home page and click on the button Try it free now.
It will take you to registration page and sign up for free account.
It’s asking you only basic information, provide them and click sign me up.
It will take you to your Put.io dashboard where you can browser stored file, download torrents, stream files and share them.
Now you can add a torrent file to fetch. For that you can click on Add new files. There you can give a magnet link or locally saved torrent file.
Then it will take you to the transfer section and there you could see the progress of torrent download. You will notice that download speed is amazing and you can download huge files in matter of seconds.
Once the download competes you will be able to see the file in your files section.
There you can download It using any download manager, share it with your friends and stream it with DivX web player.
If you want to convert the video file to MP4 you can find that option when you click on the file.
Wrapping Up
Put.io is great service for sure and entire functionalities are working just fine. I’m using this especially when I have to download torrent with very poor health. If the torrent is very health this kind of service won’t make much difference, you can simply download it.
Video streaming capability is great and for that you need DivX web player which is not so popular one. But you can always convert your video to MP4 then you can easily stream it. Sharing feature is also very useful and working great. This service work not only for torrents, you can upload your own videos and store it there as well. All those videos also get streaming and other features.
Another interesting feature here is you can create a subscription with a RSS feed. Then all torrent files and downloadable vides will be auto fetched and stored in your storage space.
In any online storage service, space matters. 1 GB comes with free account is way not enough to get something serious done. Even if you try to get a pro account, next option you have is 50 GB which will cost you USD 9.90 / Month. I wish there is affordable 10 GB options as well. Put.io team may consider this in your future development.
Information Technology has become a part of day to day life in human civilization. Most of the complex work that we used to do with conventional methods, like paper logs, has been converted to digital electronic data and it has given us many advantages including rapid access, maximum efficiency, less usage of resources, easy distribution and improved productivity. Most of the industries are being digitized including government services, banks, shopping centers, air ports and even retail outlets to the point where they don’t need paper based systems anymore.
Once you digitalize your data, you will need software, to be more specific, an Information System to handle the data effectively. To cater the general requirement, there are various “off the shelf” software in the market. Microsoft Access is one of them which come as a proprietary version of software, means you have to purchase it. If you are looking for free and open source applications you can go for Open Office Base.
Custom Made Software – Nightmare or a Day-dream?
The above mentioned “Off the shelf” software will fit many businesses which are in initial stage. Once your business start growing to a certain level, you will be having more specific requirements. If you think that level has been reached, the next step is, custom made software, in other words specially designed software which cater exactly what you need.
In the time you were using “off the shelf” software, I’m pretty sure things went smoothly. That because those software are designed to fit in to most of the general requirements perfectly after doing a massive research. But of course, as your business grows your requirement become more specific and unique. That’s where you have to develop software for yourself. But the question is, “Will it run smoothly as previously used off the shelf software?”
The theoretical answer is YES, It has to be that way. It is software specially designed to cater the unique requirement of your own business. Off the shelf software is like a pant you bought from a fashion store, which is designed for everyone while Custom made software is like a pant you order and design for your own measurements by a local tailor.
But when it comes to Software in more than 70% of the cases answer is NO. But why? What will happen if your tailor gets inaccurate measurements before he designs the pants? Obviously it won’t fit you. Same as that, if the software developer didn’t identify what exactly your business is and what you really need, the software he is going to develop won’t fit in to your business. In real life, as I said before, in almost 70% of cases Software Developers are failing to take accurate measurement of your business, in other words Poor Requirement Analysis.
How to solve this problem?
Most of the medium and large scale industries are maintaining in house software professionals to accurately analyze the business requirement and develop software that they need. In the case of a large scale development, they can out source it with the supervision of an internal team. But how are you, a small scale entrepreneur going to solve this problem. Of course you are not in a financial position to hire in house software professionals. Solution is always DIY (Do it yourself)!
You can analyze your own business and document it by yourself. You will be the perfect person to analyze your requirement because no one else knows about your business like you do. But next question, “I’m not a techy person, Can I do this by myself?”
Answer is YES. Of course you won’t be able to come up with the final architectural design of your software. But you can easily carry out the basic requirement analysis process. NO rocket science, NO magic there. Take the analytical outcome of your business requirement and a few diagrams to a software developer, then he will do a classy job for you.
Software Modeling Tools
Before you start analyzing your business you will have to install some software in your PC. However, you can get the same thing done even without software. But if you use software, final document will be neater. I recommend Microsoft Visio2010 for non technical people. (I mean normal people, not Geeks)
Workflow Diagram
As the first step you must identify the flow of work in your business and draw a diagram. This will be called as a “Work Flow Diagram”. Once you draw this anyone would be able to identify how you run your business and you also will have a clear picture about that. To draw a workflow diagram you can go to Microsoft Visio -> File -> New -> Getting Started -> Business -> Work Flow Diagram.
Once you hit the create button, it will open an empty page with lots of items in left panel. You can see that, there you can find most of the common workflow objects. By drag and drop, you can add any item in to the page.
Once you have more items, you can connect them with arrows to represent the workflow. When you take your mouse over a workflow item, you can see four arrows around it. Using them you can auto connect them with surrounding items. If it won’t work, you can use ‘Connector Tool’ in the tool bar. Using that you can click on one item and drag the mouse to next item to connect them. Finally your workflow looks like this.
It’s always better to have a documented workflow for your business processes. It will help you to further optimize the operation and let the employees to know what to do next effectively. Further, when a new employee comes in to the business all you have to do is hand over this diagram to him to minimize the learning curve.
This diagram will be useful to the software developer to identify the business requirement, specially the data and flow of data. When he designs the interfaces, this will be helpful to include relevant items, to give relevant privileges and store appropriate data in database.
Use Case Diagram
After drawing the work flow diagram you will be very much clear about the business process. Using the diagram you can identify involving employees and relevant activities. After that you have to think what are the functionalities required by each employee who plays a role in the business process. In other words you have to jump in to his shoes and see what he needs to do to continue with the business process. In order to model that there is a diagram named “Use Case Diagram”. To draw use case diagram you can go to Microsoft Visio -> File -> New -> Getting Started -> Software and database -> UML Model Diagram.
Once you hit the create button it will open an empty page and tools in the left, same as before. In there you can see a subsection named “UML Use Case” and that’s what you need. Expand it. To come up with basic use case diagram you will require actors and use cases. Actors represent employees who play a specific role in your business process and use cases are his activities for the business process. Based on the previous business process I mentioned in this article, if I draw a use case diagram for the “Manufacturing Worker” it will turn out like this. The Use Case that I have mentioned here are totally hypothetical. As I said before you are the best person to identify functionalities in your business. When you draw this, do it carefully and accurately.
What is Next?
Since you draw the Work flow diagram, now you have a clear picture about the business process, involving employees and their activities. Then you draw the Use case diagram, hence you know what are the functionalities required by each employee who plays a role in your business process. Now you are ready go and meet an ICT professional.
Consult Software Development Company and talk with them based on these diagrams. These diagrams will give them a clear picture about, what is your business and what you really need. After doing a preliminary study they will give you a quotation. Take quotations from few companies and select the best service provider. Once you come to an agreement, they will identify required data to be stored in the database using Work Flow diagram and required functionalities using Use Case Diagram. However, the details in these diagrams won’t be adequate to produce the final software application. In order to collect further data, you should give your maximum support to software development team and finally, you will be able to get an effective custom made information system for your own business.
Windows 8 official launch is few weeks away and it’s not only path breaking change for Windows but it’s the beginning of a new category of mobile computing devices. Many manufactures introduced various different devices to work with Windows 8 Pro. So far I talked about Microsoft’s very own Surface Pro and Acer Iconia W700.
There is another Windows 8 Pro device which took my attention. In first look I though it’s a Notebook, but I was wrong. It’s really a tablet with keyboard dock, which reminds me of Asus Transformer. This amazing Laptop-Tablet transforming device is Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro and it’s under NOG spotlight today.
Specification Spotlight
Design
Design of Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro is highly influenced by Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. In front face it’s having a huge display and stereo speaker. In back panel it’s having the primary shooter. When you dock it, in top edge you can find headphone jack, power button and other ports.
It weighs 884g and with clamshell it will go up to 1600g. Thickness is 11.8mm and again clamshell increases it up to 21.8. Clamshell is having full QWERTY physical keyboard and in tablet you can find a S pen.
Display
The display is 11.6 inch LCD panel with 1920 x 1080 px resolution which will give it 190 ppi of pixel density. It’s a huge display for a tablet having good resolution as well as decent sharpness.
Processor and Storage
The processor is Intel CORE i3/i5 Ivy bridge working with Intel HD graphics 4000 GPU. System memory is 4GB DDR3 and internal storage is 256GB SSD expandable via microSD or microSDHC.
Camera
The primary shooter is 5 MP capable of recording video and front facing camera is 2 MP optimized for video calling. It’s not having LED flash and it won’t be a big problem for many people. Shooter in tablet device is rarely used.
Connectivity
This is one of the major attractions in Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro. It supports wide range of connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, USB 3.0 and even LTE/3G (optional). However there are no signs of in-built GPS device or navigator yet.
Battery Life
The capacity if battery is 49Wh and it would be enough to keep it alive for 8 hours. Specification says that video playback time is 5 hours and it’s above average for device with Full HD display.
Wrapping Up
The main attraction in Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro is its convertible design between notebook PC and tablet. There is a magnetic connector to attach clamshell to the tablet and then it will become a notebook instantly. S Pen adds extra color to the whole package.
If you want a tablet to use on the way with high speed data connectivity, this could be the device you are looking for. So far this is the only LTE enabled Windows 8 Pro tablet I came across with.
I’m pretty sure this device will give a good competition to other Windows 8 pro tablets introduced to the market. So far my best pick is Microsoft Surface pro, but Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro is a step ahead in internal storage and connectivity technologies.
It’s the time of Windows 8 and many devices are coming out to work with its beautiful metro UI (Windows 8 UI). Previously I was talking about Microsoft’s very own Surface PRO and its specifications.
And I told you that Microsoft Surface is not alone in this game. It’s having more companions, more or less competitors. Today I’m going to talk about one of them. Acer Iconia W700, a Windows 8 Pro tablet with style and it’s under NOG spotlight today.
Specification Spotlight
Design
Design is the major attraction here. The tablet comes with a cradle and stand. You can use the cradle as a docking station to transfer data to a computer as well as charging. Stand is having 2 positions, one is 70 degrees and another is 20 degrees. You can use them as you prefer.
Right side edge is populated by volume rocker, power button and headphone jack. In left edge, you can find USB 3.0 port, power slot and microHDMI port. Back panel is clean and having only the primary camera. Front panel is populated with beautiful screen and front facing camera. The whole package weigh 1043 g.
Display
The display is 11.6 inch IPS panel with 1920 x 1080 px resolution which will give it 190 ppi of pixel density. This huge full HD display will give you enough space to run any application though its sharpness is relatively lesser.
Processor and Storage
The processor is Intel CORE i3 Ivy Bridge 1.8 GHz working with Intel HD graphics 4000 GPU. RAM is 4 GB DDR3 and internal storage is 64 GB SSD expandable via microSD. (only in Iconia W510)
Camera
Primary shooter is 5 MP capable of recording 1080p videos and having all the other standard features. 1 MP front facing camera is optimized for video calling.
Connectivity
The device is having Wi-fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and USB 3.0 connectivity. No signs of GPS or LTE/3G radio. Nothing to worry about, as there are enough Wi-fi hotspots and you can always tether with your Smartphone.
Battery Life
Same as many other Win 8 Pro tablets, battery capacity is not specified. However, many news sources says that it’s supposed to have 8 hours of battery life with standard usage.
Wrapping Up
Acer Iconia W700 has a unique design going beyond conventional tablets and laptops. Cradle with power supply and USB extension is a cool idea. Other hardware specification also sounds like a high end laptop.
If you are looking for a portable multimedia unit, this would be a great choice for you. It’s full HD large display and 5 MP shooter will open you many creative opportunities.
The main complaint against Acer Iconia W700 is its built quality. Most of the reports state that it has very cheap looking plastic built. This could be a major drawback for this device to compete with tablets such as Microsoft Surface with amazing built quality.
For several reasons you will need to hide folder in Windows 7. It could be a security reason or may be to organize them properly. Windows 7 is having a built in mechanism to hide folders. By default it hides system files and folder to give a clean folder view to users.
The easiest way for you to hide a folder is Right click on folder -> Properties -> Check Hidden. Now you won’t be able to see the folder in windows explorer. But still you can access the folder by manually typing its path or activating “Show hidden files, folders and drives” in folder options. So this is only the easiest way to hide a folder but not the best way.
Advanced Way to Hide Folder
Today I’m going to tell you a better and more secured way to hide a folder in Windows 7. In order to get it done you have to go through few steps manually.
Right Click on the folder -> Properties -> Customization
Click on Change icon and select the transparent icon there. You can identify this as a significant empty space between other icons.
Click OK and exit folder properties. Now your folder is invisible except its name.
Now you have to find an invisible character to make the name invisible as well. Unfortunately folder name doesn’t accept only spaces.
For this you have to give the ASCII code of non-breaking space. For that Right click on folder -> Rename then press hold ALT and enter 0160 in num pad. (ALT + 0160)
Now folder is totally invisible.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
Unlike default folder hiding there is no way to see the folder by making hidden folders visible or access is by manually typing its location. All you have to do is disable auto arranging and place the folder in a odd location.
However, if someone select all the folders by pressing CTRL + A, it will make the non-breaking space character visible which we used for the folder name. Though the folder is invisible, it’s still there in windows explorer. Therefore, you can enter it by simply double clicking on it if you know where exactly it is.
To ensure maximum security you can hide the folder as well. In that case no one will be able to access it even by accidental while the hidden folders are set to be invisible.
Previously I was talking about how to hide a folder without using default mechanism in Windows 7. It protect your folder from accessing after unhide hidden folders in folder options as well as by directly typing absolute location.
Quick Catch-up
How to Hide a Folder in Windows 7
But still it’s vulnerable for accidental clicks and become visible if someone selects all the files and folders. If you need better and more secured way to hide your folders, My LockBox is great piece of software to get it done easily.
How to Use My LockBox?
Download and Install My LockBox in your Windows 7 PC.
During the installation process check “Add Protect with My Lockbox” to windows explorer context menu. You can do this after installation as well.
Precede with the installation steps and compete it.
It will place and shortcut on your desktop named My LockBox Control Panel. Open it and in the initial launch it will ask you to set a password.
Now close the application and go to the folder you need to protect, right click on it and select Protect with My LockBox.
It will ask you the My LockBox Password. Once you give it folder will disappear. Now no one can access it by any means.
Whenever you want to access the folder, open My LockBox control panel, provide password and click on Unlock. Then protected folder will appear automatically.
You can access My LockBox control panel using shortcut key CTRL + Shift + P.
Free version of My LockBox can protect only one folder at a time. If you want to protect any number of folders you have to purchase PRO version.
This is a highly secured way to protect your folder and without providing password no one would be able to access the folder. This works even when PC is on safe mode. My LockBox is indigent to let virus scanners and backup applications to access folder. This works with NTFS, FAT 32 and FAT file system as well as Win 7, Win Vista and Win XP.
Web site performance optimization is the process of using various tools and techniques to reduce the size of web pages in order to minimize the load time, utilizing the bandwidth. This is one of the most critical success factors of any web site or application. There are so many technologies introduced to optimize the web application in the development time including AJAX. This article will give you an introduction to optimize your web page even with lesser technical skills, using simple tools without altering its basic architecture.
Getting Started
Before you proceed you have to prepare the development environment. First you have to setup the tool required and identify the skills required to the process.
Tools
You will be using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox browser and YSlow add-on installed on it. Before you install YSlow you have to install Firebug add-on on Firefox. YSlow is an add-on for Firefox developed by Yahoo which can be used to identify the performance level of the web pages.
Knowledge And Skills
In order to optimize the performance of your page you have to have basic knowledge of HTML, JAVAScrip and CSS. But in this process you don’t have to alter any code which already written, yet you will have to re-structure them.
Analyze
As the first step you have to identify the current state of your web site. For that open your web page in Firefox and click the YSlow icon at the right bottom of the browser window. It will pop up another window and there you can click the “Grade” button. (Choose rule sets according to your web site) Once you click, it will display the performance grade of your web site along with the overall performance score. Furthermore down the window, it will display grade for each sub-section. In addition to that there will be another tab displaying the size of each component of your web page and another tab for statistics including caching state and HTTP requests. This will give you a basic over all idea about the current state of your web site and where the performance hits are. After that you can solve the identified problems one by one.
Below section will explain the step by step process of optimizing a web page.
Performance Optimization Process
Optimize Page Content
Page content plays a big role when it comes to the performance. Pages with smaller file size will have the maximum performance. Therefore your main goal should be to make it smaller as possible. Any web page will have two main contents, which are hypermedia and text including HTML CSS and JS.
Hypermedia: Basic rule is reducing the size as much as possible. Especially for images you can reduce the resolution and use a compression like JPEG. Avoid using HTML sizing for images. If you need to optimize the performance in a greater scale you can use image Sprite. It will minimize the HTTP request for the external images.
HTML/CSS/JS: In the development time of the web page the HTML codes must be highly readable. Therefore developers keep spaces, comments, line breaks and indentation to increase the readability. But when it comes to the run time they will be a performance hit because it will increase the file size. In order to reduce the size those unnecessary characters should be removed. For that there are various HTML compressors out there. If you need to compress many HTML files at a time, you can use HTML Compress 5.5 PC application. In addition to that there are various online HTML compressors as well. You will observe, after the compression HTML, CSS and JS files are formed in to one single line or very fewer lines in the source code. At the same time you will be able to observe this will reduce the file size by around 10%. This process generally called as minifying the code.
Optimize External CSS/JS
If you have so many external JS and CSS files linked to the web page they need to pack in one single file for each type. This will reduce number of HTTP request for the external resources. Pack all the JS to one file and add the link in the bottom of the web page. Do the same for CSS and link them at the top of web page.
Now you have reduced the size of Hypermedia, HTML, CSS and JS. In addition to that you have minimized the amount of external HTTP requests as well.
Compression
After minimizing the size of hypermedia, HTML, CSS and JS codes by restructuring them, you can enforce compression to further reduce the size of them. This can be enabled by your web server. Once you enable the compression (in most cases its GZip) web server will compress the page before seeding it to the user over HTTP. GZip compression can reduce the file size in greater ratio, more than 75%. This will improve the performance of web page drastically and will be help full to utilize the bandwidth of the web server as well.
Before Compression
After Compression
By pasting below code in . htaccess file you can enable GZip in your web server.
If you don’t have access to .htaccess file you can use this code in every .php page header.
Caching
Finally you can enable caching support from your web server. Once you enable caching your browser will store most of the common content in your web page locally. Due to that browser can load that content without calling the web Server and this will save the bandwidth and reduce the HTTP request drastically.
You can control the caching by pasting below code in the .htaccess file in your web server.
Traffic!! Every one hate traffic on the way to office and the way back to home. There must be a perfect traffic controlling system. But what is it? By the way, Si-fi writes has come up with some solutions. I thought of noting my idea about that with my own ideas and dreams.
Just think, if everyone on the road will perfectly follow the road rules, In that case there won’t be any traffic. But humans are controlling vehicles and we are not that perfect. So is there any perfect one to control traffic. Yes, a computer. I actually saw this in the movie “Minority report”. This is a Centralized Traffic Control System. All the vehicles are connected to a centralized server and it control everything on the road. And the best part is the server knows positions of each and every vehicle, so it can move two vehicles nearby on the same track with the speed 120 Kmph, maintaining very narrow distance between them. And the same thing can be applicable to ‘n’ number of vehicles. On top of all, just assume the vehicle in front of you going to turn left in next junction. In general situation the driver on signal light in left and indicate that. But in this kind of system, the central server knows that the vehicle going to turn left and it can control other vehicles behind that accordingly. This sounds like a dream, but not impossible. We already have GPS and maps on our vehicles. All we have to do is update those details and get driving instruction from the server and execute them.
Once this kind of system will come to action, there won’t be a Steering wheel in vehicles. That space also will be allocated for passengers. The passenger will have to enter the destination once he gets in to the vehicle and those details will go to the central server. The server will give the vehicle a rout considering all the factors including other vehicle routs etc. Finally vehicle will reach the destination without human involvement. And it’s so difficult to find a parking space in modern busy cities and it’s a real pain to many people. But one day with this kind of system, once you go to office, you can tell your car to go home and come back when you going to finish the shift.
This will be a bad news for auto lovers. So sad that manual driving is no longer permitted. And you can’t drive over speed, break the law and have some fun. No more manual shifting, drifting, drag, street racing or anything. This is going to be kind a boring yes.
One possible problem in this kind of system is servers are always going down. Under any conditions we can’t guaranty 100% up time. What will happen if the central server (Probably the Server Cluster) will go down? Yes we can design the system to stop all the vehicles, but can we afford that delay? On top of all, what will happen in the case of bug or defect in the system? The possible damage will be massive and probably cost many human lives. And how far can we expand this system? When it comes to implementation we have to go for a direct changer over. Is it possible? The engineers will have to find solutions for all those problems before this kind of system comes to live.
As a blogger or a webmaster, sometimes it’s really important for you to screen capture content of a web page and share it with others. Here what you really need is not only a screen capturing tool. There are plenty of them out there. But if it has options to highlight, draw things, redact area or add text etc after capturing the web screenshot, that’s the exact tool you should go for.
When I was stumbling across the WWW I came across with a very simple tool that works like magic. It’s a Chrome extension you can find on Chrome Web Store. The tool is Screen capture developed by Google itself. Let’s take a closer look.
Getting Started with Screen Capture
Go to Chrome web store and add Screen capture.
It will add an icon to chrome address bar.
Click on that and take a look at options before you start using it.
There you can set file format, default save location, auto save, and keyboard shortcuts.
Now you are good to go and screen capture a web page.
If you select capture page region, you will get a box on page content. There you can see its size in pixel. Move it, resize it and click ok.
Then it will take you to the captured image. There you have several editing options such as highlight, redact, add text and draw line.
Finally you can save it on your HDD or share it.
Drop down menu gives you options to copy or print.
Capture visible content, capture while page and capture screen region has the same set of editing options.
If you like to go pro, start using shortcut keys.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
Browser: Google Chrome Version 23.0.1271.91 m
If you are a non techy blogger, this would be a great tool for you to work with your web developer. You can capture screen, draw on it, write on it and send it to your web developer. I’m using this tool a lot and it saved me a lot of time.
Try this out and let me know how you feel about this. If you know any other cool tips about this please share those with us as a comment below.
The world of automobile continues to hunt for alternative fuel sources. At the same time engineers are trying so hard to save the remaining fossil fuel by improving efficiency of engines. That decade long effort gave birth to the concept of Hybrid Automobiles which saves almost half of the fuel consumption compared to conventional engines.
Most of the news about hybrid cars came from Japan. Toyota came with their Prius while Honda came with their Insight and Civic. There are some cars from Europe as well such as BMW 320D diesel hybrid but Japan was the one to dominate the hybrid market according to the sales statistics.
The American vehicle legend was always about performance and safety. They were not much concerned about fuel efficiency. Therefore, most of the American vehicles were having a hardy metal body and huge engines which does less than 20 MPG. They survived for decades, yet could not give good competition to highly economical Japanese cars which do more than 30 MPG. The sales of American cars continued to drop for the past few years putting most of the American Automobile manufacturers in great financial danger.
However as it appears to be, Americans never gave up. For the year 2012 they introduced a new line of Yukon SUV from legendary GMC (General Motor Cars). They are having the same huge engine and maximum safety as any American vehicle has, plus considerably good fuel efficiency. And they introduced Hybrid version of GMC Yukon as well which does more than 20 MPG which is too much to hope from this metal monster and he is under today’s spotlight in Notes Of Genius.
Special Features
Exterior
Most of the previous versions of GMC SUVs were having a hardy metal look. But new Yukon is has a very smooth curved edge design. In order to improve aerodynamics they have undertaken many measures including lowered front, smooth leadingedge of hood and rear spoiler. Other than that they have included light weight 18” alloy wheels with less rolling friction.
Yukon has good ground clearance and at the same time it’s having lower center of gravity which gives maximum stability and safety to the vehicle. All the air intakes are carefully placed not to disturb the smooth air flow around the vehicle to ensure the stability.
The catchiest feature in exterior is placement of lights. The main lamps are powered with Dual halogen bulbs. Other lights are also nicely designed and adds extra value to the vehicle.
Interior
Yukon Hybrid has 8 leather passenger seats with more leg space like no other SUV. This will give the ultimate conformability to the passengers and maximum safety with the 3 point seat belts. Dashboard is having a very simple design yet giving all the required information to the driver.
There is an information display in the middle of the dashboard to display the status of the hybrid controls including power flow, power ratio used, battery power remaining etc.
Engine and Transmission
GMC never seemed to like to go for a smaller engine displacement. Most of the Asian SUVs are having approximately 2.5 Engine displacements while GMC Yukon Hybrid is having 6.0 L V8 engine which gives 332 hp @ 5100 rpm. Of course this huge engine will deliver quick performance which will provide a great driving experience with great responsive controlling.
Unlike in older versions of GMC vehicles, they are focused on fuel efficiency as well. In new Yukon Hybrid there is a technology named Active Fuel Management. This is having an algorithm to engage and disengage pistons to save fuel according to the driving conditions.
Ex: When you are accelerating, all 8 pistons will be engaged. When you are in constant cruising speed, 4 pistons will disengage since it only needs power to maintain the speed.
If you take a closer look in to the hybrid technology, the GMC Yukon hybrid is powered by 2 Mode Hybrid engine. This technology allows the engine to run on electricity, fuel or combination of both. The controlling unit will decide what the best fuel source for the condition of drive. Same as in any other hybrid vehicle Yukon Hybrid is also having Regenerative Breaks. The 300V battery which powers up the hybrid engine is placed under the 2nd row seat.
The entire information related to hybrid engine will be displayed on the above mentioned information display in dashboard.
Yukon Hybrid comes with 6 speed hybrid automatic transmission. 4 Wheel Drive is not a standard option yet it’s available for special orders.
Hi-Tech
Yukon Hybrid is equipped with many high tech features. If you take a look in to the car’s audio and video, it’s having 9 speaker sound system with 8”display and a DVD player. There is a separate display in between rear seats as well. Adding an extra value this multimedia system supports wireless head phones for the rear seats.
In case you need to use your mobile phone while you are driving, you can connect it to car audio system using blue tooth connectivity and then it works as a hands free system.
Yukon Hybrid comes with lots of other sophisticated features such as rear view camera, GPS navigation system and touch sensitive display.
Why You Should Go For GMC Yukon Hybrid?
Safety
The main reason to buy GMC Yukon is its great safety features like no other Asian vehicle offers. Mainly it’s having a solid metal body and sub frame to ensure safety in a collision. It’s having 360 degrees safety which comes from air bag system covering not only front, but sides and other areas. There is a children safety seat as well. As additional safety system there is an intelligent breaking assistant, tyre pressure monitor and parking assist.
This is one major factor that GMC vehicles are still here in the automobile market though they have very low mileage compared to Japanese vehicles. No Japanese vehicle can ensure the safety that GMC vehicle can offer its passengers. Therefore, people who are willing to pay extra to get that level of safety still go for GMC regardless of the very low mileage.
Performance
Another reason to buy a GMC Yukon Hybrid is its power. It’s giving 332 hp from its 6.0 L V8 engine. There are very few SUVs which will give that kind of power to your drive. And this power will give you a nice driving experience since driving controllers are snappy responsive. To control this iron monster there is a 4 wheel anti-lock disk brakes system.
With all these power, Yukon Hybrid can accelerate 0-60 mph within 8.1 seconds.
Fuel Efficiency
If safety and performance are your concerns of course you cannot expect that vehicle to be highly economical. Most of the previous versions of Yukon were doing less than 15 MPG. Still most of the people who bought Yukon were happy with it when it comes to other great features it offered.
The new GMC Yukon Hybrid is doing 20 MPG in city driving conditions according to its specification which gives you fairly economical drive in this huge vehicle. In a Highway, a Yukon hybrid will do 23 MPG.
No matter what, these huge metal monsters are having very a limited market due to global economical conditions. Most of the countries who used to buy GMC vehicles such as Saudi Arabia are also now going for economical Japanese vehicles. Even in USA Japanese vehicles, especially hybrid vehicles sales are sky rocketing because they are doing more that 40 MPG.
If GMC want to compete in this market, they have to scale down their vehicles to meet the general requirement of the automobile users. But as it appears they are not willing to go on that track. They still believe in huge vehicles with huge engines. Hope this hybrid version of Yukon will give them a hope to survive in automobile market and continue their ledged started from 1908.
