Not exactly those kind of cookies.  Cookies in computer terms are little files on your computer (harddrive) that stores some information about you.  They can store your preferences for certain websites, your authentication information if you need to login etc.

Have you ever been told you should delete your cookies? Well, generally this is a good practice as it will remove these text files from your computer and in the process clean away your personal information as well.  There are some drawbacks when doing this, as it will *forget* all your stored authenication information for sites.

If your browser is set to remember your passwords, it will still know them when you login, but setting this option is not a recommended practice

To remove your cookies in IE follow these steps:

Tools \ Internet Options \ Browsing History \ Delete button
on the popup remove the check marks from all options but Cookies

To remove your cookies in FireFox follow these steps:

Tools \ Options \ Privacy Tab \ remove individual cookies
from here, you can remove individual sites cookies, or all.

To remove your cookies in Chrome follow these steps:

Wrench \ Options \ Personal Stuff \ Clear Browsing Data… \ Delete Cookies \ Clear browsing Data

As you can see on those pages, there is other options for passwords, browsing history and some other options.  I also recommend that you periodically update / remove these bits of your personal information as well.

Clearing your Cookies is something that you should do time to time just to make sure that you have removed the settings, and personal data for websites from your computer.

A NAS is a device that sits on your home network, and it allows your to have a centralized location for all your files to sit.  NAS stands for Network Area Storage, and that’s exactly what it does.  It is a self contained box that plugs into your home netowrk, normally into your switch or router, and it provides a place to dump common files.

People use NAS devices for storing Photos, Music, Movies, and other programs.  Some NAS devices will allow you to have access to the files from remote locations as well.

These devices can be used in a variety of configurations, and normally hold atleast 2 Hard Disks.  They will allow for RAID configurations, such as:

RAID 0 – Striping – Faster Data access as data is written across both disks.

RAID 1 – Mirroring – copies the files from Disk 1 to Disk 2

RAID 5 – Striped Disks with Parity – Copies the information across the disks, but keeps one for parity information.  Requires 3 disks at a minimum.

RAID 1+0 – Mirrored Data Set which is Striped – Minimum of 2 Disks needed.

Most NAS devices will only allow for 2 Disks (drive bays) to be added to the unit, but there are 3 disk versions which are normally a lot more expensive.

Having a NAs in your network is a great way to not only share files across multiple computers, but also to have a place to store files, so they are not residing on your personal pc.  The best application is to use the NAS to store images of your hard drive, so if you ever experience a crash, your data can easily be recovered.

So what do you use your NAS for?  Do you have a favorite manufacturer?