i3, i5, or i7? Which is best for you?

i3, i5, or i7? Which is best for you?

I don't know if you can read this nifty little chart to the right here, but Intel has three main naming conventions for their CPU's.

Here's the short story:

ALL i3's are dual core

SOME i5's are dual core

OTHER i5's are quad core

ALL i7's are quad core

If you're going to be reading and writing emails on your computer and maybe burn a cd or two, an i3 is probably ideal for y our needs.

If you will be editing audio and maybe playing the odd high end graphics game now and then, you'll want at least an i5.

If you want to be using Autocad, hardcore gaming or any other 3D rendering stuff, or video editing, you'll want the i7's quad core processing power.

And, of course, they range in price accordingly, with the i3's being the least expensive.

5 Things to Consider when Buying a Computer

What to look for when buying a computer.

This is a rather huge topic so this blog post will hardly be "exhaustive" by any stretch. Rather, these are just a few simple things you may or may not already know about buying a new computer.

1. What will this computer be used for? If you want a travelling machine that you can take on holiday and type emails along the way, you don't need anything high end. Almost any cheap (or rather, "inexpensive") laptop will do. Creative writing, spreadsheets, databases, power point presentations are all pretty easy on any computer and none require a lot of horsepower. On the other hand, if you are planning to record and edit high def video, a cheap machine just will not do the job. If you're semi-serious about editing video then more than likely you'd want a desktop type PC that won't be moved around much after it's initial set up to get that job done, so a laptop will not likely meet your needs. Try to do at least a bit of homework by talking to some computer literate friends or co-workers before you go shopping and at lease figure out what you need this machine to do.

2. Does it need to be portable? Here's something to remember: a laptop is a compressed and flattened down version of a desktop computer. What is gained in space is lost to upgradeability. What is gained in portability is lost to less available internal components. Eight hundred dollars (at today's economy) can buy a pretty skookum PC these days, or a decent laptop. More than likely you'll get a better bang for your buck with the desktop than you would with the laptop. Also, desktops can usually easily be upgraded with a new video card, more ram, nicer monitor, faster harddrives, processors, etc., while you are pretty much stuck with what you get with a laptop.

3. Laptops are meant to be portable, not durable. They will not take much in the way of physical punishment. If you accidently drop a laptop or have one get yanked off the coffee table onto the floor by someone tripping over the power cable, you can almost be assured of some damage.

4. There are three main criteria I look for in a new PC.
- CPU speed. Amount of RAM. Harddrive space.
Firstly, I want to know the CPU speed in GHz (ie. is it a 3.2GHz, or 2.3GHz?). The higher the number the better and the number of cores is good to know too. There are single core processors, dual core processors, tri-core processors, quad-core processors, and even hexi-core processors. The more cores the better. The lower numbered ones will be cheaper, of course, but will be working the hardest to get the job done.

Secondly, I want to know how much RAM it has. Older 32-bit machines have a maximum of about 3 gigs of ram. Some can take 4 gigs but will only read 3.5 at the most. The newer 64-bit machines are usually 4 gigs and up. Sixty-four bit is the way to go if you're buying a new machine today. For those who have older software, SOME of it will not work on 64-bit machine, but that 'some' is very few. Most 32-bit programs will run on 64-bit machine just fine; there are of course exceptions. But we move on.

Lastly, I look for harddrive space. Usually, the more the better, but if you'll be using the computer to write a novel and keep notes and maybe some pictures, you won't need a whole bunch of harddrive space; even a few hundred gigs is probably far more than you'd ever normally use. On the other hand, if you're the person who likes to download stuff and collects every video your friends have sent you in the last 10 years, you'll want to make sure you get lots of disk space. As of today, a laptop sized 1TB sells for roughly $140 to $160 here in Canada. (In five years, if you are reading this blog, you'll either laugh at that price or cry. I remember seeing my friend pay about 800 dollars to upgrade his 486 from 4 megs to 8 megs of ram; when 2 megabyte chips were $200 each. Ouch! I myself paid over $500 for a 10gigabyte harddrive. You would be hard-pressed to even find a 10gig drive today. And it sure wouldn't be a months' rent for it either!)

5. If you are considering building a computer yourself or having one built for you, please don't buy a cheap power supply; and if your data is important, make sure you also buy an uninterupted power supply (UPS) to go with your power supply. That is so you won't have to deal with power issues later on. Get prepared now rather than wish you had later.

I hope that helps.

Upgrading Your Laptop

Most people think laptops are better because they are smaller and take up less space. This is certainly a selling feature of a laptop but there are limitations to laptops of which you should be aware.

Firstly, laptops are meant to be portable, not durable. Meaning, of course, they cannot take much in the way of punishment. If you drop it, there's a good chance it's toast.

Secondly, laptops are not very upgradeable. About the only things you can upgrade in a laptop is the hard drive and the RAM. You will not be upgrading the CPU or the video card.

In my line of work where I repair a lot of computers, a laptop really does me no good. I can't hook up someone else's drive to my laptop, I can not test their RAM or back up their data. But for someone who is on the go all the time and they need their computer, a laptop is awesome!

If you are going to attempt to upgrade either the RAM or the hard drive in your laptop, always remember to remove all sources of power so you don't accidently short anything out. Remove the battery and unplug the laptop before upgrading anything. It doesn't take much to render a stick of RAM inoperable with a static charge. Try to be standing on cement floor or wear a wrist strap and have it attached to ground.

Have a Battery Backup for your PC

This black box you see pictured here is called a "UPS" which is an acronym for Uninterupted Power Source (or Supply). It can save your computers' butt (and probably yours too) one day.

I know it says "APC" on it but that is the company that makes many UPS's. What this mysterious looking box does is provide automatic battery backup power for your computer and monitor in the event of a blackout. This leaves you ample time to finish what you're working on, and turn off your machine until the power comes back.

What happens if there's a black out and you don't have a UPS? A few things. Firstly, your computer will power down instantly, and if you happened to be working on something at that moment, or in the middle of saving a file, you will find that the data you were working on will most likely be corrupt. Secondly, your power supply can possibly get "surged" when the power gets restored, and that's not good for you power supply. It's like a punch in the gut.

A UPS is not just a back up power supply, it also provides "clean" power to your computer. The power coming into your home is "dirty" because it is not a steady stream or flow of electricity; it actually contains numerous small spikes and lulls in power. A UPS cleans this up and provides you with a steady clean stream of power and that's good news for your power supply.

A cheap power supply will not handle spikes and lulls well and it's components will become weak over time. And that can have an adverse effect on your motherboard and other components. A good power supply can handle them better because they are built with better quality parts (a heavy power supply generally indicates a good power supply). A surge protector is a good thing, and can usually do what it claims it can do, but it cannot provide the same protection that a UPS can.

When you buy a UPS, there's one very important thing you need to keep in mind. The number on the front (you see the 1500 in the picture above?) indicates the maximum wattage that it can handle being plugged into it for a certain length of time. Consider the power supply in your computer. If it's a 500 watt, it would be a good idea to get a UPS that is numbered as 600 or better. Some UPS's will have a "VA" in front of the number. VA is short for volt-amps. If you have 1000 watt power supply, get an 1100 or higher numbered VA. This way, you should be able to plug in your monitor, modem and router to your UPS as well. Often when the power goes out, your phone and cable still work, but ordinarily you can't access them because you have no power. With a UPS, you will. The higher the VA number, the longer you can remain powered during a black out.

So while the neighbourhood is dark from a power outage during the next rain storm, you'll be snuggled up behind your computer still happily pecking away on your keyboard. I say that tongue-in-cheek, of course, because the purpose of a UPS is not so much to keep you working during a black out, but rather to give you time to shut down properly without losing whatever you were working on.

You can be hacked at Facebook

ATTENTION! While on Facebook, look at your URL address (the very top box on your screen.)

If you see "http:" instead of "https:" then you DO NOT have a secure session can be HACKED. Go to Account - Account settings - Account security - click change. Check box (secure browsing), click save. Facebook by default has automatically set it on the NON-secure setting!

It's just a little thing but Facebook is a pretty huge place.

Tell your friends.
Surf safe. :)

Keep Your Folder Names Short

256 characters, maximum. That's all you have from the first character in "C:\..." to the last character in "...xxxxx.rar".

Here's an example of when that's a problem:

Let's suppose you acquire or download an album or even a single song, and the person who put this collection together gave it huge long file name so you'd know what it was. For example, you might see something like, "madonna_like-a-virgin_live_1992_super_rare_version_with_special_guest_Kate_Bush_and_Suzanne_Sommers.rar"

If you count how many characters that is, I'm sure it fit fine while it was on the creator's drive. What I've quoted above is 103 characters. If you add "C:\Documents and Settings\Nina_Lolobridgita\Documents\Music\" to the front of that and you can see how long that file name actually has become. Then copy that to a folder on the desktop called "Nina's Other Music Folder". All that added together IS the real name of the file, and if it's more than 256 characters, some bad things will happen; the least of which is that it will be very difficult to back up your music because whatever you are backing up to also follows the same 256 character limit and it will likely complain, or not copy at all and just tell you "an error has occured!"

Sometimes I have to back up people's stuff before I wipe their drive and re-install Windows. I have a licensed version of a really cool program called Vice Versa. It's basically an "X-copy" program (which was the command used to copy everything back in the DOS days) but with a Windows style formating. It comes in VERY handy for backing up data. What's really handy about it is that it can copy and move past files it is unable to copy without coming to a grinding halt to tell you about it.

When you copy and paste in Windows, and if you have a lot of stuff to copy and paste, what happens is that it will start copying until it finds a file that there is a problem with such as it's "read-only" or "file name too long," it will stop and tell you about it but the only solution it offers after that is to say "OK". Then what? You have to rectify the problem, then copy it all again. There's no easy way to make sure of how much or what you've already copied, so you have to start all over again and it will ask you, "Some of these files are already there, would you like to overwrite the existing files?" And of course, if you say "no" the process stops, and if you say "yes" then you are copying again the same stuff you had already copied before. Once you've done this a few times in a row, it gets really annoying and you just want to cry out and scream, "There's got to be a better way!!"

Okay, so I got a little off track there. What I'm saying is that you will invariably have problems if you allow your file names to get too long. Be careful when you unzip or uncompress a file with a long name. It is easy to open up a long filename folder as a .zip or .rar and make it so that it will create a new folder with the same long filename inside of a folder with the same long filename. Try to keep an eye out for this before it becomes a problem.

Keep your folder names short.

Heat is Your Computer's Enemy

It's a really great idea to make sure you clean the dust out of your desktop computer once in awhile. Here's why.

As dust builds up on the motherboard, (or any similar circuit board), heat will be kept close to the capacitors (or "caps" as some call them), and other components and the less heat that escapes, the harder those components will work, until one day they get weak enough to cause other parts to pull harder to draw the juice they need. It can be a cascading effect where one part of your computer gets weak and other parts have to work harder to maintain, until "poof"!

Don't let dust build up. It's bad because it doesn't allow heat to escape. Heat is your computer's enemy.

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Regarding laptops. Do not use them for extended periods of time actually ON your lap because it does get hot. In fact, do not leave your laptop on anything soft like a couch or bed where heat can't escape. Your laptop will die a painful hot death.

Ideally you'd want them sitting on something cool like a metal table. But barring that I'd recommend spending thirty bucks and getting a cooling tray/rack (whatever you want to call it) that it can sit on, hopefully in a comfortable place for your hands to type. The aluminum ones are the better ones in my opinion because it takes a lot to heat aluminum and it cools quickly once the heat is taken away.

The one pictured here is a pretty good design. I'd prefer holes all the way across rather than just the middle part, but that's just me. I'm sure this design works great.

Keeping it cool,

I'm Big Mike

Safely Remove Hardware and USB sticks

!!IMPORTANT!! SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE

If you have a USB stick (some people call them a "thumbdrive"), you need to know something very important about this device. USB ports are powered all the time with 5 volts. Therefore, you need to power the port down before you remove the usb stick.

Here's how to do it: down by the clock there is little icon that looks like it has a green arrow on it. Right click on that and you'll see "safely remove hardware". Then, if there are several in a list and you aren't sure which one is yours, keep in mind that they are listed in order of the time they were plugged in. If yours was the last usb device to be plugged in to the computer, yours is the bottom of the list. So you choose your device, right click, and click on Remove Device. You should see a message saying, "you can now safely remove hardware" and you'll know that NOW it's okay to take your thumbdrive back and put it into your pocket again.

If you do not do the "Safely Remove Device" part, you may find your usb stick will not work the next time you go to use it. Either you'll see a message saying, "This drive is not formated, would you like to format it now?", OR you may see that it just seems dead and the computer doesn't respond to it. Either way, your stuff is gone.

If you get the first message, you may at least be able to use this stick again. The second one means you may as well chuck it in the garbage because it's dead.

Batteries LIKE To Be Used

It's true. Batteries like being used. That is how they live and thrive. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, about the rechargeables used in laptops, cellphones and cordless phones.

Rechargeable batteries will develop a "memory" over time, and this is especially bad news if the battery is never allowed to drop below, say, 90%, before it's charged again to 100% where it usually sits at 99% for days on end.

What happens is that after a while the battery will believe it needs recharging when it gets down to, say 92%. So you've hardly used it at all (maybe 5 or 10 minutes) and it's complaining that it needs recharging!

There was a lady who came into the computer shop one day and explained that she had bought this nice laptop to save space and it sat in this one spot for two years without ever being unplugged. Then one day she decided to take it with her on a trip to Vancouver on the ferry and she was stunned to find out the battery wouldn't last more than 5 minutes and it would die. She couldn't understand why it wouldn't last longer, as she had never used the laptop battery. It had always been plugged in.

I explained to her about how laptop batteries develop a memory and there is a way to reverse the damage, or at least make the situation a bit better until you can get a new one. Remove your laptop battery completely and let it sit on a shelf for three weeks. Then give it good 8 hour charge before you use it. Drain it again and set it on a shelf for a few weeks and it will drain completely just sitting there. Charge it up again with a good 8 hour charge (some battery companies suggest 15 hours). If you repeat this a few times, you old battery will come back to life to a certain extent. But the damage is already done and you should think of buying a new battery soon.

Whenever you can, consider your cellphone battery, your cordless phone battery, and your laptop battery. They really do like to be used. If you can, and it's convenient, drain them right down as low as you can before you charge them up again. Rechargeable batteries will last much longer if you treat them this way.

Moral of the story? If your laptop is going to sit plugged in for months on end, take the battery out. Just don't move it around too much because if the power chord gets loose or something, you don't want to have you machine suddenly power down because the chord was yanked out. A battery would have saved you in that case.

Bottom line: use your battery. Or, if you have a laptop that is always plugged in, remove the battery completely.

Check the USB ports

If one day you go to turn on your computer from a "cold" state, and it won't power up, check the USB ports. Sometimes fans and some lights will come on but the machine just won't go further and power up. It can be frustrating, I know.

Check the USB ports. If you have something powered plugged into a USB port (ie, an external harddrive), some machines seem to believe they are already on because they are getting power through the USB port.

If you have nothing plugged into any USB ports, check the ports themselves visually. Sometimes a bent pin or wire can be shorting something. Sometimes people don't allow a USB plug to go in properly and jam it in the wrong way. That can mess things up.

So if after having checked all the USB ports on your desktop or laptop and nothing is damaged or plugged into them, check how much dust is in your power supply or exhaust fan. If there's a lot of dust, you might want to start thinking about purchasing a new machine, and then get this one cleaned out. You will probably need a new power supply.

If you're still not sure, have a professional have a look to troubleshoot your issue.