6 October 2020 | Computers, Gizmos, How Does it Work?, Uncategorized |
Just how fast is USB 3?
There seems to be a bit of confusion out there about how fast USB 3.x devices can actually go – as well as how to actually obtain those blistering-fast transfer rates.
That’s not surprising since what should be a pretty simple topic is actually quite convoluted…
You may recall my earlier video, Slow copy speeds with USB 3? No problem! 🎞
I was recently informed by one viewer that 400 MB/s is completely impossible for USB 3, so I guess it’s time for a review!
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22 September 2020 | Computers |
So there I was, reading my e-mail the other day, when I received an upgrade notice from Thunderbird.
Great! Maybe they’ll fix things… So I upgraded.
Welcome to Thunderbird 78, where everything has changed!
Well, sort of…
My add-ons no longer worked, the folder pane was hideously black and white, I lost my CompactHeaders, and my message pane buttons were all screwed up. SIGH…
But, not to worry… Big things are in store for good old Tbird, and many of the annoying changes are easy to fix!
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1 September 2020 | Computers, How Does it Work? |
The word on the street is that the latest version of Windows 10, version 2004, contains a bug that over-defrags SSDs.
While common “wisdom” is that SSDs don’t need to be defragged, the truth is that they sort of need it.
Okay then! So, the question then is: Will Win 10 2004 destroy your SSD?
Is a fix on the way?
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4 August 2020 | Computers |
Windows 10 2004, called the Windows 10 May Update, was released eons ago.
Despite the fact that this version was tested for ages, it still managed to cause various headaches for many users.
That’s why you probably don’t have it yet – but you will soon!
So, what’s new? What about all the Usual Stuff?
Let’s take a look…
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28 July 2020 | Computers |
With Windows Activation, the fun never ends!
Recently I reset a laptop with OEM Windows 10 Home for a friend. All I did was use the built-in Win 10 “factory reset” that should have wiped everything, reinstalled Win 10, and then reactivated just fine.
Alas, that’s not what happened…
Instead, I got error code 0xc0000022, and the perfectly valid built-in OEM key would not re-activate the same Windows on the same hardware – no matter what I did.
It turns out the culprit was an ‘access denied‘ error in the Software Protection service…
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23 June 2020 | Computers, Networking, Programming |
Ubuntu server 18.04 LTS is a rather popular linux OS for servers.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t come without its problems. For example, the current version of stunnel – an SSL tunnel – is woefully outdated.
It seems that although Canonical is aware of the problem, they have no intention of fixing it!
Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround that’s much simpler than you might think…
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9 June 2020 | Computers |
Many people these days have multiple monitors, especially on their primary desktop computer.
The trouble comes when you want to use Remote Desktop and “telecommute”. Let’s say you’re using your laptop puter, and you Remote Desktop into your main machine.
All of your icons and windows spread across 2 screens on your big puter get crammed onto one screen while using Remote Desktop on your lappy.
No big deal, right? But then you get back to your Big Puter, and all your windows and icons are STILL crammed onto 1 of your 2+ screens. OOPS!
Fortunately, there’s an easy fix…
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26 May 2020 | Computers, Programming |
ImageMagick is great. It allows your web app to process, resize, filter, and do all kinds of other nifty things with images.
Not so long ago, ImageMagick 7 was released. One of the big new features was full support for WEBP images, the new image format from Google.
Now, you might think it’s easy to just upgrade to ImageMagick 7. If you’re using a linux OS like Ubuntu, you just apt install and you’re done, right?
Well, no…
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19 May 2020 | Computers, Gizmos, Video |
For awhile now, we’ve been hearing rumors of anti-trust actions against the four main Big Tech companies.
Recently, the word is that actual charges will be brought starting in June of this year.
When you put all the recent stories together – along with some other interesting events involving Big Tech – it DOES look like something is finally about to happen.
But will any of it actually change anything?
It’s easy to be cynical, but I do see an opportunity here to make a difference…
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12 May 2020 | Computers |
When your computer with Windows 10 reboots or restarts automatically after updates, it will re-open applications that were running before the restart.
There are two problems with this:
First, not ALL applications will fire up again – only some.
Second, sometimes you don’t want this to happen because you may have a program scheduled to start up via the Startup folder or maybe the Task Scheduler. In this case, you can end up with two copies of the app running at the same time!
What to do, what to do?
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Just how fast is USB 3?
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