Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
An AskWoody Plus reader questions whether data is safe when traveling over common AC electrical circuits. Plus: Yet more tips from your fellow subscribers on hard-drive destruction, salvaging — and maybe even revival! Those are the topics of my column in this week’s AskWoody Plus. Also in this week’s AskWoody Plus edition: PATCH WATCH: Hello! Has…
Following my recounting of decommissioning a failing hard drive, readers share their real-world tips on drive destruction. If there’s a creative way to ensure that an old drive never gives up its secrets, it would appear AskWoody readers have tried it. But a nail gun? 🙂 More on do-it-yourself hard-drive destruction is the subject of my column…
Sometimes, Wi-Fi just won’t fly Steel-framed walls in my new apartment made Wi-Fi connections ludicrously slow and unusable in the home office. The router’s “SON” (self-organizing network) features didn’t help. But a hardware end-run got the office communicating again. That’s the subject of my column in this week’s AskWoody Plus. Also in this week’s AskWoody…
My home and office relocation hit some snags, including fatal damage to 5TB of backup files; and the subsequent necessary physical destruction of the drive to make the old files unrecoverable. (See photo.) But after that and other detours involving both high and low tech, things are finally getting back to normal; and that’s this…
… but it can let you see some things in a new light. We Langas are midway through a major relocation. My column in this week’s AskWoody newsletter covers a few things I’ve learned from tearing down, moving, and rebuilding my office and home computer setups. Among them: another reason to love solid-state drives, and…
AskWoody subscriber John Mackin’s laptop was badly malfunctioning, and the problem remained unresolved even after some top-notch troubleshooting and maintenance. “Fred, I have a three-and-a-half-year-old laptop (Dell Inspiron 13”, i7, 12 GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, Windows 10) that has recently begun to periodically shut down during use. “Suspecting CPU overheat, I downloaded the CoreTemp…
AskWoody subscriber John Mackin’s laptop was badly malfunctioning, and the problem remained unresolved even after some top-notch troubleshooting and maintenance. “Fred, I have a three-and-a-half-year-old laptop (Dell Inspiron 13”, i7, 12 GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, Windows 10) that has recently begun to periodically shut down during use. “Suspecting CPU overheat, I downloaded the CoreTemp…
ReadyBoost is a storage technology available in Windows 10 that lets you enhance PC performance by using ordinary USB flash drives as fast disk caches. Debuting in Vista, ReadyBoost was once cutting-edge technology. But does it still make sense with today’s PCs? That’s the main topic of my column in this week’s AskWoody Plus newsletter. My…
The note from “K.A.” was confessional and a bit anguished: “Today I hit my laptop because I got angry and I’m stupid. The screen glitched and it just rebooted. It went back to work just fine, but I’m paranoid. Did I cause damage? It’s an old Acer.” The four tools you’ll need to find and…
My column in this week’s ASKWOODY PLUS* newsletter discusses wired Ethernet vs. Wi-Fi security; provides information on Win10’s built-in “packet-sniffer” tool for examining raw network traffic; and discusses whether you can install Win10 via USB from an Android phone. Also in this week’s ASKWOODY PLUS* newsletter: WINDOWS 10: Cheap Windows 10 product keys — Are they…
