Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
(Answer requested by Edgar Ferrer) Yikes! If this actually worked on your laptop, you’re very lucky. The actual, true “put it in the fridge” advice is very old-school, and is/was a nothing-left-to-lose, last-ditch recovery option for malfunctioning spinning-platter hard drives. Deep-chilling a mechanical drive could sometimes free up stuck internal parts, via differential contraction/expansion of…
(Answer requested by Trevor Noble) Why does it take so long to paint a house compared to a garden shed? 🙂 Laptops are typically much more capacious than phones, and carry far more software and files. EG: My phone (an S10) has 128GB of internal drive storage, with 75GB currently in use (filled with files…
(Answer requested by Gabriel Yeung) You want the technical answer, or the practical answer? Technically speaking, if your average working dataset is larger than 64MB, then YES, a HDD (hard drive) with a larger internal electronic cache (aka “buffer”) will probably perform better than the same drive with a smaller cache because the cache can…
(Answer requested by ZeeForce Gaming) Encrypted files are still just 1s and 0s. So, if you’re talking about recovering encrypted files after a crash, hardware failure, or something similar, you may be able to lift the encrypted bits off the defective drive using utterly normal data/disk-recovery software, and write the still-encrypted data to a working…
(Answer requested by Oskar Jackowiak) His full question: “Say I’m charging my Galaxy S10 with my portable powerbank, if I was to drop the phone whilst connected into water will I possibly die and/or will the phone be damaged?” I’d be more worried about the powerbank than the phone, or you. Top-brand phones have been…
Those are really two different questions. “Does a USB hub add latency?” Yes. A USB hub isn’t passive wiring: It receives a signal from a source (PC or peripheral), decodes the embedded address information, and then actively retransmits that signal to its destination (peripheral or PC). That process takes a small, but measurable amount of…
(Answer requested by Tiamiy Olawale) If you’re sure it’s the power bank (external battery pack) that’s the problem (i.e. if the phone charges normally from other sources), here’s what to do: Take the defective power bank to a lithium-ion device recycling center or receptacle. Leave it there. Buy a new power bank. (Sorry. There’s no…
(Answer requested by Rosario Mezzatesta) If the cables are designed properly, yes. However, if either cable’s internal conductors are too thin, energy will be lost as resistive heat along the way; this can make the charging time longer. And: The longer the wire, the greater the thin-wire-resistance effect. Very long power cables need substantially thicker…
(Answer requested by Dan Hopper) Chilly temps (below room temp, but above freezing) will temporarily reduce the amount of power available from a given battery charge, but won’t permanently hurt anything. Freezing cold may render a phone completely, but temporarily, inert. However attempting to recharge a below-freezing battery can cause permanent damage. Extreme cold by…
(Answer requested by Ian Alter) Probably less than you think. My first notebook was a TRS-100 Model 100, weighing in at about 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb), including its power supply — four ordinary, buy-anywhere, AA cells.) I carried my Model 100 literally around the world, back in the day. 🙂 Permalink: https://langa.com/?p=3865