Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
I recently wrote about my still-working, antique, “made-for-XP” netbook as part of a fun PC-vs-Mac discussion here. Apparently — judging from the popularity of the post — there are a lot of other people out there maintaining seriously old PCs, too! For example, correspondent “twinmustangranchdressing” asks: “What upgrades and modifications have you made to this…
(Answer requested by Dex Jackson) It’s new? Still under warranty? First, make sure the problem isn’t something obvious: Plug the drive into different, known-working electrical power outlets; and into different, known-working USB ports. If a different PC is available, try temporarily plugging it into that. If it doesn’t work with any known-good USB port or…
(Answer requested by Lorenzo Gramigni) Sure. The system doesn’t care how you provide cooling, as long as you keep the CPU safely within its designed temperature rage. Most PCs use air as the working fluid for heat removal. You can prepare many PC’s for modest overclocking simply by adding a larger heatsink and higher-capacity fans….
(Answer requested by Miguel Camino) Laptop hardware and usage varies hugely, and viruses (which don’t usually damage hardware) have little to do with it. At one end, you might have a cheapo laptop that bangs around in a student’s backpack and lives in a dorm; and at the other, a high-end, graphic-artist’s laptop, professionally maintained…
(Answer requested by Julian Diep) If you can’t just blow the dust from the port before each use, and if a phone-enclosing case is overkill, try a plastic or rubber “USB Port Cover;” a malleable, nonconductive plug that fit snugly into an unused USB socket, preventing debris from entering. They’re available by the gazillions online…
When you first set up a standard smartphone (I’ll discuss burner phones later), you almost surely signed in with some external service — if not, the phone wouldn’t do anything! That sign-in information probably exists somewhere online, and can be recovered. For example, if yours is a standard Android setup, you probably created or logged-into…
Um, online? A basic search will show you that there are numerous commercially available HDDs in the 10TB-15TB range, with 20TB drives out fairly soon. Here are some preconfigured Google searches — just click the size you’re looking for: 16TB drives 15TB drives 14TB drives 13TB drives 12TB drives 11TB drives However, these high-capacity drives…
Oh, baloney. Macs aren’t magical. It’s an easy mistake to make: For example, in your mind’s-eye comparison, you may picture “a PC” as something like a $200 Lenovo laptop; and “a Mac” as maybe a $2400 MacBook Pro. But that’s hardly a valid comparison. When you compare roughly equivalent hardware you’ll see that Macs and…
It’s odd: Questions about the physical weight of data get asked fairly often — I don’t know what’s prompting it. Perhaps the move to SSDs? The most recent iteration phrased it this way: “Does data have physical weight? If something is 10 gigabytes, does it actually weigh whatever system you have it installed on down?”…
Sure. You can also start your day with 0% charge in your phone; or leave on driving vacation with 0% fuel in the tank; or start a scuba dive with gauges showing 0% air…. There are many things you can do. It might even work for a while. A “0%” phone usually has at least…