My Tech Tips

A common Question I get is "What Computer do I buy?". I decided that it might be better to give people the tools to know what they're looking for rather than tell them what they need. Watch the videos first. Check out the additional explanations and references below if you still have questions. Hope these help!

One thing I did not cover when I did these videos is navigating the various generations of processors from mainline chip makers like Intel. I found a page with a pretty good breakdown to understand the differences and linked to it below in case you would like a little more explanation.

https://www.itechtics.com/processor-generations/

If you've watched the videos and want to dig deaper, here are some helpful explanations for the fundamental components of a computer:

A computer typically consists of several components (see animation below):

• Input/output devices: A screen (or monitor) displays items to a user. Early computers displayed only textual items, but today's computers display graphical items too. A keyboard allows a user to provide input to the computer, typically accompanied by a mouse (or touchpad) for graphical displays. Keyboards and mice are increasingly being replaced by touchscreens. Other devices provide additional input and output means, such as microphones, speakers, printers, and USB interfaces. I/O devices are commonly called peripherals.

• Storage: A disk (aka hard drive) stores files and other data, such as program files, song/movie files, or office documents. Disks are non-volatile, meaning they maintain their contents even when powered off. They do so by orienting magnetic particles in a 0 or 1 position. The disk spins under a head that pulses electricity at just the right times to orient specific particles (you can sometimes hear the disk spin and the head clicking as the head moves). New flash storage devices store 0s and 1s in a non-volatile memory rather than disk, by tunneling electrons into special circuits on the memory's chip, and removing them with a "flash" of electricity that draws the electrons back out.

• Memory: RAM (random-access memory) temporarily holds data read from storage and is designed such that any address can be accessed much faster than disk, in just a few clock ticks (see below) rather than hundreds of ticks. The "random access" term comes from being able to access any memory location quickly and in arbitrary order, without having to spin a disk to get a proper location under a head. RAM is costlier per bit than disk, due to RAM's higher speed. RAM chips typically appear on a printed circuit board along with a processor chip. RAM is volatile, losing its contents when powered off. Memory size is typically listed in bits, or in bytes where a byte is 8 bits. Common sizes involve megabytes (million bytes), gigabytes (billion bytes), or terabytes (trillion bytes).

• Processor: The processor runs the computer's programs, reading and executing instructions from memory, performing operations, and reading/writing data from/to memory. When powered on, the processor starts executing the program whose first instruction is (typically) at memory location 0. That program is commonly called the BIOS (basic input/output system), which sets up the computer's basic peripherals. The processor then begins executing a program called an operating system (OS). The operating system allows a user to run other programs and interfaces with the many other peripherals. Processors are also called CPUs (central processing unit) or microprocessors (a term introduced when processors began fitting on a single chip, the "micro" suggesting small). Because speed is so important, a processor may contain a small amount of RAM on its own chip, called cache memory, accessible in one clock tick rather than several, for maintaining a copy of the most-used instructions/data.

• Clock: A processor's instructions execute at a rate governed by the processor's clock, which ticks at a specific frequency. Processors have clocks that tick at rates such as 1 MHz (1 million ticks/second) for an inexpensive processor ($1) like those found in a microwave oven or washing machine, to 1 GHz (1 billion ticks/second) for costlier ($10-$100) processors like those found in mobile phones and desktop computers. Executing about 1 instruction per clock tick, processors thus execute millions or billions of instructions per second.

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Fix your cracking laptop, and don't let an overly tight laptop hinge rob your laptop of its life potential.  Check this out for a quick tutorial on how to diagnose and repair.