Author Archives: quill

Q. After I renamed my SD card files, the photos no longer showed up on my camera, but it shows up on my computer. How do I fix this?

A. As you have accidentally found out, cameras require photos to be in specific places with specific naming conventions. The directories on the SD card will have specific names. Usually the image files themselves are sequentially numbered, such as IMG_01281.jpg … Continue reading

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Q. Why does my DDR4 memory show as 1333 MHz in my motherboard when it is supposed to be 2666 MHz?

A. The RAM is DDR4-2666 MT/s memory. MegaHertz (MHz) means the measure of clock frequency in million cycles per second.Mega Transactions per Second (MT/s) means the computer transaction rate in million per second DDR means Double Data Rate. DDR memory … Continue reading

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Q. Can I put Quad Channel RAM into a Dual Channel machine?

A. Single or dual or quad channel memory access doesn’t have anything to do with the individual RAM modules — an individual RAM DIMM is the same whether it is sold alone, or in a package of 2 or 4 … Continue reading

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Q. What is the difference between NVME, M.2 and SATA?

A. M.2 (formerly known as NGFF) is a standard for a computer expansion card socket, and the cards that can go into it. M.2 – Wikipedia M.2 cards are named after their size: the most popular is M.2 2280 – 22 … Continue reading

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Q. Why does it take much longer to copy a large file to a USB flash than to an external hard drive?

A. USB “keychain” flash drives are slower because the flash drive has much poorer writing performance than an external hard disk drive. The real world speed of writing depends both on the performance of the interface (USB in this case) … Continue reading

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Q: What should I check first if my computer lost internet access?

The first rule of support is: Check the cables. The second rule of support is: Check the cables again! Is everything powered on? Once you have done that, you need to isolate where the internet access is being interrupted. Was … Continue reading

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Q: Can I use compressed air to clean out dust from inside my computer?

Yes, you can. ‘Canned air’ is a common, if environmentally dubious, method of blowing dust out of computers. Although chlorinated fluorocarbon propellants have been banned, the replacement propellants, Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) and hydrocarbons, are still not good for the atmosphere, and … Continue reading

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Q: What does “swap memory” do that physical RAM memory in a computer can’t do?

A: It can be bigger. Swap files on the computer’s hard drive are there for when you don’t have enough physical RAM, so the operating systems swaps data out of RAM space and writes a file on storage, to free … Continue reading

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Q: What old generations of RAM memory are the same speed as drives?

A: RAM, of any generation, has always been much faster than hard drives or SSD drives, and RAM continues to be faster. There are several reasons. Bus access: RAM is on a bus that is much ‘closer’ to the CPU … Continue reading

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Q: News web sites lock up every computer I’ve used, using much of it’s resources

A: Your experience is not the same as others. Yes, news sites rely a lot on syndication, ads, dynamic content and loading content from multiple different sources. But the majority of computers do not bog down or lock up on … Continue reading

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Q: Is it expensive to add a Thunderbolt port to a budget priced laptop?

A: Yes, because it means buying a new laptop. The Thunderbolt protocol is an extension of the PCI-e bus and therefore cannot be converted from USB or any other common interface. Thunderbolt relies on having a Thunderbolt hardware controller chip, … Continue reading

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QNAP NAS storage owners – time to update your units

There is a security vulnerability that affects the QNAP NAS storage devices, and their QTS operating system. It has been fixed with a firmware update from QNAP in February, but the catch is — you need to manually install the … Continue reading

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iPhone 5 Owners need to take action before Nov 3

Apple announced that iPhone 5 will require updating before Nov 3 or iCloud, App Store, email, web and other services will no longer work. Starting just before 12:00 a.m. UTC on November 3, 2019,* iPhone 5 will require an iOS … Continue reading

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What ports do I have on my device? Sorting out cables, USB, Thunderbolt and Firewire

USB Host ports A host is a computer or another device with an operating system, that has the ports and the OS support (and drivers) to control a USB device. Where are the ports? If it is a desktop computer, … Continue reading

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Purchase Order Fraud – Impersonation scam

Every week we receive orders and quote requests from companies, universities and hospitals all over North America, requesting expensive IT equipment. Great, right? Not really, because these are fraud artists that are trying to lure companies into sending valuable goods … Continue reading

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