Monthly Archives: December 2019

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

Posted on December 22, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 20, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 19, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 18, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 17, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 12, 2019 by quill

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

Posted on December 12, 2019 by quill

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?

Posted on December 10, 2019 by quill

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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