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iPad3 – Thicker? That is the thought but not confirmed as Apple usually keeps these kind of things very well under wraps until they deem it is the right time to release the information. The increased size may be because of possible dual light bars for the screen’s lighting. Anyone familiar with how LCD screens work knows that there needs to be some kind of light source to be able to actually see what is on the screen. With the iPad 3, Apple is attempting to up the screen resolution to best the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but to do this, they will possibly need extra light for the screen to be evenly lit. There is also the possibility of Apple choosing Sharp as their newest supplier for their tablet’s screen technology. If this is the case, Sharp’s IGZO (indium-gallium-zinc) LCD panels do not  require the IPS (in-plane switching) panel technology to provide wide viewing angles, nor will it necessitate dual-bar LED backlighting. This will mean great screen resolution, thinner size, and long battery life. All of this seems really important as tablets are becoming thinner and lighter, but the thickness change would actually only be around 0.7mm. How small of a size difference really matters?

Good thing about the iPad3? The current smart covers will fit as the screen size and rounded corners are the same. That actually seems odd of Apple, release a new product and NOT make you buy all new accessories? Can it be true?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/245989/ipad_3_said_thicker_with_smart_cover.html

Xoom2 (XYBOARD) - How much would you pay for it?

Verizon is betting on anywhere between $530 and $730. And the breakdown: There will be 16, 32, and 64GB versions of the tablet available for $530, $630, and $730 respectively. Each of these are $100 cheaper than their iPad2 cousins, and these will have the blazing fast Verizon 4G LTE. Good right? Not so fast. These price points will most likely require a two year commitment, unlike the slower 3G enabled iPad2. The specs on the XYBOARD (likely a branding name for Verizon only, much like the DROID name) are not amazingly different than the current incarnation of the Xoom. Going from 1GHz  to 1.2GHZ dual core processors, keeping the 1GB RAM, keeping its 5MP rear-facing camera and actually going down from a 2MP front-facing to the standard 1.3MP. Where is the key difference? The battery. The current Xoom has a decent 3250mAh Li-Ion battery. The XYBOARD more than doubles that with a 7,000 mAh Li–Ion battery. Well, that is one impressive change.

http://betanews.com/2011/12/10/would-you-pay-verizon-530-730-for-motorola-droid-xyboard/

LAWSUITS - Many call this Karma. One such comment was “Karma’s a b*tch!” So, who would lose a lawsuit and have so many people, dare I say, happy about it? Apple. Apple has been suing many of their competitors for copyright infringement. Someone hit back. If you think about the modern communications world, one company stands out in molding these technologies into what we know today. That company, not Apple, is Motorola. Just think back to the bag phone that used to be in so many cars. Well, this week a German court has ruled that Apple infringed on a Motorola patent for its 3G devices. Namely, these devices are the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4; and the iPad 3G and iPad2 3G. Oddly, the court did not specify the iPhone 4S. The infringement cited was that Apple did not license the technology. What does this mean for Germany? Apple may be forced to stop selling these products. What does this mean to you? Motorola may decide to further this and push it in a country near you. Obviously, Apple has stated it will appeal the decision.

There is a lot behind this lawsuit and the ruling. More than just two phone hardware manufactures going toe-to-toe in court. As Motorola shareholders have okay’d a deal to allow Google to purchase them, this now becomes a battle for hardware, software and technology supremacy. Watch this one, something interesting is bound to happen. We will be!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16112259

And finally, remember the HP Touchpad? Yes? Well, it’s back. Well, sort of. HP’s CEO Meg Whitman has decided to throw the WebOS software that powered the tablet to the dogs of the open source community. This is a very good thing! What is going on is that HP has decided to invest in the continuing development of the software while allowing the open source developers to work on and improve the software. This will allow future updates to the platform, and possibly growing developer support for apps. Meg Whitman even stated that HP might make another tablet based off of the WebOS platform sometime around 2013. For now she says they are betting heavily on the Windows tablet market and may be releasing a Windows based tablet in 2012. That will have HP developing tablets for three of the four major mobile OS’s. Touchpad – WebOS, future unnamed tablet – Windows, and their eStation printer comes with an Android tablet.  Interesting move Meg, interesting move…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57340499-264/hp-tosses-webos-out-of-frying-pan-into-the-open-source-fire/

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There are a couple different ways to go about backing up data. You can do whole system backups, or you can just back up individual files. Both methods require some kind of storage device, whether we are talking a physical external hard drive, usb flash memory drive, or even off site “cloud” storage. Cloud storage is when files from your computer are stored on a server that is accessable from the internet. There are pros and cons to both the whole system backup and the individual file backups. Let’s look at some methods.

Whole System Backups - Also called a disk image. When you do this, you are backing everything up. This will include the operating system, installed programs, files and more. Right away, this may sound like a great idea. It works for some people. To do this, there are many different types of software that you can download, or purchase the physical disk. Some software is free to do this and can be downloaded after a quick Google search, while others are paid software only.

Pros - The upside to this is it is a no brainer. You just back up everything and let it go. No thinking of what to backup or even when to back up as usually you can set some kind of schedule.

Cons - Viruses, spyware, and more. That’s right, if you are backing everything up, you will be backing up your computer-slowing malware, junk temporary files, and other stuff you don’t really need but will be taking up space in your back up file anyway. Another downside is that you usually can not just restore one file if needed to complete something before the computer is fixed or if only one file is corrupted.

Specific File Backups - With this type of backup, you will have to manually select which files are important to you, and when to back them up. There is some software that will aid in this kind of backup process, but not many. We recommend just picking your own files. A good idea is just having all of your inportant files in one folder. For example, in Windows 7 you can just back up the entire user folder that contains your downloads, documents, music, pictures, videos, emails, contacts, desktop, and some other folders that are not as important.

Pros - Space saving, you only back up the documents you need, and not that giant “Windows” folder. Also, when you need to recover just one file, or transfer it to a friend or even just to compare versions of a document, it is as easy as opening your backup and clicking on the file. It is all right there.

Cons - You actually have to take a little time and schedule the time to do the backup, it is not automatic. And, you can not back up programs.

Backup Media - CDs/DVDs, hard drives, flash drives, and online storage (Cloud). There are many different options that are all good for different things. If you are looking at doing a full system backup, external hard drives are going to be your best bet because they offer the space to be able to hold the whole image file. When you are picking and choosing your files, you can really use any of the above methods.

Personally, I have used  both methods and all different types of media. Currently, I only back up important files and do so both to a cloud-based service (Box.net and Dropbox) and to an external hard drive. Why both? Well, for me, I use the hard drive for things like movies and such that I may not want to be connected online to be able to view and this way I can bring them to a friends house and not worry about their internet connection speed to watch a movie. For all of my important documents, they are stored in the cloud as their servers are made to hold things like that. If one of their hard drives crash, they have all of my documents on other ones for redundancy reasons. That is what works for me, choose your method and enjoy the peace that is having things backed up.

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There are many names for different parts of computers. Well, people call them by many different names. I am going to go over a couple common parts, what they are and what they do.

Hard Drive – This is an internal part that acts like a human brain’s long-term memory. This is where all of the documents, files, pictures, videos, etc. are stored. When you save something to the computer, it is being saved on the hard drive. The hard drive is also called the hard disk drive or HDD. Common hard drives contain mirror like disks that store the information using magnets. These disks, or platters, spin at (usually) 5400 or 7200 RPM and are susceptible to damage if the device is dropped or shaken vigorously. Another type of hard drive is what is called a solid state drive or SSD. This type of hard drive is usually smaller in size but contains no moving parts as all of the data is stored in flash memory chips instead of moving disks. Hard drives sizes are measured in gigabytes (GB) or tarabytes (TB). The average traditional hard drive can vary in size from 320GB to 4TB. Usually the ones that are over 1TB are for external (backup) use only. Solid state hard drives usually come in sizes around 64GB to 256GB.

Memory (RAM) - Memory or RAM (Random Access Memory) acts like a brain’s short-term memory. This temporarily stores information while the computer is on so the processor can access the data faster. RAM reads and writes faster than hard drives, so it acts as a mediator between the processor and the hard drive. When you shut your computer off, files, data and settings that have been changed and are currently stored in the RAM is written to the hard drive so it can be recalled again when you try to access these files again. That is what your computer does when you shut a computer off. This is why it is important to shut your computer off properly, and not just unplugging it or just holding the power button. RAM is measured in gigabytes (GB) and usually varies in modern systems from 1 to 8GB. RAM and the processor of a computer both heavily factor into how fast your computer will be.

Processor (CPU) - Often confused with the system as a whole, the actual processor is a silicon chip with billions of resistors on it that measures about 1.5 square inches. Not very big. This part of the computer is what does all of the calculations for the system. Usually running between 1.5 and 3GHz (Gigahertz – this is called the clock speed), this part, along with the memory, help determine the speed of your computer. Two of the main manufactures for computer processors are Intel and AMD. These two processor companies manufacture processors differently, therefore it is nearly impossible to compare the two using the clock speed only. To make things more confusing, there are single, dual, triple (phased out), quad, and six-core systems. What this means is that on a single processing chip, there are one, two, three, four, and even up to six actual processing cores. It is like having that number of separate processors in your computer. The more processing cores, the better multitasking you can do on your system. Also having more cores will help with processor intensive programs such as movie editors.

Optical Drive - Also known as CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drives. An optical drive is any drive that uses a laser to read the information on the disk. These disk drives have the ability to read and write disks. Writing information to a disk is known as “burning” a disk.

Power Supply - This is the part of the computer that you plug the power cord into on desktop systems. It converts AC power (from the wall outlet) to DC power (like that comes from batteries) and distributes it throughout your system. In laptops, this part is replaced by the “power brick” on your AC adapter that you plug into the wall and your laptop. This is used to save space and make your laptop smaller.

Motherboard - This is the main circuit board in the computer that the RAM and processor are connected to that helps in transferring data and power throughout the system.

And that is a quick run down on the hardware of a computer. Now that you know what’s what, make sure you do not touch these parts inside of your computer. If you open the case and start touching and playing with this stuff, there is a risk of electrical shock. Not just to you, but static electricity can kill many of these components. The voltage needed to damage the parts can be small enough that you don’t even feel the shock. If your computer needs hardware repair, please take it to someone that actually knows what they are doing, not just the guy down the street. Thanks

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Operating Systems. This is what version of Microsoft Windows you are running. Most likely it will be something like Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. An operating system is the main graphical user interface (GUI) that starts up when you press the power button on your computer. This is different than office, which is also made by Microsoft. Microsoft Office contains programs like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. For the current article, we will ignore MS Office. We need to start at the basics.

THE BASICS:

Now, there are different Operating Systems (OS) than Microsoft Windows, such as Mac OS, Linux, Unix and a few others. This post only focuses on the Windows OS as it is the most popular (most popular on home computers and laptops). From now on, we will mostly pretend that Windows is the only one, because that is the only one we will actually talk about. If we bring up another one in the future, we will be very specific. Moving on. For any modern program to run, you must be running some OS. Microsoft Windows 7 is the latest and becoming increasingly popular as people buy new computers. When you first turn on your computer it will have a  loading icon with the Windows logo in the center of your screen. This is a good sign. If you ever do not see this, there may be a problem. The only exception to this rule is if you are running Windows Vista, in this case, there is no logo, just a loading bar.

Windows XP (released Oct 25, 2001):

Windows Vista (released Jan 30, 2007):

Windows 7 (released Oct 22, 2009):

Those are the three most recent releases from Microsoft as far as Operating Systems go. They have another one in the works right now simply called Windows 8, but we have a little while before that one gets released. So now when your computer starts, you should see one of these, and you will be able to tell which version of Windows you have.

There are other ways to tell what version of Windows you have installed on your computer when the computer is already booted and running (which it should be as you are reading this). This would involve right-clicking on ‘My Computer’ (Windows XP) or ‘Computer’ (Vista, 7) in the Start Menu and clicking ‘Properties’ at the bottom of the menu that comes up. In that first screen that comes up it will usually tell you things like your computer manufacturer, how much system RAM you have (memory), processor speed and type, and what version of Windows you are running. Because the life of most computers now are between two and five years, most computers that are still running Windows XP as the operating system are getting old enough to have to start replacing. Do not be afraid, Windows 7 is amazing.

Now that you know what version of Windows you are running, the next time someone asks you or a website asks you so you can download the right version of a program or what not, you are armed with the knowledge to make an informed decision!

Just as a side note, we will be talking about hardware other than computers in the future, such as phones and tablets. These can, but do not always run Windows. On these devices, Windows is actually the minority. Just so you know.

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Blackout Technologies is under construction to bring you the latest in news and how-to’s when it comes to Windows-based systems. Thank you for checking us out!

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