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Tech News & Commentary
Brandon from Raleigh, North Carolina listening via the Android App asked: “Hey Dave, I have a question about USB 3.0. My new computer has the 3.0 ports. I understand that there isn’t much use for 3.0, so i was just wondering what the future is for USB 3.0? I’d like to see it on newer phones like the galaxy note 3. Thanks Dave.”
USB 3.0 is much faster, around 5 GB/s fast, that’s a lot better than USB 2.0 and, since files are not getting smaller, long term you’ll probably see USB 3.0 replacing USB 2.0 ports, especially since it’s a backwards compatible standard.
As for seeing it on phones, that may not come for a while because, quite frankly, it’s useless on 90% of cases right now. Unless you’re doing a full first sync and moving all your media onto a new phone, you won’t benefit a whole lot. Most of the time you add files to a phone incrementally, you just add 3 songs, remove 2, add a movie.. you rarely add tens of gigs in one go.
Phone storage is also pretty small, so USB 3.0 would be faster, but even filling an empty phone, USB 2.0 is not unacceptably slow.
As phone storage increases and as a batteries get bigger, we may see a switch though, it is the current standard after all, and USB 3.0 can handle more power than USB 2.0, some phones may want to take advantage of that if they can.
Apple, for example, had “optimized USB 2.0” ports for years before USB 3.0 made it onto Apple computers, those ports could provide more power to charge their newer phones faster and to charge iPads, which is something that regular USB 2.0 ports can’t really do (at least not fast enough).
Now before we get emails from people telling us we don’t know what we’re talking about, yes, we know that iPads CAN charge from standard USB 2 ports, but only if you keep the screen off. The power drain of running that big screen doesn’t let it charge the battery also off a standard USB 2 port. Believe it or not, ASUS makes a software utility that runs on Windows called the Ai Charger. It turns up the juice to USB 2 ports on most computers and actually lets them charge tablets. We’ve tested this, and it works! Pretty cool.
USB 3 is like 1080p HDTVs. When 1080i was the norm and people were arguing that 1080p wasn’t necessary, we said it might not be necessary but eventually it would simply be the standard, for the same price, and every HDTV would have it. That turned out to be correct. We’re saying the same thing about USB 3. It’s better than USB 2, and eventually it will simply be the way all USB ports are, at no additional cost to you, and every computer will have it.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Ray in Niagara Falls, New York listens online asked: “I want to hook up a second hard drive to my computer and have it copy the OS and everything that’s on the current hard drive, then leave them both hooked up and everything I do on the computer would write to both of the hard drives so that if the drive were to fail, I would have a backup. Is that possible?”
You can do what you need, but before you overthink it too much or look for strange solutions, look at RAID arrays, in particular what you want is a RAID 1 array.
RAID can be used for different purposes, for example a RAID 0 array is all about speed and quick data access, RAID 1 won’t give you that, but it will automatically mirror everything you do on your main drive onto a second drive, which is all you really want.
Here’s the big downside of using a RAID array as opposed to say an external hard drive and a program that backs up your data regularly: let’s say your computer has a nice 1TB hard drive, and you get a second 1TB hard drive, you set them up in RAID 1 configuration and put them to work. You’ll have 2TBs worth of hard drive and 1TB of usable data storage, because the second TB will be 100% mirror and 0% extra storage.
If that’s ok with you, then RAID 1 is easy, and pretty much stress free, if you want to have a little bit of that storage for your own use, you may be better served by using automatic backups to the second drive.
Your computer’s hardware will have to support creating a RAID volume across the two hard drives, or else you will need to purchase a RAID controller that you plug in to an expansion slot. Most motherboards built with Intel chipsets after the X58, which is several years old, have an integrated RAID controller. If your computer is less than a couple years old, you will probably have what you need.
A plug in RAID controller typically isn’t cheap, because they aren’t designed for the general consumer market. That’s because, as we just said, most current consumer model computers include the RAID support. Plug in controllers are designed for use with high performance servers.
If your concern is simply backing up your data continuously, you could always attach an external USB 2 or 3 hard drive and use backup software that does a constant background backup, sometimes called a “shadow volume.” If you’re worried about the lag this might put on your computer’s operation, then use a backup program that runs overnight. You won’t have up to the minute protection, but it won’t be more than one day old. An advantage there is that you can use a program like Acronis TrueImage and your nightly backup can be a “bare metal” disaster backup that lets you get your computer up and running again, operating system and applications included, following a hard drive crash.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Alex Zudin, CEO – Paragon
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1979 at the International Funkausstellung, known worldwide as IFA, the twilight of the vinyl record came: Sony and Philips showed two competing technologies to record music digitally on silvery discs. Both prototypes, a 12 inch disc at the Philips booth and a 5 inch disc at the Sony stand, suddenly disappeared during the show – secret talks had begun behind the curtain. The format both companies later agreed to was the CD, the compact disc, which revolutionized the record industry, the hardware industry and audio listening.
Jack from Brooklyn, New York listening via the App asked: “I have a Toshiba laptop and I upgraded to windows 8 without having a touch screen. My problem is i’m trying to connect the email to the exchange service. I have all the settings, I know where I’m suppose to connect. But when i add another location it doesn’t work. It has up to 5 field facilities. I have already set this up to my windows 7 laptop, my tablets, phones and it won’t connect. I’ve gone to the IT at my job and they don’t know why its not working. Please help me out.”
If you already have the correct settings, which you seem to have, since you have the account working on a bunch of devices already, the problem can really be in one of two places: your new computer, or your server’s settings.
As much as Windows 8 is unpopular, and as much as some tasks such as turning off your computer may now require a complex mysterious procedure, we’re sure it can do email, and it shouldn’t need any special settings.
The problem is most likely the server, Exchange servers can be set up to restrict access to a set number, or type of devices. Our best guess is that your IT people are restricting you to a set number of devices, and that this computer is putting you over the limit. Ask them to check to make sure you’re not over your allotment and, if you are, ask them to remove whatever device you use less and replace it with your new laptop.
To be honest, your IT people need to fix this for you. You’re not asking for anything too strange, if they try, they should be able to find the problem and fix it.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Bonnie in Denham Springs, Louisiana – listening via Talk 107.3FM Baton Rouge asked: “I have a iPhone 4s and ever since I got it I have not been able to get on our netgear wifi router. I have tried everything I can think of. I can connect with my kindle, laptop and my granddaughter can connect with her iPad. I hope you can give me some insight to it. Thank you for all your info on your show.”
If you just got it and everything else connects and the phone doesn’t, you may want to return it and get a new one… there may be something wrong with the phone and if it’s new they should still honor your warranty.
If you can’t or don’t want to do that, you can reset the phone’s network setting by going to settings, general and reset at the bottom of the list. Doing that will get rid of all of the passwords for every WiFi network you connect to, so while it may fix this problem, it may not be the best solution if you connect to a lot of different networks.
Before trying that, you may just want to go for the default answer for all electronics ever, and unplug everything and plug everything back in, turn the phone off and on, power cycle everything that can be power cycled… that fixes a ridiculous amount of problems.
The iPhone 4S doesn’t use any special method to get on WiFi, in fact it works pretty much the same way as the iPad, so if your granddaughter can get her iPad online, but she can’t get your phone online, you should probably consider having it replaced if you still can.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Joseph from St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and listening via WSTX 970 AM asked: “I’m a musician I wanted to know if there are any instruments that can rest on the keybaord and it records the music you play on the keyboard and it can be hooked up to a printer so I can have a copy of the music sheet?”
There are two distinct answers to your question. Yes, and No.
If you are playing from a MIDI keyboard, the Yes part of the answer, there are several options for you. 8Notes is a MIDI converter that has both a free, and a subscription service. The free version will allow you one MIDI conversion per day that can be viewed, and printed, directly from your browser.
If you are playing a traditional keyboard, then your answer is No. With the complexity of music and sound, analyzing it to pick out pitches and melodies would be next to impossible.
There are a handful of programs floating around that claim to convert more complex files, like .WAV and.MP3, but can only do so for single note instruments, and with limited success
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
iolo: Copies of System Mechanic- Fix and speed up your PC Automatically.
TYLT: An assortment of Smartphone charging accessories and bluetooth speakers.
Nite Ize Innovation: Connect Case and Connect Cradle for iPhone – Hard case with belt clip, vehicle mount and desk stand.