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Tech News & Commentary
Scott in Jackson, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk 97.3 FM and is calling via the App asked: “I have an Android Phone and sometimes the phone will fill up with apps so I start delete apps. But as soon as I delete them, it keeps getting fuller and fuller. What’s going on? Eventually I just reset my phone and start over.”
Scott, Are you sure it’s actually filling up with apps and not something else?
Android will let you see what’s actually using up your storage space under Settings and Storage. It may actually be apps, just like you think, but you may be filling your phone with pictures, songs, or other media.
If it is your apps, they may just be storing data that you don’t know they’re keeping. Developers are technically supposed to keep their storage use in check, and cache files more than store them whenever possible. Meaning that if something will only be used for a short time, or if it will only be used to increase efficiency, it should be deleted when it’s not needed or when storage space is running short.
The problem is that the “don’t hog resources” rule, is mainly a “best practice” more than an actual enforced law, so unless the app is using an extreme amount of storage space, Google tends to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Restoring the phone would take care of that problem, but it’s a little bit like firebombing a village to make room for a fire hydrant, it gets the job done, but the side effects of restoring and having to get all your things back the way you like them is more than a little annoying.
You could go through you list of apps and check the ones you suspect of using too much storage space, Android will let you see the size of their caches, you may be able to get rid of the problem by just uninstalling and reinstalling those apps, or clearing their caches, rather than to have to deal with doing a full clean restore of the phone.
It would be very unusual if apps were taking up most of the memory on your phone, unless your phone happened to have very little memory indeed. We’ve seen a lot of smartphones run out of storage, but 999 times out of 1000, it’s caused by pictures, videos, or music.
For more information tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Victor in Smyrna, Tennessee listening on SuperTalk WTN 99.7 FM asked: “What kind of product would you recommend for home surround sound systems in the $300-500 price range? I am looking to upgrade mine and just wanted to know what you would recommend.”
Victor, Prices for home surround sound systems will vary depending on where you choose to purchase them; but there are plenty of options within your price range that you may want to look into.
Samsung offers several that are both high-quality and quite affordable for people who are not looking to break the bank in order to enhance sound. For example, you can purchase the Samsung 6 Series 1000W Smart Blu-Ray Home Theater System for $450. This system is probably one of the best within your price range and supports plenty of playback formats in addition to Blu-ray.
However, in case you’re looking for something that requires a bit less installation, you may want to look into the Bose Solo 15 TV Sound System which is sold for about $450. In terms of sound quality, it just seems you can never go wrong with Bose as they are pretty cutting-edge. This system works with one single speaker but is said to resonate unbelievably lucid sound-quality.
If you are looking to spend a little less, still get the same bang for your buck, and impress friends and family– there is a more affordable option with the Panasonic 1000W 5.1 Home Theater System which comes in at a cool $350. This one is comparable to the Samsung we previously mentioned and comes with two large, very impressive-looking speakers that could make your home theater look quite spiffy.
When searching for your surround sound system, you may want to stick with an electronics store so you can actually hear the differences and a store that offers a price guarantee as well as warranty on their products, so you can rest assured in the event anything goes wrong.
If the radio used to be in another car, you may not be able to change the VIN number it needs to be unlocked.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Peggy Caruso, Author & Executive Coach – Revolutionize Your Child’s Life
Social media etiquette, do’s & don’ts for teens
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1939, the United States became the third country, after Germany and Great Britain, to begin regular television broadcasts. President Roosevelt himself started the broadcast during the World Exhibition in New York. As television had become a reality, the Big German Radio Show which had started in 1924 to make radio reception and the necessary machinery popular, was renamed in 1939 and became “The Big German Radio and Television Exhibition”, making it the first television show in the world and the show that would later become the Internationale FunkAusstellung. Today IFA is still the number one show.
Michael in St. Joseph, Michigan listens on News Talk Sports WSJM 94.9 FM asked: “I have an Asus netbook, X205T. Got it on Black Friday, then suddenly the screen stopped working. The unit powers up, but nothing comes up on the screen. Not sure if it’s a known issue with netbooks and maybe you can offer in idea how to resolve it.”
Michael, Netbooks are less powerful and therefore less expensive laptops, but they shouldn’t be any more prone to screen failures than other laptops.
If you bought it in November, it has to still be under some sort of warranty. Call either ASUS or the store you bought it from and tell them that the screen died.
To be honest, if it can’t be replaced under warranty, it’s probably a total loss… an entire ASUS can be bought for under $190, back when you bought it Staples had it on sale for $99, replacing the screen itself won’t be much cheaper than that.
Again though, there’s no way this computer won’t be under some kind of warranty and ASUS is typically a reliable brand, you shouldn’t have much trouble getting it fixed or replaced, and if it boots up, the drive and your information are probably safe too, so you shouldn’t lose anything but some time.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Sharon in Kansas City, Missouri listens to the podcast asked: “I’m thinking of changing my hard drive to an SSD. A friend of mine told me that you cannot write to an SSD, you can only read and that if you try to write more than three times, it would quit working. I wanted to know if that was true and if it would be a good idea to switch to a solid state drive.”
Sharon, Your friend is unbelievably wrong… like “summer is the coldest season” levels of wrong.
SSDs are more taxed by writing than by reading, and they have a finite number of write cycles, which really doesn’t change much, considering that HDD don’t last forever either.
Now, modern drives are rated differently, but think 20TB as a reasonable official limit… TechReport.com tested 5 drives rated at around 20TB of data, they calculated that the average endurance between the drives should make it possible to write 20 to 40 GB of data a day for the entire life of the warranty of each of the drives.
After that they ran an endurance test, none of the drives failed until they were between 600 TB and 1Petabyte of data written, and the sturdiest only died after going over 2PB of data written.
2PB is roughly the equivalent of downloading all of Wikipedia 9,524 times… that’s a little more than 3 writes.
writes would mean that you can’t even install the operating system. Even overwriting the whole drive 3 times wouldn’t make much sense, it’s not a lot of data. SSD drives are in a lot of consumer electronics devices and pretty much every consumer electronic device this day either stores data periodically or gets updated sometimes… writing is a must.
Now that we’ve corrected your friend, yes, switching to an SSD is probably a very good idea, an older computer with a new SSD feels like a new computer, you will absolutely notice the difference, it will be something like having replaced the hard drive and having gotten new RAM at once.
For what it’s worth, traditional rotating magnetic hard drives also have limits to how much they can be used. While the number of read/write cycles on a hard drive does exceed an SSD, even though an SSD is plenty long as we just explained, hard drives will eventually wear out also. Everything made by man eventually wears out and fails.
But it takes long enough to wear out an SSD that we don’t even think twice about recommending them. Many of us here have computers using SSDs now, and we endorse them heartily. You will love yours!
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Victor in Buffalo, Missouri listens via TuneIn asked: “Hello Dave, I’m soon going to have a GoPro camera, thats suppose to be plus 3, so I know they don’t come with micro SD card? Help? I looked online for something. They have HD, Ultra HD, faster, better gooder. What do I actually need for a Go Pro that can record in 4k?”
Victor, There is only one GoPro camera at the moment that will record 4K video, the $399 Hero3+ Black Edition, the Hero3+ Silver won’t work, it has to be the Black Edition.
If you buy that camera you will have to buy the SD card, but other than that you don’t need anything else. The camera will come with it’s own case and whatever else you decide to get will hinge more on your intended use than anything else.
You can get an external screen, or an external battery pack, or one of the many mounts that they offer, but all of it is optional and you don’t need any of it to use the camera.
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 Participating Listeners
TYLT: Car Charger RIBBN Cables – These cables rapidly charge 2 Smartphones or 2 Tablets simultaneously.
Jabra: SoleMate Portable Bluetooth speaker for your laptop, tablet, smartphone or music player
Monster Products: DNA Pro 2.0 High powered Over-ear headphones
Hydreon Corp: FakeTV Burglar Deterrent – Simulates the light output of a TV to deter burglars from your home.
Verykool: S5015 Spark II Smartphone – Unlocked GSM phone with Android OS and front facing flash – perfect for selfies!
Kensington: SD4000 Universal 4K Docking Station for laptop computers
Interesting point from Mark in Arizona!