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Should You Partition Your Hard Drive? The Pros and Cons. How to Disinfect Your Phone and Electronics From Viruses and Germs. (Image: Getty) COVID-19 likely made you very aware of how many times a day you touch your face, but how about how many times a day you touch your phone and other devices? Before we knew that COVID is an airborne virus, we were one step away from dunking everything into a vat of bleach. Even though we're less fanatical about disinfecting our electronic devices, they still harbor plenty of germs and should be cleaned regularly. So grab some microfiber cloths, cotton swabs, distilled water, isopropyl alcohol, and dish soap and read our guide to getting your gadgets gleaming—after you unplug or turn them off, of course. How to Clean a Phone or Tablet Image: Getty Phones and tablets have an oleophobic (fingerprint-resistant) coating that could come off, so manufacturers generally recommend wiping them down with distilled water and a barely textured microfiber cloth and then using cotton swabs to clean around crevices, like the edges of the screen and buttons.

How to Clean Headphones and Earphones. How to Choose the Right Laptop Processor in 2021. At the heart of every laptop is a central processing unit (CPU) that is responsible for nearly everything that goes on inside. The CPUs (also commonly called "processors") you see in laptops are made by AMD, Apple, Intel, and Qualcomm. The options may seem endless, and their names, byzantine. But choosing one is easier than you think, once you know a few CPU ground rules. This guide will help you decrypt the technical jargon that haunts every laptop specification sheet—from core count to gigahertz, from ARM to x86, and from TDP to cache amounts—to help you pick the one that best suits you. With very few exceptions, a laptop processor chip can’t be changed out or upgraded later, so it’s essential to make the right choice from the start. First Up: Some Basic CPU Concepts The CPU is responsible for the primary logic operations in the computer.

Processor Architecture: The Silicon Underpinnings Every processor is based on an underlying design called an instruction-set architecture. How to Fix High CPU Usage in Windows. If your computer fans frequently hit top speeds, it’s a sign that your CPU usage is reaching 100%. Simultaneously, your computer may slow down. That’s annoying, especially if you’re not actually doing anything. The CPU (central processing unit), also known as the processor, is your computer’s brain. Like your own noggin, it can become overwhelmed if bombarded with too many processes, or if a single task consumes undue attention. Just as you may find work difficult when overwhelmed, your processor can slow to a crawl if too much is asked of it at once.

Normally, you can avoid this situation by staying away from demanding apps. However, CPU usage can sometimes go out of control because of a bug in a process, such as the infamous WmiPrvSE.exe. The WMI Provider Host process, also known as Windows Management Instrumentation or WmiPrvSE.exe, is part of Windows and assists organizations in monitoring and troubleshooting a large number of systems on a network. It Could Be an Annoying Antivirus. Best of The Big Three: Dropbox vs Google Drive vs Onedrive. 13 Windows Diagnostics Tools to Check Your PC's Health. No matter who you are, whether newbie or veteran, your Windows system will eventually run into problems that aren’t so easy to diagnose. (It happens on other operating systems too.) When that happens, what do you do? You could hire somebody to troubleshoot the problem for you, but that should be a last resort. There’s no need to pay someone when you can easily figure out the problem on your own using tools you can download for free.

We recommend giving these tools a try first. Hardware problems can be a huge pain in the neck on Windows. But sometimes you just want to know which hardware you’re using. CPU-Z is a nifty little program that scans your system for its internal hardware configuration. But it’s also good for when you forget which components you have installed, especially if you built your own PC, as well as for verifying the components when buying a used PC from someone you may not trust. 2. 3.

Windows Network Diagnostic Tools 4. 5. Angry IP Scanner is a nice tool to have. 6. 7. The 6 Best Websites to Learn How to Hack Like a Pro. Want to learn how to hack? Hacking isn’t a single subject that anyone can pick up overnight. If you want to hack like a pro, you won’t be able to read just one article and visit a few hacking websites. But if you spend a lot of time studying and practicing your craft, you can learn to hack. There are two forms of hacking: “white hat” and “black hat“. White hat hackers call themselves ethical hackers, in that they find vulnerabilities in an effort to make systems and applications more secure. However, there’s a whole other community of hackers—black hat hackers—who find vulnerabilities only to exploit them as much as possible. Now that you know what sort of community you may be entering, let’s get on with the list of top sites where you can learn to hack. 1. At Hacking Tutorial, you’ll find a list of resources that’ll teach you some in-depth tricks to hacking various apps, operating systems, and devices.

Some examples of the content you’ll find here include: 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 5 Things You Should Consider When Buying An SSD. Advertisement Not long ago we covered some considerations you should make when buying a new hard drive, but the world of home computing is moving towards solid state drives for storage. Should you buy one? 5 Things You Need to Consider Before Buying a Hard Drive 5 Things You Need to Consider Before Buying a Hard Drive Buying a hard drive? It's not that difficult if you know a few basic tips. We explored the pros and cons of SSDs a few years ago. That being said, there are a few points to consider before diving right in. Pricing SSD prices have plummeted over the past few years. Crucial BX100 500GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive - CT500BX100SSD1 Crucial BX100 500GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive - CT500BX100SSD1 Sequential reads/writes up to 535 / 450 MB/s on all file types Buy Now At Amazon $218.00 Relatively speaking, however, SSDs are still more expensive than traditional spinning hard drives, and this difference is not negligible.

Physical Specifications Performance. How to Create a Bootable Multiboot USB for Windows and Linux. Advertisement Installing from a USB flash drive has become fashionable. I haven’t used a disc for any installation for a long time now. I didn’t even buy an optical drive for the last PC I built, now three years previous. That’s not to say discs are dead, but USBs are versatile, easily transported, and easily shared, as well as now coming with massive storage. Installing a new operating system from USB is a quick, usually painless operation. I’ve got five tools for you to run your eyes over, so let’s press on. Note: Some of these tools require Microsoft .NET Framework, which you can download here. Supports: Linux (Pre-loaded), Windows (Add manually). YUMI is an extremely well known multiboot USB tool. YUMI has integrated download functions for a number of Linux distros.

Supports: Linux (Free), Windows (Pro only). SARDU is another well known, well used multiboot USB tool. The SARDU interface is more accessible than YUMI’s single drop-down menu. XBOOT is a slightly older multiboot tool. 4. HQ User-to-User FAQ.