How to Love and Care for Your Laptop Battery

One of the more common questions I hear is whether it is okay to leave your laptop plugged in all the time. Battery technology has changed over the years, resulting in some conflicting advice coming from friends and family around how to best charge that laptop, smartphone or tablet.

Most current portable devices have switched over to Lithium-ion batteries for power from older nickel-based battery technologies. One of the outdated tips given around the older NiCad batteries was to always fully discharge and recharge the batteries whenever possible. Partial charges, along with age and overcharging issues, meant shorter lives for NiCad batteries. The newer Lithium-ion battery technology has addressed many of these issues, so the advice around them has changed.

Continue reading “How to Love and Care for Your Laptop Battery”

10 Tips for Improving Your PC’s Performance

WTAM 1100 – Geek Squad Tech Tips for May 17th, 2011

It’s almost a truism that as soon as you get a new computer, it will start a process of slowly losing performance over the following months. Fortunately, there are ways to combat this, and help bring your computer back into shape.

I shared 10 tips around improving your PC’s performance on today’s WTAM 1100’s Wills & Snyder radio show.

Connecting Your Laptop to Your HDTV

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A37IJfZ9RQc

One of the more common questions we see at Twelpforce are laptop owners wondering how they can connect their computers to their HDTVs. I created this overview of how to determine which connections you have available to you, along with what cables you’ll need to get your computer display onto that big screen television in the living room.

Working the Graveyard Shift 2010

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaP6yg2Kb-4

Work continues on the 2010 Halloween display at the Meister House. We decided to move the graveyard from the side to the front of the house. Once setup is complete, we’ll use a small FM transmitter to allow people driving by to listen in on the show, which will be setup to run daily between 7 to 9pm.

The lightshow is run using a D-Light 16 channel controller hooked up to a small home-built PC running AuroraShow.