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Wi-Fi or Hard Wired connection?

Is WiFi better than a Hard Wired connection? Yes and No 😀 If only it was that simple. It really depends on the device, the Wi-Fi version/speed, and the Ethernet speed. Not that long ago, Ethernet speeds were as low as 10Mbits per second, then we got a speed upgrade to 100Mbits per second and now the standard (though not the fastest) is 1000Mbits per second (also known as Gigabit). You can also get 2.5Gigabit which is becoming the new standard, with 5Gigabit, 10Gigabit and even faster available on high-end equipment. If you use a laptop or tablet (or anything that you move about with) then Wi-Fi is really the only option you have as you really don't want a cable holding you back. A desktop PC, or TV are normally in a single place, so you can run a wire from the router to the device (I know that sometimes it isn't that simple). As you can see in the chart above, the theoretical maximum data rate for Wi-Fi is getting very high (with Wi-Fi 7 saying 46Gbps which is more than 40x th...
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Are we becoming a cashless society??

I was trawling YouTube earlier (as you do lol), and came across and interview with a businessman that I follow and he was asked if we are becoming a cashless society - this made me think. So are we coming a cashless society? This is a very hard question to answer simply, and to be honest it's also a Yes and No answer. In the past, it was simpler in the fact that if your business was a cash based business then you could take your cash and pay it into the bank .... now this is just not possible in a lot of towns. If you take payment by card (debit or credit), you don't need to pay it in at the bank, but you do not get the full amount that you are paid as the card processing company take a small percentage. If you do take cash in your business, and then when you pay it into bank, they will charge you for doing this (they also charge you for taking cash out as well!). In a lot of towns (like Halesworth) you don't have any banks so paying it in is even harder. You do have the op...
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Why does my computer take ages to do an update?

So you just turn on your computer and it tells you that it's preparing to configure windows updates.... how long is it going to take? The answer to that really is how long is a piece of string. It really depends on so many things. Some updates are quite quick to sort, others, like major changes to the operating system can take a while (in some cases if your computer isn't the fastest may even take an hour or longer). I've just had a customer on the phone asking just this question. It turns out that the computer hasn't been used for nearly two months, and it's now going through all the updates that Microsoft has released in that time. I know that in an ideal world, all updates would take seconds and the computer would just do all the major updates when you turn it off, but we don't live in an ideal world, and we don't really use computers like that. I know I only restart one of my computers when it tells me that it needs to restart to do updates other than th...
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CrowdStrike IT Outage explained by a retired Windows Developer

 This is a brilliant little video from a retired Microsoft engineer who worked on Windows, so knows a thing or two. It's less than 15 minutes long, but does explain a lot. And an update with more information.
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Bitlocker ..... not good (but secure!)

What is Bitlocker? It's a drive encryption program that makes the data on your drive 'secure'. Is it good? Yes, and no. Yes because your data is more secure, however unless you have the recovery key, you won't be able to access your data - even taking the drive out of your PC and connecting it to another one won't be able to get your data off. How do I keep my recovery key safe? Ideally, Microsoft would like you to keep the recovery key linked to your Microsoft Account. This is all well and good if you have (or want) a Microsoft account, but not everyone wants one. You can store a file on your PC with the recovery key, but this is NOT recommended as if you ever are unable to boot your computer and access the drive then you are not going to able to get to the file! You can write down the recovery key, but if you do this, store it somewhere safe. You can store the file on a USB pen drive. Again store this safely as if you loose it, you'll not be able to access the...
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Is cloud storage all it's cracked up to be?

Cloud storage .... what is it? First things first, it's not actually up in the sky 😀 It is just stored in one of many datacentres across the world. Whether it's the Microsoft OneDrive, Google-Drive, Dropbox or any other cloud storage you may have heard of or used, it's just data stored on a server in a datacentre somewhere in the world. The concept of it is brilliant in that you can send a file from your work PC, and by logging into the account on your home PC you are able to get the file. However, there is a big downside to this. And it's that you need to be connected (or online) to be able to do this. For documents, storing them on the cloud doesn't take much data, so timewise, it's not too bad. Photographs and pictures on the other hand, do have lots of data, and therefore can be slow to send to receive. I was speaking to a customer, and he moved all his photographs to the cloud and was saying that it took 10 days for them to move from his PC to his cloud st...
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(Not Responding)

If you see (Not Responding) pop up in the title bar of a program you are using, it doesn't mean that the program has crashed, it's the computer saying this it is busy doing something else, so has just paused the program you are currently using. This normally happens during update downloads or installs. Windows 10 and 11, have a habit of just doing the download and then installing it without showing or telling you that this is what it is doing.  You do have the option of pausing updates, but to be honest it's not something I would recommend as the updates can include security tweaks to Windows, and even include Firmware updates for your PC, so should be done (as should be updates to your Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware programs). Updates are normally released by Microsoft on 2nd or 3rd Tuesday of the month, but it can take a few days (or longer) before your PC will download them (unless you have paused updates!), so don't expect your PC to always do the updates as soon as th...
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