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Coming Soon

Some new technologies are coming soon to a computer store near you. These promise to provide increased reliability, speed and ruggedness to PCs. The new technologies are led lighting for displays (and just about anything else) and solid state disk (well they would no longer be disks) drives or bulk storage.

We are beginning to see Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) used in lighting everything. They are rugged because there are no filaments to break. They last an amazingly long time compared to fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. Finally, best of all they use very little energy. Their major drawback has been that they were small and did not produce a lot of light. But today is another day and we see the size of LEDs increasing to those using 3 watts of power and producing over 100 lumens of light.

Most all new automobile tail lights are a group of LEDs. Because they have high reliability, and because they are very easy to spot at a distance, they make safer tail lights than incandescent bulbs. Flashlights are almost all LED lights. The 3 watt LEDs are very bright and combinations of from three to five LEDS can provide a substantial amount of light for most any task. Additionally because of their low power consumption, flash light batteries last a lot longer.

New laptop screens and flat panel TVS now use LEDS to provide the backlighting for the display. The LEDs are replacing the fluorescent technology used in the last generation of flat panel displays and TVs. Fluorescent lighting lasts a long time (several years) and uses low power, but LEDs last longer, are brighter and use even less power. I can remember my first laptops that had to be plugged in to operate their amber display screens. My next laptop had a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD – blue and less blue) with no backlighting. This was very tough to see. Then I used several fluorescent backlit color display laptops. These worked OK and had good color. Today my current laptop has LEDs around the edge for backlighting with excellent colors. All new laptops will use this technology as will all new Televisions. Soon we will be using LED lighting in the home in place of all incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. LED lighting is the next wave in energy saving technology.

Within the next five years all hard disks will be replaced by solid state storage. These drives exist today and are used in high end laptop PCs like the Dell Adamo. Solid state storage can be purchased as 64GB, 128GB and 256GB hard disk drive replacements. The benefit here is no moving parts. There is no 7200 RPM rotating disk, with a magnetic read/write head flying across it on a cushion of a few molecules of air. If your disk gets the smallest dust contamination or humidity contamination it is toast along with all the data on it.

Solid state storage use Non-Volatile Random Access Memory technology. NVRAM is written into with a higher voltage signal. This sets the memory so that even when power is removed, the content is retained (hence Non-Volatile). NVRAM can be read from an infinite number of times but has a life dependent upon the number of times data is written to it. Essentially, Solid State Memory wears out with use. The larger the memory and a usage distribution technology that spreads the usage over the entire memory make for a longer life. Also writing to Solid State Storage is slower than reading from solid state storage. Reading is lightning fast as compared to a mechanical disk drive.

Today 256 GB solid state storage modules cost from $500 to $700, and Terabyte modules run in the thousands of dollars. However, these prices should decline rapidly so that within 5 years the hard disk drive will go the way of the 8 track and cassette magnetic tapes (they were rapidly replaced by CDs and flash media). Then most all PCs will use solid state storage as their main storage media. As a nerd I can hardly wait until these technologies come to a PC store near me.

Pete Moulton is the “older than dirt on a 1981 PC” nerd at Dial-A-Nerd Computer Services and The Moulton Company. He has worked with PCs since 1981 and networks since 1985. Pete has authored the Prentice-Hall books: “A+ Certification and PC Repair Guide”, “The Telecommunications Survival Guide”, and “SOHO Networking”. Contact Dial-A-Nerd services and The Moulton Company at 410 531-5890 or visit the web sites www.DialANerd.com or www.MoultonCo.com. © P. D. Moulton.

When you live in Columbia Howard County Maryland and hire Dial A Nerd, a local Columbia Maryland small business, this brings brings their 25 yrs home and office onsite computer repair, maintenance, support, troubleshooting, fixing, and upgrading experience; constant virus and spyware removal experience; their data recovery saving your data experience and tools; and their website development experience working on desktop, laptop, Windows XP and Windows Vista computers to solving your computer repair or Windows repair, or wired or wireless network repair problem. Dial A Nerd provides immediate, hourly onsite, or repair shop fixed price services backed by 25 yrs of computer support, troubleshooting, fixing, upgrading, and website design and development experience.
Link to Information Week: "Business Technology: Coming Soon: Transformation Upheavals"

P. D. Moulton and Dial A Nerd, a local Columbia, Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland(MD) PC repair, computer repair, laptop computer repair, Wi-Fi network and wired LAN network configuration & repair, Windows XP repair, Windows Vista repair, Windows 7 repair, network server computer support, and virus & spyware removal. Dial-A-Nerd repairs PC (s), computers, networks, removes viruses & spyware and upgrades slow computers 24 hours a day 7 days a week. DialANerd provides immediate remote access as well as fixed price computer repair, network repair, virus & spyware removal services at its local Columbia, Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland(MD) repair shop. Repair completion is typically 24-hours to 48-hours. Dial A Nerd recovers hard disk data and saves your data. Each hard disk is tested for errors for free. Dial A Nerd makes a fixed disk image, recovers and saves your data for about a 90% of the desktop computer, laptop computer, and netbook PC (s) serviced. Dial A Nerd, a local Columbia, Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland(MD) repair business provides fast PC repair, computer repair, desktop computer repair, laptop computer repair, Wi-Fi network and wired LAN network configuration & repair, Windows XP repair, Windows Vista repair, Windows 7 repair, network server support, and virus & spyware removal services with a warranty. Dial A Nerd works on many PCs including Sony computers, Gateway computers, Hewlett Packard computers, Compaq computers, Toshiba computers, Emachines computers, Clone PCs, and Dell computers in the local Columbia, Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland(MD). The Dial A Nerd mission is delivering the best quality, affordable cost effective PC repair, computer repair, laptop computer repair, desktop computer repair, Wi-Fi network and wired LAN network configuration & repair, Windows XP repair, Windows Vista repair, Windows 7 repair, network server support, virus & spyware removal, home PC repair, printer configuration, PC - desktop computer - laptop computer - netbook computer performance optimization & speed up service. Homes and small businesses with limited IT service and IT support budgets in the local Columbia, Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland(MD) hire Dial A Nerd.


© 2000-2013 P. D. Moulton
DialANerd
7146 Rivers Edge Road Columbia, MD 21044 US
Phone: 410-531-5890 Website: dialanerd.com