Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss breaking news and Facebook, a Windows 10 alert regarding a critical vulnerability, and more.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

Joe in Longview, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: “Can you explain the difference between an SSD and a regular hard drive? There’s a big difference in price and was wondering if it was really worth the extra money to go ahead and shell out for the SSD.”

Joe, an SSD or solid-state drive is a type of storage that has no moving parts. It stores memory more similarly to how a USB flash drive that you’d plug into your computer does.

Since SSDs don’t have moving parts they can be more shock resistant if mounted properly, but the real advantage of a solid-state drive is the speed.

SSD can read data much, much faster than a traditional hard disk drive, and that really shows.

We would say that an SSD is not just worth the extra money, but that it’s also one of the best upgrades you can make to an older computer if you want to immediately notice a huge change in performance.

Upgrading to an SSD feels a little bit like getting more RAM, everything feels much more responsive.

SSDs do have a limited number of write cycles, but that number is so high that you can expect them to last a very long time, most people shouldn’t have an issue with that.

If you want to save some money, you can also build hybrid systems with a smaller SSD storing the operating system, programs, or anything you want to help load very quickly, and a cheaper HDD storing files and everything that you either seldom use or that isn’t very affected by reading speeds.

Gil in Tupelo, Mississippi and asked: “Can you convert an old iPhone into a motion camera to use in your house. If so, how?”

Gil, it depends on how old the iPhone is, but generally speaking: yes you, can.

You’ll have to find and download an app that is compatible with your iPhone, this is where the age of the phone comes in.

Once you have it, all you have to do is get the phone plugged in and on WiFi and run the app.

Keep in mind that the motion detection will be software-based and it won’t be great. It may fire a lot or not enough, but in general it won’t be as reliable as hardware-based motion detection.

Finding the right app will take some trial and error, but as a starting point, have a look at Presence and Motion Detector Cam. You may have to try a few more before you find the right app, but at least those should get you started.

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