Should You Keep Your Laptop Constantly Plugged In ?

You may have had people tutting and shaking their heads over the fact you keep your laptop plugged in for long periods of time. They may quote an old piece of computer wisdom that states you should not keep a laptop plugged in to the mains constantly for long periods of time, else you run the risk of ruining the battery. The usual rule of thumb is to remove the battery and run it purely off of the mains. Now that we’re in a world of laptops with built-in batteries, however, does this advice still hold up?

Does It Overcharge: the Battery?

You may hear advice that says once the battery hits 100%, keeping it plugged in may end up overfilling the battery and doing damage. If you’ve heard this advice, don’t worry; this doesn’t actually happen!

Perhaps in earlier models this would have been the case, but these days laptops are a little smarter. In general, when a laptop detects a 100% charge in the battery, it will stop charging it and instead redirect the power to your laptop. This means your battery will never be overstuffed.

Will the Battery Still Degrade?

Unfortunately, batteries have a habit of degrading whether or not you keep them at full charge. In fact, batteries will degrade even when they’re not being used in storage! As such, if you think you can keep your battery going forever by keeping it plugged into the mains, you may be disappointed to see its performance still drop regardless.

Your laptop battery will always wear down over time. The more charge cycles you put the battery through, the more it will wear down. Different batteries have different ratings, but you can often expect about 500 full charge cycles.

That doesn’t mean you should avoid discharging the battery. Storing the battery at a high charge level is bad for it. On the other hand, letting the battery run down to completely empty every single time you use it is also bad.

Avoid Heat, if You Can

Here’s one clear thing: Heat is bad. So, if your laptop has a removable battery, you may want to remove the battery from the laptop if you plan on leaving it plugged in for a long time. This will ensure the battery isn’t exposed to all that unnecessary heat.

This is most important when the laptop runs very hot—like a powerful gaming laptop running demanding PC games, for example. If your laptop runs fairly cool, you won’t see as much benefit from this.

Of course, many modern laptops don’t have removable batteries anymore, so this tip won’t apply in those cases.

Calibrate the Battery

Putting your laptop through an occasional full charge cycle can help calibrate the battery on many laptops. This ensures the laptop knows exactly how much charge it has left and can show you an accurate estimate. In other words, if your battery isn’t calibrated properly, Windows may think you have 20% battery left when it’s really 0%, and your laptop will shut down without giving you much warning.

By allowing the laptop’s battery to (almost) fully discharge and then recharge, the battery circuitry can learn how much power it has left. This isn’t necessary on all devices. In fact, Apple explicitly says it’s no longer necessary for modern MacBooks with built-in batteries.

This calibration process won’t improve the battery’s lifespan or make it hold more energy—it will only ensure the computer is giving you an accurate estimation. But this is one reason you wouldn’t to leave your laptop plugged in all the time. When you unplug it and use it on battery power, it might show you incorrect battery life estimates and die before you expect it to.

Conclusion

Your laptop’s battery isn’t going to last forever, and it will gradually have less capacity over time no matter what you do. All you can do is hope your laptop’s battery lasts until you can replace your laptop with a new one.

Of course, even if the capacity of your laptop’s battery declines, you’ll still be able to keep using it while plugged into a power outlet anyway.

Read More

How To Know if Someone Blocked You on Whatsapp

Perhaps you’ve tried messaging one of you contacts on Whatsapp and notice that they aren’t responding anymore.  Could you have gotten blocked by that person?

Some indicators let you know someone has blocked you through the WhatsApp application.  Let’s get into what those indicators are.

We've seen in a previous post How to know if someone blocked you on viber, here is how to know if you're blocked on Whatsapp.

How To Tell if Someone Blocked You on Whatsapp

CONTACT INFORMATION IS MISSING

You may notice that you no longer see some contacts last seen or online status in the chat area.  That’s a pretty good sign that the person has blocked you.  The person may have also changed the privacy settings for his or her WhatsApp account so, it’s now hidden from you as well.

Maybe you’ve configured your privacy settings not to show the last time you’ve been online or when you were last seen in WhatsApp.  When you make strict privacy changes, you’ll not be able to see your contacts last seen information also.

If you’ve checked your privacy settings and they are viewable by others and the last time you spoke to said contact theirs were visible, I’d say you’ve now become blocked.

NO PROFILE UPDATES

If suddenly, you’ve noticed that a contact’s profile picture isn’t getting updated anymore it’s a possibility that person has blocked you.  If you continue not seeing updates to a contacts profile chances are that they’ve blocked you.

CHECK MARKS AND MEANINGS

Have you been sending a person messages and only notice one check mark beside it?  That means your message has gotten sent but not received and read by the recipient.  Here’s what all check mark icons tell you.

• One grayed check mark means your message has gone through the sending process
• Two grayed check marks mean your message was sent and delivered to your contact.
• Two blue check marks mean that the message has been sent, received and viewed.

If you’re noticing only one gray check mark next to messages you’ve sent then, it’s a good chance you are on the block list of that individual.

TRY TO CALL

Trying to place a call through the WhatsApp application is another great thing about it.  Though if you’ve been trying to call one of your friends or contacts through WhatsApp and it’s just not happening, you may have gotten blocked.

Conclusion

There are some strong implications that a WhatsApp user has blocked you when all four of the above indicators for being block have gotten met.  Those four combined would lead us to believe a block has gotten put in place.

Only ever seen one check mark when you send a message?  You’ve not seen any profile updates for a user in a while and you know they are active.  The person you’re trying to reach suddenly has no contact information appearing what so ever.  Moreover, finally, you try calling your WhatsApp buddy and the call dosen’t go through.  Don’t jump to conclusions though as these are only a glimpse at the possibility that you’ve gotten blocked.

Maybe your contact has changed the privacy settings or taken a WhatsApp hiatus.  If you keep trying to reach a person through WhatsApp to no avail then, you might as well quit while you’re ahead.  Sorry, they just don’t want to talk you so, instead of telling you that they blocked you.  No worries though we’re sure you’ve got plenty more friends to share your stories and mishaps about life, so, just let it go.

Also Check: How To Know if Someone Blocked You On Facebook

                     How To Know if Someone Blocked You on Instagram

                     How To Know If Someone Blocked You On Viber

Read More

What Is The Differences Between Image File Formats

After you’ve captured great photos of properties, lawns, interiors, and more, you are most likely going to save those images so you can upload them to your website or print them for your portfolio. Do you save them in TIFF, JPEG, PNG, DNG or some other file format?

Lossy vs. Lossless

Before discussing  the image file types that photographers commonly use, it is important to know the concept of lossy and lossless file compression. A lossy algorithm removes some information in the digital file to reduce the file size. However, the loss of information lowers the overall quality of the image. Lossy files can be saved in your computer at various quality levels.

On the other hand, a lossless algorithm retains all the information in the image. But that also means lossless files takes a lot of space in your storage device.

Raster vs. Vector

When you think “image format,” you’re probably thinking of a raster. It has nothing to do with Bob Marley – it just means that the file is essentially a grid of colored pixels that make a picture. JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and most other photo files are rasters. The only information they have is what color the pixels are, so enlarging or stretching them will generally just result in a more pixelated image.

 

Vectors, though, are designed to be scaled forever. SWF, EPS, and PDF files store images not as pixels, but as math equations that can be rendered as points and lines. The image can get as big or as small as you need without taking a quality hit, but these extensions are not as common around the Web since vectors are not as readily compatible as raster images.

Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) – Lossy Raster

The JPEG file is named after the group that created it and dominates the world of web images due to its near-universal compatibility and small size. Your eye probably couldn’t tell a lightly-compressed JPEG from a higher-quality image without a few seconds of scrutiny, and it loads fast, so it’s good enough for most of the Web.

JPEG-2000 is the updated version that has some improvements over the original, but it’s never really taken off, so you’re unlikely to see this format many places.

Great for: putting photos on the Web, saving and sending small image sizes, general use, printing out pictures.

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) – Lossless Raster

This format has become the go-to for high-quality web graphics, especially if you need a transparent background. PNG was originally designed as a GIF alternative, but it supports way more colors and is more flexible about transparency settings. The file size is generally bigger than either GIF or JPEG, but PNG preserves quality better and is more flexible,

You may also run across PNG-8 and PNG-24 in some programs. These will still export as normal PNGs, but PNG-8 only supports 256 colors and doesn’t allow partial transparency, netting you a smaller file size than the more full-featured PNG-24.

Great for: web graphics, high-quality photos where size isn’t an issue, transparency.

Graphical Interchange Format (GIF) – Lossless Raster

The predecessor to PNG, the GIF format is now most famous for enabling the short video loops that you can’t stop watching on social media. The debate over whether to pronounce it as “gif” or “jif” is fairly heated, but if you want to make both sides angry, try pronouncing it as “jeff.”

GIFs only support 256 colors, which makes them a poor choice for high-quality photos, but their compression is excellent, so it can downsize simple images without a huge quality hit. Pixels can also be made transparent, but must be either on or off, not in-between.

Great for: simple graphics, animations, icons.

Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) – Lossless Raster

You may not have run into a TIFF personally, but if you’re into photography or work much with print media, you may recognize them as the large, but high-quality, format often favored by publishers.  Also, no one argues about the pronunciation.

Great for: printing high-quality photos, scanning high-quality images, anything where size isn’t an issue.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) – Vector

If you’ve ever tried to save an image off the Internet and instead gotten the “save as a webpage” option, you may have seen an SVG. These are possibly the most widely-supported vector graphics out there, and their ability to maintain good quality and scalability at low file sizes makes them popular for logos, site graphics, and anywhere else that a vector would come in handy.

 

Great for: business graphics, scalable graphics, logos.

New Image File Formats

You may not have seen these formats in the wild yet, but they offer some advantages over today’s standards.

High Efficiency Image Format

HEIF is essentially JPEG but with higher quality and smaller file sizes. This is now the default picture format on iOS 11 and later.

WebP

WebP is Google’s format, and it does pretty much everything: better compression than JPEG, better animations than GIF, and transparency on par with PNG. It’s supported by several browsers and is currently being used by YouTube, Facebook, and a few other sites if you visit them using a supported browser.

Why So Many Formats?

It’s unlikely that there will ever be one format to rule them all, since different fields have different image needs. General internet browsers don’t really need to think beyond JPEG and PNG (and maybe WebP and HEIC in the future), but for business and publishing applications, having options like TIFF and SVG makes life easier.

And, if you haven’t already, you should think about choosing a side in the GIF debate before the format disappears. Be part of history.

Read More