Refresh Computers Tech Talk
Help and advice are given on a range of technical issues from computers to everything internet-related.
Refresh Computers Tech Talk
EVs And The New Cost Of Driving
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Gas prices rise, Florida heat hits triple digits, and somehow your car and your laptop are dealing with the same enemy: heat and cost. We’re Greg Rhodes and Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore, and we walk through what’s changing right now in the electric vehicle market and what it means for everyday drivers who just want a reliable commute and fewer surprise expenses.
We talk EV tax credits in plain language, including what changed with the federal incentive for new EVs and why the used EV tax credit can still be a real deal if you qualify. Adam shares how EV ownership can translate into measurable fuel savings, why leasing can be a smart “test drive” for the lifestyle, and how modern EVs behave like computers on wheels with over-the-air updates that can improve capability long after you buy.
Then we switch gears to a practical summer tech checkup for Central Florida: dust-packed fans, laptops shutting down from thermal events, and swollen “spicy pillow” batteries that can become a safety issue. We cover common heat mistakes like leaving phones, power banks, and battery tire inflators in a parked car, plus better habits like optimized charging and checking battery health. To close, Adam gives a simple Windows tip that helps your PC clean up after itself: enabling Storage Sense to clear temp files, manage the Recycle Bin, and keep storage from quietly disappearing (with a quick Mac cleanup path too).
Subscribe for more real-world tech advice, share this with a friend who keeps gadgets in the glove box, and leave a review so more listeners can find Tech Talk.
Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RefreshComputers/
Track us on X at https://x.com/RefreshStores
Welcome And How To Reach Us
SPEAKER_00Hey there and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580 Orlando's News and Talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with technician Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline to 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, go and use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out the website over at Refresh Computers.net or stop in at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. And now for Adam Littlefield.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Greg, and thank you, everybody, for tuning into this uh Sunday edition of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. My name is Adam Littlefield. I'm one of the technicians over at Refresh Computers. I'm one of the uh guys that work on your computers whenever you bring them in. So if you ever come by and you want to talk to me, always ask one of our guys if I'm there. We can have a little chat. So I would also recommend that if you have any tech-related questions, definitely, definitely give us a call to our free tech support hotline. That number is 407-478-8200. We're not open today, but you know, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., give us a call at that tech support hotline and any of our technicians will be able to help you out with any problems that you might have going on, give you some tips of what you can try and try to do some diagnostics over the phone if we can. But we also do recommend sometimes to bring your machine in. So if you have to, we do provide some free diagnostics as well, right there in the store while you wait. So definitely something to think about, especially with you know how things have been going on with this summer. It's been hot out. So getting into our show today, I want to talk a lot, a lot of tech, you know. We're
Why EVs Are Turning Mainstream
SPEAKER_01gonna be talking today about the uh the EV market and how that's uh kind of changed things up a little bit. And you know, it's something that, you know, if you've been listening to this show, you know, I'm kind of involved with. I'm I'm very, very charismatic about EVs. So I do, I am excited to get into that. We're also gonna be kind of doing a uh a summer checkup today in our second segment for all of your tech. So we'll be going over some tips there and just what you can do to get your machines as best as they can. We're also gonna be talking about this dang Florida heat. It gets so hot here. It gets so hot here, and you know, it it does affect electronics more than any of us, I think, really consider. So we'll be talking about that in one of our segments, and we'll finish off today with uh a good Windows tip on teaching Windows how to be its own garbage man. So that'll be an interesting one. I know uh a lot of us have memories of going through defragging our computers, but there's a lot of other things now that you can go through to do to get Windows just running as best as it can. So this first segment today talking about electric cars, EVs, you know, they are really flipping the the market all of a sudden for you know cars in general. They're actually kind of becoming the the smart move. We saw the beginning, I believe, of sorry, we saw the beginning this year with uh new EV sales. You know, they were they did fall a little bit, and I do think it's because there was that federal tax credit that got dropped from EVs. You know, there was a $7,500 tax credit you could claim that was provided, I believe, towards the cost of the car if it was under a certain amount. You would you could redeem it at the end of the year to go into your refund, or you could have it go directly to the car, the salesperson. And I mean, that's what I did for mine. When I bought mine used, I was able to get a $4,000 used EV tax credit. So on top of that, and then my down payment, you know, I was almost $10,000 paid right there. That's a big help. It is, it's very helpful. And, you know, there has been this large push I've seen towards EVs in the past couple of years. We've had a lot of auto manufacturers really try to get into the realm of it. You know, we've seen Chevy come out with their Chevy Blazer EVs, we've seen the uh Ford Mustang Mach E's all over the place, and of course, you know, Teslas. All of the cars from Tesla, you know, used are used and new EVs out on the roads right now.
SPEAKER_00And we're now seeing a big influx of other people coming into the market now. We're starting to see Rivian really kind of take off with their new R2. You've seen the Scout Motors talked about a lot. Who also got this year the slate that came out, the uh affordable EV that we'll talk a little bit about as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, that was one I was actually excited to see come out. It was an interesting idea for EVs, and I think it's kind of what you know we should consider now with EVs in general, too. So, you know, just kind of getting into it again. That that EV tax credit was dropped last year, September 30th, and nothing really replaced it. So without it, you know, a new EV right now is running, you know, a little more money, you know, several thousand dollars more up front than maybe an equivalent gas car. But, you know, looking back on what we've been having going on, say with the uh gas market, for example, you know, we are seeing pipe prices all over the place for fuel. And I know my girlfriend is lucky that she has a car that runs on E85. So she's been getting gas, I think, at $3 a gallon. You know, but I've seen it almost as high as $4 over $4, I've seen. With EVs myself, I've been sitting comfortably at the fact that my home electricity price has not gone up. And me personally, I'm even able to see a reflection of what I've saved over the year in in my app in the Tesla app, compared to what my gas prices would be.
SPEAKER_00That is impressive that you're able to see the that that big of an impact, like you mentioned, with how high gas prices have gotten here recently. So right.
SPEAKER_01And you know, that's something I would really say to take into consideration now that EVs aren't just this, you know, fad of a vehicle, you know, a super fast, simple vehicle. They are something that saves you a lot of money. Looking at the the stats I have on my phone here, for example, last year I got my car in June, so I only have half a year for that. And I saved almost $2,000 in gas savings. It's almost a tax credit. It almost is a tax credit. It's half of my tax credit right there. So it's more money that was in my pocket that really did help me, you know, along the way. And that's something to consider with, I would say, all technology as well, is you know, when you're looking at refurbished cars or refurbished computers, it's kind of you know, like you are buying a used car, right? Yep. And that's something that you do have to take in consideration because I would say a large market of our cars are used right now. A lot of them are either used private sales or how I got mine was a lease trade-in.
SPEAKER_00There, yep.
SPEAKER_01And that's, you know, again, a lot of people now are getting more into doing leases, and Eevee leases are even more attractive. There's a lot of incentive to get into them. I know Teslas, for example, you can get a lease with them for as low as I think it's $330 a month with $4,000 down.
SPEAKER_00And that's been a big thing, I think, with a lot of the adopters of EV is trying to get that first step in to see is this the right kind of vehicle for me? Because sometimes it's just not the right thing for you just yet.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So at least gives you that opportunity to say, okay, you know what, I did it for however long the lease time frame was, a year, two years, three years. Right. And now I can go back to whatever other style of vehicle I prefer, or I can make that full commitment now and actually purchase my own.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And I know, you know, with a lot of automakers too, that they do give you the option to buy out your lease at the end of it. I it's not something I have considered before, but I know it is out there, and I know quite a few people that have actually done that and gotten quite ahead of doing that.
Tax Credits And Real EV Costs
SPEAKER_01But you also have to kind of think that EVs are a little more fluid with their value. You know, a lot of these EVs now are being pushed as tech forward computers on wheels. That's what a lot of them are becoming now. And as these computers are updated, you know, these cars are becoming way more capable than what they were brand new bought years ago. You know, example, I saw that Tesla's starting to do a version 14 light for a lot of their full cars for their full self-driving. So now you have a car that some people purchased back in 2018 and 2019 that just got an over-the-the-air update, a free update that rose the value of that car. Right. Because now it's more capable. So that's something to consider too with an EV, that they are a commodity that may raise its value over time. So talking about that tax credit as well, I do want to mention that the new tax credit, the $7,500 tax credit, that was completely axed at the federal level. But there still is a $4,000 federal credit for qualifying used EVs.
SPEAKER_00Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01I don't think I realized that. They have to be, there are some constraints such as your income and uh price caps on the vehicle. So it is always important to check to see if you qualify. I do know that I believe you can check directly with the IRS to, I think you can just put in either a VIN number or the make model and mileage cost of it, and they'll tell you if it's eligible for you to finance and get that tax credit. It's again more money that you're going to be saving. And I know me personally, I see little to no incentives like this on gas-powered vehicles anymore.
SPEAKER_00No, absolutely. I think you're you're you nail your nail on the head, right? The nail on the head right there. That there is not that kind of incentive for a current traditional ice vehicle like that. So an internal combustion engine vehicle. You're not you're not seeing those kinds of deals. Exactly. So I then I we we we've watched this over the years. There was a couple of years ago where enterprise pivoted completely on their EV options and then flooded the market with Teslas. So that really affected the price drop big time on those used Teslas. But it seems like we're seeing a market rebound a bit for them on that.
SPEAKER_01We are, yeah. You know, that and that's a really good point, too, talking about progress you said progressive? Enterprise. Progressive.
SPEAKER_00Enterprise.
SPEAKER_01Enterprise, thank you. One of one of the names in my head was right. I knew it was. You know, I even rented one from Enterprise before, and you know, they were just the basic Model 3 Tesla models, but again, it was an EV. And for a rental place, that is a really good choice because a lot of EVs have minimal maintenance you have to do on them as well. You don't have to worry about oil changes, brake pads last a lot longer. And I know the major concern of anybody I've ever talked to that has skepticalities about EVs is battery degradation. True. Like our batteries in our laptops and our phones, the batteries in EVs they do degrade. But there are a lot of warranties that are required now by manufacturers. It's a federal law that they have to warranty these batteries for a long period of time, at least eight years or more. And I really have rarely seen a lot of battery problems come out of EVs right now.
SPEAKER_00I think that's the big what I believe Tesla offers a 120,000 mile uh warranty on their batteries for that. So I think that's huge. That's more than you'll get on a powertrain warranty for most vehicles. Exactly. Um, and I mean, even some of these hybrid options, that's kind of that's the option that my wife and I decided to go with for her recent vehicle purchase. Right. And uh it was it was what was right for us at the time. But moving forward, I think the next vehicle I'll be purchasing myself, which uh hopefully is not for a little while still, but would probably be an EV at this point.
SPEAKER_01That's a good point to talk to to talk about too, is the hybrid uh middle path. You know, automakers they didn't want to get fully into EV, but they did want to get the electrical components of, you know, the drivetrain and everything to their vehicles. You know, and we still see hybrids to this day on the road. It's not like they were pushed out of the market when EVs came in. You know, for example, I've seen a lot of Toyota Prius all over the place. That is one of the most popular hybrids I see, especially around Florida.
SPEAKER_00It's one of the main engines for the uh Ford Maverick. Yep. The uh small pickup truck that they came out with a couple of years ago. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, EVs, especially hybrids, they are just the the better choice because we we are in a time now where we have to think about fuel efficiency because of you know the price uh skyrocketing on gas sometimes. We have to think about our maintenance on these vehicles, you know, and EVs, talking about tech at least, there is a lot more to those vehicles that just kind of make life easy. And even so, you know, you can install chargers in your own home now. There's different levels of chargers you can do. I only have level one charging at home with a regular wall outlet. It's slow, but it works for me. Right. It saves me money, that's all I care about.
SPEAKER_00And it's easy enough to plug it in when you get home, and that's your charge for the day. It gets right back to what you needed to use for the following day and things like that. If you do ever go on a trip, there's the Tesla supercharger stations that are well mapped out, but you're also seeing third parties coming in as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's tons of third party ones now. And you know, there's actually been this shift in the EV market as well with the charging hardware that they've been using, where you know, there was a couple different connector types. You had J1772, you had Tesla's NACS. Those are the two main ones I can quote off the back of my hand. And now a lot of EV manufacturers are going straight just to Tesla's NACS because of what you said. The supercharger network has expanded so much in the past couple of years that I know for myself, when I was first getting an electric vehicle, my first thought was what if I'm out on a road trip and I'm starting to run out of range and there's not a charger nearby? What am I supposed to do? That question's kind of gone up in smoke for me now. Yeah, I don't have to worry about that anymore.
SPEAKER_00And it was rather quick the adoption of that. I was uh that was one of the big concerns that a lot of people had with that. And I think there's also kind of the bit of the Florida aspect. We lose power fairly often here in the state of Florida compared to other places. Yeah. What better than having a giant rechargeable lithium-ion battery in your garage for you to use, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And you know, that's something I've seen actually with like Tesla's uh Cybertruck, for example, is you can actually connect that to the house and through the app, it'll tell you how much time you can run your house on that battery. So it's this this is market has been changing and exploding and flipping all over the place. But it's something that I would say now is becoming the smart buy for a lot of people, especially just now with how prices are kind of evened out on the playing field. So if you miss any of the segments for this, definitely go to our website, refreshcomputers.net, click that podcast link. We had
EV Battery Life And Warranties
SPEAKER_01a bunch of different facts we were talking about, and we'll summarize everything under that as well.
SPEAKER_00Are you someone who's been on the fence about EVs? How do you feel about it after our conversation here today? Let us know. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580. Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with Adam Littlefield, a technician from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, we'd love to hear it. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. And now, back to Adam.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Greg. And I want to say thank you, everybody, listening right now on uh Sunday for with Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. Um, if you missed any part of our last segment, we did a bunch of talking about EVs and kind of how that market has changed. Give our uh podcast a listen on our website and go to refreshcomputers.net, click that podcast link in the top right corner. You can listen to this show and tons of our other shows going back years, talking all different tech, and there's been a lot of stuff we've talked about that is good information to know. We've actually started summarizing these podcasts into test text form so there's steps you can follow and just kind of read instead of having to listen through my uh jabbering because sometimes I do get off track. But with this segment, I do kind of want to talk about you know the summer checkup you should be doing with your devices because let's face it, it is hot out, it is central Florida, it's mid-July, so there's Saharan dust in the air. Exactly. You know, there's there's a uh high noon draw going off near Lake uh Iola. Not really. But you know, it's it's hot out there, and like all technology, it we don't we don't like being hot. Technology doesn't like being hot either. You know, I've had uh laptops coming in, a computer just the other day actually will come in for shutdown from thermal events, a ther a critical thermal event. The computer is getting too hot and it turned itself off just to save its components. So that's something that we kind of have to think about right now. That this is kind of the device killer season. You know, we are having heat casualties, you know. Our devices are having heat stroke almost from these from these temperature problems. So it's something that I've been seeing a lot of lately, especially on laptops, that the batteries are starting to, you know, swell a little more and degrade faster. And batteries they don't like being warm, they don't like being too cold either. They have a sweet spot of where they like to be in temperature. Very finicky, those batteries. It is, and you know, inside those batteries, there is a chemical reaction that's going on all the time, and excessive heat and excessive cold can cause that to accelerate. So I want to just make everybody aware of that, just give you some tips of what you can do as well with these computers. I always suggest bringing them by us at Refresh Computers, because a lot of computers over the years, what happens? They get full of dust and grime and whatever is in our household. Dog hair. Dog hair, especially, they fill up with that. And you know, by the time July comes around, they're they've got three winter coats on of that dog hair. So we open it up, we can clean out those vents, we can do a re-thermal on the system if we have to do that. And depending on the the type of device, sometimes we can get that done while you're there waiting. It's normally we charge around like 45 for a cleaning like this, and we run, you know, some diagnostics and make sure everything's in good shape.
SPEAKER_00That's honestly that's a great deal.
SPEAKER_01It is, it's gonna save you money down the road too, and a lot of it saves you a lot of headaches of your computer powering down because it it just it can't shed that one winter coat that it's it's hugging onto for dear life. But another thing I want to mention too, again, are the batteries. You know, what when we're doing that cleaning, we can also test test the battery, visually inspect it, because when these batteries turn into spicy pillows, as I like to call them. There it is. You know, when we pop off that back panel, I've had some that have swollen so much it pops the panel off for me when I loosen up all those screws. So, you know, it's something we can inspect, we can replace too. If you want us to do that, we replace with OEM parts. Like we talked in our show yesterday, how important those OEM parts are. If you haven't listened to that show yesterday, I would really suggest going to our website and listening to that. But above all, bring the computer by and we can just run some free diagnostics if you like. If it's running hot, if it's slow or it's loud, we can give a 10-15-minute free diagnostic right there while you wait, just to at least get to the bottom of it and kind of give you an idea of what you might be looking at to get that cleaned up. So something I would definitely say to look out for as well, you know, besides the you know, the body of the computer getting hot, but a track pad, the little cursor pad on your laptop. If it suddenly won't click right or you notice that the case is swelling or bulging, it may be a swollen battery. So, you know, stop by, um, bring it in to us. You know, it's a safety issue with those batteries sometimes. So it's not it's not just a little quirk that the computer's got a little tummy on it, you know.
SPEAKER_00We'll get more into these summer things to watch for, especially here in Florida when it comes to some of your devices. Right here, you've been listening to Tech Talk on WDBO1073FM and AM580.
Summer Device Checkup Basics
SPEAKER_00Hey there and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with Adam Littlefield, technician from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, go and use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out the website over at RefreshComputers.net, or stop it at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. And now back to Adam Littlefield.
Florida Heat Can Ruin Batteries
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, Greg, and thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. This segment, we're going to be getting into the uh Florida heat and just, you know, you've got to protect your devices from it. You know, us as humans, even though it's mid-July, the heat index is over 100, a parked car in a parking lot can fly past 150 degrees internally. You know, us as humans, we can sweat, right? We can regulate it as best we can. And the computers, batteries, everything electronic doesn't really have a way to sweat it off. They maybe have like one little fan on them, and that's about it. But before I get into that, I do want to just give another mention that if you missed anything from our last two segments, go to refreshcomputers.net, click that podcast link in the top right corner, and you can listen to this show in its entirety, as well as tons of our other shows going back years. Just, you know, tons of tech news and good tips and tricks too. I I would mention of just what you can do with your computer, with your devices. And this segment right here is a really good example of one that I would suggest, you know, sharing around and just having people listen back to because this is so important for the time of year that we're in. You know, last month we talked about lightning frying electronics, the the big old lightning bolt hits next to your house, and suddenly half of your electronics don't want to turn on. But today it's the slower and I would say sneakier killer, and that's our Florida heat. It's uh it's the number one enemy of every battery you own, and I would say every electronic you own, too. You know, we we have our phones in our pockets. You have uh probably a laptop that you may carry around in a bag with you. I know even some people that keep power banks in the glove box of their car or maybe like a power bank uh tire inflator.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, those are those have become very popular. They have been. That's a great point.
SPEAKER_01That's something that I would really like to just kind of put out there. It's very possible for heat damage to happen on all of these devices that we own. Battery damage from heat, it's permanent. I mentioned, um, I believe a little bit earlier in the show about how inside of batteries there's a chemical reaction going on all of the time. And as that's going on, the electrolytes in the battery and the battery material itself are breaking down. The battery degrades, and some batteries, when they degrade extremely fast, they bloat, they actually start swelling. So let me just get into it a little bit about you know the chemistry of what's going on here. The batteries, they are just a controlled chemical reaction in a little metal sandwich. That's the best way I can put it. And like all of chemistry, heat speeds up these reactions, and batteries that live hot, they age years faster than the ones that are living in a cooler environment. I know specifically, we were talking about EVs earlier, and a lot of EV manufacturers now have noticed this with battery degradation and have actually put systems into the vehicles to help keep the temperatures of that battery in an optimal zone.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. No, those cooling systems are very important EVs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know my car right now out in the parking lot is running the cooler on the battery because it's I saw on my phone it's been hitting 100 degrees internally. It's cooling down the car to keep it from overheating, it's cooling down the battery. Our phones, our laptops, our computers don't really have much of an option, do they? You know, for example, I uh I always like when I go out, I never leave any of my electronics in direct sunlight because that's how you're gonna get the most heat in them. The your laptops and like your desktops, maybe sitting by a window, they half the time they have metal. Like the case of the computer is metal, and that pulls so much more heat out of those that direct sunlight that the computer's fans are gonna be working overtime to cool down what they are made only to cool, you know, a processor chip or two.
SPEAKER_00And even just with when it comes to desktops, like you just mentioned, the placement of your desktop computer can be so important, even in a room that you think is fairly cool and well maintained. If you put that puppy too close to the wall and its exhaust vents can't exhaust any of that heat that it's developing on its own, yeah, you're gonna have some major issues.
SPEAKER_01So and you know, even further on that, I've had I have some people that do like to keep their computer underneath their desk. And having the computer on carpet or pushed really up against the wall, you are suffocating the fan from being able to efficiently move that hot air out of the computer to cool it. Yep. So that's that is something to take into consideration. But again, I want to go back to kind of what we we leave in our cars sometimes because you know, the dashboards and the seats in our cars and parking lots, that gets easily over 150 degrees. Oh, easy doesn't matter what color interior you have, it gets hot in those cars. And phones specifically, you know, that and computers too, they throw temperature warnings when they reach anywhere from 95 to 100 degrees, I believe, Celsius ambient. So when they're stuck inside of this little metal bricks that attract heat and store it, you know, way better than say plastic does. Our phones, the batteries in them, our laptops, the batteries in those. And like I said earlier, those power banks that a lot of us do like to leave in our cars, we are aging those a lot faster than how they were designed. Most batteries I give a lifetime on of you know, six, eight. I've seen some batteries even go up to like 10 years of lifetime. And when we are throwing them into a hot car regularly, that you know, six, eight, ten years, we've now shortened it down in dog years to maybe two years. And, you know, for an example, I had a uh friend, he kept a power bank in his glove box and he never checked on it. He always just left it there in case he needed it in an emergency. And one day, leaving work, his phone died and he had an emergency. He didn't have a cable to plug it into the car, just that power bank. He pulled it out of his glove box and the plastic shell fell right off of it, and he's holding just the lithium cells inside of it.
SPEAKER_00That's terrifying.
SPEAKER_01It is terrifying, but that's the reality of leaving these batteries in cars for a constant amount of times. And, you know, that's something that I always personally recommend to not leave in your car anything with a battery in it, your laptop, your phone, these battery banks, or even these tire inflators. The only time I really take mine, because I do have a battery bank tire inflator combo, I take it with me, is on a road trip. I know it's not gonna be sitting in the car for you know months and months and months of not being touched. It's gonna be there for a week, two at most. That's something I can live with because as much as the risk is there of the degradation of the batteries, when they swell really badly badly, sometimes they can become a fire risk. They are pushing on that plastic shell, like my friends, and say that plastic perforated the lithium cell, now you have a fire inside of your glove box. So that is something to really take into consideration that there is just a little bit of, you know, a genuine fire risk. It's not just the wear and tear. So if you've got them in your car right now, or you're driving around and you're you're looking at your glove box and you know you've got one in there, don't be scared. Open it up, look and see how it is, take it inside, maybe. Just I don't really recommend leaving batteries like that in a car. It's just not something I can recommend, especially in this Florida heat. Yep. And that goes again for your phone, things like that. Is if you have if you go maybe to like the pool or the beach or something, and keep your phone with you, and you keep it in the in the car, put a shade over it. Cover it with a towel, put it under a bag, put it in your bag and take it with you. But just make sure that it is not in direct sunlight.
SPEAKER_00Right. And that's the big thing, especially with these. It's it's just a giant glass radiator. That's what's on the front of your phone right there. So uh I've and I've been guilty of this before, leaving it on the top of my towel and then going, taking a quick dip in the in the ocean and then coming back. I touch my phone and it's burning up. Yep. And you you're like, oh no, this could, and it'll you'll even try and turn it on and it tells you a heat warning, right? A lot of these phones will tell you when they're beginning to overheat, it needs to restart, it needs to reboot, or it needs to just completely shut down. Right. And you put it away, try and let it make sure it gets into a cooler spot to kind of re re-centralize itself towards it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, get the battery management system to just, you know, evenly distribute all of its power and get it, you know, at a safe temperature for operation. And it's even noticeable with phones when they have these thermal events, is I know on iPhones sometimes the screen will just go very just black, has white text that just says, you know, phone is overheated, try again later, something like that. Yep. My Android device, when I used to have this mounted on my dash, I would get a thermal message saying the phone temperature is is exceeding uh recommended temperatures. Please cool down the phone. And my phone brightness drops. The phone brightness drops at all.
SPEAKER_00Usually it's when I'm using maps it happens. That's exactly. And it tells me it can no longer render 3D models of buildings for maps. I'm like, all right, that's fine.
SPEAKER_01Do your thing, but I know even charging your phone makes its own heat. Having it plugged in. I know in my car I have a built-in wireless charger. iPhones now have mag safe to magnet to have the magnet on the back of your phone that charges, and magnetic charging, wireless charging, uses or makes makes even more heat. So that's another thing to think about is you if you do leave your phone in your car, don't leave it uncharged because you're just adding more heat to that equation. And I'll tell you right now that the the sun, while it is putting in a lot of heat
Charging Habits That Save Battery
SPEAKER_01already into your car, your phone generating it own its own heat ain't gonna help. Right. It just won't. Another thing I want to mention too, in your phone settings, there is actually an option called optimize charging that you can turn on. Basically, the phone paces itself charging overnight so it doesn't shoot all the way up to 100% and sit there while you sleep. It'll actually slowly charge itself up. It kind of gets to know your routine so it knows when it needs to be at 100%, when it doesn't need to be charging. You know, it can stay at maybe 85 or 90. This setting, I believe, is on by default, but if you have gone through and turned it off, I would say reconsider about checking it back on and just kind of use it and try it out again. Because I know specifically with my Samsung phone, they recently did a software update that kind of changed how that works now. And it's worked a lot better where I'm waking up and I'm not watching my phone go from 95 to 100 as I'm waking up. I wake up and I see it, it just says stop charging, as I basically reach over for it when I'm waking up. So it's getting a lot more accurate. I know in iPhone or in iPhones, some Androids, not all models, but you can actually check the health of your battery as well. In on an iPhone, you would go to settings, then battery, and then in battery health, and it'll show a percentage. I'm about 80% or below is where I would say the battery is due for replacement. And you know, that's probably why your iPhone's dying at 2 p.m. in the middle of your work day, is it's just the battery's degraded. And I always make fun of iPhones because it always to me felt like those are the ones that had batteries that went. But even my S23 Ultra, I had that for barely two or three years, and I could barely get the battery to last a full day. Yep. So it is something that happens. And on a lot of these Android devices too, you can go under settings and then battery. I know on Samsung devices they have an option that's device health. That'll not only give you the battery's health, it'll show you the history of its charging. It'll give you tips on what you can do to increase the health of that. So that's something really I would suggest just checking out. We at refresh computers don't do battery replacements on phones. That's not something that we can do. But if you've got a laptop, for example, that isn't holding a lot of charge, we can test the battery on that. And we do a lot of battery replacements every day on laptops.
SPEAKER_00And a lot of this heating stuff applies to laptops as well. So outside of just kind of keeping them in the car, it's also, like I mentioned before, the positioning with your desktop. Yeah. The positioning of your laptop can have a lot to do with it too, right?
SPEAKER_01It can, yeah. And you know, I have a lot of users, a lot of customers come in every day that use their laptops on their bed, on a couch cushion, or your actual lap just against like your shorts or your pants that you're wearing. And this actually blocks the vents that are on the bottom of the laptop. You know, I can't really imagine why they put the vents on the bottom. For something that's called a laptop. Exactly. You would imagine to set it in your lap, but I digress there. You know, this is this is a major killer for laptops and laptop batteries, is suffocating it. You know, you really restrict the airflow movement, and you'll hear your your laptop ramp up when it's really suffocated. So that's something to consider. And I even go so as far as to saying, buy a laptop vent for your lap. They there are tons of sellers out there that make it, that just plugs into the computer. They're just fans that just blow air up in the bottom of it, keeps it away from being suffocated. It's it's a small add-on that you can get that'll save you, you know, a headache. Before we get to the break here, I do want to touch on this one last part here because we did talk about with desktops, and this happens a lot with laptops too, is the dust. I cannot tell you how much dust ends up inside of your machines. And I've seen them cause machines to run almost 20 degrees hotter doing the same work when those fans are being suffocated by that. So if you think, you know, you've got a bad battery on that laptop or something, or you want to get it just kind of cleaned up, bring it by us at Refresh Computers in Longwood. Um, we're about three and a half miles east of I-4. Um, and if you have any questions about that as well, give us a call. Our number is 407-478-8200. We're not open today, so you'll have to give us a call on Monday, but we can definitely help you out just get that figured out.
SPEAKER_00Are you somebody who's experienced these spicy pillows? Let us know. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580. Hey there, and welcome back to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's News and Talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with Adam Littlefield, a technician from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. And don't forget to check out the website at refreshcomputers.net. And now back to Adam.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, Greg. And I want to say thank you, everybody, for tuning into this episode of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers on Sunday. You know, it's it's great that we can do just two separate different shows on the weekends just to get as much information out there that we can because let's face it, there's there's so much about our devices that we don't know anymore that we're not told when we set up these devices that we don't even know
Storage Sense Cleans Windows Automatically
SPEAKER_01is an option or a feature. And I actually want to get into one of those today. It's called storage sense in Windows. So Windows, you know, we're we're so used to having to defrag our computers and clean up junk temporary files on from older versions. And I loved watching the defrag setup. It was it was such a nice thing, you know. It it kind of made you feel like something was being done with it. And and it was. It was for older systems, but Windows actually has a new feature called storage sense that automatically clears out the junk. And I'll tell you right now, most of our listeners, you probably don't have this enabled. It's something that is hidden in the uh the settings that doesn't even ask you if you want to turn it on. So I'm gonna give you some steps of how to do it, but first I'm gonna tell you what it does. So this actually goes through and empties your recycling bin on a schedule. I know the recycling bin uh had people say, I can't, I cannot figure out where all my space is going on my computer. And there is 800 gigabytes of stuff just sitting in the recycling bin. That's my same folder. What are you talking about? That's the the folder. I'll just put stuff that I need to remember that I don't want to lose, but if I hit one button, I will lose it, sort of thing. But, you know, that that's kind of what it does. It empties the recycling bin on the schedule. It'll clear out temporary files as well. Sometimes updates leave temporary files, and it'll also tidy up your downloads folder because I'll tell you what, I have so many files in my downloads folder that I am too scared to clean out because I don't know what I do and don't use. Storage Sense is uh pretty smart with that. It'll actually help discern files that you have regularly used.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so it does it can recognize from that folder things accessed within a certain amount of time or something.
SPEAKER_01And it only targets the junk and temporary files, your documents, your photos, and your programs. All of that stay the same. So in Windows, all you need to do is go to settings. There's a little search box on the bottom taskbar, type in settings, click on that, go to system, and then there's an option in system for storage. And you'll just flip the little switch on for storage sense. You can click into it to configure it to set that schedule. Uh you can run it manually for an instant cleanup as well. And they'll even give you some cleanup recommendations that you can try out. I know a lot of our listeners too, you may be using an Apple computer. You know, you're not using Windows, you're using Mac. Apple has this as well. Um, what you'll need to do is hit the Apple menu in the top left corner, go to about this Mac, storage, and then in storage, there'll be an option that says manage. And then there will be similar cleanup suggestions that live right there as well.
SPEAKER_00That's so simple. That makes it a lot easier instead of you personally trying to go through and figure out which files you actually use. Right. You give it the parameters and you let the computer do its thing.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And you know, I uh with a lot of these junk files, I'll tell you what is a lot of times when I have computers come in that are full on space, it's not the junk files anymore. Windows does really good already at cleaning up a lot of this junk even before you turn on storage sense. That's just an extra step to getting it cleaned up. But a lot of times now it is just our documents. Our phones nowadays take way clearer photos, higher definition, and higher definition is higher storage. That's the trade-off. So if you kind of are stuck in that, that rut of being close to full storage, bring your laptop by us. We can do a free diagnostic just to see, or any computer, really. We can see where all that storage is going. We have some stuff that we can run on it, and you know, end of the day, a bigger solid state drive, it's an inexpensive upgrade to do if you need to do that.
SPEAKER_00Or maybe all 19 8K videos of Fido at the beach. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Maybe you only needed one or two of those. Yeah. Or, you know, we can give you some tips on, you know, maybe storing them on another device. Talk about external storage devices. So those steps I know they were kind of hard to keep up with if you've been listening live. So if you if you have been listening live, go to refreshcomputers.net, click that podcast link in the top right corner. You'll get our this
Final Tips And Listener Feedback
SPEAKER_01show in its entirety with our summary, all of our bullet points explaining this, and our steps there as well. So you can get these enabled on your devices. So I think we're coming to the end of this show today for Sunday. Um, we will be open tomorrow at 9 a.m. So if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, definitely come by, bring your computer in, or give us a call. Our number is 407 478 8200. And again, that's going to connect you to one of our real live living technicians, not some robot.
