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
Stop Feeding The Data Center Monster
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You can feel it happening: AI is becoming the default helper for everything from writing to repair work, and that’s exactly why we wanted to separate what’s genuinely useful from what’s just noise. Greg Rhodes sits down with Senior Technician Mike from the Refresh Computer Superstore to explain how AI actually fits into day-to-day tech troubleshooting, especially when a new device shows up with unfamiliar quirks or when a Windows 11 update quietly breaks something that worked yesterday. We talk about using AI as a faster research partner, not a magic wand, and why your experience and process still matter.
Then we zoom out to the bigger questions people are asking right now. What happens when AI growth depends on massive data centers that need huge amounts of power and water for cooling? Why are some companies already talking about excess compute and shaky ROI? We dig into the economic competition angle, the infrastructure reality, and the practical impacts communities can feel, including noise and energy constraints. If you’ve been wondering why the “AI race” feels both exciting and messy, you’ll hear the clearest version of it here.
From there, we bring it back to the gear and habits that help you today. We explain why a so-called gaming PC can be a strong value choice for creators and power users, what a dedicated GPU changes for performance, and how newer NPUs may matter for AI workloads. And because storms, outages, and voltage dips are real life problems in Florida, we lay out a simple backup strategy using external drives plus cloud backup (OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud), along with the surge protector and UPS setup that can save your system and your data. We finish with quick keyboard shortcuts you’ll use immediately, and a fast warning about digital ownership as physical media fades away.
If this helped you think differently about AI, PCs, and protecting your files, subscribe for more, share the episode with a friend who needs a better backup plan, and leave us a review so more listeners can find Tech Talk.
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Welcome And Ways To Reach Us
SPEAKER_02Hey there and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580 Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes sitting here with Senior Technician Mike here from the Free Fresh 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. 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., which means if you're listening to the show here on Saturday, you still have time to stop by. They'll be open until 7 p.m. today. And now for senior technician, Mike. How are you doing? Great. Mike, how are you doing today? Thanks for joining us on this uh special edition, filling in for Adam and David as they are off on their own adventures here this weekend.
Mike’s Job At Refresh Computers
SPEAKER_02Tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been with uh Refresh Computer Superstore?
SPEAKER_00So I've been with them for just over four years. And uh I'm I used to actually do this show a couple years back with Dave. But my they needed me in the store more on a permanent basis, so I had to segue away from that. So I was uh I was an audible call-in to come in today.
SPEAKER_02I love that we've got plenty of people over there that are willing to come on the show and do it with us here over here at WDBO. So what are some of the things that you specialize in over there at the shop?
SPEAKER_00So I have the I have a systems engineer title, which is a fancy all-in-one thing that basically says that I do the imaging that goes on the desktops and laptops that we sell. I also do some higher level troubleshooting when necessary. I'm also the lead quality assurance lead there that you know, so we check all the stuff that comes in through refurbishment before it goes out to the floor. So I I have I have to wear a few hats.
SPEAKER_02Especially definitely get that, especially in a small business like that, wearing a couple of hats for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Just not myself, but the whole team, we all have to pick up where needed to make sure the day goes good. We do it one day at a time. We do some future planning and strategizing when it comes around to holidays and things like that. Uh but for the most part, we we're all about tackling whatever needs
AI For Hardware And Windows Fixes
SPEAKER_00to be done for that day.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned that a part of your position is kind of troubleshooting the higher level products that come through the store, right? And I know we've talked about it here on the store a lot that AI really has come into play for a lot of that. For a lot of people, there's a lot of engineers and technicians that utilize AI to help with troubleshooting, whether that be if they're designing a new program or more of what you're doing, they're more on the hardware side with a lot of these things too, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. So uh from our perspective, we use it on the daily to troubleshoot customer repairs, or if we run into a new model that is behaving in a situation that we're not used to, we use it for that reason. And it can it helps with the process of elimination to deal with that. One of the other aspects of AI that's been grateful uh for us to use is on the Microsoft Windows troubleshooting side, on the software side, because of late, I'm sure Adam's talked about it in the past, Windows 11 has had many, many updates that have broken other things. No, not Windows 11. Of course, but AI's been great at like identifying what update did what and how it affected it and how we can remedy it, whether it's through a command line or another technical avenue to we can re uh mediate that issue to get things back to where they were. Uh so that's been it's been very helpful with that.
SPEAKER_02Have you find have you found that it really streamlines it? It's probably a lot of the same steps that you used to take, but maybe they're just a little bit faster because it's either just pulling that data together quicker for you.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. So with troubleshooting, it is a process of elimination based and it's based on experience of what you what you've seen in throughout your career, what you know what works and what doesn't. When you get to that point and you and it still doesn't make sense, that's when AI really, really helps, and it can it can pinpoint a remedy or an issue that you that you think is happening, but it'll or can it'll confirm it for you a lot faster and and it saves a lot of time. I wish honestly, when I started my career 30 years ago, this would have been a great help.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. No, but like you said, you've you've you've garnered skills over those 30 years that really make it to where you can utilize these tools in a more efficient fashion than maybe somebody that's maybe a little bit more of a a layman when it comes to some of these things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but uh but I liken it to an auto mechanic. I mean, I'm sure they use AI too because I mean they're they use they they take the codes that the car gives these days from like say from a 2017-2018 card vehicle, which is more computerized, and they can plug that in and they know there's like a sensor gone or several dependencies underneath it, and then they have to weed through the dependencies to find out which one is actually failing or if it's the whole thing, like a wiring harness or an oxygen sensor or something like that. So it's very similar to how they would they would track down an issue and deal with it. But people are using it in everyday life where they're using it to do reports or go through sales or you know, uh you know, just basically organize their daily routine. That's where it's really been a lot helpful.
SPEAKER_02And I know that a lot of it we talked about when it comes to AI is just kind of simplifying those steps for you moving forward. There's been a lot of talk of people being concerned about some of the impacts from artificial intelligence. We've we've also touched them, we've also touched on those here during the show here on Tech Talk. Yeah. What are some of the things that you've
Bigger AI Concerns: Power And Profit
SPEAKER_02seen people talking about when it comes to the concerns with AI moving forward? We've even seen Bill Gates come out this week with an open letter kind of platform talking about his concerns with it moving forward.
SPEAKER_00So there seems to be the overall debate is whether or not we're gonna let other nation states compete in the same space at the same level. That's kind of where the debate starts. Before you get into the doom and gloom of Terminator or you know, worldwide resources going to dust, which is definitely a factor. It it comes down to it's a it's a race, but it may not be the race that everybody thinks it is. China's got models out right now that are just as good and and very, very cheap compared to Claude or Gemini or some of these other ones. So I think that's where the the conversation is starting, is they're looking at it at an economic competition level. But on the other side of the factor, there is all the all these states and municipalities are starting to realize that these data centers require a lot of power to stand these things up. Right. We don't have the power generation to do it. We just don't. So some of them have actually renegotiated contracts right now with data centers that they have already awarded contracts to, that they have to build their own power plants. And that's caused a pause on some of the money coming in because now all of a sudden they have to figure out a way to generate power. They have to figure out a way to clean the water because there are issues in other, and including there's a famous one in Georgia where there is forever chemicals getting into the groundwater because these data centers do require a lot of cooling. There's talk about standing up nuclear power plants, that's there's a whole risk with that. And there's and there's a timeline that they want this done, that's very quickly. That's not going to happen overnight. The other issue is I think is just the the the return on investment is not going to be what people think. There is a concern from Forbes and Wall Street Journal has also reported this that there's already some buckling. You've seen uh companies like NVIDIA and Apple are starting to pull back because they actually have an excess of RAM and chips. We've talked about that excessively on the show, about how those two items have gone up in price by a lot. You can't even get them at 200% less than they were a year ago. But now they're sitting on shelves because they they don't have a way to build them out. So they have excess, what they call excess compute. Meta had a conversation about that a couple months ago. They're trying to sell their excess compute because they're not using it to other companies to see if they'll want to buy they want to buy it because they have so the this AI bubble that our current economy is currently or is running on is probably gonna burst, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02And you've seen a little bit of this loop too, where it seems to be the same companies are investing in each other over and over again, and somehow that money keeps on increasing. So there's there's a concern with that too, as you mentioned, with the little bit of a bubble going on with some of that. I think there's definitely going to be a readjustment in the market before too long, where we see some of these companies that have invested majorly in building these AI data centers, like you said, they're gonna have to figure out how to power their own groups at this point because you're already seeing states like Florida have passed laws now that will require the energy companies to not pass on those additional costs to the retail consumers. Right. It'll have to move it'll have to go on to those companies that are trying to develop these programs. And data centers aren't new, they've been around, but the rapid expansion here over the last five years has really put a lot of pressure on these.
SPEAKER_00And they're very loud too. They have there's other environmental impacts besides water and power. There's also the fact that a lot of these high-end data centers, there's some recent examples that are not in Florida, but they're also in other states that six, seven hundred, eight hundred feet away, they're loud. Right. They they have a there's a there's a noise, it sounds like a high-pitched whine that's like, you know, and people's houses are against these things. So there's a there's a lot of impact for all of this.
SPEAKER_02And imagine just imagine kind of like that whine sound is like when you first boot up your computer, everything winds up and turns on. It's just it's that sound consistently at a very highly elevated volume because it's just imagine it's just a very large computer center.
SPEAKER_00There was a video out there, I can't recall where it was, but there's a gentleman standing outside. It's nighttime, it's like one o'clock in the morning, and he has a decibel meter and it read 80 decibels. Now that's very, very loud, and he's standing probably, I'd guess, about 75 feet from the wall, maybe 850 feet or so. So that's pretty loud. So that's going to go through most residential homes pretty easily.
SPEAKER_02I think, yeah, there are definitely concerns with that moving forward. I think there are be steps being taken to try and resolve some of those issues as well while we talk about it. Right. But I think that they're it's one of those things that it's time to start learning a bit more how you can utilize AI in your everyday life because it's not going anywhere, whether it be with your work, whether it be with your home life, any of those kinds of situations. I think there's ways that we can actually kind of take those first steps and get you more comfortable with it as well, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, yeah, of course. And I I definitely think the slowing it down when you don't even have all of the methodologies that you can use it for to plug in would be a good thing. There's also the the like I said, the return on investment is starting to get looked looked really bad. There's a I don't remember which of the big companies is having a problem. I think it's I don't know if it's Claude or Anthropic or ChatGBT, but one of those two is running a negative balance.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00They they have spent so much money versus what they're they haven't generated the money that their models were supposed to get to them right now. So they're running a $30, $40 million negative right now over the last quarter from the last earnings that have came in.
SPEAKER_02Well, we even saw SpaceX with their recent IPO release has dropped below that original release price because of concerns with their investments in AI as well. Right.
SPEAKER_00So that's I think it's gonna be the driver. So while we're trying to work out how we can best use this for humanity and get the everyday worker on board with this, I think the ROIs need to realize that they're not gonna get an 18, 36 month investment, that they may have to slow down for all of our benefits.
SPEAKER_02Yep, I completely agree with that. I think there's definitely like like we said, there's pros and cons to each side of it. And I think there it's definitely important to make sure that we talk about those cons because they're they're very impactful, they're very important to talk about. But if you're someone that's still just trying to dip your toe into AI, someone that hasn't really worked too much in any of these kind of AI systems, what are some of your suggestions on what someone can do to really kind of get acclimated in the environment?
Simple Ways To Start Using AI
SPEAKER_00I think the easiest thing to do would be things like planning. So things like grocery lists. If you take the time with a with a typical legal pad and write down what's in your pantry, what you typically make for meals on the on a weekly basis, AI, and you plug that into AI and ask to do a daily planner, it's something that actually can do on a very easily for you. And it can tailor it to what you typically use and buy. Same thing with uh collating a letter about and making it sound you can you can literally tell it how professional or casual you want the letter to be. Obviously, review it before you send it, and it'll do that for you. The more information you prompt it, the AI with, however detailed you ask the tasks to do, the more specific and and more rewarding the the output will be coming back to you.
SPEAKER_02Right. So it's better than just saying, write write a letter to my husband. Yes. It's more like tell my husband that I need such and such from the grocery store because we're gonna have this for dinner on Thursday, and make sure that we're aware that everything that of all that we need for it and stuff like that. Right. I as the more specific you get, as it has definitely shown to be a better avenue, I think.
SPEAKER_00The more information you give it before you press enter, the better off the output will be. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And we've talked about a couple of the different AI uses or the different AI programs. Which one is one that you found yourself coming back to and using again?
SPEAKER_00So I use Chat GBT and I also use uh Supergrock on X. Now, just the caveat, I am aware of there's some I there's a little bit of a bias on Elon Musk's side with that, but I will tell you that when it comes to just the fact stuff that we're using it for, Supergroc's actually one of the more powerful ones. And it's it's actually it does the collating thing that I've talked about. Like it gathers resources all over the internet, puts it into a an eye a way that I can see uh and go through and eliminate when it comes to troubleshooting a lot easier than some of the other ones. It's and it's faster too. I don't usually use that part of it for everything else. I know some people are using it for videos and images and stuff like that. But when it comes to rapid fact-based research, I chat chat GBT and Supergrox seem to be work for me. I haven't used Claude yet, but that's a Dave thing.
SPEAKER_02That's definitely a Dave thing. Dave loves his Claude. I think that's definitely a good way to kind of build yourself into it. We've seen a lot of people get used to making the videos and the funny memes and things like that out of AI. But there's there's the useful aspect of AI that I think these are going to be the next steps that we're gonna see people taking into.
SPEAKER_00It's here to stay, just like Google took over, I want to say in like 2006, when people are still using, you know, Ask uh Jenkins, I think it was. Ask Geeves. Yeah, Ask G's and Yahoo search, and then Google took over, and this will be the next thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, absolutely. What are your thoughts on this? Have you been someone that's dipped your toe into AI? What are some of the models that you prefer to use? Or are you someone that hasn't yet and you're looking for maybe a couple of a little bit of advice? Let us know. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. We'd love to hear your concerns or questions. Coming up next, we're going to talk a little bit about gaming computers available at the Refresh Computer Superstore. Not a better guy to talk to about those than our guy, the senior tech mic, joining us here this weekend. You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580.
Budget Gaming PCs That Do More
SPEAKER_02Hey there, welcome back to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes, sitting here with Senior Tech Mike 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 Mike, now we're going to talk a little bit about gaming computers that are available at Refresh Computer Superstore. Not really what you guys are known for, but definitely something that this is a great option for people looking for a value option when it comes to some of these gaming setups.
SPEAKER_00Especially now with graphics cards and RAM that we've talked about to death. Through the roof. Getting one of our pre-built gaming systems is a great value to go because honestly, buying it on the open market, you're going to spend a lot more money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and even as myself, someone that does a lot of audio and video editing, using utilizing that those graphic cards is really important to really having any kind of consistent speed in those programs.
SPEAKER_00It speeds up everything, even browsing. If you have a dedicated video card, it makes everything on the computer so much faster.
SPEAKER_02And it doesn't have to be something crazy beefy either for some of these programs. If you're unless you're unless you're playing the latest and greatest when you really do need those top of the line, if you've got something that's at that at that lower to mid-level that really is an entry level for those graphics cards, really gives you pretty much most of what you need.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, any graphics card manufactured in in the 2020 2020 onward that's at least six to eight gigs of video RAM, you're you're in a good spot.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything that you found most useful when it comes to these gaming PCs? I know a lot of people when they hear the term gaming PC, they immediately think, I'm not playing video games, I'm doing serious work. That's right. That's not really what it means.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Uh a graphics card does not mean it is a gaming system. It just means that the system does not is not utilizing the onboard graphics that are available on the processor. And that's can that can sound technical to all you guys out there, but a dedicated card is basically like a separate machine that just does nothing but video for you. So it opens up different applications that otherwise would not be able to be utilized on that computer because it doesn't have a video card. So things, as I said, like AutoCAD or Adobe Creations, things like that, that that use graphic arts that you definitely would want a video card to do that with.
SPEAKER_02Is there something that is I'm trying to figure out the really the way to put that? Is there is there something that really pushes people towards getting these computers versus what's what's that cutoff point between a standard PC that you guys sell versus that gaming PC that people think about?
SPEAKER_00So just some basic probing. I mean, we we'll come in and ask, you know, do you use it for everyday office work? Then the answer would be obviously no. Yeah. And the majority of what we sell is office-based systems that and a lot of them do have as the newer systems that you get into, both Intel and EMD have a lot of really good onboard graphics that start that shrink that gap that where you don't need a dedicated video card per se. But where the the need comes in is is as a specialized video editing, any kind of a graphic capability that you need for like creating like artwork or something like that. And then of course, yes, some basic or mid-level gaming that all is going to come into play that you just simply can't do on these other computers.
SPEAKER_02We talked a lot about AI in the last segment. Do these PCs also work better with AI programs as
GPUs, NPUs, And AI Performance
SPEAKER_02well?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So it it again, a little bit technical, but there are mechanisms on the GPU, as we call the graphic processor unit, that AI will it'll see it and utilize that to rapidly respond to prompts and requests. It just does that. Now, there Intel does make a a new CPU called it NPU. On their newer laptops, it's automatically paired with the Intel i7, i5 core processor, and it'll actually say NPU enabled. I'm not quite sure how that works, but it is a hardware processor that AI that is dedicated to use.
SPEAKER_02So if you're someone that is dipping your toe heavily into AI, this might be an option for you. But also, like we mentioned, if you're someone that's just doing general office work, maybe this isn't right the right PC for you. Go ahead over, go ahead and head over to the Refresh Computer Superstore. Speak with one of the salespeople. They'll be able to be able to guide you to the right type of PC for the right kind of job that you're looking to do.
SPEAKER_00At the end of the day, we're here to help you.
SPEAKER_02If you're someone that's looking for that, you can head over to the website as well over there at refreshcomputers.net. Check out that great selection of gaming PCs and other general PCs. Coming up next, we're going to talk more about backing up your PC before disaster strikes. We'll have that and more coming up next here on Tech Talk 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, sitting here with senior technician Mike 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 an open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out their website over at Refresh Computers.net or stop into 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., which means if you're listening to the show here on Saturday, you still have time to stop by. They'll be open until 7 p.m. today. And now for senior technician Mike.
Backup Strategy Before Storm Damage
SPEAKER_00All right. So we want to get into a topic that we often touch on here and there, and that's about backups. What's a good backup? Why should we backup? How often should we backup? These are all very important questions because things happen. I'm sure last couple of days here in Seminole County, we've had and Orange, there's been some significant storms. Absolutely. I drove through a heck of a one the other day down 417 after five o'clock, where the entire tollway was just like hurricane force, winds, and rain. And it does it does havoc on computer systems. People coming in with things that are just blown dead and they question if their drives are going to be okay.
SPEAKER_02And it doesn't even need to be a full-blown power surge or outage. It can just be the fluctuation of that power throughout those storms that can really wreak the most havoc.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if your system's on and there's a dip in voltage, that that actually can cause a lot of damage. Even more so than a power surge. It's the it's the it's it's the voltage dropping that causes the problem with most systems. But we do have some ideas and some best practices to get you some confidence that your stuff is getting backed up and saved. So one of the things we talk about is having multiple copies of everything that you care about and having it on different times of storage. So there's obviously the storage on your computer, there's the backup on a flash drive or a portable hard drive, and then there's utilizing cloud backup, one of the big three, whether it's Google Drive or OneDrive, or iCloud if you're an Apple user. Those are very important because just like Back when I worked in corporate America, the banks have a robot backup drive for all the core sites that I worked at for everybody's data. But they also had off-site storage through another company you may have heard of called Iron Mountain. And that is what they do. They they gather, they go to these sites, they gather those tapes, those backups, and they store them in case there's ever a fire or a natural disaster. You can do the same thing. Whether you put it in, you know, you can store a storage device like in a safety deposit box or something like that if if you want some uh peace of mind. But honestly, the cloud backups are very secure, they're very safe. It is not like it was back in the early 20 teens where they were just coming online and people thought they weren't secure. These things are very robust and and and are not crackable. They have layers of firewall encryption, so you can trust the big three that your stuff is going to be okay.
SPEAKER_02And that's the thing, the big three. There's still some of those where it's kind of like a fly by night company that is offering a new sign up with us and get 10 gigs free of storage and things like that, where maybe you should be a little leery if you haven't really heard the company or researched them too much. But like you said, the big three, Google, Apple, Microsoft, you should be pretty safe there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and to my knowledge, I have yet to have heard or seen any story that said that there those cloud backups have been broken into or hacked. Yeah. I just have not seen it. And there would have been reporting on some level by now, but they take that data very, very seriously, as do we. But we recommend the cloud backup just because of the fact that hardware does fail. Your flash drive will fail. The portable hard drive you've been carrying around for four years is going to fail. Those drives do not last forever. They they fail at weird times, on inopportune times. So those of you that have QuickBooks or have your finances on on one device, you I suggest you heavily think about getting it copied off into other devices in the cloud back the cloud as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_02And to answer the question that I'm sure some people, because I'm asking the same question in my head right now, what about Microsoft? Don't aren't their drives going to fail all the things that they own? Well, they are backing up their backups of their backups at this point, too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it gets a little complicated, but basically Dave's talked about this too. The cloud is nothing more than a data center, believe it or not, right? That has what's also called a carrier floor, which handles communications all over the country and the world. But those systems have redundancies and they also have redundant power, and they also have generators that kick in as well. So they have they're built to withstand a lot of different failures. Uh as other there's other cloud systems out there too, like AWS and Amazon World Services, they power a whole lot of Fortune 500 companies and restaurants all over the world. And uh and they do have an outage here or there, but the data is safe. Right. When there is an outage, it's an outage and not a not a data wipe. There's that's a big difference. So it's a good it's a good peace of mind, which is a lot why a lot of these companies, insurance companies as well, use them for uh safe storage and to keep some sort of redundancy.
SPEAKER_02And a lot of the times you'll see, so especially with these the cloud backups and things like that, you'll usually have a local copy of the item that you're working on, and then you'll also have that backed up copy. Typically with OneDrive, which is what I use utilize the most of, it'll sync at certain points throughout the day. So maybe if you're working in a copy that you need to make sure is constantly updated, make sure you're still utilizing that save and sync function for those. But oftentimes throughout the day, it'll get all those copies backed up and synced, and you'll be able to have that same information anywhere you go. If you save it at work and you have access to that at home, or if you're in Barbados, you can still pull it up.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And I I also use it just to key it, and it wasn't really a thing I was going to talk about it too much was password backups. Okay, so your your browsers, I'm sure the guys have talked about this too. The your Google Chrome and your Microsoft Edge have a password manager already built in. When you're signed into the browser, it backs up all of your websites and things like that. But you can make an Excel spreadsheet or a notepad with all of your stuff and call it something weird so it's not easily identifiable, and you can back that up to the cloud. That just in case it's nice to have a password file that you can get to in case there's some sort of data loss and you can't get to your browser or something like that, but you've got to get to that website password data. So it's a good idea to keep that backed up also.
SPEAKER_02And same idea. A lot of those password managers are very well encrypted and very, very safe for a lot of those things. People I that's one of the things that we've been talking about on the show a lot recently is it's a lot safer to have it saved in that password manager than it is to have written down on a sticky note on the back of your computer, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. It is true that Google Chrome and Microsoft has have their own password manager, which is nice, but that also reiterates the fact that those passwords are usually keyed to an email address and password that you have. Folks, make sure that password is really hard to know because that unfortunately it's a single point of failure, as we like to call in the business, where if someone has access to the Google Chrome browser, then they now have access to all of your passwords. So there's third-party applications out there. I use one called Bitwarden, which ties to your phone and to the computer as a plugin. It's a master password and everything gets saved to that. So if something happens to Chrome or something's compromised or something gets changed, you have a third-party application to get all of that stuff back in a little peace of mind. And as he said, it is encrypted.
SPEAKER_02Now we've talked a lot about all the backups. How often should you be making sure that those backups are updated? Especially we mentioned the cloud backups that automatically sync. But if you have a your disk drive that you have on the side that you keep updated for your backups, how often should you be making sure that you're updating that? Is it case by case, or do you have a quick practice?
SPEAKER_00Once a week. There are some people that need this thing backed up all the time. And there's a thing, uh a term called uh differential and incremental backups. It basically means it copies over data that's only that's only the data that's been changed on the regular. That's usually what most backups do. I usually recommend checking that out about once a week, maybe on a Sunday. Just go in there and just double-click on it, make sure it's there. Usually backups run once a week. In some cases, they run more often than that. But it's a good idea to make sure that not just the folders are there. Make sure you double-click on the folder, make sure the documents that you're saving are also there, pictures, things like that. Give you peace of mind. These things can sometimes fail. It's not often, but it does happen. And it's and we see it here at Refresh Computers. Sometimes when we're doing clones, it doesn't always work for some reason. So we verify the data when we're doing it before we call it good and move on to the next task.
SPEAKER_02Corrupted data is still a thing. So yes, absolutely. Us being here in Florida, we talked a little bit about the storms earlier.
Surge Protectors, UPS, And Recovery
SPEAKER_02How important is it to have a surge protector on your main machine?
SPEAKER_00It is a necessity. Yeah. It just, you know, I have my my television has a surge suppressor. Right. Because it's expensive TV. Yeah, exactly. So so yeah, you what you want surge suppression and you don't want a fly by night brick. You want something that's got a valued name like APC or cyberpower or something like that. That's good, that's a good robust power strip. I if you can afford it, get a UPS, which stands for uninterruptible power supply. And they have a backup battery, but more importantly, you can get ones that have sine wave technology which cleans the power coming into this UPS before it delivers it to your computer. And it also acts as another level of protection should a surge hit. The UPS will interrupt it, it'll it'll take the hit for you, and the computer and everything connected to it will be okay. It's a little money, but it's a it's well worth keeping your stuff and your data safe.
SPEAKER_02That's important to have that power conditioner side of it, like you mentioned, because it it like you talked about earlier, it's really those lows when you have those power fluctuations during these kinds of storms that can really, really ruin a machine if you've got that sine wave protection, that conditioning that's built into it, really keeps that nice and level and even. And you honestly, especially if you're somebody that works in radio like myself, you really do notice a difference when you have those high efficiency kind of machines and pieces that need to be really clean to get that best quality out of.
SPEAKER_00I can give you a real world example. My house, for a number of months, we were noticing some of the outlets were going out, couldn't figure out why. It got to a it came to a head to where half the house literally started all of a sudden lost power in the middle of the night. Turns out there were 11 other homes experiencing the same thing. I had the electrician come out, they couldn't figure it out. Duke Energy finally came out a second time and told us that the transformer that actually sits in on my yard that powers those houses had halfway melted, and I was getting 95 volts out of 220 coming into my house.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that'll mess some things up.
SPEAKER_00My computer was constantly kicking off my UPS for months, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought it was the batteries going out, I thought it was a bad outlet, I changed all this stuff. And if it hadn't been for the UPS, my very expensive system would have taken a lot of damage. Easily. Yes. So I that alone saved literally thousands of dollars before Duke came in and replaced the transformer. Now we're all fine and good, but the UPS did its job.
SPEAKER_02And that's such a such an important key piece of a lot. Then we've talked about it again before many times on the show. When it comes to these like storm preparation topics that we have, to have those surge protectors and UPSs in place, they're so important. And the great thing is they're all available at the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can stop on in, take a look at what's available for surge protection, and you can also check it out on the website over there at refreshcomputers.net. And I would recommend stopping in and talking with somebody about really what your specific needs are.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and we they are reasonably priced. And you know, as a rule of thumb, if you get a typical 750, I'm just gonna throw a number out there, guys. It's a that's a typical for one workstation, a 750 watt. It's good for a computer, a one monitor, maybe a backup drive to plug in, and maybe Spectrum or your modem, you can plug into that too, just so that you have, and then of course it'll give you time to shut it down gracefully when there is a power loss, it'll you'll have to usually anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to shut down the computer well to where it is in a non-functioning state when and wait for the storm to pass. But those devices are reasonably priced at our store, and we can walk you through getting them set up and getting them hooked up to your computer.
SPEAKER_02We were talking off the air earlier, and since we've got a little bit of time here, I wanted to bring that up. The you were talking a little bit about if divorce does happen and something all of a sudden your drive does die. You can't seem to get it recovered. You bring it into Refresh Computer Superstore, they try to do a backup for you, and you guys even have issues with it. There's still that one more step, right? That people are able to take, but it costs a little bit of money, which is the concern with all this.
SPEAKER_00Right. So it's a plug to a company called Drive Saver. So there's a company out in California that has a 99.9% recovery rate for all kinds of hard drives, even the ones from your camera. They they do all the celebrity stuff, and they have a track record for this, and it's a very good one. We have a partnership with them, we have information and pamphlets with a toll-free number. I think that involves that you ship the item to them and then they ship it back. And of course, they they will work with you on a price and rate to recover that data. And and we work with them probably one or two times a week, maybe more. It just it just depends.
SPEAKER_02And not to scare people off of it, but this isn't a cheap service. This isn't something that you can just kind of flip a quarter on.
SPEAKER_00Some some aspects of their service are cheaper than others. We are not privy to what that is because they they do it on a case-by-case basis. I will tell you they have a guarantee to where if they feel like they can't recover the data, which is almost never, that there's no charge to the customer. Wow. So they don't charge you if they can't do anything. But but we get you know a benefit from them as well. So yes, if we can't recover your data because there's a hardware limitation that is beyond what we can do, we we have information that we can give you to get your stuff recovered.
SPEAKER_02Which is one of the things, again, I love about refresh computers is that you guys do take those extra steps for those customers that are having those issues. It's terrible when you don't have access to either those memories or those financials or any of those kinds of things that you felt needed to be on an important backup. It's terrible when you don't have access to them. So I would say make sure you're taking some of these steps that we've talked about first, making sure that you're doing a proper backup, whether that be an external drive, utilizing some of these cloud services. But if the worst comes to worse, stop in at the refresh computer superstore and speak with a technician about how to recover that drive, whether it's there or with that partner company.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And we're happy to have those conversations with anyone that wants to come in and have a conversation. We'll definitely work with you on that and get you the best plan to get those backups going for you.
SPEAKER_02Coming up next, we're going to talk more about our tech tip of the week. Instantly reopening a tab that you might have closed by accident. What a great tip that could be. We'll tell you about it. Coming up next, you've been listening to the 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, sitting here with Senior Tech Mike 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 over at refreshcomputers.net. And Mike, now we're going into our last segment of the show today, and we're going to talk a little bit about how you can instantly reopen a tab that you closed by accident.
Reopen Closed Tabs Fast
SPEAKER_02I'm not the only one that has done that, so I'm sure that there are a lot of people looking forward to this, Tim.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So this is a a keyboard shortcut that will allow you to, let's say you accidentally just bit closed something, and you're like, you know, you do the Dolt thing from Homer Simpson. So you hold Ctrl Shift and the T at all at once on Windows, and it will automatically reopen the tab you just closed. Additionally, you can keep doing it. Let's say you close the whole bunch of them. It'll go through the whole history in the back end of Windows and keep reopening tabs that you closed until you get to the one you want. The same thing is true for Macintosh. You can hold the command key, also hold shift and press T. Again, Command Shift T for Apple, Ctrl Shift T for Windows, and it will it'll automatically reopen any tabs that you've recently closed.
SPEAKER_02How far back does this go? Do you do you have an idea of?
SPEAKER_00I want to say it'll go back to the session of from when the computer first was turned on.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's actually that's pretty decent. Uh, you would think that that's one of those fun things that again, you don't think about. You're like, oh, I didn't mean to close that. Let me just go ahead and go bow all the way back and type it back into the address bar or click on my history page to pull it up if I can find it in there. This just makes it a quick flick of the wrist on the keyboard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for those of you that don't minimize stuff right away, it's a it's a nice save. The the other cool thing you can do is let's say you want to open up a browser window and go right to the command line to the address bar. That's another shortcut we can talk about. That's control L or Command L on Mac, and the cards will go right to the web address bar for you, and you can start typing. So if you want to go, if you don't want to go search CNN.com or search bestbuy.com and have the bring up the search result, then you have to click on the link. You can go right to the address bar at the very, very top, and this by the using this command, again, control L windows, command L Mac, and it'll automatically put you in the space where you can just type the website name and you're there.
SPEAKER_02Makes it so much quicker. And then also it reopens the uh, if you want to reopen your browser right where you left off the last time, there's another trick that we have for that too, right?
SPEAKER_00There is a setting of both Chrome and in Edge where you it'll automatically reopen the tabs that were automatically open when you when you uh close down or shut down the computer. Alternatively, let's say your computer gets shut down unceremoniously. A lot of times by default, Edge and Chrome will ask you if you want to restore pages. It'll show up as a little link on the upper left or upper right-hand corner, depending on which browser you're using. You just hit yes, and all the all the websites you were just looking at will come back onto your screen.
SPEAKER_02Such easy tips. Love to hear those kinds of things, especially when it comes to working with your PC, making it easier to use when you make a mistake. That's what these tech tips are really for here at the end of the show.
Do You Really Own Digital Media
SPEAKER_02We were talking a little off-air about something I wanted to bring up here at the end of the show, and it's about kind of your ownership of items. And we've seen a recent story in the news about a major tech player that's kind of restricting that and kind of making people lose a lot of stuff that they've honestly already bought.
SPEAKER_00This is a broader conversation that we're gonna have to bring up on another show. But real quickly, the the manufacturers of Blu-ray, which is Sony and Phillips, have decided not to make any more of those discs for consumption any longer. They made the decision I want to say back in February, and Sony's actually already said that they've already sold the plants that make the discs. So there is no reversing that decision. That's not gonna happen. So those of you that that burn for movies or data, or those of you that are PlayStation users, unfortunately, they're gonna go to a digital-only solution. They've also changed the EULA, which stands for end user license agreement, which says that you no longer own the software, you just own the license to run it. Right. And that's going industry-wide. There's been a company that's up been that's been bought out by Disney called Movies Anywhere, where people went back into the early teens. You could buy a DVD and get a digital copy. Well, they've been able to remove said copies because those contracts are no longer valid. So people that bought movies that have a digital footprint are no longer accessible on that platform. So this is gonna be coming, this is gonna become a greater issue as more and more ownership is shifting away and going to a subscription model where you don't ask to necessarily own what you think you own. But again, it's a it's a conversation for another day.
SPEAKER_02It's a it's a it's a very deep conversation that I definitely would like to have with you at some point here over the next
Closing Notes And What’s Next
SPEAKER_02two days. Mike, it's been a pleasure having you here on a Saturday show. We're gonna we're gonna run it back tomorrow for a Sunday episode with Senior Technician Mike. You can join us tomorrow. We'll be talking about how to buy a laptop without overpaying for stuff that you don't need. Finally, settling the question everybody asks, do you actually need a VPN? Remember to check out the website at refreshcomputers.net. Head over to that podcast tab where you can check out this show and any of our previous episodes. This has been Greg and Mike for Refresh Computers. We'll have a fresh Sunday episode for you tomorrow morning.
