BSIT200

This week, we discussed the internet and portable/mobile computers. One of the assignments for this week was to come up with a scenario in which we had to find replacement parts for a laptop, and how to go about doing so. What I want to talk about is the classic “Engineers vs Mechanics” debate. For those who are unfamiliar, mechanics (those who work on cars) are constantly cursing engineers for designing something in such a way that seems to only be created to give extra work to mechanics who must work on the stuff. Things such as putting a cross-member in the way of an oil drain plug so it creates an absolute mess if you don’t remove the cross member (unnecessary on a good majority of vehicles). Or using a bolt 4 inches longer than it needs to be, so you need to remove the entire engine to replace a pulley. Stuff like that. That same principle transfers over to the laptop engineer/technician world. One of the laptops I’ve had in the past was an MSI GS65 Stealth Thin. The only th...

This week we discussed the ins and outs of networking. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) I am also taking BSIT 220 this semester which goes over networking in depth, and all of the topics discussed this week have already been gone over in much more depth within that class, so I was unable to gain much value from this week.  One thing I will say is: I find it funny that Michael Meyers, the author of both the A+ and Networking+ textbooks we're reading, just copy and pasted a lot of the information from one to the other (though I'm not sure which came first) to help the writing process go along quicker. 

Chapter 17 in this week’s readings talked about the different display technologies in use today, and specifically on page 691 talks about OLED technology being a little bit of a niche product. I guess I can’t argue that the price-point of most of the OLED monitors and TVs kind of forces themselves into a niche corner, I am one of the lucky ones who have taken the plunge into OLED territory, and I don’t think I’ll be getting out of the pool any time soon. As Meyers mentioned in the book, one of the issues that plagues OLED screens is burn-in. Back in the days with CRT burn in happened when a static image was left on a screen too long and started degrading the phosphorus coating on the screen which didn’t allow light to be absorbed as well. OLED burn-in is very similar in that the organic LEDs that are used more often will eventually not be able to produce as much light. In both cases, when burn-in occurs there will be a faint permanent ‘shadow’ on the screen wherever the phosphorus/...

One of the first important tasks I was assigned when I started my current job was learning how Active Directory worked to be able to add and remove new and leaving employees as necessary. Thankfully either Active Directory is not that hard to understand and use, or our company’s implementation/use-case for AD was so simple that I was able to pick it up naturally. (Most likely the latter) File and folder sharing/permissions were up on the table next and thankfully those were also very simple to understand. We have since moved to the fully cloud based Entra ID and SharePoint/OneDrive to replace our on-prem AD and file servers, and it was a little bit of a learning curve but I have since figured out how to do everything I need with those and am constantly learning new things to do in Entra and Exchange Admin Center.

This week I would like to comment on how pleased I am with the state that the computer industry is making hardware simpler to install. Specifically hard drive or general storage installation. Back when I first started messing with computer hardware, IDE was thankfully already on its way out but having to figure out what jumpers you needed to set or not set and figure out why and having to deal with the flat and wide IDE cables that blocked airflow was just a PITA. Moving to SATA, which is a much better system, where each drive gets its own channel and doesn’t conflict with any other installed drives and of course comes with a speed upgrade that most generational improvements come with. With SATA drives, the only thing you must worry about are power and data cables. These days, even SATA is starting to go by the wayside, with the addition of M.2 drives which are much simpler to install than even SATA since the port provides power and data directly to the drive with no cabling. My cu...

Hello again everyone! Chapter 7 of the assigned reading this week talked about computer Power Supplies, and how to diagnose dead units, remove old ones, and install new ones. One of the statements in the reading that I wanted to comment on was the following:  “Modular cables are cool! You add only the lines you need for your system. On the other hand, some techs claim that modular cables hurt efficiency because the modular connectors add resistance to the lines. You make the choice: Is a slight reduction in efficiency worth a clean look?” (Meyers, 2022, p. 269) I think the one thing they didn’t mention that leads me to side with Modular power supplies is the ease of replacement when it does come down to it. (So long as you use a modular PSU from the same brand using the same types of cables as the one you’re replacing). With those types of modular PSUs, it’s very close to a drop-in replacement, since you don’t have to undo any cables connected to the motherboard or any componen...