Everything You Need To Know About SD Card

Everything You Need To Know About SD Card

The Memory, SD (Secure Digital), Cards are used to store and share data in various electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, digital cameras and even music players. But they're manufactured in different speed classes, capacities and sizes; so, different devices are requiring different types of SD cards.

 
In this article we're going to explain the differences; so, you'll get an idea 'how to choose an SD card for your device'. 

Speed Class Rating: An SD card's speed is calculated by how quickly the information can be read from, or written to, the card. Earlier the speed was specified in 'times' rating then it was superseded by Speed Class Rating. The newer SD cards are improved the speed by increasing bus rate and offering different speeds. 

The standard speed classes are defined by SD Association, a developer and publisher for SD Card technology. The manufacturers use “speed classes” to measure the speed of an SD card.  

10, 6, 4, and 2 are the four different speed classes where class 10 is the fastest, and 2 is the slowest. Class 2, the slowest, is suitable for standard definition video recording, while classes 4 and 6 are suitable for high-definition video recording. Class 10, the fastest, is suitable for full HD video recording, and HD still consecutive recording.  

There are also two Ultra High Speed (UHS) classes, but they’re more expensive and they've designed for professional uses to the devices, which support UHS. 

Here's the associated logos, in order from slowest to fastest:

For typical usage, like smartphone, tablet or digital camera, a class 4 or class 6 SD card is better and class 10 cards are for ideal usage, when shooting high-resolution videos or RAW photos. Class 2 cards are a bit of slow sides on these days; so, it's better to avoid to buy, even they're cheap in price. 

An SD card's speed class can be identified from the card itself and they're indicated clearly on the cards as in below pictures, the left SD card is class 4 and, right is 6.

You may also get the speed class from online store during purchase or on the package when buying from any shop. 

If an SD card doesn't exist speed class symbol then assume, it's class is 0 (zero), which were designed and introduced before the speed class rating system. They were, of course, slower than a class 2 card.  

Physical size: As mentioned earlier, different devices need different types of SD cards. So, SD cards are manufactured in three different sizes. They are: Standard, Mini and Micro SD. 

Standard SD cards are the largest, measuring 32x24x2.1 mm and weighing less than two grams. Most of the digital cameras still using standard SD cards. They have the standard “cut corner”  design. 

Mini SD cards are smaller than Standard SD cards, measuring 21.5x20x1.4 mm and weighing about 0.8 grams. This is the least common size today and these cards were designed especially for mobile phones.

Micro SD cards are the smallest size, measuring 11x15x1 mm and weighing just 0.25 grams. These cards are used in cell phones and smartphones including tablets. 

Storage Capacity: The SD cards are manufactured in different storage capacities, like system's hard drives, and flash memory.

The below chart will give a brief report on Micro and Mini SD cards.

But the standard (SD) cards are 1 MB to 2 GB in capacity or perhaps 4 GB, but they're non-standard. 

The standard SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity), version 2.0, was announced in January 2006 with capacity 2 GB to 32 GB.

The standard Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC) was announced in January 2009 with version 3.01 and supports cards 32 GB to 2 TB in capacity. 

Ultra High Speed (UHS) bus, version 3.0, is introduced to both SDHC and SDXC cards, with interface speeds from 50 Mbyte/s to 104 Mbyte/s for 4-bit UHS-I bus and version 4.0, to the same, is also introduced in June 2011, allows speeds of 156 Mbyte/s to 312 Mbyte/s over 4-lane UHS-II bus, which requires an additional row of physical pins. 

Reformatting SD cards may change its cluster size, make writes less efficient and do slower or shorten it's lifespan. 

Fake SD cards are commonly found in the markets as they're mislabeled and counterfeited that reported a fake capacity and run slower than labeled.  

The pictured, at left, Samsung Pro 64GB Micro SDXC (front and back) is original and the falsification is at right, which announced even 64GB, but exist only 8GB capacity with Class 4 speed can be usable. 

So, when buying an SD card, you should have to know the right speed class, size and capacity. It's better to check what the device supports and consider what speed and capacity you actually need.

Are The Smartphones Need Really Screen Protectors?

Are The Smartphones Need Really Screen Protectors? 

Screen protectors were once practically mandatory, but the advanced technology of glass and the special coatings on screen have made the protectors  unnecessary. Many people still buy screen protectors to protect those screens from scratches but they've become less necessary. 

Nowadays, the modern devices has more advanced screen protection built-in as most of the smartphones are coming with CorningGorillaGlass, a toughened, hard glass with high scratch resistance. CorningInc, an American company, has released new versions on Gorilla Glass over the years, but Gorilla Glass3 was introduced in 2013, which is up to 3 times more damage resistant than Gorilla Glass2 and better able to resist the deep scratches. This is the first glass, designed through an atomic-scale modeling and claimed to be 40% more scratch-resistant. 

The keys that you kept in your pocket shouldn’t be able to scratch a modern Gorilla Glass display. Gorilla Glass is harder than the metal such as keys, coins, and other common household metal items. And you’ll see plenty of YouTube Video's Using Knives On Gorilla Glass.

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While fixing a screen protector, you've to be positioned it correctly to fit and applied flat on the screen without any bubbles or cracks appearing under the protector. As the screen protectors seem softer and having adhesive qualities may change the experiences of your smartphone's touch screen. 

However, some materials such as sand, hard rocks can scratch Gorilla Glass, and dropping your smartphone on concreted floors will also cause damage. So, if you spend a lot of time at the beach, then your smartphone needs screen protector. And screen protectors also boast anti-fingerprint coatings, but some modern smartphones having oleophobic coatings, which repels the oil on your fingers and reducing unsightly fingerprints. 

So, screen protectors are not required, if you handle the smartphone in a good way and do not keep your keys or coins along with smartphone in one pocket because there's a chance those items could scratch some other parts of your phone.

How To Free-Up Space On Your Android Devices

How To Free-Up Space On Your Android Devices

Low priced Android phones and tablets doesn't come with more internal memory. If the device is running out-of-space for Apps or data then have to be freeing-up some space. This article explains how to freeing-up space on device storage and SD Card i.e., USB storage. The space on device storage is for Apps and the SD card storage is for other data.

By default, the Apps are installed on Android device's system storage. But they can be moved to SD card to free-up some spaces on device storage. Most Apps may work good when moved to SD card; but there are two options. 

1. You can move only the Apps to SD card, if the developer has include supportive for their Apps. 
2. When you connect the phone to a computer, along with SD card, then SD card storage will be disconnected and the Apps, which you installed on SD card, wouldn't be available because your phone's storage is mounted on computer. 

So, the Apps such as live wallpapers, widgets, and launchers must be installed on phone's internal storage, itself.

To Free-up Space: 
Setting > Applications.

Tap Applications to view the installed Apps. 

To know the Apps, how they're occupying space, tap Menu button then select Sort by size.

Now the phone reveals the largest Apps at the top of the list. 

Tap the desired App you want to move the SD card. 

From Apps detailed screen, tap the option “Move to SD card” (or “Move to USB storage”) to free up space of your system storage.

If you want to move multiple Apps, at a time, to SD card (or USB storage) then use the free App2SD or AppMgr.

To Clear App's cache or data: 
From the related App info screen, you can clear cache or data to freeing-up some space. 

Clearing cache means the temporary files that stored on your device will be cleared; but clearing data is different and more drastic that will set the application to its original state, which means erase all your custom settings of data.

If you want to clear caches for multiple Apps then use the App: AppCacheCleaner. 

To Uninstall Apps: 
It's obvious that uninstalling Apps is one of the best way to freeing-up space. The Apps that you're not using should be uninstalled, even the purchased App and it can be re-downloaded again, if you need.

To See Disk Usage: 
You can view the files that taking-up space on device storage. 

Using the App FreeDiskUsageApp, will give a graphical visualization to the files taking-up space. After installing, tap the folders then zoom-in and go deeper to see the contents.

Now from the contents, you can delete the files / folders by tapping Menu button and choose Delete to erase the selected item.

To Uploading Photos: 
Snapped photos are saved either on device storage or SD card; so, they're occupying more space and they have to be removed to somewhere like GalleryApp. There were plenty of free Gallery Apps available on Google Play and you may choose one of them then launch it on your device. 

Once you've installed, open camera's folder then tap Menu button and select one or more photos you wish to upload. Tap the Share button and choose, for example, Picasa, an image organizer and image viewer for digital photos, including photo-sharing website, to upload and share the photos. They’ll be stored on Google server and can be retrieved on your device whenever you want to view them. It's a good way to back up your photos. 

Further, if Google+ App has already been installed on your device then the photos on your device will automatically uploaded on your Google+; so, you can delete the entire photos from the phone and free-up the space. 

You may also move your photos from Android devices to the PC, connecting a USB cable or using the App AirDroid to transfer files over Wi-Fi.

Stop Printing And Enjoy Digital Era

Stop Printing And Enjoy Digital Era 

Printing, once, was necessary, when computers and printers were heavy, and kept on your desk-tops. Nowadays, printing is going costly because they often requiring expensive ink cartridges and papers.

All kind of printed papers cluttered top of your desk and they must be properly organized, unless you’ll never be able to find what you’re looking for.

But in this digital era, we just walk around with computers in our pockets, like a piece of paper, and cloud services help us to do back-ups and syncs all our documents across all our devices. So, the saved documents can be searched, easily, by the words they contain and no worries for a complicated filing system. 

Some peoples may have stopped printing, long ago, but there are many peoples, who still print e mails, web pages regularly. 

Through this article, we'll guide you some tips of way to away from the printer and the way will be saving and organizing information, which makes sense! 

Creating a Digital File Cabinet: is a good way that allows you to have one consistent location, where you've save everything. There are some sort of cloud services like  Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and MicrosoftOneDrive that syncs across all your devices and you can access them on smartphones, tablets as well as your PC. And if you really prefer local storage, then save your files to a folder on your PC and be sure to sync it up with the cloud service(s) that you're using. 

Print to PDF: If you'd like to print anything such as a receipt, e mail, webpage or any document  then it can be printed to a PDF file. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t included a built-in PDF printer; so, installing a PDF printer on Windows system will allow to print PDF files from any form of application. After installation, a new virtual PDF printer will be added on the list of installed printers. When printing any document over the PDF printer, a new PDF file will be created on your system, instead of printing, as a physical document. Then the document can be stored in something like Dropbox or Evernote.  

You may choose a variety of free PDF printers available online and CutePDF Writer is a free version for PDF converter, which virtually enables Windows applications to convert professional quality PDF documents.

During installation be sure to uncheck AskToolbar, which is noted as malware toolbar, and couldn't be removed from most common browsers once installed. 

Emails, web pages and even maps can also be printed to PDF in the same way and they're able to save, instead of printing, in a separate folder on your system / cloud services, then can be accessed later. 

It's also possible to bookmark the web pages to view later and the bookmarks can be synced across all your devices, too.  

If you'd like to read the web pages later, use a service like Pocket or Instapaper to create a list of stuff you like to read. These services take the web pages, convert them to a readable, text-only article, and even store them in offline mode on mobile devices so you can read them later without having to print. 

So, the digital work place, where you've stored a number of documents, offers plenty of advantages such as:

• No need to buy expensive ink, printers, and papers; you’ll save money.
• The files can be backed-up, if they stored over cloud services. They can be accessed anywhere using smartphone or tablet, if you're away from PC.
• You can search and find the electronic documents, which you need, over cloud services that has full text search features.  
• No worries for storing, organizing and making space to the printed documents. The digital workspace will be de-cluttering your documents.

The printed old documents, which were in your possession, has also be converted into digital versions; but it seems lot of work.

However, if they're important and necessary then you may scan and save them in PDF file format using a scanner.

The sensitive documents can also be stored online but you should use encryption and create an encrypted container then store them on your cloud services. People will need a password to access these sensitive documents.

10 Essential Portable Apps To Be Carried On Your USB Drive

10 Essential Portable Apps To Be Carried On Your USB Drive 

Portable App is a computer program, which can be carried around on a handy, portable device and used on any Windows computers. The portable device could be a USB flash stick, portable hard drive, iPod or any other devices that plugged in or your cloud drive is synced. And when you unplug the device, none of your data is left behind.

Nowadays, the memory sticks are so cheap, in the market, including the larger capacity, even 64GB, wouldn't break-up your wallet! With such larger capacities, you may store a lot of documents, pictures and even music album; but apart from these you may turn the USB stick into a veritable knife of tools with utilities. Yes, using with right tools and utilities, you may turn the USB stick to browse the web, check e mails or even edit the photos and no matter what's installed on your PC that you're using!

Web Browsing: For web browsing, there were many portable versions are available, in which Chrome and Firefox has also the portable versions. Once installed these portable versions on USB drive, you may add your favorite add-ons and extensions. As you're running the browser from USB stick, you won't leave any cookies, browsing history or even temporary files on the system you're using.

It is ideal for using in Internet Cafes or where you doesn't like the people to know what you've been accessing.
  

Safe Passwords: If you doesn't like to store your passwords online with a service like LastPass, then you can arrange a password vault instead. KeePass is an open source, free portable password manager, which is secured with a single master key, and there's no restriction to keep internet passwords, valuable information such as bank card PIN's, Windows / software serial numbers, user name with passwords, server connection details and etc., It's a best place to keep, not only, the above said; but you may add much more.

Make sure the master key you choose is strong and to be encrypted with your password database.

Zip Files: Windows has the ability to open and create .zip files; but, if you'd like to download .rar files then you're out of luck! Here's a free, open source portable version 7-Zip is one of the best desktop archiving tool, through which you may open compressed archive formats such as .zip, .rar, .gzip, .tar and .arj, including Cab and ISO files (useful for extract individual Windows files).  

Cloud Storing: Certainly, everyone of us is a big fan for Cloud and its Applications such as Google Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive and Drop Box; but without an Internet connection these aren't so helpful. So, just step on portable office App, like LibreOffice &  OpenOffice.org, which has fully featured suites with good office compatibility and both are open source, too.  

LibreOffice will open most of the MS Office documents, even complicated spreadsheets.

Photo Editing: Gimp, is an open source, portable image editor, has powerful tasks. You can took it along your USB stick to crop, resize the pictures and correcting the colors.

For Entertainments: VLC Media Player, a free open source portable multimedia version, which can allow you to play various types of audio and video formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg with different streaming protocols.                     

File Recovery: Even the recycle bin, in Windows, gives a second chance on file deletion and if anyone wants to recover the deleted data then it's a headache and he has to install more software on his system. If you need to recover deleted data, then Recuva, a portable version, will help you to recover deleted files, emails, and even the images. You can use it as an ideal portable, which lives on your USB drive without leaving any traces of use on your PC.

This portable version is available for 32 and 64 bit systems.

Antivirus On The Go: You're confident on your PC is free from viruses, but you shouldn't trust anyone, who handles your PC, even for a while. So, it is better to carry a digital prophylactic app ClamWin, a portable antivirus package, and use it on any computer to scan files on the go, without leaving any personal information behind.

Spyware Detection and Removal: Generally, antivirus programs aren't looking at spyware or other malware on your PC. When browsing some sensitive websites like net banking, the usage track and registry issues to be cleaned and fixed unless the system gets infection as the threats are emerging daily. Spybot Search & Destroy is one of the best spyware scanner, which detects then removes tens of thousands of spyware and malware and enables to delete those annoying tracking cookies used by advertising.       

Protecting Your USB Stick: One of the drawback of USB stick is, too easy to lost, because they're tiny in size, but keeping on your key-chain is a bit safer. If you lost it along with sensitive / private information then you've to face problem. So, its better to secure the private data by doing encryption, an encoding process for data that can be read only by authorized person, which runs from USB stick. WinmagicEncryption, is an encryption tool that will run from your USB stick, enabling you to encrypt and decrypt files on the go. However, it needs admin rights to the computer you are using.

What's Cache File? Is It Make Your Browsing Faster?

What's Cache File? Is It Make Your Browsing Faster?  

Caching is a storage mechanism for web documents, such as HTML pages and images, to reduce the usage of  bandwidth, server load, and perceived lag.  

Browser creates cache for some reason and caches are not the browsing history but it contains copy of images, Java Script files and etc., for the visited websites and stored on hard drives. The cache is a place where the browser stores copies of these files, and it doesn’t have to be downloaded again when you visit the same web page, next time. When revisiting the same websites, the caches will be retrieved from hard drive(s) and speeding up the browser to open the web page and saving download bandwidth as well.

So, browser caches are good for our browsing experiences and if you erase the caches, regularly, then the system just slowing down your web browsing while the browser rebuilds the caches, again. Browsers also limit the amount of data that stored in cache; so, the browser will automatically purge the old data and keep the cache size in control and every browser has it's own cache files.

As mentioned earlier that the cache took some hard disk space and when you use a tool to clean some data like history, then the tool could able to remove the browser caches, too. So, when using such a tool, for example: CCleaner, you should have to un-check Cache option to prevent from clearing the browser's cache. If you're using CCleaner or a similar tool to wipe-out some unwanted files, left by certain programs, then keep in mind to un-check the option of Cache; so, the tool remembers your preferred setting in the future.

However, when using FireFox browser, you can erase browsing and download history, cookies and even other data without erasing caches. You've to remove tick mark from cache box, then caches wouldn't be erased. And you may also erase the browsing and download history, cookies and even caches for only a small period of time, like past hour. This will helpful, when you're using other peoples system for an hour or more, which wipes away the tracks of your browsing without clearing the entire caches. 

To get this option: History > Clear Recent History .... then choose your appropriate option from Time range to clear.

The similar ways have to be applied to stop clearing caches on IE, Chrome or Maxthon browsers, where IE calls the caches as Temporary Internet Files, Chrome and Maxthon calls it as Cache.

When using IE: Internet Option > General tab then ... Browsing History > Settings then Website Data Settings.

From Website Data Settings window you may do all the required arrangements as per your need.

  
When using Google Chrome: Just type chrome://cache in the address bar then Enter. Chrome browser reveals the list of caches as shown in the below picture.

If you really want to clear the caches on Chrome, then go Settings (type chrome://settings in the address bar or choose Settings option from Customize and control i.e., Menu bar) and choose History > Clear browsing data.
 
From Clear browsing data window, you may do all the required arrangements as per your need.

When using Maxthon: From Menu, click and open Clear browsing history. From this window you may do all the required arrangements as per your need.
 

Suppose you've watch some sensitive websites, in a frequent manner, then its cache should have to be cleared, every time; because, other people may able to see you've been there. Rather clearing the caches every time, for the sensitive websites, just use Private Browsing Mode, which doesn't represented your cache. This feature is safe and not necessary to clear the caches, even if you visit several times. 

The features are called: 
in Firefox, Private Browsing ....

 in Chrome, Incognito Mode ....
 

in IE, InPrivate Browsing, and

 

in Maxthon, Private Mode that can be accessed from Menu > New Window section > Private tab. When click Private tab, a New tab (for private mode) will be opened as shown in the below picture. 
So, when browsing over these features, you'll be safe and the browser wouldn't kept the cache files, browsing history and even the data that you've accessed.