CompuClever Blog

How to Choose a Good USB Data and Charging Cable

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You may have noticed that no two USB cables are created the same. Why does one USB cable seem to charge your devices more quickly than another? To help you answer this question, we’ve created this short guide about what to look for when you buy a new USB charging cable.

Some USB chargers will charge your devices more quickly than others. However, your charger is not the only determining factor. The wrong USB cable can also slow down charging speeds.

The Lower the Gauge, the Faster the Charge

It all has to do with the gauge of the internal wires that make up your USB cable. “Gauge” refers to the thickness of the wires; the higher the gauge, the thinner the wire. Cheaper USB cables will often have thinner wires.

Thinner, higher-gauge wires are obviously made with less material and therefore cannot deliver as much current – charging will take longer. This is because a thicker wire reduces electrical resistance and allows for a better flow of electrons.

The length of your USB cable also affects how fast you can charge your device. For example, cheap, short cables may charge your device fairly quickly, while cheap, long cables could take longer. Continue reading...

What Is Bluetooth, and Does It Cause Cancer?

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Bluetooth is a safe, useful technology, and there are many affordable options that allow audiophiles to go “cord-free.”

Bluetooth is the next big thing in consumer technology. At least, that’s what companies like Apple are betting on.

In September Apple unveiled the iPhone 7. While some are saying the new iPhone features revolutionary technology under the hood, Apple got the most press for deciding to kill the headphone jack.

Instead, if you want to listen to anything on an iPhone 7 you’ll have to use wired (and very expensive) earphones that plug into the iPhone 7’s Lightning power port. You can also purchase Apple’s sophisticated Bluetooth earphones—aka “AirPods“, and a supercomputer in their own right.

Thanks to Apple’s iPhone 7 launch, then, Bluetooth has come back into style. But what is Bluetooth? And it is any good for listening to music?

Bluetooth—Simple to Set Up

Bluetooth is a wireless technology that transmits and exchanges data over very short distances. For example, while your WiFi router reaches to pretty much every part of your home, Bluetooth transmits up to twenty feet or so.

Bluetooth’s main advantage over WiFi technology is that is extremely simple to set up—typically all it takes is the press of a button in an app. Continue reading...

Why You Should Always Backup Locally—Even if You Use Cloud Storage

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Thanks to smartphones, video cameras and other gadgets we all create a massive amount of files. Often our computer hard drives are too small to store all of this information. Luckily, there are free remote backup services such as Dropbox and Google Drive that can automatically upload our files remotely.

The biggest problem with saving remotely on cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox is you could be hacked. Even Apple’s iCloud service, with some of the toughest security in the world, has been hacked.

So, it’s always a good idea to backup locally first before relying on remote backup. USB or “thumb” drives are handy devices that in many ways can be the perfect solution for local backups.

Reliable and cheap, USB drives can store anything from 1GB (the size of a feature-length HD movie) to 1TB (1000 feature-length movies) of data. Unlike a powered HDD backup drive, USB drives are also portable and easier to keep safe.

How Many Files Can Be Stored on a USB Drive?

If you’re backing up images from your camera and want to know how many will fit on a USB thumb drive all you really need is to know is the size of the image, which is measured in megapixels. Continue reading...

BloomSky – Serious but Fun

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Welcome to the third and concluding edition of our series on the BloomSky Weather Sensor review. In the previous articles we covered the introduction to the community and the technology. The second article focused on putting the device together right out of the box. Now it’s time to provide information on the software for the device and then give our overall review of the product along with our recommendations

The Device


There are going to be some of our readers who are inspired by this weather sensor technology and want to take the step of buying an actual weather device for themselves. We covered how to assemble the device and now we will look at connecting it with the available software. First we’ll review some of the features of the device.

A Serious Weather Station

For weather hobbyists, you will immediately recognize the value of the BloomSky device. It has sensors to constantly measure the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, along with ultra-violet sun exposure and a rain sensor. It is built to withstand weather extremes and it can last 20 days on one battery charge, and it can be powered by solar or AC power.

BloomSky enables you to connect your device and share weather data with Internet weather service like the Weather Underground. Continue reading...

BloomSky Weather Sensor – Setup

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Welcome to the next installment of our series on BloomSky – the weather technology. In this article we review the BloomSky Weather sensor. We will be taking the device, as any new user would, out of the box. Then we will follow the instructions and put it together. Get ready for our first impressions offered by our Tech Support specialist as he unwraps and assembles the weather sensor device from BloomSky.

When the box from BloomSky arrived, Andy was quite excited about it. So, I was somewhat surprised when he asked me to set up the unit and document the proceedings. I’m Richard from the Technical Support team and I would think the assumption is that this should be a snap for me, right? The truth is I learn how to do things by repetition – doing them over and over. However, it’s not likely that I would be a good assembly line worker – my strength is working with computers! So, if I can succeed at setting this up… most anyone can.

An offer for our readers:
For those who are interested in joining the BloomSky network, BloomSky is currently offering an unprecedented special promotion to our readers. Simply follow the link and use coupon code: COMPUCLEVER to get up to $40 off when you purchase a solar powered BloomSky weather station. 
Continue reading...