Resisitive vs Capacitive - Know your touchscreen

Maybe you have realized that your touchscreen device does not work quite the same way as your friend's, but do you know why?

Well, it can be because you're both using different touchscreen technology.

You see there are two types of touchscreens:
1. Resistive touchscreens  
2. Capacitive touchscreens

Resistive touchscreens work based on pressure - the screen is made up of several different layers of plastic.  As you apply pressure to the top-most layer (the part you can touch) it flexes onto the layer below allowing a circuit to be completed, this of course tell the device which part of the screen was pressed.

Pros:

• Cheaper to manufacture - as a result they are found on cheaper devices
• Resistive touchscreens are versatile - they can be operated with a finger, fingernail, stylus, pen, pencil etc.
• Can be used with handwriting recognition systems - being able to write with a stylus as you would with a pen on a sheet of paper
• Somewhat more accurate than capacitive touchscreens
• Does not "break" as easily as capactive screens' glass panels

Cons:

• There is little to no multi-touch support - this means that pinch-to-zoom is not something you can count on with this type of screen
• It is quite vulnerable to scratches - then again it is plastic
• Poor visibility in direct sunlight mostly due to the multiple layers reflecting light

Capacitive touchscreens do not rely on pressure, instead they are made of a glass panel coated with a transparent conductor which is able to sense the conductive properties of objects, such as the human finger (or toe...lol).  Because of the presence of glass as opposed to plastic, capacitive screens tend to used hardened or chemically treated glass such as the now famous Gorilla glass from Corning.

Pros:

• Supports multi-touch - the newer ones supporting up to ten-points multi-touch
• Excellent visibility even in direct sunlight
• Not easily scratched if you're lucky enough to have something like Gorilla Glass
• Highly sensitive to finger touch making it extremely easy to use
• Smoother response
• Glossy look and feel which makes it seem more expensive - oh yeah it is more expensive...lol

Cons:

• More expensive than Resistive touch screen
• Does not work with inanimate objects such as fingernails or pens
• The glass panel is more susceptible to breaking than resistive screens

Boot Windows 7 Faster

One of the reasons for Windows 8 booting faster than Windows 7 is because it has fewer extras enabled by default.

These extras include features/services such as Remote Differential Compression, XPS Services, Windows Gadget Platform among others that you’ll probably never use.

To disable these features in Windows 7 (which is completely safe to do by the way), follow the steps listed below:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Programs
4. Click ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ (found at the top left of the window)
5. Remove the ticks/check marks from the boxes next to the options you do not want (make a note of them in case you decide to turn them back on later)
6. Click OK
7. Restart your computer - the computer will have to configure the changes you've made so check your speed from the second restart after making the changes. 

NB:  I did experience a slight increase as opposed to a significant increase in boot-performance on my computer, but that is due largely to the fact that my computer is already almost tweaked to its limit for performance.  
Please let me know what your experience is like in the comments section.

You can also check these links for more performance enhancing tweaks:

• Remove unwanted fonts
• Clean up your hard drive
• Defragmenting your drive
• Speed up shut down time
• Stop unwanted programs from starting

Tech myth - the more megapixels the better

Many persons including myself (at one point, long, long ago) were fooled into believing that the more megapixels your digital camera or smartphone camera has the better the quality of the picture you'd be getting from it.

Well this is not completely true.

Megapixels do matter when it comes to being able to "blow up" or enlarge the pictures you take without them getting all pixelated (seeing the little dots/squares that form the picture)or distorted, but aside from that the more important things to consider are the quality of the camera lens and the size of it's light sensor.

You see there comes a point where megapixels no longer matter which is why it is possible to have a camera with, for instance, a 8-megapixel rating that would take much better quality pictures than one that might have a 16-megapixel rating.

For precise, beautiful images megapixels alone will not be enough.  You need a good lens, big light sensor (which is absent in present smartphones...yeah Nokia we're waiting) and megapixels.  Shop wisely!

What about multi-core processors on smartphones you ask?  I'll be addressing that one some time later (smile).