GeekwithEnvy

Guides

Looking at The Business of Tech and How To Make a Smart Purchase

by Leave a Comment

Cellphone with dollarsHave you ever just stopped and looked at the technology around you? Take your smart phone for example, it’s pretty amazing how much power these little devices have. Gaming on your phone was virtually non-existant 10 years ago and now we can do just about anything including having a face-to-face conversation with someone.

When we first get our new shiny device home we feel great about our purchase and can’t wait to use it. However, with todays tech culture we quickly lose this good feeling as internet buzz and advertisements start to roll in featuring a new product that outshines ours. This phenomena isn’t anything new, it’s been going on like this forever, but it’s the pace at which change is happening that really makes you feel left out.

It used to be that when you bought something it would last you for a few years or more before you needed to update, now it only takes about a year or sometimes even just a few months before we feel pressure to buy the latest and greatest. Were are told our current gadget is inferior and won’t be able to have this feature or our current device won’t work with this version of new software, then we are asked to shell out the big bucks again to play catch up.

So, what are we going to do about this? Is this ever going to change?  No, quite honestly it will probably get worse if anything. Is this really a bad thing though? I’m not so sure. I think that keeping the industry moving forward does drive the economy and can breed innovation, although I think that most of these updates are mostly cosmetic to begin with, but I digress.  It’s really about the consumer (us) and how we decide on what to buy and what not to buy. Even if you can afford it, upgrading every year can really put a hurting on you financially.

The idea here is to really think ahead before you make a purchase. Think about what you need the device for and consider all of the features it offers and how it will fit in with your life. Remember, these devices are here to work for you, not the other way around. Also, take the time of year into consideration as many deals can be found earlier in the year, and make sure you’re not buying a product right before a company is about to release it’s next big thing. Making your purchase should be a planned event and not spontaneous, do your research at home where theres no sales person trying to push you. Walk into a store well informed about the devices your interested in and that way you’ll have some confidence when it comes to making smart decisions on what you’re buying.

A little research can save you big headaches later on, look into the details like storage space for example. Do you have enough space for what your doing? Can you upgrade the device later on if your needs change? Answering these questions only takes a few minutes and the benefits are huge.

What’s not so great about the latest and greatest? Well, if you have ever bought something when it was just released you will most likely have figured out that waiting might have been a better idea. Rushing out and buying the latest can leave you to deal with all of the new bugs that come with your device. Although most new products go through varying amounts of testing in-house, the biggest test comes along on launch day. Sometimes it’s best to wait a month or so after a new product hits the market then check online forums to see and any undesirable functionality has been occurring like things failing or major glitches.

Reviews have been an extremely popular way to help you decide on what to buy next, but I caution you to take these reviews with a grain of salt. Firstly, many manufacturers will submit their own positive reviews on a product and can mislead you into thinking they are fellow consumers. This happens on more then just electronic devices, these fake reviews can pop up anywhere, like for apartments.

Sometimes you can get someone who has has a bad experience but it’s only limited to one bad unit. These people have had a truly poor experience because they happened to be unlucky enough to get the oddball defective unit. The best way to jude a review of a defective unit is to see how easily their problems were resolved, find out how their customer service responded to the problem.

Good customer service is unfortunately very rare these days and should also be considered when choosing a particular brand over another. Good customer service should be considered as a feature of the device. Look into device coverage, you may even find that you can receive discounts towards new products by sticking with that brand for the next upgrade, this happens with video card companies quite often.

Resale value is another thing to consider here, the smart phone market is a great example of how easy it is to save money on your upgrade by selling your old device. Chances are that old Android device or iOS device will sell really well, mostly because consumers have realized that they can get a great “last generation” phone for a great price from those who absolutely have to have the next best thing. This means that you too can get a great deal, look on online auction sites around the time a new product like the new iPhone is released and I’m sure you will find a ton of great deals.

The best advice that I can offer is to take your time when making decisions. Don’t be the should have, would have, could have person, be the, I planned ahead and made a smart buy person.

Guide To Understanding The Technology of OLED and LED LCD

by 1 Comment

Many of us hear the terms LED LCD and OLED and assume that they are pretty much the same thing, and some people might not even know the difference between LCD T.V’s and LED LCD T.V’s. One reason for all of this confusion is the way that manufacturers market their products and how they refer to the new “technology”  that they put into their devices.LED Abstract Image

A liquid crystal display (LCD) does not emit light itself, it requires some type of back light in order to see whatever is on the screen.  LCD screens basically control light, sometimes they let it through and sometimes they don’t, this is what produces the image we see. Using voltage and transparent conductors, each pixel can be controlled precisely.

When LCD screens first came on to the market they were primarily backlit by CCFL or Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps. These CCFL lamps are usually positioned at the edges of the LCD screen and then a light diffuser is used to spread the light across the entire screen. This method of backlighting works really well but dose not produce a very good black. The reason this method doesn’t produce a good black color is because the CCFL lamps remain at full intensity even when displaying the darker part of images, which results in a glowing effect on the screen. Often we hear commercials for T.V’s mention that they have blacker blacks, they are referring to the contrast ratio which is directly related to how backlighting is managed.

More recently, manufacturers have been using small LED lights to illuminate the LCD screen. The LED’s can be placed at the edges of the screen and the light they produce can be diffused just like the CCFL back lighting method. LED lighting uses much less electricity and are much smaller than CCFL’s, which mean you can have a thinner, lighter, and more energy efficient display panel.

In order to achieve a better contrast ratio manufacturers began to dim the backlighting when darker images appear on the screen but this method only helps when the majority of the screen is dark, which is rare in most cases and means that the contrast ratio is basically the same for the majority of what your watching since the display almost never dims. So, how can we get a better contrast ratio for every image that appears on the screen?  This is where WLED comes into play. WLED uses an entire array of LED lights that span the entire area of the LCD display. WLED allows for dimming in very specific locations of the screen which results in a very good contrast ratio. Another variation of WLED backlighting involves using RGB LED lighting instead of pure white LED’s. RGB LED  backlight screens produce superior color compared to an all white WLED display and also have a solid contrast ratio.

So now that we have a basic understanding how how LCD screens are illuminated we can start to look at why OLED is actually quite different.

Organic Light Emitting Diode or OLED technology, as the name suggests,  is an LED that uses organic compounds that emit light when electrical current is applied to them. As we mentioned before LED LCD T.V’s use and LCD screen that is backlight by LED lighting, with OLED displays, the OLED itself is the display, which means there is no need for a backlight. Since OLED displays lack a backlight they offer extremely dark blacks and very vivid and precise colors. OLED’s are basically flat in comparison to traditional LED’s which resemble little bulbs. With OLED’s being so small, manufactureres are able to make extremely thin and even flexible displays.  OLED is relatively new and still has a lot of issues including saturation problems. OLED is also quite expensive at this time due to a difficult manufacturing process.

So where does Apple’s Retina display fit in? Well Apple does utilize LED backlight LCD screens that are similar to other displays, except Apple has squeezed in more pixels which creates a higher pixel density, so high that Apple claims the human eye can not see pixelation from a normal viewing distance.

So next time you head out to buy a new display, you can walk into the store with confidence now that you have a better understanding of  how todays display technologies work.