Polar opposites.

A bit nippy,

Oh it was too hot.

These are common responses when chatting about the weather.

I personally prefer it being too hot than too cold. During my travels in Australia in 1993, I climbed Uluru, more commonly known as Ayres Rock. It was in the early hours of 7am at a relatively cool temperature of 35 degrees before rising to its peak of 40 degrees around midday.

Even the 40-degree seemed bearable in the fresh Aussie outback, which is a damn sight cooler than a 30-degree heat in central London. The mugginess is the real killer for me.

Anyway, I digress. After listening to the news headlines, I think the UK has it pretty easy when it comes to the weather.

In the last week, there have been record temperatures set at both ends of the spectrum. In Sydney, it reached a dizzy temperature of 47.3 degrees; the hottest since 1939. And in the US, the temperature dropped to a chilly -35 degrees.

These are temperatures I couldn’t imagine and wouldn’t want to experience. I did find it quite astonishing to find that Bondi beach was packed to the rafters! The mind boggles.

And talking of extreme opposites, the same can be said when choosing what type of storage to go for in a computer. When I say storage, I’m referring to the component inside the machine that stores the Apple / Windows Operating System, the applications and data.

You have two options when buying new computer; a traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or a Solid-State Drive (SSD). The difference between them is pretty much like Sydney and the US last week.

The HDD’s have been around for many years, but in my view its quite antiquated in todays world. SSD is more expensive, but the advantages are huge. Here are the main plus points.

• Uses less power than a HDD.
• Approx six times quicker in booting.
• No moving parts so it’s not vulnerable to knocks.
• Very little heat is generated.
• Failure rate is around 2 million hours of use.
• Full disk encryption is available on the majority of SSD’s.
• File opening speed up to 30% faster than HDD.
• Safe from any magnetism effect. With HDD, a magnet can erase data from the drive.
• With no moving parts, there’s no sound whatsoever.

NOTE – The SSD is not only available on new computers. If you want to significantly improve your computers’ performance and upgrade to an SSD, then please get in touch.