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Editors' note: This post is Part 4 of an ongoing series that aims to explain digital storage, based on questions and inquiries from readers. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

Made to replace hard drives in many applications, SSDs have nothing in common with hard drives in terms of how they handle data. By popular demand, I am explaining in this post how they work in layman's terms. I'll also answer other SSD-related questions.

To understand how an SSD works, let's start with two most important parts: the controller and the … Read more

Google Tasks graduated from Gmail Labs almost four years ago, but have you really taken a look at what it can do? It's true that part of its appeal is in its simplicity, however, if you haven't taken a deeper look into its features, you might be missing out on some great tools for organizing your tasks. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of Google Tasks for Gmail:

1. Quickly get to Tasks. The keyboard shortcut, G followed by K, quickly opens Tasks in Gmail. If Tasks is already open, the shortcut will … Read more

Fewer people are illegally downloading and sharing music, NPD Group said in a report today.

Among those surveyed for NPD's "Annual Music Study 2012," 40 percent who illegally downloaded music via peer-to-peer services in 2011 said they had stopped or decreased their illegal downloads in 2012.

Overall, the number of illegally downloaded songs from P2P services dropped by 26 percent in 2012 from 2011.

Part of that was due to an overall decline in the use of P2P services. At the 2005 peek of P2P file sharing networks, 33 million people used them. For 2012, that number … Read more

High Resolution Technologies makes some of the very best and most affordable digital-to-analog converters on the market. The company's newest model, the MicroStreamer, is a tiny thing, just 2.5 inches by 1.2 inches by 0.4 inch, and since it's USB-powered it doesn't have a power supply or require batteries. It works as an external sound card for computers, tablets, and some smartphones. It's also a high-quality headphone amplifier. It was designed in the U.S., and the little guy's circuitboard's components are mounted in Southern California. The aluminum case is made … Read more

Are you still flying solo instead of jumping on the Mailbox or Mailstrom bandwagon? That doesn't mean you can't get a little help from Astrid, your friendly squidface to-do list app, when using Gmail in Chrome.

Each time you read your Gmail, you may star or label some of the messages that you want to get back to. This is a great idea in theory, but messages can easily be forgotten. Instead, you can add a reminder to your Astrid that will keep up with your lack of focus on the Internet.

Here's how to get started:… Read more

In the older version of Any.Do you had to schedule each task on your list individually. While this was effective in the sense that it set off notifications, it wasn't efficient. Luckily, the new Any.Do Moment feature creates a path between listing your tasks and getting things done by helping you plan out your day.

Before you get started, make sure you have the latest version of Any.Do installed on your device. You'll probably see an update, but if not, head to Google Play and grab the latest version.

Once you open Any.Do on … Read more

Ever use Google to search for an answer and when you find it in the search results and click on the page, it's gone? How annoying. Another bothersome occurrence appears when a Web page layout has changed, and the information you usually find in a certain place is now moved somewhere else. For times like this, Google's page cache is amazingly useful. The results are not 100 percent guaranteed to show you exactly what you're looking for, but hey, there's not a whole lot of 100 percent anythings left in the world.

Before Google went through … Read more

Dropbox is one of the top cloud storage solutions for anyone who needs to share or collaborate on documents, audio or images. As long as you have Internet connectivity, you can access your files from anywhere, giving you peace of mind that a specific file won't be forgotten when you're away from the computer.

If you're often saving documents or images from the Web, you may notice that the process isn't very streamlined on its own. You either have to use the Dropbox software on your PC and choose that folder every time you want to … Read more

Apple was granted design patents today for the contentious slide-to-unlock user interface asset and the design for the original iPhone.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved Apple application No. D675,639 for "ornamental design for a display screen or portion thereof with a graphical user interface," which includes illustrations of the familiar horizontal bars with rounded corners found at the bottom of locked iOS screens since the original iPhone's debut in 2007.

Slide-to-unlock functionality has become a major sticking point with handset makers. Apple, which was granted a patent for the feature in 2011, has … Read more