Reasons Shy It's Worth Buying a 4k TV Now

4K is becoming a new household standard for consumers. 4K UHD TVs are now starting to settle in with a price that reflects build quality, and more and more companies are now focusing on producing more 4K UHD TVs than regular HD TVs. It's inevitable that they will eventually replace our current TVs and move us into a brighter, crisper era of entertainment in the near future.

Here's why some 4K TVs are tremendously cheaper or more expensive than others.

Quality to the Dollar

A TV's display quality is the most important factor for purchasing one, right? The look and feel of a TV, based on the display, can vary widely in a number of ways, far more than simply the amount of pixels packed into a given space. A 4K, or UHD TV will pack in double the amount of pixels as a regular 2K (High Definition) display.

In layman's terms, when 4K content is played on the display, it will look sharp and clear and roughly twice as good as that of a typical HD TV. In addition, many of these 4K UHD TVs will offer more features such as High Dynamic Range (HDR), which is a screen technology that allows a wider color gamut, deeper blacks, and brighter whites. Essentially, the color appears to "pop" a bit more.

Watching 4K Content

If you still watch a lot of content via cable TV, you will not benefit as much from a 4K UHD display. This is because the technology is not yet set up to sent 4K content over the airwaves.

However, there is an increasing amount of 4K content being released on platforms such as Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. If you plan to ditch your cable provider or already have done so, a 4K UHD TV may be a great choice for you.

If you would like to play games in 4K, the Xbox One S and PS4 Pro offer 4K output. Do bear in mind, though, that not all games are offered in 4K. Rest assured that the number of game studios producing 4K content will definitely grow as time goes on.

Additional Features

When shopping for any electronic gadget or appliance, you always consider all of the added features when making a purchase to get the best value. Not every brand is the same, or even similar for that matter, when it comes down to how color and sharpness will display, the user interface of smart capabilities, and so on.

4K TVs are more expensive than others because more features added into it to make it "smart." A 4K UHD TV marked as "smart" will offer some sort of user interface that enables you to interact with content-based apps such as YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix. This often comes as an additional cost.

Curved TVs will have a slight curve in the display that adds depth in the content being viewed and it makes viewing content from the side of the room a bit easier. And since it's more difficult to produce this type of display, expect that prices will be tremendously higher.

Yelling at the Tech Agent Who is Trying to Help You Will Not Fix Your Computer

In short, users, customers, and callers should try to stay calm when talking to the tech support person on the phone or online because shouting or scolding him will never solve any computerproblem.

Also, not everyone is good at explaining technical computer problems, but the job of technical support persons is to listen intently and carefully to the caller or user. On the user’s part, it helps if the problem can be properly explained, so some advice may be helpful on this part.

Computer complaints, frustration and feelings of helplessness are pretty standard for people who spend their work virtually sitting in front of a computer for the whole day, 5 days a week. So, too, is the temptation to chew out the tech support professional at the other of the phone when you’re staring at a blue screen and you have a deadline coming up.

But before you bite off the head of the help desk analyst, consider that your actions might have consequences later.

People tend to be more emotive over the phone or in an e-mail than they would ever be in person. Especially on the phone, we say things that we would never say face-to- face. In the workplace, the customer is always right but sometimes, a customer can get out of hand and needs to be put in their place. Customers need to be careful because a comment you might call snide or just a way to blow off steam might be construed by a help desk attendant and the HR department as a rather serious workplace offense called bullying.

The customer might simply describe their behavior as being annoyed, dissatisfied or snippy. But the technical support person on the other end of the phone might perceive those comments as belligerent or bullying. If someone feels they are being bullied or intimidated or disrespected, they have a right to complain.

Tech support help desk analysts also complain that there are times when they have customers with high positions or jobs who demand things, demand them immediately, and demand them rudely. In those cases, the tech support can go to the supervisor and simply say: “This guy is really out of line.” Usually, that takes care of the problem, although it may involve a long drawn out out-of- court discussion between the customer and the HR department, and in some cases, even lawyers become involved.

People should realize that tech support call centers sometimes get backed up and need to prioritize the most critical problems first. So if every caller who can’t get her solitaire to work thinks it’s the end of the world, there is now a certain sense of entitlement. People think they’re paying for a service and can walk all over the people providing that service.

And it is unfortunate that 80-20 rule very much applies in these situations; 80 per cent of the calls come from the same 20 per cent of the customers. But if a customer gets belligerent toward one of the technicians, again remember that this has consequences.

Three Rules of Thumb in Evaluating If Your IT Support is Reliable

When looking for an IT support company, you need to remember that not all companies are cut from the same cloth. But all will offer the basics like support contracts, telephone assistance, and a dedicated IT support technician for each complaint. However, it’s worth spending a little time to do some detailed research on how reliable your IT support company really is, how to tell if the company is really trustworthy, and what 3 main questions to ask to make your evaluation complete. This may seem a bit time-consuming, but if you do this, it will save you fewer hours of headaches when you eventually do need to call for IT tech support.

What Support Packages Do You Offer?

Naturally, you need to ask what services and packages they offer in conjunction with these services. Do inquire in detail what support packages the company offers and can they cater for the needs of your business today and any demands you may have tomorrow? Most companies will offer one or more of the following:

Pay-as- you-go support – You only pay an hourly rate for the time you need, or a fixed price fee for the call out. You should ask how they really charge because a fixed price might be beneficial for problems that take a long time to fix, but an hourly rate will be more cost effective in the long run.

Break-fix support – If something breaks, then the company will fix it. They won’t, however, show you how to improve your computer’s performance or how to fix a similar problem in the future.

Managed service support – This is where your IT support company actively monitors and manages your systems to reduce the chance of things going awry. With other companies, they call this a subscription support service wherein the company may or may not monitor your computers but repairs are done automatically once you make a call because the customer is paying a fixed monthly fee.

In addition, do inquire if all quoted prices are inclusive of everything or will there be hidden charges and fees.

How Qualified Are You?

Look out for a team of qualified technicians and engineers. What accreditations have they earned? What training do they have? On top of this, it’s always good to ask about what kind of training they are currently taking or are planning to in the near-future. This is because the best IT support companies will keep their staff trained to the highest levels possible. Also, aside from having college degrees in IT and computer engineering, ask the company what licenses the technicians and engineers hold.

What is and isn’t supported?

Although they may offer Windows and Microsoft Office support, you should find out if they can help with other things like Wi-Fi routers, printers, and even mobile devices. If they can, it means you only have to talk to one person when dealing with any IT headaches. This can make life much easier.

Portable Apps That You'll Find Useful for Your Windows PC

Over the years, you've probably accumulated a number of USB flash drives to the point that you don't know what to do with them anymore. So here's a tip -- you could fill one of your spare flash drives with portable apps, which you can run directly from the disks and plug-and-play in whatever computer you like.

Go ahead and fill up that lonely USB flash drive with these portable apps for Windows, instead of letting it lie on your drawer and just accumulate dust.

Google Chrome

Portable web browsers let you surf the Web without leaving any trace of your personal information like browsing history, cookies, login sessions, etc. on the computer. Obviously, as soon as you're connected to the Internet with the portable version of Google Chrome and use your Google accounts, your data will inevitably end up in the company's vaults, but Chrome users are aware of that by now. The fact remains that it's the best browser around.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a free and open-source application with a high compression ratio and powerful file manager to help you extract compressed files and create your own compressed files in several different formats. It's definitely worth keeping around in your USB portable apps collection, especially when you need to do some quick compressing.

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is another free and open-source image editing tool that's packed with powerful features. It's a perfect alternative for Adobe Photoshop, considerably less resource-intensive, and contains many of the same advanced features for hardcore editing. It takes a little getting used to if you're coming from Photoshop, but it does much the same job, and it can do it portably without Adobe's massive installation process.

VLC Media Player

VLC has long since been the fastest, most robust video player around, and being portable makes it even better. Using VLC media player as a portable, you can play a vast number of video and audio formats such as MKV, alongside the standard MP4 that makes up most movies. It has just about all the video codecs you need built in, too, so there's no need to download extra ones.

CCleaner

CCleaner is a free Windows clean-up utility, which lets you clean such junk as redundant registry keys, cookies, and excess temporary files off your system. If you want to wipe your web browsing after you've been in an Internet cafe, for instance, then you can just pop in a USB stick with the portable version of CCleaner on it, then use it to wipe all your browsing history. You can even let it clean up the entire computer while you're at it!

LastPass

LastPass is a great password manager, which lets you securely store and manage all your passwords. It garbles and encrypts your passwords and stores them online. Handily, the portable version integrates with portable web browsers like Firefox and Chrome.