FAQs: Computer hardware

Why doesn't my printer work?

If your printer was working and then inexplicably stopped, the first thing to do is to check your cable connections. If you are still experiencing the problem, and you are running Windows, it's quite possible that the driver for the printer has become corrupted: uninstall your printer driver and reinstall it. If you are receiving specific error messages when attempting to print, you can also do a search on the internet using the error message and printer model name and number (e.g. Deskjet 2000i); you will probably find instructions on how to rectify the problem.

What's the difference between a Megabyte and a Gigabyte and why should I care?

Computer data is measured in bytes. A byte is one unit of digital information. 1 kilobyte (KB) = 1000 bytes 1 megabyte (MB) = 1000 kilobytes 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1000 megabytes. 1 terabyte (TB) = 1000 gigabytes or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes If you are trying to determine the capacity of any storage device, these terms are quite important to understand. Any external storage device or hard drive should be measured in Gigabytes, or, if they are very big, in Terabytes. Anything smaller than a gigabyte is now considered quite small. The same applies to RAM.