q+a I want to buy a WiFi router for my two-storey house. Should I go for one with 150 Mbps or 300 Mbps? I need to access WiFi on both the floors.

Biswadip Sasaru

There is a difference in the ability to get a signal and the speed you can get on that signal. The first thing to look out for is that your WiFi router is 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac compatible. All new devices that can receive a WiFi signal are 802.11ac compatible. Generally, 802.11ac is better than 802.11n. It offers much faster data transfer than the n standard. The crucial point is all 802.11ac devices are backward compatible.
With an 802.11ac router you can theoretically get 1,331 megabits per second (Mbps) compared to the 300 Mbps on an n device. In reality this translates to 250-300 Mbps for 802.11ac devices compared to 50-150 Mbps for n routers.
The second thing to look for is that the router supports 5 GHz band along with the 2.4 GHz band. The 5 GHz band is broader and much less crowded. Since you are starting with a clean network slate, go for 5 GHz and watch your transfer speeds peak in the much more spacious airwaves. Your best buy would be an 802.11ac dual-band router that uses both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Not so smart

q+a I checked my mail on a friend’s Android smartphone but could not log out on that phone. How do I sign out?

Pushpamani Ghatani

I am assuming you checked your mail on the Gmail app. There is no option to sign out of the app in Android. You have to remove your account from the phone. Go to your phone’s Settings--Accounts and delete the account. If your phone has a three-dot menu at the top right, you will find the ‘Remove account’ option there.

Safari crash

q+a I use an updated MacBook Pro late 2011 version. Recently my Safari browser began crashing with the message that it cannot find the server. I switched to Google Chrome to avoid this problem. I use Alliance broadband.

Debaprasad Mukherjee

Click on the Safari menu and select Reset Safari. In the next dialog box ensure all the boxes are checked and click the reset button. Close the browser and launch it again. If the problem persists then you must delete Safari’s preferences. Go to your Home/Library folder. Quit Safari first. In Finder choose Go To Folder and type  ~/Library/Safari/. This will open your preferences folder. Drag everything in this folder to the Trash and restart Safari.

Windows update

q+a Is it mandatory to download updates on my Windows 8 laptop? Can downloading updates cause any problem in the functioning of other software that are not original?

Rituparna Das

For your laptop to function flawlessly you must download the updates to the operating system. The original Windows 8 was quite buggy and the updates have resolved many problems. Updates for Windows come separately from Office updates. So this should not affect your pirated programs.

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