2015 Tech Writing Achievements

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! :) Come 2016, I feel like sharing some of my best achievements in the blogging and tech recommendations world!

1) Blogger
My December 2014 post for fixing 'Thread Stuck in Device Driver' Error, encountered by a huge number of people after Windows 8.1/10 update, was very well received and worked for many people! It has more than 17K views! I was on Cloud 9 after getting that kind of appreciation for working and researching on something from the bottom of my heart.

Here is that answer: FIX 'THREAD STUCK IN DEVICE DRIVER' error for Windows 8/8.1/10

It definitely made my blog shine in 2015!

2) Quora
The following answer was a small achievement for me on Quora. I was awarded the most-viewed writer award for 'Dell' and 'Hewlett Packard' for some time. It was posted on 8th September, 2015 and I held that title for about 3 months after it became well-known.

Here is my answer on Quora: 
Answer on Quora by Nimish Gujarathi to 'Which laptop I should buy Dell or Lenovo or HP?'

The Answer:

If you are stuck between choosing company instead of specs I would say Dell, anytime Dell. Even if it may cost about 5K INR more or less depending on specifications.

My experience of comparison between these three tells me: 

1) Dell is more flexible with qualities like cross compatibility between batteries of different models, (like Latitude and Inspiron have same battery), standard charger port among all Dells so you can share charger of same electrical specifications. HP and Lenovo have their own custom shaped port. 
Analogy: Android with micro-USB which majority had and iPhone 5s with lightning connector which was rare in 2013.

2) Dell is more robust. Drop your HP and Lenovo and they will break like ceramic. I have seen both Dell and Lenovo fall. Screen connector of Lenovo broke and the person was forced to painstakingly use the crippled laptop for another year somehow due to financial issues, as service center could not help and asked for a large sum to change body. Dell however, survived without a scratch.

3) It is fairly obvious that HP is overpricing their products & accessories (HP battery costs about 6-7K INR, Dell battery costs around 2-3K INR) and with the reliability being not commensurate to the price. Dell is reasonably priced and gives most punch for the price.

4) Dell Support is simply amazing. The person sitting behind that toll free help number knows almost everything and gets you out of any situation.

5) Almost all Dell laptops can be customized. I myself could upgrade from 4GB to 8GB RAM. 

6) The performance of Dell is simply amazing. I run heavy softwares like MATLAB and Xilinx as well as high-end games like Battlefield 3 and Mafia II smoothly (Core i7 3632qm coupled with 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7730). The full HD screen is beautiful and sharp bringing out the best quality that the media has to offer. 

7) If you want to force me in telling you issues with Dell I would only speak about battery life. It has reduced from 2.5 hours to 1-1.5 hours in 4 years of use. Happens to all laptops though.

What is 'Class' in SD Memory Cards?

You always have that one friend who will boast about having got a memory card of a high capacity at a cost that is super-cheap in some deal. There is very high chance that, that memory card is of a lower 'Class' than the more expensive ones out there and it may not give him performance.

This post applies to all types of SD (Secure Digital) memory cards, be it micro-SD, mini-SD, SD, SDXC, SDHC and so on.

So to make it very simple:

Class = Speed and Performance

ALWAYS look out for 'class' logo while buying memory cards!

You will see these kind of logos on memory card which signify their class.

Here is an example of how cost differs with class.

Now, the number written in circle, signifies the write speed of the memory card. For example, 4 means minimum 4 MBps writing speed will be ensured! It can go above that, and if it is so, it will be specified on the packaging. Higher the class, higher will be the cost of the memory card.

Question: But Nimish, how is this 'class' significant and how do I choose which class I need?
Answer: Here is a Wikipedia extract.

Source: Speed Class rating of Secure Digital(SD)

Write Speed Significance:
Like many reviews will tell you, if you have a DSLR that has a very high shutter speed, that is, it can capture photos very fast, then you will require a high performance memory card on which they can be quickly stored. Otherwise, your memory will become a limitation and you may not be able to choose a higher shutter speed. In such a case, you might have to choose a minimum class 6 or better yet, class 10.

UHS Speed may be required if you want to shoot 4K video with your camcorder.

Read Speed Significance:
If you have a performance demanding game installed on your Android smart-phone's micro-SD card, no matter how powerful the phone hardware is, your micro-SD card will become a limitation on performance if it does not offer high reading speeds.

For example, if you try to use a class 2 card for installing and playing something like Asphalt on a Galaxy Note II, it will definitely lag. But it will not lag if you use a class 6 or a class 10 card. Your general phone performance will also be affected depending on the class of the memory card, if you choose to install applications on the memory card.

So in conclusion, don't be fooled if someone offers a hard-to-believe dirt cheap price on a high capacity memory card and check the class rating on it first.

Investing in expensive headset/headphones

Here is some audio technology research I did before deciding to buy a Sennheisser headset. This is some serious investment we are talking about. Think it out very well and make a proper decision. All prices are mentioned in US Dollars as they are not that different in the US and in India.

By 'headset' I will be referring to headgear with a mic and by 'headphone' to the one without a mic.

Few terms you need to know if you are new to audio technology like I was:

1) Drivers:
        Drivers are the speakers on the left and right.

2) Soundstage:
       To put into very simple terms, while listening to music if you want the feeling of sitting in an opera theatre and being able to make out precisely and directionally the violin being played by the 4th musician from the left you will want to invest in better soundstage. Also hearing footsteps while gaming comes under soundstage. It basically means how well you can perceive the surroundings.

3) Open back and Closed back
       In an open back headphone the casing of the drivers is not closed to the external environment and it will give you better access to sounds in surrounding. Closed back headphones are made such that they are completely noise cancelling and give an immersive experience. However, open back headphones give a better soundstage and are preferred for gaming. Closed back ones are preferred for focused listening of music.

4) Circumaural  and supra-aural
        Circumaural means that the headphone drivers are big enough to completely cover your ear. The won't press on your ear and the cushion would rest around it. Supra-aural are the ones which press against your ear. Circumaural ones are better at noise cancelling.

5) Impedance
        Impedance is the resistance that your headphone offers to the analog signal. Higher the resistance lower would be the amplitude of the signal, resulting in more power requirement. For example,if you keep the sound level same for comparison, the headphone with a higher impedance would give out lesser sound.

6) Frequency response
         If you search for high quality headphones on the internet this is something you will hear a lot about but not understand if not familiar. Its simple. Lower the frequencies your headphone can go to, the better you will 'feel' the music. You must have guessed it, i'm talking about bass. Lower frequency response generates better bass and better music experience for certain genres like metal and rock music. The explosions you hear in games would be better 'felt' with good bass.

7) Mono and Stereo
        The ability of being able to make out the direction from which the sound is coming is absent in mono. In case of stereo controlled sound is available from 2 drivers and you can make out if sound came form left or right side. So if a person talks something close to your left ear, mono will make it sound like he is standing in the front giving out uniform sound in both left and right speakers, whereas stereo will make sure you get the realistic left side sound effect.

8) Surround and virtual surround sound:
        In surround sound systems like 7.1 and 5.1 you will see multiple speakers kept around the room. With software gimmick and a USB connection headphones have the technology to create 5.1 and 7.1 surround virtually using 2 drivers.

9) Digital and analog connectors
        Digital connector : USB - cannot use on smartphone.
        Analog connector : 3.5mm jack - can use on smartphone.

10) Sound card:
         The 3.5mm female jack is your connection to system sound card which does audio processing. It takes a digital input from the system and outputs analog signal. If you buy a $300 headphone and connect it to your computer via a cheap low quality sound card, the quality of sound will be far lower than you expect. The sound card quality has to be on par to the headphone quality you are going for.

11) Audiophiles:
        People who buy headgear costing nothing less than $200-$250 and focus only on audio quality. :)

Now we know the basics! Lets start! We will do this in a Q n A format so its easier.

Question 1: What is your budget?

Answer to this is everything. I would say keep your budget flexible to the range of plus/minus $30-$35. For example, if you set a hard budget filter for your searches on online shopping websites, something you want truly and are ready to invest slightly more for, will not show up in search results and you would miss out! However do check for cheaper option too as you may find something tha tis bang for the buck.

Question 2: Are you buying a headset for gaming, for video chatting or purely for music?

Now you may have the following answers:

1) Purely for music
      Now that you have decided this, it is obvious that you do not need a mic coupled with the headset. So your investment will be based purely on audio quality and nothing else. The type of music you like also matters here. You will need better response on lower frequencies if you hear metal and rock and better on the higher frequencies if you listen to classical.

Let me tell you that most of the headgear in the world belongs to this category. There is a lot available on the market and even companies like Sennheiser sell awesome headphones at just $100 which is comparatively cheaper and 'bang for the buck' than the big guns out there.

2) For gaming
       If this is your decision, you will be more focused on the bass i.e. how well you experience the explosions and soundstage i.e. how well you can hear the footsteps if someone is lurking behind you. The audio quality may or may not be as good as pure headphones, but it depends on the model. The mic quality of purely gaming headsets is not that good as it is not a necessity for gaming. So they incline on improving the soundstage and frequency response more. For example, the Kingston HyperX Cloud II gaming headsets are great but the mic recording sounds modulated and artificial.

3) For video chatting and music
       You may be away from family at college or on tour and need a way to chat with them without sounding like a robot and hearing their voice as realistically as possible. Now we are talking about a headset that is a combo of both high quality drivers and mic(Eg. Sennheisser headsets are the best I found for this category).

Caution:

1) Some headphones have a USB connector just to provide power, so they wont work with USB connection(Klipsch KG200 - excellent headset by the way!). This makes them unsuitable to carry around for trips and plug in to music player unless you have a power bank.

2) The foldable headphones may come at an attractive price and they are highly portable, as sometimes they can be dismantled to pieces(Steelseries 5H v3). But more number of joints can prove to be a disaster. If the contacts become loose, problems like sound coming out of only one speaker may happen. That is why unibody headsets with no volume controls along the wire are preferred.

Want best of both worlds?

Here is what audiophiles who are gamers as well do:

1) Buy an expensive headphone according to their need.
2) Buy a separate attachable microphone. The best in the market seems to be the AntLion ModMic. It magnetically attaches to your headphone whenever you need it.

However the ModMic costs as much as moderate quality headphone so this combo is a bigger investment.

Happy hunting! :)

No sound after Windows 10 update? Here's the solution.

Thousands of people over the world have reported problems with Windows 10 operating system especially with Microsoft rolling out these updates for free for the older PCs/Laptops running Windows 7. All of these problems have their roots in the older driver softwares that interface the peripherals like speakers, display, touchpad(mousepad), card reader etc. not being compatible with the features offered by Windows 10.

Coming to our main problem, people having Conexant SmartAudio HD driver as their main sound driver in HP and Dell laptops, faced this problem the most.

I have 2 solutions for this, first is extremely simple with some tweaks to the sound properties and the second one is for slightly advanced users with uninstalling faulty drivers and installing new ones.

Solution 1: Disable sound enhancements.

Step 1: Right Click the sound button on the bottom right of your task bar. Select 'Playback Devices'.

Step 2: Right click on your default speakers which will read 'Conexant SmartAudio HD Device' and select 'Properties'.

Step 3: Select 'Disable All Enhancements' and click 'Apply'

Your sound will be back! However this is with compromise in loudness of sound, since you disable the Bass Management, Virtual Surround and Loudness Equalization. Second solutions helps you keep these settings and turn your sound on,

Solution 2: Install Conexant Driver given by Lenovo for Windows 10.

This solution was posted by 'Darkbreeze' on the 'tom's GUIDE' Forums and is reported to be working by several users. Thanks a million to him! :)
Link - Darkbreeze's answer on tom's GUIDE.

Step 1: Download the Conexant Drivers from Lenovo from this link. download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles/audio143w81.exe


Step 2: Hit Windows + X key (only for Windows 8/8.1/10) and select 'Device Manager'.  Right click on 'Speakers' and select 'Properties'.

Step 3: Go into the 'Driver' tab and click 'Uninstall'. Do this for all the audio devices ('Internal Microphone' in my case as shown in screenshot).

Step 4: Install the driver you downloaded from Lenovo. Restart your laptop.

Your sound will be back with all the enhancements! :)

How to check Windows product key(BIOS injected and normal).

The laptops/branded PCs sold after 2010-11 started to not have the Windows product key sticker if it came pre-installed. This is because while manufacturing the product key was injected into the BIOS itself, so that people would not lose it and while installing the OS it would detect it automatically from BIOS and not ask the user. The contrary has happened.

This started to create problems for advanced users who keep installing different OS and replace the pre-installed one. If they did not note down the product key, then it would cause problems while re-installing the original OS if they did not have the DVD of the same Windows version as a different version of other build number does not accept that product key even if edition of Windows is same.

This recently happened to one of friends who lost her Windows Activation as she hadn't noted the key. We did some research and managed to bring it back.

Solution 1 : For BIOS injected product key.

Step 1: Go to rweverything.com and download their free software

Step 2: Install software by running the 'SetupRW.exe' file inside the zip folder. Start the application after installing.

Step 3: Click on 'ACPI Tables' and a dialog will be displayed within the app.

Step 4: Select 'MSDM' in this dialog and your bios data will be displayed with the injected product key written on the last line and beside the hex values as shown. I have blurred out my key for security reasons.

Solution 2 : If you are running pre-installed OS and just want to check keys

Step 1: Anywhere on the desktop or other drives right click and select 'New' and 'Text Document'. This will open up notepad.

Step 2: Paste the following in the notepad.

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 Step 3: Save it and close. Change the extension from '.txt. to '.vbs'. If you double click this it will run as a Visual Basic Script file identified by Windows itself and you will see the product key from the Registry. This is the product key of your current OS and NOT your BIOS injected key.

If you are running the pre-installed version of Windows then the BIOS injected and VB Script product keys will be same.

However once you update to Windows 8.1 or 10 it will change as Microsoft gives a new product key for a different version of Windows.

As I have shown here the pre-installed Windows 8 product key in BIOS and updated Windows 10 key is different! Look at the starting and ending characters.

Powerbanks: Which one to buy? What is mAh?

I have got this question a lot! "My phone's battery life has reduced, which power bank should I buy?"

Things to keep in mind for buying

1. Charging speed matters. Make sure it has a 2A output or at least 1-1.5A.
2. Make sure you are ready to shell out around 1-1.5K INR or more for a well-known good quality powerbank. If it is selling too cheap, it is poor quality/first copy and will definitely stop working after max 4-5 cycles, give you a low current output or could be of a much lower capacity than it states on the box.
3. Buy a good quality cable. If you buy a cheap cable it might provide a higher resistance, obstructing electric current and thus reducing charging speed. 
4. Preferrably buy from Amazon and Flipkart. Avoid Ebay as the listings are not verified and the seller may cheat by taking cost of original but sending a duplicate. Always read reviews. 

What is mAh?

Coming to the second question, milliampere-Hour or mAh simply put, is the unit of the amount of energy your battery can store. Higher the mAh, more will be the time for which the battery lasts.

For example, if you have a 10,000 mAh or 10 Ah powerbank and you are pulling 2A current for charging your phone, it will provide 2A for 10/2=5 hours before completely discharging.


So far in my experience, the best powerbanks that I have seen are the original Tukzer (1-2K INR), TP-Link (1.2K INR), Xiaomi (1K INR) and Sony (2K INR). For more details on these, check out my latest post, if you are not coming here from that one: 

Which are the best quality, reliable and high output Power Banks and Chargers for USB devices?

Booting to black screen with only mouse pointer?

Before updating to Windows 10 I was running Windows 8.1 on my laptop. I have a policy of not constantly updating my Windows as new updates may come with bugs. So I update in bulk whenever I fell like I have time to rectify and restore my laptop in case of a failed update causing glitches.

The last huge update I did before upgrading to Windows 10 lead to a problem. My laptop would boot up to show a black screen on which only my mouse was visible and I could move it around, but no desktop. Something like this:

It suddenly struck me that this would be happening due to a certain application not starting. The laptop had booted up since I could move the mouse. From past experiences of using a method to solve certain problems, I recalled how I ended the task of 'explorer.exe' from task manager and manually restarted it.

So now I decided to give it a shot and try and start explorer.exe manually as I felt that Windows is not being able to automatically initiate that task. I was correct. I manually started explorer.exe for the next one week before another set of updates arrived which fixed the problem.

Here is how to do it:

Step 1: Ctrl + Alt + Del

• Just press the good old Ctrl + Alt + Del on the black screen and you will be taken to the following screen which is common for Windows 7/8/8.1/10.
• Start Task Manager.

Step 2: Run New Task

Step 3: Simply type 'explorer.exe' in the dialog box.

There you go. Your desktop and all the icons will now be visible!

Alternate solution:

Just in case this does not work out, here is the solution to restore your system to a previous state by using a 'recovery disk'(can also be a pendrive). You can make this disk using another PC/Laptop running Windows 8/8.1/10.

• For Windows 7
• For Windows 8/8.1/10

Review of Dell Inspiron 15R 7520 Special Edition Laptop(My Workhorse)

My specifications are: 
Core i7 3632QM, 8GB DDR3 RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7730 2GB graphics, 1 TB HDD.

Performance : 4.5/5
I bought this laptop as a future proof laptop that I could use for my Bachelor' as well as Master's Degree in Electronics engineering and let me say it has never disappointed me! Heavy softwares like MATLAB, AutoCAD, Xilinx, Quartus II, VMWare Workstation Pro, Sony Vegas Pro and anything and everything you threw at it! 

Sure there were problems with drives with it upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 but it was totally solvable unless you were a noob and eventually everything got fixed when Windows 10 happened!

The graphics are awesome and you can run games like Battlefield 3, L. A. Noire, Arkham City, GTA V etc. on moderate quality settings and not ultra. The graphics card is not as good as NVidia for heavy rendering and image processing applications in robotics projects which need speed. But they are good for the very high resolution movies and games.

You can even run Mac OS SMOOTHLY in VMWare Workstation! Yeah, shame on you Apple.

Build quality : 6/5
Trust me when I say this, but this is the most sturdy laptop I ever saw! Not just this, you pick up ant Dell Insprion from 2012-13 they are all tough as hell! I have seen Dells dropping and nothing happening to them at all! No parts inside would dislocate and nothing falls apart. Try dropping a Mac and see what happens! xD

Weight : 3/5
This laptop is a bit heavy with a solid 2.2Kg weight and you will feel it on your back after a few minutes of walking with it. But that is a compromise you will have to make for build quality and I was ready as I am strong and well built.

Speakers : 3/5
The speakers are SkullCandy and they will sound good. They are not as loud as you'd want them to be to turn up the groove and dance around the room. But they are fair enough to watch movies and all if you are sitting close in front of the laptop.

Screen : 4.5/5
The 1080p display is really worth it. You will have to compromise on a BluRay DVD drive if you want 1080p otherwise Dell gives 720p. But duh, who buys those overpriced BluRay discs anyway? ;)

Value for money : 8/5
I bought this laptop for 60K INR and the service it has given me is priceless! Half of my education would not have been possible without it and this was the best investment I ever made. It has almost the same specifications of a MacBook Pro which sells for over 1.5L. Yeah! Shame on you Apple.

Do not buy cheap card readers!

For all those who have a Micro-SD card, most of you must be having an SD adapter that comes with it which you can plug in to your laptop card reader. However not all have it that easy. You laptop may or may not have an SD card reader or you might have a PC making it essential for you to buy an All-In-One card reader.

For  users who have a laptop with a card reader and SD adapter(like me), you will need this if you have a Sony Camcorder which comes with a Memory Stick Pro Duo(I hate Sony for that).

So, coming to the point, which card reader to buy?

• Any card reader sold by Sony, Transcend, iBall, Enter, Kingston or QuantumZERO are good.
• Do not buy cheaper card readers sold by companies like QHMPL Quantum( knock-off of QuantumZERO), Digitek or COMBO.

All card readers with green tick support SD cards, all except Transcend USB 2.0 support Memory Stick and all except iBall support MicroSD.

Understand that the reason I am saying this is because data is precious. Especially in SD, Micro-SD and Memory Sticks where you store precious photos/videos from your camera/smart-phone.

From personal experience, I have owned two Quantum card readers and both did not last for over a year. The first one stopped working which made me buy the second one. But the second one stopped working when I was transferring my videos from my Sony camcorder Memory Stick and the data got corrupted! Not even professionals could recover it. I had lost more than 4GB of priceless memories.

So take care of your data and 'invest' in a good card reader, even if it costs you 10x than the cheaper ones. Your data is not worth a 1000 Rupees INR, its priceless.

Fix 'Wireless Module not found (701)' error on HP laptop.

My brother gave me a priceless gift...an opportunity to completely backup, format and reinstall OS and drivers on his HP Pavilion DV6 2165TX laptop.

Yes we managed to remove all the mess and garbage of data and increased speed by around 5x i'm sure! But a problem persisted...a 'Wireless Module not found (701)' error before booting up and it was showing only Bluetooth module in wireless devices in Device Manager.

So we went on the internet and found a HP support solution to reseat (unplug and plug in again) the wireless adapter to fix the problem.
I disassembled a part of laptop for the first time in my life and took considerable risk as the wireless device is located below Hard Disk.

Note: I did this only because laptop was out of warranty. Doing so may void your warranty if dealer comes to know. If you are confident...go ahead! :)

Step 1:
Download HP maintenance and service guide for particular model of your laptop. You will find it in manuals section of your product page on HP support website
Download and install the correct WLAN driver for your laptop model. In this case it was Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver for Microsoft Windows 7 

Step 2:
Go into 'Removal and replacement procedures'. Read instructions in the manual about placement and connections of the wireless module (the manual shows 3 connections..we have only 2 on this model)

Step 3:
Collect necessary tools
   a)Magnetic screw driver (those small screws should not fall in any crevice and be lost forever).
If you dont have one, then check out my previous tutorial on how to magnetize a normal one.
Link -  'How to magnetize screw driver'.
 
   b)Pair of tweezers if possible. (Nails will also do but be careful so as to not deform the connector).

Step 4:
Remove the Battery.

Step 5:
Unscrew the panel as shown in manual.

Step 6:
Remove the hard disk very slowly and strictly as directed by the manual. Be careful to not pull on the connecting wire and keep it flipped to the right as shown in the next step.

Step 7:
Unscrew and unplug the wireless device and plug and screw it in again as shown in colour coded figure below.

Step 8:
Seat the hard disk the same way you pulled it out and screw back in the panel.
Seat the battery.
Turn on your laptop.

     a) Case 1: The error message is gone.
                  Celebrate! You just fixed the error and your laptop now recognizes the device. Since you already installed the driver package the laptop will automatically recognize the device and reinstall the software after fully booting up if necessary and give 'Your device is installed and ready to use' pop-up. You can now connect to wireless networks.

     b) Case 2: The error still displays.
                   Can be a false alarm as you did not seat the module correctly while following procedure so check again.
                   If it still shows error you may have to get your wireless module replaced from a service center as it may have stopped working (not because you unscrewed and touched it but because it reached end of its lifetime).
         

Magnetize a screw driver.

Recently I posted a tutorial involving unscrewing panels and opening parts of a laptop. Small and easily misplace-able screws are involved there which my roll into crevices and corners becoming difficult to remove especially if it falls inside the laptop itself (big problem!!).

So I strictly instructed to use a magnetic screw driver to handle those screws easily.

But what if you dont want to spend on a costly magnetic screw driver and want to use the normal one you have? Then we can magnetize it!

Tools:
1) Bar magnet(preferably).
2) Screw driver to magnetize.

Procedure:
The procedure is a 10th grade Science lesson on how to give magnetic properties to non-magnetic metal objects using Magnetic Induction.

Step 1:
Run any pole of the magnet along the portion of screw driver you want to magnetize in single direction only.

Step 2:
To come back to the start point don't directly follow a horizontal path backwards. Take the magnet well above the screw driver and come back in a parabolic path.

Do this a few hundred times (200 gives pretty strong magnetization). Do more for a stronger magnetization.

It will not magnetize if you keep running the magnet back and forth.

How to choose a tripod.

I recently decided to buy a tripod. And thus came another big dilemma...How to choose one perfect for amateur photography. I found that some of the good tripod brands were Benro, Slik, Photron, and the cheapest being Simpex.

I was ready to properly invest in an amateur photography thing so I went for a Benro T880EX. They have four variants of beginner tripods ranging from 1500 upto 2000 INR. (All prices mentioned hereafter are in INR)

(Comparison of Benro T600EX, T660EX, T800EX, T880EX tripods)

Here is how I found out which tripod to buy
My research tells me there are 4 kinds of pods and 2 kinds of heads.

Heads:

1) The Pan-head

The pan-head will have 3 kinds of adjustments - Horizontal, Vertical and 90 degree rotation for portrait-landscape.
Pros: This is most helpful when you take more videos rather than photos. A smooth horizontal or vertical panning action can be achieved. The adjustment is stable even if one of the knobs is loose(this may not be guaranteed while using heavy cameras).
Cons: Takes a bit of patience to adjust for those precision shots. Experienced photographers switch to ball head to save this time and never come back to pan head

2) The ball-head

The ball-head means your camera is basically fixed to a ball that can rotate in any direction. Adjust the direction and fix the ball with a single lever.
Pros: This is most helpful when you take more photos rather than videos. It takes very less time to adjust and you will be done in a few seconds. If you can pan with a stable hand then there will be no jerks.
Cons: Once the ball is unlocked your cam will not stay stable and is under control of gravity. The panning actions are a trademark of the pan head and difficult with ball head.

Pods:

1) The Monopod

Cost: from 700 upto 10,000

2) Travel or light Tripods

These are the tripods which are bought for their light weight making them easy to carry around on vacations and hikes.

Cost - from 800 upto 4,000
Weight supported - upto 3kg

3) Entry-level tripods

These are the tripods you buy when you start out as an amateur and want to buy a budget tripod. They are light, compact and reliable if you are using a lighter camera and not into the heavy stuff. However the customization options available are a very few and these usually come with a pan-head. So if you want to go for a ball head only the head will cost more than the tripod!

Cost - from 800 upto 4,000
Weight supported - upto 3kg

4) Professional tripods

This trippd is used by professionals and is slightly heavy or so, as higher stability is reqiured for heavier cameras so weight matters. They are also available in carbon fibre legs.
You will easily recognize them by hooks provided at the centre for attaching more weight. These tripods are usually ball heads and I feel are meant more for photography

Cost: from 9,000 upto 40,000

5) Heavy tripods

These are meant for heavy filming cameras that can weigh more than 15kg or so and they are biggies in the business.

Cost: from 25,000 upto 50,000

6) Flexible or Octopus (Not quite!) tripods

These are flexible legged tripods whose ball sectioned legs will coil around any objects or hold on to bars or trees.

Cost: from 250 upto 500
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So bottom line is, choose what you need and not what others are saying is the best out there. I wanted and entry-level tripod which was cheap yet practical and I found it in the T880EX! I am now ready to upgrade to a better one if my needs demand, as I have also got better at photography and sometimes this one falls short for newer applications I found.

Comparison of Benro T600EX, T660EX, T800EX, T880EX tripods

Benro entry level tripods

T600EX - Height :1435 mm, Legs : 3 sections, Weight :1.2 Kg

T660EX - Height :1460 mm, Legs : 4 sections, Weight :1.2 Kg

T800EX - Height :1435 mm, Legs : 3 sections, Weight :1.5 Kg

T880EX - Height :1460 mm, Legs : 4 sections, Weight :1.5 Kg

Load capacity : 3 Kg for all.

As we can see from the specifications of all the 4 tripods: 

Height and leg sections - 

The T600 and T660 differ in the maximum height they can reach and in the number of leg joints. Both weigh the same so the choice matters at parametrs of height and leg joints. Same is the case for choosing between T800 and T880.

Weight - 

However the T8x0 have more weight than the T6x0. So they will offer more stability than the former. They will be less wobbly and more sturdy.

Hence the T6x0 are entry-level, compact and travel tripods.

And the T8x0 are entry-level compact tripods.

So if you travel and hike more I would say go for the T6x0 and if not then T8x0 if you are into amateur photography and family photos.