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There's an old adage for computer noviceses that says if you can smash

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something with a hammer, it's hardware. But if you can only swear at it in

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futility, it's software. But not

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everything is that cut and dried. And one of the most important parts of your

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PC is actually a closely linked fusion of hardware and software. I'm talking

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about the basic input output system or

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BIOS, which I certainly don't recommend hitting with a hammer, by the way, no

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matter how upset you are. So, the BIOS is a very small piece of code that sits

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on a readonly or a flash memory chip on your computer's motherboard. It's often

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referred to as the motherboard's firmware since it links the software to

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the hardware. But how? Well, think about it kind of like a person. Your brain

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stem helps control very fundamental bodily functions like breathing and your

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heartbeat, but it doesn't do any actual thinking. So, your computer's BIOS does

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some very basic but crucial things

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without which you couldn't watch Tequiki or have your Red Bull fueled CSGO

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marathons, but it doesn't, you know, render graphics or anything like that.

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So, when you first turn your computer on, the BIOS is the first thing to

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spring into action and wake up the rest of your computer. Kind of like how your

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car's ignition gets the engine going. The BIOS first check settings stored in

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a SMOS chip to determine how the user wants the system to run. So, that's all

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that stuff that's in the utility that you get to by mashing delete or F2 when

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you first boot up. Then, what it does is it initializes your devices accordingly.

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CPU, RAM, graphics card, peripherals, and so on. After this, the BIOS will run

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the power on self test or post to make sure that all the gizmos inside your

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case are functioning correctly. If

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everything is hunky dory, you'll usually hear a single beep to let you know that

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everything's good, provided that you installed the little speaker that came

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with your motherboard. If you get an error, you know, like beep beep beep

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beep beep. It's not Morse code. It's probably telling you you need to receat

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your RAM or a video card or check for a

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part that's just plain gone kaput. Once that's done, the BIOS will check for a

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bootable device, meaning some kind of drive with an operating system on it,

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and then it'll hand off control of your computer to the OS. Now, old school

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BIOSes often provided a link between your keyboard, mouse, and other devices

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and the OS. While modern operating systems like newer versions of Windows

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control the hardware more directly. So once you're at the Windows desktop, your

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BIOS basically goes to sleep until you need it to start things up again. Seems

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pretty straightforward, right? Well, sort of actually. The way that the BIOS

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was implemented for a long time had some very serious limitations. One of the

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most obvious of them being drive support. The system that a conventional

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BIOS uses to access your hard drive or SSD called the master boot record or MBR

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could only handle partitions less than

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two terabytes. And that was fine for a long time. But with many modern hard

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drives holding way more data, it became

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obvious that something new was needed. The unified extensible firmware

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interface or UEFI, which no one can agree how to pronounce, was born. Not

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only can UEFI deal with insanely large storage devices, we're talking millions

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of pedabytes here, it's also quicker than a conventional BIOS to boot up and

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can use an actual graphical interface complete with animations and mouse

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support. Older BIOSes only featured that blue screen that looked kind of like a

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crash, but it was fine, which at least I guess was better than the really old

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days where there was no BIOS utility at all and you had to physically move

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jumpers around on your motherboard in order to change settings. Speaking of

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going through tedious procedures in

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order to make basic changes to simple

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stuff, FreshBooks is the tool that makes

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your accounting, pretty much the most tedious part of running a small

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business, simpler and more accurate. It

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helps you get organized, get paid on time, and send out bills correctly. All

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kinds of great stuff. FreshBooks is on a mission to make freelancers, whether

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you're a plumber or a computer technician, you run a a small yoga

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studio, you run a daycare, whatever kind of small business you're running, Fresh

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Books takes your accounting and bookkeeping and your billing stuff and

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puts it in a cloud-based utility that is easy to use, even for people who aren't

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super technical. And they're adding new features all the time. Now, you can

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accept deposits, like say for example, you're a house painter. So you can make

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sure that even if the client bails, you're not stuck holding literally

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gallons of paint that you had to pay for out of pocket and now have no way to

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return because you can't take back tinted paint. I speak from experience.

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So getting started on FreshBooks is extremely simple, even if you're not a

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numbers person. And you can try it for free for 30 days by going to

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freshbooks.com/techquicky and entering techquicki in the how did

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you hear about us section. So thanks for watching guys. If you like this video,

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hit the like button. It's more of a sideways thumb. What could you do with a

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sideways thumb? If you dislike the video, then you can suck it. Giant.

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Oh, boy. So, you can leave a comment under the video if you have suggestions

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for future videos. And you can also subscribe and follow and all that good

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stuff if you want to see more Techquiki videos just like this