Switching Power Supply Design Handbook on Apple Books and Google Play Books

My books besides Amazon are now available in an electronic form on Apple and Android devices. You can have them particularly on your phone. Here are the links:

Switching Power Supply Design: A Concise Practical Handbook: Apple Books and Google Play Books.

Home Generator: Selecting, Sizing and Connecting: The Complete Guide: Apple Books and Google Play Books.

Both books may be previewed on Google books- search for the title. Note: if you view an eBook in pdf format, be sure to set your app to "Original Pages" rather than "Flowing Text" for proper rendering.

Fingerprint Login Stopped Working- The Fix That Works

Microsoft Windows updates are notorious for screwing up things that used to work. In my case, fingerprint sign in suddenly stopped working after another Windows 11 update. When you search the web for a solution, you will find many suggestions like updating the driver, clearing cache, etc that don't work (otherwise you would not land on this page). So, here is how to fix it (at least, how it worked for me).

Click Start button and type Registry Editor in the search bar. Open Registry Editor and scroll down to biometrics folder. It may be located in different places. On my Dell Inspiron it was here: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CspSchema\passportforwork\device\biometrics

If you can't locate biometrics there, you may try "Find" menu and search for it. It definitely should be somewhere under Microsoft. This search BTW works very slowly- it may take long time to finish.

Once you open biometrics, if default value is not set, click on it and enter 1. Write down the full path to folder where you did, so you can always undo it if you got any problem with it. Hope it helps. Good luck!

Engineers Salaries 2023

 Electronics Design magazine published its annual salary and career survey. About 70% of the engineers said that engineering is still a secure career, and is as promising a career path as it used to be. And what good for the engineers, is the engineering shortage remains: it is difficult to hire people for new positions, with most companies seeking at least 3-5 years of experience for new hires.  According to a report from Oxford Economics, around 1.4 million engineering jobs will remain open by 2030 in the US. What not so good is 52% companies are already evaluating use of artificial intelligence for the designs. Which means very soon some jobs may be replaced by AI.

What professions are the most wanted? The survey says software and system engineers are the two most often-mentioned jobs needed, but generally there are needs for engineers in all design areas.  All electronic systems obviously need power. Not surprisingly, among all technologies, power management has the main design impact. 

How much engineers are making? 66% of engineers said they had direct compensation $100,000 or more. At this, 53% are making between $100,000 and $200,000. Not bad? In addition to the base salary, 72% of engineers got some kind of bonus. Especially for smaller manufacturers, profit sharing can be a big part of compensation package.

The bottom line is, if you are technically inclined, becoming an engineer can be a right way for you to go.