Tech DC » Robert

Accidentally put an SD card in the iMac’s DVD drive?

Robert — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:20:46 +0000

Apple usually puts a lot of thought into the design of their hardware. However, the placement of the SD card slot right below the DVD drive has always escaped me. I always suspected people are looking directly at their screen and put the card in the slot by feel. As a result, it is probably all too common to accidentally put the card in the DVD drive which is right above it. I recently saw this happen for the first time.

My first thought was to take apart the iMac including the DVD drive. Unfortunately, this requires specialized tools and 1-2 hours of time. I tried shaking it out (a scary thought with an expensive piece of hardware) but it didn’t budge because of the foam guards at the end. Finally, I created a high tech tool just for the job.

This is a piece of cardboard cutout to have a little extension at the bottom. I inserted this at the top of the drive and pushed as far back as possible. I then slide it down and pulled it forward and the extension pushed the SD card right out. This is a rather thin piece of cardboard which is probably necessary. Be sure to be gentle as you don’t want to damage the DVD drive in any way.

Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200 Review

Robert — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 03:03:57 +0000

There are several MiFi devices out there these days but none as cheap as the one by Virgin Mobile. A MiFi allows you to get on a cellular network via your devices WiFi. Your laptop or iPad has WiFi but probably not built-in cellular network support. This bridges that gap. You can also use up to 5 devices thru the MiFi at one time so its more useful than a built-in connection like the high-end iPad. This MiFi 2200 can be had from walmart.com for just $139.99 with no contract. In comparison, the Verizon MiFi is $269.99. The Verizon data plan is $60/month with a 5GB data cap while Virgin Mobile offers unlimited data for just $40/month.

Activation

The first thing you have to do is activate the MiFi. This is actually different from paying for service. Activation involves creating an account, getting some special IDs from Virgin Mobile, and entering them into the MiFi. This is a simple guided process that you do by connecting to the MiFi via wireless and going to virginmobile.mifi in any browser. One odd thing is that the MiFi will not connect to 3G (EVDO) until it is activated. This means you have to go through the activation website via the older 1xRTT Sprint network which is only slightly faster than dial-up. While annoying, you should only have to activate your MiFi once. Once activated, you will then see it connect to 3G.

You can provide your billing info without actually starting your data plan. You’ve got an option to have your plan auto-renew which is nice if you plan to use it always. If you plan to use it only on occasional trips, there is also the option to only pay manually so when you sign up for a month of service, it will simply end at the end of the month.

Data Plans

In addition to the $40/month plan that most will probably get, there is also a $10/month plan with 100MB cap. That’s a great cheaper option if you just need to use the MiFi for a short period. There’s one other secret extra special plan only available to people who buy their MiFi from walmart. For $20/month, you get a 1GB cap. That’s a nice additional plan option since that would likely cover most people for a week long trip. This is plenty reason enough to purchase your Virgin Mobile MiFi from walmart.

Performance

Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint so it uses Sprint’s cellular network. When you are connected to Sprint 3G, you can expect typical downloads speeds of 300Kbps to 1000Kbps. While testing, I typically had 2-4 bars of 3G and averaged about 450Kbps. This is no where near as fast as most DSL or cable speeds but for the price and mobility, I think its terrific performance. If you are not in a 3G area, the MiFi will fall back to the older 1xRTT network where the best speed you’ll likely see is 100Kbps and more typical is probably half that. I recommend you check out sprint’s 3G coverage map before purchasing to be sure 3G is available in the areas you plan to use it. The 1x speeds are fine if you’re desperate for any connection but it will be painful to use. As long as you’ve got 3G, you’ll be happy with the performance, especially at just $40/month. If my home internet ever went out, I’d be happy to use this as an alternate internet connection. And since you can start your data plan through the device, you can do just that whenever you have to.

Battery Life

You can expect to get about 4 hours of continuous use from the MiFi. It can be setup to automatically power down after X minutes of no usage. This can be handy to save battery life but it is also easy to simply press the power button until the light goes out to save battery.

If you are looking for a little more battery life like me, I recommend an external usb battery like the Satechi Battery Extender Pack. The built-in MiFi has a 1150 mAh battery. This Satechi has a 4800 mAh battery. That means it has enough extra juice to fully charge the MiFi over 4 times. It can also be used to charge almost anything else powered by USB such as iPhones, iPads or most other cell phones.

Admin Options

This MiFi offers terrific admin controls. You can change the wireless SSID, the wireless password or admin password. You can even setup port filtering, port forwarding, and mac filters. Once you’ve setup your config, you can even back it up to a computer in case you ever have to reset your MiFi and restore your setup.

Conclusion

The Virgin Mobile MiFi doesn’t offer the fastest speeds. It doesn’t offer terrific battery life. But it is an amazing price with terrific data plan options. If you’re a price conscious shopper that wants connectivity for any of their many WiFi gadgets, this is the device for you. I think road warriors or occasional travelers would be happy with this device.

New MacBook Air’s (Late 2010) Review and Benchmarks

Robert — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:35:22 +0000

It would be easy to dismiss the new MacBook Air as slow due to its apparently slow processor but if you did, you’d be wrong.

Offerings

The new Air comes in 4 base models.

$994 – 11.6″ 1.4GHz CPU 64GB storage

$1194 – 11.6″ 1.4GHz CPU 128GB storage

$1294 – 13.3″ 1.86GHz CPU 128GB storage

$1594 – 13.3″ 1.86GHz CPU 256GB storage

What’s so special about it?

The obvious impressive feature of the Air is the size being extremely thin and weighing 2.3 lbs (11.6″ model) or 2.9 lbs (13.3″ model). But what really makes it worth having is what’s under the hood. The CPU is not cutting edge, maxing out at just 2.13GHz. However, the graphics and hard drive are so much faster, this more than offsets the CPU for most users.

Graphics (GPU)

The 320M graphics are about 2-3Xs faster than the previous 9400M. Graphics performance is becoming more and more important since apps like iPhoto and the Mac OS itself do a lot of animation and tasks that can be run on the GPU. The latest version of Mac OS X actually has the ability to run tasks that would normally be on the CPU on the GPU instead. Programs do have to be developed for that but it is something Apple is heavily pushing developers to do.

Disk Storage

The hard drive actually isn’t a hard drive. It has flash storage, much like that found in the iPhone or iPad. Flash storage is typically significantly faster but also very expensive. The price points that Apple has been able to create with this kind of fast storage is quite impressive. Any task that involves the disk will be massively faster than any other MacBook Apple offers. This is perhaps the most impressive feature of the new Airs. There are various hard drive tasks but most will fall in the range of 2-6Xs faster than a hard drive found in other MacBooks.

Screen

These MacBook Air’s have a much higher ppi (pixels per inch) than the other MacBooks. The higher the ppi, the sharper things look. The 13.3″ Air actually has the same resolution as the 15.4″ MacBook Pro. That means if you had them side by side, they could show the exact same content on the screen at the same time though the Air’s would appear slightly smaller since the pixels are squeezed into a smaller screen.

One thing I immediately noticed on the screen was that it seemed to be less reflective than the other MacBook’s. This is a photo of the Air 13.3″ next to a MacBook Pro 15.4″ with the screens pointed at the same set of windows.

The screen is clearly less reflective. This may be because the Pro has that sheet of glass across the whole area and the Air does not. Whatever the reason, I far prefer a less reflective screen.

What is it no good at?

Multi-threaded CPU intensive tasks are definitely the biggest weak point. In this regard, the MacBook Pro i5 is about twice as fast. If you do a lot of this, you may not be satisfied with the Air. If you don’t know what multi-threading is, then this likely won’t be a problem for you. An example of this is making digital backups of your DVDs with Handbrake. Handbrake is multi-CPU optimized and will perform much better on any other Mac.

Flash storage is typically smaller. The $999 MacBook Air has just 64GB storage. The 11.6″ can have up to 128GB and the 13.3″ starts at 128GB and goes up to 256GB. If you don’t plan on storing lots of photos or movies, the 64GB or 128GB should not be a problem.

Real World

In informal real world feel tests, typical tasks like browsing, email and application startup don’t feel slow at all. Safari and Mail load on one bounce in the dock. iPhoto feels quite fast, probably because loading all those photos from the faster storage really helps. For typical day to day use of a normal user, this MacBook Air is not only decent, but it feels faster than others just because of the flash drive storage.

Benchmarks

We benchmarked the MacBook Air 13.3″ 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo which is the fastest model. The overall Xbench score was 180. In comparison, a previous generation MacBook Pro 15.4″ 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo gets about a 137 and current generation MacBook Pro i7 gets about 174. The Xbench overall score tries to take every type of performance into account. This doesn’t mean the Air is faster than an i7. At multi-threading, the i7 is more than twice as fast. But overall, the Air is competitive because of the big gains in disk speed and graphics. The Xbench disk score was 238 compared to other MacBooks which get around 55 at best. It is this disk score that really raises the overall score.

Xcode is a development program for creating software for the Mac or iOS. I’ve heard a lot about how this Air still couldn’t possibly be used by developers. Well, we tested a rather large project consisting of over 20K lines of code to compile and about 15MBs of resources (images and data files). When building a project in Xcode, it has to do both file copying (disk intensive) and code compiling (CPU intensive). Building this project took 15s on a quad core Mac Pro with software raid drives and 33s on a MacBook Pro 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo. The 2.13GHz Air was able to do it in 24s, much faster than the MacBook Pro. This was a surprise but shows just how the old hard drives cause a slowdown of all the tasks in building the project.

Conclusion

All previous MacBook Air’s were higher priced and underpowered. They had much slower CPUs even though they were the same clock speeds. They had either slow hard drives or insanely expensive SSDs (solid-state drives) and subpar graphics. Apple clearly worked hard to make a product that could truly be a potential system for almost anyone.

The 11.6″ MacBook Air should be an attractive option at less than $1,000. If you want small, this is it. It is just 1.4GHz but for most uses, this should be fast enough. The $1300 model is probably the best value, offering you enough storage with 128GB and a much faster CPU at 1.86GHz.

Custom Computer Parts List For Windows 7 PC

Robert — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:20:12 +0000

I just built a PC that I wanted to be small-ish, quiet, powerful enough to play the latest games, and reasonably priced. While one can spend many hundreds more and eek out a bit more performance, the additional gains will be minimal. This setup plays current games, including my favorite Starcraft 2, like a champ and costs under $1370 as of this writing:

Parts List

Samsung XL-2370-1 23-Inch Widescreen LED LCD Monitor $310

Intel Core i3 CPU i3-530 2.93GHz $114

MSI N460GTX Cyclone768D5/OC 768 MB Overclocked Graphics Card $185

Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450-Watt Power Supply $70

Corsair 4GB DDR3 RAM $94

SilverStone MicroATX Midsize Tower Case TJ08B $95

OCZ 60 GB Vertex 2 Solid State Drive (SSD) $150

Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 Motherboard $120

Lite-On 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive $25

SIIG USB Mini Keyboard $22

Logitech Wireless Performance Mouse MX $80

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit System Builder $100

AT&T 3G MicroCell Review and Recommendations

Robert — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:34:16 +0000

The MicroCell is an interesting product. Some believe it is a product filling holes in a carrier’s network that shouldn’t exist. No carrier has blanket coverage and often even when there is coverage, it is worse indoors so it is nice that products like this do exist. For $150, you can pick up an AT&T MicroCell from any AT&T store. This is a cheaper option than some alternatives and worth consideration if you have little coverage at home or work.

Setup

Account setup is rather simple and done through a website. You provide your address and phone numbers and that’s it. You are limited to 10 phone numbers that can work through a MicroCell. The good news is that it is locked down by phone numbers so your neighbor can’t use it. Your address info is verified by GPS in the MicroCell during startup. Unfortunately, this means the device needs to be near a window so it can get a GPS signal. This is the oddest thing about it but apparently a requirement by the FCC. If the GPS light does not come on, you need to move it closer to a window. In some cases, you may need to try various windows at your house until you finally are able to get GPS.

Once you get GPS and are connected to your Internet, you can move the device as long as it doesn’t lose power. This might be easy if are just relocating it in the same room. If you are moving to an area with no windows, you’ll need a battery backup solution. A cheap good option is the Tripp Lite Compact UPS. Once you get GPS by a window, you can unhook the ethernet and move the MicroCell and UPS (uninterrupted power supply) wherever you like. Of course, if you ever lose power for longer than your UPS can last, you’ll have to go through that whole process again to set it up. This battery backup approach can make sense though because placement is very important.

Performance

AT&T claims a 40 ft range. This is pretty decent and works out to an area of about 5,000 square feet, even more if you have 2 floors. You’ll drop about 1 bar of coverage per major obstacle (like a wall) so to cover a whole house, you’ll want to put the MicroCell in the most central location. Unfortunately, central often means no windows, hence the need for the UPS approach.

Even if you’ve got 5 bars and are sitting right next to the MicroCell, your call quality might be awful if your Internet isn’t good. This is often the cause of any VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) issues and everyone’s assumption that their Internet is good. To test the VoIP quality of your Internet, visit this VoIP test site. If you don’t do well on those tests, you shouldn’t consider any VoIP products.

Assuming you’ve got good Internet and good bars, the MicroCell performance is very good. You’ll know you’re connected because your phone will say something like AT&T M-Cell instead of just AT&T. If you’re far from the MicroCell or have many walls between it and you, your performance may suffer so be sure to place it near where you expect to make most calls. If you’re heavily using your Internet, streaming a video for example, your call quality may suffer if you don’t have your router setup properly.

Router Optimization

The MicroCell can go between your router and DSL/Cable modem but additional routers is rarely a good thing. We recommend you hook the MicroCell up to your router so it can plug in anywhere on your network. We don’t recommend the use of a wireless bridge as wireless can be too sporadic for VoIP. To optimize MicroCell performance, it should be given high priority in your router’s QoS (Quality of Service). The MicroCell MAC address is on the bottom of the device.

Alternative

Before the MicroCell, the best alternative was the zBoost YX-510 Cell Phone Booster. This is around $300 and requires that you have some signal near a window or in an attic. Coaxial cable is run from an antenna to the zBoost repeating antenna.

Conclusion

If you’ve got poor Internet but some outside signal, the cell phone booster is your best bet. If you’ve got good enough Internet, the MicroCell is a cheaper and superior option. You may not like having to pay for such a device but it is a one time fee that should simply make your AT&T phones work at home.

New eBay fees raise prices yet again

Robert — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:04:33 +0000

eBay has recently announced new seller fee prices to take effect at the end of March. While they announced “lower insertion fees”, if you are selling something that sells for between $50 and $1500, your total fees will end up much higher.

The new fee structure will have no listing fees for the typical auction seller. The old way was usually $0.15. Both assume you start your auction at $0.99. The old final value fees had a tiered structure where you pay 8.75% for the first $25 and then 3.5% for $25-$1000 and so on. The new fees have a flat 9% final value fee but with a maximum of $50.

The following table shows how the total fees will change. It assumes you start your auction at $0.99.

Sale Price	Old Fee	New Fee
$10	$1.03	$0.90
$25	$2.43	$2.25
$50	$3.21	$4.50
$100	$4.97	$9.00
$250	$10.22	$22.50
$500	$18.97	$45.00
$1000	$36.47	$50.00
$1500	$43.96	$50.00
$2000	$51.46	$50.00

So unfortunately, most items you sell will have much greater fees, especially around the sweet spot range of $100-$500 where fees are about double to triple what they were. eBay has done this before where they announced the lowering of insertion fees but in reality it is an increase in total fees.

Make your Internet faster by changing DNS

Robert — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:33:16 +0000

When you go to any website, the browser first has to lookup where that site is located. This is done by connecting to a domain name server (DNS). There are many DNS options, not just the default of the ISP. Often other options are much faster. Most websites actually load content from various domains at once so each DNS request adds up in how fast your internet experience feels.

A great open-source DNS benchmark utility is namebench. It will test your current DNS against other global DNS or nearby providers. Versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux are available for download.

A recent customer had OpenDNS setup but it turned out the nearby AT&T DNS was 142% faster. Most people probably won’t get quite that huge of a gain. Depending on your location and ISP, its hard to predict what your best DNS option is which is why the namebench utility is so valuable.

Once you’ve figured out your best DNS options, it is best to setup the DNS in your router through its administration page. You could change the DNS in your computer’s network settings, but then none of the other computers on the network would see that gain in internet performance.

Harmony Remote Favorite Channel Icon Image

Robert — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:17:52 +0000

If you’ve got a recent harmony remote such as the Harmony One and have hard to remember 3 or 4 digit TV channels, setting up favorites can be very useful. Then you just have to select the channel on the remote and the right numbers are sent. To make things even prettier, you can define icons for each channel.

A great place to download icons is iconharmony.com. The interface is a little strange but you can search for each channel icon image you want and select it. Once you have selected each image you want, you can download them all in one zip file. You use the logitech harmony remote software to define your favorite channels and browse files to assign the icons.

Old Kindle and Kindle 2 users get no improved battery life

Robert — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:31:03 +0000

Kindle Battery Update.. Not For Most People

It has been widely reported that the recent Kindle firmware update improved battery life up to 85%. Unfortunately, this is not true for almost all Kindle owners. The battery life improvement only applies to the recent Kindle 2 (Global Wireless) version that was introduced October 7, 2009. The original Kindle and Kindle 2 (U.S. Wireless) version see no such benefit. Amazon points this out in a roundabout way on their site.

The Kindle 2 (U.S. Wireless) version does get the other benefits like built-in PDF reader and manual screen rotation.

Aluminum iMac Hard Drive Upgrade

Robert — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:43:23 +0000

What you need

1. T6 and T8 torx screwdrivers
2. Phillips Head screwdriver
3. Microfiber cleaning cloth
4. Suction cups
5. External USB or firewire backup hard drive
6. New SATA hard drive. We recommend the 1.5TB Western Digital Green Drive

Step 1 – Backup via Time Machine

Before you start, you have to first make sure you have a recent time machine backup. After installing the new drive, we will restore from this backup.

Step 2 – Remove RAM slot

The RAM slot is held on with just 1 screw. Unscrew it and pop off the panel. The screw does not fall out but remains in the panel itself. If you are upgrading RAM, this all all you need to do.

Step 3 – Remove the glass screen

This may seem like a scary step but it is extremely easy. Firmly attach suction cups at opposite corners. Then gently lift up. The glass is held on with magnets and comes off with very little effort. I recommend laying out a towel or paper towels to lay the glass on. Be careful not to scratch the glass or screen beneath it. If at all possible, try to do this work in a non dusty area because we will later need to clean off the dust between the glass and LCD screen.

Step 4 – Remove front aluminum casing

There are 12 screws around the edges holding on the front aluminum casing. Unscrew them all keeping track of which ones go where since they are varying lengths. You can then lift upwards around the edges to take off the front casing. Flip it towards the top of the imac and lay it on the table above it so that you do not have to unhook the camera.

Step 5 – Remove LCD panel

The LCD is held down with 8 screws on the sides which need to be removed. There is a cable marked in green toward the bottom which needs to be unhooked. There is also a connector to the right marked in yellow that is held down with 2 screws. Remove the screws and pull the connector upwards to unhook it. You should then lift up the LCD gently where you will see 2 power connectors toward the upper right that need unplugging. The LCD should then be free to place elsewhere. The hard drive will now be visible.

Step 6 – Remove the old hard drive

There is a cushion glued on top of the heat sensor cable. Gently pull up this cushion keeping it in one piece and try to maintain its stickiness for later. The heat sensor is held in place in a plastic notch and can slide out of it.

There is a black plastic bar holding the hard drive in place. Lift it up from left to right to unlock it. This can be very challenging since it is tight. The drive can then slide up and out and you can unhook the power and SATA cables.

Step 7 – Add the new hard drive

There are 4 screws on the old hard drive which need to be removed and added to the new hard drive so that it can slide into the holders on the iMac. Once the power and SATA cables are plugged back in, you can slide it back in and lower the black plastic bar to lock it in place. Place the heat sensor on the drive in about the same area where it was and use the sticky cushion to hold it in place. If it doesn’t seem sticky enough to hold, you can get some rubber cement from your local home depot and add just a bit to hold it in place.

Step 8 – Put the system back together

Rebuilding the system is mostly straightforward. It can be handy to have an extra pair of hands to hold the LCD as you reconnect the power cables. We recommend you lay out the screws in an orderly manner so that you know exactly which one goes where as you rebuild.

Once the system is rebuilt except for the glass, you want to use the microfiber cloth to remove any dust or debris on the front of the LCD screen and back of the glass. You will also need to use the microfiber cloth to clean the front of the glass once you remove the suction cups.

Step 9 – Restore from Time Machine backup

When you first boot up, insert the Mac OS X install disc and hold down the option key while booting so you can select the disc to boot from.

Step through the install until the Utilities menu appears at the top of the screen. First use Disk Utility to erase the disk and create a volume. Then choose to restore from backup from the same menu and choose your external time machine backup. Your system will then be just as it was except with a new hard drive.