How to Troubleshoot a Power Issue

Filed under Maintenance and Repairs by on April 15, 2010 at 6:00 am {no comments}

Power issues are annoying. Either your laptop shuts off suddenly because the power cord unplugged, the battery craps out after 20 minutes, or it just doesn’t turn on at all..

Like all laptop manufacturers, Apple sometimes has battery issues. Or power adapter issues or power related logic board issues. How can you tell what exactly is wrong with your laptop that either won’t run or has a chronic dead battery?

Here’s how you can troubleshoot a bad battery, bad power adapter or bad logic board and is it covered under warranty / AppleCare.
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Recover Lost Data from Memory Cards and USB Drives

Filed under Maintenance and Repairs by on March 22, 2010 at 6:00 am {no comments}

Memory cards, USB Drives and even SSDs are small, hold a good amount of data and don’t have all those pesky data corruption issues that traditional hard drives have… Or do they?

Yes, even data on a flash media can get corrupted or at the very least, accidentally erased. If this has happened to you, I’ll show you what you can do – assuming the media itself isn’t damaged, crushed, or physically destroyed in any way.
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Fixing Damaged CDs and DVDs

Filed under Maintenance and Repairs by on February 25, 2010 at 7:00 am {no comments}

Whats worse than watching a good Netflix Movie that’s getting to a really suspenseful part and suddenly the screen stops.. The beach-ball appears.. Then DVD Player quits and says the disc is scratched or unreadable. You re-insert the movie and scan to the part, only to find out you’re going to miss about 5 minutes of the scene, if you’re lucky. Sometimes the disc is so bad, you just need to send it back.

Thats great with Netflix but what happens if the movie is one of yours? What if its so bad, OS X won’t even give it the time of day, ejecting it after a minute of spinning? What if its a CD you burned years ago? Or some software you bought? How do you fix the CD or DVD so that OS X will read it again?
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Check up on your Internet Service Provider

Filed under Basics for Beginners by on February 8, 2010 at 7:00 am {one comment}

In the days where unlimited access doesn’t really mean you can download “all you can eat”, and Verizon and AT&T are at each other’s throats about 3G coverage, it pays to check up on your ISP to see if you really are getting what you’re paying for.

There’s a few ways you can check on your ISP. Speed tests, Ping tests, DNS tests, Shaping / Throttling tests to see if certain protocols (P2P, Voip, Skype, Torrents) are traffic shaped.

What about if you have a bandwidth cap? How can you meter your bandwidth to see if you’re approaching it? Its not just for DSL and Cable – 3G and other mobile data plans are usually capped with heavy overage charges.

Here’s what you can do to give your internet provider a checkup:
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Dealing With 10 Common MacBook/Pro Problems

Filed under Maintenance and Repairs by on February 4, 2010 at 7:00 am {2 comments}

Everyone’s heard the rumor that Mac’s are perfect, never have problems and life is so much easier with OS X. Nobody’s perfect and neither is OS X, Mac hardware or Apple. In fact, there’s a few common ailments specific to MacBooks and MacBookPros.

Below are some of the most common problem’s I’ve come across with Apple laptops, how to identify them, what to do about them and fixing them.
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