If like me for some reason you have to change your AppleID email address you could well discover that this is an absolute nightmare.
To do this you need to go to : https://appleid.apple.com/
And then you click on ‘Manage Your Apple ID.’
From here you can ‘Edit your Apple ID and Primary Email Address.’
It should be a case of changing your email address and saving it. For me and many others though that is not the case.
– Perform a FULL BACKUP using both iCloud and a physical backup on iTunes –
I recently posted up a thread in which I explained how my previous USB 2.0 Powered hub didn’t seem to like my new 2013 iMac and it was subsequently returned, and that I was on the look out for a replacement…
https://tbni.blog/2013/10/18/d-link-usb-2-0-7-port-hub-unboxing-important-mac-related-notes/
Well after a little searching I felt I may have found that replacement, and at this early stage it does indeed seem that I have.
So if you are a late 2012 or late 2013 iMac owner who has had issues with USB hubs not being able to cope then one worth trying for you is the ‘Plugable’ Powered USB 3.0 HUB. I picked it up on Amazon.co.uk for about £30.
For reference I currently have a 500Gb Portable USB 3.0 drive, a 1TB Portable USB 3.0 drive, and a powered 3TB USB 3.0 plugged into the rear of my iMac along with this 7 Port Powered Hub. In the HUB I have had running without any issues whatsoever a 320Gb Powered Drive and a further 1TB Powered drive (These are both USB 2.0). I have also had at the same time my iPhone 5s and iPad (3rd Generation) syncing and iPhoto pulling photos off my Panasonic TZ30 digital camera as well as my GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition.
Now admittedly there is a lot going on here on here and much more than I usually would be doing at one one time, but it was a good way to test the hub. The results were ‘two thumbs up’ everything worked away doing its thing, without any drive drop outs or apparently power problems. (My previous HUB failed on simply having the 2 external drives plugged into it).
So all in all after over a weeks use the HUB is yet to experience any issues or give me any problems. A firmware update is available however it must be done from a Windows machine. I have not at this stage completed this firmware upgrade as things are working well, and as the man says, ‘If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.’
One little superstition I did carry out was before I plugged in any USB 2.0 devices into the HUB was I allowed each port to mount a USB 3.0 drive. I don’t know if this is a requirement, and to be honest I doubt very much it is, however it is something I and my colleagues always do with USB 3.0 ports – mount a USB 3.0 device first. The legend goes it lets the port know it is a 3.0 rather than getting locked in at 2.0 speeds.
So there you have it, if you are experiencing iMac related USB HUB issues this may well be the HUB worth trying, (one final thought is that the blue LEDs can be rather bright at night, so make sure you have some black electrical tape to cover them up).
Plugable USB 3.0 Powered HUB Unboxing Gallery :
I have found that on ocassion you may need to see some of the hidden files and folders in OSX, mainly for troubleshooting. When enabled things can appear very messy and untidy so in my opinion it is best to make things visible, then when you are done, hide them again.
Good luck.
To enable hidden files/folders in finder windows:
– Open Finder
– Open the Utilities folder
– Open a terminal window
– Copy and paste the following line in:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
– Press return
– Now hold ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon
– Click on Relaunch
You will now see all the hidden files and folders. Once you are finished, perform the steps above however, replace the terminal command in step 4 with:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
The Acer Aspire One D257 is a capable netbook, but one of the choke points of the system is that it is supplied with 1Gb of RAM, this can be easily upgraded by the user to a maximum of 2Gb and this is one upgrade that I reccommend all users consider.
It is a fairly simple process that can be done without any issues by taking your time and being careful. It isn’t like your desktop where the RAM upgrade is almost foolproof, here you will need to undone some very delicate clips and leads, my best advice is :
1. Take your time.
2. Don’t force anything, if it is isn’t going, it won’t go.
Then my next bit of advice is watch this video, it isn’t mine, but I used it and it is very good and well explained :
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DiBKaS1s80&w=560&h=315]
From this video you will see that this can be broken down into a number of simple parts…
Acer Aspire One D257 Windows 8 Installation :
I have decided to add this as an individual post to make it easier for anyone looking for specific information in relation to installation of windows 8 on a netbook, so apologies for the double post.
They say it couldn’t be done! They say it wont work! I say, ‘Bring it on!’
Every one loves a challenge right? So here is the thing Windows 8 is out, I have it. It was on my Mac, I got rid of the Mac, so I had a licence of Windows 8. I wanted it on my netbook. It requires a minimum resolution of 768. My netbook has a resolution of 600. They say nothing will work, I say we will tell it to work!
If you are in the same position and have a 600 resolution netbook and would like to see what Windows 8 is like, it is entirely possible. The upscaled resolution would look completely polished but it is entirely usable and more importantly fully functional!
This machine comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition so the first thing to do is to make sure it is fully updated so run windows update.
– Now Install Windows 8 – as you would if upgrading any machine. Run the ‘Setup’ from the USB / media…Windows 8 will install.
Recently whilst in the process of changing from my MacBook Pro to an iMac I went through a stage of being ‘computerless.’ In today’s modern era that’s just not an option! Couple this with a recent holiday to America during which I borrowed a friends netbook to use as a storage device for the bucket loads of photos and videos I took and found it to be a brilliant little device for this purpose. Every traveller should consider taking a netbook with them, couple with a portable HDD for backups it is the perfect solution for storing and viewing a large amount of photos. You can then obviously do basic editting, emailing etc, and the storage options you have are much greater than say for example a 16Gb or even 64Gb iPad. A netbook will have for example 320Gb of storage and a 1Tb portable drive can be picked up for reasonably sensible money now. Anyway I digress. I picked up a brand new net book on gumtree for the handsome of £100. The Spec of the Acer Aspire One is as follows :
Whilst I was still using my MacBook Pro I had also been using a USB Hub, although due to power restraints I had to upgrade to a Powered Hub. After a little research the D-Link 7 USB 2.0 Powered Hub seemed to be the way forward. I ordered it up and upon its arrival I plugged in it, stuck in in the MBP and now had an extra six USB 2.0 Hubs to play with.
On this machine it worked flawlessly, never missing a beat, my machine didn’t have USB3.0 so that wasn’t an issue and this hub happily powered four HDDs (2 of which were powered, 2 were portable). It also worked whilst syncing my iphone / ipad and camera. No complaints whatsoever on this machine.
This specific Hub also has two ports which are dedicated to charging. They are ports six and seven, and if your machine is powered down but the hub is still on (via the wall socket) you can use ports six or seven to charge your phone / tablet etc. It does not charge whilst the machine is in use.
For reference the machine this Hub was being used with was a Early 2011 MackBook Pro i7 2.2GHz (1Gb Graphics), 8Gb RAM, USB 2.0 with a Apple Cinema Display attached via Thunderbolt.
Then came the problems. I upgraded my computer to an iMac. It was at this point that this hub stopped working.
Again for reference the machine it was being used with was a late 2013 27″ iMac i7 3.5Ghz, (4Gb NVIDIA Graphics), 8Gb RAM, USB 3.0.
In this set up I used 3 of the 4 USB 3.0 ports on the rear of the machine to deal with three USB 3.0 hard drives (2 portable and one powered). The forth port was used to power the D-Link Hub. At this point only 2 hard drives were being used in it (both themselves powered desktop drives). This is when things started to fail. Both drives would mount momentarily, then disconnect with errors, mount -> disconnect and repeat! If you removed one drive the other mount successfully (either drive). Either drive would successfully mount via the USB ports to the rear of the machine.
For some reason when both drives were plugged into this port things failed. My only option was to bin the hub and try again with a new one. A quick Google search for USB hub problems with an iMac do tend to suggest that this is an issue with many hubs and the power they require as opposed to what they actually supply.
As expected customer service from Amazon was excellent and a new hub was ordered.
D-Link USB 2.0 Hub Gallery :
Having been using my G-Form Case for my iPad since April 2012 and with it still going strong, (although a little dirtier than when it started life) I had a G-Form case ordered and sitting on my desk about 10 days before I even had my iPhone 5s. I had made an enquiry with G-Form to make sure it would fit (which it does) and that order was placed.
I am a huge G-Form fan, the iPad case I use is this one :
https://tbni.blog/2012/04/27/april-2012-review-g-form-extreme-sleeve-for-ipad-and-others-up-to-10/
I have had my iPad safely homed in it for 18 months and it has been in some strange and wonderful places. The iPad is still absolutely immaculate, the case although the yellow shows up any marks is still 100%, the material is uncreased, unfolded with no scuffs or tears. It is generally in a back pack but I have 100% faith in the job it is doing in there, after all back packs are not generally one of the safest nor more stable places on earth!
It is for these reasons that I decided to entrust my brand spanking new release day iPhone 5s to G-Form.
The case feels tough and strong with the reassuring ‘squigginess’ of the G-Form material. The case has a certain ‘tackiness’ or ‘stickiness’ that means you can put the case on the dash of your car and most of the time it will sit there, however it wouldn’t be as sticky as, for example, a Griffin Survivor. It slips into your pocket and out again with ease, something the pure silicon cases don’t. And it isn’t a dust magnet, so unlike the silicon cases when you put it into your pocket it doesn’t come out as if it has just done an impression of a vacuum in your pocket.
The case is face-safe, in that it has a raised lip sitting above the bezel of the screen, meaning you can place it face down on a desk and the screen won’t touch the desk.
All ports are open and plugging in the official Apple sync charging cable causes no issues, however the official Apple 9 pin to 30 pin connector won’t fit in, you would need the cabled adapter if this was an accessory you relied on.
The camera ports caused me no issues when taking photos, with or without the flash.
The full screen is open so using the Touch-ID fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s isn’t an issue.
In my previous post I mentioned my Nook Simple Touch. A short time after I bought this Banes and Ernst dropped the price of the Nook Simple Glow Light to £49.
I had mentioned in the above post that one of the only faults with the Nook Simple Touch was the fact that without a source of light you couldn’t read from it. The Nook Simple Glow Light solves this problem.
The Glow Light is a back lit e-Reader and makes reading your Nook anywhere a complete possibility. It has been mentioned across the web that the back light isn’t great, however I think that it is important to point out that there is nothing else at this price point offering such a complete e-Reader experience. The light isn’t as uniform as that of the likes of a Kindle. However it is perfectly usable making reading in the dark a doddle!
My advice however is, if you are going for a Nook, go for the Glow Light, I didn’t think having a back light would have made much of a difference, however it only took me a matter of hours before I realised how handy it would actually be. The most obvious on is in bed. No back light means a bed side light at the minimum needs to be on. The just by lying on your back you arm is likely to cast a shadow on the screen blocking off part of that ‘page.’ The back light removes any such problems and at such an affordable price point you should definitely considering making the extra investment in the Nook Simple Glow Light.
Finally one other difference between the two is that the Nook Simple Glow Light comes supplied with a waller charger (plug & lead – the lead doubles up for data transfer purposes also). The Nook Simple Touch comes only with a charging and data transfer lead, if you don’t already have a compatible wall charger you will need to buy one or rely on charging through a USB port on your computer.
I already had a few options for readings whilst on the go, the first being books and magazines, but c’mon it is 2013 and actual books are heavy and awkward. I know to some people I have just committed a crime against humanity by stating that actual books are in some way less than the perfect item to place your eyes upon, but for me they are ideal. I had my iPad, iPhone, and more importantly with the mobile internet do we actually need to read one specific thing when there are millions of articles and pages to read online?
That opens up thousands more questions but I think it is safe to say that at some point most people will come across a title that they want to read, something that they have a genuine interest in and the internet just won’t cut it.
It is this point for me that an e-reader has a role. I am not a ‘big’ reader, I have probably read about 10 books in the last as many years however there are a few books that have appeared in the recent past that have made me look at a techy way of reading them.
So the iPad and iPhone are options, iBooks seems like a good solution too, and with Apple’s OSX Mavericks coming very soon with iBooks built in Apple seems to have a great solution. One main problem is the screen, the screen that is so perfect for so many things just doesn’t suit reading, then you have battery issues, an iPad lasts hours, an e-reader can last months.
Then along came the biggie, the price reduction in the Banes and Ernst Nook Simple Touch e-Reader. Coming in at £29 it made e-Readers very affordable. So I bought one, and they are great. With a program called Calibre you can convert many different eBook formats to be compatible with the Nook, it evens handles pdf files reasonably well (a little laggy, but completely functional). The biggest benefit in these e-Readers is the e-Ink, and the paper type display, it greatly reduces any eyestrain and makes reading from the tablet much easier on the eye. It is actually like reading from paper.
Books can be downloaded from the built in book store (accessed via wifi), or for some other source and transferred to the Nook, remembering Calibre you have a huge library of both free and paid books available.
The next big advantage is the battery life, one charge can last up to three months, say no more!