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 :
Tips and Tricks
D-Link USB 2.0 7 Port Hub Unboxing & Important Mac Related Notes
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 :
Will the Otterbox Defender for iPhone 5s work with an InvisibleShield?
IMPORTANT UPDATE : PLEASE READ :
Having used this case for a number of hours I took it off to check that it was causing no damage. Something I do with each case I try and it is for exactly this reason that I do this.
The case has an Otterbox Logo embossed into the rear part of the case (inside the case). The rear of the phone sits against this. Upon checking my phone this logo had transferred itself onto the rear of my phone, in a big black ugly printed mess.
Much like if you left anything lying on a newspaper.
Photos will be added soon.
I have no idea if this transfer occurs onto the aluminium of the phone, however it certainly does if you have a shield / skin on the rear of your phone.
My advice is simply do not use this case if you have a skin on your phone.
The transferred logo did come off the rear of my phone with a lot of clean and scrapping with a fingernail however it was a mess.
I will be contacting Otterbox and will advise in due course.
IMPORTANT UPDATE : PLEASE READ :
For me this is one of the biggest questions I have in relation to any case. I have dedicated this post to this question so anyone else searching for the answer to this question should hopefully find it easily.
1. Will the Otter Defender for iPhone 5s work with a Zagg InvisibleShield?
– No. Watermarks are present across the entire surface of the Otterbox and thus massively affects the screen clarity and usage.
2. Will the Otter Defender for iPhone 5s work with a Best Skins Ever?
– No. Watermarks are present across the entire surface of the Otterbox and thus massively affects the screen clarity and usage.
3. Will the Otter Defender for iPhone 5s work with a Body Guardz?
– No. Watermarks are present across the entire surface of the Otterbox and thus massively affects the screen clarity and usage.
4. Will the Otter Defender for iPhone 5s work with a Matt / Privacy Screen Shield?
– Yes. No watermarking occurs. Although the clarity of the screen will decrease as does the sensitivity of the screen it will function.
In relation to the above if you have one of the other screen guards on you can apply a Matt screen protector over the top of it. It will prevent the watermarking. However the clarity and sensitivity of the screen will decrease. It does mean you can keep your invisible shield etc for when you change cases.
I will add images to highlight the above when I get my computer back.
Might even do a quick video, but don’t hold me to that.
MacBook Pro SSD (Solid State Drive) Install Guide
If you ask anyone in relation to current recommended upgrades for their machines the most highly recommended and common answer will be, ‘install an SSD.’
An SSD is a Solid State Drive, and it replaces your HDD (Hard Disk Drive). It is basically a giant flash drive, with no moving parts or spinning disks and and pull information from itself almost instantly.
It is hard to beat Wikipedia for definitions so here you go :
Solid State Drive :
Hard Disk Drive :
The main benefits from such an upgrade are :
1. Massive improvement is booting times.
2. Massive improvement in program launch times.
3. Massive improvement in data access times.
4. So basically everything runs quickly.
I decided to take this upgrade on, and it is one that you can easily do yourself in about twenty minutes!
Here is a quick guide to get you on your way to a massive speed improvement of your machine. At the end I have added a video that shows my machine booting prior to the upgrade with the standard 750GB HDD installed, then booting up with the new 256Gb SSD installed.
Good luck and take your time, there’s no rush, and no reason to be troubled by this upgrade.
1. Make sure you have everything : You will need your new SSD, an external case for your old HDD (as well as aiding in data transfer if you decide to go down that route), a set of precision screw drivers.
Windows Phone 8 – Getting Started Tips & Tricks.
I have just got myself a new Nokia Lumia 620, running Windows Phone 8. My initial impressions are this is a quality phone and is running a quality operating system.
Now I am an Apple fan, but I have to say the WP8 OS is exceptionally nice.
When I have used it a little more I will post up more detailed thoughts, however in the mean time I have found this as an excellent starting point;
iPhone Mail Message Stuck in Outbox – An Easy Solution…
This happened to me today, so I thought I would share the easiest solution ever to sorting this problem out. Basically an email message was stuck for whatever reason in my Out Box on my iPhone(5) (running iOS6). It was stuck all day and as the battery has enough issues in lasting the day this really didn’t help. So if like me you were puzzled as to how to resolve this, (because as it is trying to send you can’t click on ‘Edit’ and subsequently delete the email) here is the solution.
1. Go to ‘Settings’
2. Put the phone into ‘Airplane Mode’
3. Go to ‘Mail’
4. Go to your ‘Out Box’
5. Click ‘Edit’
6. Delete the problem message.
7. Go to ‘Settings’
8. Turn off ‘Airplane Mode’
9. Continue with an enjoyable stress free day!
Best Free Mac Anti-Virus Solutions.
It is with great pride that you you will hear Mac users, owners and genius(pl) tell you that due to the rigidity of OSX and the super tightness of its code that the Mac doesn’t need an anti-virus.
“How is it so secure? There are a number of answers to this question, but it’s primarily due to a technique known as sandboxing. Essentially, sandboxing is a form of software virtualization that runs programs and processes in an isolated virtual environment, thus giving them limited access to your system and everything on it. Secondarily is a system called library randomization, which makes it harder for malicious programs to find their targets, coupled with this there are dozens of other security features that make the OSX operating system so tight.”
However there is another truth behind this story and it is this. The Mac has less risk of virus(pl) attacks as hackers spend less time targeting Macs. This was primarily because a lot fewer people had them, so the virus would have been targeting a minority, so why bother, you could easily get enough victims by targeting Windows machines.
This are changing though! Macs are getting hugely more popular, and people are buying them, as numbers increase, so too will hackers interest in the machines.
The simply fact is people put the same info into a Mac as they do a PC, bank details, personal details, passwords and so on…
This makes the Mac more attractive to the hacker now. More Macs, more reason to hack, more chance of a virus or malicious code and more chance of personal loss.
It is for this reason that I am now moving away from the mindset of “I have a Mac there I am safe.”
I am now of the mindset “I have a Mac so I am safer, and I can be safer still with an Anti Virus program.”
HOW TO : Moving iPhone / iPad / iPod Backups to an external drive
If Santa has just brought you a nice new shiny SSD or you are running out of space on your HDD / SSD and are disgusted by how much space is actually used on backups of your iDevices you need this guide, it could save you gigs of space and is pretty easy to sort out!
The simple fact is we all need backups, but why not put them someone you want it to be instead of cluttering up vital space.
Mac Tip : How to burn ISO disc images
I thought this may be useful to some:
I recently decided to have a look at Windows 8, and as I am now a Mac User I had an old copy of Windows that I could upgrade on a spare parts machine. I needed to install Windows on the MAc to be able to upgrade it, but to be honest I am still learning at OSX. I needed to burn an ISO of the windows disk to a DVD and I had no idea what I needed or how to do it. I know that on the PC I needed separate software, thankfully with the Mac it was much easier, in fact it is this easy…
1. Insert a blank disc.
2. Start Disk Utility.
3. From the File menu, choose Open Disk Image and select the ISO to be burned.
4. In the list of volumes, you will now see an item representing the ISO file. Select it.
4. Click the Burn button and follow the instructions.
Easy eh?!