The Lance J. Technoweb

Sometimes I have something that is old, worn out, or even broken, but I -know- that someone in the world could use it.  For instance, the heating element of my coffee maker broke, but I knew that someone could use the coffee maker's carafe and filter basket.  I listed those two parts individually on eBay, and they sold right away.  I didn't get a lot of money for them, but I got enough to cover my costs. Why bother?  Yes, I didn't make a ton of money selling my defunct coffee maker's carafe and filter basket.  So what's my logic for selling them on eBay? It's better for my stuff to be used, instead of it being thrown into a garbage heap. It's better for my stuff to be used by someone who needs it, instead of having it sitting idle in my attic to rot. It's better for someone else to be able to fix their own thing with an inexpensive used part, instead of them having to throw away their old thing and buy something new. It's better to repair stu

We all love our Macs, but one Mac laptop was the best ever. What was it?  It was the late-2009 through mid-2010 white plastic MacBook. What?  That piece of ugly white? Yes!  Here's why: They are powerful.  It was nearly as powerful as the MacBook Pro of its day, and can still run a modern OS well.  It was faster than many more modern MacBooks. It was inexpensive.  It was under $1000 when new, and today they are under $400. It is tough.  People could only ruin them with water or with serious abuse. Unlike today's Macs, it is standards-based.  It uses standard memory, drives, and dvd. The memory is replaceable.  The memory can be inexpensively expanded to 16 GB (the same limit as today's most expensive MacBook Pro). The hard drive is replaceable.  A MacBook today can easily use an off-the-shelf 2 TB SSD drive.  Try a 2 TB drive in today's MacBook Pro.  Haha, see you at the bank. The battery is long-lived.  I have many heavily used 7+ year old MacBooks, all s

A few years ago we were all excited that Google was getting into the Fiber Internet business.  And before that, Verizon was getting into the game with its FiOS brand.  Now they've all pretty much stopped. What happened? Part of the issue is that Comcast and its industry brothers have strong monopoly-like powers and the ability to direct Congress and the President.   The Cable TV industry, operating as a single monopolistic business, is a very powerful force despite extremely poor ratings and ever-rising high prices. The other death knell to Google Fiber and Verizon FiOS is Wireless Internet.  Not today's wireless, but next year's wireless. With Comcast working towards a monopoly of wireless spectrum, it is financially irresponsible for any wire-based ISP to continue to build out their services. - Lloyd Emerson It takes a ton of money to string up wires along the street and drag them into a house.  Even a simple thought experiment shows that  a reasonable $200

I really hate the idea that honest and upstanding Americans continue to spend good money to RENT a cable modem from Comcast when they can save a lot of money by buying a great modem for very little money.  So I aim to help you avoid these awful rental fees. Comcast usually charges about $10 a month for you to rent a cable modem, which is $120 a year, and Add the "taxes and fees" that Comcast layers onto your bill and maybe the cost is $140 a year.  Wow. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  STOP!!! Cable modems are inexpensive!  You can buy a new, modern, blazing fast, Comcast-certified cable modem for less than $40 from Amazon. But How? Buy this cable modem, the TP-Link TC-7610-E Unplug your Comcast rental cable modem Plug in your modern, newly purchased cable modem Restart your WIFI router (unplug it for 30 seconds, and then plug it back in) Wait a couple minutes Go to any website Comcast will put up a page instead of the website Log into Comcast using your Comcast account