The Lance J. Technoweb

For years my cousin was suffering with the WIFI of his MacBook. His MacBook would drop its WIFI connection every few hours (or minutes), and he'd have to manually stop and start the WIFI on his MacBook to fix it. The bad behavior made web surfing, Netflix, and anything else on-line quite unpleasant. The Bad WIFI card, as pulled from my cousin's MacBook. I tried everything to try to fix the problem. I replaced his router, tweaked OS settings, and even re-installed the OS. The on-line forums weren't particularly helpful - a lot of people had a lot of ideas how to fix it with software, but ultimately none of their suggestions worked. So I concluded that the problem was with the MacBook's WIFI card. Some of you might think that the MacBook has its WIFI chip soldered onto the MacBook's main board, but that's not the case - the classic MacBook uses a fairly common WIFI card. Getting access to that card isn't trivial, but if you're able to drive...

Well, the old Dell X200's keyboard gave up the ghost. Not entirely, but the good old backspace key stopped working, and it's really hard to use a keyboard without a backspace key. Happily, it was easy to fix, as follows: Buy a replacement keyboard (I bought my "like new" replacement keyboard through eBay for about $20) Remove the battery Unscrew the six screws from the bottom of the Dell marked with a (K) Lever out the old keyboard from the bottom left. There is a little latch there. Before fully removing the keyboard, un-snap the ZIF ribbon connector Remove the keyboard completely Slide the new keyboard into place Push the keyboard cable into the ZIF connector; lock the ZIF connector Screw the keyboard back in place with the six screws Reinstall the battery The end result? My 8 year old Dell X200 laptop is still running strong! It'd be awesome to get 3 more years out of it. Its only real shortcoming is its limited RAM.

My MacBook keyboard and trackpad has worn out to the point where it was hard to use. The trackpad and its button was behaving poorly, and the keys were less than perfect. Furthermore, the "palm rest" was stained and developed a crack. Figure 1: T he Yukky old keyboard/trackpad. Cracked, stained, and worn out. But excitingly, there is a simple fix! I've replaced the keyboard and trackpad with new ones - and it was easy to do and inexpensive! It was the best thing I've done to my MacBook ever. This article covers what I did. Figure 2: My clean new keyboard & trackpad! Awesome! Background: The MacBook Top Case design The MacBook keyboard and trackpad are integrated into a single part called the " MacBook Top Case ". Due to the MacBook's design, you just can't replace the keyboard or the trackpad - you have to replace the entire "Top Case". That sounds bad, but it really isn't, because the "Top Case" ...

You've made a great decision to buy an iPhone 4. It has become the love of your life, and now you want to buy it gifts. What should you buy? Here are the things that I bought - and love. 1. Grantwood FM transmitter with integrated car charger. Awesome iPhone 4 compatible Grantwood FM Transmitter If you have a car, this is one of the best gifts you can buy for your iPhone 4: The awesome iPhone 4 compatible Grantwood FM transmitter that has a built-in car charger. So you can listen to Pandora and listen to GPS directions all through your car's FM stereo... and keep it charged while you're at it. And it works exclusively through the dock connector, so there is no fooling around with extra cables or fiddling with the volume control. It works great for me, and is a solid bargain. I know - I bought one and I love it. I use it almost every time I drive. 2. Spare Charger and cable. Spare iPhone Charger Spare aftermarket chargers are standards-based and inexpensive. And so...

The Problem: A Poorly-Behaving Trackpad Button MacBook trackpads buttons are going bad. Happily, there is a quick and technically-simple fix that may work for many MacBook owners with a misbehaving trackpad. A few months ago I started to notice that my trackpad was operating in a funky manner. The trackpad button had lost its solid click and turned mushy. As I typed the trackpad button would mistakenly register clicks, and the cursor would jump all over the place; The cursor would jump around and my words would end up jumbled. Or a button press wouldn't register at all, and I'd end up trying to smash down of the button with no response. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had with a keyboard and mouse. I tried every technique I could find on the web to try to fix my bad trackpad button – from sliding paper through the gap around button, to MacBook disassembly and vacuuming everything. Nothing made it better. My MacBook was fairly unusable, and getting worse. Af...

Recently, I was asked by a good friend to help her buy a new Windows Desktop PC. I recommended that she buy a PC with something other then a near-obsolete processor - meaning a machine with an Intel Core2Duo or better, as I believe that a computer with a decent processor will have a good chance of not becoming obsolete as soon. Atom, Pentium, and Celeron are too close to being obsolete. And I also recommended that she get a machine with Windows 7 instead of the now-deprecated Windows Vista. And after I described what makes a decent desktop PC, I started to shop for one. And that's when I discovered that the Mac Mini is a bargain. A bargain mid-ranged desktop computer I went to the popular brand web sites: Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, ACER, etc. And I found that a machine of this class generally starts around $500+. And that for $500, you don't get wireless, bluetooth, or sometimes even speakers. WTF??? In contrast, the base model $599 Mac Mini is very well specified - it h...

I recently visited my dad while on a business trip when I coincidentally discovered that DD-WRT is now available for his TEW-652. The TEW-652BRP has been a great router for my father, but it isn't what I'd call "feature rich". An upgrade to DD-WRT is a big bonus. I live 2500 miles away from my non-technical father, and so a well-specified router that helps me manage his network remotely is important to both of us. This article will explain what I did to finally get DD-WRT working on my TEW-652BRP v1.0R. About the TEW-652brp It's a nice looking little black 802.11n, 2.5 GHz router. It was amazingly inexpensive (usually way under $30), and  the TEW-652brp is available through Amazon. Mine is a version 1.0R, you'll likely want the same version. Out of the box, it works quite well - it has been stable, and I was fairly happy with the stock firmware. But it was short on features - I like having VPN, SSH, and flexible DHCP services on the home netwo...