The Lance J. Technoweb

802.11b and 802.11g are utterly obsolete and must now be disabled by all access points, routers, and clients. 802.11b first emerged in 1999 - a hot new standard that provided inexpensive networking over the air. But by January 2003, a faster standard became commonplace - 802.11g. And since 2006, 802.11n based products have been on the scene. Both 802.11b and 802.11g are inefficient.  These protocols consume valuable wireless bandwidth and manage to slow everyone down. And therefore, I proclaim that 802.11b and 802.11g must be immediately banned from the world. Doing so will speed access for everyone. So log into your access points and disable the mixed modes that support anything below 802.11n. Throw out your old interface cards and routers. You, and 99.99% of the rest of the world will see much better performance.  Never buy a product that doesn't support 802.11n or better. Upgrades are very inexpensive: 802.11n USB client interfaces are available for under $15 ...

Some folks are under the mistaken assumption that Chicago is not actually a windy city.  They look at the NWS weather data and see that Milton, Massachusetts is the windiest city, and that Chicago is a bit down on the list. The problem with this logic is that NWS weather stations are often not actually in the cities themselves, or at least not downtown. The Milton, Massachusetts weather station is on Great Blue Hill (the namesake of WGBH), the highest prominence on the coast of Massachusetts.  In contrast, the Chicago NWS station is at O'Hare International Airport, which is far west of downtown Chicago and as far away from the shore as one can be and still be within the sprawling limits of that city.

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...