Don’t think for a moment that you need a new MacBook Pro to run your once speedy applications with new-found pep!  Recently, we’ve begun installing Intel SSD drives in MacBook Pros and the results have been unbelievable!

What’s the Procedure?

A typical SSD upgrade involves replacing the mechanical hard drive (HDD) with a faster SSD.  While useful, the drawback to this approach is it sacrifices space for speed.  Most semi-modern MacBooks have at least a 300+ GB hard drive.  Getting a similarly sized drive can cost upwards of $400! That’s not good planning!  Since you already have a perfectly good hard drive for storage.  The best approach is to replace the original hard drive with a SSD and then replace the DVD drive with the original full size drive.  This approach gives you the best of both worlds: Speed & Storage Space!

MacBook Pro Pre SSD

MacBook Pro Component Location

Replaced SSD with Original HD replacing DVD Drive

This video shows the first part of the step-by-step upgrade procedure for an SSD ultimate upgrade.

The next step is a clean installation of the operating system on the SSD.  Once  Mac OS is stable and updated on the faster drive, the old OS is removed from the mechanical hard drive and you have a large disk drive for documents & media with a super fast Intel SSD for your operating system and apps!  There is no faster, more cost-effective solution!  Please call Nerds Limited with questions about an Ultimate Upgrade.  We’ve done plenty of these and can’t wait to show you just how fast a 5-year-old computer can become with the magic of SSD!

One of the most common questions we get at Nerds Limited from small business owners is, “I love my iPad, how can it help me streamline my small business like it streamlined my personal life?”  Glad you asked!  Here are some of the best apps for small businesses.

Get a Pro Dropbox account and use it to store only your documents.  That will allow every one you authorize to view current files in the field.  Next, there’s Polkast and its accompanying Polkast for iPad app.  This little beauty will allow access to a PC or Mac’s storage as long as the computer is on.  Finally, there’s the expensive, but crucial LogMeIn Ignition which allows unlimited direct screen sharing via iPhone or iPad from anywhere in the world.  Move your mouse from anywhere you have net access!  All without monthly subscriptions to expensive remote clients.

On the hardware side, if your small business gives presentations, don’t overlook the relatively inexpensive iPad HDMI Adapter. This little beauty takes the guesswork out of presenting a slide show and makes the entire workflow feel more natural.  If you’re feeling like you’d really like to impress during your presentations, pick up a 2nd Generation Apple TV and use it to give your presentations wirelessly!  Pace around with the iPad and as long as both devices are connected via WiFi, rest assured, your presentation will come through flawlessly!  The Apple TV can do what the Airport Extreme does with Airplay to stream to speakers, except with HD video.

Along the presentation line, Keynote for Mac users & QuickOffice Pro HD for PowerPoint users allows

for easy keynote and PPTx file types to be played on the iPad.  Care to hand out copies of your idea to everyone in the room in addition to remote clients?  Try Conde Nast’s Idea Flight.  Then there’s the ever popular GoodReader: far and away the best way to annotate any kind of file.

For consultants who run mostly Mac based systems, the Marketcircle app Billings has an excellent workflow for generating invoices.  Nerds Limited’s invoicing system has been 100% billings for the past two years and we couldn’t be happier!  The only irritating limitation is the iOS version of Billings doesn’t store invoices it doesn’t create.  That aside, it is great!

Have more questions?  Feel free to call or text Nerds Limited any time!  Our contact information can be found on the main page, or Google Maps’ excellent Places Page.

To get a first generation iPad, we recommend Amazon.  If you think you’d like one, please use the link below. It gives us Ad credit.

iPad First Generation @Amazon

Here’s a little about inductive charging from Energizer. Rest assured, this will become more & more popular.

The Power of Qi

Pronounced (chee)!

Qi is the new universal standard for inductive charging. It’s a common language for inductive chargers and devices to talk to one another. Qi allows you to charge smartphones, cameras, MP3 players and anything else that needs 5W or less without directly plugging the devices into anything!

It is very similar to other standards like Bluetooth^® and Wi-Fi™. It is anticipated that the Qi universal standard will be broadly adopted by mobile device manufacturers and the others, providing you with the freedom to charge all Qi-enabled devices on a single station without multiple cords and eventually without Qi accessories.

Qi was created by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), which is a cooperation of Asian, European and American companies from diverse industries. Most of the major consumer electronics companies are members including, RIM, Verizon, Nokia, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sanyo, Panasonic and Motorola. Strict standardized testing and certification is required before any product can carry the Qi symbol.

So you got a Tech gift recently which you’re sure can do more.  You’re probably right!  Life Hacker recently published an excellent article entitled Set Up and Get to Know Your New Tech Gifts which we believe to be an excellent start to understanding your new gizmo.

Once you have and idea of what you’d like to do with your new and old and new tech gear, give Nerds Limited a call and see just how much we can do to take the guesswork out of your world!

Call or text +1 (505) 750-8885 day or night for rapid response.  If we’re with other clients, please leave voice mail and expect a response faster than you can say “help!”

Nerds Limited techs understand the companies behind the products.  Such expertise allows us to understand the motives behind certain movements in the tech world.

These undercurrents are beginning to shape our daily lives in way from minuscule to massive!

For example, Steve Jobs’ 2010 open letter entitled, “Thoughts on Flash” detailed Apple’s official policy on Adobe Flash.

Who cares? If you own an iPhone, you do!

The letter explains why Apple’s mobile division will probably never produce a device with a web browser which runs flash!  To quote the letter directly:

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

This is a simple example of Nerds Limited’s commitment to going beyond the headlines and technical manuals to grasp the whole picture.  Call Nerds Limited at 505-750-8885 to schedule your on-site appointment today and see just how good tech can be!

What’s the best router for my old desktop, three-year-old laptop, new PC laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad and HDTV home theater with NetFlix?  We don’t care about the technical stuff, just give us an answer!

You got it!  While routers depend heavily on use-case, we won’t bore you with that.  We own, troubleshoot, and use all of the above stuff and more every day in our own homes.

Here’s the Apple Router we use:

Airport Extreme 802.11N (5TH GEN)

Here’s the gigabit hub we use:
NETGEAR GS105 ProSafe 5-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch – 10/100/1000 Mbps

Here’s the article which won us over to the apple router.  We are truly not a Mac people, we’re computer people.  So too is Brian Klug of AnandTech.com: one of the most objective review sites on the net.

Here’s the article link which discusses the AirPort Extreme 5th Generation

The article really gets technical!  In the interest of brevity, here’s an excerpt from the conclusion section of the article:

I guess the reason that I personally use an Airport Extreme (in conjunction with another device for NAT) is that it’s really one of a small number of 802.11n dual-band APs I’ve tried that actually works without locking up, becoming unstable periodically, dropping the session from overheating when being pushed to 100% for hours, or requiring a daily reboot. There are just so many other consumer level 802.11n APs  that either fall short or are incredibly frustrating and unreliable.

AnandTech Reviewers are never that kind about anything, ever.

Next, for those with a HDTV configuration which includes networking, do not expect to be happy with even the best WiFi connection.  WiFi, even with MiMo can’t hold a candle to a slow and steady cable for streaming.

Why? Because your streaming HD video will always be competing with something for your router’s attention.  Cell phones, laptops, or simply walls with adobe, metal mesh, or plaster wreck the absolute dependability of a solid cable connection.

“I’m not going to put a network cable across my living room to get a better picture!  What’s the best way to get the best of all worlds?”

Power-line Networking / Power-line Ethernet (PLE for brevity)  sounds crazy.  But it works!  Using the electrical wiring in your house, two boxes can establish a rock solid connection between your PlayStation, Xbox 360, Netflix enabled HDTV, Blu-ray Player, & DVR!  Simply plug the home theater devices in to the hub mentioned above, leaving any single port available for Ethernet over power line uplink, plug the last port of the hub in to one EOP box and plug it directly in to an outlet (no extension cords, no multipliers).  Next, plug the other PLE box next to your router anywhere in the same house and your connection will find its own way through the wiring to its match across the house! While some report this up-link can take up to 45 minutes, we have rarely observed more than 60 seconds before PLE is working at full speed!

Here’s a link to one of the faster PLE interfaces.  Again, even the slowest PLE will beat the best modern WiFi in the long run.

For good measure, I’m also going to give you some other router links.  Any one of these will be an order of magnitude  more capable, nimble, and, of course, speedy than what you currently have.

I’m going to rank them by amazon’s popularity which, in this case nearly correlates to overall ease-of-use.

1. Cisco-Linksys E4200 Dual-Band Wireless-N Router
2. Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4500)
3. Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700

Here’s the clincher:  Most non-industry specific end-users would use Apple hardware if it was less expensive.  We’re not judging, simply stating what we’ve heard time and time again.

That said, the Airport Extreme 5th Generation is just over 20% more expensive than the cheapest router on the list and exactly the same price as the current version of the same router (N900 vs. N600).  Yes there are other routers which cost half as much, but for an extra $80, you’re getting gigabit Ethernet and dual band WiFi. Dual band means that another, non- 5 Gigahertz compliant device can connect to the same router as your MacBook Pro without one slowing the other’s connection to the router.

If you end up going with the Airport Extreme, we personally like these mounts because they let you put your router out of the way )(under a desk, on the inside of a closet, behind a bookshelf, etc).  Routers and cables are ugly.  This mount keeps the router within reach but out of the way.

H-Squared AIRMOUNT-S Air Mount for Airport Extreme

We hope that helps clear some of the mystery up.  As usual, we love your questions!  Call Nerds Limited today! If we’re with clients, don’t worry! Leave us a voice mail and we will call you the moment we’re available to talk.  Phone time is always free so don’t hesitate.  Text or call us 24/7. 505.750.8885 or drop us an email.  Our address is NerdsLimited@Gmail.com

We have decided that the single best morsel of British Slang is the term ‘tosser’: so useful, so delicious?  What does tossing have to do with podcasts?  Well, most of us subscribe or at least dabble in Internet media (live, or podcasted) and most of that content is not consumed, or consumed inefficiently.  When it spoils, we either toss it, or let it clutter our drives.  Sound familiar?  Read on!

Keeping podcasts current on any device is a pain!Nobody syncs their phone any more.

• iThis (your Apple Device) hates gThat (your Android Phone) & won’t talk to your MacBook or PC Desktop.
• If I pause playback on my iPad and try to resume on my google phone, I’m out of luck.
• iTunes(PC or Mac) is not as simple as it looks.
  • Even the fastest windows computer, iTunes is intolerably slow & still is as inflexible as on any Mac.
  • Possibly the worst part:
    • Podcasts take up space on our disks when I really only want them on my mobile devices.

After such a horrific summary, what can possibly be done to save this exclusively first-world problem?

Stitcher!  We had given up on the entire class of ‘Sync-MEdia’  (our own term. Probably highly incorrect in programmer-speak) apps because they either crashed, didn’t function at all, or NEVER stopped downloading stuff, getting in the way of my usual Android phone tasks.

For those with smart phones (iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, Palm), Android Tablets, or iPads, take a look at stitcher on iOS and Android.
Think of Stitcher as Steve Jobs’ Baby delivered via Pandora‘s box.  That analogy is as bizarre as it is accurate.  Stitcher takes the RSS feeds from podcasts, LIVE feeds from Internet radio & TV, and mixes them according to your expressed preference (how much or often you consume what you say you like).  It stores A/V data intelligently according to your bandwidth constraints which can be overridden manually.  In our tests, it does an excellent job of never skipping while also not storing too much junk on your device.

How fast is fast enough when syncing media? Enter the Nerds Limited bathroom test.

The sync works between all devices so quickly that you can pause your iPad (WiFi) and resume on your google Android or iPhone (3G) for the amount of time required to go to the bathroom without spending an inefficient amount of time messing with the interface.  Once you’re logged in with a free Stitcher account, it also works via their Web site with all of the above functionality.

NetFlix comes close to passing our bathroom test, but doesn’t quite cut it.  Stitcher passes with flying colors!

A quick look at the press Stitcher has received from around the web tells us that we aren’t the only ones who really like it.

@NerdsLimited we are very impressed by Stitcher.  Much of our daily research involves simplifying our client’s daily tasks.  Do you live in the greater Albuquerque / Santa Fe area? Call or email Nerds Limited today and see just how well we can painlessly integrate your devices in to your daily life!