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

Attention Students! Microsoft is offering Windows 7 Professional edition for $64! No joke!  Here is the link! Show your appreciation for Nerds Limited by sharing a link to this page and sending a retweet @nerdslimited

Microsoft announced a few days ago that ANYONE can download a free 30 day trial of windows 7 which will work for 90 days.  This version is the FULL version!  Call Nerds Limited @ 505-750-8885 to discuss upgrading today!

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!”

Question:
Hey Jason, I was hoping you could provide a little advice.

I recently switched to Comcast internet service, about 3 days ago, and I am having major problems with my wireless network. When we had Qwest, I never had to reset the router, it always operated at the same speed, and never went down. Now that I have switched to Comcast, my wireless internet speed is ridiculously low. I know it is not a problem with the provider because when hard-line to the ISP modem, I get speeds of roughly 25 mB/s, but when I connect to the wireless network, I am getting about .33 mB/s, and I am using the Comcast Xfinity Speed test to get these figures.

What could be the issue? I realize that there will be a drop-off when testing wirelessly, but not from 25 to .33 mb/s.

Answer:
Excellent question!  There is no ‘drop off’ in the conventional sense of the term.  A drop off would imply that the speed was fast and then slowed down over the course of the speed test.  In this case, Comcast does throttle their residential customers (you’re slowed down if you use more than 80% of your promised bandwidth for more than a few minutes).  That’s legal in the same world where a cell phone company can say un-limited means 5GB.  Go figure.

Anyway… Your drastic speed difference is either caused by an older router which has begun to kick the bucket, or, more likely, a WiFi card on the network which is not WiFi N compatible.  Let me break it down for you.

As I’m sure you know, to get the best wireless speed, you need the same standard to be accepted by both the router and the WiFi card.  If a single device is not Wireless N compliant, the router will adapt to the needs of the slowest device and shift itself down to accommodate the slower device.  Alternatively, if the router itself is not wireless N compliant, every Wireless N card will shift down to accommodate the router it is connecting to.

Now, enter the world of Dual-Band Routers.  The higher end of modern routers usually have a feature called ‘simultaneous-dual band transmission’.  That means the router has two separate transmitters within the unit itself and can function entirely independent of each other.  If a Wireless G card tries to connect to the router, one of the transmitters shifts frequencies and standards to permit the connection without slowing down the rest of the wireless devices.  If every device is Wireless N, the two transmitters usually shift to accommodate the two Wireless N frequencies: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.  5 GHz is faster but more prone to interference and 2.4 is slower and more robust.  They both use the same standard, but on different frequencies.

In your case, I think your Lenovo might claim to have a Wireless N compliant card which isn’t actually N compliant.

I hope that helps.

Jason

Nerds Limited, LLC

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

Not everything shared over P2P networks is piracy.  In fact, much of the content delivery on the web is done with private torrents which allow companies to share large files between their different distribution nodes evenly. Spotify uses a peer-to-peer network along with streaming servers to stream music to its desktop music player.  Peercasting networks such as  FreeCast and Rawflow depend upon P2P networks to ensure the fastest possible delivery of their streaming media to listeners worldwide.

If you’ve ever used the free, legal, and open source Linux based OS Ubuntu, you know downloading the whole OS via direct download takes quite a while the torrent link allows you to download the entire file in as little as 10 minutes.  So why would we write about torrents?

Much of Nerds Limited’s repair work involves removing our client’s precious data from computers crawling with viruses.  Some of which infected our client’s systems because the systems had been used to download torrents (legal or otherwise) without proper discretion.  This article is intended to give users, both Windows and Mac a few tips about torrent selection and proper torrent protection.

Windows 7

Windows users who download all of their system updates and use a good free or premium Anti-Virus application (MS Security Essentials, and ESET’s NOD32 respectively) aren’t nearly as prone to infection as they were in the past.  In order for a virus to infect your system, it needs to fool you in to installing it.  This can be done in any number of ways, the most common of which with torrents is hiding in an archive file such as .Zip or .Rar. If you find yourself downloading a torrent whose files are compressed, stop immediately and delete the file.  It may contain malware.

Windows Torrent Client

There are literally hundreds of torrent clients out there, the best of which, in our humble opinion is μTorrent (pronounced U-Torrent).  The μ means micro and refers to the small amount of memory required to run the client.  It is available for both Mac and Windows and works extremely well without slowing down your system.

Here’s the Key to Safety: Run with Protection

Picking good .torrent files isn’t good enough!  The design of P2P framework allows your computer to connect to any system which is currently offering the files you need at the time you’re asking for them.  That’s not good! A brilliant little application called Peer Block acts as an active operator between your torrent client and those you’re both uploading to and downloading from, to ensure no data is transferred with known bad servers.  From PeerBlock.com:

PeerBlock lets you control who your computer “talks to” on the Internet.  By selecting appropriate lists of “known bad” computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been “hacked”, even entire countries!  They can’t get in to your computer, and your computer won’t try to send them anything either.

Peer Block must be running and with current block lists downloaded every second μTorrent is running.  If used properly, it can really help keep you safe when using P2P technology to download legal and free media quickly and efficiently.

Mac Torrent Client(s)

The most popular Mac torrent client is Transmission.  Transmission is fast and simple.  It includes the same technology Peer Block uses to block bad hosts but recently stopped including the URL to automatically block the worst of the worst.  There is a tedious workaround, but for the most part, transmission doesn’t make it easy to keep a nice block list easily maintained.  Remember, just because Macs are less prone to malware in the wild doesn’t mean downloading copyrighted material illegally can’t get you arrested and sued for all you’re worth!  We aren’t condoning piracy.  Rather, we’re trying to educate the public about safe and unsafe methods of file transfer in this amazing communications revolution!

Call Nerds Limited or email us if you have questions.

Disclaimer: If you use torrents to transfer copyrighted material, you’re breaking the law.  NerdsLimited.com does not condone any use of torrents to transfer material illegally.

Join Nerds Limited on the Facebook!

Facebook has finally simplified their privacy settings.  They can be found here.  Feel free to contact us with questions.

We’re used to thinking of the internet as a useful tool for getting work done or more likely The Best Way Ever Conceived To Blow Five Hours On Cat Videos.  In the past few days however, I’ve watched an encouraging example unfold of what it can do for good.

It all started when Glenn Beck and the Fox News crowd held a “Restoring Honor” rally in DC.  Soon after, somebody posted this on reddit, a popular social news website, calling for Stephen Colbert to hold a satirical “Restoring Truthiness” rally in response.  The idea took off, quickly becoming one of the most popular posts on reddit and even garnering it’s own user-designed subsection of the website.  For the past two weeks, Reddit users have been trying to get Colbert’s attention.  They sort of succeeded, earning a few vague hints from Colbert and Jon Stewart that they may hold a rally.  Then yesterday, somebody hit the idea jackpot: see how much money they could raise for one of Stephen Colbert’s favorite charities.  It’s now 24 hours later, they’ve ponied up $140,000 for teachers in underfunded schools to buy supplies for their children, a record set so fast it temporarily broke the donation website.  The campaign has been getting some mainstream press coverage, and all day today the top story on Reddit has been a thank you letter from Colbert himself.  Not too shabby, internet.

But I’m not writing this just to give you the warm-and-fuzzies.  There’s a very good chance that Colbert will mention the campaign on his show tonight, and if I know anything about the power of the Colbert Nation, I’d bet there will be hundreds of thousands of dollars more flowing into donorschoose.org in the next day or so.

What does that mean?  If you know any teachers, coaches, guidance councilors, etc., forward this to them immediately. Have them set up a teacher’s profile on donorschoose.org, and have them try to create a project tonight, before The Colbert Report airs.  Projects can be anything that’s directly for students, from Motivating kids to read with Time Magazine, to replacing old keyboard in a computer lab, or buying reeds for needy kids in a school band.  There’s an excellent chance it will be funded by Colbert’s supporters, and even if it’s not, the extra press the website will be receiving in the next few days makes this a great time to apply.

Kevin Bache, Nerd @ Nerds Limited