It was bound to happen. Parking my laptop on the island in the kitchen with two boys under five precariously drinking out of open cups as we wean them from the sippy is an accident waiting to happen. So it was quite a surprise when I found myself spilling my very own glass of water onto my ThinkPad’s keyboard!
The system shut down immediately, which I deemed either a very good sign or a very bad one. I leapt in to action and immediately unplugged the power and then yanked the battery. Ask anyone who makes toast whilst taking a bath–water and electricity don’t mix. When something like this happens I quickly watch my computer’s life flash before my eyes. When was the last backup? How quickly could I get up on a new computer? What data would be lost forever? Why am I such an idiot?
There are worse things to spill on your computer than water. Soda and juices contain sugars that can leave a nasty residue behind. If no electronic damage was done, water mostly just needs to be dried up and things should be just fine. Or so I consoled myself.
Perhaps a normal person would have simply used some paper towels, a hair dryer and some time, but I needed to disassemble the entire laptop. No stranger to a Phillips-head, soldering iron, and piles of scrapped electronics, I flipped the thirsty ThinkPad on its back and removed as many screws that I could find. Removing the keyboard, I saw that the main circuitry was mostly dry with only a bit of water near the edges. The keyboard took the brunt of the damage. After blotting up any water found, I did what any desperate person would do and proceeded to remove every key cap from the keyboard in an attempt to rid it from all water. Putting these keys back on proved to be the most challenging part of the repair.
Heat and moving air are the enemy of water, so I employed the wife’s hair dryer placed on “split ends” mode for a time that seemed ample. Not confident that I had done all I could, I attempted something I had only heard about and baked the keyboard at 100 degrees in the convection oven for about fifteen minutes. Like a freshly baked pie, I left the keyboard on the counter to cool and perhaps dehydrate as long as I could bear to wait.
Now feeling confident and calm, I waited until after dinner to attempt reassembly and testing. Everything went back together fairly simply except for the key caps which I left off until I could prove it a worthy project to continue. With everything secure, I place the battery back in, crossed my fingers, and powered on. Success! Everything started fine and my only real problem was trying to type a password on a keyboard without the keys. Through trial, error, and another computer as reference, I took my time leisurely replacing and confirming each key. Of course the first thing I did was a complete system backup, and then had a nice cold drink from the safe distance of the next room.
Moral and advice:
Back up your computer regularly. Use an external drive or online service. Why not do it daily.
Keep large quantities of fluids away from your computer.
If exposed to liquid, immediately remove all power and batteries from the computer.
Dry out the computer as best as you can–or dare. If you are not the adventurous type, bring the computer to a reputable repair shop and let them know what happened.
It is most likely that even if your computer was permanently damaged, the data on your drive may be unharmed or certainly recoverable.
Everyone knows you should backup your precious digital pictures after you transfer them to your computer, but what happens if there is a problem in the camera itself?
I still had pictures from the holidays I hadn’t downloaded, so I wasn’t surprised when I got a “memory card full” message. I wasn’t near my computer, so I began reviewing the pictures in the camera to see if there was anything I could delete. I have a 256MB compact flash card that can hold about 200 pictures on my Canon Elph S400, so I was surprised to only find about a dozen pictures from the current day. I didn’t panic, but waited to get back to my computer to investigate further.
First I reviewed my picture folders on my computer and network to make sure I hadn’t already downloaded the pictures and forgot, but alas they were not there. Connecting the camera to the computer didn’t reveal anything else. I was fearing that this year’s holiday pictures would be lost and was about to perform an “erase all data” command on the camera. I then began to search for “recovering pictures from digital camera” and found that this is not an uncommon problem. Memory cards can become corrupt and pictures irretrievable in traditional ways. The information is most likely still on the card, but some special utilities are needed.
I found many utilities that claim to assist with the problem, and I have found one that worked for me and I can now recommend. PhotoRescue installs on your PC or Mac and can scan your camera or memory card reader for files that can be recovered. If found, small thumbnail images are even created so you can see what is being recovered and selectively restore them. This is a nice feature of the free evaluation. Before purchasing, you can actually see if the program will be able to restore your missing photos, but you need to pay $29 for a life-time license with one year of free updates. It’s certainly worth the price if you only use it one time for those “priceless” pictures.
One thing to consider with almost all of these utilities, is that they rely on being able to scan your camera as a drive letter. Using my Canon camera with Windows XP, it appears as a device that I can open and browse using Windows Explorer, but does not mount as a named drive letter (i.e. G:). In order for me to accomplish the scan and recovery, I had to use a card reader that I already had. If you have many devices with different format memory cards, I highly recommend a mutli-format card reader. For around $20, you can easily use all of your memory cards by plugging this device into a USB slot. I use a Sandisk ImageMate like this one.
Hopefully you will never need to use PhotoRescue, but it’s good to know about if you ever find yourself in trouble.
I have had many Palm handheld devices. Models m100, i705, Treo 270, Treo 600, and now the Treo 680 smartphone. There are so many things that I use it for, but here is a list of the 10 things I use my Treo 680 for everyday.
1. Alarm Clock Programed for each weekday, I am awakened by my Treo 680 using mobileClock (previously named Bob’s Alarm). A quick tap of the screen offers a snooze, or pressing an application button shuts it off. Multiple alarm programs, a timer and a stopwatch are other cool features of mobileClock.
2. Weather I have programed a Quick Key, so that holding the W button fires up the browser and takes me to my town’s weather report at Weather Underground Mobile. A good time to check if I need to wear a sweater or bring an umbrella.
3. News While waiting for the train, I use the ubiquitous Internet connection to browse Yahoo! Mobile News to keep on top of any latest news.
4. E-mail When not at a computer, I use SnapperMail to check my many personal email accounts with the double-pressing of the email button.
5. Calendar The built-in calendar keeps me on time for appointments and provides ample warning for family and friend’s birthdays.
6. Instant Messaging
Texting is a popular phone-to-phone function, but many people are still using AIM, MSN messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and ICQ. I can connect and use all of these with one application. I had used VeriChat for years but now I use Mundu IM.
7. Checkbook Keeping track of personal finances is very important to me, so I always have my virtual checkbook available in my phone using SplashMoney. Each ATM withdrawal or online check written is recorded in the register so I always know exactly how much money I have (or don’t have).
8. Phone Of course it’s a telephone. Integrated with the address book, speakerphone, bluetooth, etc.
9. Passwords Instead of using sticky notes, I use Yaps to securely manage all of my personal and business user accounts and passwords.
10. Games Sudoku puzzles for numbers and Crosswords for words, I play during down time, or to unwind before bed.
Flash drives have replaced the floppy and the CD for portable storage. Their physical size continues to get smaller and the capacity increases offering the ability to store so much information in a convenient to carry package. Here are a few tips to help keep you and your information safe.
1. Create a text file named “IF FOUND”
Put an If found.txt file in the root folder of the drive. In it simply type your name, email address, and phone number. If the information you store on it is important enough, you may wish to offer a reward. I have a couple of drives that I found but had no way to identify the owner.
2. Start with at least two folders: Business and Personal
I only want to keep track of one of these drives, so I mix business with personal. By organizing your files in this basic manner, you can avoid some embarrassment. Loading a presentation from your drive being projected to an auditorium full of people, no one wants to see picture previews of your drunk friends at the beach or your musical favorite: “I like big butts.mp3.”
3. Password Protect Personal Files
I would be very cautious about what type of files you store on your flash drive since it can be so easily lost or stolen, but there are times when it is not avoidable. There might be a good reason you need to transport a PDF of your tax return on your drive and you will be sure to delete it right after you are done, but most likely you will forget it was ever there. Most applications have the ability to password protect files in a fairly secure way, and it will at least deter the casual finder from accessing your personal information.
You could also set the folder or files to “Hidden” which will also keep them out of view from the average person, but “security by obscurity” is not a good model.
Some USB drives have some built-in security measures, password protection, and encryption which can also have some impact on flexibility, but would certainly be worth it based upon the sensitivity of your data. Be careful.
4. Supervised Visits
If someone needs to use your drive to copy a file to or fro, make sure you are looking over their shoulder. Just as people will look through your medicine cabinet when using your bathroom, expect people to nose through your files and help themselves to a copy of anything interesting. (”Got any naked pictures of your wife? You want some?”)
5. Backup Your Files
Make sure you have a current copy of the files on your USB drive somewhere else. If you tend to work directly on the files on the drive, you are flirting with disaster. There is no file recovery from a device you no longer have.
With two little kids, we don’t go out to the movies much. It seems we don’t even get to watch TV that much either. Our TiVo has helped manage our TV watching, but even with the “Silver” cable package, there are very few good movies available to watch–unless you like “Mindhunters” as it has been on at least eight times a day for the last few months.
Like many people, we grew tired of the back and forth transporting of movies to the video store, and although I always thought NetFlix was a good idea, I never brought myself around to joining.
Amazon has partnered with TiVo to offer a pretty good service called “Amazon Unbox.” Quite simply, you buy, or rent, videos at Amazon.com, and instead of waiting for a DVD, you can download the movie to your computer or directly to your TiVo DVR, and you can start watching almost as soon as you start the download.
I rented “Borat,” (I like) placing the order at work, and the movie was fully downloaded when I got home. It’s kind of like on-demand NetFlix.
When you buy a movie (around $14.99), you own it and can watch it as much as you like. Even if you remove it from your TiVo (presumably for space issues), you can re-download it from your Amazon library. If you rent a movie (around $3.99) as I did, you have thirty days to start watching it before it is removed. After you start watching, you can watch it as much as you like within 24 hours. After that, it is deleted.
The video quality was very good, probably equivalent to the “best” resolution on TiVo, and overall, the viewing was a good experience. I can’t be sure, but it didn’t seem that there were any DVD extras available, which is one of my favorite things about DVDs.
The ease of use and integrating digital media into the living room makes this service a potential hit. The Apple TV is attempting to do this, but it seems a little like trying to shoehorn iTunes from your computer to your television.
If you have a TiVo, I would recommend giving Amazon Unbox a try.
Like most people that have one–I love TiVo. It’s hard to imagine watching television without one. Record the shows you want, watch them anytime, fast-forward through commercials. Sure it is mostly like a VCR of old, but it is so easy to incorporate into your life: ease of programming, season passes, no tapes, etc. A 1-hour show like American Idol can be watched easily in less than 30 minutes. See my review of TiVo from last year.
Since we had not be living in our house for the past 9 months, TiVo was packed away in the basement. Without TiVo, I watched very little television during that period and found I really didn’t miss it that much. But now that we have moved back in, a priority was to setup the TiVo. It was great in the first few days as we were without cable and Internet–all of the shows that had been recorded (mostly kid shows) were still there and watchable. My trouble started once the cable and network were back up and I needed to connect back to TiVo’s home base.
Since the TiVo had been dormant for so long, it had some catching up to do. There was a system update, and of course I needed to load the channel programming information. Things seemed to be fine, but I noticed that the programming was incomplete as it had been failing. In retrospect, perhaps the TiVo’s hard drive (80-hour series 2) was full and didn’t have any room to process these updates.
After reading about this problem (error S03) and possible solutions at a popular TiVo forum, I decided to try a fix by using a special remote-control button combination at TiVo start-up sometimes referred to as a “kick start.” After trying this, I got the expected “Green Screen of Death” (GSOD), and after waiting the suggested 3 hours, the unit restarted. However, the GSOD returned again and then continued in an unexpected endless loop of green screens and restarts.
Green Screen of Death
There is not much to a TiVo. It is basically a hard drive with media software, and everything I read seemed to indicate some kind of hard drive failure. I really wasn’t too concerned for any of the content I had on the drive, I just wanted a working TiVo.
There were a few options:
Buy a new generation TiVo
Buy a refurbished similar TiVo
Buy a preconfigured replacement hard drive
Buy a TiVo software program and configure a new hard drive
My TiVo was over 2 years old and out of warranty. I had purchased the lifetime service from TiVo which seems is no longer available. If I got a new TiVo, I would have to change my service plan to a much more expensive, non-lifetime plan. It seems having a lifetime plan is very valuable now, but not if your unit is not working.
I decided to give TiVo service a call to see what my options were. I spoke to a very helpful technician who indicated that the “green screen is very bad,” confirming my conclusion. He told me about choices 1 and 2. The new generation TiVo was quite expensive (HD, dual-tuner), and the new service “special” was also costly. This option seemed to add up to about $1,000. Very steep.
Option 2 was to send my TiVo back and get a similar refurbished model. For $149 I would be back to normal. Seemed like a safe option.
However, I did some research, and option 3 and 4 seemed viable. A replacement hard drive kit seemed the easiest. A new hard drive comes with TiVo software installed. You simply open your unit and replace it using the included torx wrenches. Simple for anyone who has every worked inside of a computer. For $139 I could get a 173 hour hard drive. $10 less than a refurb, and pver double the capacity! Sounded very good. I asked the TiVo technician about this option trying to understand the “official” position on this 3rd-party solution. After being placed on hold, presumably to ask others what was supposed to be said, the tech and I concluded that it was certainly worth a try. I had nothing to lose, for if it didn’t work, I could always send the TiVo, with the original drive, back for a refurbished unit.
I considered the $20 solution of downloading software, making a boot-able CD, plugging in a new hard drive into a PC, booting from the CD, and transferring the software, but it seemed like too much work and had potential for mistakes. If I was in a more daring mood, I might try it.
I ordered the replacement drive from weaKnees.com which seems to be the preferred supplier by my research. I used UPS ground shipping, and in less than 1 week, got my new drive. In the box: drive, instructions, 2 torx wrenches.
My 3-year old helped me unscrew the case. A few more screws to free the ailing hard drive. Unplug power cable and ribbon cable. Reverse operation using new drive. Done.
I reconnected the TiVo to the television and started it up. After a few minutes, a setup screen appeared as if the TiVo was brand new. Success!
The serial number of the TiVo is not part of the hard drive, so my lifetime service is still valid and I did not need to go through a reactivation of the unit. It’s as if nothing had happened, except now I have a higher capacity TiVo with a brand new hard drive.
If you have an broken TiVo and you have lifetime service, you should consider having it fixed, and I can highly recommend a replacement drive from weaKnees.
Here is a cool item I just discovered. Part game, part experiment, part cult, is Line Rider. The object is simple enough: draw lines for your digital sledder to ride. Some basic physics are programmed into the environment, so your lines must keep him moving and prevent him from crashing or falling into the abyss of infinity.
It’s probably best understood by watching what some have already done…
Face it–most computer applications have a spell check feature that removes the pressure of us having to really know how to spell. They do a good job at trying to guess what we really meant when we mangle the letters of a word. Programs like Microsoft Word show us right away when a letter is misspelled, and sometimes even fix the most common errors automatically. This can perpetuate bad spelling habits as we aren’t even reminded that we have made a mistake. However, with so much content being typed directly into web forms, our spelling safety net is gone, exposing our ignorance to the world.
Blogs, forums, Wikis, feedback forms, commenting systems–all of these ask for input directly into the browser, but alas, Internet Explorer (still the most popular browser) does not have a spell check tool. Some of us type or copy the text into Word (or any other program that has a spell check), do our proofing, and then copy into the form. This is hardly elegant.
Enter ieSpell, the Spell Checker add-on for Internet Explorer. I have been using this for a few weeks, and I can’t believe I had been getting along without it. It is available free, and once installed adds a button to your Standard Toolbar and some options to your Tools menu. You can expect it to work just like your Word spell checker, however personal dictionaries are not shared, so you will have to build this as you go.
iTunes 7 is now available. I loaded this up over the weekend and am pretty pleased with some of the new features. I wasn’t really interested in upgrading until I learned that a whole new batch of (real) games are now available for the (fifth-generation only) iPod–one of my favorites, being Zuma by PopCap.
In able to use games, you also need to upgrade your iPod firmware to 1.2. This has been made much easier since iTunes 7 now has an iPod manager section which allows control of a number of iPod settings and functions.
Probably the biggest news is the addition of movies to iTunes. A library of Disney films can be purchased with a resolution higher than previous video downloads making them friendlier for large screen viewing.
Movies cost between $9.99 and $14.99. Games cost $4.99.
Other games include:
Bejeweled, Tetris, PAC-MAN, Vortex, Zuma, Texas Hold ‘Em, Mini Golf, Mahjong, and Cubis 2.
New features that don’t cost anything are:
Automatic Album Art which reviews your song library and provides the album artwork to be viewed within iTunes or on your iPod. This feature does seem a bit scary–you can only get this missing art if you have an iTunes account, and now you are sharing a list of all your music with them. They of course tell you not to worry–so I do.
Cover Flow allows you to browse your music collection by flipping through the cover art. It is reminiscent of an old album collection. Now we can once again judge a book by its cover.
Gapless Playback is a must for anyone listening to live albums or tracks that are meant to flow from one song right into another. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon is a great example of this. Prior to this feature, there was a noticeable and offensive gap between songs. This can take place retroactively as again, your music collection is scanned and fixed. I tried it and it works well.
If any of these features seems compelling to you, I would recommend upgrading to iTunes 7.
As I wrote about a few days ago, my iPod has not been feeling well. After numerous resets and much frustration, I decided to visit the Apple store on 5th Avenue.
After traveling the 10 floors from my office and underground via the spiral staircase, I visited the “Genius bar” and signed up for a consultation. They have a nice reservation system and are quite helpful. Counters of young creative technologists with modern haircuts, tattoos, and piercings (you know…Apple people) all eager to help.
I met with Eric, who quickly diagnosed my problem as a hard drive issue. My iPod was less than 1-year old, so still under warranty, but more than six months, so I would have to pay around $30 to swap it for a new unit. I actually opted to pay for a $60 AppleCare plan which extends my warranty a total of 2 years past the original purchase price. I don’t normally do extended warranties, but I get the feeling this might happen again.
I take great care of my iPod. I have it housed snuggly in a leather case with clear plastic window so it can never come in contact with anything nasty. But still, the front screen has received some abrasions. This has been a common complaint on these devices. Anything so portable with a sensitive hard drive must also be susceptible to shock and other environmental conditions, but how else are you going to get 60GB of information on there?
I thought it interesting that a little sign on the iPod bar advertised an iPod recycling program where they would happily dispose of your iPod in exchange for 10% off the purchase price of a new one.
Well in less than 20 minutes I was setup with a brand new iPod–charged but without any content at all. I would need to sync up with my computer to get everything back on. I always thought that should have at least some songs and videos loaded on the player out-of-the-box. I’m sure some up-and-coming unsigned band would kill to be pre-loaded.
I also lost my personal engraving that I had on the back of the unit, trading it for immediate gratification. You can opt to get your replacement in the mail complete with your personalization.
The guy next to me had the same problem and got a new unit as well. I wonder what percent of units sold fail within one year of use?
Although disappointed that my iPod met an early demise, I was quite happy with the service and quick replacement. I don’t know how smart these geniuses are, but they are very helpful and professional–Thanks Eric.
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I have had many Palm handheld devices. Models m100, i705, Treo 270, Treo 600, and now the Treo 680 smartphone. There are so many things that I use it for, but here is a list of the 10 things I use my Treo 680 for everyday.
Put an If found.txt file in the root folder of the drive. In it simply type your name, email address, and phone number. If the information you store on it is important enough, you may wish to offer a reward. I have a couple of drives that I found but had no way to identify the owner.
I would be very cautious about what type of files you store on your flash drive since it can be so easily lost or stolen, but there are times when it is not avoidable. There might be a good reason you need to transport a PDF of your tax return on your drive and you will be sure to delete it right after you are done, but most likely you will forget it was ever there. Most applications have the ability to password protect files in a fairly secure way, and it will at least deter the casual finder from accessing your personal information.
After traveling the 10 floors from my office and underground via the spiral staircase, I visited the “Genius bar” and signed up for a consultation. They have a nice reservation system and are quite helpful. Counters of young creative technologists with modern haircuts, tattoos, and piercings (you know…Apple people) all eager to help.