January 2025
What speed internet should I buy?
Any chance you can give free advise (maybe one time). I am in FL trying to decide on internet and want fast enough speed for whole house internet (with repeaters or extenders) , smart tv / UTube Tv. What is the right amt of speed?
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Over 150 down would be the minimum you should consider. Above 200 is preferable. Keep in mind when someone says you have “gigabit speeds” that is when being delivered via a wire. Wireless throughput drops pretty quickly as soon as you step 5 ‘ away from a router. Wireless repeaters (when not hardwired) only send out what they can receive. So often, more important than “how fast of internet should I buy?” is the question “How strong can my wifi routers send signal throughout the house. Two types of frequencies. 2.4 and 5ghz. 5 is basically meaningless at this point. You want the best ability to broadcast out 2.4 as you can. 2.4 travels farther than 5 but carries less info. 2.4 will cut through walls whereas 5 will fail at walls.
___________
Over 150 down would be the minimum you should consider. Above 200 is preferable. Keep in mind when someone says you have “gigabit speeds” that is when being delivered via a wire. Wireless throughput drops pretty quickly as soon as you step 5 ‘ away from a router. Wireless repeaters (when not hardwired) only send out what they can receive. So often, more important than “how fast of internet should I buy?” is the question “How strong can my wifi routers send signal throughout the house. Two types of frequencies. 2.4 and 5ghz. 5 is basically meaningless at this point. You want the best ability to broadcast out 2.4 as you can. 2.4 travels farther than 5 but carries less info. 2.4 will cut through walls whereas 5 will fail at walls.
Wifi doesn't overheat the battery
I had a new battery installed about a year ago, by the way.
My software is updated and I have cleared the cache, which didn’t improve my internet speed just now. It was close to 200 mpbs this morning and down to 30 just now. I had my IT guy come out yesterday to check everything and determined the problem is my computer.
___________
I have never seen one’s computer internet speed at all correlated to the battery. Your internet is either good or bad and the speed is in no way tied to how much battery power the laptop or iPad has. It would be the exact same as saying "my phone only has one bar because my battery is about to die.” The two are not tied.
Now it is very likely that the computer is overheating for another reason and if it’s a Chinese battery, carry a fire extinguisher around because I’ve seen that exact behavior in poor quality batteries many many times.
I’m happy to do what I can to assess your situation further remotely via zoom or in person. Feel free to schedule either at the link below.
My software is updated and I have cleared the cache, which didn’t improve my internet speed just now. It was close to 200 mpbs this morning and down to 30 just now. I had my IT guy come out yesterday to check everything and determined the problem is my computer.
___________
I have never seen one’s computer internet speed at all correlated to the battery. Your internet is either good or bad and the speed is in no way tied to how much battery power the laptop or iPad has. It would be the exact same as saying "my phone only has one bar because my battery is about to die.” The two are not tied.
Now it is very likely that the computer is overheating for another reason and if it’s a Chinese battery, carry a fire extinguisher around because I’ve seen that exact behavior in poor quality batteries many many times.
I’m happy to do what I can to assess your situation further remotely via zoom or in person. Feel free to schedule either at the link below.
New batteries are never reliable.
23/01/25 Filed in: Batteries
My 2017 MacBook Pro is acting up at a critical time finishing up my dissertation, and I am trying to determine if I need a Genius Bar appointment or possibly a new computer or hopefully neither. The internet speed goes down dramatically during the day and gets better if I shut down and power back up, but then it can overheat and drain the battery quickly. I had a new battery installed about a year ago, by the way.
___________
017 is getting pretty old for a computer. The battery is likely gone. No rechargeable battery can be recharged an infinite amount of times. My rough number is around 450 charge cycles. Once a battery has reached up in to that number of times of having been discharged and recharged fully, it’s time to move on. To find out how many cycles your computer has gone through, you can go to “About this Mac” under the Apple logo in the corner of your computer. Select “More Info” System Settings should open. Select General. Scroll to the bottom and select System Report. A new window will appear.
On the right side, select Power. You’ll find the number of cycles there. As seen below:
New batteries can be a little sketchy. The problem with new batteries:
1. If you had the battery replaced by Apple, you bought a very old battery that was manufactured when the computer was built. Apple has to stock pile enough parts for a certain number of years. They don’t have to continue to produce fresh batteries.
2. If you had the battery replaced by a third party, then most likely that company got the battery from China, and those batteries are usually pretty crappy.
Either way, battery replacement on laptops is rolling dice.
___________
017 is getting pretty old for a computer. The battery is likely gone. No rechargeable battery can be recharged an infinite amount of times. My rough number is around 450 charge cycles. Once a battery has reached up in to that number of times of having been discharged and recharged fully, it’s time to move on. To find out how many cycles your computer has gone through, you can go to “About this Mac” under the Apple logo in the corner of your computer. Select “More Info” System Settings should open. Select General. Scroll to the bottom and select System Report. A new window will appear.
On the right side, select Power. You’ll find the number of cycles there. As seen below:
New batteries can be a little sketchy. The problem with new batteries:
1. If you had the battery replaced by Apple, you bought a very old battery that was manufactured when the computer was built. Apple has to stock pile enough parts for a certain number of years. They don’t have to continue to produce fresh batteries.
2. If you had the battery replaced by a third party, then most likely that company got the battery from China, and those batteries are usually pretty crappy.
Either way, battery replacement on laptops is rolling dice.
The Google space paradox
20/01/25 Filed in: google
Google says my storage will run out in 5 days. So does it make sense just to buy more storage. Thanks.
___________
As much as I like to be frugal, it would be easier and it’s usually not too expensive. Email should really be the only justification for purchasing more space from Google however. I do often see people accidentally connecting Google Photos to their iCloud account and Google then backs those pictures (which are already in iCloud) therefore allowing them to justify asking you to buy more space as well. But if your Google drive space is not being taken up by photos and only email instead, then yes, it makes sense to buy your way out of the problem.
___________
As much as I like to be frugal, it would be easier and it’s usually not too expensive. Email should really be the only justification for purchasing more space from Google however. I do often see people accidentally connecting Google Photos to their iCloud account and Google then backs those pictures (which are already in iCloud) therefore allowing them to justify asking you to buy more space as well. But if your Google drive space is not being taken up by photos and only email instead, then yes, it makes sense to buy your way out of the problem.
Don't trust a quationable backup hard drive
01/01/25 Filed in: time machine
I am trying to use the external backup disk (WD my passport), and I keep getting the message “Backup Disk not available”.
Any ideas? It doesn’t seem to recognize it, whereas it used to give that message once and then it would work when I hit “backup now” a second time.
____________
My thoughts on Time Machine backup drives. As soon as a backup drive starts giving any problems at all, it’s time to replace it. Compounded by the fact, I dislike western digital drives. My goto that has been overall very reliable with so many people over the years is Seagate. I’ll place a link below.
If you would like to give the WD drive a little more chance however (and save some money for a bit) you could always wipe the drive, reformat it, then start the Time Machine backups over again. I don’t like this option because you then lose the history of your backups that exist on that drive.
There are other support files that could be deleted in order to get the drive to behave properly but honestly, I like using the analogy that a backup drive is like a scuba tank. If it’s leaking, don’t dive with it, don’t repair it, get a new one. Same could be said about fire extinguishers. You need them to work without question.
https://amzn.to/3W102dK
Any ideas? It doesn’t seem to recognize it, whereas it used to give that message once and then it would work when I hit “backup now” a second time.
____________
My thoughts on Time Machine backup drives. As soon as a backup drive starts giving any problems at all, it’s time to replace it. Compounded by the fact, I dislike western digital drives. My goto that has been overall very reliable with so many people over the years is Seagate. I’ll place a link below.
If you would like to give the WD drive a little more chance however (and save some money for a bit) you could always wipe the drive, reformat it, then start the Time Machine backups over again. I don’t like this option because you then lose the history of your backups that exist on that drive.
There are other support files that could be deleted in order to get the drive to behave properly but honestly, I like using the analogy that a backup drive is like a scuba tank. If it’s leaking, don’t dive with it, don’t repair it, get a new one. Same could be said about fire extinguishers. You need them to work without question.
https://amzn.to/3W102dK
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