Category: Tech Support

With more than 5 million pixels packed into a 15.4-inch display, the MacBook Pro with Retina display has raised the bar for its competitors, making everything on the screen more vibrant and sharper than ever. Everything should look better on 2880 × 1800 pixels, but here’s where we face a problem: third-party apps now look…

My last article detailed the arguments for and against anti-virus or anti-malware software on Macs. It turned out to be pretty popular because I got a good deal of feedback and further questions that fell into pretty much two groups; one set was about “beyond anti-virus,” which is what other measures can users take to…

Data recovery is a service that doesn’t always yield results, and having done it a few times, I know that whenever a hard drive or a solid state drive fails, the data on it has a very good chance of being lost forever. There are tools that can help recover data in the event of…

Wondering if deleted data can be recovered is valid to be mindful of (but of course, you’re backing up, right?), though not necessarily something to worry about. For most cases, data deleted from a hard drive can possibly be recovered by the appropriate recovery software, but it takes time and effort. However, depending on how…

Pretty regularly, customers will bring in a Mac that is intermittently dropping its Wi-Fi signal. This is a very frustrating issue, and it can also be a difficult one to diagnose. Every basic home network setup is different in that the environment, the hardware used, the ISP and the amount of load/strain can all vary.…

One of the most common questions I receive as a technician is “why did [x,y,z] part fail, I mean, I take great care of my computer and have only had it a year…” and so on. This question is easier to answer when we’re talking about components with moving parts, like HDDs and optical drives,…

To give a little background before launching into this article: I am a junior technician compared to some here at Small Dog Electronics. I have spent more time diagnosing and fixing PCs than Apple Products, so the conversion was a complete one-eighty degree turn for me. I have never attempted to install Windows alongside OS…

Almost everything we do online these days involves passwords and security. It’s important to take some steps with your passwords to make them more secure. One simple thing you can do is to change your passwords often. Use different passwords between sites. Try to stay away from common words. A good safe option is to…

Pretty regularly, customers will bring in a Mac that is intermittently dropping its Wi-Fi signal. This is a very frustrating issue, and it can also be a difficult one to diagnose. Every basic home network setup is different in that the hardware is different, the environment is different, the amount of load/strain varies, and the…

You have probably heard the terms “viruses, trojans and worms,” which are all under the umbrella term for malicious software called malware. These items are usually thought of as interchangeable or the same thing. Although they are similar in that they are created with malicious intent, if you understand the differences, you will better be…