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Tech News & Commentary
Eddie in West Pittston, Pennsylvania listens to the Podcast asked: “I have a Cisco Linksys EA4500 router. I’m looking online and see that they sell extended antennas that you have to drill out the back of the unit and open it up. They’re 9dB gain at the 2.4 and 5 GHz range. Will this actually increase the performance of the router? There are 6 internal antennas on this router, 3 for 2.4 GHz and 3 for 5 GHz. Are these antenna mods worth it on this router?”
Eddie, You may see some slight improvement as long as the cable you use to connect the antenna is of good enough quality, however… don’t expect an earth shattering difference.
We have heard just about everything from “I saw no change at all” to “it’s a little better” to “it really helps” but most seem to agree that any difference is slight, with some even suggesting that building a makeshift parabolic antenna using a box and tin foil and putting the router in it may be more helpful.
If you really need the signal to be better, you may be better off investing in a better router.
Eddie, Antennas cannot magically create power. What they do is focus the radiated into narrower patterns so there seems to be more power coming in the measured direction. Unless it’s marked somehow on the directional antenna, or you have some equipment to measure the the gain in all directions, you will have a very difficult time getting things to line up correctly. We will link a very good article on this subject in this week’s show notes, so be sure and come to the website to get that.
And the whole point of Wi-Fi is to connect devices that will be moving around the house or office, so having a very directional RF pattern simply isn’t a wise idea in most cases. You would be better off buying a second access point to place about halfway to the area with weak signal.
If you can’t pull an Ethernet cable to that location, buy an access point that offers a range extender feature (or just buy a range extender, if you don’t care to use this device as an access point later). A range extender connects wirelessly to your network and retransmits the signals to increase them in the dead spots. They really DO work.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Steven in Durham, North Carolina listens on WPTF 680 AM asked: “I have a Chrome laptop. My keys are sticking. I’ve had it about a year or so. Whenever I write an e-mail, it’ll like give me 15 ‘N’s in the same word. And when I hit the delete key, it’ll delete the whole thing. What can I do to clean my keyboard?”
Steven, There are some products you can use to clean a keyboard and see if they help your situation.
First of all, you can buy a can of compressed air to try to shake any debris loose, you can also use a cleaning putty like Cyber Clean to try to pick up particles that may be clogging the keyboard.
If that doesn’t work, there are alcohol-based cleaning solutions you can try too. If none of those solutions work, you can probably pop off the keys that are sticking and clean them, but double check that you can actually pop them off, and if you can be very careful… if you crack anything on the keyboard you will be cursing yourself for years when you try to use your Chromebook.
Yes, be very careful with that key cap removing business. Most Chromebooks use very inexpensive keyboards and don’t feature removable caps. They are likely to be glued down and once you pry them loose you will never get them back. Folks will tell you that you can Superglue it, but if you are just a wee bit sloppy you will glue the key in the “down” position.
Cleaning the keyboard using the steps we outlined already is definitely, 100% your best bet. If that doesn’t solve the problem, it might be time for a new Chromebook. They cost less than iPhones, these days.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Karen in Fresno, California listens online asked: “I have an old Pioneer PL 12D turntable from the 1970s and I want to connect it to my 10 year old Pioneer VSX D711 Amplifier Receiver, which does not include Phono inputs. Do I need something called a PreAmp, and if so, what is a PreAmp, and do you have any recommendations for a good one?”
Karen, Your amplifier receiver powers your speakers and passes on the audio to them but it takes as input something called a line signal, the preamp you’ll need for your turntable basically takes audio from your turntable in the form of a weak phono signal, turns it into a strong line signal and sends it to the amplifier so it can pass it on to the speakers.
To avoid a hum, you will have to ground your turntable to your preamp too, so get one for old turntables specifically with an easy grounding port.
You should also look for a preamp with RIAA equalization, that’s specific to turntable preamps and it’s used to reverse an equalization curve that gets put into vinyl when the content is cut into it. It serves to reduce background noise, but have a preamp that take that effect into account can greatly improve the quality of the music you’ll hear.
As far as recommendations go, you need a turntable preamp, they’re not the only kind, so don’t be shocked when you find $800 preamps, you can skip those. For example, the Pyle Pro Ultra Compact Phono Turntable Preamplifier is just $15 and will do what you need it to do. If you want a better one, you can jump to something like the ART DeeJayPRE, that will run you about $50.
For around $200, you can find the Radial Engineering J33, but you’re getting into audiophile/professional territory already, you probably don’t need an extra high quality device to listen to a regular turntable.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Chris Seper, VP of Healthcare – Breaking
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“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
The first navigation system was a girl: “Carin” was the name of the system developed by Philips which was demonstrated at IFA, the International Funkausstellung in 1993 and tested the same year. The name Carin was short for “Car Information and Navigation System”. Data was stored on a CD and a built-in computer used sensors and optional GPS to select the best route. The result was displayed on a screen and verbalized with a speech synthesizer.
Warren in Ridgeland, Mississippi listens on 106.5 asked: “I was wondering if any phone companies out there, in the future or now, would ever consider being able to forward a voicemail to someone else.”
Warren, As a matter of fact, there are plenty of ways to forward voicemails! It all just varies, depending on what phone and/or carrier you’re using. The easiest way to tell how to do this would be to first check on forums that are designated to help users using your carrier, and if that doesn’t work– check forums for your specific phone.
For the iPhone, we were able to find solutions for forwarding voicemails on Apple’s forums and step-by-step guides that give different techniques designated for carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Plenty of YouTube videos are up that will also guide you through it.
There are also plenty of apps that will allow you to forward a voicemail with just a few clicks. The most popular app to do this with is YouMail, a free visual voicemail app that has been available in most app stores for years.
One other solution would be to switch from using the voicemail provided by your phone company or phone manufacturer to a third party service, such as Google Voice. Google Voice allows you to embed your voicemails in a website or blog, download them as MP3 files, or share them directly from the Google Voice page as an email attachment. Google Voice is free for personal use and works with almost any combination of phone or service that offers “call forwarding, no answer” support.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Leonard in Raleigh, North Carolina listening on WPTF 680 AM asked: “I have a Sprint HTC phone, an older model. I also have an iPhone. I want to transfer my apps from the HTC phone over to the iPhone. Is that possible?”
Leonard, Unfortunately you won’t be able to transfer your old apps.
Android and iPhone run on different systems and don’t understand each other’s apps, and even when an app is on both systems, they’re on different stores and neither one is going to give an app away for free to someone who paid a competitor’s app store.
On the plus side, most apps are free and paid apps are cheap, so if you already know there’s an app you use regularly, paying a dollar or two may be acceptable, at least by now you know which ones you used to use and not use on your old phone.
The good news is that many apps can share information between iPhone and Android, so if you’re using the correct version of the app for each phone, you could still share data. But you will have to have separate Android and iOS versions of each app.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
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