Refurbished is a option

If you're looking to buy a computer and you don't care it's new or refurbished you should check out Apple certified refurbished stock. Now it's not easy to find because they want to buy the new stuff. If you are indeed interested here's how to get there. When you go to the Apple Store online select something like shop Mac. When you get to that page click on something whether it be Macintosh, iPhone or whatever. Then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page you will see a bunch of small lettering on the second column from the left the first item will be refurbished. Click on that you will be given a selection of refurbished Mac refurbished iPad refurbished iPod and clearance items. Click on the shop now button on the item that you're interested in and you will be presented with the refurbished units that Apple has listed. Over in the left-hand column you should be able to choose whichever device you're actually looking for say if you're looking for a 15 inch MacBook Pro click on that and it will present you with a list of the refurbished 15 inch MacBook Pro's Apple has in stock.

Surge protectors

One thing that almost everybody has is a surge protector hooked up to your household power and your computer plugged into it. What most people don't understand is that surge protectors wear out over time. Every little spike in the line, every little surge, every brownout takes a little bit out of that surge protector. So if your surge protector is 3 to 5 years old you might want to consider replacing with a new one. These items do not cost a whole lot of money, so spend the $20 to replace the old surge protector with the new one and hopefully it will protect you when that lightning strike finally does hit. Stepping it up a bit from the plain old surge protector is the uninterruptible power supply. Now you're putting in a surge protector with a battery that automatically switches on if the power drops below a certain point to help protect your equipment. It like everything else will indeed wear out and so you would have to replace that device probably every 3 to 5 years. If the battery in that device wears out, the charge to replace it at someplace like Batteries Plus would probably be somewhere in the vicinity of $40. And in fact if you were to take that uninterruptible power supply to Batteries Plus most likely they would change the battery for you and recycle your old battery. You do have to keep in mind even when using a uninterruptible surge protector that it will only keep your devices running for a certain amount of time. The more devices you have plugged into that UPS the less time that you will have to shut your computer down before the battery dies when the power is out. My suggestion to most people is to buy enough battery backup to power your computer for at least 10 minutes. This will give you enough time to save all your work and shut down your computer. I need to point out that most UPS units have some power outlets that are surge protected but not powered by the battery. This way you can have a device plugged in that is not critical to your computer needs but will have the protection provided by the surge protector. So things like your computer, your monitor and your hard drives should all be plugged into the ports that have the battery backup. Things like an iPod charger, radio or a set of speakers can be plugged in to the surge protected ports that are not connected to the battery. This way devices that your computer doesn't depend on to get information from are protected but are not running the battery down if the power goes out.

Passwords when you have passed

Another aspect of computer security that you may not have thought about lately is how to get those passwords out if you do need to share them. There may come a time when you are ill and not capable of accessing your computer. You need to have some written information that will allow a friend or relative to access the information that you have on your computer. We don't think about it but a lot of what we do on the computer has to be accessed with passwords. All of this is fine and good as long as we are well. But when we get sick, have an accident, or even pass away, not having passwords really does leave a mess. Having a sealed envelope to be opened in case you're incapacitated or have passed away is a great way to help those that you have left behind. Then they can access the information to close accounts, inform e-mail accounts, stop automatic payments from your bank account, and inform your friends that something has happened. Now you may never use that information but if needed it is there. You can place this information with a good friend/relative, however I do not recommend putting it in a safety deposit box. The reasoning behind this is the same reasoning you should not put your will into the safety deposit box. By law your safety deposit box is sealed after your death until it can be opened in front of witnesses which makes any of the contents in that safety deposit box sort of worthless till it can be opened.

Passwords get your passwords here

An interesting new tactic from Internet thieves. Because so many sites have been broken into and allowed passwords to be taken, there is a good chance that your password and username are being passed around on the Internet. The thieves have found new ways to use this information. If you're one of the unfortunate people who use the same password on every website that you go to, you could indeed be contacted by one of these individuals threatening to destroy your reputation. One person who was contacted by the Internet extortionist was asked to pay over $20,000 to keep the extortionist from destroying his credibility on the Internet because they had managed to hack into his account. Little did they know that the account that they hacked belonged to a professional computer consultant who actually knew more about the systems that the hackers did. After being contacted the hackers and finding out the exact information of what they wanted and how they wanted their $20,000 delivered, he then went on the Internet and put up a webpage offering $20,000 bounty for the culprits arrest and prosecution. It seems that was enough to frighten off the extortionists who contacted him and said they were only an intermediary and that they would make sure that he was never bothered again. Now of course this type of tactic won't work for everybody out there. You need to get out there and make sure that you have fresh passwords on your accounts. If you have not changed your password in several years it may be time to go through and change the password to a new one on any site that requires one, whether you visit regularly or infrequently. There have been people who have broken into Apple accounts and used iTunes accounts that they do not own to buy software. There have been people who have broken into Amazon accounts and charged things to accounts that they do not possess. You really don't want to be the one arguing that you did not make those charges and changing your password is a simple way to prevent such action. I highly recommend that your password be at least eight characters long with at least one capital letter and one number within that eight characters. Don't just think about it, go out and protect yourself. If something funny occurs on your account, be it a charge appears that you did not make or you get word from friends that they got a strange e-mail with your address on it, it may be time to go in and change that password even though you just changed it recently. Waiting around to see if something else happens may indeed make it a lot messier than just changing one password on one e-mail account. Just as a word of warning, please don't use things like your first name and your birth year as a password. It's not going to take people very long to put two and two together and come up with the right answers. However if you were to take your name, capitalize any letter but the first, break the name in two with the birth year and put something else on the beginning - then you have a password that at least stands a chance of not being easily broken. So "rent1954" is not likely to be a great password. Things like "69caLamari34" stand a lot better chance at surviving a password test. 

Rounding numbers when selling computers

Have you ever noticed how some companies round numbers up and some round numbers down? I mean iMacs that are 21.5 inch screens are called 22 inch screens. MacBooks that are 11.6 inch screens are 12 inch? If you can’t take the time to give true numbers why not be at least consistent? That way we would at least have an idea of how you measure. This rounding of things is becoming more and more common. I’m not sure if this is copy writers being lazy or incompetent. At any rate the numbers that you see on advertisements should be accurate. After all you are buying a product and you expect that product to live up to what it was advertised at. I'm sure that nobody minds getting an extra half inch to the plus side but there are many many people out there who will be vastly disappointed at the fact that their monitor is a half inch smaller than advertised.

Why I'm not hot to buy a new computer

There was a time when I would think of buying a new computer and I would know exactly which computer that I wanted. Apple has made this very very difficult for me at this time. In order to buy the computer configuration that I really want, I have to buy a 15 inch MacBook Pro built in 2012. They simply do not make a MacBook Pro that I actually would like at this current time. So what's so different that I can't just go out and buy one as it stands today? Well to be truthful, the whole idea of everything in my MacBook Pro being glued to the top of the case or the bottom of the case (everything being soldered solidly in) kind of goes against my upgradability thinking. I really feel uncomfortable not being able to upgrade my RAM at some future date or not being able to swap out my own hard drive. The sheer fact that I couldn't even change my battery because of all the components that are glued to it requires having a technician swap out the battery, and current pricing for this is around $400. Now I do know that Steve Jobs was really into building "toaster ovens" so basically you put information in, you get information out; you never open the machine, everything's built in already and one package serves all. Jony Ives loves this because it's smooth and streamlined and beautiful. I like smooth and streamlined and beautiful, but you know on the bottom of my case having some removable doors to allow me to swap out hard drives  and a battery that isn't glued into the case, it can’t that hard to engineer, even with that wonderful case design. So how about spending a couple billion on designing products that will not cost the consumer an arm and a leg to make a change or get an upgrade. After all, we are paying top dollar for these well-designed computers so why not allow some expandability into the design. 

iChat Messages and System software

If you use iChat, now known as Messages, be prepared to change your user name or your AOL name if you are running 10.6.8 or older. The reason for this is that Apple has changed its security on iChat so that you will no longer be able to use a Mac.com, or Me.com, or iCloud.com name with the AOL servers after the month of June. AOL has been warning all users in iChat for about a month that iChat service will be interrupted if they are using that type of username on AOL servers - basically you just will not be able to connect. Now I'm not sure why Apple has decided that this needs to happen other than the fact that this drives more people to Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks. The unfortunate part about this is that many people using Snow Leopard and iChat don't have the ability to move to a higher operating system without buying a new computer. Since that cost is fairly significant if you're running an iMac and don't have a separate monitor, Apple may lose some customers to the PC World. I am recommending anyone that has an old tower to purchase a Mac Mini. The Mac Mini makes it easy to use your existing keyboard, mouse and monitor with the Mac Mini to replace your older computer. However I also recommend that you don't get rid of your older computer. One of the things that I have found recently as people move to the new operating system is printers and scanners that are over four years old are unlikely to work under Mavericks. Many pieces of software will break because of the fact they were never designed to work with the Mavericks operating system. Which means if you have a really old version of Microsoft Office it will not function under Mavericks, and we're talking about 2004 and below. Remember AppleWorks does not work anymore also. 

Be aware when moving to Mavericks and the new Messages application that there is a big difference in how it operates from iChat. Everything is in one window, with the people that you may be chatting with appearing in a sidebar on the left of the window and you have to click on the person that wants to chat with you to move between chats in the same window. This not only sounds confusing but it is confusing.

Mavericks problems

If I was a leader of Apple (which I am not) and I had $3 billion to spend on something, I think my choice would be to spend the money on things to improve the existing Mavericks operating system so that it all worked rather than having strange problems constantly appearing on my computer. Like the fact if I click in the wrong place with my cursor or move it, suddenly it jumps to the edge of my screen for no apparent reason. I would love to have a mail system that actually goes out and gets all of my mail so that I don't have to go into webmail to find out if it is downloaded all of the mail that it was supposed to. There are things that I can live without, however having a consistent email program download correctly is one of those things that most people won't even check. But when current and past clients are reporting to me that part of their e-mail is not downloaded by the Mail program for no apparent reason, it tells me that something is wrong down at the basic core of this mail system. Please Apple take $1 or $2 billion and fix the operating system.

Apple buys Beats Electronics

If you're like me, you were greatly surprised when Apple decided to buy Beats Electronics. Now I know that there are things that Apple wants from Beats like their streaming music service. I also know that as far as I am concerned they make headphones that are absolutely over bassed. I guess because I'm not a teenager and do not want thump thump thump in my ears that I am not their demographic. I am pretty sure that we will never see Beats headphones with an Apple logo on them. It may be that we have Apple computers that are advertised to have Beats speakers in them, but really, Jony Ive should be throwing a fit right now over the ugly engineering and design of the Beats headphones.