These are blogs of the techrestore crew, sharing our love of technology and other interests.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Time Machine Travels To Macworld
Take a ride with Shannon and I as we drive the DeLorean time machine to Macworld Expo! Watch, as we discover where the gascap is and navigate the underground maze of Moscone Center. Here's a map of the route that we took.
The DeLorean time machine has landed! After a short journey through time and space, the Back To The Future car has finally arrived at our warehouse, ready to travel to Macworld, where all expo attendees will be able to view it, in all it's noisy blinking glory! If you still haven't registered for tickets, there may still be a few left - if not, it'll be well worth $25 to get in and pickup free schwag and prizes. Check out our latest video to see what it looks like up close.
Have a wonderful Holiday! We've just finished off the last repairs and upgrades, loaded them on the sleigh and gave our reindeer a good smack in the rear as they went on their way, delivering joy, happiness, repaired Macs, iPods, iPhones and PSPs to locations throughout the country.
We wish you, your families and your friends the best this holiday season. The TechRestore repair center will be closed on Christmas Day, but we will be right back at it on Friday, 12/26.
Apple Cancels Christmas after 2009. Gotta love this take on the end of Apple's participation in MacWorld Expo.
We released our final Specials newsletter of 2008 last Friday. You still have time to get deals on MacBooks and MacBook Pro's in time for Christmas starting at $699 and lot's of other deals on repairs and upgrades. See the full list here.
We had crews in our repair labs throughout the weekend, making sure that your Macs, iPods, iPhones and gaming systems get back out to you in time for the big day on Thursday. To check the status of any product in for service, just visit TechRestore.com/status.
Last week, I started thinking about all the publications that had featured articles about TechRestore, our products, our services and our customers. Brian Northway and I decided that it would be a good idea to put up a page on our website listing some of the magazines, newspapers, websites and radio shows that have featured TechRestore over the years. I can’t tell you how pleased we were to find article after article featuring TechRestore in publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, WIRED magazine, CNN, MacWorld, MacLife, countless local newspapers and a bunch of websites and radio shows. All of us have put a tremendous amount of work into making our company succeed over the years and it's wonderful to be able to see us in these publications.
Click on over to view the cool logos in all their full-sized glory. Have a great Friday!
Here's a tip passed along from our expert PSP tech, Lance:
After a PSP has a motherboard replaced and you find that you can't play games downloaded from the PSN (Playstation Network), due to the board having a different serial #, here is what to do:
Activate/deactivate using a computer (for PSP system only)
1. Visit the PlayStation Network Account Management website at https://store.playstation.com/login.gvm and log into your PlayStation Network account. If this is the first time accessing the site, select your region from the list of countries.
2. Select "Activate/Deactivate PSP system."
3. Connect your PSP system to your computer via a USB cable and place the PSP system into USB Mode (Settings) > (USB Connection).
4. Select "Video Content," if you wish to download and watch movies from the PlayStation Network Video Download Service. Select "Game Content," to download games from the PlayStation Network.
5. Select "Activate System," to activate the console.
6. If the PSP system was previously activated with a different account, you may see a warning message indicating that activating the system with this account will deactivate it from the previous account. Click "Yes" to proceed.
7. Once complete, an "Activation completed" message will appear.
For certain types of PlayStation® Network content, you must activate your system (PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system or PSP® portable entertainment system) on the PlayStation Network in order to view or play the content. In these cases, if your system (PlayStation 3 or PSP system) is not activated, you will not be able to access the purchased PlayStation Network content. A maximum of five systems may be registered to a PlayStation Network account at a time. You must have the PlayStation 3 system or PSP system in order to activate or deactivate it from a PlayStation Network account.
For those of you who would like to visit us at MacWorld Expo, and see the Back To The FutureDeLorean, we have a limited quantity of free passes available (a $45 value)! To get yours, register online. You can also get a 15% discount on select conference programs here. When visiting our booth (#2644), you'll also be able to win free T-shirts and a free MacBook! Check out the virtual brochure, to plan your visit and get the most out of the Macworld Conference & Expo.
We rolled back into town late Saturday night after 4 days in sunny Scottsdale...it rained quite a bit and it was only warm enough to swim one day. And if you know my kids, they will pretty much swim in just about any weather, rain, sleet, you name it. Well, I might be exaggerating a little. We stayed at the Kierland resort, which was just fantastic and it had the added benefit of accepting our frequent flier miles as payment - what's not to love?
I hope you had a great long holiday weekend. While I was down in AZ with family, our Techs were busy with repairs and upgrades. We're seeing a big increase in our PSP repairs, which might have something to do with the 72,000+ folks that have watched our PSP 3000 video. We're also seeing more iPod Touch and 3G iPhone repairs making there way to the TechRestore repair labs. We had a record number of repairs scheduled over the weekend, so we're ready for a busy week.
If you're a subscriber to the TechRestore Specials, you know that each week we send out some dramatic discounts to our loyal subscribers, we're just about to hit the 10,000 subscriber mark (we'll have to do something super-special when that happens). So, how do you partake in these fabulous prizes (deals, actually)? Simple, just click over to our Specials page, enter your email address and you'll instantly be saving on Mac, iPod & iPhone repairs, upgrades, iPods, software, Mac parts and more. We promise not to annoy you, or if we do annoy you (sometimes happens if you're around me too long), you can unsubscribe with just 1-click of your mouse.
If you'd like to save even more, click over to the TechRestore Fan page on Facebook. Signup as a Fan of TechRestore and you'll get access to the best discount code we've offered to date. We're not bribing you to be our friend, really.
Before I go, check out these pictures of some Dale Chihuly glass work. We visited an exhibit titled "The Nature of Glass" while in AZ that had Chihuly works spread throughout the Phoenix Botanic Garden, which, (no surprise here) is full of cacti, succulents and tons of other crazy desert plants. Pics taken with my iPhone, so don't expect much detail.
Have a great week! Now that you're a subscriber to the TechRestore Specials, I'll see you again on Friday, with about 10,000 other friends.
The big boss has been out on business this week, [and I was out sick yesterday, with the cough of doom] so the Specials News will go out MondayWednesday evening - stay tuned! This will be our "Thanksgiving Edition" Special News, with a generous spread of juicy deals...mmm.
We're on iTunes! Future Shock, TechRestore's video podcast is now live on the iTunes Music Store - and it's free. Now you can have high-quality versions of our animated videos on your iPod, iPhone or computer, without having to be online while you watch them. Better yet, by subscribing to our podcast, they will be automatically downloaded, so you can be showing them off to friends, on your iPod, before they get picked up by the big gadget blogs!
Here it is, our first non-Apple product tear-down video, the PSP 3000! Not to be outdone by Chet, one of our game system techs, Lance, took this unit apart and put it back together, while I snapped video frames. This baby sports an extra bright screen, smudge-proof case and a built in microphone (for free PSP to PSP Skype talk and other apps). Check it out and see for yourself:
I've upgraded TechRestore's YouTube channel to include annotations that label all of the parts in our tear-down videos and created a DVD-style menu, with animated button/links:
Stay tuned for the PSP 3000 tear-down video, coming soon!
The long overdue animated AppleTV take-apart has finally arrived! In other words, I've finally created one. You see, we posted all kinds of sexy photos of the device's innards, when it first came out - but that was before I started doing the stop-motion dissections. So, go ahead and check it out...
iPhone users rejoice - you can officially count on getting free Wi-Fi service on your iPhone from any AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot across the land - this includes boatloads of Starbucks, airports and all sorts of other places. Check out the map, that's a lot of free wifi. Enjoy!
Here's our latest animated tear-down video: a look inside the brand new MacBook Pro! As an added bonus, by popular request, I got footage of Chet putting it back together.
These new MacBooks Pro are amazing! The whole trackpad is a button, which doesn't seem all that much better than tap clicking, until you go to drag stuff, which is sooo much better this way! The four-finger Expose controls are wicked too.
With Macworld Expo just around the corner, it's time to promote our booth and announce to the rest of the world that we'll have the Back To The Future DeLorean on display! Here's the ad copy that I just sent off to Macworld and Mac|Life magazines:
Our friends at Engadget are publishing these blurry top secret photos that are being leaked in advance of Apple's laptop announcements tomorrow.
Remember losing the floppy drive all those years ago? Then we lost our PC Card slots...now, if this photo is correct, where did that pesky little trackpad button run off to? Multi-touch to the rescue with a newfangled touch-pad that handles all your clicks and drags? You tell me.
A quick plug before I sign-off - checkout this week's Specials newsletter and get yourself signed up for future savings here. Learn about our new free shipping policy on all repairs and save some cash on a bunch of different repairs and upgrades.
We'll let's not single them out too much, but 1123 files have to be installed on my Mac in order to print a label? C'mon, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm not sure it makes me feel any better that it only took 2 minutes to install...where are all those files and what are they doing right now? It's 10PM, do you know where your label software is? When I install some massive application like Photoshop or Dreamweaver, I expect a ton of files, but it seems like these printers have upped the ante and they're multiplying before my eyes. I'm pretty sure the last HP printer driver I installed had about 465,000 files. I could be wrong, but at least it felt that way as the installer bar flew by, taking over my computer and sending stuff to all corners of "my" Mac - who really owns my computer now anyway? I'm just the guy who types and reads. I'm totally outnumbered by these files and I'm waiting for them to revolt at any moment. "Shut down? No way dude, we're just starting a party in here!"
Hey, speaking of new stuff on your computer (lame segue, I know), checkout our new Free Return Shipping offers that are popping up all over our website. You can now choose from free return shipping on Mac LCD screen repairs, hard drive upgrades and optical drive replacements. As well, you can get a free diagnosis with free return shipping when you approve any repair - pretty cool huh? And we only need to install 23,596 files on your computer to make this happen! Just kidding...
We have a couple of new employees joining the elite TechRestore ranks this week! Welcome to Lance Torrence, the newest Technician in our Consumer Electronics department and Gail Sarabia, who you will soon be speaking to on the phone if you call in to schedule a repair or to check your order status. We're thrilled to have them here and can't wait to see what they will be cooking at this week's Friday BBQ. ;-) Just kidding...again. We'll let them get settled before we turn up the heat about cooking. Bad pun, I know - but I'm in one of those moods today.
I hope you're having a great Friday and you're on your way to an exciting weekend. It's been a very busy week at the TechRestore home office in Concord, CA and we're looking forward to a nice weekend with family and friends. It's been awhile since I've checked in with you, so I thought I'd push a few updates out to you so you can see what we have in store in the upcoming months. Here we go:
+ Coming next week - a (long overdue) new Specials newsletter with a bunch of nice deals on products and services.
+ A new iPod parts announcement that we're looking forward to sharing with you during October
+ New super-duper FREE shipping on many of our services that will start in the next 7-10 days. We're just putting the final polish on our programming to make the new system work when placing your orders online
+ New interactive local drop off service - no more paper forms. Just walk in to any FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinkos), tell them you have a TechRestore repair and they will take if from there. It's been my dream to make this new service possible since we began offering our local pickup service two years ago. I'm thrilled to be getting close to launch with this new program.
And finally, before I let you go, checkout this excellent message that just arrived this morning. What a great way to end the week.
"Every great once in a while, you can believe the hype and a service delivers everything it promises. TechRestore swapped my original, small iBook hard drive for a 250GB drive, and did it in a professional, expeditious way. The over night service, even from the west coast to the east coast, was exactly as advertised. You offer a tremendous service. The website is easy to work with and the staff during phone calls was very helpful and knowledgeable.Thank you, - Bill Millerick"
My thanks for all the staff at TechRestore that work hard to make this kind of service possible. Have a great weekend!
Here's our latest stop-motion animated tear-down video: a look inside the 4G iPod nano! For size and design comparison, I've included some 2G and 3G nanos as well. Check out the first cross-dissolve to see how the screens are the same size on the 3G and 4G.
Here's the cliff-notes on the new iPod announcements from Apple today: * Tall, oval shaped nano with screen turned sideways and accelerometer to rotate movies/photos, like the iTouch
* New shake to shuffle feature and more colors for nano - 8GB $149
* Slimmer iPod Touch with built-in Nike+ and speaker - pushed as "best portable device for playing games" (look out PSP) - 8GB $229
* iPod Classic available in 120GB only, at $249
So there ya go. For more details see the play-by-play blog of Apples 'Let's Rock' event at engadget.
It's time to start getting ready for Macworld Expo SF, once again, and I have to tell you that wehave a treat for you this year. We will be displaying the actual De Lorean used in Back To The Future! Actually, it's one of six that were used in the film, but it's far more impressive than the one on display at Universal Studios, since you'll be able to get up close and even see inside! On top of that, it lights up like a Christmas tree. You can only get about three feet from the one at Universal, due to the metal barricades, and I hear that it doesn't even have a flux capacitor, let alone opening doors - where as our is complete and even functions as a real vehicle. In fact, it will be traveling forward through time even as you look at it - amazing! You can get your photo taken with the time-machine, and enter to win free T-shirts and other prizes (I'm not sure if we'll be giving away an iPhone, MacBook, or what , just yet)
Check out this video to see the actual car that we will have on display.
Keep an eye out for free passes to Macworld - we'll post 'em here in our blog, as soon as they arrive. Now if I could just transport myself to the point in time where all of my trade-show prep was done...
Ever wonder what a black MacBook would look like with a white keyboard and track-pad? Well, wonder no more. This client of ours is sure to be the only person on their block with such a unique MacBook...
Here's an email that we received from a satisfied client today. This is the kind of thing that makes us proud of what we do. Thanks for the feedback Rich!
Hot tubs are so 20th century. For a truly rejuvenating experience, skip the chlorine bath and submerge yourself in colorful acrylic polymers instead! I actually haven't experienced this since I was about 10 but I'm seriously considering the installation of a ball pit, now that I have access to a calculator that will determine how many balls it takes to fill any given space. By the way, the geeky comics at XKCD are hilarious too!
Are those plain white earbuds of yours making you feel like one of the indistinct denziens of the underground world of THX-1138? If so, Budclicks are here to add pieces of flair to your otherwise drab and uniform appearance! Smiley's, bio-hazard symbols, and just about any other well known symbol are ready to adorn your ears for about $6-$16. Audacious ear ornaments for men and women - how's that for Future Shock?
searchme.com is still in beta, but you no longer need to sign up to access it! If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth a look. Imagine thumbing through web sites as if they were in cover-flow, on a Mac or iPod. Not only does it look slick but, on the practical side, it allows you to visually search for the website that you want (eg. that game site with the red background that you don't remember the name of). In addition to that, SearchMe also let's you thumb through stacks of photos or videos online. I have yet to try it out on an iPhone or iPod touch, but I'm guessing that it looks great!
Ever wonder what would happen if you drove over an iPhone. Wonder no more. This iPhone was run over by a car and all that was damaged was the screen, which has since been replaced. The iPhone that you see here is now restored to complete functionality!
