Category Archives: Upgrades

FiOS Upgraded for Free to 20/5mbps

Posted by JasonTomczak on August 22, 2008 1 comment

When I signed up for Verizon FiOS a few months ago, I got the 15/2mbps service. I was told that Verizon was going to be increasing all its d/u speeds in retaliation to Comcast’s announcement of upcoming 60mbps service in select areas. Rumor had it that my 15/2 service would become 20/5 automatically.

The automatic bump never happened. I called Verizon approximately 8 times to inquire about it and every person I talked to had a different understanding of it, though truthfully, several FiOS service reps were totally unaware.

I called again today and immediately selected the option to talk to someone in billing. I got a very nice girl on the phone who was willing to listen to my gripe. A first time experience for me dealing with Verizon – she knew exactly what I was talking about. Oh My Frikin Gawd! A FiOS employee in the know! Wow! She checked my account, confirmed that the 20/5 option was indeed available to me and put the change request in. For free, by the way.

Now that was pretty awesome. It got even better when she told me when to expect the upgrade to take place. “Now,” she said. My reply was less eloquent – something like “Haruh?!”

Lo and behold, I popped over to speedtest.net and ran a quick test. I got a near perfect score. Here’s the result:

So if you have FiOS, you may be eligible for a free upgrade. Give them a call. Give the billing dept a call. The support guys are serving up a pretty dismal 10% success rate at solving problems.

P.S. It looks like I can upgrade to 20/20mbps for an extra $10 per month. I might just do that!

Replacing a Hard Drive in a MacBook Pro – The Good, the Bad, The Ugly

Posted by JasonTomczak on February 29, 2008 10 comments

After becoming accustomed to upgrading to newer MacBook Pro models every year, I finally convinced myself that I’d try hanging onto the same 2.16GHz laptop for a little longer, even if it was out of warranty and a whole 240MHz slower than the latest-greatest. I already had 4GB RAM installed, so I figured it’d be best to just upgrade the hard drive. Granted, the 160GB 5,400RPM stock hard drive I was using had more than 60GB free, so I wasn’t exactly aching for storage, but bigger is always better, right? I found a great 200GB 7,200RPM SATA drive on newegg.com for only $139 after $30 rebate, so I bought it.

I cloned my 160GB drive to the 200GB drive. Unfortunately, it took nearly 4 hours thanks to the 80GB of data running over a USB 2.0 connection. USB 2.0 sucks. Really.

Once the cloning was done, I got my handy-dandy Torx screwdriver set out and began disassembling the MacBook Pro. I used the awesome (but somewhat outdated) instructions from iFixit.com.

MacBook Pro, ready to go. Note the awesome Dr. Bodelin’s Laptop Bumpers that keep the MBP raised up a little for heat dissipation. I have a set for each of my laptops, my wife’s laptop, etc. You should, too.

Beginning surgery:

Removing screws from the body of the MacBook Pro is simple.

I found that placing the screws along side the iFixit instructions made things easier on me. So many screws, but so little to worry about.

Lifting the top off the MacBook Pro is easy… kind of. The rear, left and right pry loose with almost no effort, but the front was a real pain in the butt. There are some little plastic tabs that are hooked just under the lip of the front bezel. They just don’t want to let go. After a leap (or tug) of faith, I wrestled the entire top of the laptop off.

Pretty stuff under the hood:

Old drive with heat sensor:

Old drive and new:

200GB drive snugly in place in the MacBook Pro:

Putting the MacBook Pro back together was dirt simple. It took no more than 4 minutes and everything looks as good as it did before the whole upgrade process.

- – - – - -

The Good
After replacing the hard drive, I’ve got nearly 120GB free space. Wow. I noticed that moving data to and from my FireWire 800 backup drive is much, much faster. A 10GB transfer used to take 6-8 minutes, and now it rips through in less than 4 minutes. Parallels seems to open and run faster, too.

I’ve noticed almost no increase in heat with this new drive, and it’s actually quieter than the 160GB drive that came with the MacBook Pro. Hooray!

The Bad
With a 7,200RPM drive, I was expecting a serious decrease in boot time. I saw a significant increase – like 15-20 seconds slower. Converting AVI files to MP4 (for AppleTV) went from 5 mins 20 seconds to 6 mins 40 seconds. Time to open big RAW images in Photoshop remained the same. A bit of a disappointment.

The Ugly
During the cloning process, something must have gone awry, because the Leopard video drivers got seriously messed up. The colors on the MBP screen looked washed out and my 24″ LCD screen, which was previously gorgeous at 1920×1200, was now rendered dull brown-ish green in color and wouldn’t display anything above 1440×900. I re-installed the video card firmware update that Apple released in late February, but that didn’t fix it.

I ran a full battery of cleanups with Leopard’s Disk Utility and OnyX. Neither made any notable improvement.

After several fruitless calls to Apple Genius bars, I decided to wipe the drive clean and see how things would go. The fresh install of Leopard fixed the video problem, but it didn’t seem to make any difference with the speed I was hoping to see in the 7,200RPM drive.

Even with 4GB RAM and a fresh OS X installation, the apps I use most often seem to move at the same (or slower) pace with this new drive. Bogus.

Final Verdict
While I’m happy with the extra hard drive space, I am pretty disappointed with the fact that I’m not seeing any real-world, “holy crap!” increase in speed. Aside from the kick-ass transfer rates with my external backup drives, the 200GB 7,200RPM upgrade seems to have been a bit ho-hum.

 

Update on New Upgrade:

After using the 200GB 7,200RPM drive for a couple months, I swapped it out for a 320GB 5,400RPM drive made by Western Digital. Check out the installation process for photos, notes, etc. Comparing this modded 2.16GHz MacBook Pro to my newer 2.4GHz MBP, they’re really running about even.

These same display problems eventually plagued my 2.4GHz MBP and I had to have Apple replace the logic board. Thankfully, that fixed it – and it was free. – Jason

 

Replacing a Hard Drive in an Intel iMac

Posted by JasonTomczak on November 23, 2007 252 comments

I recently bought a used 17″ iMac for use in my kitchen – Emeril & Iron Chef vids, recipes, iPhoto collection and, of course, iTunes. The iMac had 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. I thought that might be enough, but once I transferred a few Emeril videos and half of my iPhoto library, I had only 3GB left over. Clearly, 160GB is olde schoole.

So I set out to increase the RAM to 2GB and pop in a new 500GB hard drive. My first task, opening the iMac case. Apple makes this harder than opening other, earlier cases. They use Torx screws instead of phillips screws. Home Depot has sets of Torx screws for $10 and eBay has similar sets for $8 to $15.

Here’s the iMac opened up on the operating table. I didn’t disconnect the LCD 100% from the iMac. I left the video connector attached and used the foot of the iMac as a nice stable holding spot during the surgery.

In this pic, the insides of the iMac are exposed. A late note about warranties. This completely voids the warranty on the iMac. I don’t care, but if you try any of this, you should consider preserving your warranty. Unlike repairs on most Macs, opening Intel iMacs results in obvious cosmetic scarring inside. It’ll be 100% clear to any Apple tech that your iMac has been opened and messed around with.

Here’s the 160GB SATA hard drive. It’s tucked tightly inside the case.

Luckily, it’s very easy to remove. Two screws and a little slight of hand, and the drive pops right out.

See?

Unplug the SATA power and data cables.

Carefully remove the HDD heat sensor. There’s a glue-like substance underneath. Try not to tear it.

The new 500GB drive is back in place. I secured the heat sensor on with some electrical tape. It may give a slightly inaccurate read due to the thin insulation, but it’s fine. Again, be gentle with the adhesive.

With the hard drive secured and the LCD replaced, I screwed the internal Torx screws back in.

A little more electrical tape to affix the thick tinfoil-like metal sheeting back to the inside frame of the iMac case.

Aligning the top of the front bezel onto the case is important. It can be a little tricky, so take your time. It may take a few tries. The best way to tell if you have it right is to see and/or hear the metal clips snap into place. The back side of the iMac will also be snug against the bezel. If the setting isn’t right, the bezel and frame will be slightly misaligned and will feel sloppy. A tight, clean fit is desired.

Tighten the Torx screws on the bottom of the case to complete the surgical process.

Boot the iMac into FireWire Target Disk mode and clone the old drive to the new, blank 500GB drive. I used Carbon Copy Cloner. Because I had to clone a drive with around 150GB+ of stuff on it, the whole clone process took about 4 hours. Egads.

With cloning done, the new 500GB iMac boots up just fine. I had about 320GB free at that point. After moving the rest of my iTunes, photos and cooking vids, I had about 220GB free. We’ll see how long that lasts. A nice 1TB drive may be in order sooner than I expected.

Post op, I hooked the iMac up to some speakers by way of an Airport Express unit. It’s a very nice setup. It’s not a brand new silver & black iMac, but this is fine for me. Besides, it’s likely to get some ragu on it now and then, so I’d rather have an oldie in la cucina mia.