EU MacBook Pro keyboard layout

Mac Repair for Minnesotans… and International Travelers

Truong Nguyen Technology Consulting

Throughout the years I have had the pleasure of helping many different customers with their Mac repair needs. Most have been local customers here in Minnesota, while others have been traveling from around the world. I have helped clients visiting Minnesota from Norway, Sweden, Finland, China and Israel. It’s always fun to see the variations in Mac computers from around the world. Here are recent photos of a European model of the MacBook Pro. The keyboard layout is varied slightly. I’ve been able to coordinate both large and small repairs and upgrades for these clients. Some have had the misfortune…

Trackpad Won’t Click on your MacBook or MacBook Pro?

Truong Nguyen Technology Consulting

Trackpad won’t click? Does your MacBook’s trackpad look like these photos? Or even worse… It’s not a pretty sight. Your trackpad won’t click, can’t click, outright refuses to click! And you’re stuck. This is an issue I’ve worked on again and again. The culprit is not always obvious, especially when the problem first starts. The troublemaker is often no other than your battery. As your Mac laptop ages, the battery can degrade. The cells within the battery can begin to expand. One these unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, the battery is located beneath the trackpad, and as it expands it pushes up against the…

Ransomware, Malware, Adware and Virus Removal for Mac OS X

Truong Nguyen How-To

As Mac OS X platform has increased in popularity, so have the needs for ransomware, malware, adware and virus removal/protection. The number of Macs affected by ransomware, malware and spyware has unfortunately been on the rise. These attempts come in many different forms. Malware (Spigot, Genio, etc.) often portrays itself as security protection software but is really doing almost the opposite. On older Macs, it may take up such a large amount of the computer’s resources that there will only be a constant beach ball (or spinning wheel of death). Another issue is Adware. Adware floods your computer with annoying…

MacBook 12″ retina vs. PowerBook G4 12″ – The 10-Year Mac Laptop Evolution

Truong Nguyen Product Reviews

I love 12″ display Apple laptops. My very first Mac was a 12″ iBook that my brother bought me for college, and one of my all-time favorite Macs is the 12″ PowerBook G4. It remains to this day one of the best Mac laptops I’ve ever used. So when Apple announced a new 12″ laptop after a 10-year hiatus, I was excited to see what was in store. A decade in the technology world is comparable to a century in a human lifespan. In 2005 Facebook was only available on a few college campuses. Google was nowhere near the household name it has…

imac dual ssd upgrade

Apple 27″ iMac Dual SSD Upgrade

Truong Nguyen How-To

One of the most effective upgrades for an aging Mac is an SSD (solid state drive) upgrade. I received an inquiry from a freelance video editor in St. Paul about speeding up his Apple 27″ iMac. This iMac had gotten so slow that it was used as a glorified display to a MacBook Pro retina. We both agreed an SSD upgrade was the right path to take. Having worked on these iMac before, I know there’s a hack to mount a second hard drive which I proposed could be used as a scratch drive – very beneficial in video post editing…

jon music studio

Jon’s Music Studio

Truong Nguyen Technology Consulting

One of the best perks for doing my kind of work is the many creative people I get to meet. Jon Erickson, owner of Ultimate Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning is a prime example. Besides running his successful business, Jon spends most of his free time with family and pursue his passion of music production. His MacBook Pro was in need of an upgrade to make use of Logic Pro X and Jon hired me for the job. We put a 240GB SSD (solid state hard drive) and 8GB of RAM in his laptop. We then updated the software to Mac…

dust filled imac inside caused overheating

Dead Hard Drive Caused by Overheating due to Dirty iMac Innards

Truong Nguyen Technology Consulting

A couple weeks ago I got a call to assist with an Apple iMac desktop that failed to boot into Mac OS X. A quick assessment over the phone gave me enough information to know it’s likely a dead hard drive issue which prevents the iMac from booting and stuck at the flashing question mark folder screen. I took the iMac home attempting to retrieve the data on it and to replace the dead hard drive with a new one. It’s worth mentioning this iMac was not even two years old – it is very unusual for a hard drive to die in such short…

G4 Cube, a failure that made Apple successful

Truong Nguyen Product Reviews

Almost 11 years ago, Apple unveiled a very special computer to the world. It was truly a “magical and innovative” product back then and still has a very strong fan-base today of which I’m a part. That computer is the beloved PowerMac G4 Cube. Never before had that many features and power been made available in such a compact and beautiful design of a computer. In fact, it was one of the most powerful offerings from Apple at the time with all the latest technology (in 2000) such as G4 PowerPC processor, discrete Nvidia video card, Airport card for Wifi…