We Tech Supporters

We tech supporters don’t know all the answers. We just understand how to ask the question and of whom.

My office looks like a bomb has gone off. My neatly sealed boxes of cables and plugs are strewn across the floor. There are six down there plus their lids. I was looking for a full size USB-to-USB cable. Good luck with that.

There are two laptops on-the-floor too. Oh, and an external drive with a continually blinking light.

Stef has asked me to back up her iPod. Probably the best I can do is make sure all her songs get to her Mac. They aren’t there now.

I could have tunneled between her old laptop and the Mac over my WiFi network, but it seemed PC-to-external drive-to-Mac would be fastest. There’s no way to know if I guessed right.

I am feeling extra nerdy right now.

We tech supporters don’t know all the answers. We just understand how to ask the question and of whom.

14 thoughts on “We Tech Supporters”

  1. Try turning on home sharing in iTunes on the PC, then open iTunes on the Mac, enable home sharing if needed, and import “items not in my Library”. Should get everything to the Mac without a lot of hassle.

    1. Thanks Steve, just a reader of Geoff’s blog here, thanks for this info. I have a PC with an extensive music library in Itunes. We also have a Mac mini (1st generation) that we’ve been fooling around with. This tip will come in handy for copying the library to the mini.

  2. Home sharing is an excellent solution. It’s wire free and works over your local network. It allows you to share your library with up to five computers in your network. Here’s a link explaining it in more depth. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819

    Another good idea is utilizing iCloud for purchased content. The step up from iCloud would be iTunes match which costs an annual fee, but uploads your entire library to the cloud. All your music content would be accessible from any computer you link your iTunes account to. It can also upgrade the sound quality of music that has been ripped from cds. http://support.apple.com/kb/VI292

    1. Thomas: Thanks for that info also. I have had a very distressing experience with iCloud over the last few days after downloading the latest software update for iTunes onto my laptop(PC)and also updating the software on my iPad. iCloud will not recognize Outlook 2010 on my laptop. It keeps telling me to intall Outlook and then it will sync my contacts and calendar from Outlook and then I will regain the ability to communicate again between my iPad and Outlook on my PC. I don;t dare download the software update onto my iPhone until this issue is resolved. I spoke with 3 different Apple tech support people over two nights for a total of about 3-4 hours and they had no solution to my problem except to uninstall iCloud and reinstall it (that did not resolve the issue)and then to uninstall Outlook and reinstall it. I have not done that yet because I have to do that by re-downloading it from the Microsoft website. I am fearful of losing my contacts and calendar appointments and I can’t back up any of it using my iPad or iPhone because they will no longer communicate with Outlook since the software download. Also, there is no guarantee that doing this will resolve the issue. I am truly disappointed and frustrated with Apple for being unable to resolve this issue for me especially after investing so much time and money in their products and extended tech support for my devices.

      I have heard that there have been many problems with iCloud since it came out and Apple has been swamped with people needing help. Their techs are not up to it and Apple has not been able to handle the volume of calls.

      Stupid of me to have downloaded the new software before all the “bugs” have been resloved by Apple. I am so disappointed with them. So much so that I am contemplating walking away from Apple products when it is time to replace my iPad and iPhone. I just got the iPhone in May and the iPad in March so I can’t justify walking away from them just yet. I’m in a bad position here………….

  3. I would check to see if outlook has an export feature. Also, if I’m correct, the information associated with your outlook application would be linked to an email account that you use with outlook. If this is right then your contacts should be linked to the outlook email you have. To make sure you don’t lose your contacts I would look into a way to export them into a file. Hopefully this can help you: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/export-contacts-HA101870639.aspx

    If that doesn’t help I’d be happy to assist you more. As for making this work with iCloud, that should be as simple as linking your outlook email in your settings on your iPad and iPhone. I’m sure you’ve attempted this already, but if not I’ll run through the steps. Basically, go to your mail settings in the preferences section on your iPad and iPhone. You would add your email as a new account. It should offer a list of different account types and from there you would enter your email adress and it should set it up automatically. I found a video on youtube that could help you out if that doesn’t. In fact, I’d suggest checking the video out anyways! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1a-KHQG0n4

    If you continue to have problems google these terms: outlook 2010 exporting contacts, syncing outlook 2010 with iCloud

  4. Okay, so I think the video I sent is so good at explaining how to do it that I would just follow that for iCloud instructions. But I would still check out exporting contacts just to make sure you don’t lose your contacts.

  5. Thank you Thomas………….will show this to my nerdy husband and we can work on it this weekend. Will check out your links. Thanks……………Happy New Year!

  6. Ha! I have every flavor of USB cables ever made including a universal USB cable that has an A connector on one side and all flavors of B on the other. The only thing it is missing is A to A but no fear, I have several A to A cables. I usually pick them up off of Woot.com (a site which all self-respecting geeks should frequent!) when they pop up. I also have a pile of iPod cables that I bought from Woot that are also various flavors of connectors. Now when the kids misplace their cables, I have a spare at the ready and I’ve usually spent less than $10 for three cables.

  7. Whew! All of you are great! I’m going to save this to digest later!
    I’ve got a Mac and IPod and IPad and IPhone myself and husband and son the same minus the IPad and Mac so I want to find a better way to keep us all up to date!

  8. This blog entry is so true though. The thing about us techy people is we don’t know all the answers about tech, but we know where to look and how to ask to try to find out the answers to our questions. Keep teching on people! 🙂

  9. Once all the I-devices had the new software, mine all update themselves. So far it’s all working seamlessly. I’m amazed, having come from ( and still immersed in) a PC world, where nothing ever works the first time…or even the second time. I’m impressed with apple (but not their geniuses) for this kind of stuff. Business software, not so much. They don’t really even speak the language!
    My real question about ‘the cloud’ , referred to as if it were a single data storing and sharing facility is, what will happen to all the systems with ‘optimized’ storage in their clouds when everyone wants to access data at once? I know it’s not supposed to happen, but…
    Corporate users, go ahead and get cloudy….and I’ll even use it for all my devices, but you betcha I have backup on all my stuff!

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