Tech Table Monday, December 23, 2013
December 23, 2013
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest. Hello, Justin. It’s Monday.
Justin: It is Monday.
Diana: But it’s Monday for the week of Christmas.
Justin: That’s right, it’s the week of Christmas. Fa la la, and jingle bells, and such things.
Diana: Fa la la, yes.
Justin: I didn’t want to sing too much of anything because we might have to pay royalties.
Diana: Oh, whoa.
Justin: Yes, that might stretch the bank over here at Tech Table, so we don’t want to do that. But yeah, it is the week of Christmas and people are sending in all sorts of questions to us, and Monday is the day that we go into our email inbox and take a look. What’s that email address, Diana?
Diana: You can send your questions to questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: That’s right. And Halle wrote in, and Halle asks, “My tablet won’t charge and I want to take it on the road trip to grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. What can I do?” And by tablet, she probably means like an iPad.
Diana: Or Kindle, something like that.
Justin: Or a Kindle, yeah, something like that.
Diana: Oh my, it won’t charge, Halle. So what can we do for Halle?
Justin: Well, yeah, you tell me.
Diana: Well, we talked to Donnie.
Justin: We did. Donnie at MPA a lot of times has great ideas for easy fixes.
Diana: Yes. He says the first thing you should do is try to change the cable or the charging block. So, the reason for this is that over time, the actual cables and the charging blocks may actually go bad. So, if you replace both of those or try a friend’s cable or charging block and you know that works but it’s still not charging, then you know you have a deeper problem. So, troubleshoot first with the cord, okay, with that power source.
Justin: Yeah, so your deeper problems are, you know, electrical connection issues within the device that draw power from the cord. It’s possible that one of those pins is damaged and the port itself could be bad or something even more internal. I mean, this really could not be good for Halle.
Diana: Well, hopefully when she hears these suggestions, it’ll stop with the cord. She can figure out, oh, I just need a new cord.
Justin: Right, and you can always try to blow out the connections with compressed air, which we use Blow Off a lot of times for some of these things or applying a small amount of electronic alcohol to the connection to try and clean it.
Diana: Right, but that’s a little dangerous sometimes, isn’t it?
Justin: Right. Be careful when doing that because you can possibly damage the system further.
Diana: Okay, yeah, you don’t want to damage it further.
Justin: So if all these things don’t get it working, take it into a repair shop and see if they might be able to open it up and fix the device. And it might just take some small part and a little time with the tech, and it’ll be worth a shot.
Diana: It is worth a shot!
Justin: So, yeah, it hopefully won’t be too much of a problem for you to get fixed.
Diana: Yeah, Halle, we really hope you get your tablet fixed because you can do so many things with those tablets.
Justin: Yeah, tablets are really great. You can do a lot of things with tablets. What are some of the things you might do?
Diana: Oh, gosh. You can look up things on the Internet. You can read books. You can download movies, apps, play games, all sorts of stuff.
Justin: Yeah, and there are a lot of different tablets out there, like we said, there’s the iPad, there’s the iPad Mini, there’s the iPad Air, there’s the Kindle, the Nook.
Diana: The Nook, and Samsung.
Justin: And most companies now have their own version.
Diana: Yes.
Justin: So, anyway, we hope, Halle, that you get that fixed. It’s an easy fix. Hopefully, that works really well. And if not, bring it into MPA and we’ll definitely fix it for you.
Diana: Yeah!
Justin: If at all possible. And send us your questions, folks at…
Diana: questions@askmpa.com
Justin: Great. And we’ll see you tomorrow, which is Christmas Eve. It’s very exciting. All right, until then.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at AskMPA.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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