However, many of the how-to guides that I needed in order to properly install my SSD turned out to be pretty vague, which left me in a rut halfway through the installation. So, I’ve decided to write a proper how-to on installing an SSD in a MacBook Pro.

Note: This method can be easily translatable to any other laptop or computer, so if you don’t have a MacBook Pro, you can still follow along with your own laptop and successfully install your SSD.

Materials

• Your new SSD!
• A small towel
• Phillips precision screwdriver
• Torx T6 screwdriver
• OS X install disc or flash drive

Disassembling your laptop

First thing’s first: Completely turn off your laptop and make sure it’s unplugged from its power source. Lay down your small towel on your desk, table or any other flat surface and put your laptop on top of it with the bottom side up. The towel will prevent the laptop from getting scratched up while its laying on the hard surface.

Next, remove the screws from the bottom plate. These are the ten screws that are placed on the outer edge (pictured below). The screws are very tiny and can be lost easily, so put them in a small bowl — just make sure you know where they all go (three of the screws are longer, and they go in the top three holes to the right. Other than, it doesn’t matter where the rest of the screws go since they’re all the same).

After you remove all the screws, carefully lift up the bottom plate to reveal the innards of your MacBook Pro — it should pop off pretty easily.

The hard drive is located in the bottom-left corner. There will be a plastic tab that you can pull on to get the hard drive to pop out, but before you do that, you have to remove a small black plastic retaining bar that holds the hard drive in place. It’s located directly north of the hard drive and is held down by only a pair of screws (pictured below).

Remove the bar and pull on the plastic tab to pop out the hard drive. Make sure not to get too greedy, since the hard drive is still attached to the laptop via the SATA cable. In this case, the SATA cable is an extremely thin ribbon cable, so be extra careful here when unplugging it.

A view of the thin ribbon cable. Be extremely careful here!

Once the hard drive is completely out, unscrew the four torx screws on the sides of the hard drive using your T6 screwdriver (below). You’ll need these screws for your SSD, as they’re essential to holding the drive in place while it sits inside your laptop.

Go ahead and put the four screws on your SSD. All there is to do now is to plug in the SATA ribbon cable to your SSD, mount it inside, put the retaining bar back on, reattach the bottom plate with the screws, and the hardware portion is all done!

The last thing to do is insert your OS X install disc (or plug in your OS X boot USB drive), hold down the alt/option key during the boot process, and then install OS X like you would with any other drive.

Congrats! You’re all done and you should now be experiencing blazing fast speeds.

How to install a SSD in a MacBook Pro is a post from Techerator.com.

You can buy laptop stands pretty much anywhere, and they come in all different shapes and sizes. However, they’re pretty expensive — one of my favorite laptop stands is the Griffin Elevator, which rings in at a cost of almost $35 on Amazon.

I wanted to see if I could make my own laptop stand that closely models the Griffin Elevator, but build it for the fraction of the cost, and I believe I have succeeded greatly. Here’s how to do it.

Materials

• 10-foot length of 1/2-inch PVC pipe – $1.49 (Sometimes you can find 5-foot lengths, but 10 feet is the better deal. Plus, you can use the leftover for other DIY projects!)
• Six 1/2-inch PVC elbow joints – $2.76
• Two 1/2-inch PVC end caps – $0.52
• Kitchen drawer & shelf grip liner – $3.23

Total Cost: $8.00

Assembly

Putting this PVC laptop stand together is straightforward and easy, and there’s no pre-determined measurements that you need to follow, since all laptops are sized differently. All you need to do is cut your PVC pipe into seven different lengths. One of the pipes should be roughly the length of your laptop, four of them should be roughly the width of your laptop, and the other two determine the height of your stand, which is completely up to you.

After you have your seven lengths of PVC pipe, it’s time to start assembly. Simply just attach the pipes to the joints. Refer to the photo above as a guide. If you want to make the stand really sturdy, you can glue the pipes and joints together with some PVC cement.

After you’ve assembled the stand, ideally you want to add some kitchen drawer grip liner to the base and at the top. This stabilizes the stand and keeps it from sliding around. It also prevents the laptop from accidentally sliding off the stand easily. Cut out small squares of grip liner and glue them on (pictured above) using some super glue or any other glue you have lying around.

You’re done! That was all there was to it. It’s arguably the best DIY project that I’ve ever done because it’s quick, simple, useful, and it hardly cost anything.

How to make a DIY laptop stand for $8 is a post from Techerator.com.

Gameplay

Hero Academy is sort of like chess, in the sense that you have different “chess pieces” that do different things, and there’s a certain kind of strategy that you have to keep in mind that’s similar to how you would strategize in chess. Hero Academy consists of five different characters (or “units”) and a wealth of different items like shields, swords, and helmets that you can use to upgrade your units, as well as one-time-use items like health potions, fireballs, and boosts.

You get 25 of a mixture of units and items per game, but only have access to five at a time. When you use them up, you get new units/items to replace the ones you used until all 25 are used up. Look at it as a deck of cards with a five-card hand.

Each player gets five moves per turn, and you can use those moves however you like. You can do a mixture of moving and attacking, or spend a turn simply building up your army for a major attack later in the game. You can even spend a move swapping an item in your hand for something else that’s waiting in the queue, in case you’re dealt a crappy hand.

The goal of the game is to either destroy all of your opponents’ units or destroy their jewel — whichever comes first. The game board includes special squares that give you certain boosts when one of your units lands on them. These include different types of increased attack power and defense strength.

Misc. features

All users receive the Council “starter” team when they begin playing Hero Academy. You can buy different teams (Dark Elves, Dwarves, Tribe, and the Team Fortress 2 team) for a few bucks per team. All the teams are relatively balanced, so there’s no real big advantage to using the paid teams other than having different characters besides the default ones — every team has roughly the same type of units that do the same thing with the same amount of power. Some units on the paid teams do things that other teams can’t, but there’s usually a trade-off  for those units.

Availability and pricing

Hero Academy is available on Steam for $4.99 and on iOS as a free, ad-supported download. When you buy the Steam version, you get the Team Fortress 2 team for free, along with the Council starter team. Sadly, the TF2 team isn’t available to purchase on iOS, but you can still buy the other teams for $1.99 each (removing the game’s ads while you do so) and get different avatar packs ($0.99 each) as well.

Conclusion

In a word, Hero Academy is addictive. Any game that allows you to play against your friends usually has a great lasting appeal, and Hero Academy has that and much more. The chess-like strategy mixed with the different attack items makes the game a unique title that a lot of casual gamers will enjoy.

Game review: Hero Academy is a post from Techerator.com.

First off, it’s extremely easy to set up any kind of reminder in Checkmark, and there’s two kinds of reminders you can set for yourself: “When” and “Where.” When, for time-based reminders, and Where, for location-based reminders. You switch between the two using When and Where buttons at the bottom of the screen.

For “Where” reminders (location-based), you just add your most visited locations on the home screen, like work, home, the grocery store, your parents’ house, the bank, etc. You can add a location multiple different ways: By using your current location, searching for a point of interest, importing an address from your Contacts, or manually entering an address. You can also choose a radius of a location, so that notifications will alert you within a certain distance that you specify. I found the radius feature to be extremely helpful, since I was able to know far in advance that I needed to pick up a few things from the grocery store before I got near it.

After you add a location, tap on it to add a location-based reminder for that specific place. The next time you arrive there or pass by, you’ll get a notification reminding you of the task you need to get done at that specific location. Any location you add will automatically be saved to the app’s homescreen for future use.

“When” reminders are a little more basic. When creating a reminder, you simply enter in a title (and some notes about the reminder if you wish) and choose the day and time that you want to be alerted. When it’s time for the reminder to be delivered, you get a notification.

There are also other small features that can be really handy for a lot of users. You can sort your location-based reminders by distance, and even delay notifications until after you’ve been at a location for a certain amount of time.

The only downside that I see with Checkmark is its lack of integration with iOS and OS X. Checkmark is only available on the iPhone, so there’s no syncing between multiple devices. Checkmark also doesn’t integrate with Siri, so you can’t just quickly add a reminder in Checkmark using Apple’s virtual assistant.

However, Checkmark’s location-based reminder system is leaps and bounds above Apple’s offering, and I’ll gladly take that over any kind of integration with Apple’s ecosystem.

Checkmark is available in the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

iPhone app review: Checkmark is a post from Techerator.com.

However, after a few days of trying them out. I just couldn’t fully get into them, and I’m not really sure why. It might have something to do with how I hate wearing any kinds of glasses on my face for an entire day (thank God I have better than 20/20 vision).

I think I also didn’t really like the Gunnar glasses because they screwed up the colors on the monitor. The yellow tint overcompensated for the blue hue and changed the “true colors” of the image, so looking at a shade of green through the glasses wouldn’t be the true shade of green that’s shown. This really is only a big deal for graphic designers and not so much a huge deal for those who just surf the web, but it still bugs me…

My solution? I started using an application called F.lux. It’s a tiny program that can change the color temperature of your monitor in order to get rid of that nasty blue hue. You can even set it up so that the color temperature automatically changes based on the time of day, but what I really like is how you can manually adjust the color temperature to your own liking. It’s working out great so far. In fact, after using it for a couple of weeks, I temporarily went back to the default color temperature and almost blinded myself. The blue hue was horrific and I can’t believe I went all these years looking at my monitor like that. Of course, that might be because I was so used to the warmer color temperature, but even after getting used to the default temperature again, going back to the warmer option was still a lot better.

Have you experimented with Gunnar glasses or F.lux? I’m very curious to know what your thoughts are. Leave them in the comments below!

Are computer eyewear the way to go? is a post from Techerator.com.

However, for those looking for a mobile device just to play games, listen to music or surf the web over Wi-Fi, buying a smartphone with a bad ESN actually isn’t a bad way to go.

Every smartphone has its own unique ESN (Electronic Serial Number) and it works just like any other serial number for any product, except that an ESN is embedded into a chip inside the phone and can be deactivated at any time – sort of like a kill switch. When a phone is either reported stolen or the owner doesn’t pay his phone bill, the carrier can ban that phone’s ESN so that it’s unusable on the network.

A device with a bad ESN is pretty much considered useless in some ways. That’s why you can usually find great deals on smartphones with bad ESNs on eBay or Craigslist.

However, for those just wanting an iPod Touch-like device for super cheap, buying a used smartphone that has a bad ESN is the perfect way to go. Just like an iPod Touch, you can still download and install different apps and games, listen to music, surf the web over Wi-Fi, get turn-by-turn navigation using an offline maps app, and even take photos and video. I actually recently snatched an HTC EVO 4G in great condition with a bad ESN for $50. That’s a not a bad price for all the things it can still do. Plus, I can just grab a 32GB microSD card and load it up with all sorts of music, movies, and games.

Image Credit: Miki Yoshihito

Buy a smartphone with a “bad ESN” for cheap entertainment is a post from Techerator.com.

Note: When I refer to any kind of console gaming throughout this guide, I’m referring to the Xbox 360, since that’s what I use and have the most experience with. However, most of the tips that you’ll read about are easily transferable to any console.

The Number One Tip

Before I dive any deeper into this guide, the number one tip that you must remember when gaming on a budget (or doing anything on a budget) is to never pay full price for anything. If there’s one thing that you learn from this guide, I hope it’s this. There’s no reason to pay full price for something, even if it’s brand new. This might seem obvious in a way, but too many gamers will go ahead and pay $60 for a game when they easily could have gone online or waited a few weeks and bought it for less.

Find a console (or computer) for cheap

Image Credit: YuMaNuMa

First thing’s first: You need a console (or a computer) to do your gaming on. If you already have either one of these things, skip to the next section. However, if you’re just getting into gaming for the first time (either console gaming or computer gaming) and don’t have a machine where you can stick game discs into, then you’ll want to stick around.

Gaming Consoles

There are tons of places where you can buy used gaming consoles, and some of these places I cover later in this guide, but I’ll give you a quick overview. eBay, Craigslist, and even Gamestop offer used gaming consoles. You can sometimes even buy brand-new gaming consoles at a discounted price. All you really have to do is wait for a seller who’s desperate for cash that needs to sell his just-purchased console because his car broke down. I’ve seen plenty of never-been-opened Xbox 360 Kinect bundles sell for around $250 on eBay (retails for $300), and I’ve even spotted one for $200 brand new on Craigslist.

Computers

Just like gaming consoles, there are tons of places to find used computers or even used computer parts to build your own custom rig. I’ve had great luck with eBay finding used parts for my gaming rig, and I probably spent half the cash it would’ve taken to build it brand new. However, some computer builders get nervous buying used parts from random strangers on the internet. The only solution to this is to either buy from a trusted friend, or wait for a sale at a reputable e-tailer and either buy brand new, or refurbished for an even bigger discount.

Be willing to compromise

I can tell you really want to play Forza 4, and it’s old enough now that you can get it used for around $30. But do you really need Forza 4 or could you get by with Forza 3? It would still be an excellent game and you can grab it for as low as $5 on eBay or Half.com. One of the biggest things that you must do in order to game on a budget is to be willing to compromise. You probably don’t need the latest and greatest sequel that’s out, especially for a series that releases a new title every year. Go with a game in a series that’s a year or two old in order to save some major cash.

Be patient

This sort of goes along with compromising, but to save yourself a lot of dough, be willing to wait a few months or even a year before buying that new release — it allows time for the used copies of a new game to start appearing on eBay and such. I can’t even tell you how much money I could have saved if I just waited to buy Call of Duty: Black Ops once Modern Warfare 3 came out. Usually when a sequel to a game comes out, you can get the prequel for a lot cheaper.

I’ve been finding a lot of great games for under $10 on eBay and Half.com recently. Titles like Forza Motorsports 3, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, Grand Theft Auto IV, Mass Effect 2, Halo 3: ODST, and Batman: Arkham Asylum all were under $10 each at various online spots and stores. Sure, they’re older games that might have lost their hype, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their appeal.

Places to find cheap games and gear

eBay

eBay is easily one the best place to get cheap used games and gear. However, the best things to buy on eBay are huge lots of stuff.  You’ve probably heard the saying that it’s much cheaper to buy in bulk, and the same concept applies for big bundles of stuff on eBay. A lot of sellers simply throw all of their games and accessories in one listing and sell it at a single price. This is what we bargain hunters refer to as a “jackpot.” It’s much cheaper to buy a ton of games at once than to buy ten or twelve single game. Plus, whatever games you don’t want out of the lot, you can simply put back on eBay to make back a few dollars.

Half.com

Half.com is another awesome place to find cheap games. However, I would only recommend it if you couldn’t wait for an eBay auction to end. Half.com allows you buy cheap games right away, but sometimes you can find it cheaper on eBay if you just wait a few days for the auction to come to a close.

Amazon Marketplace

The Amazon Marketplace is a great alternative to Half.com. Prices of used games and gear are very competitive, so if you prefer doing business the Amazon way, there’s nothing to lose. You can still find some great deals through Amazon’s offering as you would with Half.com.

Gamestop

Gamestop wouldn’t be my first choice for looking for cheap stuff, but it’s at least worth a mention. Most pre-owned games they have can usually be found for a few bucks cheaper online, so I tend not to go to Gamestop too often. However, don’t cross it off your list completely. They do have a plethora of games under $10 and even a few for as little as $3. You can even find great deals on pre-owned gaming consoles. During my last trip to Gamestop, I spotted a used Xbox 360 Slim with a wireless controller for $130.

Steam

If you’re a PC gamer, Steam is pretty much your go-to place for awesome, cheap games. They have numerous free-to-play titles, as well as tons of games under $10. You can also find crazy sales going on year-round on A-list titles, especially during the holidays.

Humble Bundle

This is also another computer-only option for budget gamers. The Humble Bundle offers an assortment of 5-8 indie games for a price that you choose. That’s right. Pay whatever you want for a bundle of games. Only thing is, the Humble Bundle comes around only a few times a year.

Craigslist

Just like Gamestop, Craigslist isn’t my first choice to look for used gaming stuff, but you can get lucky at times by finding a good seller who’s selling his gaming gear for cheap. And like I mentioned earlier, a lot of Craigslist users get desperate and need money fast. Thus, you can grab some great deals.

Garage Sales

Garage Sales are a hit or miss when it comes to used gaming gear. Actually, I should be more specific. Garage sales are a hit or miss when it comes to good-quality, used gaming gear. Sure, you might find a couple of beat-up gaming systems bundled with a few B-list games, but you’ll have to look a little harder to find the good stuff. However, when that time comes — that time when some ignorant old lady is selling all of her grandson’s unused gaming gear for really cheap — that’s when you pounce.

Auctions

Same thing goes for auctions as with garage sales. It’ll be a little bit more difficult to find the good stuff, but once you do, you’ll be the proud new owner of some awesome gaming gear that you bought for mere dollars.

Conclusion

Gaming on a budget certainly takes a little bit of effort. It’s not as easy as just going to your nearest store and simply purchasing a game off the shelves. In order to save a lot of money, you have to be patient and be willing to compromise in order to get not only the good deals, but the best deals. Hopefully this guide will help you for your future budget-gaming endeavors, and if you have any of your own tips or tricks for saving money on gaming gear, let’s hear them in the comments!

Gaming on a budget: An exhaustive guide is a post from Techerator.com.

Notification Center

If you use iOS 5 on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, then you know about Notification Center. It’s a handy drop-down menu that consolidates all of your notifications, and it’s finally in OS X. Whenever a notification comes in, it’ll let you know by displaying a small pop-up window in the upper-right of the screen. To see all of your notifications at once, you can simply swipe to the left from the right edge of the trackpad to bring up Notification Center in its entirety or you can click the small menu bar icon at the top-right.

Messages

Messages on OS X Mountain Lion is a lot like iChat, but it lets you send messages to other iOS devices right from your Mac. Your messages will also stay synced between all of your Apple devices, so if you start a conversation on your Mac, you can finish it on your iPhone if need be.

iCloud

iCloud has been available on the Mac since OS X 10.7 Lion was released a year ago, but it just got better with automatic syncing and updating of files, which means anything that you update on your Mac through one of Apple’s default applications will automatically be updated on all of your other Apple devices.

AirPlay

AirPlay Mirroring has finally come to the Mac. This will allow you to duplicate your Mac’s screen onto your television wirelessly. You’ll just have to make sure you have an Apple TV or other device that can receive AirPlay transmissions in order to take advantage of this new feature.

Notes and Reminders

Mountain Lion now comes with Notes and Reminders, which are already very familiar to iOS 5 users, and they work in the same way as iOS but with a little more screen real estate, obviously. They work seamlessly with iCloud as well, so you’ll have all your notes and reminders synced across all of your iDevices.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper is a new anti-malware feature on OS X that allows you to control how apps are downloaded and installed so that you don’t accidentally download anything malicious. You can manually choose whether you want your Mac to download new apps from the Mac App Store only, or download apps from the Mac App Store and other places as well.

OS X Mountain Lion is available now for $19.99 in the Mac App Store.

The Best New Features in OS X Mountain Lion is a post from Techerator.com.

Knowing our readers here at Techerator, we’d assume that you pretty much live at your computer. You probably eat at your computer and designate your keyboard as a spill zone of sorts. So, like me, you probably can’t even imagine what kind of crap made its way inside.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to thoroughly clean your keyboard and seriously make it look and feel brand spankin’ new. Before we begin, though, it’s important to know that the method that I’ll be using is exhaustive, but it doesn’t require you to take apart your keyboard other than snapping off the keys. If you feel inclined to, you can clean your keyboard by completely disassembling it, removing the circuitry, and giving the shell and keys a scrub bath in the sink. Otherwise, follow along!

What You’ll Need

• A dirty keyboard
• A bowl of hot water (not scorching though)
• A cleaning sponge
• Q-tips
• A screwdriver
• Compressed air
• A camera

Disassembly

Before you begin any disassembly, take your camera and snap a photo of your keyboard. This is crucial because you’ll want to know where all of the keys go after you take them all off.

Start off by taking your screwdriver and carefully prying off each of the keys. I like to cover the key with my other hand to prevent the key from flying across the room after popping it off. You’ll also probably notice that some keys will be harder to remove, like the spacebar. These keys have metal rods attached to them that also attach to the keyboard. You can simply add a little more force to pop it off or if you want to be even more careful, you can get under the key to slide off the metal rod.

After all the keys have been removed, you should now be covering up your mouth to prevent projectile vomiting. You’ll probably notice all the gunk and crumbs that are lying about.

As you can see from the photo below, I’ve separated the “special” keys from the “non-special” keys. The special keys are much dirtier because of the little metal rods that are covered in grease, which attracted more gunk and crumbs.

Cleaning

Dump all of your keys into the bowl of hot water. Hot water helps to separate the gunk from the keys more easily. I put the special keys in a separate, smaller bowl as a mental note to clean those more thoroughly.

Let your keys soak for a while. In the meantime, take your compressed air and blow off all of the loose crumbs on the keyboard.

Next, get your cleaning sponge wet and begin to wipe up any gunk that stayed put, making sure to also clean the outside shell of the keyboard. Use the Q-tips to get to hard-to-reach places.

When you’re done with the overall cleaning, go back to your soaking keys and give each key one last cleaning with your fingers and then place them on a towel to dry.

Finishing up

Sometimes water will get into small crevices in the keys, which can be problematic since that’s a difficult area to air-dry. To fix this, simply blast a little compressed air into the keys to blow out any water.

After the keys are completely dry, you can then place them back on the keyboard. This is where you can play a fun little game and see if you remember where all the keys go. If you don’t know exactly, refer to the picture that you took earlier.

After all of that’s complete, you should be staring at a perfectly clean keyboard! Give yourself a pat on the back.

How to thoroughly clean your keyboard is a post from Techerator.com.

If you’ve read the internet lately, many people have been giving Verizon a lot of grief about these new plans. But after looking everything over myself, Share Everything data plans are actually not a bad way to go. Let’s break it down and compare some things.

First though, let’s look at the details of these new plans:

Okay, let’s begin comparing Verizon’s current FamilyShare plans with their upcoming Share Everything plans. First, we’ll see what the monthly cost is of a FamilyShare plan with two people with smartphones:

• 700 Anytime Minutes – $70
• Unlimited shared messaging – $30
• Two 2GB data plans – $60
• Additional line for 2nd person – $10

Total cost per month: $170

If these same two people wanted to go with the Share Everything plan, this is how it would look:

• Line access for two smartphones – $80
• 4GB data plan (w/ unltd. min. and msg.) – $70

Total cost per month: $150

The Share Everything plan is $20 cheaper and includes unlimited minutes instead of just a limited 700. Seems like a better deal to me. Now let’s bump it up to a family of four where all of them have smartphones. Here’s what a normal FamilyShare plan would look like:

• 700 Anytime Minutes – $70
• Unlimited shared messaging – $30
• Four 2GB data plans – $120
• Additional lines for 3 people – $30

Total cost per month: $250

This is what the monthly charges would be if that same family went with a Shared Everything data plan:

• Line access for four smartphones – $160
• 8GB data plan (w/ unltd. min. and msg.) – $90

Total cost per month: $250

It’s the same cost! But yet again, you get unlimited minutes with the newer shared plan and you have a whopping 8GB of data that you can share amongst the entire family. So if mom hardly uses any data, then all the better for the rest of the family.

However, Verizon’s Share Everything plans still don’t solve the one problem that most carriers are guilty of with contractual plans: There’s no middle ground. Carriers only offer their customers either too little or too much with their plans, intentionally not including any kind of middle ground. Why? Because the middle ground is the sweet spot that’s of greatest value to the customer. And when the customer gets the greatest value, the wireless carrier loses in a way.

And Verizon really isn’t doing anything revolutionary with these new shared plans. Sure, depending on how big of a family you have and how much data you use, the Share Everything plans could save you a few dollars and simplify things a bit, but it’s all simply just a reworked way to divvy out minutes, messages and data.

In the end, just by looking at the charts above I can see how users would scoff at Verizon — $40/month just to add a smartphone line to a plan? That fact alone seems like highway robbery, but you have to look at the whole picture and do the math. Verizon’s Share Everything plans certainly aren’t any worse than what they’re offering now, and in some cases, it could be a better way to go.

Verizon’s “Share Everything” data plans actually aren’t that bad is a post from Techerator.com.