Ubertechs - IT Support, Computer & Apple Mac repairs, Lancaster, Morecambe, Kendal

It’s been a while!

Mike — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:06:19 +0000

It’s been sometime since I posted an update here! Things have been very busy at Ubertechs HQ that’s for certain.
We continue to repair many Apple computers in the area and we look after the IT needs for an increasing number of small businesses.
We have a presence on Google+ and that will likely be the main place that we post updates to our blog from now on.
You can find our Google+ page at https://plus.google.com/u/1/b/108304950224331892682/

Ubertechs are on the move!

Mike — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:10:49 +0000

We’ve been in our existing location at White Cross for almost one year! Things have gone from strength to strength and whilst at the time of moving in to the new office I thought it would last us for a few years it soon became apparent that we need a bigger office! Our new office is almost twice the size, much cooler (temp!) and has high ceilings. This will give us greater space to fit more workbenches in and allow us to have more storage space, something we are lacking in our current location.

Our new offices are much easier to find too! We are moving to The Gatehouse building, which is the location of the main reception for White Cross. Our new workshop is located just behind the reception area so you won’t have any trouble finding us!

I’ll post some pictures and an update here when we have finished the move.

Meraki wireless survey.

Mike — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 21:26:42 +0000

I went to visit a local hotel/restaurant in Lancaster this weekend to carry out a wireless survey. Their current Wi-Fi solution is not providing consistent coverage in their hotel rooms. I took along the equipment you can see in the photo above.

MacBook Pro 13″ (ideal size & power consumption for this type of work)
2 x Meraki indoor units. Very small and neat wireless mesh access points.
2.4GHz Wi-Spy USB spectrum analyser.
Power supplies and aerials for the Meraki units.

I was able to quickly setup the Meraki units, one at the location of the existing BT router, the other in a different part of the hotel but located so it still picked up a reasonable signal from the gateway unit. I gave the units 5 minutes to boot up and configure themselves. I could then run the Meraki site survey software which allowed me to see the speed of the wireless connection and get an idea of the signal quality between the gateway unit and the remote unit.

You can see in the above picture I am running the site survey software which is built in to the Meraki units, to test the link. I also ran the Chanalyzer software which comes with the Wi-Spy spectrum analyser to get an idea of which part of the 2.4GHz would be best suited for the Meraki network.

I was in and out within an hour and in a position to quote the customer for an installation.

MacBook Pro Arrives.

Mike — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:32:28 +0000

Yesterday I ordered a 13 inch MacBook Pro at 1:30pm, direct from Apple. Today at 10:30am it arrived!
Several months ago I sold my 12 inch iBook which I’d used as my main laptop for a few years, I’d been getting by with a small Acer Netbook as my main Ubertechs ‘work’ laptop for some time. It was fine for basic diagnostics and network testing but it had no storage for data backups and the screen and keyboard were just too small for any extended work. The MacBook fills the gap left by the iBook nicely. It’s really fast and just the right size for carrying about.
As we are now an Authorised Apple Service Provider the MacBook is very convenient for creating diagnostic Apple service disks as we often require for testing Apple hardware.

Ubertechs – Apple Authorised Service Provider!

Mike — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:31:52 +0000

Well it’s been a long time in the making but finally we have our long awaited Apple Authorised Service Provider status! This is a big achievement for us and something we started working towards back in February of 2010.
It means we can offer a repair service which is fully authorised by Apple and allows us to carry out repairs on most Apple equipment, both in warranty and out of warranty.
So no more driving down to Manchester Arndale or the Trafford Centre with your Mac, just pop in to our workshop at White Cross in Lancaster and we will take care of you! We are the only such repair centre for many miles around. For the time being though, use the contact page to make sure we are at the workshop and not out on a call-out.

Find more details on our Apple pages here.

Ubertechs go Skydiving!

Mike — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:48:57 +0000

Well not quite, but it got your attention!

Last week we were called to fit a small Meraki network at the local Black Knights Parachute Centre. We installed a single Meraki Outdoor Unit configured with two networks. One is a public network with a hotspot & billing enabled, the other is configured to allow access to the local network for staff or pilots. The Meraki Outdoor Unit is a weatherproof unit which is able to be powered over it’s network cable as we did here.

All the billing and configuration of the unit is setup via the Meraki cloud controller, making it easy to monitor and setup the Meraki mesh units. If in future the Black Knights would like to expand the network to cover other areas, this is as easy as adding a second unit. Only power is required for this unit, no network cable is needed. The network is picked up from the first unit seen below.

Keeping campers happy with Wi-Fi!

Mike — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:59:36 +0000

Last week we were called in to install a wireless network at a small caravan site near Lancaster. The owner wanted a solution for his caravan customers so they could get Internet access from their caravans. Meraki equipment makes setting up a ‘hotspot’ like this very easy. We decided to use the Meraki Outdoor Unit, which is a weatherproof wireless mesh access point and repeater. It only needs a single ethernet cable to provide the uplink, in this case from a BT Businesshub, the power is also sent down the same cable.

We mounted the unit on an adjacent building to the caravans, the owner had kindly installed the Cat 5e cable which we terminated and connected to the Meraki Outdoor and to the BT router at the other end.

We had previously configured the wireless network with billing and appropriate network name (SSID), this is all done using the Meraki cloud controller and makes setup and subsequent monitoring a breeze. Once we had installed the unit we did a walk test round the site and got excellent signals in the required areas.

All in all a great install and we were blessed by some great weather! Next we will be reaching for the sky as we setup another Meraki unit for a local parachuting company, watch this space.

Improved 802.11n range.

Mike — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:11:15 +0000

As you know from a previous blog entry we use a Meraki MR11 wireless access point in the Ubertechs workshop, well what other brand would we use?! The MR11 is a single radio 802.11n high performance wireless mesh access point, as such it gives greater throughput and better range than 802.11b/g.

My mobile smartphone, a HTC Desire, had recently received an updated to Android 2.2, amongst other things this included enabling the wireless radio in the phone to work at 802.11n. To my surprise today I was able to receive the signal from our wireless network whilst visiting a customer in the same building as our workshop but 3 floors below! We are not talking wooden floors here either, these are pretty heavy duty concrete floors.

I then visited the cafe onsite, which is even further away from our workshop, I don’t even get a mobile signal down there. To my surprise I was still picking up the Meraki access point in our workshop! I was able to do a speedtest and acheived a pretty decent throughput!

So if your in any doubt as to whether you should go with 802.11n to give you better performance and range – don’t hesitate, just make sure it says Meraki on the box!

Simple and inexpensive wireless networking.

Mike — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:57:15 +0000

Simple and inexpensive are two words you would not normally associate with a centrally managed and controlled wireless network solution. However Meraki of California produce both affordable and easy to manage wireless mesh networking equipment.
Meraki use a unique cloud based management system which makes setup, monitoring and subsequent control of your wireless networks almost too easy!

All that is required to get your Meraki wireless network running is to:

Plug the wireless access point in to your LAN
Create a cloud controller account at meraki.com
Login to it and configure any options you require

That’s it!
Of course if you wish you can delve in deeper and setup things like a wireless hotspot with billing, various security settings, bandwidth settings etc.
The Enterprise version of Meraki allows you to setup group policies, 802.1X authentication, add maps & floorplans to your network schematics and monitor for rogue wireless access points, Quality of Service and much more.

Meraki access points start at £119 +vat. Please contact Ubertechs in Lancaster for further information.

Geeks Guide to Butlins.

Mike — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:39:48 +0000

Recently our family went on a short break to Butlins in Bognor Regis on the south coast. I thought it might be useful if I wrote a short blog post on some of the more geeky aspects of our stay!

We’d been a few years ago, stopping in the Shoreline Hotel and our children had enjoyed it, so we thought we would go back and try out the new Ocean Hotel that has recently been opened.

Firstly the hotel is really very nice. You can forget any preconceived ideas you have about Butlins being a budget holiday, you can make your stay cheaper by booking in to one of the self-catering chalet/apartments if you wish. However if you want the luxury option then the Ocean Hotel is for you!

Back to the new hotel, our room was an Atlantis Room which is designed to sleep two adults and two children, the room was fairly spacious, very clean and they have a great little alcove or den area as Butlins call it, for the kids beds.
It’s like their own bedroom but without doors, they have their own LCD wall mounted TV with Freeview, great lighting and even some funky blue lights under their beds! There are two power sockets in this room.

The main room has a larger LCD wall mounted TV again with Freeview, they also seem to have some dedicated sports channels.
The hotel contains a high quality spa, according to my wife!

Our room had a good sized balcony, with 4 chairs and a small table outside. We had a great view looking out across the park and straight out on to the sea.

There is a kettle with tea, coffee, decaf-coffee and hot chocolate. They seem to supply lots of sachets daily too, along with 2 or 3 packets of small biscuits. There are two free power sockets adjacent to the kettle here.

In this same area there is a large mirror, hairdryer and small fridge too.

Our room had air conditioning, it seemed to work well, though it does require you to leave your room access card in a ‘card reader’ just inside the door way. This also allows the room lighting to be powered too, I cannot confirm as to whether it turns off the power sockets in the room when the card is removed? One thing to note is that the air conditioning does not cool the children’s ‘room’ very well.

In the room I was able to receive a good HSDPA signal on my T-Mobile HTC Desire phone. The hotel also has free Wi-Fi and again the signal was very good in our room. I did a speed test on the Wi-Fi from my Android phone and was able to achieve just over 3MB/s download speed and a decent 2MB/s upload speed.

One thing to note about the Wi-Fi is that you must open a web browser and accept the Wi-Fi usage policy before you are allowed access via any network port. The timeout also seems a little keen to me, if you leave your device idle for more than 20 or 30 minutes you must authenticate again. There is some content filtering on the Wi-Fi, Youtube for one is blocked. If you find any other ports or major sites which are blocked please let me know below.

Across most of the Butlins complex the same Wi-Fi system is present, I did not test this as extensively as I’d like, after all this was primarily a holiday! My phone maintained a very strong mobile signal on the T-Mobile network and was almost always HSDPA speeds only occasionally falling back to 3g and very rarely to gprs.

I’m not sure where the local cell towers are but judging by the often full HSDPA ‘bars’ it can’t have been far away.

There is a small funfair on site and most rides are included in your admission fee.

There are plenty of entertainment shows on each evening, as you’d expect the X-Factor and Britain’s got Talent plays a big part here!

The pool complex has several water slides of various sizes and the “Master Blaster” is particularly good fun, it’s a 2 person ride in a small dinghy, there is a timer clock which shows the days fastest time and your time next to it. This did not always register our time for some reason, if you figure out why this is, please let me know. Also if you manage to get your dinghy over half way off the end of the final slowing down straight, as my son and I did, then let me know too! The pool does get very busy and the queue for the slides can get long, so go early and you will be ok.

To summarise:-

Excellent free Wi-Fi coverage across the site and in the Ocean Hotel. Content filtering is enforced and YouTube is blocked.
Excellent HSDPA T-Mobile signal across most of the site.
There were 4 mains power sockets in our room, might be worth taking a 4-way mains strip if you have a lot of gadgets to power/charge.
Two LCD TV’s in the room with Freeview.
There is a phone in the room which will accept incoming calls via the main switchboard.
Fairly decent air-conditioning in our room, Ocean Hotel.
Costa Coffee on site in the main pavilion. £2.40 for a latte, so a touch on the high side I’d say?
Excellent Kaleidoscope bar & restaurant in the hotel.
Cinema on site with 2 screens.
Movenpick ice cream shop on site.
Spar shop on site, Fish & Chip shop, Burger King & a Papa Johns pizza restaurant too.
The whole site is very clean, well maintained and the staff are very friendly.

Below are two videos I recorded on my HTC Desire phone in 720p “HD” mode. I actually received the Android 2.2 Froyo update whilst we were on holiday!

If you would like to read some other bloggers articles about Butlins and the Ocean Hotel then please visit this excellent article here.

If you have any comments or questions please leave them below