If you purchased and returned a Motorola Xoom tablet last year your data may have been given away. Motorola announced on Friday that 100 “refurbished” tablets that were sold by Motorola through the web site Woot.com did not have the previous owners data wiped from the device before it was sold. These units slipped through the refurbishing process without being checked and still contained pictures, documents and even passwords and login information. The units were sold on Woot between October and December 2011. Read more

Do you use a jailbroken iPhone/iPad or a rooted Android device? The manufacturers claim that rooting or jailbreaking devices violates Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In 2010 the US Copyright office issued a temporary 2 year exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) that granted users the right to root or jailbreak their phone and devices. This exemption is about to expire. If this exemption does not get renewed then it will be illegal to root your device. Read more

In this repair guide we will be repairing the Samsung SyncMaster 225BW 22″ LCD monitor that has a failing power supply. This model monitor uses the IP-45130A power supply board. Typical symptoms of a power supply failure are no power, flashing power light and no display, slow to show picture or a white screen. The repair will involve replacing the capacitors on the power supply board. Read more

Thanks for helping us grow this year and be hope you will come back in 2012. We will be adding much more content this coming year including additional repair information on monitors, Laptops, Desktops and printers as well as new product reviews and updates.

The Dell Inspiron 1525 and 1526 laptops have a strange design issue. If you have one of these units that will not boot up this may be the solution. Check out the status lights, if the num lock is on solid and the caps lock and scroll lock lights are flashing then the CMOS battery needs to be replaced. Read more

We have had great comments about the Torque OBDII reader App article we did earlier so here is another free useful Android app that is automobile oriented – Trapster. If you live in or travel to areas that use red light cameras or speeding cameras then you should check this app out. With over 11 million downloads and 4.5 million traps in the database Trapster is well established. In addition to the camera information Trapster can also warn of construction zones, road hazards and school zones. Read more