Tech tips have a tendency to focus on shiny new gadgets and pricey software.
But it doesn’t have to be that way: sometimes ‘whatever works’ is the best tech mantra of all.
Here are three back-to-basics ways to improve home technology by making do and mending like the plucky repressed housewives of yore.
Increase wi-fi signal… with an old beer can
Sometimes those free wireless routers you get from your broadband provider need all the help they can get.
So the next time you’re doing a contortionists act to move your laptop directly in front of the wireless antenna stop and do a bit of DIY instead.
The signal booster is fairly easy to make:
- Clean your beer can.
- Turn it upside down (ringpull facing down). The hole you drink from is going to house the antenna.
- Cut off the top of the can (the ringpull free bit).
- Make cuts in the body of the can so that you can pull it out into a semi-circle behind the antenna.
- Surf away, hopefully much more quickly than usual.
Speed up mobile broadband… with a saucepan
Here’s another handy trick for speeding up broadband.
A USB dongle or mobile phone can often get a 3G signal boost from sitting at the bottom of a saucepan – the signal bounces around the saucepan sides and concentrates in the center where your device is waiting to pick it up.
Dry out a wet mobile… with a bowl of rice
As phones get more advanced they also seem to get more prone to accidents and less likely to recover from them (or it just that we started taking them everywhere?).
Wet mobiles are a perennial problem, one usually solved by just letting the phone completely dry out.
The next time you throw your phone in the swimming pool/toilet/washing up, though, be sure to give that drying out process a fighting chance by leaving the phone – with batteries and any other removable parts removed – overnight in a bowl of dry rice.
The rice sucks the moisture right out, just be sure to blow off any rice dust before reassembling your new dry as a bone phone.
This is a guest post from broadband deals site, Choose.
