ipad 2 not charging when connected to laptop - windows pc / mac

Its very strange that my new iPad 2 is not charging when connected to my windows 7 laptop.
I tried switching to my different laptops, one dell xps of my wife with windows vista, one with acer windows 7 ultimate, one with HP Pavilion with windows 7 home premium and finally with my Samsung running on windows vista. None helped and the only option left out to me was plug it to the wall socket with the adapter that came along with the iPad 2 pack.

I searched online much and it seemed to be a frequent and common issue. The underlying issue is with the power requirements of iPad 2. Apple to improve the per recharge usage life of iPad 2 came up with a larger battery and naturally it needs more power. Either it can use the same power source and take longer to charge or use a powerful recharge source and charge it up faster. Apple went for the latter and thus resulting in a requirement for a powerful charger.

Normally any usb drives gives 500mA power. But seems to settle the hunger of iPad 2 it requires 2 A, which is not fulfilled by most of the usb ports. But Apple having had this design plans, already has optimized its new versions of laptops and OS to support a higher power output via usb ports. This helps for instance MAC Book Air to power up the extended optical drive. For normal PCs, there should be an external power source for these extended drives.

There is  a tweak for this. Its by installing some patches for usb drivers so that, it tries to output more power to the usb drives. These patches are more kind of mother board specific but some a more generic. Below are some links to these patches which you can install. After a reboot, your usb ports should be powerful enough to charge your iPad 2.

But because these patches can affect your hardware drivers which in turn affect the working of your softwares, its safe to take make a checkpoint to which you can roll back once you have any issue.

Below are the download links:

http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/AI_Charger/(ASUS) *Recommented
http://www.msi.com/index.php?news_no=1013&func=newsdesc (MSI)
http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/185/on-off-charge.htm (GIGABYTE)
http://www.asrock.com/feature/AppCharger/index.asp(ASROCK)

iPhone / iPod / iPad Screen Shot (Capture)

Many a times we want to capture (Screen Shot) the iPhone / iPod / iPad screen, similar to the way we do a "Print Screen" on our computer. You can use this to capture and share some display on your device or send reference to some error messages displayed on your screen or even to share a high score displayed on your screen. ;) iOS provides a very efficient way for this. the screen capture is very clear and vivid.

When you have the screen to capture on your device, hold your home button for a second. While still holding the home button press the power/sleep/wake button on your device to capture the screen. Your iPhone / iPod / iPad will give a camera shutter like sound and a white flash on your screen representing a successful screen capture.

To view the captured screen go to, "Photos" app -> "Camera Roll" and your last screen capture must be there as the latest picture there.

Note: The power button on iPhone is on the top side of your iPhone towards the right side. It is the same Sleep/Wake button on iPad. The home button is the round button on the front (towards the bottom of the screen) of your iPhone / iPod /iPad.

Screen Rotation Lock - iPhone / iPod / iPad

Many a times the automatic screen rotation option in iOS is highly annoying. Especially while checking out google maps / reading e-books / watching movies / playing games. iPhone / iPod / iPad provides option to lock/disable/turn off the screen rotation whenever you dont want the option. This is a real handy feature provided by iOS. This feature is for iOS 4+.

Double click your home button to bring up task manager. Navigate to the left of the application list by sliding your finger on the task manager to the right. When you slide one screen from the default position, it gives you a screen with iPod option icons and on the left of this menu icons you can see a gray icon with a round arrow. Click this icon and the screen rotation is disabled on your device until you press this icon again to enable the screen rotation.

You can lock the screen rotation and press the home button to start using any other applications as normal. Follow the above steps to come back to this icon to disable Screen Rotation.

How to Restart iPhone / iPod / iPad

Many times you might want to restart your iPhone / iPod / iPad, because of application mal functioning or memory clean up or for any other reasons.

To restart your iPhone / iPod / iPad, you need a combination key press. Press the power button and home button together. Keep holding both the buttons for about 10 seconds and that will restart your iPhone / iPod / iPad.

The power button on iPhone is on the top side of your iPhone towards the right side. It is the same Sleep/Wake button on iPad. The home button is the round button on the front (towards the bottom of the screen) of your iPhone / iPod /iPad.

How to enable Caps Lock on iPhone / iPod / iPad

This is yet another hidden treasure in iOS. Many of the iPhone / iPad / iPad users believe that there is no Caps Lock option with the iPhone built in keyboard. Some smarter people kep holding the Shift button, and type to get the Caps Lock effect.

The fact is there is a Caps Lock option inbuilt in the keypad. You can enable this by double clicking the Shift button on the keyboard. The Shift key also shows up in a differnt color (blue) when the CAPS lock is enabled. To turn off the CAPS lock, press the shift key once again.

iPad trouble connecting to Wi-Fi wireless network issue

This a very annoying issue with iPad / iPad 2. Many of my friends has mentioned this issue. Once the WiFi gets disconnected on the iPad, then its really a headache to get it back. The issue is mostly seen if you are moving around with your iPad and you happen to be at a position where the WiFi signal is feeble. Even after to get back to the position with proper signals, the WiFi symbol shows good signal, but the web pages doesn't load. Another situation when the disconnection happens is when the iPad goes to sleep and wake up after sometime.

Eventhough the issue is a very annoying one we can get back the connectivity in a cheesy way.

Option 1) Try to reset the iPad network settings. This can be done by going to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings. Most of the time this should solve the issue.

Option 2) Try hard reset the iPad. This can be done by pressing the Sleep/Wake button on top of the iPad till you find a "Slide to Power Off" slider on the screen. Power off the device and wait for a couple of seconds to ensure the process is complete. In a while press the Sleep/Wake button again to switch on the iPad. Now you must be connected to the WiFi.

Option 3) Try this funny solution for yourself. :) . Once your iPad / iPad 2 is woken up from sleep and you find there is issue with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, go to settings and try adjusting the brightness. This could magically help you restore your wifi connection sometimes. :)

Other suggestions:
Always make sure that there is no conflict with the SSID with any wireless networks around. If this is the case then it should seriously be resolved else it will confuse the iPad.

How to make iPad / iPod / iPhone faster

Apple has produced one of the most fast responding devices. iPhone, iPod and iPad users certify this. But sometimes I have heard my friends complaining about a slow responding iPad. Majority of the time I check their tablet, its overloaded by running apps. Also some applications can be buggy and memory leaks in these apps cause in the wastage of usable memmory of your iPad. Below are the steps to make your sluggish iPad faster.

1) Close unused apps from the background. iPad 2 / iPod / iPhone 4 with its iOS supports multitasking (running more than 1 application at the same time) and it does it very efficiently. You can play your favourite game listening to your favourite music all on your favourite  iPad / iPod / iPhone at the same time. But running very many applications at the same time overloads your iPad 2 / iPod / iPhone 4 and it becomes sluggish.
While using an application, when you press the home button (the round button on your  iPad / iPod / iPhone front screen), the application disappears. There are atleast some users, mostly those new to iPad/iPhone iOS, tent to assume that when the application disappears, the application is closed or killed. But in reality, the application remains in the background and still executes and consumes memory (may be not as much as when the application was in use). When there are many applications like this, eventhough iOS manages memory well, at a point your device gets sluggish.
The simplest remedy is to close these background running or temporarily suspended apps. This can be done by bringing up the open applications on your iPad 2 / iPod / iPhone 4 but double clicking the home button. Then at the bottom of your screen, a row shows up with all the open apps. Now press any of the applications in the list for a couple of seconds, till the application icons in the row starts shaking/shimmering. Now on top left of each of these icons a new round red symbol shows up with a white line inside the symbol. press on this round red symbol and the icon disappears and you can be sure the application corresponding to the icon is closed. Continue closing each of the open applications and your iPad 2 / iPod / iPhone 4 must be faster now.

2) In some cases, step 1 mentioned above alone doesn't solve the issue because some of the applications you use might be corrupted and it wouldn't have released some portion of your device memory. To solve this issue you would have to do a reset / restart of your  iPad 2 / iPod / iPhone 4. The need for this usually comes only say once in 3 months according to the apps you use. It's a good idea to restart your iPad / iPod / iPhone once in a while as this improves the performance of your iPad by releasing any of your unusable memory. But don't restart your device often and when not necessary.

To restart your iPad / iPod / iPhone , hold on the sleep/Wake button of your  iPad / iPod / iPhone which is located on the top right of your  iPad / iPod / iPhone along with pressing the home button. Press and hold it for some seconds. After sometime you can see a slider saying "slide to power off" . Slide it to power off your  iPad / iPod / iPhone . Else keep pressing these two buttons and it will restart your device. Once the device is completely power off, press the sleep/wake button and your iPad / iPod / iPhone would switch on now. Now your iPad / iPod / iPhone is has a fresh memory with no unwanted programs using up memory.

3) In some cases, you would have many applications which run on the background, even if you close them from the task manager. These applications will not be visible in the task manager but constantly run on the background checking for specific conditions like checking for online updates or checking for locations using your GPS device. These applications would degrade the performance of your device as they use your iPad / iPod / iPhone resources including processing power, memory, gps, 3g/wifi and ultimately battery life and performance. You can disable these applications from running in the background by going to Settings -> then clicking individual application settings and then switching off the activity that make it run in the background. These settings would vary depending on the application. Typical examples would be like "Refresh Rate" or "Check for updates" etc.