About a month ago I bought a new router, draftN this time, to speed up my network and to add a shared USB port. It worked rather less than well, and as it stands it doesn't really reach as far as I wanted in terms of features. On the USB port I attached an 1T external hard drive, and it works fine, but the speed is horrendous, which I expected. The bad thing is that it is absolutely incompatible with anything you can imagine, so the only way to get stuff out of it is to copy it somewhere else - disconnect the drive from the router's USB port and nobody will be able to read it...
Well, I moved the old G router to the living room, where the connection strength was really bad, and I decided to try to set up a WiFi roaming (meaning the device(s) would transparently and automatically move from one AP to the other as I moved through the house). It's been an interesting experience and almost fully successful.
The setup of the APs was rather simple. as my DSL modem holds all the routing functions (firewall, router, DHCP,...) I only use the WiFi routers as APs. All I had to do was to set them both up identically - same SSID, security settings and the such. Easy peasy.
My wife's netbook seemed to work rather well, roaming form one AP to the other without problems. But my phone didn't want to. As both APs manage to maintain at least a trace of a signal in all corners of the house, the phone kept its connection to first AP it connected to even in places where the other AP provided a much stronger signal. It seems Android doesn't have native WiFi roaming - this is 4.1 I'm talking about. However, some googling unearthed a small app called Best WiFi that supposedly solved exactly this problem: at a (user set) level of the signal, it forces the device to reconnect to the strongest AP available. I installed it, set it up and everything seemed to work fine.
Now comes the "almost" part.. It seems to work fine when I connect first to the new router in the basement and then I move to the living room - it transfers immediately to the old G router. However, when I head back downstairs, it takes a long time and it keeps reconnecting again and again at the old G router until at some point (after I get bored watching it going up and down) it finally connects to the new router. I only have a couple of ideas about the root cause, and I am really in no hurry to test them (considering I have a week left until my big overseas holiday...). First, the old router is on channel 2 and the new one on 8, so maybe it tries to connect first to the first/lowest channel it finds. Second, the signal strength the old router provides at the new router's location (den in the basement) is way better than the signal strength the new one provides in the old one's location (living room), so maybe the phone still sees the old router and keeps at it... I'll probably switch the channels at some point to see what happens... but I'm in not hurry for now.
5.9.12
26.7.12
The droid is here!
Earlier in the month I was as excited as the next guy about Google's new little toy, the Nexus 7 tablet. I fiddled for a while and then finally I gave in and went as far as (pre-)ordering it from NCIX - it showed "backorder", and it never changed...
In the meantime I noticed (RFD forums be blessed! - that's Red Flag Deals for the uninitiated) the carrier I am stuck with for another year (Telus) had a reasonably nice promo: a refurbished (aka refreshed in Telus parlance /haha/) Samsung Google Nexus S for free with a "one year commitment on any plan." Sounds good. The small print? New activations only. So after a while (and talks with various people, and listening to a lot of music at phone quality...) I had to give up and admit that I had to get a new number if I wanted that little piece of high tech - which I did. I went on the site, got the cheapest plan ($25/mo) and got it this past Monday. The sucky part was that my old phone had a $20/mo plan... extra $5/mo. But all is not that bad. I noticed the new $25 plan has the CID included (for which the $20 plan required an add-on worth $8/mo!!!). I never bothered, but my wife had it, so I called and got her the same $25 plan, which means we are saving $3 this way - almost pays for my increase... Plus I got CID, too.
Going back to Nexus 7, once I got my new cell phone, I called Telus and cancelled my old phone, then called NCIX and canceled my Nexus 7 order (which was still waiting stock...) So no 7" tablet for me... yet!
I also upgraded the phone to 4.1.1 JB - it came with some 2.3.1 or so.
And it blew my mind away. The JB Android is amazing. The phone is also (almost) amazing. Almost is here because the battery is awfully undersized - on a full charge and with all networking turned off, playing games and watching movies will kill the battery in 3 hours... I disabled the data over mobile networks (for which the big RoBeLus guys charge an arm and a leg) and with wifi only it is amazing... Did I tell you it is amazing? Well, it is. The screen, the video performance, games, the availability of free apps, I love them all.
BTW, BB is dead. I was growing to hate it more and more over the past 2 years, but now I *know* it. And it is not the hardware that is sinking it, but the software. It sucks big time.
I am now contemplating my next moves: first I plan to root the phone, and then unlock it, sometime in the nest year as I am still tied to Telus for another 12 months. Which doesn't really matter as my wife still has 12 month on her contract anyway - and we have both phones on the same account for the free "family calling" feature. Plus try the USB OTG thing. Get a keyboard? First I'll have to get a case of some sort.
Now I need a NAS...
After several days with it, I think this phone has two technical weaknesses: the battery which is undersized - probably one three times the size would make the phone really unwieldy - and the wifi sensibility - this one is quite bad, I compared it with my wife's netbook (an Acer Aspire One some two years old) and the Nexus drops the connection in places the netbook has no problems connecting. It is rather annoying not to have a stable connection in your own livingroom... BTW, the access point is an old WRT54G from Cisco hidden in the basement.
And the lesson learnt: subscribe to RFD forums (especially the Hot Deals and the Latest Deals)!
In the meantime I noticed (RFD forums be blessed! - that's Red Flag Deals for the uninitiated) the carrier I am stuck with for another year (Telus) had a reasonably nice promo: a refurbished (aka refreshed in Telus parlance /haha/) Samsung Google Nexus S for free with a "one year commitment on any plan." Sounds good. The small print? New activations only. So after a while (and talks with various people, and listening to a lot of music at phone quality...) I had to give up and admit that I had to get a new number if I wanted that little piece of high tech - which I did. I went on the site, got the cheapest plan ($25/mo) and got it this past Monday. The sucky part was that my old phone had a $20/mo plan... extra $5/mo. But all is not that bad. I noticed the new $25 plan has the CID included (for which the $20 plan required an add-on worth $8/mo!!!). I never bothered, but my wife had it, so I called and got her the same $25 plan, which means we are saving $3 this way - almost pays for my increase... Plus I got CID, too.Going back to Nexus 7, once I got my new cell phone, I called Telus and cancelled my old phone, then called NCIX and canceled my Nexus 7 order (which was still waiting stock...) So no 7" tablet for me... yet!
I also upgraded the phone to 4.1.1 JB - it came with some 2.3.1 or so.
And it blew my mind away. The JB Android is amazing. The phone is also (almost) amazing. Almost is here because the battery is awfully undersized - on a full charge and with all networking turned off, playing games and watching movies will kill the battery in 3 hours... I disabled the data over mobile networks (for which the big RoBeLus guys charge an arm and a leg) and with wifi only it is amazing... Did I tell you it is amazing? Well, it is. The screen, the video performance, games, the availability of free apps, I love them all.
BTW, BB is dead. I was growing to hate it more and more over the past 2 years, but now I *know* it. And it is not the hardware that is sinking it, but the software. It sucks big time.
I am now contemplating my next moves: first I plan to root the phone, and then unlock it, sometime in the nest year as I am still tied to Telus for another 12 months. Which doesn't really matter as my wife still has 12 month on her contract anyway - and we have both phones on the same account for the free "family calling" feature. Plus try the USB OTG thing. Get a keyboard? First I'll have to get a case of some sort.
Now I need a NAS...
After several days with it, I think this phone has two technical weaknesses: the battery which is undersized - probably one three times the size would make the phone really unwieldy - and the wifi sensibility - this one is quite bad, I compared it with my wife's netbook (an Acer Aspire One some two years old) and the Nexus drops the connection in places the netbook has no problems connecting. It is rather annoying not to have a stable connection in your own livingroom... BTW, the access point is an old WRT54G from Cisco hidden in the basement.
And the lesson learnt: subscribe to RFD forums (especially the Hot Deals and the Latest Deals)!
26.6.12
SSD Action
I found a nice offer this past Friday for a nice little SSD, the OCZ Agility 3 120GB at $85, plus a mail in rebate of $15, will see how that goes, I posted the form today... Anyhow, I got my little SSD and I was faced with two problems: one, how to port Windows 7 from my current SSD (a 64 GB Kingston V100) onto the new one, and second, how to port my living room OS, Windows XP, from its former host - an 120GB "traditional" hard drive, onto the Kingston SSD.
The first step proved to be rather easy both to research and to actually perform - the nice Windows 7 feature called System Image took care of all the details - I imaged my boot SSD on my secondary 1TB hard rive, then replaced the SSDs, booted from the Windows 7 installation CD and told it to "repair" the system using the system image just created. Really a let down in terms of dramatic build-up. The whole action took maybe 30 minutes including screwing the screws.
The second part proved to be a bit more challenging. First, the ubiquitous Google - I tried "system image Windows XP" and found another gem for my little bijoux collection. It is called XXClone, and comes with a freeware version, with very limited functionality. Basically, the only feature it has in the freeware version is... you guessed, cloning one hard drive onto another. Talk about lack of drama.No tension, no angst... A bit of action, though, as I had to download the little thingy, install it on my htpc and let it do its part, after I connected the SSD (I had to get a SATA data cable out of cold storage... more action!). It took about an hour to move all the data from the old hard drive to the SSD, then 2 seconds to make it bootable, and voilà! More screws to screw, and the whole thing took maybe two hours or so.
That was so much easier that I first feared. While I knew Windows 7 has that nice backup feature that can handle replacing the system hard drive with no pain only gain, it was the Windows XP one that gave me the shivers for a little while.
In the end, one word: XXClone!
The first step proved to be rather easy both to research and to actually perform - the nice Windows 7 feature called System Image took care of all the details - I imaged my boot SSD on my secondary 1TB hard rive, then replaced the SSDs, booted from the Windows 7 installation CD and told it to "repair" the system using the system image just created. Really a let down in terms of dramatic build-up. The whole action took maybe 30 minutes including screwing the screws.
The second part proved to be a bit more challenging. First, the ubiquitous Google - I tried "system image Windows XP" and found another gem for my little bijoux collection. It is called XXClone, and comes with a freeware version, with very limited functionality. Basically, the only feature it has in the freeware version is... you guessed, cloning one hard drive onto another. Talk about lack of drama.No tension, no angst... A bit of action, though, as I had to download the little thingy, install it on my htpc and let it do its part, after I connected the SSD (I had to get a SATA data cable out of cold storage... more action!). It took about an hour to move all the data from the old hard drive to the SSD, then 2 seconds to make it bootable, and voilà! More screws to screw, and the whole thing took maybe two hours or so.
That was so much easier that I first feared. While I knew Windows 7 has that nice backup feature that can handle replacing the system hard drive with no pain only gain, it was the Windows XP one that gave me the shivers for a little while.
In the end, one word: XXClone!
10.5.12
The Harper year
I found yesterday a very nice article about the first year of Conservative majority in Canada - I thoroughly recommend it: Harper Unbound in The Globe and Mail.
8.4.12
My new reader
So, yesterday I received my new Sony Reader. Pretty cool, especially the WiFi part - I was able to log into my favourite website immediately and get a couple of files in epub format. Even cooler is how I was able to get into Toronto Public Library's site and log in and borrow a book - everything took some 10 minutes. The nicest thing is that it was even easy to find the MAC address in the settings section of the reader - having dealt with Sony stuff before, I was sure the MAC would be hidden under 10 layers of stuff - if available at all. Of course, to do all this I did have to check the manual (included in ebook format on the reader) a couple of times...
Pretty cool all in all.
Pretty cool all in all.
20.3.12
The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!
I've read an article the other day about the death of the PC by the hand of the tablet... (remember 30 years ago... the death of the mainframe by the hand of the PC?). The guy was absolutely bursting at the seams with excitement, like he'd found the Actual Truth. And I thought - another one bites the dust (no, not about the PC). In the past 80 years or so (since the first computer has been built for the military in WW2) they have followed a very old and common pattern of falling prices and diversifying audiences. The first computer was the domain of the USArmy, 15 years later only governments could afford one, another 15 years and we have computers restricted to big corporations' "data rooms" (read, ivory towers), another 15 years we had PC getting in every home, then yet another 15 years (today) we have the computer appearing in every pocket. We started with one for all humankind, and will end with several for each person. It happened before so many times - telephones, anybody? Or the car, maybe. Let's look even deeper in the past - written books? i don't think we can find in the miniaturization and "personalization" of the computer any paradigm shift of the sort the guy mentioned before was exposing. But I guess it makes good news and it sells (I only read it because it got a "+1" from a friend of mine). Anyway, I am convinced computers will get smaller, cheaper and more powerful every day. And make no mistake, mainframes or smartphones (and everything in between, including PCs and tablets) - they are all computers. And just like the big corporations still employ plenty of mainframes, the PC will be around for a long time. What will actually happen in the personal computer market is the so called "personal cloud" - I am basically going to build myself a central server where I'll store all my files, and all the other computing trinkets - my gaming PC or my wife's email/web browse tablet - will connect to it. I'll put a RAID5 array (four 2 or 3 GB hard drives) in the server and one 128GB SSD in my PC. I'll let you know how it goes.
19.3.12
The Rational Optimist
Just read a very good book over the weekend - The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. A rare breath of fresh air in a world where everybody dances to the tune of "it's the end of world as we know it". For a change, the guy's motto: life is beautiful, and it's only going to get better.
For years I was of the opinion that people see their lives as getting worse (the crappy present versus the now gone golden age) for a very simple reason: life was obviously better 30 years ago, when I was young, healthy, and with no obligations whatsoever - as opposed to today, when I'm older, have worse health and lots of obligations: family, work...
Actually, life today is much better that 30 years ago - if I only compare the life my kids have today versus my childhood 30 years ago - you can easily see huge improvements everywhere - health, food, clothing, toys, education.
For years I was of the opinion that people see their lives as getting worse (the crappy present versus the now gone golden age) for a very simple reason: life was obviously better 30 years ago, when I was young, healthy, and with no obligations whatsoever - as opposed to today, when I'm older, have worse health and lots of obligations: family, work...
Actually, life today is much better that 30 years ago - if I only compare the life my kids have today versus my childhood 30 years ago - you can easily see huge improvements everywhere - health, food, clothing, toys, education.
7.3.12
Another gem
Been a while, eh? Anyway, I found another interesting gem out there the other day: http://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/. Basically, you get some cash back while shopping on the net. And also an interesting offer: be approved for a credit card with no annual fee, receive $60 and a free wifi reader. The credit card is the MBNA Sony Rewards MasterCard, and the reader is the new Sony WiFi Reader. The reader retails today for $150 on http://store.sony.ca/. So all in all you stand to receive $210. Way to put that good credit rating at work for some hard cash. The small print: apply before March 15 and make 5 purchases on the card (no minimum amount required) before May 31. 2012, yeah. Not bad eh?
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