AT&T did not deliver
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on January 19th, 2009
4 weeks ago, I orderd AT&T DSL after I received a flyer promising a $200 gift card, A free 2-wire wireless home gateway, and guaranteed $35 a month fee for 2 years for the “Elite” service. A few days later I got a message saying that my service had been activated, and reminding me to install the DSL hardware. Well I hadn’t received any hardware yet so I waited. And waited. We got the first bill for the service, $35, but still no hardware and no actual DSL service had been used yet. I tried calling AT&T customer service a few times after work, but the Internet service department was always closed.
Today I gave up waiting for a hardware to show up and called them on my day off. After 38 minutes of hold music I finally got to speak with someone in customer service. The first thing they told me was that one screen in there computer said I had received the hardware, and another screen said I hadn’t. Then she said she would get the hardware right out to me. I told her NO THANK YOU! So in two days the DSL service I never got to use will get disconnected.
NETGEAR WNR 3500 RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on January 7th, 2009
Netgear WNR 3500
This router is the main ingredient of the fastest wireless performance I have ever seen. A few weeks ago I wrote about getting 70 Mbps with the Trendnet TEW-624UB and this router. Read the rest of this entry »
Comcast Cable Vs AT&T DSL
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on December 24th, 2008
Pretty interesting. the AT&T DSL Elite service which is $35 a month boasts 6 Mbps Download and 768 Kbps Upload. Comcast cable charges $49 a month for this service. This is how fast my Comcast measured at 9:30 AM on Christmas Eve.
Buying a Socket 771 Quad-Core Xeon CPU
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on December 21st, 2008
I’ve recently spent time researching Socket 771 Xeon CPUs, to figure out options when upgrading or building from scratch, finally I’ve been able to connect some dots. There are two series of Quad-Core socket 771 Xeon available: The Clovertown 53XX and the Harpertown 54XX. The Harpertown was released earlier this year and it boasts more on-board cache (12MB vs 8MB on 53XX Xeons) and higher clock rates. Read the rest of this entry »
Dual Quad-Core workstation on a budget – part 2
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on December 21st, 2008
Dell Precision 490
In my last post I wrote about trying to obtain a dual quad-core workstation on the cheap, I wrote that buying a new bare-bones dual Xeon setup (case, power supply and empty motherboard) would run $500-$700.
Well the reason I started this article is that I found Dell Precision 490 bare bones systems on E-Bay for as cheap as $150. Read the rest of this entry »
Trendnet TEW-624UB 300 Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter H/W:B1.1R
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 21st, 2008
Trendnet TEW-632BRP
Today I noticed that Fry’s is selling the Trendnet TEW-624UB adapter for only $19 (Price is good until December 23rd) . Last month I paid $59. This cheaper model has the same exact UPC as the $59 version, but the hardware revision listed on the back is B1.1 instead of A1.0. The new packaging doesn’t list its 802.11N as draft anymore. So this $19 adapter is the newest model version. Read the rest of this entry »
New wireless speed record: 71 Mbps with Netgear WNR3500 RangeMax Wireless N Router
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 14th, 2008
I am very excited to be writing this! Finally I’ve seen some decent wireless-n speed with off-the-shelf products. Last week I wrote about finally seeing 38 Mbps with an all Netgear combination: the WNR 3500 Gigabit router and the WNDA 3100 Dual-Band USB adapter. I was so happy to see 38 Mbps then that I didnt really beat on that setup very hard. Well I did more testing with that setup this weekend, and now, I can’t recommend the WNDA 3100 anymore. Things change fast! Read the rest of this entry »
Printing to your Lexmark X9350 over wireless
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Desktop Printing on December 13th, 2008
I’ve been using this printer via USB for some while now, without a hitch. It comes with a wireless adapter built it, so I tried to use that to print with from another machine. No Luck. The other machine was never able to browse to the printer to add it. I was able to get the printer’s web setup via its IP address, and I could even ping the printer from the other machine, but no matter what I tried I couldnt add this printer via the windows “Add Printer” dialog. Read the rest of this entry »
How I test wireless products
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 13th, 2008
Netgear WNDR 3300
I’m explaining my wireless testing in detail with this post so I can abbreviate more and hopefully make it quicker to write up product reviews later on. After installing the wireless router and adapter, the main way I test is to do lots of file copies between my test machine and a file server directly attached to the wireless router. I copy the same amount of data each test pass, so I just have to measure how long it takes, and do some basic math to arrive at the effective throughput in millions of bits per second (Mbps). Read the rest of this entry »
Review: Buffalo DriveStation External USB 2.0 Hard Drive 1TB
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Product Reviews on December 10th, 2008
Everyone (or just me?) has a few hard drives full of pictures, songs, video, and software. If you want to back all of that up, DVDs are not practical. You gotta get a BIG external hard drive you can move from computer to computer. I’m very happy to be able to write a positive review. The Buffalo DriveStation has exceeded my expectations! Read the rest of this entry »
