Posts

Testing / Improving Your Wireless Connection

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A while back I had reported difficulty with the reliability of my wireless connection. I learned that different channels may perform better than others, and by switching, my wireless connection is much more reliable. There are also various tools that can help the educated person with their wireless network. NetStumbler is one such program. With NetStumbler, you can test the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The higher, the better (i.e. a lower number is bad).

Use Gmail to Store Files

Did you know that you could use your Gmail account to store files? With nearly 3 GBs of space, this is an easy way to store files that you may want to access from multiple computers or that you want to make sure get archived off site. Rahul Jonna has created a simple Firefox Extension , making it very easy to store files from Firefox. I made a 1.5 minute how-to movie to demonstrate how this works. [The quality of the movie does not match my desire, but I had to use a program that would output a format that could be accepted by Google.] Be sure to watch the last 3rd of the video as it demonstrates how to write a filter in Gmail, so the files do not show up in your inbox.

Michael Copps: Net Neutrality and Media Consolidation

I listened to a wonderful podcast yesterday (you can listen online too), provided by Gigavox' IT Conversations . Michael Copps, an FCC Commissioner spoke about Network Neutrality, Broadband and Media Ownership . This guy really gets it. We need to find ways to support Mr. Copps, and find more leaders like him. I highly encourage you to listen to the podcast -- in particular if you do not understand the issues, I think you will once you have listened to Mr. Copps. Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps states that all is not well in Washington when it comes to technology policy. He argues that the continued trend in media consolidation, with fewer organizations owning more and more properties that allow them to control both content and distribution, will be further exacerbated by recent decisions by the FCC.

New Bug in IE7

CNet reported on October 25th that a new spoofing bug has been reported for IE7. The basic issue is that the displayed URL can be coaxed to looking like a legitimate URL when in reality it is hitting an undesirable website, i.e. phishing. CNet's source is Secunia , a security company. Did I tell you that Mozilla released Firefox 2.0 on the 24th ?

A Free Vista Upgrade May Not Be Free

I recently posted that I would recommend staying with Windows XP as long as possible. Well if you buy a PC now, it is likely that you will get a coupon for a free upgrade to Vista when it ships. I would be very leery of what "free" really means. As you may also recall from my prior posting, I suggested you should wait as long as possible so that Microsoft can correct all the security issues -- there will be security issues. PC World published on October 24th a good reminder about the new Vista Home Edition -- it will have less features than XP Home. So, for your free version, you can upgrade to an OS with fewer features. Why would you want to do that? PC World makes another good point... upgrading your OS may not be an easy task either. Unless you are very comfortable troubleshooting your PC issues, I would recommend you avoid that chore -- wait until you buy your next PC in 2009. (Average users should be fine getting a new PC every 3 years.)

Lithium-Ion Batteries and More Sony Recall News

The November issue of Wired has a great article on " Building a Better Battery ". John Hockenberry begins with a story of a battery that catches fire, and then takes us to the first battery built in the 1800s. Hockenberry quickly takes us through the history to the point of talking about lithium-ion. Today, most Li-ion cells contain at least two – and sometimes three – separate countermeasures to keep the reaction from getting out of control. Finally, we hear a bit about Sony before Hockenberry concludes with the current research in battery technology. CNet reported on October 23rd that Sony has even more battery recalls. Batteries that shipped with laptops sold by Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba comprise this recall... ...worldwide tally... ...more than 3 million... This extends the list to Dell, Lenovo/IBM, Apple, Sharp, Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony, and Toshiba.

Firefox 2 - Get it Today

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If you have been reading my blog, you know that I do not recommend being an early adopter of new software. I let others try it first, and wait to hear the news. For example, I still have not updated to iTunes 7. Likewise, I will wait as long as possible before getting Vista. On a side note, if you are thinking of getting a new PC, I would recommend you get it now before you are forced to take an early version of Vista. You want to wait as long as possible until the majority of the security issues are solved. Anyway, back to Firefox... I have installed version 2 and have used it both at work and home without any problems. I did have to update an extension and removed the anti-phishing, as it is now built into Firefox, but other than that all is good. I do not see a big difference from 1.5 to 2.0. My hope is that it does a better job managing memory -- occasionally in the past, if you surfed a lot and/or had the browser open for a long time, it would begin to slow down as it consumed mor

Battery Recall Information from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council

I figured that I could find all the lithium-ion battery recalls by looking at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council website -- I was wrong. Here is what I found, but it is missing quite a few. Dell, December 2005 and August 2006 Apple, May 2005 and August 2006 Lenovo / IBM, September 2006 HP, October 2005 and April 2006 Battery-Biz, June 2005 It is unfortunate that this website is incomplete. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council also released tips on notebook computer usage in September of this year. Interestingly enough, I found a laptop battery recall as far back as 1994 . For those of you who are interested, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council has new recalls announced each week. You can sign up for an email or even subscribe to a podcast to listen to the recalls.

Use VM to Play Old DOS Games

Do you have some old DOS games that no longer play on your system? I found a way to resurrect these old classics and play them again. As you may recall a while back, I introduced the VM Player as a way to run Firefox in an effort to provide total protection on the Internet. You can use this same idea to run DOS. I have found three solutions: Download Microsoft's Virtual PC and load FreeDOS or another DOS. (Virtual PCs only provide the hardware visualization , you still need to provide the OS.) Use the VM Player and run the Nostalgia appliance . This appliance comes pre -installed with OpenDOS and 8 old DOS games. Use the VM Player and run the FreeDOS appliance (beta). On a related note, apparently there are some hacks you can make to the VM Player environment to create new environments without purchasing the client.

XP Memory Problems and Startup Applications

My wife and I bought the same model computer this past summer (HP Compaq Presario, Win XP Media Center), and while I have had no problems, she seemed to have many. The first problems was that her computer seemed to lock up when accessing the Internet. After several different tries, I ended up re-imaging her computer, and that seemed to do the trick. Within a month though, she started having memory problems: "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service." After doing a bit a research, I concluded that the problem stemmed from the new multi-function HP printer we bought . HP kindly [grrr...] installs a java-based server and application to monitor the device. And because it is so important, HP installed it in the system tray upon startup, so it is always available. Come to find out, HP has know memory leak issues with this application. And worse, it is a very difficult application to uninstall. This led me to Bleeping Computers and Startup Inspector . S