My purchase is now winging it’s little way back to Amazon for a refund after a very short and honest call with Verbatim support this morning. The technician said she has had a number of calls regarding the cards not working and suggested I return for a replacement or refund. Of course, by the tone of her voice, a replacement would just be a waste of time.
My 2 year old Macbook pro is still a very capable laptop. I don’t have the affection for it that I do for my blackbook but it churns away all the time, being my only computer for daily use.
Multiple VMs running Active Directory, SQL2005, Domino do hurt performance though. For a short term fix, I ordered a Verbatim 32MBGB SSD Express Card, taking advantage of the express slot on the side for the first time. Plan is to run a vm on it and leave the local disk for other things.
Here are the steps taken:
Easy eh? Well no. Errors copying to the card and so far 4 total system freezes. So, go into disk utility and try to re-partition the drive in every format, and get these type of errors:
So I go to their support page, click here and click on “your questions answered”. And get a big fat emptiness. Nice. Call support line. eMail support at lunch. No response. Call support this evening. They are closed from 4pm CET.
Not a good start Verbatim. A cursory google search shows I am not alone.
Trying to line up suppliers when you are moving house is akin to herding cats or trying to get Lotus Geeks to decide where to go when in Vegas (yes, it’s an “in” joke).
Although the Sky TV move happened on schedule, Virgin Media wont install my broadband for another week. In fairness, this is not a delay, it’s just their next available slot. Another wincing point is that I am being moved from cable broadband to good ‘oul adsl (telephone line based) broadband. God help me.
So between now and then, all the kit in my house will connect to the intertubes using my MiFi. So far, this device has never failed to impress and has saved me a fortune. This little device gives me decent connectivity on the Three network (although it is unlocked). A few short years ago, this would of been considered smokin broadband!
My lack of travel for the first half of this year is now leading to a fairly unforgiving few months ahead. Trips to France, Austria, Germany, Holland all are now in the near future. Having a PAYG data sim in each of these countries (when you land – buy one if you have a MiFi) saves a lot of money. Strongly recommended.
At Lotusphere, Matt White was getting my attention. Not just because of his immense brain, witty humour and ability to get Allister Rennie to get him drinks before the OGS, but because he walked around with a bulge in his pocket. He wasn’t that pleased to see me.
Ok.. enough ‘fnar ‘fnar references.
Matt had a MiFi. This is a 3g Dongle, but without the dongle bit. Basically its a 3g Dongle that you put a sim into, but it is also a mini wifi router. So, insert your sim, turn it on and it connects to the internet. Then you connect to it as a wifi source and bingo, you connect to the internet! Unlike dongles there is no wire and you can connect multiple objects to it.
Had.to.have.one.
So, about 2 weeks ago I bought a MiFi on ebay. You could walk into a store and buy a locked one, but then you are tied to the carrier. On ebay, they are unlocked for about £60.
I got an
“UNLOCKED 3G HUAWEI E5830 Mifi USB Mobile Modem Router”
HUAWEI E5830 Mifi
It came with a 3G uk SIM card, and I added some credit to it. Then after traveling to Ireland I bought a 3G Irish sim card, and added some credit to it.
Connect to your MiFi and complete some very basic configuration work, then you can switch sim as you need (think about this people who travel) and all your devices can connect to this router and connect to the internet.
Speaking purely for myself this will come with me everywhere from now on and save me a fortune.
I am finding that with VM Ware and Virtual PC, Music files, multiple domino/Websphere installations and photos/documents I just keep on running out of disk space these days. I know quite a few of ye guys now have one, but I would like some opinions on which to buy. The Buffalo Terrastation looks like an ideal solution (Ben
and Warren
both have them). What other models are on the market that ye lot approve of? I would much prefer a NAS over any form of DAS.
I was sooooo happy to hear that there was a new ROM available for the XDA2s.
I am a big fan but the unit I have has caused me some real grief
since I got it. Hangs, poor bluetooth range, phone audio issues etc.
All these issues occured to me before on my old XDA2 until the ROM
was upgraded. I was also quite looking forward to the BES client
being available on the new ROM. Surely it would be availble on the
new one, wouldn’t it?
Here is the first check screen of the BIOS upgrade.
As many wise men have said, Bollocks….. Guess I will still have problems
then. Well done O2. You have released a "new BIOS"
that has been out for months.
An excellent product! At first, I positioned the unit on the floor
downstairs in my house, and signal was not improved much. After placing
up high (and hidden) in my kitchen, I now have full 54MG coverage everywhere.
So, before getting the media centre into the house, I will get some
better disk storage solution installed here.
My Range
Expander turned up today.
It took roughly 5 minutes to setup and enable for WEP/change IP address
range. So far, it seems to work excellently, but the weather is far
too bad to go wandering out around my back garden to see how far the range
has expanded. I will post full comments soon.
I suppose I have to come to terms that
I am WAY behind the crowd when it comes to on-line music and media. I
shall stand up and admit the following:
I don’t own an IPOD
I don’t own an MP3 player
I have never purchased music on-line
(with exception of physical cd’s).
I have a few albums recorded as WMA
on my XDA and that’s about it. I am not interested in a mobile player
of any sort. I do, however want the following:
A wireless media centre for my house
that will tie into WMA or MP3 files on my servers
A good on-line music store
The ability to convert any files between
MP3 and WMA as needed if I want to burn.
For the wireless media centre, I have
looked at the Linksys
Wireless B Music System, which
plays both MP3 and WMA files. It seems to do the job, but I don’t
know anyone that has used one before. (my house is becoming an advertisement
for Linksys at this point 
)
For on-line music, I have looked at
a few (not iTunes). Yahoo
Music, Rhapsody
and MSN
Music (beta). I do like
the look of Rhapsody, but there is no support for Ireland as yet.
Conversion software. Loads of
them out there…..
Any thoughts on a way to go on all of
this?
Update. The reviews of the Linksys
kit are very mixed…. If anyone has a recommended alternative, I would
love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks to my brother…
Lightsabre
Replica
One word… Class
For more info, click
here
