tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
I did mention I was having an issue with my wireless network topology and channels. I was having to use the Automatic channel setting which meant my older UFO shaped Airport Extreme decided channel 13 was best.
Well first problem I had was my HP TC1100 Tablet PC did not like channel 13 and refused to connect and co-operate.
So I knew I had to change the channel.
Well I changed the channel from Automatic (13) to channel 6 and guess what? Yes it all works fine now!
Bizarre!
I have been working on my new dual wireless network, in essence creating two wireless networks on my home network, one pure 802.11n 5GHz and a 802.11g 2.4GHz for older legacy devices.
When I initially set up my 802.11n Airport Extreme I used the 802.11n b/g 2.4GHz radio mode so that both 802.11n and 802.11b/g devices could connect. I also left the channel on Automatic and it chose channel 6.
For the 802.11g network I was going to use the older UFO shaped Airport Extreme (having given up on my Airport Express). As I configured it this evening, I had some problems getting my wireless Canon MP600R to connect to it, so I changed the channel from 11 (which is the same channel) as a neighbour’s wireless network and put it on Automatic. It chose channel 13, and I thought this is going to be problematic, as though UK wireless devices can use 13 channels on the 2.4GHz spectrum, in the US you can only choose channels 1 through 11. Some manufacturers only make a single device for both the US and UK markets, so these would not be able to connect to a wireless base station using channel 13. So I went in again and changed the channel to channel 2.
What happened next was weird, basically it stopped broadcasting.
I could see it was okay in the Airport Utility, as I was connected to the 802.11n wireless network and the older Airport Extreme was hard wired into that. However I could not see (on a few devices) the 802.11g wireless network.
I set it back to Automatic and it was there again.
I then decided to change the channel on the 802.11n Airport Extreme so that I could free up channel 6 and (hopefully) the older 802.11g Airport Extreme would then automatically choose channel 6 as its Automatic channel.
Well imagine my annoyance and surprise when I changed the channel on the 802.11n base station, it too stopped broadcasting!
Changed it back to Automatic and all was fine again.
Why I have to have Automatic as my channel choice I don’t know.
Why not one but both base stations stopped broadcasting when I chose a channel manually, I have no idea.
So for the moment I have the 802.11n network on channel 6 and the 802.11g network on channel 13.
Plan now is to turn off the 802.11n network and try and get the 802.11g Airport Extreme to choose channel 6!
Digital Photography Review has posted a review of the Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd.
Like the other 18x zoom / 8MP cameras on the market the FinePix S8000fd is a camera that tries to be all things to all men, and in some respects it succeeds, in others it shows the limitations of current compact camera technology in a very stark manner.
As with other DPReview reviews, I do like the way in which they compare the cameras they review with similar cameras, which means when it comes to making a choice you have a much better idea about what each camera can and importantly can not do.
Over the last week or so, I have been messing about experimenting with my network topology.
Previously I had a relatively simple network, a sole Airport Express with a lot of wireless clients. After having quite a few connectivity issues with the Airport Express, I knew I had to replace it with my newer Airport Extreme.
Once I did this, I left it in place for a few days to iron out any wrinkles or problems. I am running it in 802.11n b/g mode so that all my wireless clients can connect to it.
Yesterday I started to rearrange things, so that I could have wired clients, a pure 802.11n network and a separate 802.11g network.
My Airport Extreme now sits under my television, connected to it is my EyeHome, this should mean it can communicate to my iMac (which I use to record television via an Elgato EyeTV device) and stream video, audio and pictures without stuttering. I also intend to hardware a Mac mini as well and this will be my media centre for the moment – longer term I will replace this either with an Apple TV or another Intel based Mac mini. This Mac mini will have an Elgato USB EyeTV device attached.
I will also connect to the Airport Extreme (the third device to the third LAN port) an older 802.11g Airport Extreme which will be running a pure 802.11g wireless network for the older wireless clients. I will very likely stop using 802.11b devices, but as these are only PDAs I am not too worried and if I do need to test them I can always use the airport Express and plug that into the AirportExtreme as and when necessary.
Both wireless networks will use WPA as this is secure compared to WEP, however I will not be closing my networks, nor will I be using MAC address access control.
I am hoping that this will improve the network and make it much faster for internal file transfers and as I replace older Macs with newer ones which support 802.11n it should also be future proof as well.
The only downside I guess is the location of the 802.11n Airport Extreme does make it difficult to test USB hard drives and printers.
I have written a new guide on sharing files between a Mac running OS X Tiger 10.4 and a Windows PC running Windows Vista Business Edition.
Sharing files between a Windows Vista Business Edition PC and a Mac running 10.4
I am in the process of writing guides for Vista Home Edition and once I have installed Leopard 10.5 will write guides for that.
For some reason when my iMac today synced my bookmarks (via .mac) it added all my bookmarks again to Safari, so I had duplicates of every bookmark both on the menu bar and in the bookmarks themselves.
No idea why .mac decided that I needed to add all my bookmarks again.
This is (I have found) one of the problems with maintaining multiple bookmarks across computers.
I can add a bookmark on the iMac, it will sync, be added to my .mac bookmarks and then be synced to the PowerBook. As it should be.
But there have been times when I have changed as in updated a bookmark on the PowerBook and in theory this should update back, but I have found later that .mac has synced the old book mark back again.
Though what happened today is very weird. I will probably need to do a manual sync to replace all the duplicated bookmarks with a single copy from .mac.
My ADSL seems slow this morning, not sure why, maybe it’s just a preception rather than reality and may be down to specific sites.
Will see how it goes over the day before I mention it to my ISP.
I know some reading this may be thinking, yes, Elgato have released an 802.11n version of their (sadly discontinued) EyeHome media streamer.
Sadly no, though like others I hope one day Elgato do release a new EyeHome, though Apple have released the Apple TV, I think there is still a gap in the market for a revised EyeHome.
However onto what this blog post is about… My EyeHome with is non-wireless is connected to my wireless network via a Linksys WET54G which was connected to my 802.11g Airport Express wireless network.
Now I have been having problems with my Airport Express so streaming video has been difficult as it stutters a lot. Particularly I have been having issues with my EyeTV BBC digital (Freeview) recordings which seem to be of higher quality than other Freeview channels.
Today I connected a cat5e cable from my 802.11n Airport Extreme to the EyeHome, as my TV is one side of the room and the telephone point is on the other, I have had to get a long cable.
First tests have been very positive. My content is on my iMac which is in the office in another part of the house, this is linked wirelessly to the 802.11n Airport Extreme, but streaming video, including BBC recordings, has been nearly perfect. Compared to what was happening before this is so much better, much much better.
I am pleased, as up until now I have been forced to burn my EyeTV recordings to DVD before I could watch them on my TV.
Another reason why I am glad I upgraded my wireless network to 802.11n.
Well my package from Amazon arrived today and as well as some other stuff, it contains Leopard and Windows Vista Home Premium.
Should help me write some new guides for my website as I have a fair few to write…
Typical Microsoft, though I have a PC running Windows Vista, it is Vista Business Edition, which is (allegedly) easier to network, so I also need to test Vista Home as well.
Having said that, networking with the Vista Business laptop was very simple and I was quite pleased about how much easier it was than using XP.
Though you can create PDF files on a Mac, it is not always possible on a PC unless you have dedicated software. This is where online PDF creator sites can be very useful.
They are also useful if you for example have been sent a Microsoft Publisher file and you have a Mac, or you don’t have Publisher on your Windows PC. They can take the Publisher .pub file and print it as a PDF.
One such site is PDF Online, which can convert a range of file formats (including Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Office) into a PDF which is then e-mailed to you.
I would suggest that if you do use such a service that you use a disposable e-mail address, or one that can be deleted later.