Category: news

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File Sharing with Leopard and Vista

Update: guide now available.

I am in the process of writing my file sharing guide for Leopard and Vista and though similar to Tiger and XP, there are some quite fundamental differences which means it is taking longer to write the guide then I first thought.

I have recommended using the same username and password on home networks for sharing files as it makes it easier to share files.

Now with Leopard you can share individual folders much more easily, which means I may write two separate guides rather than one long one.

We’ll see how it goes, expect it soon.

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MacBook Pro Airport Sleep Issues

My MacBook Pro has stopped re-connecting to my Airport network after sleep. I am sure this is down to the fact that I have started to use it on a WPA2 802.11n wireless network.

Checked my settings, but nothing there that seemed out of order.

A quick Google search and up comes through this site the following Apple KB article which has a solution, will try it and see what happens.

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Fujifilm Finepix F50fd Review

Digital Photography Review has posted a review of the Fujifilm Finepix F50fd, a compact 12MP camera.

Like any sequel the F50fd was always going to suffer by comparison to its illustrious predecessor, so is Fujifilm’s new flagship compact a Godfather II or a Matrix Reloaded? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it’s neither one or the other, but something somewhere in between.

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Just installed Leopard

Well better late than never I guess…

I have installed Leopard on my iMac (using an external Firewire drive rather than my main drive).

It installed fine, though I find it amusing that Apple’s “about one minute”  can be longer than any other minute, maybe a Time Machine thing?

I have had a quick look and I am quite impressed. I am quite pleased with the performance on my iMac which seems much faster, certainly don’t get the lag I have been getting when changing the volume for example.

Safari 3 is much better and I might just install 10.4.11 on my other Macs to get Safari 3, like the fact I can move tabs.

File sharing looks relatively simple, but quite different to Tiger therefore new guides are essential.

Overall impressed so far.

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Bizarrely Automatic

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!

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Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd Review,

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.

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Changing my Network Topology

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.

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ADSL Sloowwww’ish

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.

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802.11n EyeHome

I know some reading this may be thinking, yes, Elgato have released an 802.11n version of their (sadly discontinued) EyeHome media streamer.

EyeHome

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.

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Arrived

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.