802.11n

I was playing around with my new 802.11n Airport Extreme base station seeing how I could maximise the performance of the wireless network.

I switched to a pure 5Ghz 802.11n network and then using Chicken of the VNC on my work MacBook Pro made a connection to my iMac and set EyeTV going. I was quite impressed with the screen refresh, however it wasn’t good enough (even at 300Mbs) to watch remotely.

I also undertook some file transfers and was very impressed with the speed.

I had to switch back to b/g compatible mode which reduced the 802.11n speed down to 130Mbs, but as I have a fair few legacy devices I need the b/g compatability. I will at some point add an Airport Express or my older 802.11g Airport Extreme to one of the LAN ports of the newer base station to enable me to have a dual wireless network, one a pure 802.11n network and a b/g network.

The only problems I had were when I switched back to b/g compatible mode, I forgot to reset the security back to WPA/WPA2 mode which meant that my HP TC1100 Tablet failed to connect back onto the network. I had to reset the wireless security and then reboot the TC1100 before it would connect correctly to the wireless network. Other devices worked fine, butI suspect that was because theTC1100 hardware doesn’t support
WPA2.

I also had to delete and add back my wireless Canon MP600R wireless printer.

I am impressed with the new 802.11n Airport Extreme and I haven’t even started to utilise the full functionality of the device.

Ubuntu Display Server Error

So I managed to download Ubuntu 7.10 (in an hour) and decided to install it on my Mac via Parallels.

It seemed so simple, create a new VM and say I want Linux and Ubuntu Linux at that, point Parallels to the ISO and wahay!

Well not quite.

It seemed to start okay and then I got the following error.

Click to enlarge

Click the picture to enlarge.

No (real) idea what is going on here.

Six Months to Download Ubuntu!

So after some excellent recommendations from Jaikunauts I decided to download Ubuntu.

Went to the website, chose a mirror and went to make a cup of tea.

Came back later to find this…

Well six months to download Ubuntu is not really what I had in mind. Pressed the back  button chose a different mirror and…

An hour now that’s more like it.

Amazon debuts digital book reader

Big news yesterday was the launch of Amazon’s digital book reader.

BBC reports that:

Online retailer Amazon has unveiled an own-brand wireless electronic book reader called Kindle.

The paperback-sized device is on sale immediately in the US for $399 (£195). It can store up to 200 books in its onboard memory.

Kindle does not need a PC to be loaded with books, blogs or papers – instead content arrives via wireless.

Amazon said 90,000 books, including bestsellers priced at $9.99, were available for Kindle at launch.

Stable Wireless

Well after upgrading to the new Airport Extreme (802.11n) base station, it does seem to have had an impact on my network stability.

Today my wireless network has remained stable and I have maintained connectivity.

It would appear that the fault lay with my Airport Express, though it didn’t help that my ISP had problems at the same time.

All working now.

Annoying Printer

Though I really do like my new Canon MP600r multi-function printer, there is one aspect which does annoy me slightly.

If you need to reconfigure the wireless connection you need to connect it to the Mac by USB cable. This can be difficult if the printer is not near the computer, which it might well be as that’s certainly why I bough a wireless printer. If I wanted a wired USB printer I would have bought the much cheaper MP600.

Canon MP600r

Ah well, at least I have reconfigured the printer to join my new Airport Extreme wireless network, and now I can print and scan over the wireless network.

ADSL Normal?

Well my ADSL speed and latency seems to be back to normal now. Pages are loading as they should and I seem to be getting quite good speeds as well.

Less annoyed now.

ADSL Connection Still Flaky…

Still very annoyed that my ADSL connection is still very flaky this morning. Sometimes pages load really quickly, then the next click to another page times out!

Very annoying.