Recently I noticed there was lag whenever I tried to access internet. I guess the recent government directive to Streamyx and other ISP providers in Malaysia in an attempt to use DNS block has resulted in a slower internet access. Such DNS blocking is futile as it was very easy to bypass DNS block.
The Malaysian government went against their promise (perhaps even illegal since it went against the MSC Malaysia Bill of Guarantee) of giving its citizen unrestricted access to the internet and instructed Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block off certain sites. So much for freedom of information. The reasoning behind it was to fight against piracy and against illegal file sharing sites. That’s the overt reasoning, I should think there is also a covert conspiracy to also shut off opposition website as well too since they did get a hammering during the 2008 general election as the opposition used the internet media to voice out their opinion thus making the current coalition losing so many Parliament seats that they are now so desperate to get back their 2/3 majority.
Showing posts with label computer devices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer devices. Show all posts
Firefox 5 breaks Google Toolbar
The latest Firefox 5 update inadvertently broke the Google Toolbar. Frankly the version 5 came too fast in the wake of Firefox 4 which broke the Delicious bookmarking plugin.
Since I have several PC's, looks like i'm not going to update the rest of my PC's to Firefox 5 until Google comes up with an updated plugin.
--- [update 27/6/2011]
Found this thread in Mozilla support. By using this compatibility reporter extension, you could make Google Toolbar to work with Firefox 5. I gave it a try and it works! It also made my Trend Micro toolbar working in Firefox 5 too! Nice fix!
And finally I gave the Delicious toolbar a go too, and voila! It works! No need to wait for update from Delicious. Anyway, with the breaking of Delicious I found a better bookmarking service from Xmarks.com. Since I still got many bookmarks in Delicious, I guess I will be keeping both service for now.
The Google Toolbar 7.1.20110512W version works in Firefox 5.0 by using the Compatibility Reporter extension.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/
Since I have several PC's, looks like i'm not going to update the rest of my PC's to Firefox 5 until Google comes up with an updated plugin.
--- [update 27/6/2011]
Found this thread in Mozilla support. By using this compatibility reporter extension, you could make Google Toolbar to work with Firefox 5. I gave it a try and it works! It also made my Trend Micro toolbar working in Firefox 5 too! Nice fix!
And finally I gave the Delicious toolbar a go too, and voila! It works! No need to wait for update from Delicious. Anyway, with the breaking of Delicious I found a better bookmarking service from Xmarks.com. Since I still got many bookmarks in Delicious, I guess I will be keeping both service for now.
The Google Toolbar 7.1.20110512W version works in Firefox 5.0 by using the Compatibility Reporter extension.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/
New devices for my PC hobby
Seems like i'm having a shopping spree on my IT gadget devices recently. Although Malaysia is having sales everywhere in the shopping malls. The same cannot be applied for computer gadgets.
With rather limited time, I haven't gotten around to blog about my new found gadgets.
Basically, i bought myself a LiveScribe 2GB Pulse smartpen as they were letting go at RM400 which was within grasp for me to give this smartpen a go. This model may not be new, but still works just as good.
I've also upgraded my modem coz my old wireless-B router already knocked out sometime ago and i was mulling whether to get the Belkin share router modem. But when Aztech recent lauch their new router modem wifi-N with a usb port for NAS, it was 1/2 the price of Belkin, at RM149, so I went for it.
And finally, I couldn't wait any longer and decided to iindulge myself with the SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB. I could only get it from PineApple computer store meeting up with old friends. I use to patronize their shop however their prices are not as competitive against the Low Yatt based shops in Digital Mall. Still they gave me a reasonable price. Which wasn't too bad.
Now preparing it for security and perhaps even install Ubuntu Linux into this thumbdrive since it got quite a lot of space!
With rather limited time, I haven't gotten around to blog about my new found gadgets.
Basically, i bought myself a LiveScribe 2GB Pulse smartpen as they were letting go at RM400 which was within grasp for me to give this smartpen a go. This model may not be new, but still works just as good.
I've also upgraded my modem coz my old wireless-B router already knocked out sometime ago and i was mulling whether to get the Belkin share router modem. But when Aztech recent lauch their new router modem wifi-N with a usb port for NAS, it was 1/2 the price of Belkin, at RM149, so I went for it.
And finally, I couldn't wait any longer and decided to iindulge myself with the SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB. I could only get it from PineApple computer store meeting up with old friends. I use to patronize their shop however their prices are not as competitive against the Low Yatt based shops in Digital Mall. Still they gave me a reasonable price. Which wasn't too bad.
Now preparing it for security and perhaps even install Ubuntu Linux into this thumbdrive since it got quite a lot of space!
HP OfficeJet warranty exchange problem
I was very pleased when my defective HP OfficeJet all in one printer fax scanner was given a one-to-one exchange. But my joy was shortlived after receiving the replacement unit. I don't know whether this was a slip up from the HP warranty service department. I don't know why they gave me a defective unit as replacement, in fact this unit was much worst off then my earlier OfficeJet.
Although my ealier unit could not get a dial tone,it could still print and scan. The replacement unit was a total wipeout. It kept giving me a paper jam message when i haven't even fed any paper. My guess the previous owner was a having a seroius paper jam defective unit. The HP service department didn't do a good job with the repair and they release the unit?
Very poor show on their part. Coz it left me with a poor impression about Hewlett-Packard. In their attempt to discourage people from submitting their defective HP units for warranty claim (they want to charge me $30 for checking a unit stillwithin warranty!) and made me call for phone support and yet they gave me a defective replacement! I was thinking how they could give customers brand new unit, but actually they are just giving reconditioned units which were defective and send it by the previous owner.
Sigh! No choice but to call them again to give me another replacement OfficeJet for the defective replacement OfficeJet that was for my earlier defective OfficeJet.
If the next unit is also defective, it would really show Hewlett-Packard having a very poor on their after sales service.
In fact I'm thinking twice about purchasing HP products in future. In their attempt to cut cost to improve their short term bottomline they are sacrificing their long term goodwill of their customers.
Got My HP OfficeJet J3508 All-in-one Fax Scanner Printer
Got my HP officejet J3508 all-in-one fax scanner printer
Just my luck. My 3 year old HP all-in-one fax printer went kaput and I had to get replacement. Opted for HP Officejet J3508 all-in-one fax scanner printer.
This one uses black ink cartridge 702 only. That's all I need as I basically use it for faxing mainly with occassional document printing.
The colour print version, the J3608 is more expensive though it has a higher print speed of 20ppm vs 15ppm for the cheaper model. That's ok for me, no need so expensive. Besides my soho home business is still in the early stages. So not expecting any heavy fax volume.
My old HP officejet all-in-one could still print and scan though. Looks like it will just end up as printer only. I think I'll just place that in my in laws place wher a printer is required.
This HP Officejet J3508 is sufficient at least for now.
HP OfficeJet Warranty Exchange Problem
[update] Aug 2012
My good old HP all-in-one finally went kaput in my in-law's house, instead of getting another HP printer, decided to replace with a simple Epson desktop printer. Simple printing was all I needed in the other house.
As for my current house HP J3508, decided to not leave it on all day long due to lightning strikes. I have lost several surge protectors and it was very inconvenient when the surge protector failed to prevent damage to the fax printer itself. Though fortunately HP replaced a another set with no question asked. But it was not a brand new fax machine, just a repaired version from another user who had a problem with it. I found another solution to my personal fax requirement and that was to subscribe to a virtual fax service. It wasn't so cheap, but it was very convenient and less problematic.
Recently my work place 8 year old Panasonic Laser Fax was not working well. It could not feed in the paper for outgoing fax. Although it was an expensive fax, I thought it was not value for money for the repair. The fax toner was expensive plus every 4 toner changed, the laser drum need to replace and it wasn't cheap!
Nowadays people tended to scan into a PDF file and email over, so the amount of receiving fax was less. So opted to get the cheaper HP J3608 fax printer. It was simple and lightweight (the Panasonic fax was heavy!) and good enough for our simple daily usage. I couldn't find the black ink cartridge version only HP J3508 anymore. Perhaps it was so low priced (I bought the J3508 for RM200) or perhaps not popular, the vendor decided to sell the colour printer version instead (the J3608 was RM270). Since most incoming faxes would be black, the colour cartridge would definitely be under used and become unusable come the expiry date. No matter, the fax machine would still run without the colour cartridge, and if truly needed, it would be cheaper to replace it when compared with Panasonic toners and drum.
The only disadvantage I see is the HP inkjet printout would smear when come into contact with water. So if our hands were wet or sweaty, the fax copy would smear. This incident would not be common so I guess it would still be acceptable.
Changing to HTC Desire Z - thinking
I'm considering to change my android phone Sony Xperia X10 mini pro to HTC Desire Z. Sure I've just updated the firmware for this X10 and i liked the new updated stuffs. But there is still one drawback: the tiny fonts. At my age a larger font would go easier on my eyes especially since i do a lot of texting and mobile blogging. I couldn't find the font size adjustment in this Xperia and many of the rich text mail has extra tiny fonts. Fortunately the road sync has very nice comfortable fonts but it only allow one email account though. So my next best option is to plough in some dough perhaps trade in or sell my Xperia X10 and upgrade to HTC Desire Z. I know HTC got font sie adjustment base on my short lived experience of using HTC Wildfire. So it is just a matter of time for me to change my mobile phone.
Faulty Kingston DT mini 10 USB drive
Looks like it was just pure bad luck when I redeemed the Kingston DataTraveler mini 10 USB thumb drive from Bonuslink. I redeemed two DTmini 10 8GB thumbdrive, one for me, and one for my sister-in-law. I was fortunate that mine had no issues at all and currently now using it to store my MP3 to be played in my car's Red Fox MP3 FM Modulator player. My sis-in-law on the other hand seemed to get into the 5%-10% fault range of most defective digital device. Just a matter of probability, a 50-50 chance between mine and hers and of course a 5-10% defect rate and hers was it.
If you thought a 5-10% defect rate was high, think again. Most computer devices are getting ever tinier that if a speck of dust gets in, the digital device will not function well. Though the manufacturer will try to use class 100 clean room for their production, you never know some dust could be introduced in their manufacturing process by accident. Looking at some of my digital devices that failure rate seemed fairly consistent at about 5-10% defect rate. This rate feels high and if you are one of the few unlucky ones that tend to get the defective item like my brother-in-law who felt he always get faulty digital devices like digital cameras and such, well there you go, Murphy's Law at work!
So now is a matter of claiming the warranty and since my sis-in-law didn't test it till recently (lapse about a few months), we can't send back to Bonuslink to exchange, instead we have to send it directly to the vendor to claim warranty.
The Bonuslink Kingston vendor contact is different from the Kingston Vendor contact that I got from All IT Digital Mall. Anyway we will just follow the directions of Bonuslink vendor instead since it was them who supplied to Bonuslink:
Hit On Sdn Bhd
No 8, Jalan LP 2A/2,
Taman Lestari Perdana,
43300 Seri Kembangan,
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Phone No : +603-8943 4193
The ALL IT Digital Mall Kingston vendor is:
Able Action
401D, Level4 Tower D, Uptown 5
No. 5 Jalan SS21/39
Damansara Uptown
47400 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7665 3939
Hmm.., looks like there are two Kingston suppliers in the Klang Valley.
[update: 20/1/2012]
Recently I bought some higher capacity USB flash drive, and decided to use my older workhorse SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB for my Red Fox MP3 player. Initially I reassigned my Kingston DT Mini 10 for watching HD movies on my Sharp LCD TV. But turned out to be a bad idea. The slimmer connection style of USB-A type, lacking an outer case meant the connection can be rather loose on some USB port. Thus it was very difficult for the LCD TV to detect this Kingston DT Mini 10.
My sis-in-law felt that slim type connection was not so good because:
a) Difficult to figure out which way was the correct way to insert into USB port
b) Even if inserted correctly the USB port has difficulty to detect it as the slim USB-A connector without the casing makes it difficult for the connector to connect to each other
I should think so too, never really quite liked this slim styled USB-A connector, though it did make USB flash drive much smaller than the usual standard flash drives.
So I decided to use this as DT Mini 10 as Readyboost device for my Windows 7 instead. If you plan to totally use the 8GB capacity for readyboost, you should reformat it to NTFS or exFAT, since FAT32 has filesize capacity limit of 4GB max. For me, I decided to keep its original FAT32 format and use the balance 4GB space for file storage.
[update: 15/10/2020]
Finally this Kingston DTmini10 gave up on me. I suppose it wasn't hardy enough to withstand the constant readyboost duty. And of course the poor design of the connector points could also be at fault. After testing it on my other PCs, confirmed that the electronics was fried. Still I was able to use it for about 10 years which was not too bad. As the years went by, USB flash memory gets cheaper and cheaper. Now I have a bunch of them and many of my older and smaller capacity flash drives were relegated to readyboost duty for the older PCs and laptop or used as USB boot drive for Linux, Cloudready Chrome OS live CD / installer. Newer PCs and laptops were blazingly fast and didn't require readyboost to help speed up.
If you thought a 5-10% defect rate was high, think again. Most computer devices are getting ever tinier that if a speck of dust gets in, the digital device will not function well. Though the manufacturer will try to use class 100 clean room for their production, you never know some dust could be introduced in their manufacturing process by accident. Looking at some of my digital devices that failure rate seemed fairly consistent at about 5-10% defect rate. This rate feels high and if you are one of the few unlucky ones that tend to get the defective item like my brother-in-law who felt he always get faulty digital devices like digital cameras and such, well there you go, Murphy's Law at work!
So now is a matter of claiming the warranty and since my sis-in-law didn't test it till recently (lapse about a few months), we can't send back to Bonuslink to exchange, instead we have to send it directly to the vendor to claim warranty.
The Bonuslink Kingston vendor contact is different from the Kingston Vendor contact that I got from All IT Digital Mall. Anyway we will just follow the directions of Bonuslink vendor instead since it was them who supplied to Bonuslink:
Hit On Sdn Bhd
No 8, Jalan LP 2A/2,
Taman Lestari Perdana,
43300 Seri Kembangan,
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Phone No : +603-8943 4193
The ALL IT Digital Mall Kingston vendor is:
Able Action
401D, Level4 Tower D, Uptown 5
No. 5 Jalan SS21/39
Damansara Uptown
47400 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7665 3939
Hmm.., looks like there are two Kingston suppliers in the Klang Valley.
[update: 20/1/2012]
Recently I bought some higher capacity USB flash drive, and decided to use my older workhorse SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB for my Red Fox MP3 player. Initially I reassigned my Kingston DT Mini 10 for watching HD movies on my Sharp LCD TV. But turned out to be a bad idea. The slimmer connection style of USB-A type, lacking an outer case meant the connection can be rather loose on some USB port. Thus it was very difficult for the LCD TV to detect this Kingston DT Mini 10.
My sis-in-law felt that slim type connection was not so good because:
a) Difficult to figure out which way was the correct way to insert into USB port
b) Even if inserted correctly the USB port has difficulty to detect it as the slim USB-A connector without the casing makes it difficult for the connector to connect to each other
I should think so too, never really quite liked this slim styled USB-A connector, though it did make USB flash drive much smaller than the usual standard flash drives.
So I decided to use this as DT Mini 10 as Readyboost device for my Windows 7 instead. If you plan to totally use the 8GB capacity for readyboost, you should reformat it to NTFS or exFAT, since FAT32 has filesize capacity limit of 4GB max. For me, I decided to keep its original FAT32 format and use the balance 4GB space for file storage.
[update: 15/10/2020]
Finally this Kingston DTmini10 gave up on me. I suppose it wasn't hardy enough to withstand the constant readyboost duty. And of course the poor design of the connector points could also be at fault. After testing it on my other PCs, confirmed that the electronics was fried. Still I was able to use it for about 10 years which was not too bad. As the years went by, USB flash memory gets cheaper and cheaper. Now I have a bunch of them and many of my older and smaller capacity flash drives were relegated to readyboost duty for the older PCs and laptop or used as USB boot drive for Linux, Cloudready Chrome OS live CD / installer. Newer PCs and laptops were blazingly fast and didn't require readyboost to help speed up.
Xperia X10 Android 2.1 Update coming soon
My current Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro is running on Android phone version 1.6. Heard about the update/upgrade to Android phone version 2.1 will be released on week 38 or end of Q3. Somewhat earlier than the Q4 released mentioned.
Quick search found the SE blog about the upcoming release for Xperia X10 not just for the X10, but for the entire X10 series, the X10 mini pro and X10 mini.
Ran through the Sony Ericsson website and it seems I can upgrade the X10 Android phone software by ourselves instead of handing it over to the SE service center. If so that would save time but I wonder what are the caveats of doing my own software upgrade?
Quick search found the SE blog about the upcoming release for Xperia X10 not just for the X10, but for the entire X10 series, the X10 mini pro and X10 mini.
Ran through the Sony Ericsson website and it seems I can upgrade the X10 Android phone software by ourselves instead of handing it over to the SE service center. If so that would save time but I wonder what are the caveats of doing my own software upgrade?
Streamyx is down yet again!
Welcome to boleh-land where nothing works right. Malaysia is vying for high income develop nation status and yet the simplest of things like a decent broadband internet connection still cannot achieve. Yes, I'm kvetching again at the lacklustre Streamyx service.
I was having off then on connection whole day long. At first I thought it was my PC, but then I realised it was TM/Streamyx fault. The connection sputtered on like a lame duck. I have to force click several times on a link to get a web page to refresh. Trying to do some work was a slow process.
And finally this evening while trying to update a web page, TM/Streamyx finally died out. And no amount of forcing the line would get me a connection.
Hurmph! Where's the competition to force Streamyx to improve their service? If this is the way TM is going about their broadband connection, you have better think twice about signing up on their UNIFI service. It ain't cheap and Malaysia broadband service is one of the expensive one around this region due to lack of competition. Monopoly is no good. It just shows it can't improve its services when the competition is sleeping with their promotion.
So where is that garish potong wayar ad to spur Streamyx to improve its broadand service connection?
Windows Messenger Error Code 81000306
Again I got Windows Live Messenger Error Code 81000306 in my Windows Vista. Which means I could not connect to the Windows Live Messenger server. There was this fix that I did some many months ago, and it still works.
- Click start
- Type: cmd (but don’t hit Enter)
- Right-click cmd.exe when it appears under Applications
- Click Run As Administrator
- Type the following: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
- Press enter
It should work without rebooting. I must have turned on the TCP during one of the Windows update or something. But this didn’t help me on my office new Ricoh Aficio 2027 Multifunction copier printer scanner. Though I could send print jobs to it, but the scan jobs would not send to my PC. Still trying to figure that one out.
Format FAT32 big partition using Linux
I was attempting to format big partition size >100GB for a FAT32 file system for the WD My Passport portable hard disk. Turn out to be very tedious because the FAT32 format utility provided by Western Digital could not work in Windows Vista. So I tried to find alternative way, but to no avail, until...
There is limit to the FAT32 partition on your hard disk. It cannot exceed more than 32GB. To format larger than 32GB I will need to use the manufacturer software. Turn out it cannot run in Windows Vista. So I searched around for alternatives.
I found one software called SwissKnife, but turn out that this too was outdated and could not run in Windows Vista. It could only run in Windows 2000.
There were many post in forums about using command prompt to format large size partition. Many said it was very slow, you can't do a quick format, and there seem to be limit to the format size. NOt sure about the actual limit, but I believe it could not exceed 100GB. Since I need it bigger than 100GB I decided not to try this way.
In the end, I have to fire up my old PC running in Windows XP to install the WD FAT32 formatter program. It requires at least the dotNetFx 2.0 version so again I have to take time to install a .Net software. Than installed the WD FAT32 formatter. Finally got them all installed.
But... it wouldn't allow me to partition it!
So in the end, I used Ubuntu Linux Gnome partition manager. Before using it, I have to delete the partition using Windows Disk Manager. For some unknown reason I couldn't delete the partition in Gnome partition manager. Using the Ubunto Linux Gnome partition manager, I could partition the WD My Passport portable hard disk and format a FAT32 partition bigger than 100GB size.
Thank goodness for Linux!
There is limit to the FAT32 partition on your hard disk. It cannot exceed more than 32GB. To format larger than 32GB I will need to use the manufacturer software. Turn out it cannot run in Windows Vista. So I searched around for alternatives.
I found one software called SwissKnife, but turn out that this too was outdated and could not run in Windows Vista. It could only run in Windows 2000.
There were many post in forums about using command prompt to format large size partition. Many said it was very slow, you can't do a quick format, and there seem to be limit to the format size. NOt sure about the actual limit, but I believe it could not exceed 100GB. Since I need it bigger than 100GB I decided not to try this way.
In the end, I have to fire up my old PC running in Windows XP to install the WD FAT32 formatter program. It requires at least the dotNetFx 2.0 version so again I have to take time to install a .Net software. Than installed the WD FAT32 formatter. Finally got them all installed.
But... it wouldn't allow me to partition it!
So in the end, I used Ubuntu Linux Gnome partition manager. Before using it, I have to delete the partition using Windows Disk Manager. For some unknown reason I couldn't delete the partition in Gnome partition manager. Using the Ubunto Linux Gnome partition manager, I could partition the WD My Passport portable hard disk and format a FAT32 partition bigger than 100GB size.
Thank goodness for Linux!
Welcome to My Blog
This is my first personal blog. Hopefully more will be published as days go by. Right now I am at a loss as to what to type in. But writer's block does not apply to blogging, right?
I was setting up my Cameron Highlands website, but it takes time to come up with content. Well hopefully I can complete my project and something will come out from my endeavor.
I think the present modern day is rather exciting with all the new gadgets and technical wizadry. I have seen the pace of advancement is rather amazing! I myself owned a few of these gadgets, PDA, handphones, digital cameras, and it does certainly makes life rather interesting! Incredibly I still have my old HP 320LX handheld PC and it still functions. But its speed is so slow, using this ancient device is more like nostalgia.
Until I have something more interesting to write, au revoir!
I was setting up my Cameron Highlands website, but it takes time to come up with content. Well hopefully I can complete my project and something will come out from my endeavor.
I think the present modern day is rather exciting with all the new gadgets and technical wizadry. I have seen the pace of advancement is rather amazing! I myself owned a few of these gadgets, PDA, handphones, digital cameras, and it does certainly makes life rather interesting! Incredibly I still have my old HP 320LX handheld PC and it still functions. But its speed is so slow, using this ancient device is more like nostalgia.
Until I have something more interesting to write, au revoir!
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