I got an email today from Sirius Canada indicating that we can finally listen to our radio subscriptions across the Internet! This is something that US subscribers have been able to do for some time and was expected in Canada last spring. That day is here!
If you are a Sirius subscriber and have not received an email yet, contact Sirius customer services to get your login account ID and password!
There will be a site to behold Wednesday Nov 8th! Mercury will pass in it’s orbit across the face of the sun. Starting at 12:12PM and continuing till 5:10 PM, you will be able to see this tiny planet pass directly in front of our neighboring star! Never look at the sun directly either with your eyes or with a telescope or binoculars without having appropriate solar filters installed!
If the weather is clear, I will have a couple of scopes set up and try to photograph the event. I am planning on mounting my SW 80 ED and my Coronado PST and try to get pictures! If I am successful links will be posted, so watch this site!
S
In some areas of Canada, Rogers is now offering a new Portable Internet service. The service is based on Wimax technology and requires a special wireless modem available from Rogers. While the solution is not mobile it is portable! let me explain.
Mobile internet allows you to connect anywhere and is usually acheived by adding a PC Card to a laptop. It is typically fairly slow and very expensive in Canada. It does however allow you to roam and switch stations, and is generally available anywhere there is a cell phone signal.
The portable Internet service relies on transmitters on specific Cell phone towers and the modem requires a power outlet. This modem does not automatically switch to different towers as you move about.
The service however is extremely cost effective! Rogers offers it for 49.95 per month (minimum 1 year contract) and requires the purchase of the modem for 99.00. The published speeds are quite impressive however (nearly double todays cellular technology) at 1.5 Mb per scond download and 256K uploads. In addition you get 30GB downloads per month, 5 email addresses and the abilty to take your connection with you to certain areas. At this cost, and with these bandwidth amounts it is a far better deal than going with a cellular based service.
With a power inverter in your vehicle you do get some roaming ability.
We have not decided if this would be a good solution for Sysguy yet but are looking very closely at it.
Please let us know if you have tried this service and if it works well in your scenario.