Monthly Archives: July 2007

First podcast coming soon

Posted on by

We are getting ready to produce and release the first episode of the Sysguy Show podcast. This podcast will feature reviews of products, tech news, troubleshooting tips special guests and more. We will also answer some of our readers questions about technology and how to do things or troubleshooting. If you have a question you would like addressed in the show please email use at questions at sysguy dot com. If your question is chosen you will receive an email about when you can expect your question to be answered and posted.

I look forward to hearing from you all soon

Stephen the Sysguy

Out of the Box Review – The Blackberry Curve (8300)

Posted on by

About three weeks ago when all the hype was going on I did something a little crazy. Maybe it was all the hype about the iPhone and what it could do, but I ended up getting myself a new cell phone. I was very happy with my Blackberry Pearl (8100) that I got at the end of November, and was getting use to not having the full qwerty keyboard and just trusting the phone software. Deep down I still wished for a full keyboard. I looked at the Blackberry 8800 but it didn’t have the multimedia features or the camera that I wanted (not that I really cared about the camera though).

In May of 2007 RIM released a new device, the Blackberry Curve (8300). It has all the same features that the Pearl has (MultiMedia, Camera, Mail etc) but also features a full qwerty keyboard. It is a little larger than the Pearl but is still smaller than the older Blackberry devices. It does not have the GPS that the 8800 does but I have a Bluetooth GPS receiver that works fine with both Blackberry Maps and Google Maps.

When my wife’s Motorola finally gave up the ghost and stopped charging, I looked on EBay and found a Curve that was selling for the same price as an upgrade for my wife’s plan would cost. I purchased the phone and anxiously awaited the Canada Post delivery.

The new phone was here by the end of the week. I pulled my SIM card from the Pearl and put my wife’s in it. Put my SIM card in the Curve and charged it up. I also added a 2 GB Micro SD card which allows me to store data and multimedia to the card. One thing that is similar to the Pearl is that the Micro SD card slot is located under the battery, so if you have a need to change cards frequently it is a little bit of a pain.

While the phone was charging, I went into my Blackberry Enterprise Server on my SBS 2003 server and reset the enterprise activation password for my account. Once the phone was charged all I had to do was on the Curve, go to Enterprise activation, put in my email address and the activation password and let the phone sync up. In a few minutes all of the data from my profile and email was all synced up.

I also use the Blackberry Internet Service on this phone for a couple of other email accounts. This is a service that is free that polls a pop3 email account and forwards messages to the device. Yes you can use both services (BES and BIS) at the same time. I set up the new pin in the BIS service website and resent the service books, bang the mail was forwarding to the new device.

I have now used the phone for about three weeks and have been very happy with it! The screen is very bright and can be seen in all types of light. It even automatically adjusts based on the light you are looking at it on. I have downloaded a couple of podcasts to the phone (converted with the included Roxio Media Manager) and it performs very well for displaying video, although the screen is small.

Voice quality and reception has been good, although due to my back injury I have not had a chance to try this in lots of places. The phone has a built in speaker phone and another unique feature is that the phone will adjust volume based on the ambient noise that it picks up around you. It is kind of weird the first time as the volume will go up without touching the controls. Voice dialing as in the Pearl is very good, you can either say a name or say a phone number, the phone will confirm and dial for you. I really like this feature and is something I am using constantly with my Bluetooth headset. I can make calls while the phone is securely clipped to the case on my belt.

Another feature that has been finally added to this Blackberry is a spell check. Yes no more misspelled words in your emails! As for typing, while the keys for the keyboard are actually a little small even, with my large fingers I have no problems typing as they have enough space between the keys. Something like sending a long email on my Pearl was a little trying, it has been an absolute breeze with the Curve.

Battery life- I have had some pretty good battery life from this device. Typically with my usage which includes web surfing, email, phone use taking pictures and Bluetooth I get about two to three days of use.

Camera – The phone features a 2 Megapixel camera with flash. With a Micro SD card you can store all of your photos to the card. There is also a 5X digital zoom. While the camera is okay in bright light pictures using the flash or taken in low light without the flash tend to be a bit noisy. The camera is fine if you want to snap a quick photo but I would consider using it for taking vacation photos!

One thing that I wish this phone has is WiFi so that I could connect to the internet wirelessly at home and save on downloading files via the slower edge connection.

One of the nice things about the Blackberry platform is that there are a fair number of third party applications for the phone. I have 4 already loaded up on the phone that I use on a regular basis. I have loaded a program called Mforms from http://www.skysoftsystems.com which allows you to build your own databases for the phone. For example I have created my own mileage tracking application for the BB and I can fill out the form and send it to my main email address for import into an Excel spreadsheet. I have installed the new audible air player which allows me to play my audio books on the device and actually download parts of my books from audible for listening. Another application is Jaikuberry which allows me to open and post to my Jaiku Presence Feed http://sysguy.jaiku.com. But I think the application I am looking most forward to hasn’t been released yet. The makers of Documents to Go, Dataviz will soon be releasing a Blackberry version of their software. http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/blackberry/index.html This will allow you to edit attachments on the Blackberry and gives the device a whole new use! Of course pricing is to be determined and I hope it is not as expensive as the other Office Application for the Blackberry.

In the box, you get the phone, battery, a USB Sync Charge Cable, a travel charger, a stereo headset, manuals and software CD. Am I happy that I got this phone? Yes! If I had to do it all over again would I do it? Again I have to say yes!

Intel Wireless Card Woes

Posted on by

I wasn’t going to post a full blog entry for this, but was going to post it to my mini blog instead (http://sysguy.tumblr.com). Then I decided that other folks may benefit from this too, and the rant will be a little longer than I thought so I will post it here.

I have been having issues of late trying to hook up my Asus laptop to one of my wireless networks here at home, and yes I did say one of my wireless networks. With my back problems I have been working from home and off of my laptops of late connecting via remote desktop to my main PC. Rather than run 3 cables to the laptops I need I was hoping to hook up via wireless to do my work.

When I said wireless networks I did mean more than 1. At home I run up to 5 wireless networks at the same. My main network has an older Netgear WG602 Access point with one SSID and a Linksys WRV 200 router with two SSIDs set up on it, one is WPA security and the other is WEP for a couple of devices that don’t have WPA ability. My SBS 2003 server network has a Belkin N1 Wireless router set up in Access Point mode (I am testing the N speeds) and there is another Linksys WRV 200 with a wireless network set up for a new MS server I am in the beta program for. I am currently trying to connect to laptops to the various networks. My Asus Z62FM custom built machine with Vista Ultimate and an Intel 3945 ABG Mini PCI-E wireless card in it and my new Acer TM6292 laptop (Out of the box review coming soon) with an Intel 4965 ABGN mini PCI-E card in it and Windows XP Pro.

I know what many will say is that the interference from the networks is causing the problem, but I don’t think that this is the reason. All of the SSIDs are different and the devices are set for different channels. The Netgear on 11, the Main Linksys on 6 and the Belkin on 1. The Linksys on the beta server is currently disabled.

Let me start with the Acer machine. This one took a while to fix but I did fix it and it was strange. I updated the drivers to the latest Intel drivers for the card and could not see any of my wireless networks except for the one on Channel 11. I checked the settings on the card and could not figure it out at all. If I moved away from the other two wireless laptops that were there I could then see and connect to the other networks. But if I happened to lose the connection I could not re establish it without moving away again. I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers several time. Finally I tried changing the ad hoc channel settings to channel 6. All of a sudden I could see the two SSIDs. This really shouldn’t be happening at these SSIDs are set up for infrastructure mode and not AD HOC mode. I have since been able to connect without problems and have been able to now see all of the three networks I have set up.

The 4965 card does have the problem that other Intel wireless cards have in that it will after a long period of time drop the connection. Re-establishing the connection usually involves disabling and re enabling the card in the Control Panel Network Icon. The problem also occurs after bringing the machine out of sleep mode or hibernation mode.

On my Vista Asus machine the problem seems to be specifically pointing at the network card itself. I have tried several fixes that I have found on the net and none seem to work. Again I was only seeing the network that was on Channel 11 (this is the default ad hoc channel setting in the Intel driver). Changing it to channel 6 allowed me to see the SSIDS on that channel. But for some reason I cannot connect to any of the networks. Nothing I tried worked (enabling/disabling the card, registry hacks from MS knowledgebase, disabling IP6). Finally I put in an old Netgear WG511 PCMCIA wireless card in the system and boom, I could see all of the SSID’s and connect to any network. There were a couple of problems that Vista identified that the router did not support and it offered to fix those. Once that was complete the card was stable and would connect fine. After a while I removed the card and connected with the Intel card and everything was fine for a couple of hours with it. After installing more software and rebooting the machine, I found I could not get connected with the Intel card but again had no problems with the Netgear card. Now this Vista machine has been newly reimaged twice this month (a couple of weeks ago I did it because of wireless problems) as well) and this last time I tried default Vista drivers, as well as the latest Intel ones.

I have picked up a used Dell DW1500 Mini PCI-E card from EBay to try in this machine. This card does feature the Draft n spec but I am more concerned about the connectivity of the machine. This card is based on the Broadcom chipset, and if it performs like the Broadcom card in my wife’s Acer I should be fine. I hate the idea of having to carry around a second wireless card in case I can’t connect with the one that I have.

Of course I will no longer be able to say that the laptop is a Centrino Duo after the change because one of the components will be gone (the Intel wireless card) but if this card works I will be happy. Watch here for an update after the card arrives and is installed.

 

Technorati Tags: ,

Strange Vista Networking Problem.

Posted on by

I have recently run into a strange problem with my main Windows Vista Ultimate system and my networking. So far both times that it happened to me were after Windows automatically applied Windows Updates and rebooted. The machine is based on an Intel Board with an Intel on board Gigabit Nic. It has been more of an issue lately as with my back injury (I can’t sit down) I have been using remote desktop to connect from my laptop down to my main machine to use some applications or access data.

I have tried to connect via remote desktop back to my machine but the desktop would not respond. I checked the machine and it was powered up and sitting at the log in screen. Logging in and checking the networks showed that the machine was connected to two networks, my own (private) and an unidentified network (public). There is only 1 network adaptor and no Bluetooth or wireless in this machine. Furthermore it was showing local only as connectivity.

Running diagnose and repair indicated that there were two network connections and to disconnect 1 and try again. Disconnecting the cable did no good. The first time this happened it solved itself after a reboot, when it happened today two reboots did not solve the problem. Finally I disabled the network card and re-enabled it and this solved the problem.

I am still not sure if this was caused when the machine rebooted when remote desktop was connected or if there was another reason. I will watch it a little more closely and see if the problem crops up again.

Hidden menus Vista and IE 7.0

Posted on by

If you open my computer or a Windows Explorer window in Windows Vista, you may notice that the menu is not there. The same applies if you have upgraded to IE 7.0 on Windows XP. One of the most often questions I get is “Where are the IE menus?” Actually they are there but hidden, and I have confirmed that this tip also works on IE 7.0 on Windows XP SP 2.

Open IE 7.0 and press the alt key on your keyboard. The old menu with file, edit, view, tools etc will now show up. The same applies if you open a Windows Explorer box in Windows Vista. Press the alt key and the old fashion menu shows up.

If you want the menu to always show in IE open the menu with the alt key. Go to view toolbars and check the menu bar. It is a little trickier for the explorer windows. Open my computer and open the menu. Click on tools, folder options and then the click on the view tab. Click in the box that says “always show menus”.