In How to Fry a Wireless Router or Two, I wrote about my brother’s experience frying a pair of wireless modems in a lightning storm. Last week, I talked about what had happened, why it happended, and what he could do to prevent the problem in the future (this was the third set of routers, plus he lost a computer motherboard in that storm).

This week, we’ll look at his network layout, and why he could not get the network to set up properly.

To summarize the situation, he has an office an a shop, with computers on his network in both locations. Some connect via wired connections (Ethernet), while others use wireless connections. His Internet cable comes into the office first.

In the past, he first used Linksys wireless routers. Then DLinks. This time, he chose Belkin wireless routers.

The incoming cable (standard cable-company RG6 coaxial cable) connects to the cable modem.

Then, the cable modem connects to the WAN (wide area network “Internet”) connection on the router.

The local wired ports on the router…

Continue reading How Can One Cable Modem Work With Two Wireless Routers?

One of the differences between inkjet printers and laser printers has to do with handling of the data to be printed.

An inkjet printer gets its commands for each printed line, one at a time, from Windows. It prints the line and gets the data for the next line. Sometimes they buffer a little of the data so there’s no hesitation, but Windows is talking to the printer thoughout the whole print job.

That’s not the way that laser printers work. A laser printer has to get all the data for a whole page before it starts to print that page.

What happens if there is so much content, shapes or colors, that the printer’s memory can’t receive the entire page? You can’t print it. You have to add memory.

That happened to me one time with my LaserJet 1200, so I had upgraded its memory a long time ago.

Now, with the new printer, I needed to think about that possibility. Surely it wouldn’t be a problem, but it shouldn’t have ever been a problem with the LaserJet 1200, either.

HP offered extra memory for the Color LaserJet CP1518ni printer, which has an easily accessible side door so the user can pop extra memory into it.

Continue reading Adding Memory to the HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni

Sometimes, we don’t want to hear the answer, so we look for an easier fix. Such was the case recently with this email from Arjun:

Hello there Terry ! To begin with,I’ve to say I’m incredibly impressed for the way you recommend applications,settings,software reviews.

Recently I ran into a problem,my hard drive LED was glowing solid and all the applications I tried to open up used to show up after ages for which I contacted my laptop manufacturer,HP.

Continue reading Hard Drive Problems

One of the questions I received recently was a surprise… Gary Karasick, who subscribes to my newsletter, wrote to ask me about a problem he was having…with his iMac:

I am having difficulties maintaining connectivity with y new iMac. I have many external USB devices and instead of reaching around the back of my iMac, I have used a powered USB 7 Port hub. Sometimes I get a machine from my machine saying there isn’t enough power to support all of the devices. How can this be if I am using a hub with an external power source? What can I do so that I can continue getting the benefit of the easily accessible hub?

I wrote back to Gary to say that I don’t use iMac or any Apple Mac products, so I really could not answer questions specific to the Mac.

However, this problem wasn’t directly an iMac issue…it was a problem with an external USB hub.

Continue reading When a Powered USB Hub Is Not Enough

Subscriber JNC wrote to me to say that he’d been using Acronis True Image for a while and wanted to know about keeping old backups:

I have just completed a total backup via Acronis on my external hard drive. Is there any reason to save previous total backups?
My external (500) hard drive is over 2/3 full.
jnc

I wrote back to JNC to say that I wouldn’t get rid of all of them. I suggested that he keep some recent ones and one or two full backups from the past — including the oldest one he had.

I find that, most of the time, I’m reaching for a backup file or backup image file because my brain messed up, not because of a hardware failure. It’s too easy to change a file and not realize that we haven’t done the change correctly. We find it out later when we try to use the file, or that part of the file. It might be days, weeks or even months later.

Continue reading Keeping Old Hard Drive Backup Files

After years of using a rolling laptop cart, I managed to break it about a year ago and ended up shopping for a new one. Unfortunately, Office Depot had stopped carrying this type of product. Their only desks for laptops were ugly, bulky things.

First, I ordered a similar item via a merchant on the Internet. Let’s just say that someone had seen a real laptop cart and designed one from memory. The most important flaw was that, despite having independent table surfaces to the right- and left-hand sides of the support, they were welded into a constant height between the two, even though they tilted independently.

A properly designed laptop cart has the two table shelves working independently — independently adjustable height and tilt.

Fortunately, I was able to find almost exactly what I was looking for at Amazon. This cart image looks very similar to the bad one I purchased, although that one was dark in color and manufactured by another company.
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Continue reading about My New Laptop Table

Larry Braud, longtime subscriber, reader and friend, told be about the protective film he applied to his new laptop. The material was a light-weight, clear, colorless material which came with an anti-glare finish. It adheres to the screen using a built-in silicone resin adhesive.

It seems to be easy to apply and easy to peel off. More importantly, it protects the delicate screen from accidental touches (fingerprint marks are very hard to remove from most LCD monitors). Most importantly, if he hadn’t told me that he had the film on the monitor, I never would have realized it. The picture was bright, sharp without the shine of a high gloss LCD.

I’m not sure why so many manufacturers seem to be shifting to high-glare notebook screens. Perhaps the glossy finish is less susceptible to finger oils or easier to clean — but they’re awfully hard to read.

I haven’t tried these, but Larry has. I’ve seen his and it looked good, too. If you’ve got a glossy screen laptop — or if you’ve got an LCD monitor and have children around (or adults) who can’t be trusted to keep their fingers off the screen, this can be a lifesaver.

Another friend noted that he had managed to touch his monitor while he had a felt-tip pen in his hand – and now has a mark on it. A film screen protector would have saved him a lot of grief.

Continue reading LCD Monitor and Notebook Protection