Consumers lose 30% of broadband speed using home Wi-Fi

Just for my own reference really. Here is the article for the research firm that claimed that Wi-Fi connections caused a slowdown in users broadband connections.

http://www.epitiro.com/news/latest-news/2011/consumers-lose-30-of-broadband-speed-using-home-wi-fi

A great deal at Logitech

I just wanted to inform everyone of a great deal at www.logitech.com


Firstly I am not affiliated with them what so ever, I was simply in search of a new mouse as my MX revolution was on it's last legs (and by legs I mean the battery charging contacts). 


Firstly as soon as I got to the website I noticed they had a trade in recycling scheme (UK link) which when used gave you a purchasing discount of 20%! I signed straight up for this and went and put a reasonable priced mouse in my shopping basket.. 


Here is where it got really good, an e-chat window popped up and offered 5% discount before I put in my 20% off voucher and it also looks like Logitech are giving away free gifts as I had a M305 wireless mouse in my basket at no additional cost....


This got me thinking... 25% is a BIG discount and also with a free gift... it might be worth spending a bit more...Yes, I know I'm a bit of a sucker and they are probably about to release a new range but it does make sense for some good quality products and are going to be heavily used. 


So I ended up with the Logitech G Series Bundle G510 & G930 & G700 + a extra mouse for under £200. I think that's pretty awesome. I checked today and the free gift in my basket was some simple headphones but I think it changes daily. 


If my trusty old Creative Inspire GD580's weren't still doing the job I'd be digging out an old Logitech mouse to trade in for a discount on the Z906 speakers!




Reviews:
Bit-tech.net review of the G510
Engadget review of the G700 & G930 

Poor Sony Ericsson support

Just had feedback from Sony Ericsson that they do not stock / supply spare ear buds for this device and I have to try and seek them out from a service centre if they have any left. That's pretty poor service seeing as though they still list the product in their current portfolio.. Especially as this is a £70+ product! 

Why did they not just make them with the same common buds as most other SE earphones.... Luckily I haven't actually lost any yet but I only have medium buds....

A productive geeky day..

Ah finally a productive personal day.

Things have been really mounting up as of late!

Wrapped some Christmas presents, bought some more, replaced a hub with a switch in my network (hey it stilled worked OK!). On an interesting note, it was nice to see that the Xbox network cable is actually STP. Probably a good thing as well with all the power cables everywhere. I really need to do some cable management under my desk and bed (not they aren't the same).

I've also started pointing www.alpagot.net here as my old rubbish homepage didn't really need to be in the public domain and also I'm in the process of moving the domain from Talk Talk business which required a IPS tags change.

Interestingly enough my ADSL line has also been rock solid recently with a uptime of 23days! I was sadly quite impressed with that for the quality and distance of the line.

My next mini project I managed to get started on (again) is to overhaul my dad's website (Work in progress can be found at: www.alpagot.net/BSPPlumbingANDHeating) from it's current incarnation found at: www.bsp-limited.co.uk/flashes/intro.html

Xbox Live cloud profiles!

Woo hoo, from tomorrow Xbox live is going to be updated to support cloud profiles, it's long been a bugbear of mine with having to remember to carry my USB pen-drive between mine and the girlfriends!

Android Ice Cream Sandwich Source Code Released

Now that the code is officially out there it shouldn't be long before we start seeing devices with this on. The is the operating system google intends to merege the Operating systems of its tablet devices and phones together. Previously we have Gingerbread (2.x.x) for phones and Honeycomb (3.x.x) for tablets.

I know for a fact that someone over at XDA already has it up and running on a Motorola Xoom tablet (I must admit I've only looked at that devices forum as I own one).

Apple rant & suggestions

I had a friend talking to me about buying an iMac the other day and asking me what I thought. Now I don't own a Mac but I have supported and used the iMac in various job roles over the years and I've grown more accepting of the platform. Especially since they moved to Intel processors and had bootcamp come along. I advised it wasn't a bad choice as he's also musically orientated in his work / hobbies and I think he'd love software such as GarageBand.


Out of curiosity I was browsing the iMac product specifications and I seriously don't get some of the  hardware choices.


I can forgive things like eSATA being left out in favour of the new Thunderbolt interface but the rather confusing part for me when it comes to Apple is:


The iMac is a multimedia machine if you look at the specs, but if you look at the back you only have one analogue input / output port (well two if you count the headphones jack as well). No optical out.... No 5.1 jacks....


Next up is Video playback.. Not a problem you say? Correct! but just go and try and stick a Blu-ray disc in your iMac.... Yep, thats right, Apples 'supper drive' still doesn't support Blu-ray discs. If my PC can do it with a £50 addition I sure as hell would expect a iMac to. It's the creative industries choice workstation after all....


Ok, to counter my comments. I'm sure you can get add-on devices for sound output and for Blu-ray drives. iTunes and various other content provider offer downloadable services for movies but should I limited to these options and not be able to purchase physical media.


Come on Apple, you have some of the best displays on the market ( 2560x1440 pixels on the 27" iMac)! Actually on that topic, a touch screen OLED display would be awesome as well. Better quality OLED displays are set for 2012/13 and Tim Cook could do well to bring a few of these 'innovations' (I love how they use the word innovation to mean "we brought it to market in a user friendly way") to Apple to show everyone he's picked up the baton properly from Steve Jobs (RIP) and it's full steam ahead. 

HD Voice - UK operators

Wow, we still haven't got wide spread availability of 'HD Voice' and we're fast approaching 2012.... Then again the UK looks set to be one of the last European countries to jump on the 4G bandwagon as well. 


I hadn't looked at this for a bit but just did a quick check and its good to see that Three jumped on board this year to join Orange with availability but it would seem other operators are still dragging their feet. 


Probably the upgrade is costly or they are concerned about the disparity when their customers fall outside a 3G coverage area (required on both HD Voice handsets in order to function).


The magic phases you want to look out for our:
HD Voice,

G722.2

AMR-WB

Anyway, for more info, check out the Wikipedia link:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio

Boots.com Search fail!

So before I went on lunch I thought i'd pop onto the boots website to see what they had for my recently burnt arm:

I went with Savlon in the end.... 

The New Gmail

For all you Gmail users out there.

You might not have seen it yet but in the bottom right hand corner of your Gmail browser window will be a 'try the new Gmail' button. Give it ago, it's really cool and very user freindly!

Tip: Facebook permissions.

With Facebook being well established and users having used it for a good few years now it's well worth checking over your security settings regularly to protect what to do and do not want to share.

It's also worth making sure your doing as much as possible to protect unwanted access to that data. It's also wise to limited what can access that data.

What page that deals with your app's permissions is found here:

https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications

You'll be surprised at what might be on there. I had app's listed form years ago that I'd forgotten about (Graffiti, Yahoo, game promotion apps). Even with only the ones I wanted it's a pretty hefty list:

I'll cover other checks another time but I found this a rather quick and easy thing to tidy up & just felt like sharing it.

Fibre to the cabinet (UK)

I learnt a couple of new things today about FTTC. Firstly I got to see the master socket that gets installed with these new VDSL installs (This is what that £70 install buys you). 

It looks like the filter is now built into the socket. Whether that turns out to be a good or bad thing is yet to be seen. I suspect that it wouldn't be easy to replace from the looks of it. Not sure I like that.

Secondly, BT are using Huawei hardware (HG612) with PPoE. Pretty indifferent about that, IPoE would've been nice but I guess we're not there just yet... 

[Update] Check out my broadband page over on the right >
I have lots of broadband related links and info kept here!

Also the socket is made in three sections. There is a middle section that can be detached.

Tutorial: Animation snapshot in Maya.

I was looking for my old blog archives from previous ones I've had over the years as I wanted to pick out of the more interesting / informative entries (site content = visitors = ad revenue ) but I seem to have lost the archives. Needless to say, I still want some decent content for this blog so I'll stick up stuff I can dig out. Starting with this:  

Infinity sword! iPhone

Been checking this iPhone game out as I remember seeing posts raving about the quality. I must say I'm impressed. Here are some screenshots direct from the phone :

Ubuntu 11.10 Impressions a week on.

I haven't used Ubuntu since it implemented the Unity UI. Having had some time pass since its launch and, I thought it about time to give it a spin.

To be honest I'm not overly impressed with the UI. It isn't all that great to navigate and seems clunky. They have in fairness made for a less pain free experience in terms of 'install and go' with a lot of features working straight out of the box.

I was also bit surprised that it has not been able to detect my Nvidia GTX 275. This is something previous Ubuntu versions never had issues with.

The Ubuntu Software centre is a nice addition and I think this will help a lot of new users find what they are looking for but could do with some expansion on the search criteria.

In terms of day to day use it's pretty good thought! Libre Office works in it's usual seamless manner as well as most other productive software... I did have issues with WireShark picking up the right interface though.

My personal preference was to change the browser to Chromium and the music player to Amarok (especially if you use Lastfm's Scrobble feature). I'd probably recommend the novice user still steer clear for a little while longer (at least from unity anyway) but overall its a step in the right direction, it's nice to see some major development on a GUI for once.

New gadgets!

Been playing with a fair few new gadgets recently.

I got a great deal on some stereo Bluetooth Sony Ericsson HBH-IS800 (£35 eBay, new!!) headphones which are simply awesome! You need to be able to live with a relatively short battery life of 4 hours in use but for their size I think they are really impressive. The range and quality is top notch! 

I was a little concerned as the volume needs to be controlled by the device they are connected to but this didn't seem to be a problem on my HTC HD7, Motorola Xoom and even my Iphone 4 S. I had heard these used to have issues pre IOS4 on older Iphones. 

Next up, the girlfriend and me ended up randomly purchasing DJ Hero 2 in town at the weekend as it was like £18 a set. The below is what happened when we got home: 

Apart from the heavy bout of RSI I developed it was a good laugh! I actually find it a lot harder than guitar hero as there are soo many different things to do and being mixes, a lot of the songs are new to me so it's harder to anticipate what's going to happen next with the songs. 

Tesco Mobile UK - no personal hotspot feature.

Gutted, I got the Iphone 4 S as a replacement to my Windows Phone 7 (See you again in 12 months) HTC HD7 mainly as this did not have a wi-fi tethering option. Once my Iphone sim was activated I found that the Network ( Tesco Mobile) who has some fantastic offers on the handset with 1GB allowance does not allow this feature.

Bit confused as it seems pointless to give such a high cap and I want to use it with my Moto Xoom wifi tablet!

Just thought i'd post this in hopes that other potential Tesco mobile customers don't get less features than they were expecting when they make their purchase.

Testing.

Welcome to my website!

Please ignore this first post!  Enjoy the site!

EDIT: Just going to use this first post to list domains i've registerd so search spiders can pick them up and index them.

alpagot.co.uk
alpagot.net
maximumblogpage.co.uk

Domant:
niahs.co.uk (Needle in a hay stack) 
rta-it-solutions.co.uk      

Dad's buisness:
bsp-limited.co.uk
gasrepairwork.co.uk
plumbingrepairwork.co.uk
repairwork.biz