mluker.com

I cracked the screen on my Palm Pre and had to get a replacement from sprint. Once I got the new phone I logged into my Palm profile and all of my accounts (gmail, facebook, email, etc) were there waiting for me! Well, I had to re-enter my passwords. This is where the trouble started with Google calendar and Gmail. Let me explain.

• On Wifi Google synced properly.
• Off Wifi Google prompts for password and no matter what I enter it says invalid username/password.

Solution! Delete all Google accounts and log into Gmail via the web browser. Keep the browser open, open a new card for creating a new Google contacts account. Create the account and presto.

It’s been a full day since the setup of my new computer gear. So far I have had no issues with any of the hardware. What did I get you ask. Wonder no more! I purchased a new wireless N router and bridge, duh.

To be exact see below:

• D-Link DIR-825 Dual Band N Gigabit Router
• D-Link DAP-1522 Wireless Bridge/Access Point

I went with wireless N because my PS3 was having problems streaming high bitrate video over my G network. The D-Link DIR-825 is a nice router. It allows you to control what runs on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. I put all of the wireless devices in my house on the G band except my work laptop and my PS3. They are luckily enough to support N. It also has options for VLANS, Guest internet zones, syslog support, etc. It has a very rich feature set. Now for the results.

File Transfers:

• Wireless G laptop to wired PC reached file transfers speeds of 1-3 mb/s.
• Wireless N laptop to wired PC reached file transfers speeds of 8-10 mb/s.
• PS3 had NO trouble streaming high bitrate HD movies from the network.
• Wireless G connection showed a fairly constant 54mb connection.
• Wireless N connection bounced from 80mb to 300mb connection speeds.

Overall I am glad I made the plunge into the N arena. It’s much faster and I can definitely notice the speed boost. The downfall is the range of the 5GHz band it seems to be half that of 2.4GHz band. Oh, I almost forgot about the set up and configuration. It was a was breeze! I did it manually without using the supplied install CD’s. I recommend yo do the same. What are you waiting for? Go get N!

Check out the moves Alison has! I think Julie taught her the move at 0:33.

I recently bought a Kodak Zi8 camcorder based on a recommendation from a friend. Below is a sample video of Alison shopping in 720p HD. As you can see it takes very good video for a small $179.99 camcorder.

I cant speak about the gaming side of the Ps3 as I have not used it yet. I bought mine to stream netflix and local media. Here are the issues I have had to far.

Accessing network media using:

windows 7 media center server.

• Doesn’t always show music in sub folders.
• Only shows AVI files in the xvid format
• Video quality 7 out of 10

PlayOn

• Costs $40
• Music play back was kind of slow
• Allowed me to play all of my video types (m4v, mp4, mkv, etc)
• Netflix streaming was acceptable but there interface is nothing compared to the netflix disk you can get from netflix.
• Video quality 6 out of 10

Ps3MediaSserver (java application)

• Free!
• Amazing!
• Plays every format you can throw at it. If it needs to transcode on the fly it will.
• Video quality 10 out of 10

Netflix supplied disk for Ps3

• FAR superior video and user interface than any others I tried. A++!

I spent 2 hours playing with Playon and the Wii. The results were sub par for the combo. The video quality was horrible, the interface was clunky and the audio sucked. I don’t blame Playon for this tragic accident. It’s the Wii fault. The playback quality issues were present because Playon has to transcode the stream to FLV on the fly for the Wii. I have heard the quality for XBox 360 and PS3 is superb. I wont be using playon anytime soon unless I get a PS3 or 360.

I am trying to sell my Wii for $300 or trade for PS3. Here are the specs.

• Wii Console with 2 controllers w/recharging station and all accessories
• Guitar Hero w/guitar
• Preloaded with Homebrew. WTF is Homebrew?
• 100+ games on a new 250gb my passport essential harddrive

Do to my recent upgrade, I am selling my old custom built, by me, computer and the Dell 19″ LCD monitor. All of the parts were purchased from newegg.com on 4/4/2005. I am asking $250. Here are the specs:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.2E Prescott 3.2GHz Socket 478 Single-Core Processor Model BX80546PG3200E
• ZALMAN CNPS7000B-Cu LED 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan (CPU)
• ZALMAN VF700-CU 2 Ball VGA COOLER (GPU)
• Western Digital Caviar SE WD2000JB 200GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 3.5″ Hard Drive
• (2gig total) 4x Crucial 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory
• ABIT IC7-G MAXII 478 Intel 875P ATX Intel Motherboard
• VANTEC 10″ Clear/Silver Floppy drive round cable
• Antec TruePower TRUEBLUE 480 480W ATX12V Power Supply
• XFX PVT43ANDF7 GeForce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card
• LITE-ON DVD Burner Beige IDE Model
• Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000SWA Silver Aluminum Modern Dream Tower Chassis Computer Case
• Windows Vista Ultimate (unless I don’t know you, then no OS.)
• Dell 19″ Flat Panel LCD

You can see all of the pictures here. You can contact me at ‘mluker@ mluker.com’ if you are interested.

I just purchased a new computer! Its a Dell XPS 8000. The specs are sick. Here comes the nerd porn:

• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English (will be installing Windows 7 Ultimate)
• Intel® Core™ i7-860 processor(8MB Cache, 2.80GHz)
• 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz – 4 DIMMs
• 24″ Dell ST2410 Full High Definition Monitor (for Julie, I already have a 24″)
• 1024MB nVidia GeForce GT220
• 1TB – 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
• 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
• Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

The best part about it was the price, it was only $1,100 out the door! I have a feeling Visual Studio is going to load much better now.

Thanks for deleting that file, msims32.dll, you thought you didn’t need. That really made me happy when my PC wouldn’t boot. Oh, and thanks again for allowing me to enter a DOS prompt after creating a Vista Recovery Disk. It really made it easier to restore the file that you thought you didn’t need.