stupid computer
Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:23 pm
anyone know why my wireless keeps going ca-ca?
seems every now and then the signal just drops out or loses a lot of power, and only by fiddling and repositioning the aerial can i get all of it's paltry 11mbps back. i'm pretty certain its not shifting in between, neither is the router.
today wasnt so bad as the times when its icon's gone completely red and only moving the router itself will fix, but it went down to a mere 1mbps ... thought the net was hellish slow and acting up but couldnt figure it out.
stupid thing.
oh yeah............. if a clever boffin can make me some reccomendations on a load of gadgetry that would be muy muy bene:
# new firewall wireless router (g-band, must do UDP port forwarding)
# a cheap external "bridge" i can ethernet the old laptop into (or, lord-a-mercy, a non-cardbus PCMCIA wireless card that has win95b drivers*)
# printer-scanner combo - no larger than a HP Deskjet 800 series if possible, not an HP or Epson if it can be avoided, and separate black/colour cartridges or tanks. cheap as possible, though!
as i've had trouble with all of those recently (router is slow and peeing me off bigstyle anyway, need to net-up the laptop without going into the chaos room, printer has gone crazy and scanner is quite simply dead).
a really cheap new XP box for the express purpose of running XP apps i can't run on 98 ... particularly if there's some way to make it graphic-terminal controllable over the network rather than having to get it a screen, keyboard etc.
and a good, low cost palm pilot. black and white is fine, so long as it has the power to run a word processing app properly. A 16mhz Dragonball with the old skool graphics chip just hasnt quite enough clout to keep up with typing... and serial socket instead of USB would be nice..! Just something a little bit faster and more capacious than an m105 or IIIe!
* if you can find one of these, grab me one with USB sockets in as well so i can move out of the age of floppy discs and serial ports!
(or, a cheap, SMALL laptop which isnt treacle slow (doesnt need to blaze) and has 2+ hours battery)
seems every now and then the signal just drops out or loses a lot of power, and only by fiddling and repositioning the aerial can i get all of it's paltry 11mbps back. i'm pretty certain its not shifting in between, neither is the router.
today wasnt so bad as the times when its icon's gone completely red and only moving the router itself will fix, but it went down to a mere 1mbps ... thought the net was hellish slow and acting up but couldnt figure it out.
stupid thing.
oh yeah............. if a clever boffin can make me some reccomendations on a load of gadgetry that would be muy muy bene:
# new firewall wireless router (g-band, must do UDP port forwarding)
# a cheap external "bridge" i can ethernet the old laptop into (or, lord-a-mercy, a non-cardbus PCMCIA wireless card that has win95b drivers*)
# printer-scanner combo - no larger than a HP Deskjet 800 series if possible, not an HP or Epson if it can be avoided, and separate black/colour cartridges or tanks. cheap as possible, though!
as i've had trouble with all of those recently (router is slow and peeing me off bigstyle anyway, need to net-up the laptop without going into the chaos room, printer has gone crazy and scanner is quite simply dead).
a really cheap new XP box for the express purpose of running XP apps i can't run on 98 ... particularly if there's some way to make it graphic-terminal controllable over the network rather than having to get it a screen, keyboard etc.
and a good, low cost palm pilot. black and white is fine, so long as it has the power to run a word processing app properly. A 16mhz Dragonball with the old skool graphics chip just hasnt quite enough clout to keep up with typing... and serial socket instead of USB would be nice..! Just something a little bit faster and more capacious than an m105 or IIIe!
* if you can find one of these, grab me one with USB sockets in as well so i can move out of the age of floppy discs and serial ports!
(or, a cheap, SMALL laptop which isnt treacle slow (doesnt need to blaze) and has 2+ hours battery)