Belkin suck.

I do love to recommend stuff to people. I don’t like it when people make purchasing mistakes. So naturally, when I come across a piece of crap like this, I am going to make sure that I let everyone know that they shouldn’t buy the product. This router, of course, is no exception.

 

I have had this thing, if you could call it a router, for around a year and a half. It disconnects CONSTANTLY, and simply won’t connect for more than a minute when it is being used by the Mac, wired. Last time I checked, the router was supposed to be capable of fifty connections. Also last time I checked, my two computers aren’t twenty five computers each, that have some how been merged into one. While typing this, in other words, around two minutes, this gray shit has disconnected five or six times.

 

Obviously, I tried contacting Belkin tech support, to see what they could do to try and rectify the problem. First thing that they suggest is to change the channel that the router is transmitting on. That has NOTHING to do with my problem at all. I have changed the channel on numerous occasions to try and reduce the amount of times that the thing is disconnecting while the wired computer isn’t in use. It is quite clear that they simply shoot out emails that have all been pre-written. Phoning up tech support, and I find out that they have moved from a free phone number to a charged one, probably because there is plenty of money to be made from the huge amount of callers that are contacting them because their crap router doesn’t work at all.

 

I used D-Link in the past as well, and it was very much the same problem. Again, contacting their tech support was useless. In the end, I just gave up on that router and chucked that out.

 

I don’t recommend either of these companies’ routers. I would like to know, however, how many of you have bought routers recently, and your experiences with them. I have found reading reviews for all of them pointless, as every single review has given a different opinion.

Please feel free to comment on this post with your thoughts.

After five bloody months…

Small update:

So, got that overclock up on that E4300. Now, we are running at 3.24GHz. I am pretty happy with that result, it is a pretty big overclock. While I could go further, I don’t really want to ramp up the voltage more than it already is, as it is already pushing the limit. I might, however, do some quick playing around, to see if I can get that processor voltage down a little, and maybe a slightly higher clock.

 

I recently have been playing a lot of CS:S, and over the last week have been getting into DoD: Source, in particular, the new beta that has come out, that has introduced features found in the Orange Box games, in particular, HDR. I also managed to get some play with the new Race Driver: GRID demo. It is pretty darn good in my opinion, although it isn’t really a full on sim, it is still great fun. A game that I will definitely look into buying. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, is another game that I want to get. It seems to share the same bits that made the old game so good.

 

Finally, I recently bought some new Denon C-700 in-ears. For those who don’t know, these babies are £70, making them bang in the mid-range of the market. I haven’t broken them in completely yet, though they have helped me conclude; my iPod Shuffle needs to go, as it sounds crap, and that my first generation iPod (yes, the massive 10 gig thing) still sounds pretty great. I will give a more comprehensive write up as I listen to them more.

A rather late New Years Hello!

Hi guys, Happy New Year.

Finally got my rig up again, got the new cooler and case, got CS:S. which is fantastic, and COD2, old but fun. Since then, my MX1000 has died, I got a replacement with the wobble issue, and have now got a G5 Rev. 2, a stunning mouse.

Other news, Apple released their Macbook Air, in case you haven’t kept up. Three ports (headphone jack, mini DVI, and one USB) which sucks, and a huge price tag. Not much different at Apple then.

Rapidshare, the famous German file sharing site, was shut down today at 4:00, and their servers were seized. No arrests have been made, but they are considering legal action against people who have downloaded from the servers. No chance of them doing it, but let them consider.

EDIT: Seems to be rumors, as it is back up…

Update from a happy me…

So, after a week of waiting, I finally received my replacement board. Strangely, the old board was the much older black box model, the newer ones have blue boxes, and they have done for a few months. I am praying that this board overclocks well. All I need now is acetone, more commonly called nail varnish remover (amazing how often this is mentioned with enthusiasts), some MX-2 thermal paste, and a new cooler!

Games wise, I of couse will be getting the old, yet legendary, CS:S, and COD4. Maybe some cheap crap too…

Dead PC…

So, my PC has died. Motherboard I think is faulty, so I sent that back.

On the plus side, I am probably getting a Logitech G25 and some games for Christmas! For the meantime, I am stuck with the crappy old Mac, with a 19 inch display.

Just a small update, just proving I am not dead.

AMD ditches QuadFX

AMD recently decided that it was time to drop the dual CPU ‘QuadFX’ technology, that they introduced less than a year ago. This both surprised and didn’t surprise me, as I would have thought that AMD would have tried to push the technology, as most companies would, yet I was expecting it, considering that I have only heard of two people actually buying these systems. (If Chris Pirillo hasn’t, then that is one, but I am pretty sure that he has).

Still, things are looking really bad for AMD, they really need to get their act together if they are going to dominate the enthusiast market again. Both their desktop and laptop processors are worse value and slower than the Intel competition.

Again, more updates…

So, here it comes…

I have been trying out the latest Firefox 3 Beta. After using it for a couple of days, I noticed that it crashes less on PC than it does on Mac. It is also faster in all aspects. Browsing performance is quicker than it was before. In fact, I have enough of all those noobs saying that Safari is the fastest, it is slower than both IE7 and Firefox 2, let alone the third version. God knows what Firefox will be like when released officially.

Second, UT3. Again, there isn’t much that I can say here, other than it crashes under Vista. A lot. Whenever I disconnect from a server, it crashes. It crashes for no reason. So much for the Games For Windows certification then.

Talking of Vista, it is getting quite boring how people are constantly talking about Vista problems, and issues. The fact is, that for the most part, they have been sorted out. A few more small tweaks, and it will be a great operating system. I have no regrets whatsoever switching to Windows, I don’t think it is that different from the Mac, both seem natural, full of features., and easy to use.

Update…

Well, today I was on my computer, about to play some F.E.A.R Combat, when my router disconnects from my computer. So, I wait for it to reconnect, and try again. Behold, it does the same thing. I repeat this process about five or six times, until I give up. Not the first time I have had this issue, I had it with my D-Link long before, and with this several times. C’mon, can’t people even make a proper router nowadays?

Crysis was finally released. I tried the demo, and to be honest, I didn’t think it was that good. Graphically it was fantastic, but it isn’t really my kind of game.

ATI released their HD38xx series of cards, and, as seems to be the trend, it is slower than the nVidia cards. The 8800 still pwns it.

Anything positive then? Well, not really. My Vista experience has been going great, I have not had anymore crashes, nor have I had any problems. And, with Microsoft claiming that it has learnt a lot from the mistakes it made with the Vista launch, I am sure that the next Microsoft OS is going to be great.

The iPhone finally reaches the UK

After many months, the iPhone finally reaches us. Only with O2, the phone costs £269, and comes with either a £35, £45, or £55 contract for 18 months. As I have previously said, the iPhone is a great device, with a fantastic user interface, but there are just too many features missing to really make it the phone that it should be. Whether it is the bad camera, the stupid price, or the rather large size and weight, pretty much everyone will have a problem with it to some extent. Apple could really make this perfect phone (no denying, it is amazing already) with just a few modifications, or even with a simple firmware update. Flash would be useful, as well as a movable on screen keyboard. That price really does need to come down though, you shouldn’t have to pay so much for a phone when you can have a phone that has more features and is cheaper (but without the interface).

Macbook Pro owns itself.

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6900.html
Honestly, just look.

If you want to buy one, look here: http://www.computer-choppers.com/