Tech Review - BTC 5113RF Wireless Keyboard

I was looking for a wireless keyboard with a built in mouse. There aren't many on the market so I just searched around until I found one that I thought would fit my needs (Ahem, price).

Searching on eBay I found a bunch of listings for the same wireless keyboard with built in mouse. Most from the same seller. This should have sent alarm bells going off in my head. I tried searching for user reviews of the keyboard but couldn't find any.

All in all I thought the price was reasonable, $29 including shipping (If it seems to good to be true).

The keyboard arrived and I am first greeted by poorly written instructions, that being Chinese English and didn't even explain what the additional keys on top were for.

It said that you had to change some dip switch settings on the keyboard and receiver which I thought was odd but I did it anyway.

I plugged it in, crossed my fingers and booted up my computer. I saw that the receiver did light up indicating that the operating system had detected it as a keyboard, that was good and that's about as far as it got.

I tried multiple dip switch configurations, swapped out batteries and have tried everything I know but I can't get the darn thing to work.

Now that I have the product model number I have been able to do some research and see that it is problematic across the board. I also see that a computer liquidator had been selling these keyboards last year for $4.99! Not including shipping but even with shipping it was less that 1/3 of the price I paid, but even the web site I found that was selling them at that price people said to stay away.

S

Bonehead Home Networking

In less than 2 weeks my USB WiFi antennae quit working on me. When it was working I wasn't getting the WiFi security I wanted and the connection was spotty at best.

Back to square one. Didn't want to buy another WiFi antennae. And then it hits me, I had the correct component all along! My ADSL router. In less than 5 minutes I plugged in the router (Tucked it out of the way in the entertainment center), ran an Ethernet cable from the PC's Ethernet port to the router, added a static IP address to my PC's network card (Geek speak) using the router as it's gateway and shared out the Wireless broadband connection to use the PC's network card.

End result? When I connect to the wireless broadband network the connection is shared out through the network card into the wireless router where I can now connect with my netbook and Chris laptop using higher WiFi (WPA2) encryption (That's the coffee talking).

I deserve the bonehead geek of the week badge!

Multimedia Headache Central

My eMachine computer, receiver and television. Actually I might just get rid of the DVD player as the computer has a DVD player. Note the keyboard and mouse to the right of the center speaker.

This may not be an authorized photo from my wife, we'll see after I post it!

Partial Geek Success

When we got rid of our fixed line ADSL package and went for the wireless dongle I figured no problem, I'll hook it up to our main computer and share out the connection, or so I thought.

Not to get into real deep geek speak, I'll just say that our main computer did not like going from a fresh reinstall to XP Service Pack 3. Fact is I found knowledge base article from Microsoft attesting to my problems are from the Service Pack, that I can't uninstall. So I couldn't use our main computer to share out the connection, for now I would try my netbook.

It took two frustrating nights of trying but I finally nailed it, having to give my other computer a static IP address on its wifi adapter as it wasn't picking one up from the netbook.

Amazingly I am getting 384kb on the shared computer, which isn't bad. The main thing I need to do is test the Skype call quality.

So for you geeks that want to know how to share out your laptop/netbook's wifi connection here is how I did it:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/adhoc.mspx

Multi Media = Multi Headaches

Ever since I have received all of the parts to make my multimedia center, things haven't exactly fallen into place.

The video card installed easily enough but there are some annoying pop up error when the computer starts. I found the fix on a forum, just need to get around to it.

The wireless antennae was a little buggy at first but after downloading the latest drivers it has been doing a great job.

I have hardly any hard drive space. I used to think of that as totally unnecessary, but now that I have taken up downloading certain files, I realized how quickly hard drive space fills up.

Initially I setup my computer in one of the side compartments in the entertainment center, problem was some of the cords were to short and they stretched this way and that. It looked like spaghetti and I decided the thing to do was move it closer the receiver. So I disconnected everything and moved it closer to the receiver, big mistake. The receiver by itself generates a good amount of heat, the computer generates a good amount of heat, put them in the same compartment and I have an oven! Time for Plan "C" and move it again.

My ADSL broadband, fugget about it. I put in a request to have it disconnected.

The Upgrade Downgrade - Epilogue

Ever since our ADSL broadband service has been upgraded there has been one small problem, it hadn't been upgraded. I checked our router and it showed 4MB service (Although we didn't request that) but our results were closer to dial up speeds. When I checked our line speed online, I was right, it was closer to dial up speeds, in some cases even slower!

I did what I should have done a long time ago. I walked across the street to the cell phone store and in less than 10 minutes had purchases a USB wireless device with 1+MB download speeds already activated and ready to go. The neat thing about this is we can use it anywhere in Sri Lanka.

I brought it home, installed the software and instant 1-1.5MB line speed. Here we waited well over a month to get our ADSL upgraded, only to have it get times worse, where we now have wireless broadband for less than half the monthly rate we were going to pay. Incredible.

It's going to be interesting to see how long it will take to have our broadband disconnected from the phone company. That and there is no way we are going to pay for a 4MB line that delivered dial up speeds!

The One Phone Call - Upgrade Dowgrade

So that's all it took, one phone call to the right person at the phone company to get our ADSL upgraded, and I'm not sure that the apartment management did it.

Here's the story. I get a call from the apartment management this morning and they told me that my Internet service has indeed been upgraded, again. She tells me that I have been upgraded to a 4MB service (Although I had only requested 2MB), to confirm everything she tells me what she believes is my phone number, it's not. I know for a fact our neighbor across the hall has a 4MB connection to which I told her, it's probably him that the phone company was referring to.

I was visiting the company's phone techs and brought one of them a shirt that was to large for me. I told them the latest and greatest with my situation. The guy I gave the shirt to asked me my phone number and said he would make a phone call to the telephone company. I went to my office and no sooner entered that my colleague told me the phone company had called and said I would have upgraded ADSL by close of business.

I arrive home and low and behold, yes, it was upgraded, to 4MB which I didn't want, but it was upgraded.

Also the rest of my parts to connect the computer to my plasma tv arrived. Sadly the video card that I ordered was not what I expected. I swear I researched and read every review I could find, I swear I thought it had a DVI port, but it didn't.

The wireless antennae turned into a slight nightmare. It installed easy enough, but was a huge headache to connect to my wireless network. The problem was Symantec Endpoint Protection, don't use it.

The ATI Radeon 9250 video card seemingly installed easy enough, but lots of pop up errors when the computer starts up. I attribute this to Symantec as well. When I get around to it I am going to compeletly uninstall the software package and reinstall. The computer is a little old and slow to boot up so I'm not exactly looking forward to this venture.

Oh, the 4MB ADSL? Not as good as expected. I thought with 4MB service we could watch streaming videos with no problem, hardly. Mind you, better than 512kb, but not great. Did notice typical downloads were much quicker though.

Yeah the picture has absolutely nothing to do with computers : )

The Upgrade Downgrade Continues

Still no luck getting our Internet service upgraded to 2MB. The apartment wants to send their phone tech out again as "There is something wrong with the phone line", when there is NOTHING wrong with the phone line, the problem is nobody from the apartment management has submitted a request to the phone company to upgrade our service.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

The Upgrade Downgrade

The nice thing about our apartment is that it includes free ADSL Internet service at 512kb download speeds. Well, it's supposed to, but closer to 384kb or less in reality. I have wanted to upgrade our service to a 2 Megabyte line and after dragging my feet finally got started on the quest.

I started at work and submitted the request, no problem I was told. Then the days went by and I inquired and was told that my Internet service had indeed been upgraded, but indeed it had not. So I tried with the apartment management who sent a phone tech out, he spent a half an hour with talking with the phone company only to tell me that my Internet service had been upgraded I had to reconfigure my router. Somehow I knew that this was a total farce but I did it anyway, resetting it to factory defaults, but no 2MB service. So I called the phone company and they told me that it had not been upgraded. They also suggested that I go directly to their office and submit a request.

I leave for the phone company office at one building only to be told that I had to go to a phone company office at another building. There I had to take a number and wait forever, only to be told by the customer service representative that only the apartment management can submit the request (Because they own the internal phone lines).

I was able to get in touch with someone with the apartment management who said she would check into it and call me right back, right back has been three days ago and I have yet to be able to reach her since.

I checked at work and was told that they had been in touch with someone at the apartment management and will be doing something about it.

This whole fiasco has been going on for well over 3 weeks!

BlackBerry's

Well I have a BlackBerry (BB for now) issued to me again, complete waste of money. It's not that I am so important that I need to be tethered to my email 24/7 and respond at a moments notice.

Fact is there is very little, if nothing I can by just responding to an email from home.

It's not as if I'm not a "Team player" or anything, but a cell phone would do me just as well.

Now I'll admit surfing the net when I am bored is pretty cool, and it makes a nice alarm clock as it does have a setting where the alarm clock won't turn on during weekends.

I've already been brow beat a little for not checking my BB during the weekend from the boss as he sent me something then realizing I hadn't checked my BB he called me. Hint duly noted.

Internet Connection - Good and Bad

It was really cool that I had a Internet ADSL connection when I arrived complete with wireless router. It's around $30 per month, affordable. It's supplied by the apartment, but thats where there is a problem. I was hoping to get a faster connection but apparently you can't change the plan. It's also a little buggy, it has dropped on me a few times, picked back up, more irritating than anything else. It definitely has its slow periods to : (

Gadget Review - Skype for PocketPC

So I bought a used HP Ipaq 4700 around two years ago for whatever reason and was really excited when Skype developed a version for PocketPC. Initially it was model specific, so you had to find your model, download the software and install. It didn't work. Then Skype came out with an all around version for all PocketPC's, it almost worked, but when I tried to make a call the program would quit. Well I overheard someone saying how he has been using Skype on his Ipaq and I thought, well it should work for mine then. So I went back to the Skype download site and see that the latest version was something like 2.2.0.32 where I had version 2.2.0.23, would it make a difference? YES! I can actually get Skype to work on my Ipaq now. The point? So anytime I am at someplace that has a WiFi hotspot I can logon to Skype via my handheld and make a call : )
If I am really geeky (Okay, so I am), I also have a Bluetooth headset for my Ipaq, so I can use this in conjunction with my Ipaq just like a cellphone.

Now really what I would like is a PocketPC capable cellphone, then I can have the best of both worlds : )