Exploring the potential of Mobile Broadband

Being able to access the web and email while we’re on the move has transformed the way we work and enjoy our leisure time. Mobile broadband gives us the freedom...

Being able to access the web and email while we’re on the move has transformed the way we work and enjoy our leisure time. Mobile broadband gives us the freedom to surf whenever and pretty much wherever we like and it’s getting faster and cheaper all the time.

The fact that mobile broadband isn’t received through a fixed-modem line means that there’s no line rental to worry about either, which is a real plus point when you weigh up the benefits of just having a mobile phone and no landline. All you really need on top of that these days is a laptop, or better still, one of the smaller netbooks, and you’re ready to go.

A laptop can be had for just a few hundred pounds, and some broadband deals now throw this in for free as part of the package, while a netbook can often be had for less than a couple of hundred quid. Once you’ve got one of these little beauties all you need to do is shop around for a mobile broadband contract that’ll suit your needs and you’re ready to go.

Getting set up for mobile broadband is a doddle. With a contract or pay-as-you-go deal in place, you simply plug a small stick-like device known as a ‘dongle’ into an available USB slot on your chosen device and with a few simple clicks you’ll soon be accessing the web and email. This extends to pretty much any UK area, just as long as you’re in range of a mobile phone network signal.

There are some obstacles to watch out for along the way though. Mobile phone connections can sporadically break up, which can be very frustrating. Similarly, reception for mobile broadband can often be affected in much the same way. Coverage in major cities is by far the most dependable and it’s getting faster too with recent upgrades being announced by the likes of Vodafone, which now promises speeds of up to 14.4Mbps. However, the everyday reality could be much less than that.

Where there is copious network coverage you’ll find that it’s also easy to connect to the internet using the 3G mobile broadband network, and access to web pages and emails can be carried out swiftly and easily using this method, in much the same way as it can be done on many of the new smartphones available from the same network providers.

This means that catching up with content like movies, TV and radio shows via catch-up services is all the more easier. It also means that you can do this while you’re on the move, so long journeys or lengthy waits in places like airport departure lounges can now be whiled away in veritable luxury. There are data limits on most packages that you need to be wary of exceeding as there can be costly surcharges, but clarity on this can always be easily found in a providers terms and conditions.

The best way to get a handle on costs involved for mobile broadband is to check out a price comparison site like Mobile Broadband Genie that’ll not only give a comprehensive overview on the best deals, but they’ll also highlight the pro’s and con’s of each and every contract. Some deals may look good initially, but if you’re a heavy user then data usage limits on your downloads and penalties for exceeding them may turn that good deal into a dud.

Pay-as-you-go offers no contract but if you’re prepared to sign up for something like 12 or 18 months on a contract basis then there are plenty of deals that’ll throw in the dongle that you need plus lots of other perks that’ll make a monthly paid for service seem like a much better idea. This is particularly true if you’re a heavy internet and email user and expect to be online a lot.

You can land a basic mobile broadband contract from anywhere around £10 per month but naturally the cheaper the deal the more the limitations of the service. If you can stretch to something like £30 a month then you’ll immediately find that there is much less constraint on the amount of data you can download and upload, while some deals will also give you a laptop to take away and use as if it’s your own. The price you pay means it’ll basically cost you in the long run but it’s still a good deal for some users.

If you tend to travel overseas and want to use mobile broadband there then you should also be aware of the potential extra costs on that front. Simply using your existing contract and associated kit could end up turning out to be very expensive indeed. There are overseas mobile internet deals available, but they don’t come cheap so you need to work out how much you plan to be surfing overseas and work out a more cost effective option. Whatever the option you take, it is unlikely to be bargain-basement in terms of overall cost.

Meanwhile, if you invest in a mobile broadband contract back here in the UK then lookout for increased performance in the coming months. Mobile network companies are fiercely competitive and each one is constantly trying to outdo the other. However, there is still some way to go in terms of speed and efficiency of mobile broadband compared to its home-based rival. Virgin Media is now offering up to 50Mb speeds for some of its cable-based customers while mobile surfers cannot currently hope to get anywhere near that figure.

Nevertheless, with speeds ranging from 1Mb to 5Mb on average, the greatest plus point that mobile broadband affords its users is that you’re free to keep on working or enjoying that valuable leisure time of yours just about anywhere you choose to take your smartphone, laptop or netbook.

About the author: Rob Clymo writes on behalf of www.broadbandgenie.co.uk, the independent comparison website for broadband and mobile broadband.

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Amahi Home Server – The Free Alternative to Windows Home Server?

Over the past week my Windows Home Server box has been crashing, restarting and causing me and my family many problems.  It’s not been the first time this has happened. ...

Over the past week my Windows Home Server box has been crashing, restarting and causing me and my family many problems.  It’s not been the first time this has happened.  A couple of times now I have managed to rescue data from it before re-installing Windows Home Server on the same machine and starting again.

I decided to ask people on Twitter if they knew of an alternative to Windows Home Server.  I chat to quite a few Linux geeks on Twitter and they’re always trying to get me off my Windows machines.  I’m not a fan boy but I do use Microsoft operating systems normally because I can run all kinds of software and games that I wouldn’t be able to with Linux.  This wasn’t really a concern for a server.  All I wanted were back-ups and some shared folders that could be accessed across my home network.

A great guy on Twitter named Simon Doyle (@sidolye) suggested that I should take a look at Amahi so I did.  I was very impressed with what I saw looking around the website and was sold on installing it after reading some of the testimonials.

First of all I needed to download myself a Fedora 10 Installation DVD (Fedora 11 isn’t supported with Amahi yet) which I got from here.  Don’t do what I did in my haste and excitement though – I stupidly downloaded the PPC version which is of course for Power PC Mac’s – that’s not going to work on a home built PC with an AMD64 processor.  You need the i386 version.   I’m not sure if the x64 version is supported for Amahi but I guess not. EDIT: The x64 version is also supported so you could also use that if you have a 64bit CPU.

Installation of Fedora 10 was a breeze.  I have installed various Linux distributions in the past but I’m no expert.  I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it as long as they read the on-screen instructions.

Unfortunately I didn’t read the instructions for the installation of Fedora on the Amahi installation page!  I should have added a software repository for Amahi during the installation.  I mistaken thought that it wouldn’t matter and that I’d be able to add the software repository address after Fedora was up and running – you can’t!  You can read these instructions which I didn’t and caused me to have to reinstall Fedora from here.  You’ll kick yourself if you don’t read them!

If you install Fedora with the Amahi repository correctly by following the instructions, installation is so easy!  It’s just as easy as installing Windows Home Server (which is just like installing Windows XP).  I guess that it took around 30 minutes.

I won’t go into every step of the installation process, just make sure you read the instructions over at the Amahi site and you’ll have no problem whatsoever.

If you’re interested in the spec of the machine I’m now running Fedora 10 and Amahi on here you go.

Once everything was installed and up and running per the instructions I turned off DHCP on my router (read the instructions before doing this), set-up a few static IP addresses for the 3 PC’s at home and everything worked well.  Amahi uses OpenDNS which is a good choice for DNS IMHO but I think this is something that can be changed if you’d like.

One of the main reasons for me having a server at home is for back-ups.  These are easily set-up through Windows 7 which is the OS I’m using on all 3 PC’s at home at the moment.  It’s just a case of visiting the Control Panel, going to the Back-up and Restore page, selecting the network location and running through a wizard.  This isn’t as nice as the back-up system in Windows Home Server but it’s simple and does the job just as well.  I have created a back-ups folder of the server for each machine.  For example: \\hda\luke\backup and \\hda\mandy\backup etc.

The other reason I have a server at home is so that media files can be accessed from any PC that happens to be on and files aren’t duplicated across machines.  I have all of my music in a shared folder on the server so someone in the living room can be listening to something, I can jump on my PC and also have access to the same music folders.  The same could be done with photos, videos or any other files that need to be accessed from multiple machines.  The only issue I have found with Amahi is that because it is running on Fedora and not a Windows machine, the files and folders aren’t indexed in a way that Windows 7 understands.  This means that folders on the server can’t be included in “Libraries”. Continue reading »

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Removing Linux Grub & Restoring Windows 7 Boot GUI

Recently I had been playing with Kubuntu on my Windows 7 machine.  Don’t get me wrong, Kubuntu and other Linux distributions are great.  I wanted to remove it because I...

Recently I had been playing with Kubuntu on my Windows 7 machine.  Don’t get me wrong, Kubuntu and other Linux distributions are great.  I wanted to remove it because I wasn’t really using it anymore and I was getting sick of booting my machine and forgetting to change the GRUB option at start-up to boot into Windows 7.

I know that the GRUB can be edited so that Windows 7 would boot first but I no-longer had the need for Kubuntu so I wanted to remove it all together including the GRUB.

First of all I made a really dumb n00b error of booting into Windows 7 and deleting the partitions that Kubuntu occupied.  Of course, the GRUB remained and my computer wouldn’t even start.  To get back to being able to boot again, I inserted my Kubuntu DVD and re-installed so the GRUB would work again.

Now I thought, maybe EasyBCD would be able to remove the GRUB from within Windows 7 and then I could delete the Kubuntu partitions again.  Unfortunately EasyBCD could not do this.

My next plan was to boot from my Windows 7 DVD and use the option to fix start-up errors.  This was not a good plan either.  The GRUB remained but I now had a Windows Vista GUI start-up instead of the much more pretty Windows 7 one.

I decided to do some research before making anymore stupid mistakes – RTFM comes to mind.

So I discovered that the first step to remove the GRUB (and Kubuntu or other disto of Linux) is to boot from your Windows 7 DVD, select your language and then to choose the repair option.

At the repair option you should choose the command prompt and use the command: bootsect /nt60 C:

Now restart your computer and Windows 7 should boot without entering the GRUB because this has been removed from your machine.

If you have somehow got the old Windows Vista start-up GUI displaying on start-up, then you should wait for your computer to boot into Windows 7 and run the command prompt as an Administrator.  To get the Windows 7 GUI start-up back, use the following command: bootrec /fixmbr

Once you’re happy that your computer is booting without the GRUB and directly into Windows 7 you can remove all traces of the Linux distribution going into Disk Management (Windows Key + R and type diskmgmt.msc). Simply delete the partitions and then expand the rest of the drive containing data to fill the empty space.

The above is just a brief overview of what I did but if you have any questions or would like anything in more detail, please contact me or leave a comment.

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Wii Softmod to use Back-ups

Firstly, I cannot take any credit for the files or the method for soft modding the Wii.  I am merely sharing information that I have discovered from searching the Internet. ...

Firstly, I cannot take any credit for the files or the method for soft modding the Wii.  I am merely sharing information that I have discovered from searching the Internet.  After much searching, the easiest method was found through a torrent site but was originally from this great site: http://www.wiiguide.co.cc/

I have used this method twice, both times this worked and took less than 10 minutes to compete from start to finish.  This method requires you to have a Microsoft Windows based PC.  I’ am running Windows 7 x64 and this was fine.

Firstly you will need to download these files: download here

Next you will need an SD card which is formatted correctly.  To format the card, I recommend using Panasonic SD formatting tool (2.0) which can be downloaded from here.

After this, I read though the PDF below which can also be found in the Zip file that was downloaded earlier

Wii Soft Mod Ding for Dummies v4.1

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Using an Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive on a Windows PC

I’ve not actually got an Xbox 360 or the HD DVD add-on drive but I’ve been doing a bit of research as in the past couple of weeks, two people...

I’ve not actually got an Xbox 360 or the HD DVD add-on drive but I’ve been doing a bit of research as in the past couple of weeks, two people I know have been trying to get the drive to work on their Windows PC’s.

In the course of my research I have discovered that it’s easy to install the device but more difficult to find software for HD DVD playback.

To install the device; simply connect it to your Windows driven PC.  The device is plug and play and will install in little time.  If there are any prompts when installing (such as one asking you to use Windows update to find drivers) click yes and next etc until driver installation is complete.

Once the drivers for the device have installed, insert a HD DVD disc to make sure the files on the disc are readable.  If so continue to the next step.

This step can be skipped if running Windows Vista or Windows 7 (I believe).  For Windows XP users however, the Blueprint UDF reader should be downloaded and installed.

Download the UDF reader from here, unzip the contents, read the readme.txt file, follow the instructions and install.

Now, to play anything you’ll need a player capable of playing HD DVD movies.  Cyberlink has removed all HD DVD functionality from the later versions of PowerDVD (as HD DVD is now officially dead) but you can download PowerDVD 6.5 HD which does support HD DVD.

Download PowerDVD 6.5 HD
Download HERE (hosted with RapidSpread which is a free service that distributes your files to several file hosting providers).

AFAIK, these instructions will work but if you do have any problems feel free to leave comments or contact me.

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