Today’s photo is short and sweet.  I will be selling the Dell PC below very soon, once I have finished using it to rip all my DVDs to MP4 files.

It is an excellent machine that does this job well. I could do it on my Mac but it is one of those things that you need to let it run without using the machine, which is not practical really.  The specifications are:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 processor (3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB cache)
• 4Gb RAM
• 300Gb Hard Disc
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium – English
• Internal PCI 802.11g Wireless Network Card
• 256MB ATI® Radeon™ HD 2400 XT graphics card
• Dell™ 22″ Black Wide Flat Panel (E228WFP) – UK/Irish
• Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse
• 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
• 19-in-1 Media Card reader
• USB Keyboard

I will pop a link to eBay when I list it should you wish to bid.

Having had my new MacBook Pro for a few weeks now I decided that it was time to seriously start thinking about regular and reliable backups in order to prevent problems if a failure or error on my part should occur.  It has happened to me before and it is not good.  Therefore I invested in a Time Capsule from Apple to wirelessly backup my MacBook and provide wireless access to the Internet.  He is how I set things up.

First of all let me say this.  Finding out how to set up the Time Capsule pre-sale was a little difficult.  You see for some reason the Time Capsule is exactly like a ‘normal’ wireless modem router only it doesn’t have a modem inside.  Therefore by itself it cannot connect directly to the Internet.  In order to connect it to the net you need to have a modem.  Of course I have a modem but it is not a dedicated modem, it comes in the form of a Belkin wireless modem router and I was having great difficulty in finding out from Apple, or anywhere else on the web for that matter whether it would work.

Well I can safely say that it does work.  The setup that I am currently using you can see in the diagram above.  So what I have is my original Belkin Wireless modem router plugged into the phone socket, accessing the Internet from Tiscali.  Then out of the 4 Ethernet ports at the back I have my Ethernet wires going around the house, when I completed my home networking, one of which is plugged into the time capsules Ethernet WAN port, which provides the Time Capsule with the Internet.  In the setup I have to use ‘Bridge Mode’ on the Time Capsule in order to get it working.  Then I setup a wireless network from the Time Capsule following the very simple steps in the Airport Utility that is already on your Mac (Leopard needed although the disc does come with the Time Capsule).

All my devices no connect to the Time Capsule which shares or routes the Internet to each device.  Also the Time Capsules built in 500Gb hard drive shows up as a network drive and so I have using that as my Time Machine drive when backing up all my Mac.  As usual a cracking piece of kit from Apple and very easy to setup.  Highly recommended.

This week my new MacBook Pro arrived diret from Apple after being delayed for about a week due to the entire product line (including my new Mac) being upgraded to better processors.

I have to say that I am impressed with it so far.  Everything about it speaks quality as well as the performance.  It houses an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz processor, a mighty 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb 7200rpm hard drive to storing all of my (ever growing) data.  Oh and it looks good too!

I am currently making use of an Apple Bluetooth mouse as I am really not a fan of touch pads, even though Apple have made some improvements to the one of the new MacBooks.  As yet I have really to put it through its paces with some intensive application work however no doubt in the near future that will happen and I will report back here.  For now enjoy this photo!

A wrote last week about the home networking of my house and the addition of hard wired connections into the new garage conversion.  Well over the last couple of days we have been trying to get it working and finally we have managed it.

It has been causing tremendous problems as it would simply not work.  Everything seemed to going fine, the cables were laid and then plugs put on one end of all four cables that were going into the router and then face plates on the opposite end to provide a socket on the wall.  However when a patch lead was plugged in and then into a computer nothing.

So we tried just putting as plug on the end of the wire coming out of the wall were the face plate would go on and it worked.  Therefore it was clear that it was the face plate connection.  I am not an expert on this but the plugs going into the router where wired as type B (the norm).  The faceplates were also wired type B and then a B to B patch lead to the computer.  This provides a ‘straight through’ connection but it wouldn’t work.  Therefore we did the face plates as type A crossing over the connection and then tried a straight through patch cable.  Still nothing!  Finally trying a cross over patch cable works, which makes sense as the connection is now crossed over twice.

Wierd but we at least have it working apart from the dining room port which we can only assume has a fault in the wire.

With the garage conversion in full swing I decided that it was time to do some home networking and get dedicated wired connections around the house.  There are several reasons for doing this, and with a little help from Matt it will be all fairly simple, if not hard work.

So you might be asking why I would want hard wired connections when I have a perfectly functioning wireless router that works a treat?  Good question.  The answer is two fold really.  The first reason, and the real reason why I am doing this is because I may well in the future invest in an AirPort Express Base Station from Apple so that I can stream my music from iTunes to a set of speakers in the new dining room which is part of the garage conversion.  I have found that streaming music (mp3) via a 54mbps router can be a little jumpy and therefore it is best to do it hard wired.  The second reason is that it is clearly better to have a wired connection as it is more reliable than wireless.

First job was to think about where the router would have to be placed so that I could get the wires around the house.  We quickly decided that we were not going to be tearing down walls and plasterboard and therefore we decided to go outside the house rather than inside.  So the router is going at the back of the TV in the lounge and the 4 wired ports in the router will be used to provide a wired connection to 4 rooms – the office (obviously), the new dining room and gym and finally Harry’s new nursery room.

So with the wires in place and tacked around the house it was time sort out the new garage conversion in terms of putting the boxes on the wall etc.  Those were screwed on and with there being no flooring or plasterboard there the wires were just tucked down the side of the floor boards.  Then we had to drill 4 holes.  Two behind the TV in the lounge to take the four wires out, 1 in Harry’s room and one through to the office.  Once they are all connected up with plugs and face plates its job done.  Here is a little video on the finished product.

This week saw the arrival of 3 new gadgets to my clutches.  A laptop (works really hence the ‘mostly’), my new iPod nano (after much deliberation as to which to buy) and an portable, external hard drive for carrying my documents and files around with me.  So how has mu experience of using these gadgets gone then?

Lets start with the laptop.  Although it shames me to say it I purchased a PC rather than a Mac.  The reasons were simple.  The laptop will be used to power the interactive whiteboard and work and the classes I teach all use Windows.  Therefore I could hardly demonstrate on a Mac and then let them use Windows.  Also price was a consideration.  I have to say though that I have regretted ever moment since the purchase.

Lets get this straight first of all, that if you want a laptop then the Toshiba Satellite Pro A300D is a good buy.  With an AMD Turion x 64 2GHz processor (Dual Core) and 3GB ram along with its 160GB hard disk the computer is great and provide ample computing power in order to do most tasks.  This is not were my fault lies.  As most laptops do these days, it came with Vista.  No problem there until you get to the fact that it was Vista Home Premium and you cannot marry Home Premium with a domain.  Therefore I would have to be wiped and rebuilt using Windows Vista Business (which can’t play DVDs and so on….).

The process seemed simple, you shut down, insert the Windows Vista Business DVD, reboot from the DVD drive and then let the disk do its job answering a few question here and there.  Then we booted and finished you download all the drivers from the Toshiba website, install them and hey presto you have a great spec laptop hooked up to the domain and away you go.  If only it was that simple.  Installing Vista Business was fine but the drivers afterwards, not so good.  I couldn’t get the display to work (in fact it is still not working properly – see below) and also the wireless card was not working and I just kept getting an error messages saying that the hardware was not present.  Armed with this failure I decided to plug in an Ethernet cable straight into the router (the LAN driver was fine) and then see if Vista could find the drivers itself.  It managed to find the Wireless Drivers but not the graphics card.  Therefore I went straight to the ATI website for the latest drivers.  I selected the one that it said on dabs.com were I bought the laptop, however although it displays correctly on the laptop I cannot get the external display to the projector to display in 16:9 aspect ratio or even letterbox mode.  I have had to settle with the projector cutting off the start menu!

Hassle from the word go are these PCs.  If it was an Apple you would literally just put the disc in and press go.  Petty we are not using Mac’s at work.  Talking Mac brings me onto Gadget number two for the week – the iPod.

In the end I decided to go for the iPod Nano 3rd generation (the square one).  They were going cheap on Apple’s refurbished stock store and therefore I picked up the 8GB model for less than £75.  Great value.  First impressions are good.  It is slim and small with excellent quality music and video playback.

Finally today my external hard disk arrive.  I went for a Seagate Freeagent portable drive with a 250GB capacity.  Again I have only had limited use so far but it is small and seems to connect to the laptop fine, which is what I intend to use it for.

P.S. sorry to Lisa Bettany for the title of this post, but it just seemed appropriate.  Visit her blog and you will see what I mean.