Widnows vs Linux vs Apple

I have been called out to three clients with Windoze machines in the last three weeks 'cos they could not find a user friendly way to install:

a) a printer
b) a webcam
c) a sapo router

Windows user friendly??????....Ha!

However, I was called to transfer a client's data from his old XP laptop to a brand spanking new Apple 15" Macbook Pro... what a dream!

It's a BMW of PC's! The client who has always felt challenged by his XP machine was roaring around on it when I arrived. However, linux knowledge was useful to configure the inbuilt samba server to talk the XP machine. Mac OS X and upwards is unix (forbear of linux) under the hood.

Very user friendly but these machines are pricey.

However, interesting to note that FNAC in Guia are pushing them big time.

Furthermore, like Linux, with an Apple OSX machine you can select your install language on first boot so there is little risk of buying a laptop in Portugal with Windows aboard and find its installed in Portuguese and then have to buy another copy of Windows in English and do a fresh reinstall.

XP/VIsta Switching between 3g Mobile accounts

A technical question:

System: Windows XP/Vista

I travel a lot and have 2 3g dongles/providers -

One from say from Vodafone UK
One from say Vodafone Portugal

Each dongle is tied to the indvidual sim/provider and is blocked.

Can I configure dial-up software in XP to recognise each individual dongle when I plug it in, instead of having to reconfigure it each time I switch accounts.

Any thoughts would be useful.

Thanks

Alentjeo Adsl Woes

Why don't you consider a 3G pay as you go dongle to start with as discussed above.

I have to comment that as you are at Zambujeira, I suspect that even when you get your line in, broadband speeds will be at the bottom end of the advertised range. I am not sure where the local sub-exchange is, but I doubt that adsl speeds in that part of the Alentejo will not be great and if you are more than 2-3 kms from the local DSLAM, and dependent on overhead cables, expect climatic conditions to regularly impact on the line quality. Also, make sure your the electrics on property is properly earthed, keep a spare adsl router in the cupboard as lightning strikes and power cuts regularly fry these units.

I was called to a client a couple of years ago, situated between Lagos and Burgau. They needed broadband. Their phone line had a history of regularly frying fax machines owing to lightning strikes on overhead phone cables. I refused consequently to install Sapo over the landline because I could see what was going to happen, (i.e regularly fried modems/routers). I did however, rig them up a vodafone dongle on a yearly contract. I then attached this to a router and at one stage they had up to five machines running on it, although I would not normally recommend more than two or max three machines over such a system. I subsequently installed a similar system at Ingrina near Vila de Bispo where a property was to far from the exchange to install adsl over the landline.

The problem with a dongle solution will probably traffic volume as data transmission rates over the 3G network will be higher than over landline.

Setting Different Character Sets in MYSQL/PHP

I encountered a problem this week while updating the http://www.dancaiberica.org website for Dance Algarve 2010.

The site runs off a PHP/Myssql Database setup hosted on Godaddy shared hosting and servers pages in 4 different languages. This year I introduced a javascript dropdown menu that required the strict code in the header.

All was fine until the page were served up. Despite the fact the collation in the database is set to Latin_bin_1 and the following line is included in the header

meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8",

certain browsers were not rendering the Portuguese Characters correctly unless you manually changed the encoding in the browser each time one viewed the page. Needless to say the main culprit behind all this was Microsoft whose IE6/7/8 caused the original problem.

Anyway, after a bit of searching I found the following thread that resolved the issue:

http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?103,46870,247882#msg-247882

Simple:

Add

"mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");"

to your php database connection string/file.

Problem solved!

Wifi

[quote="micas"]Please... experts out there, can someone explain to me how it works?
In simple language one can actually understand.
[/quote]

Wifi is essentially a system for transmission of data signals between computers and/or computer like devices over a limited range. The technology can therefore be used in homes, businesses and in compact public places to allow computers to connect to each other or to internet access facilities (usually know as routers) in the absence of cables.

Most laptop computers today and mobile phones such as the Apple Iphone
have built in wifi antennas.

One can also encounter WIFI signs in places such as motorway service areas. This usually means that if one has the correct access account one can use the short distance wifi facility to connect to the Service Area router and via that access the internet.

3g Wifi Dongles with router

As regards using dongles with laptops, it is technically possible to connect one to certain models of routers with built in usb ports and then share the signal.

I have done this twice for clients here near Lagos. However, bandwith and speed are less than a Sapo connection. In both my cases, these were rural hostelries. At one stage, one had five pc's working on the system although the webpage load times were relatively slow when all five were being used.

The other unit has two computers operating (the owner's XP machine and a linux/ubuntu guest machine) and these work fine, although there can be periodic signal drops.

The problem is that most commercially available routers that work with dongles are quite expensive. I managed, however, to find a freeware firmware download from a guy in the Czech Republic which allowed me to flash the bios of a relatively cheap Asus router (€ 75.00) and connect the Vodafone Dongle.

www.zapp.pt offer a wireless internet solution here in Portugal also using old radio-telephone frequencies. They also offer a router option. See http://www.zapp.pt/equipamento/routerasus.php.

As mentioned above, and I cannot emphasize this enough, do not buy any gear until you are absolutely sure that you can receive not only a good mobile signal but a good 3G mobile signal. A normal GPRS mobile signal will only transmit data at 64 kpbs/sec. (Not much more than old dial-up) You must make sure that you can receive a good 3G signal to get speeds approaching broadband velocity.

Scrabble Maniacs and Linux

Screenshot of wordbiz 1.8 running on ubuntu 9.04 on an Acer 4310 Laptop.

For use with Internet Scrabble Club - http://www.isc.ro/

(Click to enlarge:)