Wireless Netbook Question

This can be a real pain. My other half has an Asus EEEPC which I got her and I have an Acer Laptop and despite my best efforts we often have odd problems with hotel wifi installations. I should point out that both machines run Linux.

The Asus EEEPC suffers sometimes from having to many "dead" wireless connections in its database. This happens when you visit a lot of wifi locations that you will never use again (e.g. hotels ) in a short period. It is always a good idea to clean out your wifi connection points database periodically.

With my Acer, the problem turned out to be the fact that is was designed 3 years ago and has an old spec onboard wifi card. Once I disabled that....by stripping the laptop down as there was no option to do so in the bios, and then fitting an external wifi usb dongle, 90% of the problems went away.

Another point is that often hotels and hostelries have no one in-house that understands their wifi systems. I look after two such installations and I have, after much hassling, have finally got the staff trained "Pavlov" style to text me the moment the wifi goes down. Often a router reboot sorts it. However, where one has installations involving a router, a couple of access points, a bridge, it can be more complicated.

A final point, if you can find the setting in your wifi control panel, make sure that the channel select setting is set to Auto. Wifi can be broadcaat on anything up to 16 channels I think and this can complicate matter. Setting channel selection to Auto can often resolve this.

The Difference between Linux Distributions and Windows

Linux is an operating system.

Ubuntu Linux is a sub-distribution/flavour/variety of the Linux operating system and to complicate matters is based on the Debian distribution of Linux ....

Structure is like this

Linux
......... Debian
....................Ubuntu

Why so many?

Linux is for hyper nerds like Linus Torvalds (initial developer of Linux) and Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu and 1st South African into Space)

Debian is for super nerds.....

Ubuntu is for you and me, and is a user-friendly system evolved from above with GUI's (graphic user interfaces) and designed to operate like Widnows and Mac OSX.

Linux is based on the UNIX OS developed in the '70's and '80's.

The architecture of Linux systems does not allow for 99.9% of scripts/programs to run with out the adminsitrators permission, unlike Windows systems, where .exe., .com and some .dll files can run, without permission, as soon as they enter the system. It is the latter function, that is the origin of most viruses/malware/spyware infections.

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.