3G Wireless Reading Device Review

Overall I feel that the Kindle is just as good if not better than other E-Books such as the Sony E-Reader and iPhone E-Book Apps, as it doesn’t boast hundreds of different features but gets straight on with the job. With a whole month of battery life its an incredible unit, especially for those who like to have a daily read. Not only can you store up to 3500 books, but, they cost as little as 72pence each!

After reviewing the Archos 101, people were coming to me asking to review the Amazon Kindle! This product was an exclusive to the USA but has since been released to the UK. The more expensive model, which includes a free 3G connection to the Kindle store costs £139 and the Wi-Fi only model costs around £109.

What’s in the Box

The box contains:-

- Power Adapter

- USB 2.0 cable

- Rechargeable Battery

- Quick Start Guide

Physically, the device is a little slimmer than its predecessor. Amazon has achieved this by reducing the size and thickness of the bevel and removing the row of number keys from the keyboard. The keyboard itself is a rudimentary affair that is, thankfully, only used during setup and for book searches, other than that I don’t see the need for having it.

The rear mounted speakers are surprisingly effective, though. Page turn buttons are mounted on the left and right, with forward and back replicated on both sides so you can turn pages one handed. This proved to be quite useful, however, after using the iPad and Archos 101, the touchscreen seemed that little bit better, allowing me to slide the page across rather than press the button. The device itself cuts no corners and does exactly what you would expect. The latest Kindle looks almost identical as its predecessor minus the few cosmetic changes.

However, Amazon have tweaked the performance by increasing storage to over 3GB, improving the clarity of the display and increasing the refresh rate for a better experience. The Kindle uses the new E Ink Pearl panel, and it’s just as comfortable on the eyes as words on a page. The Kindle can even be used in direct sunlight without the need to move around for a better/clearer picture. Not that I have used it in direct sunlight as of yet, but I’m sure to be taking it on holiday with me this year!

Specifications

Display Size
6" diagonal

Display Type
E Ink Pearl

Size
7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335"

Weight
8.7 ounces

Storage
3,500 books

Battery Life                                                                                          1 month

The bottom edge of the device sports a volume control and 3.5mm headphone jack along with a micro USB connector for both charging and data transfer. The latest Kindle does not boast a touchscreen feature, nor do Amazon plan on adding this to future releases. I think the Kindle would benefit from touch screen as I find it easier to just flick the screen to change page.

Battery life is quoted at up to one month with wireless turned off. In the real world, however, Amazon encourages you to keep it switched on so you can store the furthest point reached in a book. However, with internal bookmarks I didn’t see the need for leaving the wireless on. A month of battery life is superb! Considering I charge my iPhone every day!

Amazon has clearly been working hard at improving the book buying process. Order a Kindle and, on delivery, you’ll find it’s been automatically linked to the Amazon account used to buy it. Its simple to buy books and there’s plenty of choice, too, with the UK Kindle store now boasting more than 400,000 titles.

At the time of writing, all of the top ten books were available in Kindle form, many of them at an impressive discount. Stephen Fry’s “The Fry Chronicles”, for example, costs £6.54 in its digital version compared with £9.35 in hardback and this despite the fact that eBooks are subject to VAT. The joy of a device like this is being able to download the entire works of Charles Dickens for 72p and hardly notice the difference in storage available. 72p for that many books will save the user a lot in the long run! The buying process is simple! Find the book, then click Buy! Then automatically the book is saved to the Kindle.

Summary

Overall I feel that the Kindle is just as good if not better than other E-Books such as the Sony E-Reader and iPhone E-Book Apps, as it doesn’t boast hundreds of different features but gets straight on with the job. With a whole month of battery life its an incredible unit, especially for those who like to have a daily read. Not only can you store up to 3500 books, but, they cost as little as 72pence each!

Garmin ecoRoute HD Onboard Computer Review

Lemon Digital                                 The cheapest satellite navigation from TomTom, Garmin and every other brand, PDA system and digital picture frames

After using the Garmin ecoRoute HD for 2 weeks I found that overall I did save a few pennies and that I did manage to cut down my daily miles. I think that if I would have used the ecoRoute HD for a whole year then it would have had a far greater impact and I would have saved a decent amount. Not only have I cut down the miles on my vehicle but I have also lowered my carbon footprint.

After the highly anticipated release of the Garmin ecoRoute HD i was wondering what all of the fuss was about. So I contacted our good friends Lemon Digital to see whether or not they had these in stock, they had plenty and offered to give me one to review to see what I thought about it.

What Does the ecoRoute Do?

The Garmin ecoRoute HD Onboard Computer is used to help improve Garmin Nuvi users fuel consumption and help the users to reduce their negative impact on the environment. The ecoRoute also specialises in:

Engine Monitoring Fuel Efficiency Car Diagnostics

The ecoRoute also offers Sensor and Gauge Data to help you keep track on everything ranging from your RPM to your Coolant Temperature.

The users of this relatively cheap accessory should earn their money back within a year with the amount of fuel saved. This is a rough estimate based upon the amount I think that I saved throughout the two weeks of usage.

Compatible Garmin Units

After looking into the Garmin ecoRoute everyone was listing that it was only compatible with a select few Sat Navs. However, once I received the package it seemed to state otherwise. The package read that it was compatible with the following:

That is quite a lot more than what Garmin were originally saying on their official website. So i gave them a call and they confirmed that it is compatible with the list that i gave them and what was on the back of the package. In a nutshell, the ecoRoute HD is compatible with nearly all of the Garmin Nuvi units.

Whats in the Box

This is what you get in the box:

Garmin ecoRoute HD Instructions Manual 4 Cable Ties 2 Self Adhesive Stickers

Here’s an Image of what i received:

The box that the ecoRoute comes in is classic Garmin. A solid cardboard box with all of the glossy images that you would expect, including the compatibility list on the back of the box.

Installation

Once I went through the box and read the Instructions manual i was still unclear on how to install the device to my vehicle. Unlike most other Garmin units this wasn’t as straight forward as I would have thought. I looked in my vehicle for the “OBD II Connector” only to realise I didn’t have a clue what it looked like nor did i know where to find it. The manual did give me a brief image of what it looked like and it told me to search the web for images of it.

I went onto the internet and then onto YouTube to find out exactly how to do it! Once I watched a video on YouTube it was Simple! The Connector was located right in my footwell below the steering column.

After I Installed the ecoRoute i asked myself whether or not it is compatible with all vehicles?

Vehicle Compatibility

I quickly surfed the web to see if anyone had experienced any problems with the ecoRoute HD and whether or not it is compatible with all cars. I couldn’t really find a lot of information about the ecoRoute, maybe this was because its a new product. There wasn’t a lot on the internet to answer my question. So once again, I phoned Garmin to ask them. They were very helpful and gave me a list of vehicles that it wont work with:-

1996 Dodge Intrepid 2000 Ford F350 7.3L Turbo Diesel 2003 Subaru Forester Renault Vehicles

Renault were the surprising incompatible vehicles on the list. A market leader which will have a detrimental impact on the sales of these units.

Summary

After using the Garmin ecoRoute HD for 2 weeks I found that overall I did save a few pennies and that I did manage to cut down my daily miles. I think that if I would have used the ecoRoute HD for a whole year then it would have had a far greater impact and I would have saved a decent amount. Not only have I cut down the miles on my vehicle but I have also lowered my carbon footprint.

I was however, slightly bewildered as to why it is not compatible with Renault vehicles. I am guessing its because the OBD Connector II is situated in a non suitable spot, near the pedals maybe?

Vexia Econav 380 Sat Nav Review

This review looks at the Vexia Econav 380 Sat Nav.  Vexia is a name you might not immediately associate with the sat nav market, it is a Spanish brand developed in 2008 to encourage eco friendly GPS navigation.

The Vexia Econav works like any traditional GPS navigator, but with features built-in to encourage you to drive more economically and thereby save money on your fuel bills.

The eco market is an area several manufacturers have moved into over the last 18 months, both Garmin and TomTom have developed systems which allow a user to navigate using the most fuel efficient route.

Vexia take this a step further.  Not only can it calculate the most fuel efficient route, but it also provides visual and voice instructions indicating when to change gear.

It does this by storing the vehicle profiles of over 11,000 models of car.  You simply select your car model and make when first setting up the system.

In addition to giving instructions on when to change gear, it also provides visual warnings if you accelerate or brake too quickly, as well as displaying the safe stopping distance based on current speed.

We reviewed the Vexia Econav 380.  There is also an Econav 480 if you prefer a widescreen version.  Both the 380 and 480 ship with either UK and Ireland mapping, or for a higher price European mapping.

We tested the Vexia on the same routes we use when reviewing other GPS systems.  On the whole it performed pretty well, selecting appropriate routes.

Route recalculation when taking a wrong turn worked well most of the time, although on one occasion it got completely messed up, first telling us to turn right onto a dirt track, and when we ignored that instruction it told us to turn left into a caravan park.

The Vexia displays the speed limit of the road you’re driving on and in our tests it did an excellent job.  The correct speed was displayed on all the routes we selected.

  

There were a number of issues we did run into whilst testing, none of these were major, but they are areas we’d like to see improved:

There is no visual or audible warning if you take a wrong turn, the system will silently recalculate the route for you.  If you’re quick and glance down at the screen you will see a progress bar as it recalculates the route, but it is very easy to miss that.  We’d like some kind of warning when taking a wrong turn. We couldn’t enter a destination until a satellite signal was established.  This can be particularly annoying if you want to check or program a route indoors before a journey.  Other manufacturers provide an “offline” mode where you can calculate a route without a satellite signal. We found the screen too small.  The information bar displayed at the bottom of the screen showing details like time of arrival and current speed was too small to read.  It’s possible things are slightly better on the Econav 480 which has a wider screen, but we feel the display needs redesigning to improve readability. The left hand side of the econav screen tries to convey too much information in our opinion making the screen look cluttered and unreadable.  The right hand side of the screen looks much better. 

We also found ourselves looking at the screen more often than a traditional GPS navigator to read this information, which could prove a distraction when driving.  Sometimes less is more, and we’d like to see less information on this screen.

At slower speeds, such as driving in urban areas, you may find the Econav is continually asking you to change up and down gear.  In our tests we were driving at 30mph in a built-up area, and it kept asking us to change up to 4th and then back down to 3rd, since our speed was drifting a couple of mph either side of what it felt was time to change gear. This got a bit annoying after a while.

We tested the Econav 380 on a 2007 Honda Civic 1.8 Sport, which itself includes a series of lights on the dashboard that indicate efficient driving, so it provided a good comparison with the Econav 380.

Overall it did a decent job of telling us when to change gear.  Of course the Vexia has to use satellites to compute your speed, so you may find a 1-2 second delay before it realises you need to change gear.

There are times when the gear change instructions don’t make sense, for example when driving up or down a hill it makes sense to stay in a lower gear, so on these occasions it is best to ignore what the Vexia suggests.

The Econav 380 provides a nice series of reports where you can view how efficiently you’ve driven for a particular day, week, etc.

 

Safety camera warnings are pre-installed and in our tests it worked fine with fixed cameras.  We did not get an opportunity to test whether it will detect mobile or red light cameras.  Safety camera updates are available from Vexia.

The points of interest (POI) was surprisingly good, offering a good selection of categories and providing accurate listings for our local area.

The Vexia Econav is an innovative looking device with some nice features to encourage more eco friendly driving. 

As a navigational device we’d still recommend either Garmin or TomTom, both perform better overall, although the Vexia is not far behind.  Some people could also argue that driving sensibly is common sense, most people already know that if you don’t accelerate or brake too hard you can save fuel, you don’t need really need a GPS device to tell you that.  So we’re not totally convinced this device will catch on.

There is a move to making GPS devices more eco friendly though, and this device offers some potential and advantages over the likes of Garmin and TomTom in this department.  If Vexia continue to be creative and innovative in this marketplace this could be a device to watch.

LG GW620 Android Phone Review

For the last few weeks we’ve been playing with the LG GW620, the first Android phone from LG.  Here is our quick review on how we got on.

Summary
The LG GW620 is a decent entry into the Android phone market.  The Google integration is excellent and there are a large selection of free applications you can install.

It needs a more responsive touch/slide interface, a larger screen, improved browser and an upgrade on the installed Android 1.5 firmware.

If LG can improve these areas this would become a very attractive phone.

Out of the box the phone looked good and of a decent build quality, nothing too flimsy and the phone looked like it would survive a few knocks and bumps quite easily.

The phone was a bit chunkier than we were expecting but nothing excessive, the phone easily fits in the palm of your hand.  Considering the slide out keyboard the overall dimensions of the phone are pretty good.

The touch/slide interface at times is fiddly to use, and is not as responsive as the iPhone interface.  You have to press the screen quite firmly before you can scroll the screen.  This can make it difficult when navigating a list of options, you can end up selecting an item from a list when all you want to do is scroll down the list.

Our other minor niggle was the proprietary USB port on the phone.  For a phone that is trying adopt open standards we would have liked a standard USB port like those used on other devices like digital cameras for example.

Other phone manufacturers are equally to blame in this area but it would be nice to see some standards between manufactures here.  It certainly would save having different flavours of USB cable scattered around your home.

We were disappointed to find that under the covers the LG GW620 is only running Android 1.5 (Cupcake).  We would have preferred an Android 2.0 phone.  The 2.0 version is better, more robust and provides a greater selection of applications.

Since this is an Android phone the integration with Google services such as GMail and Google Maps is excellent.

GMail contacts can be synchronised with the phone.  This can provide a very powerful contacts management system on the phone, especially if you hold information like a person’s address and web site within your GMail contacts list.  You can select a contact on the phone, click on their address and Google Maps will automatically start up and show you their location on a map.  Click on a person’s web site URL and the browser will display their web page.

There are a good number of applications available, both free and non-free, via Android Market, such as the BBC iPlayer.  Android Market works pretty much the same way as the iTunes store does on an iPod, just search for an application and install it on your phone.

The LG GW620 provides good integration with social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Twitter applications like twidroid can be downloaded from Android Market.

The built in browser worked well in our tests.  Web pages don’t render as well as the iPhone and the LG screen size could do with being a bit larger, but it’s not a bad effort.

Text messaging works slightly different than some other phones.  Text messages are displayed on screen as if you were having an instant message conversation with a person, which can make tracking conversations easier.

The keyboard on this phone is pretty decent overall, it is easy to use and keys were just about sufficiently far apart to avoid hitting the wrong keys.

Our only gripe was the delete key positioned directly above the enter key.  We had a tendency to press the enter key by mistake on a number of occasions, this was most annoying when performing tasks like updating your Facebook status.  The result being a half finished sentence posted to Facebook.

The LG GW620 sports a 5 megapixel camera with a good selection of options available to tweak items like exposure and metering mode.  The quality of photos taken with this phone was very good too.

Overall this a decent phone from LG with some really nice features, but it needs to improve in several areas before we would consider buying one.

If LG can provide an Android 2.0 phone with a touch/slider interface to rival the iPhone then we’d seriously consider buying one.

Buy the LG GW620 from Amazon.

Google integration excellent Good selection of applications from Android Market Decent sized QWERTY keyboard Good 5mp camera More responsive touch/slide interface Better browser Larger screen Latest Android firmware Standard USB port

 

Slide Phone QWERTY Keyboard Dimension: L x W x D (mm): 109 x 54.5 x 15.9 Android Cupcake Bluetooth Touch Screen Camera Resolution: 5 megapixels Video External Memory: Micro SD up to 16Gb 3.5’’ Audio Jack

3M MPro150 Pocket Projector Review

Overall this is a nice looking device that has a decent price tag for what it offers.  It is small, portable and easy to use.  It will never replace a full size projector but if you want to impress your friends at home, or fancy using this at the office, then it has potential.

The 3M MPro150 is the latest pocket projector to be released by 3M, building on the previous MPro 120.

The MPro 150 is essentially the same as the MPro120 but with 1Gb internal storage, improved file format support, a USB mini out port and a MicroSD card slot.  The only downside is reduced battery life.

The full specifications page provides further information if you want to compare these two models further.

In the box you get the following:

MPro150 projector2Gb MicroSD cardBatteryWall charger with adapters (US, EU, UK)USB to mini USB cableComposite video cable (RCA)3 x RCA Gender ConvertersVGA computer cable TripodSoft protective pouchQuick start guideOut of the box the MPro150 is surprisingly light, weighing only 160 grams.  It is small enough to fit in a suit or jacket pocket.  The MPro150 exterior looks well built and feels good to hold in your hand.

 

On the top of the device are controls for adjusting volume and for navigation around the menu systems, a zoom button and an on/off switch.

1Gb of memory is built into the device and a 2Gb MicroSD card is included should extra storage be needed.  Personally we would have preferred a standard SD card, we find the MicroSD variety too small and fiddly for our liking.

The front of the device holds the projector screen and a dial focus control.  The rear of the device holds a VGA/AV port and a mini USB port.  Again we would have preferred a standard USB cable connector.

The MPro150 connects to a variety of devices such as digital cameras and MP3 players, but the box only includes an RCA cable with a variety of gender connectors. 

That only provides half of the connectivity you need though.  If you want to connect one of these to your iPod Touch or digital camera for example, then you’ll need to buy additional cables that connect to the provided RCA gender connectors.  So it was a shame we couldn’t hook up these devices out of the box.

Setup is straightforward, simply connect the MPro150 to your laptop or PC and transfer the necessary files onto the internal memory.

The MPro150 supports a variety of file formats, including Microsoft Office (DOC, XLS, PPT), Adobe (PDF) as well as BMP and JPG image formats.  MP3 audio and MP4 video formats are supported.

A small three legged tripod is provided to enable the projector to stand safely on a desk.

Once the projector is turned on a menu system is projected allowing a user to navigate and operate the projector.  The menu system is not the most intuitive and could be made easier to use, but after playing with the system for 10 minutes we felt comfortable working our way around.

A fan kicks in when the projector is initially switched on but soon switches off again.  We saw no signs of overheating or a noisy fan continually coming on.

Brightness or power is clearly not up to par with a dedicated full size projector, especially in brighter rooms, but if you can find a sufficiently dark room it is pretty good.

We tested out some Microsoft Word and Excel documents, these projected pretty well in small size rooms where we were sitting close to the projector.  Sitting further away and the brightness was not really sufficient to read text clearly, the font sizes became too small, so this projector won’t really scale up for larger size meeting rooms or for complex business documents containing a lot of text or graphics.

The MPro150 is more suited to small meetings or for simple PowerPoint presentations with a few bullet points on each page.

  

We also tested projecting some JPG photos and these worked well.  Picture quality was pretty good and if you move the projector sufficiently far away from a wall then you can enjoy photo slideshows occupying a whole wall.

Overall this is a nice looking device that has a decent price tag for what it offers.  It is small, portable and easy to use.  It will never replace a full size projector but if you want to impress your friends at home, or fancy using this at the office, then it has potential.

We’d like to see a more generous selection of cables inside the box, improved brightness and resolution.  We give this a 4 out of 5 star rating.

Fancy winning one of these pocket projectors?

To enter, visit the mobile u web site and simply tell in 50 words or less the most memorable, funny or embarrassing presentation you’ve delivered or seen.  One winner will win £500 worth of  iwantoneofthose vouchers and an MPro150 as well as a short viral video being made, which the winner can star in if they wish.

Buy the 3M MPro150 Pocket Projector from Amazon.

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Size & Weight

Power & Battery

Battery Life: 120 minutes Battery Type: rechargeable lithium polymer battery

Memory

Internal: 1GB External: Micro SD Card slot (free 2GB card included)

File Format Support

Business Tools: DOC (MS Word), PPT (MS PowerPoint), XLS (MS Excel), TXT, PDF (Adobe) Image File: BMP, JPG Movie & Audio: MP4, MP3, PAL, NTSC, H.264, AMR, AAC

Inputs / Outputs

VGA Composite Video Component Video USB Mini 2.0 (Data Transfer) Audio Out (3.5mm Stereo Jack) Micro SD Card Slot

Host your domain with Google Apps – you@yourcompany.com

For those who have never done it, and those who are paying too much for it, there is an easy and inexpensive way to get your own registered domain name hosted for email so that you have an email address like bob@hiscompany.com

The trick to this is to use Google Apps and a domain registrar (I use godaddy.com as registrar in this example as it’s cheap and they’re one of the biggest on the internet).

First things first.  You need to decide on a domain name you want.

Go to godaddy.com, search for the domain name you want and follow the prompts to checkout and purchase. There should be sufficient instruction on their website on how to purchase.

Once that has been accomplished, you will be able to login and configure the domain so that email is hosted by Google Apps. This allows you to access your email from anywhere without any further concern for backups or uptime.

Sound good?  Then let’s get started.

In the godaddy interface, you login so that you can see your account (link to “My Account” in top right of screen on their current website layout).  This will show you your newly registered domain in a list.  Click on the “Advanced details” next to your domain name e.g. yourcompany.com.

On this screen, it is the “Total DNS” section you need to change.  Click on “Total DNS Control” to bring up the screen to edit these values.

There will be two settings shown under the MX section. These relate to email and need to be deleted by clicking on the red cross to the right.  Then we add three new ones in this MX section to point us to Google Apps email.

Click on “Add New MX Record” and enter these values (Note there is a period/fullstop after each of the names below.  TTL value is left at default of 1 hour)

Host Name - Goes to Address - Priority

@ – aspmx.l.google.com. – 10

@ – alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. – 20

@ – alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. – 30

@ – aspmx2.googlemail.com. – 40

@ - aspmx3.googlemail.com. – 50

Next we want to alter the CNAMES section so that mail.yourcompany.com points to the Google Apps email website.  To do this we, delete the current CNAME Alias called “mail” and create a new one of the same name with these settings…

Alias Name – Points to Hostname

mail – ghs.google.com

This should be it for setting up the domain, now we need to configure the Google Apps side to accept these emails for us.

Click on http://www.google.com/a

Click on the “Apps Editions” and choose the “Standard” which is free and allows up to 50 email addresses to be created.

Click on the “Get Started” button.

Now you can enter an existing domain name (bought from godaddy above) e.g. “yourcompany.com”.

Choose Administrator, as you control the domain, and then “Get Started”.

Next complete the screens with your personal details to register with Google Apps and you will eventually get to a page that talks about how you can confirm to Google Apps that you really own the domain.  You have 7 days to confirm this or this Google Apps account will be deleted.

To confirm ownership,  login to Google Apps and it will prompt you to verify ownership.

Choose  the first option “Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration” and choose godaddy.com (assuming that’s who you registered with) from the drop down list .

Step-by-step instructions will be displayed on what is required.  You will need to login to godaddy.com and go to the “Domain Manager” (from the left-hand menu) and create a TXT record for the domain by clicking on “Total DNS Control”.

There is a button half-way down the screen on the right hand side called “Add New TXT Record”.  Click that and add the details that Google Apps indicated for the TXT Value and leave the TXT Name blank.

Finally, click on the “Verify” button at the bottom of the Google Apps page and you’re done!!!

There are options to create user email accounts but that is outside the scope of this little setup exercise and should hopefully be self-explanatory if you follow the on-screen instructions.

Also, it is worth noting that any editing of the domain settings through the godaddy.com site takes some time to be replicated around the internet. Don’t be dismayed immediately if you cannot see the fruits of your labour. If it is still not working a couple of days later, you have my permission to be dismayed.

NOTE: Once you are configuring your Google Apps account, you should enable the SSL checkbox under “Domain Settings”.  This makes your email communications encrypted even if you use http://mail.yourcompany.com

Good Luck

Inexpensive 802.11n Wifi USB with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

UPDATE: it may be possible to get this working with two simple lines. Tested as working under Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat”.

In a terminal window try the following and then reinsert the USB wireless N adapter.

cd /lib/firmware
ln -s RTL8192SE RTL8192SU

END UPDATE

I bought this relatively cheap USB wireless N adapter online but it did not work when initially inserted using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

Now I cannot determine the speed as my Wireless Access point is actually on Wireless g (54Mbps) but this is what I did to get it working.

From the CD that came with the adapter, I copied off the file containing the Linux driver and then copied only the firmware to the appropriate location for Ubuntu to be able to utilise it.

(Assuming the CD is visible at /media/WLAN_6.58/)

Open a terminal window (from the Applications menu, Accessories), then type each line as shown below followed by Enter key each time.

mkdir ~/tmpwifidriver

cd ~/tmpwifidriver

cp /media/WLAN_6.58/USB-11N_RTL8191\&8188/Linux/rtl8192su_linux_2.6.0002.0708.2009.tar.gz ~/tmpwifidriver/

tar xvf rtl8192su_linux_2.6.0002.0708.2009.tar.gz

sudo cp -r ./rtl8192su_linux_2.6.0002.0708.2009/firmware/RTL8192SU/ /lib/firmware/

Just delete the temporary folder now to cleanup

rm -rf /home/tony/tmpwifidriver/

Then just insert the wifi USB adapter and click on the icon for Network Manager in the top right of the screen.  You should be able to see any nearby wireless hotspots.

For the record, my wifi adapter looks like this when queried with lsusb

Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0bda:8172 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

A bargain for only $16!!

Webmin on a server running Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”

If you have an old PC lying around, why not put it to good use as a server?

Download Ubuntu 10.04 Server edition in 64-bit or 32-bit versions depending on how old your server is.  64-bit is recommended if the PC will accept it.

Once downloaded, you use .iso file to burn a CD.  Then boot from the CD to install Ubuntu Server on your machine.

This is an install that does not have the usual graphical user interface which can scare people off but it has its benefits.  You use the power of the machine only for its intended purpose e.g. acting as a file server, a DHCP or a DNS server.

Once it has been installed successfully and the network connection is verified to be working, it is quite feasible to remove the display monitor and to deal with the server across your network from now on.  A key tool in this approach is Webmin.

To install run the following command line

sudo apt-get install webmin

Once that completes, you will be able to install updates, configure the machine, add extra server components, get alerts when things are going awry on the server etc

To harness all this incredible power, point your browser (Firefox, Chrome etc) at …

https://yourservername:10000

As an example, once you have installed it, go to the menu on the left hand side, choose “Webmin Configuration” and then the “Upgrade Webmin” icon.

This will upgrade you up to the latest version available from the webmin site.

Then try this to keep track of all software updates that are available for your server…

On the same “Webmin Configuration” Screen, choose “Webmin Modules” icon and then the button to the right of “Standard module from www.webmin.com“.

Select “package-updates” from the list and follow the instruction to install it. (It may be already installed but this shows you how to get other modules should you be interested in adding new functionality to webmin).

It is also necessary to install another package which is not installed by default in order for the list of packages to work as expected.  Run this command line.

sudo apt-get install apt-show-versions

Now, you can have Webmin check for updates every hour and let you know via email if your server has important updates ready to be applied.  This is better than automatically configuring the server to apply updates blindly in case something breaks. You can then choose a suitable occasion to perform the updates when you have time to rectify any issues that may occur.

Click on the System menu on left-hand-side of Webmin screen and choose “Software Package Updates”. In there you can set your schedule for checking updates and where to send the email.

I recommend to check every hour and “Just notify” of available updates.  This screen is fairly self-explanatory.

Webmin has everything you need to remotely control your server and circumvents the need to run a graphical user desktop environment on that machine saving precious processing time particularly on older machines. It also makes the configuration,  monitoring and management of that server easier to perform remotely so it can be hidden away in some dark recess of your home or office.  This is a good thing if the machine is an ugly beast from the last century with a noisy fan and a hideous disfigurement like my server, “quasimodo”.