Hopefully, you’ve heard about the Do Not Call registry (located at https://donotcall.gov/) and already have registered your phone number on this site.  This site is a great tool to block telemarketers who follow the laws, but medical organizations, political campaigns; not-for-profits are exempt from this list and can call you regardless!

So what can we do about the rest of these telemarketers?  Back when the telephone system was invented, several special tones were conceived to send information over the line for remote telephone routers, callers, and other purposes.  Just as a very brief side note, telephone hacking was popular back in the 1970’s and had a term called Phreaking, and Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple was actually a hobby based phone phreak (hacker).  Anyways, back to topic, today I learned that the TeleZapper ™ is a $50 device that simply plays the special tone for “this line has been disconnected”, which is 3 beeps that progressively get higher in frequency.  This works because it costs telemarketers money to call your phone and they share similar phone number databases.  When the telemarketers come across a disconnected line, they will update that database accordingly to save them money (there is no sense in calling a disconnected number, right?).

Since 99% of telemarketing calls are automated by computers, the computers are typically programmed to be efficient and save the telemarketer money, meaning the computer will disconnect / update the number if they come across certain special codes.  If they don’t, they’ll redirect your call to a human that is being paid to market a product to you.  The human costs the most, so the idea is to keep this cost as minimal and as profitable as possible.

So now the basic idea, what happens if we play the special tone on our voice mail message?  Our voice mail is the very first  thing that plays if we don’t answer the phone ourselves, and furthermore, we can turn off the automated “the number you have reached…” message to simply allow our own recorded message to play immediately after the 4^th ring.  Telemarketing computers typically ignore the ring, so if the special disconnect code is the first thing that plays upon connection, the computer will usually assume that the line is disconnected.

Today, I added this tone to the very beginning of my voicemail, and then I proceed to give my normal message.  I know that if anyone important really wants to talk to me, they’ll leave a message past the 3 tones because my voice explains why it’s there in the first place.  So if you’re willing to take an easy chance at stopping the telemarketing calls, try this, you never know what might happen!

If you’d like the tone to download, you may grab it at this link: http://famousphil.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/disconnected.wav 

Finally, one last thought: since I’m on the topic of phones, I got a great graphic about the dangers of Cell Phones a while back from a Mr. Tony Shin, you may view his graphic at http://www.onlinemastersdegree.com/cell-phones-kill/

Mobile broadband is a technical freedom that is right there at your fingertips. When you are using bit torrent with mobile broadband card, the download speed not only depends on your bandwidth but also on the number of seeders you are getting. You need to make sure that you very well know your broadband card and its bandwidth status in detail. Running below 54Mbps will not to be able to help you download with the speed you always wanted. One benefit with them is that it works very much like a DSL connection for around $60 a month. Cheaper plans are available with carriers.

What is Bit torrent?

Bit Torrent is a popular and useful way of downloading large files on the internet. In case you are planning to use Bit torrent on a regular basis, you must have a reliable broadband plan. This will encourage you to get the best from the file sharing platform. After downloading software, users are allowed to directly send and receive files. It’s the resource that shows the route to the file being searched.

Bit Torrent is an extensive peer to peer (P2P) file sharing communications protocol that distributes large amount of data to several users who are targeting to download same file at one point of time. Pieces of data are supplied to the new recipients by the original user that supplies downloading the file. This further reduces the cost as well as the burden on the uploader who uploads the original file and encourages the reduction of dependence on the original user who first uploaded the file. It is important to carefully select the broadband card plans so that you can use bit torrent with mobile broadband flawlessly.

Know the Risks – Minimize the Risks

There are several risks involved with the access of this technology. Here are some of the possible risks that you should be aware of –

• Avoid downloading files into your “My Documents” folder. This should be done in order to avoid people from establishing a connection with your computer and peeping into the files and folders of your system.
• Users should only be having access to your “Shared documents” where no sensitive and confidential content should be shared.
• Have a decent firewall installed on your system in order to avoid Viruses that can damage your system.

Mobile Broadband Cards for Bit Torrent: Why?

Here are the reasons -

• Mobile broadband cards provide 3G soon going to be 4G and this is reliable and faster technology at your service.
• This technology is getting cooler and amazing year by year giving you easy and comfortable access to the internet.
• It is now possible to have uploads and downloads simultaneously. Cards have a decent access to GPRS, GSM and Edge networking upto 7.2 Mbps download and 2.0 Mbps upload speeds.

With the help of EV-DO and HSPA you can get on the net at 3G speed. You will get 50MB (basic plans) or 5GB (Average plans) or unlimited mobile broadband plans. If you are a typical user you will download over 20MB of data for web surfing. BT usually works fine on 3s 3G for users! Clients like Torrent have an inbuilt anti-leech feature which will easily cap your download speed in case you have a slow upload speed.

For using Bit torrent, a 5GB plan would suffice most of your needs. For power users that go through and through, nothing less than an unlimited plan should work conveniently. Even if the plan is unlimited, ‘prohibited’ uses can easily get you banned by providers like Bit torrent. This is done so that you don’t eat up the entire internet for yourself!

After a week with the device, it makes sense to finally make an unbiased review of it.  When I first got home with it, I was really impressed with the design of the packaging.  Only Apple would put the iPad into a backpack style bag that’s really durable to carry out of the store, in addition, the packaging for the iPad was also well thought out.  There were tabs that easily allowed it to be pulled out of the box (no turning the box upside down, etc to remove it).  So after the unpackaging of it, I plugged it in to find that I needed to install iTunes to set it up.  This has got to be one of the worst things about Apple products, because I cannot stand iTunes, it’s just so bloated, and I manage my music library through other means!  Anyways, I installed iTunes and accepted the license agreement.  I couldn’t do much else though because iTunes couldn’t connect to my AppleID account because I firewall my internal network very heavily (which is fine).  Accepting the license agreement was enough to get the device to work without a computer; I quickly enabled the 3g access through Verizon and signed into the Apple Store using the 3g connection.

My first impression of the 3g access on my iPad was a very positive one, I actually get a little signal on the Manhattan, NY Subway which most phones I’ve used don’t even get, and I think this is because the antenna on the iPad is bigger.  This signal is just enough to check email and such, nothing too demanding.  I also get roughly 1.7Mbps down, and .42Mbps up on the 3g connection which is quite good for a Verizon mobile connection (EvDO at least, LTE would be pretty crappy).  I also love the fact that 3g is built in… so there is no tethering or anything of that sort.  Unfortunately, there are a few downfalls to the 3g model.  The first is that it will cost more and there is no way to sign up for a long term contract to get a big discount on the device (unlike phones).  I was pleased to find that the 2GB mobile data plan was only $30/month, which is well within my price range and usage range.  There are several other plans as well that are just as great.  If I were to recommend an iPad to anyone, I would strongly suggest the 3g model, just because you can use it anywhere without having to worry about being within range of a wireless signal.

I bought the smart magnetic cover for my IPad because I figured it would adequately protect it.  Although it does that, it really helps make the unit more dirty, especially if you goto a restaurant and put it on the table, since the cover that touches the screen also touches the table unless you put it in that triangle stand arrangement.  For general movement, the cover does a good job at protecting the screen.  Looking back, I wouldn’t change the decision to get the smart cover, but I do need to look into a carrying case / solution for this iPad.  It is too big to carry in a pocket, but it’s too small to put into my laptop case, and that presents a problem.  I currently carry it around on my side everywhere, which isn’t awful, but does make me more of a target when annoying people ask for money on the streets (it is NYC after all).  I haven’t quite found the perfect solution to this yet, but I’m sure it will come with time and more exposure to my options.

Apple is known for their App Store, and I someday hope to make some apps that appear in it.  For now, I downloaded several apps that made sense for my particular usage of the iPad… I’m going to just briefly mention them now.  The first application I got was Outlook Mail Pro by Code Before Dawn, which was meant to give a very similar interface to Outlook.  It works well for mail because the interface is well thought out (perhaps a bit better than the default mail app’s interface), but I still prefer using the built in Mail Application support for Exchange when it comes to the calendar, contacts, and task list access.  I also bought the iTap RDP application for remote desktop; it saves passwords and allows several bookmarks to remote desktops.  I use this for connecting to my remote windows computer for Trillian instant messaging and handling other issues that only a true computer can do.  Over 3g, the speed is phenomenal for response times to clicks and such.  I also bought the Remoter VNC application which supports SSH, Telnet, VNC, and other remote access protocols.  Remoter uses Putty keys for authentication which is why I sprung for this application over its competitors, and so far I’m very happy with it.  Other free apps that I got were Facebook, speed test, Skype, yelp (restaurant ratings), and Sirus XM (online subscription required).  Remember that Skype and Sirius will use a lot of data, so I tend to use Wi-Fi when I use those apps.  I did try a video chat on the Skype application and I believe that it works better on my iPad than it does on my main computer!

I will now go onto usability of the iPad.  When I first got the iPad, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get used to the keyboard.  Honestly, at first, it was difficult to get used to since there is no bump on the F and J keys (home keys), so you have to look down to place your hands.  It was also weird not being able to rest my hands on the keys.  Overall though, I did quickly adjust to it and even with big hands, I can type fairly well on the keyboard.  One thing I did notice is at first my hands would always drift away and hit the wrong keys, but somehow that has gotten far better, I’m not sure if Apple is doing error correction or if I’m just getting better at keeping my hands in a consistent position while typing.  The second usability issue was the limited nature of most Apple products; fortunately, I haven’t hit any of these limitations that I couldn’t work around (e.g. remote desktop).  So far, my iPad is quickly replacing most of my computers since I’m quite used to it now (I’m actually typing this up on my iPad).  The battery life on the iPad is great, I haven’t had a single issue with battery life, and the lowest I was able to get the percentage to was 65% remaining, and that was after a full day of using it while visiting several parts of Manhattan.  This segue takes us into a side topic about the maps application.  So far, the iPad tends to be more reliable than my phone when it comes to placing a dot on the built in map telling me exactly where I’m at.

Overall, I love how fast the iPad is to display anything.  Unlike other things I’ve used, I can usually click something on the iPad and it loads instantly with very little delay.  I really like this about most Apple products and I wish that other competitors (e.g. Android) could make similar advancements in speeds for embedded devices.  Oh well, I’m sure that Google and their partners are working on this, and all good things take time to perfect.

So there you have it!  Overall, I would recommend the iPad to anyone, but at the same time, I really do think that you have to take the plunge yourself to discover if it is right for you.  I took the chance (with a 14 day return policy), and I found out that I definitely have great uses for my iPad, and I’m quickly learning why others strongly recommend it.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope to post more frequently now that things are settling down in my life and are starting to become the same old routine, just another day.  I have a few interesting blogs on business and high traffic hosting coming soon, I just need the time to thoroughly review what I’ve already written for them so that they’re as clean and concise as possible.

Also, in the near future, FamousPhil will be getting a new, professional design (mobile and full computer oriented!), so that is something that you can look forward to!

In 2009, I came up with the first version of my light control system.  This consisted of a clapper, a set of cheap computer speakers, and an audio recording of my clapping.  My original system used a web interface to have the speakers (connected to the web server / site) clap when I wanted the lights to come on.  This quickly became unmanageable since I couldn’t monitor the states of the lights without a webcam monitoring my room (and I wasn’t thrilled about securing a webcam in my room that could be hacked into).  This lead into X10 which has done wonders for me over the course of the past two years.

Its funny remembering back to when I first got an x10 system, because the x10 website doesn’t look like your average store, it looks more like an adult site with lots of flashy banners (ha ha).  I do have to admit, with x10, the initial impression was very deceiving for me, since their products are really good!  Anyways, moving on, My x10 system consists of a USB transceiver module (CM15A located here) which connects to my windows server that runs a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  In addition, I have several lamp modules, appliance modules, and remote control wall switches (which wirelessly communicate to the CM15A).

As for the software, I installed the ActiveHome software onto my server (that came with the CM15A).  This software installs a few application libraries (dlls) which enabled programmatic access to the CM15A to send and receive x10 commands over the power lines ran in my apartment.  Using this api, I wrote a quick program that makes a command line based program that can run certain commands.  I have to note that ActiveHome includes a default command line executable, but this didn’t have all the functionality that I wanted, most notably output in HTML for my web interface.  With the executable I wrote, I simply have the apache web server run the command as a local user which sends the x10 signals over the power lines ran in my apartment.  I should note that I considered using ASP.net which could interface with the API directly, but at the time I wasn’t very familiar with ASP.net and I wanted to use PHP.  I didn’t use IIS because I didn’t have the time to go permissions hunting to figure out why PHP wasn’t allowed to run programs as a local user on the web server through IIS.  Luckily a standard WAMP install that included Apache and PHP worked out of the box with little configuration.  The WAMP that I used was Vertrigo.

For the IR receiver that controls my projector, I use a USB-UIRT that I found on Ebay (I didn’t feel like waiting the estimated 6 weeks at the time for a new one).  Fortunately, the executable program that was included could send and receive signals from the USB-UIRT that I required, so I wrote some PHP that invokes it for the commands I used.

In 2009, I mentioned that voice control would make its way into my system.  I have to admit that it did!  Unfortunately, it didn’t last long because of all the bugs that I ran into.  I used the Microsoft speech libraries with a program called SmartButler, which could listen for speech commands and run commands on my server.  I initially used a cheap computer microphone, but quickly found that the interference in the audio made commands very inaccurate, and furthermore, if I held a conversation in the room, my lights would act up!  I figured that a USB professional Condenser Microphone would fix the problem, so I quickly ordered one and integrated it into my system.  This did significantly improve the quality of my system, but normal conversations would still occasionally trigger some of my web control panel controls inaccurately.  The final straw that broke the camel’s back (and caused this system to get removed) was when my RA (resident advisor), Stephanie came into the room, said hello to me and my lights went out of control (since I didn’t train it for a higher pitched, female voice, I’d assume).  I’d like to approach this problem in the future when I get the time to do it properly, but until then, I’ve been satisfied with web control panels that both my smartphone and computer can access.

Finally, at the very end of my video, I took a moment to show my Linksys PAP Adapter (VoIP, Voice over IP).  This works through a service from voip.ms.  Voip.ms is a prepaid service for VoIP adapters that allows you to buy a phone number for a very reasonable price (even 800 numbers).  They also have really reasonable rates and really good control for those phone numbers.  I thought I’d provide a plug for them since they are really good.

I would like to add that the Linksys adapter required an unfirewalled IP address to work properly (for incoming calls) in my experience.  It does have a NAT mode for this situation, but the university firewall constantly crushed this mode.  To get around this problem (and allow my web server for x10 to work properly), I implemented OpenVPN on my network and pulled in several public IP addresses and left them unfirewalled.  This solution worked well for me at UB, and I documented it fairly well in my OpenVPN post.

With nothing more to mention on the topic, here is the video that details my light control system and some other stuff.

Of course, I made many bloopers in this video (I improvised a lot!), so I thought the bloopers video would be appropriate.  Warning, there is a little language in it and the audio isn’t exactly balanced.

Disclaimer: I was not paid to endorse any of the products above (and I’m never paid to do that!).  I like to think that when I make a recommendation, it carries a lot of weight with it, which it should!

Last summer, I was looking for a new computer to replace a 12” HP tablet PC that I owned.  I wanted the new computer to be mobile, have suitable graphics; processing power and much better battery life (the hour I got out of the tablet was worthless).  I settled on a netbook from Dell.  It did exactly what I needed although it lacked a big enough screen for any real usability.  I typically use my mobile laptop as a dummy terminal that connects to remote systems via Remote Desktop or SSH.  I used the netbook for a few months and told myself that I need something that better fits my requirements.  After a long search, typical PCs turned up nothing particularly interesting, although I typically require Windows 7 since a majority of my licensed software requires Windows.

I remember meeting up with some friends who are “mac boys” as I like to nickname them last October.  They showed me how great the Mac OS is, and I have to admit that some of the features they showed were nice.  This along with the fact that I wasn’t really knowledgeable about Apple convinced me to look into an Apple brand computer.  I’d like to bring to mind that up until this point, I had very little experience with Macs so I felt that to help aid my extensive administration knowledge, a Mac wouldn’t be a bad investment.  The final push that got me over the hill was the fact that the cheapest MacBook pro had really good specs for the price and I didn’t find any PCs that could compare to the specs of the MacBook pro with a similar size.

So around Thanksgiving of 2010, I got a MacBook pro 13” model.  Honestly, my first words when it arrived were “this machine needs windows now!”, and I proceeded to configure bootcamp (a way to run Windows natively on the Mac hardware).  Bootcamp was an interesting experience because it was so simple that I overthought the problem and ended up having to reinstall the Mac OS.  I’m still not entirely sure how I managed that, but command line utilities definitely aided the problems.  It is at this point when I realized why people really like Macs.

After I got Windows up and running (it didn’t take too long to start thinking at the level that I needed to), the first problems I noticed were related to driver problems (mostly right click on the mouse, graphics not working properly, etc).  So I proceeded to install bootcamp in Windows and most everything fixed itself with a few minor exceptions.  The first exception was the nvidia graphics driver had a problem and caused Windows to crash, so I ended up installing the latest driver via their website.  The other exception I noticed was poor battery life (2 hours on a 10 hour laptop).  After playing around with nvidia settings, I turned off the dedicated graphics card and this bumped the battery life to 6 hours.  Still fairly crappy of course but I figured that Apple hates Microsoft and this is intentional to encourage users to try the Mac side.

Needless to say, I decided that I’d give the Mac side a try for a few days after being disappointed by the performance of Windows.  I quickly got Chrome and Microsoft Office installed and I must say that the effort required to accomplish this was little if any.  It was a pleasant surprise to find that Office installed a remote desktop client automatically.  As an aside, for the Safari / Firefox fans out there, I no longer like either browser since when I compare them to chrome, they’re really slow, and adblock plus is now available for Chrome!  I’ve also noticed that Chrome uses little to no resources.

After the first couple of days (and enabling several tweaks), I began finding Mac to be a somewhat superior operating system when viewed from Windows.  The first huge plus was that my battery life would often reach 14-15 hours while using Chrome, remote desktop, and the terminal.  This kind of battery life alone exceeded the 8 hours that I’d get from my old netbook and the screen space is actually large enough for me!  If you’re looking into battery life of 14 hours though, don’t be disappointed, much of my work is remote and doesn’t require a lot of power to run locally on the mac.  I found that if I went to YouTube (Flash powered), or opened any significant application like Microsoft Word, Firefox, etc, I’d easily trim the battery life down to a more realistic 8-10 hours as suggested by Apple.  Overall, I’m really impressed at how well the Mac saves power and I’m even more impressed by how few resources Google Chrome uses!

Coming from a Linux background, I found that the terminal was the easiest option to configure the operating system with since I’m already very familiar with the commands (and Mac is based on a BSD kernel, which is very similar to the Linux kernel).    I quickly installed MacPorts (and the supporting applications like XCode) to make my mac more usable for me, the programmer / system administrator.  With MacPorts, I enabled apache, mysql, wine, and several other applications that I found useful when on a Linux based system.  Other than adjusting to the change of /opt/local for the software installations by MacPorts, configuration was fairly simple and painless.  After everything was up, I even installed Eclipse (a programming environment primarily for Java, but extendable to C, PHP, Python, Lisp, etc).  I now find that it is easier to develop websites and applications on my mac locally than it is to develop on remote systems.  The one exception is C# and .NET applications of course due to their dependence on Windows.

There were a few pet peeves that I initially had with the MacBook pro and its OS.  I will start with my software problems and move to the hardware related problems.

First, mac doesn’t believe that the maximize button should maximize to the screen, so instead, it maximizes to the required window size.  This is very annoying on websites since some websites use fluid layouts (meaning they dynamically size to the browser window size), and mac doesn’t size properly.  To solve this issue, I found RightZoom which is an application that solves that issue.

Another problem I encountered was the startup sound always came on regardless of the sound settings.  In addition, there was no intuitive place where I could disable the sound.  Thankfully, an app called startupsound made fixing this problem very easy.

Up next is probably my biggest pet peeve, which is standards compliance.  Mac really impresses me design wise, but I find that some functionality that I would expect is missing.  If you remember back to my OpenVPN blog… my internal network has special routes programmed to ensure that some traffic will circumvent the VPN connection (like YouTube, local college bound traffic so that I’m within the firewall, and Netflix).  These rules that allow circumvention save a lot of bandwidth, and therefore cash (internet connectivity is charged by the GB for providers such as myself).  For those of you who understand DHCP, Option 121 (254 on some Windows versions) is reserved for Classless Static Routes.  This means that a DHCP server can push these routes to a computer automatically while assigning addresses and the computer knows that certain internet traffic (e.g. YouTube) will pass through a proper router (or gateway).  Fortunately, both Windows and Ubuntu look for this option and appropriately adapt to the rules… mac on the other hand completely ignores these options.  Although this is the first case I found that Mac doesn’t adhere to standards, I’m sure that this isn’t the only case.  Of course, most people won’t ever need this, but still, it is in the RFC #4562!  So as a work around, I have to manually add routes to my mac via command line… it isn’t the best option but it does work.

Finally, I’d like to talk a little bit about the Apple keyboard and track pad.  If you’re like me, you will find yourself wondering where the home, end and delete keys are.  The truth is that they don’t exist on the Mac keyboard layout (at least on my new MacBook Pro).  I ended up mapping F10, F11, and F12 to these functions respectively using KeyRemap4MacBook.  For the Windows side, I used an application called SharpKeys.  I also found that mapping F9 to print key saved me a little time in Windows.  I also made sure to have the keyboard function keys enabled without the fn key required.  With the track pad, I made sure that double finger scrolling and right click were enabled features.

They keyboard itself is very uniform on Mac so many protective covers have been made for the Mac keyboard.  I got two covers, a cheap one ($8) from Amazon and a fairly pricy ($30) model from KBCovers.  If you’re going to protect your keyboard (I highly recommend it), definitely go for the KBCovers version since it feels a lot more secure and real than a cheap imitation.

Overall, this keyboard/mouse solution made me so content that I ended up buying a wireless keyboard and magic mouse for my windows desktop (both Bluetooth wireless).  Although I installed bootcamp (not entirely necessary), the magic mouse doesn’t have the full functionality as it would in Mac (Apple hates Windows, I get it), it is still a great keyboard / mouse combo.  Maybe someday when I get the time, I might write an application that enables the full functionality of the magic mouse on Windows, but don’t get your hopes up.

Back to boot camp, on every Windows machine that I’ve ever owned, I’ve always kept restore images of the hard drive incase Windows got a virus or I messed Windows up somehow.  I am a fan of both Acronis TrueImage and Symantec Ghost, but neither solution looked appealing on the mac.  So I found a free program called WinClone.  Unfortunately, its development has been discontinued but it still works well on my mac (version 10.6.6).

In addition, I discovered that VMWare Fusion is a way to virtualize the bootcamp partition, so theoretically Windows can boot natively or via a virtual machine.  I really like this feature since I often only need Windows for very minor tasks, but the initial setup wasn’t all that great.  After Windows booted, it required me to reactivate it, and as per Microsoft’s crappy licensing policies, you have to call them and tell them what is happening.  After a bunch of problems, I finally figured out that before activating, VMWare tools needs to get installed.  After that is installed, activate Windows and Office in the virtual machine via Phone.  Then reboot into the native Windows and reactivate using an internet connection.  If all goes well, VMWare tools will help solve the problem, at least it did for me.  I’m guessing that it stores both activations and switches them on Windows and Office automatically so both the VM and native modes think that they are properly activated with Microsoft on the proper hardware.

Overall, I don’t think I’d go back on my decision to buy a Mac.  It’s definitely a really nice computer and I have to admit that the design is outstanding.  Who would have ever thought that an aluminum body would dissipate enough heat to remove the need for a blatantly visible fan (like many PC laptops have).  Anyways, there are a few things that Mac could definitely improve on, but for now I’m happy with it and would find it difficult to move to something else for the needs that acquainted me with this computer.  Finally, contrary to popular belief, I do not believe that Mac is an overpriced fashion accessory, at least for the model that I bought.

Today’s interesting topic relates to my personal HP Laptop (Tablet PC – tx1000 series).  More specifically Microsoft Windows User Access Control (UAC) and the graphics card in it.  If you own any computer or laptop with an NVidia GeForce 6150 graphics card in it, this will be incredibly useful to you.  So, the problem is: does your computer dim the screen and take forever to come back up?

If so, I have a solution… but first some background into the problem. Normally with any new operating system, I normally wait at least a year before I consider running it in a production environment (I’m quite conservative).  My tablet originally came with Windows Vista about a year ago, and I threw Vista out the first day I got it to put Windows XP on it.  I would never consider running Vista on any of my computers because of its horrible performance!  Windows XP served me well, but Microsoft recently stated that they wouldn’t be supporting XP anymore.  This coupled with a few really good reviews of Windows 7 prompted me to try Windows 7 when I first got it.

Back in late August, I got my hands on a copy of the Windows 7 Release To Manufacturing (RTM) and I installed it.  To my surprise, it seemed much better than Windows XP ever could be.  There were a few bugs, but nothing that I wouldn’t mind suffering through.  Of these bugs, the only major annoyance was the Nvidia 6150 dimming the screen for UAC (User Access Control) prompts.  I will get to that in a bit, but first, I want to make something very clear.  Windows 7 is the first operating system that I have ever ran in a production environment without it being fully released!  Microsoft should be very proud of themselves for making me feel safe while running a possibly unstable Windows 7.

The Windows 7 update software is quite impressive because it also found all of the missing drivers on my tablet and installed them for me.  Out of all of the drivers, it also got the latest Nvidia graphics driver for my card.  Prior to the driver being installed, UAC prompts and key combinations such as ctrl-alt-delete popped up the appropriate screen immediately.  After the driver installed, the screen would dim and then go blank for a good 10 seconds before it would come back up.  Back in August, I found no good solution to solve this but it was the only annoyance I had, so I decided to stick with Windows 7 for the college semester instead of doing a 10 minute restore of XP.

Now that I’ve got some background and some time in to solve the problem, the solution to this problem was quite simple.  For some reason, Windows 7 scales your computer screen and this takes longer to dim it due to the scaling problem.  To solve this, all you need to do is right click the desktop and goto the Nvidia Control Panel.  Click the advanced button and ok it.  Goto the “change flat panel scaling” option and turn it off entirely.  Once you ok this, your screen will now dim quickly (and properly).

Hopefully this will help someone else out because it was a big annoyance to me for a long 4 months!

Over the past week, I got a new server to host Microsoft Exchange which is a powerful email server from Microsoft.  Before you go all crazy on Microsoft (I know I typically do), Exchange is one of the few excellent products they make.  I am actually very hard pressed to find anything that compares to it that is open source and can easily run on Linux which 99% of  my hosting business up until now has ran off from.  Man, I never thought that I would say that

So the first logical question is, why move your email to exchange?  As you know, I’ve had 1and1 mailxchange now for quite some time.  I really wanted a solution that would sync my calendar, contacts, tasks, files, and email to every device I use on a daily basis.  Mailxchange was that solution but there are many problems. First the web client is very slow,  sure its flashy, but it takes 5 minutes to load on my connection (that is fairly fast).  I don’t have the time to wait on this client to load.  The next problem is it needs custom software to connect to Outlook and Mobile Devices, I’m not into installing “connectors” to software when it has functionality built in with other products.  Perhaps one of my biggest problems is the level of support I’ve gotten from 1and1.  My mail has gone down on a few occasions and I’ve been unable to easily send a support ticket in asking what is wrong.  I’m not even sure if 1and1 backs up my email and I have no method of backup, so I’m kind of stuck if they go down or don’t back up the server.  Its kind of scary actually since I save all of my email.

So about 2 weeks ago, I started talking to a few friends.  I know that I get a free msdn copy of Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Server 2003 from my University.  I figured if I could find a few friends who were interested in small mailboxes on exchange, I could cover the cost for the hardware to host my copies of this software.  I figured that I could host 4 people and handle a server that costs $25 a month from 3dgwebhosting which I’ve had in the past and they run excellent hosting on Windows server 2003.  They cover the license cost, so I’d only be covering exchange.  The downfall was I would only have 10GB to work with which isn’t a lot for email and backups.  Because of this, I looked for alternate hosting.  I decided that if I could find xen hosting, xen would support Windows.

About this time when I was looking, I knew that http://fsckvps.com who is a child company of vaserv in England hosted xen vps machines.  I went to that site to look up their support email and found out about the horrible hypervm owner hanging and they were down.  Anxious to get this hosting off the ground, I began looking at alternate places for hosting.  Shortly after, I found good reviews on other blogs of a new hosting company called Elite Data Hosting.  I contacted them about a 10mbps plan to host exchange on and they got an account for me on a xen vps using my server key.  I’m basically paying $15 a month for ~325MB of ram and 30GB of hard disk space.  The server is a high end server and I have had no complaints.  They even took the time to install Windows for me from my disk!

Elite Data Hosting is good news for me because I now can have my 2 guaranteed friends and myself have a guaranteed 5GB of space for files / mailboxes a piece.  It will also be very easy to automate backups of these mailboxes.  We all split the $5 a month cost for the server so I’m basically paying what I would be paying 1and1 but I control my backups and have a better piece of mind.

So now I started the daunting task of setting up the Exchange server. Normally with Microsoft products, it takes about 5 seconds and about 10 clicks of the next button to install software and another 3 minutes to say configure this software to do this.  By that point, everything normally works flawlessly (except for the occasional crashes of Microsoft Windows).  On linux, there is always a lot of configuration, but linux always works without the crashes and instability.  Perhaps this is the way to tell what is good and bad???

To get back to Exchange, I must say, this is the hardest piece of software I have ever had to install on both Linux and Windows.  Part of the reason is the way Exchange relies on existing Server 2003 infustructure to improve itself.  I’m not so sure if I’d rely on a Windows Server operating system, but I really have no choice with Exchange.  Exchange requires Active Directory among other server features to run correctly and the prerequisite list is a nightmare to get through in less than 5 hours if you ask me.  I started with a clean server a week from last Tuesday and didn’t get Exchange running until about Monday and I had 8 hours a day into it at the very least.  I will take part of the blame for not knowing what I was doing past Active Directory configuration, but Exchange was no day at the beach to figure out.  I also had a lot of errors that I spent hours reading about to find simple fixes.  Finally after all of the struggle, I got exchange fully working to the point where I wanted it about 2 days ago. During my struggle, I posted a lot about my solutions on Admin Reference which is my site where I post solutions to all of my problems.  I picture it as another *free* experts exchange but more tutorial based than question based.  Maybe some day it will do a little of both   That is my goal anyways!

One side note that I should add is, when I first loaded Outlook Web Access, I got a crappy looking interface.  I found out quickly that Exchange only supports Internet Explorer in its premium interface (the one that looks nice and loads quick).  Sadly, this is the only reason why I have opened Internet Explorer, and I have found that Firefox can open an IE tab, so I’ve began using that.  I will also likely find a solution when I migrate completely to Linux (my next upcoming project).

So now that Exchange works, what was so difficult? Most of my difficulty was from I never managed an exchange server in the past, and I couldn’t find any decent documentation on how to do it. That is why I posted a lot to Admin Reference unlike I normally would.  My biggest issue was the domain errors which were caused by firewalls and figuring out how to get Outlook Web Access and Outlook Mobile Access working with SSL encryption.  I also was not prepared to spend money on an SSL certificate (required by exchange) and provide antivirus / spam scanning to the server.  I was under the impression that spam/virus protection was built in, but it isn’t, and the freeware gfi version is no longer free.  I figured out how to migrate linux spamassassin to the server and that is adequate for spam protection

One last question that I should cover is why didn’t I go with Exchange 2007?  I will admit that Exchange 2007 is very nice software, but there are a few problems:

• My first issue would be, Exchange 2007 is really bloated.  If you compare the 2003 to 2007 installation disks, the 2003 install disk is about 300MB, the 2007 version is closer to 1.7GB.  That is a huge difference, one that I’m not willing to upgrade for.
• My next issue is due to the bloat, I would need a much powerful server.  I could upgrade to the 600MB RAM server plan with a 50GB hard disk or so for 30 dollars a month, but then I would have to start hosting more mailboxes than I’d want to to cover the costs, and I’m not really into that idea.  I might upgrade for 2003 if people are interested and it won’t take too many server resources or hurt my rigged spam fighting solution, but that is a decision that I’d rather not make now since it works perfectly as is!
• My final issue is, newer software normally sucks.  I always wait for at least Service Pack 1 (2 if possible) until I start using a product mainstream.  Exchange 2003 is at SP2 while Exchange 2007 is at SP1.  With other Microsoft software, I’ve found that when I compare a fresh install of Server 2003 to Server 2008: Microsoft Server 2003 with a GUI (Graphical User Interface or your windows desktop) uses 400MB on a new install, while the Microsoft Server 2008 Core Edition (no desktop, strictly command line to reduce bloat) uses 800MB on a new install with nothing configured.  This is a huge jump and I have a feeling that Exchange 2003-2007 will be very similar (the requirements for 2003 is 256MB of ram, 2007: 2GB of ram).  BIG DIFFERENCE, huh!

All in all, I figure I am paying about $200 bucks total for my new email solution, but my friends really do help cut the cost down to where I can happily afford it.  I still have 1 slot open but have a feeling that will be closed before long.  For a private email server, I consider it an excellent learning experience, and a good way to get some good content on Admin Reference! Hopefully you got some helpful tips out of this.

One final note:  I’d like to put a plug out there to any other system admins.  If you are like me, you are always running into new problems that don’t have easy solutions.  Why not take a few minutes when you find the answer and post it to Admin Reference?  Maybe someday you will look back on it (I know I have) and say thats how to fix it!  Someday when it gets a little more material, I plan on integrating the forum into a wiki that is easily searachable for solutions to problems.

In the past, I have tried Yahoo’s VOIP (Voice over IP) and Skype’s VOIP services to call people on landline phones for cheap long distance and a few times international long distance.  Both services average the same quality and when I used them charged by the minute.  When Skype came out with an unlimited national calling plan for 2 bucks per month, I jumpped at it and ditched Yahoo.  I’ve been using skype on and off until last week.

The quality of both Yahoo and Skype are very similar, calling computer to computer is crystal clear and perfect.  When I called landlines, I’d often have a lot of echos in the line that would make using a landline (and paying a lot more) a better option for the call.  In my opinion, Skype and Yahoo are meant for computer to computer calling and calling a land based telephone line isn’t the focus of quality in their eyes.

Another bit of history that you should know about is I use Skype and Yahoo only at the University at Buffalo.  I have had satellite internet at home for the longest time and know that even on computer to computer calls, there is a massive lag (usually 4 seconds).  I know that with this lag, a normal landline would just drop the connection.  Now that I have EVDO though, I tried skype and computer to computer calls are quite clear and good sounding (just a hint of lag).

I’ve heard about the MagicJack for some time now and for 35 bucks (with a free year) on ebay, I decided to try the unit for the heck of it because frankly, what do I have to lose?  If I don’t like it, I will go back to skype.

Why did I want to even try the magicjack?  The reason is because I like the idea of using a land line phone, I’ve always liked having a landline available to me and the feel is better than using a headset or any cell phone that I’ve ever seen.  Talking to a computerized cell phone that can surf the web just isn’t my cup of tea, call me old fashioned if you’d like   In addition, I can use the MagicJack service in conjunction with a thin client or VOIP adapter (I don’t endorse the adapter method as it violates the magicjack terms of service).  I will likely setup a thin client eventually for it.

So with all that said, I plugged the magicjack in when I got it.  Like they said, it was about a 2 minute install on my quadcore and a few prompts the first time asking who I am and what number I would like for my first year of service. After all that was done, they sent me an email verifying I was real then registered me with my local 911 office.  It is nice that I can use this with 911, although I wouldn’t depend on my connection to be up all the time, a landline connection is still the best option for this.

My first call was to the landline in our house. I could hear a delay just under a second and there was an echo.  I guess that echos are typical of all VOIP services.  I then decided to call my aunt in Florida with it.  We talked for about a half hour on it.  Although it held the connection, it cut in and out during the duration of the call like a cell phone would in a weak signal area.  I’m almost certain this is because I’m using a cell phone for internet and the signal could be fluctuating between great and good.  I will be coming back to this topic in 3 months after I get back to the University to verify this and give a more thorough review.

For now, I believe that if used on a land connection with good speed and low latency, the MagicJack would have crystal clear quality except for the slight echo and slight delay.  I doubt that the connection drops would be present.  I’d recommend it to anyone with DSL or Cable as a 2nd landline for long distance calling.  I’m going to keep mine

Looking back at my history of internet usage, I can say that I have exhausted every possible connection that I can obtain.  I’m hoping that by writing this blog, I will save someone the agony that I have gone through in the past 7 years and provide a quicker route to getting usable internet (as I like to call it).  Before I even start, if you can get Cable, DSL, or FIOS, or another form of land based wired internet connectivity don’t even bother reading this blog since I don’t have them and can’t explain why they are better with proof (they just are).

I would like to start out with Dialup internet. Dialup is often the only form of affordable internet access for people in rural areas and this is why I have tried it and am blogging about it.  An example of a quality dialup provider is http://copper.net

First the disadvantages of dialup : Dialup has a major disadvantage of speed.  Dialup is very slow to connect (1 minute to dialup to the remote location) and is also very slow speedwise (56Kbps under ideal conditions).  In addition, Dialup uses your existing telephone line, therefore, while on dialup, your phone will be tied up and appear busy to outside callers.  In addition, Dialup requires that your phone line be fairly clear.  Unfortunately the phone line to our house is very old (ran circa 1930) and runs under a modern day wetland area (I would call it a swamp).  Obviously our phone line has a lot of noise in it which prevents dialup from connecting any faster than 24Kbps (in the city, I get 48Kbps).  Dialup has fairly good error control even though our phone line has a lot of noise and crackle in it.  Unfortunately, the noise in the line can be so excessive in spurts that it causes the connection to be lost.  Because of this, I was only able to get my own ping test, I had to borrow speedtests from elsewhere.

The upside to dialup is that it has a decent latency because it is ran via land.  Latency is the time it takes to send a signal to a remote computer and back over the connection, this is measured in milliseconds (ms) and is called a ping.  If you wish to try to ping google for instance, open up a command prompt and type “ping www.google.com”.  This will give you the latency of your test (it does 4 trials in Windows XP).  Latency on Dialup is effected by telephone line noise and connection distance to the local internet service provider (isp).

Now for some details on my testing for dialup:

This connection is connected to netzero (a free account that I had laying around).  It was connected at 24Kbps and I performed a latency test to google.  My average latency on dialup through my line was 258ms.  This isn’t bad for low latency applications such as SSH (remote linux terminal, completely text based) and VPN (virtual private networking) which both require very low latencies (below 300ms) to even connect.

Now comes the downfall.  I could not acquire a speedtest because I was disconnected from the internet (it took well over a half hour to complete which my connection couldn’t support).  I had to find speedtests which was a very hard task.  This is very close to what I would get if I let my speedtest complete without error.

This kind of speed is just useless for any kind of internet surfing.  Most webpages today are 100KB or more, and on this connection, 100KB will download in about 50 seconds to a minute.  This is the biggest downfall to dialup!

So now, lets move onto satellite internet.

I have wildblue satellite internet at home.  This is the connection that I have been using for the past few years.  It advertises 512Kbps down, 128Kbps up.

The advantages to Satellite Internet:

1. Stability – The connection rarely goes down.  Reasons for the connection going out is bad weather at my location or the WildBlue ground station.  Or if someone at WildBlue trips over the main internet line *ha ha*, but I bet it has happened a few times when our internet was out for no reason.
2. Always on and doesn’t tie up the phone line
3. It is fairly fast for web browsing (not considering latency just yet)

The disadvantages:

1. Latency will kill you – I will detail a bit about the high latency below.
2. Wildblue has several ground stations, but each ground station can’t take over another ground station’s frequency on the satellite, so if the weather there is bad, you won’t have a connection.  This happens frequently in the summer.
3. During peak usage times the connection is much worse than dialup (higher latency, slower speed).  I will detail this below also!
4. Your bandwidth (total data transfer allowance) is limited severely compared to land based solutions (7.5GB of downloads per month on the lowest plan or about 10 movie downloads at 800mb each)
5. Wildblue will cost an arm and a leg- the lowest priced package is 50 bucks a month

Hughesnet to Wildblue.  I’m using Wildblue’s value pack which offers 512Kbps down, 128Kbps with 7.5GB download and 2GB of uploads per month.  This is 50 dollars per month and if I go over the download / upload limit, I can be terminated by Wildblue and pay fees to them for this if I ever do it again (the first time is a warning). I’ve always been very careful of this contract limitation to prevent getting billed heavily.  Wildblue will also slow your speed down until you go back to 80% usage.  This means that if you downloaded 8GB the first day of service, you would be billed for the rest of that month and not be able to use your service (it is slowed down to dialup speeds with high latency), plus you can be terminated by Wildblue if it ever happens again.  Imagine 30 days waiting for that 8GB to disappear off your record before you get your speed back

On Hughesnet, their lowest plan will provide 1024Kbps down, 128Kbps up with a different limit system.  They limit you per day to 250MB of download and 50MB of upload (I think).  This also varys by plan.  If you go over this limit during the day, they will slow you down for a day then restore it with no contract violations or service outages.  Unlike Wildblue this is daily so you aren’t slowed down for possibly a full month.  In addition, Hughesnet allows you to download without this limit between 2am and 7am every morning when their system is underused by a lot. Also, hughesnet is more resistant to rain fade (weather effecting the signal strength and connectivity) and allows you to see how strong your signal is unlike wildblue.  I also found lower ping times on Hughesnet (800ms vs the wildblue average of 1300ms).

Unfortunately though, hughesnet and wildblue still suffer from peak time usage slowdowns every night and on weekends.

Lets show some details.  My plan is 512Kbps down, 128Kbps up remember (50 bucks per month).  First, I will show my latency tests.  The first series of pings was performed at 9:30pm at night, I left the computer on overnight with this window open to take the 2nd series of the ping test from non peak usage time (this was taken in the morning.  I used NASA.GOV because it is a government controlled server and *should* have really low ping response times for land based connections.

As you can see, during the morning the average ping is much lower than during the evening during peak usage hours.  now lets goto the speedtests:

This above one is for a peak usage time connection.  Notice I’m only getting 180Kbps down, 30Kbps up (compared to my advertised speed of 512Kbps down, 128Kbps up).  This connection is useless for even surfing because the latency is much higher with a slower speed (see above).

Here is a speedtest above from the morning when there is little usage or normal usage.  Notice that I’m getting 530Kbps down, 60Kbps up.  Still not a good upload speed, but its better than 30Kbps which is comparable to dialup!  Also notice the pings, this isn’t quite true because these were taken around the same time of the day (different days though) when I did the latency ping test on the command prompt above.

Now lets move onto EVDO from Verizon (I know, this is a long blog)

Lets first start out with the advantages and disadvantages (for both rev 0 and rev a since they are both good)

Advantages:

1. Land based wireless communication, but its more land based and latency is much lower and comparable to DSL and Cable (especially under revision A, revision 0 matches Dialup latency more).
2. Speed is quite good.  It can exceed DSL speeds with up to 3.1Mbps download on Rev A, 1.8Mbps down on Rev 0 (1024 Kbps = 1Mbps).  Normally DSL gets about 1.5Mbps max download.  The upload on Rev a can reach 800kbps and on Rev 0, 128kbps.
3. Stability – if you get a good signal, this will rarely drop unless Verizon or the provider is doing tower repairs and such.
4. Mobile, this can move with you

Disadvantages:

1. Expensive.  EVDO can cost 60 bucks per month on Verizon.
2. Low Bandwidth allowance then excessive overage charges (5GB of downloading per month, then 5 to 10 cents per MegaByte (MB) over)
3. not the best replacement to DSL or Cable (but the only option in the country)
4. Works only if you get a cell signal on EV.  If you don’t get 3 bars, your connection will suck.  You need 4 bars for a decent connection.  There are cellphone boosters like the one I got that give excellent reception (see part 2 of my evdo quest).

So, I’m paying my heart out for an EVDO connection through Verizon and I love my connection speed thus far.  It has excellent latency and fair reliability.  The speed that comes with it is merely a bonus.

So here are some ping tests:

The above is from EVDO rev 0 with a perfect signal.  Notice the average latency beats dialup and satellite already at 236ms!  Lets do a speedtest:

Once again, much faster than Hughesnet, Wildblue, Dialup or any other connection that I have seen available to me!  And the really great part is, I haven’t even touched EVDO revision A yet.  Lets do that now, shall we?

Notice the average ping of 102ms.  DSL and Cable average at 30ms to 100ms, so I’d say this is a latent land connection.  EVDO rev a rocks, no?  Lets see a speedtest:

The speedtest above shows that rev a is a bit better than Rev 0!  This is now my primary connection method and I use satellite as a backup.  Maybe some day we will get DSL or something else land run, but until then, I’m quite happy with this setup.

Hopefully this will give you some insight into different connections that I use and sort of show why I like EvDo the best.  I’m sure something faster will come eventually, but until then, I’m now focused on stability of the connection to the Verizon tower, not so much the speed aspect.

Before I even start, I need to define a few terms that might confuse you.  I will use Kbps and Mbps quite often in this article.  These stand for Kilo/Mega bits per second.  These are used to measure connection speed.  DON’T CONFUSE THESE WITH KB/S AND MB/S which are your actual download speeds (KiloBytes/MegaBytes per second).

I live approximately 6 miles from the closest cellphone tower that I can get a half way decent link to.  There is another in the opposite direction about 5 miles away, but in our location, we could never get over the hill and trees to establish a connection of over 1 bar even with a specialized booster system.  I also should state that we live in a valley almost, although there is a passage through the hills that is relatively at the same level above sea level, this is the general direction the cell tower that we connect to is in.   If we were to connect to the other tower, we would have to bypass the highest hill in our entire county to get to the tower in that direction (Cattaraugus County, NY).

Before I get into any details, I connect to the Verizon EvDo network.  AT&T does not service our general area, Sprint roams in our area.  I’m not sure, but on TMobile, I get 1 bar in perfect conditions, so that may be an AT&T tower roaming.  I will leave that up to an expert to comment on if one wishes to do so.

Verizon EVDO is a specialized data network developed for cell phones to connect to the internet.  EVDO stands for Evolution-Data Optimized.  As you might guess, its made for high speed internet and is similar to the 3G technology offered by AT&T for the IPhone and other similar phones.

Verizon EvDo has a few different revisions, plus there is another 1x voice network that can handle internet data (although very slow, it does work).  Verizon’s 1x network that supports both voice and data is able to support a 128Kbps data speed (both uploading and downloading) and is suitable for voice.  The 1x network in many instances is stronger and able to maintain a connection in weaker signal areas, therefore in an area like mine, I normally connect to the 1x network without any kind of boost to the signal or locating my cellphone in good signal spots.

Verizon’s Evdo has 2 current Revisions that I know of.  The Revision 0 standard can handle a 128Kbps upload speed and 1.8Mbps download speed in optimal signal conditions (about 16KB/s up, 150KB/s down).   This is slightly older though, the current standard is EvDo Rev A.  This standard can handle 2.1Mbps upload, 3.1Mbps download under optimal conditions and with appropriate equipment (or about 268KB/s up, 400KB/s down).  In most conditions, you won’t ever achieve these speeds unless you are right next to the tower, but in most cities, you should achieve a very fast connection because you need an ideal signal.

For the past year, I have been using a tethering plan to get data on the Verizon network with my EvDo Rev 0 phone.  I noticed at the end of last summer, I was always getting on the 1x network, but I could always go outside and fix that problem.  This year, I know I have all summer, and I want decent internet access for voice over ip, etc.

Knowing that boosters existed, I had my father pick one up (on my tab).  I had a Zboost yx500 cel (800mhz only) booster here and we put the external antenna outside at the highest point.  Like the product said, it did give me 4 bars of signal inside, but it was only within an inch of the unit.  Data also wasn’t much better than what I could get when taking my phone outside with a computer.  I was let down, and had the zboost returned a day later.

Now comes the amazing part of using the dish: I was looking online at more powerful boosters and discovered that many people use parabolic antennas for reception.  We have a huge 10′ cband satellite dish in the back yard that has been unhooked for at least 5 years now.   We were actually considering scrapping it for junk money!  I’m glad we didn’t do that now.  Anyways, I wondered for a few days if I could use that to get a decent signal. I was bored about a week ago so I thought, why not take my vx6800 evdo rev a phone out to the dish and put it in front of it and try to focus a signal to it.  Surprisingly although the 6800 has a horrible antenna (no signal most places here), I got 1 bar with the dish pointed way off, so I took some tools out and pointed the dish with my father the other day.  To our pleasant surprise, I started getting 4 bars and an excellent signal when we got the dish aligned appropriately and used its focal length to focus a signal onto the phone. To put the signal in perspective (using ##debug on the phone pad to get the field test screen), I went from a -110db signal to a -70db signal.  Thats about a 40db gain, stronger than most amplifiers will guarantee.

To point the satellite dish, I sort of cheated using GPS.  I know where both towers are exactly, so I got the altitude and coordinates of the tower.  I then used the GPS to point the satellite dish correctly onto the tower.  It took a little time (vs a guess and check approach), but it provided a really good signal on our first try.

Knowing that the zboost would bring the signal inside (and boost it slightly), I had it brought back and we mounted the antenna correctly onto the dish.  Since the old dish had RG6 satellite cable already ran into the house, we used the existing low loss cable to connect the booster to the antenna (instead of the RG6 cable provided with it).

As the box says, the signal did come into the house as 4 bars within 4 feet of the base unit.  I found that 2 bars were still visible within 25 feet of the unit (before I go behind a lot of walls).   Unlike Jordan (In his blog here) and using the yx500 single band unit, my signal did go further.  I know this is because I have a very strong signal outside for it unlike Jordan had. I would still say the unit is a bit far fetched on its estimates of signal coverage area, but its more than fine for me (I don’t even use a cell phone for voice in my room, although I can now).  So I recommend if you get a zboost system, make sure you have a very strong signal outside.

Now for the boost that the zboost provided.  Inside within an inch of the unit, my previous -115db signal is now -35 to -40db.  This is better than it would be in the city (I get about -70 on that 6800).  I’m very happy with this setup, although I may consider finding ways of pushing the signal further into the house so I can talk in another room without problems if I ever would want to.   I also can use 2 data connections at maximum speed at the same time.  I will compare my exact speed results, but for now, I will say that I am averaging about 2Mbps down, .4Mbps up on my evdo rev a connection.

So now for photos of my setup:

This is by far the best connection to the internet I’ve ever had and my next blog in the next day or two will explain exactly why I say this!  So the next time you have the signal blues, try using a big dish to focus directly on your signal, you might be surprised, I know I was!

Links to other blogs that also may interest you:

• 10 Ways to hide your Satellite Dish