November 10th, 2011

Pointless Tab

Posted by John Havlik in Reviews > Hardware

What do you do when you are trying to keep symmetry in your device, but only have 2 speakers and a volume rocker to fill the spaces? If you’re HP, you’ll hide the serial number barcode on a popout tab in this fourth space.

Naturally, they could have done something useful with the space. Placing a SD (or micro SD) card slot in this location comes to mind. Possibly, this was going to hold the SIM for the 3G version that was never released. Regardless, it is still odd.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

October 31st, 2011

Cisco Valet Connector Constant Reboot

Posted by John Havlik in General

A few Sunday mornings back, I was woken up by the dog, who was in a quite agitated state. The media center had been trying to come out of hibernation to check TV schedules and do the other miscellaneous stuff that brings it out of sleep. However, it kept rebooting instantly out of the BIOS. Every time the memory check passed, it would beep, annoying the dog, who passed the annoyance onto me.

Unplugging the Cisco Valet Connector allowed the media center to boot properly. Cool, well not really, as a WiFi adapter should not keep a computer from booting. The fact that the Valet Connector shows up as a USB flash drive before becoming a WiFi adapter seemed odd to be before. And, I’m placing part of the blame on that behavior for this constant rebooting. To resolve the issue, I removed USB flash drives from the boot list in the motherboard’s BIOS.

When the media center finally booted, I noticed another issue. The Valet forgot that it was supposed to be in WiFi adapter mode. This one was my fault. If you do not complete the device setup using the included easy setup software, the device may not remember its state after reboot. Awesome, right? After completing the setup within the included easy setup software I have not had either issue reappear for a week now.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

October 28th, 2011

Cisco Valet Connector (Model No: AM10)

Posted by John Havlik in Reviews > Hardware

It seems like whenever Woot is selling a very cheap, or somewhat decent USB WiFi adapter I’ll end up picking one up. In the past I’ve picked up two Netgear WPN111 USB WiFi adapters, and a Netgear WG111t. I’ve never been a fan of either model, but they did the job and were super cheap. A few weeks back, Woot had the CISCO valet connector (Model No: AM10), in new condition, for a decent price (almost went for 2).

October 18th, 2011

Conditional Permutation Evaluator

Posted by John Havlik in General

This past spring, I took an interesting class as part of my master’s degree program titled ‘Circuits, Computation and Biology’. One of the many topics in the course was conditional permutations.

October 16th, 2011

What I Look for in a Laptop

Posted by John Havlik in General

After having a slight scare with the “h” key on my trusty Vostro 1400 (the key mechanism was binding slightly so that it had to be firmly pressed from the top to register), I began casually perusing the laptop market to see what was available.

Since I’ve had this laptop for over 3 years now, it is nearing the end of its normal service life. Lithium Ion batteries are only good for 3 to 5 years. Based on previous experience, I probably have about a year left before the battery stops holding a charge. Even though I could just buy a replacement battery, getting something new may be a better alternate (already have a fatigue crack near the ExpressCard slot).