36 posts from May 2008

ASUS are bringing out a games controller for the Eee PC that they've dubbed the Eee Stick - despite there being two of them (surely it should be Eee Sticks?)

These sticks look a hell of a lot like Nintendo's Wii-mote and nunchuk and I'm not entirely convinced they're a good idea (there's not a whole bunch of gaming available for the Linux variant of the Eee PCs for a start).

Eee PC News / Eee-PC.de / GoNintendo

My own Eee/Wii mashup

Within moments of hitting 'send' (well actually it's 'save' but that just doesn't right) I got an error page, then another, then another.  Oh no, me thinks, that don't bode well... bammo - no connection!  Hmm, so I thought I'd see if my phone's connection was down as well.  Yep, nothing, nada, zip.

So I get on the line to 333 and spend about 40-odd minutes trying to resolve my own phone's issue (not concerned about the mobile web 'dongle' at this stage) and they were stumped.  I explained the problem as best I could and they got me to try everything other than stand on my head (I tried that before and it didn't work).  No resolution there then, but they were very apologetic and escalated it.

Once off the phone I thought I'd try the laptop one more time (it was on and just sitting there waiting) and to my surprise it worked!  But my phone, its internet? Not so much - just Planet3, Google and parts of Yahoo!

My 3 Mobile Broadband is up and working again.  It's been slow despite having HSDPA reception and only doing basic browsing.  I looked at the handy usage monitor/connection-thingy software and whoa! Been receiving way more than just web pages... oh look - Windows update!

The linux flavour of the Eee PCs is far from perfect but at least it doesn't have huge updates updating hugely all the time!

Hmmmmm I love Nando's and I love that they have all their UK locations mapped and ready for use on TomTom (and Garmin, and Navman).  What more could a hungry techie-traveller want?

To get your POIs, head to their site and where it says "Find Nando's" tell it you don't know your postcode, you'll then see the following...

Following my TumTum to Nando's

Three bill

3Alert Internet Usage: You've reached your allowance

I can't believe it's not buffer!

My phone's internet access isn't working, mobile broadband isn't working and, earlier, my home broadband wasn't working!  I tell ya, you really, really miss somethings when they're not there...

Fortunately I've now got back my home broadband.  That's a relief, I thought it'd be out of action for a couple of hours, if not a few days.  My ISP keeps messing up my payment details and every couple of months sends me out a nasty letter threatening to cut me off if I don't pay up.  I then have to call a premium rate number to resolve the matter and then... two months later I go through the whole process again.  This time it's looking better, the woman was really helpful and without me saying anything, she figured out the problem - explained/admitted it was a problem created by someone at their end and that should be that.

Now to figure out what's up with my phone's X-Series Silver internet add-on.  I'll admit I've hooked up my Eee to my N95 8GB a few times to get online (I don't believe that's 100% okay small-print wise!) but I should be well and truly under the fair use limit.  Hopefully this is just a problem at their end and not me being cut-off until the next billing cycle.

As for mobile broadband via 3's Huawei USB modem - well I took 3mobilebuzz's unlimited usage a little too literally and have seemingly gone through 7GB in two weeks.  In normal usage (and when one's paying) I doubt only the most foolish will use the likes of Sky Player or download HD videos via Miro.  But, with XP and Vista laptops and mobile broadband being bundled together at many stores, I do wonder if anyone has thought about how huge Windows updates can be and how you have little choice in the matter of downloading them.  If you've got a household where there isn't a fixed line connection, or someone has unwittingly connected via the 'dongle' then that's sure to eat through some precious bandwidth (certainly not good for those on 1GB).  Not a problem on the Linux Eee PC though - another reason why these should be pushed more.

Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly annoyed by my phone's problem with streaming audio.  Whilst my N95 8GB is connected to WiFi it can play internet radio streams fine, on 3G it's a very different situation.  Buffer, buffer, bu... f... f... e.. .. ..

I used to be able to listen with barely a problem.  Occasionally I got the odd second or two of buffering - but often listened for over an hour without even one blip.  My trusty old N73 even managed fine and that didn't have super fast 3.5G.

It's got really annoying now though and I've had enough!  I want to find out what the root of the problem is and fix it.  I've got great reception where I use my phone most, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.  I have a phone which is supposedly cutting edge, has lots of memory and supports HSDPA - so that shouldn't be the problem.  It's gotta be the network right?  They must be the ones that are throttling my connection, it has to be...

...that's what I thought anyway but I've just discovered it can't be.  Why?  I've just had my phone hooked up to my Eee PC and have been streaming the same stations, same streams that I attempted earlier on my phone and had completely different results.  Listening on my phone I suffered buffering problems every couple of mins on average.  Listening on my laptop to the same stations, using the same connection, I had no problems at all (well that's not entirely true but one station I tried is useless on anything other than my home broadband).

So it looks like there's something wrong with my Nokia and I need to suss it out.  Why does the phone need to buffer a stream on the handset but dosn't need to when it passes the connection on to the laptop?  It makes no sense!

Nokia Internet Radio seems to suffer worse than S60 Internet Radio.  Anyone got any ideas why?  Anyone else having similar problems?

Nothing to see here, move along...