The Next big Wave of Layoffs is Sony. (9,000 workers)

In a report from Engadget, there seems to be more Layoffs going on.   One such one is Sony.  Here is what Engadget said:

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The bad news from the Japanese consumer electronics industry continues. Sony just announced plans to cut about 8,000 global jobs from its beleaguered electronics business while making unspecified reductions to its seasonal and temporary workforce. The move, as Sony explains it, comes “in response to the sudden and rapid changes in the global economic environment.” Ominously, it looks like Sony will also be raising prices in the countries where “Sony makes significant sales” (read: US and Europe) if we’re reading this statement correctly:

[Via Engadget]

[ad#ad2-left]In Today’s economy, you need to be prepared.  So I thought I bring back some old Favorites of mine and talk about them.  To see the other layoffs that I’ve talked about CLICK HERE.   If you wanted to know what you can do to be prepared here are some great resources for people who are worried about there jobs:

If you have any others you would like to suggest please leave a comment and let everyone know.   These are hard economic times and we all could use the help.

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id=”4523″ type=”post”]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

After a full week of playing around with this USB wireless, I wanted to talk about it. So let’s break it down into pieces.

  1. [ad#text-broadband1]
  2. Installation —  The installation of the USB was not to difficult.  I did have to do some more steps than this:  Install the Software, then hooked up the USB device to the USB port.
  3. Manual Activated the Broadband —  For some reason in my area they had several people have problems with the broadband activation.  So I had to activate it manually!!

After that all went well, I was on the internet just a cruising along.  I did however wonder why I was getting such a slow response speed.  When I went traveling I thought I would share some of my local results with you to better show you my speed.  All these test were done at

my speed test around town

Please see an updated post on how to get even more speed from the broad band modem.
This speed is not the true speed for the broad band modem
.

The Percentages over the results are showing you just what my signal strength was when I was doing the test.  Two of the 4 were traveling on the highway and the other two were stationary.  I also know that my speed will vary along with signal strength, I know I have to be a mile or less from a tower to get 100%.

*Update* 12/21/08

[ad#cricket-1]In my other post I talk about why I didn’t get the speed I expected, but after I did the activation I went to normal Mobile Broadband speeds.   I also now have been using the USB Modem for my main internet without any or much problems.   I know I can’t play any major online games but I can at least have the internet with me were ever  I go.   As long as you stay in the coverage area, you should be in good shape.  .  Like I Said I’ve used it in my area for over a 1 month and with the small little problem, the speed has been really dependable and I haven’t had any major issue with connectivity. I’ve been using this modem as my main internet and have not seen any major internet and have not seen any of the cap come my way.   I think they won’t mind to much as long as you don’t ABUSE the internet, for example don’t use it for bittorrent downloads and you should be fine!!

Update 12/24/2008
I also did travel with my laptop to another city, and I got to say it was really good and how it did when I went from one city to another. Check out the report here.
According to some post and forum talks around the the internet they are talking about the soft cap of 5 Gigabytes but that seems to not be so important right now.   After all, they have to make money some how.   I will update as necessary when I find anything else out.

update 1/01/09

I also did a video and uploaded it to youtube using the broadband connection. I had no problem uploading this video to Youtube. I’ve embedded it in this web page. See it on the bottom:

I also bought the [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Cricket modem[/intlink] and I absolutely love this modem because of the things you can do with it.

Did the Xbox Experience break netflix on Demand activation?

[ad#ad2-left]According to Google Trends people are trying to activate there Xbox Experience with Netflix.  This could be a problem for Netflix, I just tried and they are extremely slow in response.   I am willing to guess that later on tonight the Netflix will go down when everyone comes home from work and tries the new Xbox Experience with Netflix.   I’ve heard of problems with activating the Netflix on the Xbox 360, this will become 10 times as bad tonight when people want to hook up and try out this new service from Netflix.   Microsoft should of released this one day at a time for each time zone.   Some blogs talking about the problems that might come along with the update are:

Although this is just a few that talks about the experience and Netflix problems there are going to be more tonight when people start to come home from work wanting this service.   I would bet over 100$ it will probably go down because to many request to sign up!! I hope they have the IT guys ready for this tonight or it will be a long night!!