Usb – Page 2 – Paul's Tech Talk

Cricket Broad Band Modem Extended Review 12/23/08

PaulDecember 23, 2008

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 the last fiasco of the troubles, I had with Cricket. I wanted to talk about some of the performance of the Broad band that I experienced going from one City to another major City. I thought I’d explain how well this went from one City to another. While on the road we had to watch for sleet and ice conditions of the surrounding area.

I had the system going through the whole part of this travel and thought I’d share my impression of the speed and reliability of the service. This is my expressions:

A few times I’ve had to activate the modem — During the trip I had to activate at least twice from once city to the other but that created no major problems and took relatively short time to activate.

Got comparative speeds all on highway — This is due to distances and where the cellular towers are and how they respond to incoming and outgoing request. Although there were many hills it seemed to keep about the same all through the drive.

Connected until I got out of Coverage area — This was due to us traveling outside of the coverage area and ended my use of the modem, but until that time it seemed to be very good at keeping me up to date on current weather conditions and other important information during the drive.

Update 12/26/2008

travel-highway1

As you can see, On my way home, I decided to run the test to show you how different it can be on parts of the highway. These show you just how much of a difference you will experience on different areas of any given city. You see it all comes down to Hills and Valleys and also the location the tower. You will never be able to get the best speed possible while driving but you will of course be able to surf the web and check email. I also was able to use Twitter with this to test that feature out. It seemed to work well with Twitter web update with out much trouble. Please see below to see how you can get this service for yourself. If you like this service, please recommend my review to others so they can determine if this is available in there area. Please remember this will only work if you are in the coverage area. This was done on the way home once I got into the Cricket Service area and you can see what type of speeds I got.

To see my other review of this modem you can click here. I had problems with speed until after I did the activation of the modem the first time around. After I activated the modem, the speed really increased to what it should be. When it comes to the reliability of the modem and the ease of use, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars due to the problems and understanding of the problems associated with a broad band modem. I will for the time recommend this to friends and family because after the activation of the modem, I’ve had really good speeds and want to remind people that the modem is only as good as the source, so you must remember where the towers are to better help you get the speed you want.

[ad#text-broadband1]

Stop botnets in its tracks With a Firewall!

PaulNovember 30, 20083 Replies

According to PC World and I’ll quote:

According to FireEye chief scientist Stuart Staniford, detection rates are so poor that, on average, only around 40 percent of security software can detect binaries during the period of greatest infectivity and danger, namely the first few days after a particular variant starts being used by botnet builders.

[via PC World]

[ad#ad2-left]Now let’s talk about this, having been seeing recent surges of people getting infected. I’ve come to the conclusion that companies like AVG and other Anti-Virus companies are keeping up. Now true if all you have is an Anti-virus and nothing else that greatly increases your likely hood of getting a virus.

In a recent virus storm, We have people finding my site because of a Good Firewall. No if he didn’t have anything but Windows firewall then it would of gotten through and you would not of known about it. So let’s talk about how to prevent botnet attacks. This is relatively easy and if you follow some common rules. You to could be less likely to be infected. I will say this most people don’t do these common tips and they should do them.

[ad#digg-right]So what should you do to help prevent from getting a Virus or Malware. This is really simple, you want to find an Anti-virus Software that you like, and Firewall that you like also. You’ll also want to download the tools to better help you in case you do get infected. Some of these tools I recommend are Hijackthis, Spybot Search and Destroy, Hitman Pro, and Ad-aware 2007 Edition (FREE). Then Go buy a Sandisk USB memory Stick and put those on there for later use!! You will always want to keep a backup of those just in case you get infected.

[ad#ad2-right]Make sure you update Windows regularly. Having seen this time and time again, if you don’t keep windows updated then you lose the battle. If you have a system that needs updating, I suggest downloading the Clone to Autopatcher. This little program will download the files needed to update your system without having to be online. Although, you can have windows update automatically every month but that might not update the recommended updates only the ones that are hot. It doesn’t matter which way you prefer to update, as long as you do to update regularly, Like every 2nd Tuesday of the Month.

One last tip you should also keep your Firewall and Anti-virus updated. There is a little program that will do that, it’s call AppSnap. If you follow all these recommendations you will greatly reduce your chances of getting a virus on your system.

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

PaulNovember 25, 20086 Replies

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.

[ad#text-broadband1]

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.

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

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.

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

PaulNovember 25, 2008

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket A600 Modem Review Or the UM185 Broadband modem. 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.

(USB Broadband A600 Modem card for Free after Instant online rebates and Mail in rebate Free shipping & first month free! Shop today.)

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.

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!!

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.

*Update* 12/21/08

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 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 A600 Cricket modem and I absolutely love this modem because of the things you can do with it.

How to disable autorun the easy way!!!

PaulNovember 21, 2008

I read a report from Cnet about USB devices spreading Virus and I will quote:

The bad guys are intentionally developing new flavors of malware designed to propagate through USB devices,” said Gunter Ollmann, chief security strategist for IBM’s ISS security division. “They are today’s floppy drives.”

[ad#ad2-right]An infected computer can spread a virus to a clean USB thumb drive that is inserted. That USB drive will then be spreading the virus onto other computers if the operating system on those machines has an AutoRun-type feature enabled. The AutoRun function in Windows launches installers and other programs automatically when a flash drive or CD is inserted. The Mac has an equivalent function, according to Ollmann.

[Via Cnet]

In order to disable “autorun“, which in Vista is called Autoplay. In order to disable Autoplay from starting when you insert media into your computer here is how you do it:

You will need to be Logged in as Administrator before this can be done:

Next click start and type “Autoplay” without quotes. It will bring up a screen but all you have to worry about is this:

You will need to make sure there is no check mark for “Use AutoPlay for all media and Devices”. Click save and close.

[ad#ad2-left]Once that is done, you will have no more Autoruns from USB devices. If you want to disable Autorun in XP, I’d suggest reading some of these articles for XP.

Wikipedia – AutoRun

How to Disable Autorun

These are just a few and are really nice to articles but there are others out there that might be more to your liking. I suggest searching Google for them. I hope this helps you out!!!