My Computer System

* AMD Duron 700MHz
* MSI K7T Pro-2A
* 256MB PC133 SDRAM
* WD ATA100 60GB (Jumbo Buffer)
* Samsung 40/12/40 ATAPI CDRW
* HP 8250i 4/4/24 ATAPI CDRW
* Creative GeForce256
* C-Media CX8738 4-channel PCI Sound card
* Creative FPS 1800 5.1 Speakers
* Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI
* Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter (Intel 82559)
* Compaq NC3121 Fast Ethernet NIC (Intel 82557)
* ViewSonic E655-3 15 inch monitor
* Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (PS/2)
* Logitech New Touch Keyboard (PS/2)
* Aztech DSL305EU ADSL-Ethernet-USB Router
* Canon D646Uex Flatbed Scanner

I am considering getting a laptop, even if it is second hand. It really would come in handy for when I have to travel. I can even bring it around the house reading documents while in front of the TV. Anyone laptop lover upgrading theirs? reasonable price acceptable.

Update (4-Nov-2007): After a long period of deliberation and shopping around, I finally decided on the Compaq Evo 620c and bought it on 31-Dec-2003.

I bought it from a nice guy Desmond Goh at P.A. Mart (Sim Lim Square 6th floor, which is now defunct) who answered my questions patiently and explained the products nicely and honestly. I especially liked his frankness of opinion on some of the products and bundles instead of blindly defending everything the shop is selling/bundling. Note, Desmond has moved on to laptop specialists mc.2 - that was some time ago, so I'm not sure if he is still there. Anyway, he is a nice guy and I would suggest you can listen to his recommendations and eventually buy from him.

I've been using the Evo N620c it till now, although it is really sluggish. I'll be looking for a replacement when I find my life direction in a couple of months.

Random Thoughts

I just watched Italian Job ... "no imagination" seems to be the correct phrase to describe the state of my mind right now. Hee hee. Hmm ... I think this is in the wrong BLOG ... should be in Chnrxn instead.

Check out Linux SysAdmin Portal. Make it your daily read.

IT Snippets

The Perfect Programming Environment - The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code. A must read for all software developers! Yes, this includes firmware as well!

Yahoo PoPs! has released a whole new version 0.5 on Aug 3, 2003. I know this is old news, since 0.4.6 has been serving me well until now. A good thing that Yahoo! decided to disable free POP3 access for their free accounts, because having YahooPoPs! allows me to check my mail conveniently from even behind my office's proxy server! Kudos to 1 Anuj Seth, K Shyam, and Daniel Bryg!

Snippet Library at SourceForge has a collection of many useful utilities. Check it out.

Where Art Thou DSL305EW / NA3000???

After a lot of hoo haa, NA3000 is still not released. DSL305EW is still stuck at the factory.

I have written many enhancements to the firmware, including SmartDNS/URL, port range forwarding, and enhanced, more user-friendly wireless configuration.

In the pipeline is triggered port forwarding, ICMP ping blocking on the WAN, and hopefully a SPI firewall buit-in. All these of course will not come easily. Lots of testing still needs to be done.

Wireless Ethernet ADSL Router + Broadband Router

Comex is coming back 4th to 7th September 2003! We will be lauching two new products at the exhibition.

1. DSL305EW


2. NA3000

The DSL305EW is a ADSL 4-port Ethernet router with a built-in IEEE 802.11b AP. I did the development for the wireless firmware features. This is my first foray into the area of wireless routers, so give me your pointers!

The NA3000 is an Ethernet WAN to 4-port Ethernet LAN router, something like the SMC Barricade router. I also developed the firmware for this router. The nifty part of this router is that it only utilises one 6-port Ethernet switch chip using VLAN tagging to distinguish between LAN and WAN traffic.

Do give me your support.

Produce PDF documents for free

Adobe Acrobat is not the only program that can produce PDF documents. There are freely available tools that do a decent job.

What you need

• Win9x/Me/2k/XP Installation CD
  
• GhostScript and GhostView
  

To be continued ...

Why are Windows Updates hanging?

Check your firewall and anti-virus software settings!

How to Check if You Have a Virus on Your System

If funny things happen when you are installing applications or if they do not run as expected, first thing to check is if you have a virus on your system.

The most common manifestation of a virus on your system is when files start getting corrupted.

Viruses commonly corrupt executable files and DLL files on your system when they are created or accessed. So any suitable file that you download from the Internet could probably be infected. Here are some steps to check before firing up that virus checker and checking your whole 80GB hard disk.

1. Get a nice MD5 checksum utility like WinMD5
   
2. Download an EXE file - WinZip installer comes immediately to mind - and save it to disk.
   
3. Download the same file again, BUT save it as a .TXT file. Yes, as a TXT file, because viruses normally DON'T infect non executable files, and they usually only tell by the file extensions.
   
4. Drag and drop the two files into the WinMD5 application window, assuming you have opened it in the first place. If the checksums don't match, then you are in trouble. Perform a full virus scan - there are some online scanners available - on all files and folders on all drives. Delete all affected files.
   
5. Despite 'common wisdom' advising to the contrary, you can still install and run an anti-virus program even if you have been infected with a virus. After all, this is the best you can do at this stage. I've tried McAfee evaluation version with good results.
   

If you are unwilling to shell out the bucks for anti-virus software, try AntiVir Personal Edition.

Hail ClearType Font Smoothing!

My computing well-being has dramatically improved since I started using ClearType font smoothing on Windows XP. Many thanks to Guangrong for showing me that! Oh, and I'll forget to tell you the amt we chalked up using the Singtel wireless access last Friday yeah?

How to Make Fonts Look Really Nice in Windows XP

WinXP uses Tahoma for icon and window fonts by default, which is aesthetically a much better choice than MS Sans Serif used in previous versions of Windows. Use the Clear Type method of smoothing edges of screen fonts.

To do this

1. Right-click on the Desktop and choose properties


2. Select the Appearance tab and click the Effects button


3. Select the checkbox to "Use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts"


4. In the drop down list, select "ClearType"


5. Click OK twice to accept the changes.

It even feels good working on a PC that has fonts looking this good. Even typing on the keyboard feels smoother.

Try it!

Windows 2000 / XP file and print sharing

To enable Win9x clients to use a printer shared from a Windows 2000 / XP machine:

1. Enable the Guest account on the WIndows 2000 machine


2. Right-click on the printer, choose properties, and in the Security tab, add Guest to the list of users allowed to print to the printer