Netgear WNR2000

My trusty old D-Link DI624 started having problems recently. Actually it only started having problems immediately after a Comcast technician switched out our cable modem. Coincidence? Probably, but whatever...

I knew my Macbook was supported "Draft 2" of the 80211.n standard, so when I saw a reasonably priced 80211.n router, I went for it. "It" was a Netgear WNR2000. It installed very easily. I was able to re-use my old SSID and security settings, so that I did not to change any of my devices (two laptops and a Wii) or devices of friends and family who had previously used my network. Very nice. All of my devices accessed the new network with no problem. Happy happy joy joy! Not so fast.

Everything worked great except for my Macbook. It had no problems with the network, but its Internet connection was horrible. It was like being on dial-up, and it was only this way for my Macbook. My wife's laptop was blazing along as was our desktop computer (with a wired connection to the WNR2000.) It was only my Macbook that was badwidth impaired.

I started tweaking with the WNR2000's settings, well actually just one (wireless) setting: maximum network speed. This was set to 300 mpbs, or half the theoretical maximum for 80211.n and nearly six times as fast as my old DI-624's 80211.g network. I started tweaking it down, but to no effect. Until I set to 54 mpbs, i.e. the same speed as you get with 80211.g. Then my Internet connection on my Macbook was as fast as it was for every device on the network. Order had been restored, but it is not a satisfying solution.

My only guess is that I fell victim to some kind of "mixed" network issue, but that is mostly a guess. I thought the 80211.n would come in handy when copying files between my desktop computer and my Macbook. I do this a lot for music, photos, and videos. Now I basically have the same wireless network speed as before, but I could have gotten that with a cheaper router.

Mo' Ram

I've been working some lately with DB2. The worst thing about DB2, at least for a Mac-totin' developer, is that DB2 is not (yet) available for OSX. So what to do? I already had Vista installed on my MacBook via Boot Camp. So I installed DB2 on there and ... developed under Windows. Ugh. Running DB2 and Eclipse at the same time often resulted in not only a slow computer, but Eclipse stack overflows and out of memory errors. Funny how I never had such problems on OSX.

Once that project was done, I decided to upgrade the memory on my MacBook. The max it handles is 2GB (I had the 1 GB that was stock) so I went with that. So where to get the 2GB? Well there is always Apple @$300. Ouch. A better choice is Newegg, of course. For a change though, I found an equally good deal at Fry's, just up the road from my office. 2x1GB sticks of Patriot RAM for $65.

Now it was time to install the RAM. I am always quick to tell people that I am a software guy, not a hardware guy. However, Apple makes it really easy to install RAM on the MacBook. It took me like ten, maybe fifteen minutes total to upgrade the RAM. It could not have gone smoother.

The extra memory has inspired me to give Parallels a try. So far the results are mixed. Every time it launches, I get a message form Parallels saying it is installing Parallels Tools. Then Windows crashes (blue screen.) It reboots and seems ok, but it's still aggravating that it does this every time...

Have MacBook, Will Travel

Saturday I'm flying to Florida to visit family. I'm planning making heavy use of my MacBook both on the flight and in Florida. The thought occurred to me that maybe I should buy one of Apple's MagSafe power adapters that work on the airplane. Reading the reviews on Apple's site was very useful. Here's what I learned:

• First, make sure your airline seat has a power outlet. This turns out to be easy. Just go to SeatGuru. This is an awesome site! For me, I looked up my flight on American Airlines (I needed the confirmation code, but that was included in my itinerary on Expedia.) For each flight, I could look at the Flight Details and see what kind of plane it would be. I then went to SeatGuru, picked airline, and then picked plane model. You get a map of the seats with not only information on what seats have power outlets, but also other info like "this seat doesn't tilt back" or "it gets cold or loud here" etc. Very nice! I found out that neither of the seats on my two flights (coming and going) had power outlets, but I could change my seat assignment on American Airlines' site and pick seats that did!
• Next, the Apple airplane adapter does not provide much juice! It will not re-charge your laptop, and in some cases you will continue to drain your battery albeit at a slow rate. So if you're going to use it, start using it as soon as you get out your Mac. Don't wait until you get the warning about being low on juice.
• Finally, the adapter has a removable tip of some sort that allows it to work with different kinds of outlets used by different airlines. This tip is a major source of problems because you can pull the adapter out of the outlet, and the tip remains behind. Many people have left their tips behind, forcing them to buy a new adapter ($60.)

In the end, I decided not to bother with the adapter. I didn't want to change my seats because I would have to give up aisle seats for seats in between people to get a seat with an outlet. Plus, my MacBook gets very good battery life, especially when you turn off the wireless, which obviously I will do. I figured I would only have about 3 hours of time I could use my MacBook on the flight, and my battery life is much better than that. I will use my iPod to listen to music, just to save a little more juice from my Macbook. Speaking of which, I am looking forward to using my headphones on the plane.

Paying the Mac Tax

One thing I used to really like about my old iBook G3 was the AV cable. This was a special cable from Apple that plugged into the headphones jack but provided RCA audio outputs and a composited video output. So with one cable, I could easily hook my iBook up to a television. This came in handy so many times. The cable was only $20 or so to boot.

My MacBook, like most (all?) new Macs, has FrontRow and a remote control. However, the AV cable does not work with the MacBook! I asked a guy at the Apple Store about it, and he said that many people buy the AV cable and then return it because it won't work with the Front Row Macs. GRR!

Ok, so what do I need to hook my MacBook up to my TV? Well, first I will need a mini-dvi to video adapter. Cost: $19. I'll still need a separate composite or S-video cable. Cost: $20. For audio, I'll need a Y-adapter. Cost: $12. Total cost is $51!

What's silly is that Apple doesn't make those last two cables, so they are not getting any more money than they would got for charging me $19 for the magical AV cable. Maybe they're just trying to push Apple TV. I guess there must have been some technical reason to drop support for the AV cable. The MacBook supports DVI, whereas the old iBook did not. So there.

Now if only the Apple store would have carried the mini-DVI to video adapter...

MacBooks Updated

I buy a MacBook, so of course the very next week MacBooks get updated. Oh well. The black one like I bought only got bumped from 2.0 GHz to 2.16 GHz and from 120 GB HD to 160 GB HD. Not too big a deal. If they had added an ATI video card I would have been really annoyed!

MacBook

I bought a MacBook yesterday. No, I didn't get it from the mysterious shop owner in Bern :-) I got a black one, and it is way cool. I wasn't sure if I'd like the glossy screen, but it is really nice. It's sooo bright! I was using a MacBook Pro back at Ludi Labs, and the screen on the MacBook is definitely superior. I'm typing this on it right now. I spent much of last night installing Java 6 (still only a "developer preview" version,) Eclipse, and XCode last night. I ran Software Update and saw what looked like half-a-gig of updates to install. I deferred them for now. Ah the joys of a new machine.