Review Horizon

1. Introduction

If it would be up to me, I would install wired networks whenever possible, but many times it is just not practical. Most of the notebooks people own today have wireless-N adapters already embedded but if you have an older laptop or you want to bring wireless network connection to a desktop you’ll have to go shopping.

That’s what I did and after carefully reading / testing many USB wireless adapters, the product I decided to keep and install is the object of the current review - Cisco AE1000 High Performance Wireless-N Adapter, or Linksys AE1000 High Performance Wireless-N Adapter, whichever you prefer since Linksys was bought by Cisco quite a while ago and it is now Cisco’s home products division. Also, AE1000 is a re-branded WUSB600N v2 adapter so this review will apply to the WUSB600N v2 as well (they share the chip-set)

2. Cisco AE1000 Unpacking

The adapter was packed in a box quite large considering the content. In the box, you’ll find the adapter itself that Read More…

I bought the Buffalo Nfiniti Wireless-N WZR-HP-G300NH router because my good old Belkin started to die after about 2 years of heavy usage and I also got a pretty good deal from Amazon. I looked around for a while for a decent N router under $100 that also had Gigabit ports and some kind of NAS functionality and WZR-HP-G300NH seemed to fit the bill. If you look on the WEB, you will also find out that it provides DD-WRT compatibility which is certainly a bonus, and it is claimed that it provides a higher transmitting power than other routers on the market. Let’s put these claims to test and see how it performs.

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I just saw this offer on Newegg‘s website and wanted to share it with you. It looks like Newegg will have a SSD sale tomorrow, 04/02/2010.  SSDs can be used to replace mechanical hard drives and have several advantages over them as speed, power consumption and reliability. The prices are still relatively high for the provided capacity, so the best deal at this point is to get a SSD smaller than 120GB and use it as a system drive.  You can also check my post:

To SSD or not ? How Intel X25-M Solid State Drive performs in a HTPC

for more information about how a SSD drive performs in a Home Theater PC.

Also, when used in notebooks, SSD drives will significantly increase the boot speed and battery life at the same time. Most of the applications will just take a second to start, including Microsoft Office.

Important: If you want to buy a SSD drive to use in a desktop computer, remember to also check if it comes with a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter (retail boxes do). Otherwise, you will need to buy one separately.

I use my HTPC every day to watch movies, but I don’t like to wait until it boots. To be honest, it was never that slow to boot, I have a AMD Phenom II X4 Deneb at 3.0Ghz on a Asus M4A785-M motherboard, and the system is pretty nimble as it is. However, there is always room to grow, so after a long wait I got myself the Intel X25-M SSD.

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At 80GB, the size is perfect for a HTPC, a Windows 7 installation plus various 7MC  plug-ins only takes about 25GB with enough to spare for additional media-related applications.

Installation:

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