As well, I have classed the article list between computer systems and peripherals; and network equipment including Internet-enabled entertainment. There is also a separate article group for buyers’ guides dedicated to small-business and community-organisation owners. This layout will evolve as I add more buyers’ guide articles to this site.

You may have come in to this site either via a Web search, an email or from the URL that you may have copied from posters, cards and other offline advertising that I may have put up around town; and have found the site of interest. But you don’t have the time to keep checking on it for newer articles.

There are three ways to follow this site so you don’t miss the latest articles:

1. RSS feed (Webfeed) – You can subscribe to an RSS feed using your feed reader. This may be integrated in your email program, Web browser or operating system;’ or there will be many different applications for all the computing platforms that will show a list of articles in an RSS feed. Your browser may highlight the orange RSS icon to indicate that there is the Webfeed to subscribe to. Click on this to start subscribing with your browser’s feed-reading function.

For other applications, the URL is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/HomeNetworkingAndItInformationAndDiscussion

This feed is updated as and when new articles are published.

2. Your email inbox. There is an option to subscribe to this site so you have new articles appear in your email inbox. This will be provided in the form of a “Subscribe” form located in the sidebar on the right hand side of your page in the standard view and you fill in your email address, with a CAPTCHA-protected “opt-in” form popping up when you click the “Subscribe” button. Another way will be to visit this URL:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=HomeNetworkingAndItInformationAndDiscussion

When you fill in your email in either of these forms, you will get a confirmation email from Feedburner Email Subscriptions which has a link that you must click on in order to start receiving the latest articles in your email inbox.

The emails come on days where there are new articles posted and if two or more articles are posted on the one day, you will receive one email with all the articles.

3: Facebook Feed: If you are a member of Facebook, you can follow this site by either scrolling down to the “Visit this on Facebook” box and clicking the “Like” button in that box or visiting this Facebook page.If you haven’t logged in to Facebook at that point, you will be required to log in.

Subsequent articles will appear in your Recent Items Facebook list under “HomeNetworking01.info” and you will have the introductory text of the article as the copy so you can follow through and continue reading it at the site. This may not be feasible if you are checking your Facebook account from a device that doesn’t start a Web-browsing session when you click on a link.

These articles will appear as and when new articles are published.

At the moment, there isn’t the ability to start email or Facebook subscriptions from the simplified mobile user interface unless you click on the links in this article. You may have to click this link or click the “Go to Desktop View” option at the bottom of the page to open the regular view for creating an email or Facebook subscription. This will be a problem if you are viewing this from an Android or other tablet which shows the mobile view by default.

I hope this is of use to you as you keep following this site and reading the articles written within.

With regards,

Simon Mackay

I am writing this special article which will help you get the most out of your visit to the stores during the Boxing Day Sales. No doubt, you will have enjoyed your Christmas celebrations with your family and friends and are about to see the New Year in. Concurrently, you will be bombarded with print, TV, radio and online advertising by the big consumer-electronics stores and department stores concerning the deep discounts that are offered on computer and consumer-electronics equipment during the Boxing Day sales that will be on this week.

Here, the usual price ranges that you expect for certain classes of equipment may change due to the deep discounting that these retailers do but it is worth paying attention to the features that the equipment offers.

Beware that the “doorbuster specials” and other highly-promoted specials may not offer a good return on their value because they may be low-end equipment that doesn’t have the necessary features that you want out of the equipment. In the case of printers, you may find that you have two ink cartridges that are costly to replace when they run out.

Printers

I have started with this class of equipment here because most people end up making mistakes when they buy printers on price alone. Here, the very cheap multifunction printer will typically end up being costly to run and may need new ink very frequently.

When you buy an inkjet printer, look for printers that use four or more ink cartridges. Here, there is one cartridge per colour and if you run out of one particular colour, you just need to replace that cartridge.

As well, some printer manufacturers, most notably HP and Brother, sell multi-cartridge inkjet printers that can take high-capacity cartridges. Here, you benefit from the fact that during low-demand periods, you could get by with standard-capacity cartridges but can run high-capacity cartridges during the high-demand periods like end of school term for example.

A printer that is fully network-enabled can be worth its salt in situations where you have multiple computers or a laptop connected to the Internet via a wireless network. This is more important for a multifunction unit because the network-enabled multifunction units provide network access to the scanner as well as the printer with nearly all of them offering the ability to scan a document to a particular computer from the machine’s control panel. In the case of most of the recent HP (Hewlett-Packard) printers, you gain extra functionality like email-to-print or "print-app” functionality because of the fact that you have network functionality.

Network Infrastructure

Be careful when buying a router for your home network. There are two major classes of routers – a router, sometimes referred to as a broadband router, which only has an Ethernet connection on the Internet side and is designed to connect to a broadband modem; and a modem router, which has an integrated broadband modem, typically an ADSL2+ modem, or, in an increasing number of cases, a wireless-broadband modem for the Internet side.

If you are buying to replace an ADSL modem or older / failed ADSL modem router, it would be preferable to buy an ADSL2+ modem router. Similarly, you could buy an ADSL modem router as the core piece of equipment when you set up a new broadband service in a built-up area and have that service as a “BYO modem” or “wires-only” service, which attracts cheaper setup charges.

If your Internet service uses cable-modem, fixed-wireless, fibre-optic or similar technology and the provider provides a modem or “ONT” as the customer-premises equipment, you could get by with a broadband router connected to the modem’s Ethernet port as the network-Internet “edge”.

As for wireless routers, you may gain a better deal by looking at the 802.11n equipment because you can have them run with existing wireless-enabled network devices by using an 802.11g “compatibility” mode. This may not achieve the full high-speed throughput that 802.11n is designed for but still has a very good operating range for wooden or brick-veneer houses. You will still need to consider the second access point and wired backbone for houses with double-brick or masonry interior walls, including interior fireplaces and brick-veneer extensions built on to double-brick or masonry houses. 

Speaking of which, if you are buying HomePlug powerline equipment, it would be preferable to go for equipment that is based on HomePlug AV standards. Here, this equipment will comply with IEEE 1901 powerline-network standards and work properly with the newer HomePlug AV2 standards. As well, you will get higher data throughput and improved reliability across the powerline network.

Games consoles, TVs and consumer AV

The Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft XBox 360 can work beyond just being a games machine that is hooked up to the TV. These consoles, especially the PlayStation 3, can become very powerful networked media terminals that can benefit from media held on your computer’s hard disk, a network-attached storage device or the Internet.

It is also worth paying extra attention to DLNA-compliant network AV equipment. Here, you can start slowly towards the networked-AV world yet be in a position to play your pictures, music and video collection from your Windows or Mac computer through the use of cheap or free software. You may be able to use your smartphone or tablet computer as a media controller even if the media files are held elsewhere on the network. This can be achieved through the use of DLNA / UPnP AV media-controller software that is ether supplied on your phone or available through the phone’s application store for a modest sum of money or, in some cases, for free.

As well, you may find that an Internet radio may be an entry point in to the world of networked AV and also give you a chance to hear radio from distant lands. This is especially more so if you “cottoned on” to a radio station that you had heard on your travels and were enamoured by its programming. There may be some bargains out there that are worth considering as manufacturers move towards newer models of these radios.

Laptop, Notebook and Netbook Computers

Make sure that you buy the right computer for its role in your IT lifestyle rather than on the price. A 14” or larger laptop would work well as an easily-transportable alternative to a desktop or all-in-one whereas a netbook or 13” notebook would work well as a secondary computer that you use when you travel.

If the computer is expected to be the primary computer, look towards increased hard-disk capacity and RAM memory. Dedicated graphics may be important if games, multimedia and graphics are important to your computing life. Conversely, a 15” laptop with low-tier processor specifications may be useful for retirees who are going to use it primarily for word-processing, email or Web-browsing.

Conclusion

When you plan to take advantage of the Boxing Day Sales to buy your computer equipment, it always pays to know what you want and where you envisage your use of the equipment over the next two to three years.

A summary post of the year in review for home and small-business Information Technology

Technological Changes and Events

Arrival of Windows 7 and MacOS X “Snow Leopard”

Windows 7 and Macintosh “Snow Leopard” have been primarily “under-the-hood” reworks of the operating systems in order to make them perform in an optimum manner on today’s hardware. This has led to both of them being fine-tuned to work properly with the latest Intel-architecture processors, both the 32-bit versions and the 64-bit versions.

The main benefit is that Windows has been brought up to the same performance expectation as the Macintosh platform especially when it come to graphics and multimedia tasks. This also has affected the industrial design of Windows-based computer hardware where the computer systems, especially portable computers (laptops, notebooks and netbooks) and “all-in-one” computers which have the computing power integrated with the LCD screen, are aesthetically on a par with or overtaking the Apple Macintosh computers, especially the MacBook portable computers and the iMac all-in-one units.

There will still be the Macintosh users who crave the glowing Apple logo on the back of the computer but an increasing number of these users are still considering the Windows 7 platform.

The rise of the netbook

This year has seen the netbook become a significant computing option. These compact portable computers run on a processor like the Intel Atom platform, use a screen of up to 11” and have as their secondary storage a hard disk of up to 160Gb and a memory card reader but no optical-disk drive. As far as networking is concerned, they will usually have Wi-Fi wireless networking at least and may also have wireless broadband connectivity built in to them. These grew out of the “One Laptop Per Child” project where the goal was to provide portable computers to children in underdeveloped communities, especially the Third World, to assist with their education.

They are now being seen as being of value to computer users who have a desktop, larger laptop or “all-in-one” as a secondary computer for use when travelling or for computer users who consider that their only needs are word-processing, email and Web surfing. They also have become of value to “hotspot surfers” who make regular visits to cafes, bars and similar locations where a wireless hotspot exists.

Apple iPad and the arrival of the consumer tablet computer

Another significant technological event that had happened this year was Apple launching the iPad. This is a touch-sensitive portable computing device about the size of an average magazine and is supported by an electronic book and periodical library provided by Apple’s iTunes infrastructure.

It has attracted a lot of curiosity and interest from consumers, publishers and competitors alike and there has been interest in it being a platform for delivering books, newspapers, magazines and other printed material. It has been taken further with the concept of rich media and video as part of illustrations in the electronic publications.

Of course, competitors have answered the device in different ways. One was to provide low-cost touch-enabled convertible notebooks including “netvertibles” which are touch-enabled convertible netbooks. These units would run the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system or another “tablet-form” operating system. Another was to provide touch-enabled “tablet” computers that run Android or another competing consumer-electronics operating system. They would also run “front-ends” for various electronic-publishing platforms like Amazon and / or provide PDF reading functionality.

The ultra-cool Apple iPhone faces serious competition

Google had officially released the Android embedded-device operating system and this led to the arrival of touch-enabled smartphones from HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson which were able to effectively compete with the Apple iPhone. This operating system was backed by an application development environment and on-phone “app store” that gave developers more freedom to do what they want with their applications.

Similarly, Samsung had developed Bada, which was their own touchscreen smartphone platform and supplied a number of smartphones that ran on this platform. Other smartphone platform designers like RIM, Symbian and Microsoft had prepared touchscreen smartphone platforms and app-store environments that were able to compete with Android and the Apple iPhone platform.

The arrival of the competing platforms had occurred concurrently with an increased developer dissatisfaction with the way Apple handled iPhone apps for sale through through the iPhone App Store. This dissatisfaction has also been intensified by the “found iPhone 4 prototype” saga which engulfed the Gizmodo blog circa May and June, where Apple wanted to haul that blog and one of its reporters “over the coals” because they were perceived to be spying on their trade secrets.

Next generation broadband

Another major technological change that has happened over this year was the arrival of next-generation broadband in an increasing number of countries with the most progressive rollouts being in UK, France and Germany.

This is a category of broadband service that gives network bandwidths of at least 10Mbps to the customer’s door. Most such services use a backhaul that is primarily fibre-optic cable but there are some that use fibre-optic cable to the customer’s door whereas others use copper-based technology, usually VDSL2 which is a fast version of ADSL2 optimised for short runs.

Major promises that have been offered with this technology include the delivery of IP-based TV services that provide many streamed or on-demand channels of high-definition video as well as IP-based voice and video telephony with the voice service at the sound-quality equivalent of FM radio.

TV content delivered over the Internet

This leads me to an increased interest being shown by broadcasters, Internet service providers and the consumer-electronics industry in delivering TV content via the Internet. This encompasses content streamed in real-time to the end-user in the traditional broadcast context and video-on-demand content able to be drawn down by the end-user for immediate viewing or storage on a hard disk local to the end-user’s home.

Some European countries are using this technique to provide free-to-air TV and pay TV through “triple-play” Internet services. But the technology is being considered in the USA and Australia as an alternative to pay TV. This is being considered more so in the US especially during the Financial Crisis because of a desire to save money by “cutting the cord” – disconnecting from cable TV and is augmented by the fact that a lot of Americans are becoming disenfranchised by their cable-TV providers.

TV over Internet has been augmented by the development of the Google TV platform and consumer-electronics manufacturers developing their “online-TV” platforms that are part of their TVs and Blu-Ray players. These platforms include a front-end to various video-on-demand or IPTV services as well as social-Web services like Facebook and Twitter. Even Panasonic, LG and Samsung have integrated Skype in to their TV platforms and provided support for a Webcam so that their TVs become a large-screen communal videophone of the kind only dreamed of in science fiction.

As well, companies like TiVo and Sony are proposing that the FCC (the communications regulator in the USA) implement a standards-driven “broadcast-IP” way of delivering premium TV services, both broadcast and on-demand, to the networked home. This is to be considered as a preferred alternative to the status quo of delivering pay-TV where the signal is delivered from the cable-TV infrastructure or satellite dish to set-top boxes that are leased from the pay-TV provider at each viewing location. The DLNA-driven setup would provide for viewing and recording of regular broadcasts, viewing of on-demand content as well as use of interactive TV using equipment purchased by the consumer and supporting the ability to have the user experience branded by the equipment’s designer for example.

On this site

Naming change from cumbersome name to simple HomeNetworking01.info name

This site used to be known as the “Home Networking Information And Discussion Blog” but has been rebranded to an easily-remembered “HomeNetworking01.info” brand. This reflects the actual URL address for this site rather than the URL referring to a cumbersomely-worded site name.

As well, the site isn’t just pitched as a blog. With all the many feature articles and product reviews, this site is positioned as an information portal for home and small-business information technology.

Plenty of reviews

Over the past year, I had built up strong relationships with various names in the consumer and small-business IT scene in order to review network-enabled equipment for this class of user. I have focused on equipment that can be managed by the user themselves, especially that the householder or small-business owner is likely to be the one who manages all of the equipment rather than relying on dedicated staff or outside contractors.

I have reviewed network-based media players that support UPnP AV media playback as a standard. This encompasses the Internet radios that I have reviewed here because they are able to fulfil the role of a network media player as well as an Internet radio.

It has been dominated by a lot of table radios, mostly made by Revo; plus one Pure Evoke Flow portable radio and a Sony home-theatre receiver that was primarily a network media player.

I have also reviewed plenty of network-enabled printers, primarily multi-function printers with or without integrated fax functionality that are targeted at either home users including home-office users, or small-business users. This was to work with the theme of how you can take advantage of your small network but also to show people that there are printers out there that are capable of being there “for the long haul” rather than those el-cheapo specials that cost as much to replenish with ink or toner as they do to by and have a very short service life.

Most of these were Hewlett-Packard printers that covered most of the “good-quality” home and small-business market but I had reviewed two of the Canon “home-office” PIXMA fax-enabled multifunction printers. I had also reviewed a Brother network-capable all-in-one printer with fax functionality that could scan from or print on A3 or US-Ledger paper.

I have not forgotten about the laptop, notebook or netbook computer being a centrepiece of the “new computing environment”. Here, I have reviewed a range of machines that suit different usage types like users who have the laptop as their sole computing device as well as users who have a desktop or larger portable computer and want to have a portable computer primarily for use while they travel.

I have reviewed a number of Dell and HP notebooks but am diversifying to other brands, especially as I am starting to review Sony’s VAIO lineup of portable computers.

More feature articles

As the 802.11n wireless-network standard was declared “final”, I had written an article about understanding this new standard and selecting the right equipment for the home or small-business network. This includes catering for older equipment that operates on the 802.11g standard.

I had also written an article on understanding and optimising a HomePlug powerline network in order to gain best value out of the technology. This also includes using HomePlug to extend network coverage out to outbuildings in larger properties, especially where a remote building like a cabin may be wired from another outbuilding like a garage that is closer to and wired from the main house. It also encompassed deploying a HomePlug AV network in to a premises which has a legacy HomePlug 1.0 Turbo network already in place.

Not forgetting the shops and other small businesses

The HomeNetworking01,info site is also targeted at shops and other small businesses who have the business owner being the business’s IT staff. In a lot of cases, these businesses can easily end up making mistakes by not understanding IT trends that come about to them or by buying cheaper poor-quality computing equipment that doesn’t suit their needs exactly.

I had written a buyer’s guide article about understanding IP-based video-surveillance systems because most businesses who actually run or are contemplating installing a closed-circuit TV setup may be talked in to buying one of these systems. As well, I had written an article about using UPnP AV / DLNA technology in the small business whether to play music or use one of the recent Samsung or Sony DLNA-enabled LCD TVs as part of a digital-signage effort.

Similarly, I have reviewed a number of fax-equipped multifunction printers that would be considered fit for small businesses like the Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6500 and LaserJet M1210 Series as well as the Brother MFC-6490CW A3-capable unit as well as two single-function printers from the Hewlett-Packard stable – the OfficeJet 7000 A3-capable inkjet network printer and a direct-connect LaserJet  P1560 monochrome laser unit suitable for doctors’ offices, motels and the like. Of course, there are businesses who may need to make short-run promotional material that is to be printed on A3 paper or who need to print material like ledgers and charts on to A3 paper for easier reading or mounting on a wall or noticeboard. I have reviewed a couple of network-connected printers that can do this job at a cost-effective price, one being the previously-mentioned Brother all-in-one and the other being an HP OfficeJet 7000 single-function wide-carriage printer.

As for laptop computers, I have reviewed an HP ProBook 4520 business-grade unit that is best used by business owners who take the computer between their business’s shopfront and their home office. I have also reviewed netbook and subnotebook computers for people to use as “traveller” computers that are secondary to a desktop or larger notebook computer.

Expect a lot more

As the new technologies are introduced through the coming year, especially as countries increase the deployment of “next-generation” single-pipe triple-play wireline broadband and more people take up wireless broadband, there will be a lot more coverage in this site.

As well, as each year yields a new technology for release to the home, SOHO or small-business market, I will be covering these technologies by explaining what is involved when buying equipment based on them. There will of course be more articles concerning the online life and other plans that are afoot concerning this technology.

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY

HOMENETWORKING01.INFO

A few weeks ago, I had trouble with the WordPress content management system not showing up posts that I have submitted using Windows Live Writer and other programs rather than the program’s Web-based user interface. I have had to resort to “cutting and pasting” text from Windows Live Writer into WordPress’s “Add new post” data-entry form for those weeks until I had upgraded WordPress to 3.0 – the latest version.

Now I had done a test post which you may have received if you followed this blog through an RSS Webfeed, via email or on Facebook (whether you have me as a Facebook friend or have marked the HomeNetworking01.info Facebook Page as a fan). I had deleted the test post from the main homepage so it doesn’t show up in an awful light. I am sorry about this situation especially if it has cast the site in an amateurish light and this test was to prove that I can still edit offline and publish the articles online instantly or save them as a draft online so I can work on them across multiple computers.

You can still follow the site for new posts as an RSS Web feed, in your email Inbox or  on your Facebook Home Page.

Expect to see a lot more good-quality material including many reviews, feature articles and buyers’ guides to appear on this site soon,

With regards,

Simon Mackay

I am reorganising the Product Reviews page after reviewing a lot of equipment over the last few months. What I have done is to put the review lists for the printers and the laptop / notebook / netbook computers on separate pages that can be accessed from the Product Reviews page or the top menu. This will be a step towards making this list become less cluttered as I receive more products for review.

Also, if you think that the only printers being reviewed in this site are Hewlett-Packard units, there is something coming around soon in the form of a Canon PIXMA MX-350 network-enabled consumer all-in-one inkjet unit that I have received today for reviewing. I am also establishing relationships with other manufacturers in order to review many different brands of product.

WIth regards,

Simon Mackay

I have established a reference section on this blog to improve its useability. This is being achieved through a glossary that uses simple language to explain the computing terms that will be used in the blog or by salesmen in this industry. There is also a “network hierarchy” reference table which describes the logical areas of a network in relationship to each other, as well as the relationship of various device classes to the network.

As this blog evolves, I will be adding more reference material to this area as a way of making the articles easier to understand.

With regards,

Simon

I have changed this blog’s title to “HomeNetworking01.info” to make it easier to remember, especially that the Web address is homenetworking01.info , thus the URL name will effectively become the blog’s “brand”.  

However, it will still focus on home, community and small-business IT and network issues and will also include “on-the-go” network and Internet access for these communities. It also includes some articles concerning the Internet experience such as social-network use, which may perplex most people who don’t use the Internet regularly.

As well, I have enabled a mobile-optimised view which will appear if you are viewing the blog from a smartphone or other handheld device. Both views have a link to allow you to choose the one most appropriate for your device in case the blog doesn’t respond properly or you are using a “tablet” device which may be seen as a handheld device.

The desktop view has a “Print this article” button at the end of each article so it is easier to print out or fax the articles if you need to do so. This is because some articles, such as those I have written about Facebook use, may be wiorth printing out and attaching to a noticeboard by the computer.

With regards,

Simon