Lannig

I'm in BKK- am having same issues-very slow-can no longer watch streaming TV-drop outs and losses every 10-30 mins.

If you call True Internet customer service and press 9 for english there is a pre recorded message that says "we are in a state of emergency and you may not be able to use high speed internet" !!

May be related to these problems!

Someone has been pulling out the wrong cable in True's operations room again, to demo how his brand new laptop can play 1080p videos smoothly :-)

Don't flame me, I've seen this happening for real. Not at True though, but there's no reason to think they're better than the others.

It might be less than 1% on computers browsing the Internet, because I suspect this is where these figures are coming from, but in corporate/government environments it's still the only officially supported browser in many, many places. Reason for this: a zillion legacy web-based apps that only work properly with I6 and that no one can fix anymore (or at least it's not economically doable). Of course web developers aren't too concerned about this, except the ones who have to support corporate intranets too.

Why remotely? Just log in to the router control panel and alter the settings, assuming that the router supports scheduled port blocking.

If done on the PC then some third party firewall would be needed; the Windows firewall is very basic. I suspect that some of the "net nanny" type programmes could be configured to do this.

the CLI version is slightly more flexible: http://technet.micro.../dd734783(WS.10).aspx

Ah... netsh. The swiss knife of command-line networking in Windows. Didn't realize it could be used to control the firewall too. Thanks for the hint. Obscure syntax, though. For real nerds :-)

Guys... don't fall for the marketing buzz. The so-called LED TVs *are* LCD screens. Only with LED backlighting instead of the classical neon lights. So far screens whose pixels really are made of LEDs (and therefore do not need backlighting) exist only in small sizes (for smartphones), at least out of labs. They're called AMOLED.

So what are the advantages of a "LED" over a LCD ?

As far as I know :

- somewhat brighter image (not a huge difference though)

- thinner screens

- more uniform backlighting (might not be true for all kinds of LED-backlit screens though, depends on the exact technology used, there are several different ones: LED bars, LED back panel etc.)

- longer lifetime for backlighting

Don't take this as authoritative though. I'm sure Google knows more about this than I do ;-)

Here's what seems to be a good summary: http://reviews.cnet.com/led-tvs-review-10-things-you-need-to-know

From Linux News;

The first ten Raspberry Pi Model B Beta Boards have arrived on eBay. Charity auction.

Yup. The one with serial # 9 has reached a price over 800 quids. Unless you're a collector or you want to donate, better buy an expensive notebook :-)

Many firewalls only enforce TCP rules on SYN packets (the ones used to establish a TCP connection) therefore there's a chance that changing the rule won't affect the already established connections.

Worth a try though, I think.

Certainly. However configuring one's router remotely from a program/script can be tricky. I would know how to do this from a Unix box using Perl or TCL/Expect but from Windows?

I wouldn't how to to alter rules in Windows' firewall programatically either. At least not off the top of my head.

Out if the box the computer does not usually have the SW fully installed

and that takes some minutes to do.

This is probably why you are not allowed to play.

True, but if I was a retailer, I'd have conniptions if some unknown guy showed up and wanted to use an unknown data source on my equipment. Who needs to get a virus or malware? Sadly, there are people that do this, and no offense to the OP intended in mentioning this.

Well, in the places that can afford having one computer on show, they usually complete the initial installation and let it booted up. They know, of course, that after a few weeks on display this computer won't be completely "new" anymore: dirty, maybe a few scratches etc. Putting it back to factory settings usually only is a matter of pushing a function key at power-on and letting it boot from the OEM partition. This will wipe the Windows partition clean. But once again the computer isn't 100% new anymore, so it normally has to be sold at a discounted price. I have to admit that I've seldom seen this happening in Thailand. Does that mean that they're sold as new of that they're sold through other channels? (to staff maybe?) I don't know.

In places selling computers without an O/S (Lotus included), they often have a small DOS-based loop program that displays pictures on screen running all the time. In such a case booting from your Linux disc isn't likely to do any harm.

My friend the Policeman has just come to me about his computer (...)

Always good to have policemen as friends in Thailand... just in case

I remember spending an afternoon at a local police station trying to fix their virus-loaded computers there. Too much leisure-oriented usage taking place I guess. They once very politely asked me to come because they couldn't play VCDs during guards anymore. After I had replaced the drive, I asked for a VCD to test my repair. One of them walked to a locked cupboard and came back holding a disc of a kind that... ahem... you guess it. TiT.

I heard that at Swampy you cannot use the free WIFI without a password and login, which is obtainable at the information desks, and only for 15 minutes.

Hint: try sitting next to the doors of the business class lobbies downstairs. Several freely available wifi networks are usable from outside.

Raspberry II would be the follow up from the Raspberry PI with the main difference that it would have a HDD connection. This make it for Windows the ultime play toy. The Raspbery PI can only on a memory card and basic designed fro Linux.

Care to share a link to a page describing this beast? I'm curious.

Toshiba. I've got two Toshiba A100/A105 Series laptops that are approx 4 years old. The only problem I've had is one developed a minor keyboard issue a few months ago in that the "s" key had to be pressed harder than normal. I didn't really need to replace the keyboard but I did anyway...I was able to buy a new keyboard (off Ebay) and replace the keyboard myself for less than 500 baht.

Oh yes I forgot Toshiba. They used to be built like soviet tanks. Actually I knew a guy who was the IT shopper for a large NGO. The notebooks he was buying would travel around a lot and have a rough life. He was only buying Toshibas because according to him, they were the only ones that lasted. However that was 10 years ago. We don't have Toshibas where I work but based on some experience collected from friends, they're not trouble-free these days. Disks especially seem to have a rather short lifespan, mostly because they use their own brand.

Guys... don't fall for the marketing buzz. The so-called LED TVs *are* LCD screens. Only with LED backlighting instead of the classical neon lights. So far screens whose pixels really are made of LEDs (and therefore do not need backlighting) exist only in small sizes (for smartphones), at least out of labs. They're called AMOLED.

I've certainly played with notebooks a lot at various places in Zeer Rangsit. The sales droids might become a bit nervous when you pop the DVD drive open and put your disc in, though. Never tried this.

As I wrote in another post, I've been pleasantly suprised by the choice of notebooks and their prices at a local Tesco Lotus store.

Humm... Darell's explanation is by far the most likely one, but I've also seen anti-virus programs that scan web traffic on-the-fly run amok, randomly blocking stuff. I know Avast can do this, why not AVG?

I'd give it a try on a safe site with your a/v completely disabled, or at least the web-scanning part.

You could block your ftp port at certain hours in your router/firewall. Then your ftp programme will just time out gracefully.

Not sure this will work. Many firewalls only enforce TCP rules on SYN packets (the ones used to establish a TCP connection) therefore there's a chance that changing the rule won't affect the already established connections.

@Astral: have you tried TASKKILL without the /F? This could make a difference, giving a chance to Filezilla to catch the termination signal (or whatever it's called on Windows - I'm a Unix guy) and exit gracefully. On the other hand it might not terminate at all without the /F. Better try a simulation first.

Sorry for sounding dumb but what the heck is a Raspberry II?

I know the Raspberry Pi, the 25$ computer designed by very smart guys mostly for the 3rd world market (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) but Raspberry II doesn't ring a bell. A Google search didn't yield much.

It might be worth mentioning that some 3G USB keys can be unlocked very, very easily especially the Huawei ones (e.g. the E160 model). You basically can get the unlock code free from a multitude of web pages. Some others are notoriously difficult to unlock (ZTE).

In the western world such keys can be obtained for almost nothing with 3G prepaid plans. Use the initial prepaid online time while you're there and bring it back to Thailand - unlocked. That's what I did with a Huawei key I had for less than 10 euros from SFR (Vodafone). I've been very happy with its performance while in Thailand (unlike BuffaloRescue apparently), although I must admit I have used it on True and AIS networks only, not DTAC.

I'm sure you're going to have all kinds of contradictory bits of advice, but I'll tell you my ideas anyway. I'm an IT guy deadling with a lot of laptops at my company. This is based on my experience. Your mileage may, and will, vary.

- Asus: yes, good stuff most of the time

- Acer: no, most of them really are poorly built and have a high failure rate

- HP: they make a lot of excellent models and some crap too. Kind of hard to tell sometimes. If you hold a grudge against them I can understand that you're not willing to buy from HP anyway (note that they might only have been following the stupid US export regulations at that time!)

- I still like Lenovo. Not as robust as the old Thinkpads were, but still good stuff IMO and competitive prices

- no significant experience with DELL

As for the place where to buy it, why not considering Tesco? last time I've checked, the one close to my vacation place was selling Asus notebooks at a fairly competitive price.

When is a secondary DNS server be called into use? Is it only when the primary DNS server is totally unreachable, is it after a certain time-out period is exceeded for a particular resolution transaction, or what?

Yep that's how it works, however the delay until the switch to the secondary DNS takes place is unbearingly long. Not sure whether it can be tweaked or not. So if your primary DNS is down, you're not going to be surfing happily.

Several years ago when MaxNet had frequent DNS resolution problems, I would use a MaxNet DNS server as primary, and OpenDNS as my secondary. It seemed to work fairly well in that configuration, but I've often wondered what it was that would trigger use of the secondary DNS servier.

A long timeout.

Goggle's own DNS server can be used too and its address is easy to remember (8.8.8.8). It's fast and extremely reliable in my own experience.

Of course you have to accept the idea that just any DNS resolution you make will be recorded and matched with your Google account by IP (if you have an account) so that Google Ads will serve you more targeted advertisements.

@ Lannig, I think u have been BS to. I stayed Worabura in south HH, had 3G there, and at Sheraton HH which is north of the airport in September . Was jus in Ao Chalong ( Phuket ), Phi Phi, Ko Lanta.... Had True Move H signal on my iPad.

As mentioned, the word came from a True employee and I was just quoting this FWIW.

Anyway as far as I can remember the Sheraton HH *is* along the main road. And being the Sheraton, I somehow suspect that these guys might have an aerial on top top of the building just for them.

No idea about the other places.

do you mean the operating system language, or the keyboard language. windows 7 ultimate operating language can be changed, all other versions can no

Not quite true. Professional can as well. Editions below this (home etc.) cannot.

What do you want to do, specifically? If your downloads have completed before the end of your "no caps" period, what's the point of stopping the FTP client? unless it's configured to auto-refresh the remote directory contents or send NOOPs to avoid being disconnected, it won't generate traffic. Even so, it would be little traffic.

If you really want to abort the transfer in progress when reaching some specific hour, I can understand what you want. In such a case, a bare-bones way would be to configure a Windows scheduled task to run:

TASKKILL /F /IM <name of your FTP client program>.exe

At a specific hour.

You can find the actual name of your FTP client program using the Task Manager.

Are you serious with the cancer-free thing? If so I'm in the same boat.

Have a look at this: http://www.asianet.c...rverconfig.html

It says to use mxauth.truemail.co.th as the name of the SMTP server.

The rest (weird username that probably is the MAC address of your cable box, plus password they gave you) should be OK.

It's old information (dates from the domain change from Asianet to True) but I would assume that it's still valid.

Another one for Gom player. it plays anything you can throw at it, it is free and has a very easy to use interface.

The only issue I have with GOM Player is that it tends to stutter on hi-def MKV movies. I don't think my computer's CPU is at fault because the same videos play smoothly in Zoom Player. However this might be a problem with my installation only.

Er... maybe a few extra words of explanation is needed. WPS is a feature that allows you to connect a computer to a home network over wi-fi by just typing a 8-digit pin code instead of having to enter a long and error-prone WEP or WPA alphanumeric key.

Most of ADSL routers with wi-fi come with this feature enabled by default. It's been demonstrated that a brute-force attack can be conducted to guess this pin within a few hours (worst case) up to several days. Even in the best case this is still a threat e.g. from your neighbours since routers tends to be up 24x7 and this attack goes completely undetected.

Until there's a fix from your manufacturer you will want to disable this feature in your router... if possible at all.