Mark Lim’s Blog Page

At the moment I am really enjoying the use of a variety of wireless technologies. Firstly, about two weeks ago my brother Spacehamster purchased a new Linksys SRX Wireless-G Broadband Router for our shared use and bought me a Linksys Wireless-G SRX PCMCIA card. We have been experiencing problems at home with wireless deadspots, especially where my bedroom is located. I use my computer at home from my bedroom, but my bedroom happens to be in the awkward position of being not in direct line of sight with the wireless router and having many walls, doors, and other obstacles in the way (e.g. washing machine and bookshelf). Normally, the wireless router cannot transmit a strong enough signal to get into my bedroom, so I basically get little or no wireless network coverage.

However, with the combination of the new Linksys SRX Wireless Broadband Router and my new Linksys SRX Wireless PCMCIA card, this totally eliminates the problem of deadspots. Apparently the new SRX devices use something called MIMO technology, which basically uses the reflections from hard-to-reach regions to boost the wireless signal strength. Orginally I thought this claim from Linksys was a load of hoohah, but once we tried out the SRX hardware it did exactly what Linksys said it would do. Now I get at least 54Mbps wireless speeds whereas last time I would barely just reach 5Mbps. Now I can surf the net with a breeze!

Figure 1: Old Linksys Wireless-G PCMCIA card with Speedbooster, which I was originally using.

Figure 2: New Linksys SRX Wireless G Router and the Linksys SRX Wireless PCMCIA Card. These devices totally kick ass!

Secondly, I recently purchased a new Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Comfort Edition wireless keyboard and mouse. I originally had a Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard that was working really well up until last week. I carry the wired keyboard around with me a lot (for use with a laptop - laptop keyboards are really crap to do typing on) and apparently the constant travelling with the keyboard resulted in the cables getting too bent and losing electrical connectivity (i.e. no lights would come on when the keyboard was plugged in). This basically spelled the end for that keyboard, so I decided to buy myself a new Microsoft wireless keyboard which was very similar in layout to the Digital Media Pro keyboard except it is wireless. The great thing about the new keyboard is that it has lots of shortcut buttons that allow me to launch my favorite programs with the touch of the button (so to speak). It also has volume control keys, media player keys (play, pause, stop, next track, and previous track buttons), zoom toggle switch, plus some other features. The wireless keyboard also came with a wireless mouse, which has some really neat features as well, such as vertical and HORIZONTAL scrolling.

Figure 3: The new Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Comfort Edition wireless keyboard and mouse that I just purchased today.

So with the combination of my new wireless network and wireless keyboard/mouse devices, I’m basically having a ball with these technologies because it makes computer use so much easier and comfortable!

PS: If you want to compare mouse technologies that use vertical and horizontal scrolling, check out Apple’s “Mighty Mouse” device. Apple’s device allows you to do 360 degrees of scrolling (vertical, horizontal, diagnal), but only works best if you use a Mac (even though it can be used on Windows computers).

If you’re a really paranoid person (like myself - only on bad days) who is really unsure about whether documents that you receive are virus infected, you might want to visit the VirusTotal web site. At VirusTotal, they provide a free service where you can e-mail them a file which you suspect might be virus infected and they will scan it for you using several anti-virus engines. They then send you back an e-mail with a report on whether the file you sent was infected. It’s a really great free service to use if you’re not sure about whether your anti-virus software is up-to-date, because VirusTotal will use a variety of anti-virus scanners to make sure your document does not contain any of the latest known viruses.

There’s a really neat web-based application on the Internet called “ShieldsUp!“, which allows you to test out how safe your computer is from intruders on the Internet. When you run the program, it scans all of your Internet ports to check which ones are open and displays a report to show how secure your computer or network is from intruders. It’s a very safe program to use and was designed by Gibson Research Corporation.

Gibson Research Corporation also designs other interesting free security software, which are worth checking out.

At the moment I’m trialling ZoneLab’s ZoneAlarm Pro version 6.0 Firewall. It has all the features of previous ZoneAlarm Pro versions (i.e. port level firewall, program access firewall, e-mail security, identity theft protection) plus some new features such as:

• Operating System Level Firewall
• Spyware Scanner
• Wireless PC Protection

Initially I had some frustrations with the new Operating System Level Firewall, since it stopped some legitimate programs (e.g. Adobe Distiller and Microsoft Word) from working properly. However, after a bit of fiddling around with the settings, I eventually learned how to make use of the Operating System Level Firewall and am now quite happy of the new feature introduced by ZoneLabs. The OS Firewall is a new feature in ZoneAlarm Pro and is designed prevent malicious programs such as viruses, worms, trojan horses and spyware from harming your computer. The OS Firewall triggers an alarm everytime a program wants to do an operating system level action and allows the user to choose whether to allow the program to go ahead with its task or block it. ZoneAlarm Pro learns from what programs you allow/block to access for and automatically blocks or allows access for programs you have previously specified.

ZoneAlarm Pro has a whole heap of other features I could review, but that would be too much for me to write. If you’re interested in ZoneAlarm Pro, head to the ZoneLabs website to try out a trial version of the software before deciding on whether to purchase it. Its definitely a good idea to try out software before you buy!!

While on the topic of firewalls, you might want to check out the book: “Building Internet Firewalls“, authored by Elizabeth Zwicky, et al., published by O’Reilly, 2000. It’s a pretty good book covering the basics about how firewalls operate and provides quite some good advice on how to set-up your computer network to defend against hackers and worms from the Internet.