Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Do you think corded phones are better than cordless phones?

Q. Silly question but I was just wondering what you thought. Cordless phones are annoying. They have horrible quality, receive interference from just about any other device sharing the same network. Plus they need power to operate, so they are useless in a power outage. And there also in some ways a security breach. You can easily listen into a conversation with a baby monitor. And to top it off they lack most features that corded phones offer. So what's your opinion?

A. You clearly haven't used a modern cordless phone. A good digital cordless phone is unlikely to see any interference with much of anything, the link quality is indistinguishable from wired, and no, you cannot hear the call with a baby monitor. That's not to say that those things have not historically been problems, just that they're problems largely solved in pretty much all modern gear.

One good idea is to get a cordless phone system that does not collide with a home network or your microwave. Look for a 5.8GHz digital phone or a DECT (runs around 1.9MHz), rather than a 2.4GHz phone, which uses the same ISM radio band as your microwave, 802.11 network, X-Box 360, Sony PS3, Bluetooth phone, etc.

With that all said, yeah, I have a few wired phones as well as the cordless. Of course, this may also depend on how you get your phone service... if you're using POTS (plain old telephone system) phones, a corded phone is useful in a blackout. If you're on VoIP, FiOS, DSL, or Cable, there's a strong likelihood your network gear in the house goes down anyway, so the cordless phone is unlikely to be an issue.

I'm very happy with my digital 5.8GHz phones... one wired connection for a base station that supports up to eight handsets (I have four), phone to phone intercom system built-in, great range, enough to cover my house (4200ft^2) and the immediate areas outside (if I want to go for a walk in the woods AND talk on the phone, I'll use my cell).


Based on your actual experience, what is the best baby video monitor for sale?
Q. I've heard so many different, mixed reviews. I'm mostly concerned about them not working with our wireless network (which I don't know how to tweak). If anyone has a good one that works well with a wireless network that doesn't cost TONS of money, please pass on the info. Thanks!

A. What do you mean working with wireless network? Most baby monitors are wireless, but they don’t connect to a modem. Do you just mean without a cord or actually hooked up to a computer? I have been using Summer Infant Hand Held Video baby monitor for 6 month now and can’t complain. It sees at night and has color. The monitor is hand held so you can carry it with you where you want to. At first the battery would last 3-4 days now it lasts 2 days, then you have to recharge, but it can be on when charging. I got mine on eBay at half the cost. If you still don’t have your baby and don’t need one ASAP. Start looking for deals. I got ours 2 month before the baby was born but it took me 4 weeks to get the deal I wanted.
I’m also using a wireless connection on my laptop and there is no interference with the monitor, it’s working perfectly fine. Also it does NOT pick up cell phones, radios or other babies.


How do speed up my file transfer speeds across my home network?
Q. I have a D-Link rangebooster G gold series router which is apparently supposed to have network speeds up to 108mbps or something like that right? I'm trying to transfer some files across but its going at an embarrassing 1.5mbps. I would almost make sense I had just put them on my external hdd first..

is there a way to speed this up?

A. I think there are two problems here that are leading to confusion. I suspect (but I could be wrong) that you're confusing megabits with megabytes. The 108mbps you should be able to get is megabits per second. It's possible that the 1.5mbps you're getting is megaBYTES per second. If you do a file transfer, chances are it will give you a speed in megabytes, rather than megabits. A megabyte is 8 megabits, so you might actually be getting 12megabits per second of your promised 108, rather than the 1.5 you thought you were getting.

Also, that 108Mbit promise has a couple unspoken conditions (probably listed out in fine print as a footnote of a footnote in the Chinese language section of your manual). For instance, since 802.11g only supports speeds up to 54Mbits, you need to have special D-Link wireless cards in order to support that full 108Mbits. Without it, you're only going to get up to 54Mbits.

Also, that 54Mbits is total throughput, not the speed of each connection. So if you're transferring from one wireless computer to another, then you're only going to get (at best) half of that speed (about 27Mbits), since it needs half the bandwidth for the transmission to the router, and the other half for the transmission to the other computer.

Finally, if you take into account this is consumer hardware and you probably don't have ideal conditions at your house, there's no reason why that won't cut the speed in half again, leaving you with about 13Mbits expected speed and 12Mbits actual speed.

All that being said, let me address your question of how to speed this up:

The first thing you should do is eliminate the second wireless leg (if it exists). Put one of your computers close to the router (or the router close to one of the computers) and connect the router to the computer via a wired Ethernet connection. That should provide a hefty boost of speed (it should nearly double).

Next, make sure you have an 802.11G card in your wireless computer. If it's 802.11B, then it will max out at 11Mbits. So getting an 802.11G network card for it will increase your speed dramatically.

Also, upgrade your firmware on your router. If there's a new firmware available, you should be able to get it from DLink's website. This might give a minor speed increase.

If you have any baby monitors, home phones, etc that are "2.4Ghz," turn them off, they can interfere with your wireless signal and slow your transfer speeds.

If you can get your speed up to 40Mbits (5 megabytes per second), then you are doing about as well as can be expected from consumer networking hardware. I doubt you'll get over about 25-30Mbits (3-4 megabytes per second), though.

On a side note, back in college we used to be able to get about 5-10 megabytes per second transfer speed by loading files on an iPod (via 400Mbit Firewire), walking down the hall, and loading them on another computer. You could probably achieve similar results with your external hard drive, as you suggested. So I'd go that route for large transfers such as this.

Good luck!





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Title Post: Do you think corded phones are better than cordless phones?
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