These shows are free if you have a coupon and they send me coupons every time. I'll keep my eyes open for Linksys, D-Link and Realtek. Any other recommendations? BTW, tips on good router very welcome. I saw the D-Link DI-704p at the last show and I printed out a $20 rebate coupon from the Web but I've seen a lot of posts from people who had serious issues with this router and couldn't get decent support from D-Link, who contract out their tech support to a 3rd party. They don't make timely firmware upgrades, apparently. So Linksys sounds better but the 704-p's print server support seems like a nice feature. Well, you can't have everything. I've never touched a router in my life (OK, I opened the box at the computer show), so I'm a newbie like I say. Oh, I have a question: do all the routers use wall warts? The one that comes with the DI-704p says it draws 1/2 amp. I figure that means it'll be drawing ~60 watts (maybe 40 w?) 24/7. Thanks for help.
Today was the computer show and I walked all over looking for PCI 10/100 NICs. Several were "no-name" cards but one had a handwritten note on it saying Realtek, $5.99. The box said "Dolphin", though. I asked them and they said it had a Realtek chipset. I figured that this would work like a Realtek, if my Kingston NIC is any indication. It has an Intel 21143 chipset and Windows 2000 recognizes it an an Intel 21143 and it seems to work just fine. No need to install a driver, in fact. The Dolphin comes with a driver diskette and some instructions that look completely generic and they are probably for any NIC with the chipset, which says RTL8139C. I figure it's worth a try for the $6. Says it supports PCI 2.0. Is there a problem that it wouldn't support PCI 2.1? It also says in the instructions that it will support PCI 2.x. Don't know what this might mean. I figure I'll slip it in my main system first, swapping it for the Kingston card and see what happens.
Yeah, I saw that Office Max has a rebate offer for a D-Link NIC, result = $5. I decided to see what I could come up with at the show and forgot about the Office Max deal. Site with rebate info. I installed the "Dolphin" card and Win2000 saw it and said it was working fine but I didn't have a connection. Like I say, I'm a newwork newbie and I didn't realize that after installing a new NIC you have to reset your connection parameters - IP, gateway, preferred and secondary DNS. After I realized that I got it working pronto. Win2000 warns me that having two NICs with the same parameters is a potential problem, that is if you have both installed at the same time. I sure don't plan on doing that... I guess unless they are set up for different connections. I guess that's the way it works, right guys?
Lately I have been going to all the computer shows but I get in phases where I don't. What I have discovered (My thinking, OK?) is that they have a few real deals but most of it is decidedly not. It's real nice, though, to get to feast your eyes on a lot of stuff if nothing else for the ideas. Out here in the S.F. Bay Area most of the stuff you see can be gotten a lot cheaper somewhere else, on line for instance, and it's not hard to find stuff with the search engines. Also at the shows I have noticed that a lot of the time they are (my view, again) trying to sell old stuff, almost legacy stuff in a lot of cases. They usually do not feature the latest but want you to buy something that's going out, something that a person in the know wouldn't touch. Believe me, it's true, so beware. Mostly the prices are NOT good. Some stuff, selective stuff, you can get at good prices and sometimes things that are hard to find elsewhere. Just sometimes, though. The shows were free for a while, IIRC. Then they started the admission thing, had coupons sometimes published in computer rags. Then they started registering people and sending coupons. For a little while you still had to pay $3 or so. Then it seems like they started keeping a database and if they didn't have records of your attendance for X number of months, they would send you a special FREE coupon. This kept up for a couple years, maybe. Nowadays, they send FREE coupons regardless. I think it's mainly to keep out the riff raff - anyone who has the ability and inclination to print out and clip a coupon isn't apt to be a shoplifter.
