MojoLists

It was 1998 when I first started collecting DVDs, and oh what a time it was. Buy one get ones were all over the web, it was difficult to pay more than five or six bucks for a disc back then, if you knew where to go. It was the golden age of collecting and in a very real way, it was responsible for the super fast adoption of DVD.

Blu-Ray has seen its share of buy 2 get one deals, super special pricing and so forth, but it in no way compares to the early days of DVD. It was the perfect storm. I was working for an online company at the time and was very in-tune with the fledgling industry as a whole. The rise of the internet played a big part in the surge of consumer technology. New product news traveled fast and people wanted it, now.

The general idea behind internet sales sites was not to make money, at least not for a few years or even a decade. It was all about being cool and getting as many customers in your doors as possible. Music, movies and book sales were the driving force behind Amazon and many other companies, they practically gave away the media. Just to ensure they were not going to make any money soon, they often threw in free shipping.

I miss those days but I also realize that they had to end in order for these companies to survive. I grit my teeth when I look at prices for new releases and have had to adopt a different mindset when adding to my collection. In the old days. I bought everything the week it came out, assuming it had received high ratings for picture and sound quality. Today it is more difficult to get me out there on any given Tuesday, I can wait most of the time.

Waiting serves two purposes and unless I absolutely know I have to get the movie, I wait. First off, waiting means the price will come down, way down in most cases. Second, I end up finding I really didn't need the movie. I rent it and will probably never watch it again.

Waiting was unthinkable before, I would miss out on the good deals... hey, wait a minute... you know what? That old marketing ploy actually worked. Amazon got me collecting on the cheap, they hooked me like a pusher births a junkie. All those years ago I thought I was taking advantage of these companies but they were just waiting for my addiction to fully kick in.

I don't collect as much crap as I used to and I figure the stores I buy at are even making a little money off of me now. Perhaps Blu-Ray needs to go out and offer up a few cheap highs to the public. It worked in the past, besides, I could deal with a good sale on Blu-Ray movies right now. I still have a taste for the addiction but I am staying on the wagon, at least for now.

I have purchased several computers since Windows Vista first came out, I just made sure they had XP on them or I installed it when the computer arrived. Last week I got a new (Refurbished) Dell Studio desktop with Vista 64 bit. The thought of 6 Gigs of RAM got me all geeky and the fact that I could bump it to 8 Gigs just made it better.

The Quad core processor and the 64 bit Dell meant, even if I didn't like it, the computer isn't backward compatible with XP because much of the hardware has no XP driver available. Being a geek I bought into the Vista hating crowd even though I had never taken a serious look at it. I have set up several Vista computers for friends and relatives and I was always surprised by the lack of follow up support they needed. The computer challenged seemed to get along great with Vista.

After getting it out of the box and starting it up it took about 30 seconds to figure out the navigation. It took another 20 minutes for me to understand why my technophobic friends didn't have a problem with Vista. It doesn't let them get into things that will screw up the system. That was not a good thing for me however, I am driven to crack the registry, disarm every little bit of power sapping programming, and must bend a computer to my will. I am lord and master of my system and I hate vista... wait, I don't hate it at all, in fact I am quickly learning to love it.

Once I did a little research and figured out how to unlock the OS, I quickly set out to modify as much as possible and in doing so came to the realization that I really didn't need to change that much. Vista works pretty well right out of the box and removing bloat ware was my only real concern.

I was a little disappointed with the speed of the system, it wasn't able to break down the genetic code of my dogs very quickly or even design a new robot assistant. What it can do, and it does it so well, is run multiple programs that use a lot of resources individually. To fully test the system I ripped a DVD, while streaming HD video from my DVR, loaded my 100gigs of MP3 music into iTunes along with my 80 gigs of movies, all while surfing the web and watching cats eat spaghetti on YouTube.

Now I feel the power at my fingertips and I am happy, ecstatic even. Vista works, it works with all of my programs, it works with all of my hardware, it plays nice with all of my XP machines, and it does it quickly.

I am sure I will find something I hate about it, I always do, but so far I am only seeing good. If you have been sitting on the fence about Windows Vista, it is time to dive in and give it a chance, you won't be sorry.

Linksys needs to fix the DNS problem on their WRT160Nv2 router and they need to do it now. I haven't used this blog to gripe much,  the fact is I have been very lucky and my equipment functions with little or no problem. Now I have a big problem and a major gripe with Linksys, a company whose products I have used for years without a hitch.

I decided to step up to a wireless N router about 6 months ago even though all of my wireless apps are b and g. The router was an amazing upgrade to the system. It extended the range and speed on all of my laptops and other devises. I could even stream HD effortlessly from the DirecTV DVR on the other side of the house. I was one happy camper. Then I got the news that there was a DNS security risk associated with the routers firmware. I was running 2.0.0.2, build 8. Being the security nut that I am I immediately updated my firmware to 2.0.0.2, build 11. This turned out to be a huge mistake.

Web pages started throwing 404 errors, I had to refresh pages over and over before they would come up. I hated it, it was a serious time suck for me as I spend most of my time working on the internet and God help me if I wanted to order something online or pay a bill. the 404 errors made it almost impossible to make it through a multi-page process.

I quickly jumped online and researched the problem to find this is a well documented issue in the Linksys forum. One of the threads I found had 17 pages of complaints and thankfully a fix. Unfortunately when I attempted to downgrade my firmware to the version I had previously, it failed and the router did nothing but flash at me, nearly lifeless and unable to reset itself to the factory defaults.

After 90 minutes of attempting to revive the WRT160Nv2, I gave in and contacted tech support. Of course they ignored the fact that I had attempted everything and made me do it all again before starting the RMA process. The router was dead and Linksys is replacing it. After receiving all the information and filling out the forms, mailing it back to them, at my expense I now await my replacement which will undoubtedly have the new firmware version and most likely the same problem that everyone else is having with this build.

The issue with the Linksys WRT160Nv2 firmware has been around since October and Linksys has failed to acknowledge the problem and worse, fix it. Linksys, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars with you between my home and my business. If this is not fixed, you can kiss my future business goodbye. I understand that shit happens and errors take place, I accept and am happy to work with any vendor while they correct the problem. You won't even admit there is a problem even though there are hundreds of documented cases on your own website. This is an issue and you need to fix it.

If you have the WRT160Nv2 router and are experiencing the DNS problem, here is a fix. I bricked my router attempting it but many have downgraded their firmware successfully. I intend to try again if my new unit has the problem. Good luck!

*** UPDATE! ***  Linksys does not have a fix yet but they did take care of me by replacing the router I killed with a new one. Read more here.