So, my laptop is a Dell Precision M6400. For a while now, I’ve been experiencing some weird issues with the sound card (IDT HD Audio)
Some examples:
– Random audio hiccups
– Every time I open Adobe Soundbooth, open a file in soundbooth, or change my microphone settings, I get a brief, but loud piano slamming noise. Also any music or sounds I was playing in the background kept switching between stereo and mono output
I recently discovered a huge performance decrease in download speeds and eventually narrowed it down to the way my wireless routers have been configured.
As a note: my wireless routers are not used as routers but as access points and bridges.
Basically, you have to leave WMM support enabled in order for most 802.11n wireless cards to connect to an access point supporting 802.11n. But in my scenario, a wireless router configured as a bridge was the client. WMM is an extension of 802.11e, which is Quality of Service (QoS) for wireless protocols. The N-wireless standard requires that this is supported.
The important thing I discovered was that the bridge client needs to have WMM support disabled or download speeds will be less than 1 Mbps (as measured by http://speedtest.net) while upload speeds were normal for my ISP (Comcast Cable). I’m not exactly sure why, but it makes sense that the wireless client should not be setting WMM priorities over top of the access point’s priorities. It just confuses the communications since “upload” from the AP means “download” for the client and vice versa.
So yes, if you have wireless bridges & APs, especially those running custom firmware, be aware of these settings.
Hi all,
I just wanted to alert you on a new scam that is going around on Facebook. It comes in the form of an invite to a group called “Dell Laptop Giveaway (1 in 2 people win one Laptop)” at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=355563360211
BEWARE! The instructions stated actually collects your entire friends list and spams them with this invite and in no way enters you into any sweepstakes. This is another classic example of a deal too good to be true. As of writing this post, about 47000 people have joined the group and likely fell for this trick.
Resolution: IGNORE the invite and help spread the word about it. Do NOT do what the instructions tell you to do.
EDIT (11:53 EST): Looks like Facebook took down that rather quickly after I reported it. But still a lesson to be learned about carefully reading what you see.