Freeware to measure the true WiFi speed to your connected computer / smartphone / tablet

Although modern WiFi routers or access points nowadays are able to support gigabits per second of wireless connection speed with multi-bands MU-MIMO technology, the actual network speed obtained by your connected computer / smartphone / tablet is always lower than that maximum possible speed, and is determined by the following factors:

• The location (which includes sub-factors of distance, obstacles and surrounding interference)
• The wireless chipset used and its driver efficacy
• The antenna quality
• The amount of other devices concurrently connected and sharing the same WiFi router or access point, and their network activity

There are many software tools available to help you measure your Internet connection speed, which typically involve uploading and downloading a big file to a designated server in the Internet. However, software tools that are able to measure your WiFi connection speed within your LAN using similar method are still very rare. I will introduce you 2 of them, namely DownTester and LAN Speed Test (Lite).

DownTester by NirSoft is a lightweight freeware that is able to test the download speed but not the upload speed. It performs the download speed testing by using a URL, which you need to put a large file (recommended at least 200 MB) in the computer /smartphone / tablet to be tested running either one of FTP server, HTTP server or Windows network file sharing. The ability to test using FTP or HTTP server also means that DownTester is not only able to test your LAN connection speed, but also your Internet speed when you are testing with a server located in the Internet.

Normally if you are testing the WiFi speed to a Windows laptop, you can test using Windows network file sharing. If the laptop is running Linux, you can test using its FTP, HTTP or Samba service. If it is an Android smartphone or tablet, you can install the File Manager + app which include an FTP server in its "Access from PC" function.

Then, you just need to run DownTester from a Windows laptop or PC which connected to the same LAN with your WiFi network. DownTester even comes with a portable version which can run straight away without needed to have any installation.

The screenshot above shows the DownTester result of a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet, all connected to my WiFi network using 5GHz band from different location. Although the theoretical speed of the Wireless-AC network they are connected to is up to 433Mbps (single band) or 866Mbps (dual band), their actual download speed obtained is much lower.

One thing I noticed is that, if your device is too near to your WiFi router or access point (less than 2 meter), you will get a much lower speed than when you place it further away (yet not too far until the signal is weak).

By using DownTester and test for WiFi connection speed obtained in different locations in your premise, you can find out those locations with higher speed and those with lower speed for better planning (such as where to put your 8K super-high resolution smart TV that can run YouTube and stream video from Internet).

LAN Speed Test (Lite) by Totusoft is another lightweight freeware, and it is able to test both the upload and download speed to a computer connected to your WiFi. There is another paid version called LAN Speed Test which perform almost the same thing, so I think the freeware Lite version is good enough.

LAN Speed Test (Lite) will generate the file for testing, and is able to auto delete the file after testing, so you don't need to prepare for the file. It supports 2 modes of connection: using Windows network file sharing, or connecting to a LAN Speed Test Server running in the target computer. It does not support testing using FTP or HTTP.

If you are testing using the LAN Speed Test Server method, you can perform the testing across the Internet too. However, the LAN Speed Test Server is not free.

LAN Speed Test (Lite) is portable and does not need installation. It has both Windows and Mac version.

• Click here to download DownTester for Windows.
• Click here to download LAN Speed Test (Lite) for Windows.
• Click here to download LAN Speed Test (Lite) for Mac OS X.

The trick to delete unwanted last empty page in Microsoft Word document that stubborn to be gone

If you have a Microsoft Word document with a table that ended until last line of of the page, and so happen that it is the last page of your document, you will find a blank empty page below which cannot be deleted.

This is because any table in Microsoft Word document must end with a paragraph mark, which is a non-printing character that normally won't show up in Print Layout view. This paragraph mark is required by the table and cannot be deleted unless you delete the entire table.

When the last line of the table reached the end of page, the paragraph mark will have no choice but to flow over to a new page below it, forming the last blank page. You can eliminate this last blank page by reducing the height of the table to leave some space for the paragraph mark to stay at the end of the same page, or alternatively, you can keep your table untouched and hide out this paragraph mark, which will magically make the last blank page disappear by itself.

The steps below is the method to hide out the paragraph mark at the last empty page so that there will be no last blank page when viewing the document on screen as well as when it is printed out.

Since the paragraph mark is normally invisible, we need to firstly display it on the page.

Inside the Paragraph ribbon under the Home tab of Microsoft Word, you will be able to find the paragraph mark toggle as shown below. Click to toggle it on.

 



Then, scroll to the last page which is the stubborn blank page, highlight that paragraph mark, right click and select Font...

 

The Font setting window will pop-up. Inside Effects setting, you can set the highlighted paragraph mark to be Hidden. Click OK when done.

 

 

Now, go back to the Paragraph ribbon and toggle the paragraph mark off. The last blank page will disappear.

That's the trick! The page is still there but is now hidden. It won't display out, and won't be printed out too.

Boost WiFi coverage with TP-Link RE450 AC1750 WiFi Range Extender

As I have more and more WiFi devices that support 5Ghz wireless band, I have upgraded my TP-Link TL-WA860RE range extender with a new TP-Link RE450 AC1750 range extender.

Running on Qualcomm Atheros QCA9558 (Scorpion) WiSoC platform, this range extender has 3 antennas (2 dBi) for 2.4Ghz network and another 3 antennas (3 dBi) for 5Ghz network. It supports MIMO 3x3:3 wireless with speed of up to 450 Mbps on 2.4GHz band and 1,300 Mbps on 5GHz band, totaling to 1,750 Mbps.

It has the same CPU with famous routers including Asus AC55U, TP-Link Archer C7, D-Link DIR-863, etc.

It is able to smartly allocate 1 antenna to communicate with upstream WiFi router, either using 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz network, while the other antennas serving the connected WiFi device. In this way, the effective bandwidth will not be halved as happened in the case of most WiFi range extenders.

It also supports "high speed mode" to use 1 band to send data and another to receive data concurrently, to optimize the overall WiFi speed and performance.

Its size is larger than my perception. The actual size is slightly larger than an adult's palm.

It comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port which can connect to a wired device or a network switch using network cable.

It has the modern TP-Link web user interface, and setting up is pretty easy. However, being easy to set up also comes with a trade off that there is not much advanced configuration for you to play around in the web user interface.

It allows you to control 3 ranges of WiFi signal power. You can also schedule to turn off its LED lights during certain period of the day.

Its maximum power consumption is only at 9W, which is about the same as an energy saving LED light bulb. You can schedule for it to automatically switch off at a particular time, and switch back on again at another time. This can save electricity during the time period when it is not likely to be used, such as during midnight.

This TP-Link RE450 range extender can be controlled and monitored from smartphone by using the TP-Link Tether app.

This WiFi range extender works pretty impressive, particularly in extending the reach and connection speed of 5Ghz WiFi network. I am quite impressed with its performance.

SoGoSurvey - free unlimited online survey platform for students

Nowadays there are quite a number of online survey platforms available in the Internet, many allow you to sign up a free trial account which will restrict you on the features and functions available, and most importantly, on these 3 crucial quotas:

• The maximum number of surveys you can have.
• The maximum number of questions per survey.
• The maximum number of responses you can accept.

SoGoSurvey allows you to sign up a free for life Basic Plan account with 15 surveys, 30 questions and 125 responses, which is pretty generous compared with most of its competitors. With these combination of quotas, you can probably run 1 or 2 serious online surveys and perform in-depth analysis to the responses using its built-in reporting tool.

If you are a student and your coursework requires you to conduct surveys, good news is you can request to upgrade from Basic Plan to Student Plan for free,  provided you've fulfil some simple requirements (click here or here for more detail).

With a Student Plan account, you'll get all the features and functions available to their Plus Plan (click here or here for more detail of available plans and their comparison), and most importantly, you can now conduct unlimited surveys with unlimited questions and receive unlimited responses, for free. This will enable you to make use of SoGoSurvey to conduct all the surveys needed in your entire course of study.

If you need to use more advanced features and functions, you can also further upgrade to Pro or Enterprise plan with big student discount. Beside students, SoGoSurvey also provides special discount for academic institutions, universities and non-profit organizations.

There are at least 3 steps in using SoGoSurvey. First, you design your survey, either creating from scratch, or copy from existing, or making use of ready made template in Survey Bank.

 

Then, you publish your survey and distribute your invitation to your target respondents. You can have each of the target respondents having a unique URL to access to your online survey, or to use a shared general URL. After you've collected some data, you can start analysing the responses using the Report tool.

You can also export the data to your own computer for your own keeping and analysing/reporting using your own tool such as MS Excel, SPSS, PSPP, etc.

Beside putting up surveys with Survey Tool, there are also step-by-step Poll Tool and Assessment Tool for you to conduct poll and/or assessment, which structure is less complicated than a survey.

SoGoSurvey's designer is WYSIWYG type. You can create single-lingual, bi-lingual or even multi-lingual surveys with it. You can organize your survey questions into separate pages. The survey pages will show nicely on browser screen, tablet screen and smartphone screen, which you can preview in the designer.

Simple branching of questions is available in Basic Plan. More complex branching is available in Student Plan, Plus Plan and onwards.

You will see a green colour keyhole icon for all the features and functions not available in your current plan. For example, available and unavailable question types for Basic Plan is as below.

Once you successfully upgraded to Student Plan or Plus Plan, your available question types will become as below.

With the Student Plan / Plus Plan, you are able to generate 2-level or 3-level cross tab reports, which is very handy in analysing data with relationship, particularly when linked with demographics, such as "how many females agreed with this?" and even "how many females at age 18-24 agreed with this?".

Some remarkable features in SoGoSurvey that I like including:

• It has an option to allow participants to print out a copy of their own survey response.
• Even after the survey has gone live, minor editing to the survey, such as making change in wording, is still possible.
• You can customize your survey's looks-and-feels by using the Visual Settings.
• It can generate beautiful reports, enabling you to perform in-depth analysis to your data collected.

How to remove all hyperlinks in Ms Powerpoint presentation file with one click

When you copy-and-paste a picture from your local disk or from Internet source to your Ms Powerpoint presentation slide, you might unconsciously also created an embedded hyperlink inside the picture which link back to its source.

You might want to remove/delete all those hyperlinks in your presentation slides, as you don't want them to surprise you (and your audiences) in the middle of your presentation, in case you accidentally clicked on the picture and it starts to open up your web browser, searching and connecting to the source of that picture.

Well, you can remove the hyperlinks one by one, by right clicking on the picture and select "Remove hyperlink" from the popup menu.

However, it will be extremely tedious and inconvenient, as Ms Powerpoint unable to tell you which picture got hyperlink and which one doesn't have. You will need to check and unlink all of them one by one, and you are very likely to miss out some of them.

Here is a method which enable you to remove all those hyperlinks in the entire Ms Powerpoint presentation file at one go.

In this method, you create a simple macro program to automatically remove all the hyperlinks one by one at the background, and report back how many hyperlinks removed when it finished. When you save your presentation file, the macro won't be saved together so your file remains clean.

Step 1: Open your Ms Powerpoint presentation file.

Step 2: Press Alt+F8. That will open the Macro window.

Step 3: Enter "Rmlinks" as macro name (or any name you like, as it is for temporary use only), and click the Create button.

Step 4: Copy and paste the following codes into your macro editor.

Sub Rmlinks()
 Dim slide As slide
 Dim index As Long
 Dim counter As Long
 counter = 0
 For Each slide In ActivePresentation.Slides
    For index = slide.Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
       slide.Hyperlinks(index).Delete
       counter = counter + 1
    Next index
 Next slide
 MsgBox ("Removed " + CStr(counter) + " link(s).")
End Sub

Step 5: Press the F5 button on your keyboard to run. If it pop up another window, just click on the Run button to run.

Step 6: Press OK after seeing the result of how many hyperlinks successfully removed.

Step 7: You can now close the Macro window by clicking on the [X] in red at its top right corner, the same way you close any other windows.

When you save your file, the following dialog box might appear. Just press the "Yes" button.

Now, you have your Ms Powerpoint presentation slides the same as before, but clean from all the unwanted hyperlinks.

Converting video files to be playable from USB drive in Sony XAV-W650BT double DIN player

Sony XAV-W650BT is a decent double DIN (Duetch Industri Normen) car head unit with DVD player. It has all the functions you need: radio, USB, AUX, Bluetooth, NFC, DVD/VCD player, steering control support, reverse camera support, etc.

It is able to play 3 types of multimedia files in a USB thumb drive: MP3 music, JPEG photo, and XVID/MP4 video.

Playing MP3 music and viewing JPEG photo is pretty straightforward, but playing video file might need some conversion work done to its compatible format, as it will face difficulty playing video that exceeds its maximum supported video resolution of 720x576. It also requires the video to have compatible codec and frame rate.

The conversion can be performed using a free software called Freemake Video Converter.

You need to convert the video file into MP4 format, with the following custom settings:

• Frame size: 720x576
• Adjustment: Auto
• Video codec: MPEG4
• Frame rate: 30 fps
• Audio codec: AAC
• Bitrate: maximum 4096 kbps

Even if your source file is already in MP4 format, it might not work well with the head unit if the setting is different from the above. Therefore, conversion is still required to ensure it will work well.

Now, you can run your conversion and put your favourite music videos, movies (MV), recorded TV programmes, etc. into a USB thumb drive that can be played in your Sony XAV-W650BT or similar head unit in your car.

Mobile LTE network: moving forward from 4G to 5G

5G is the next generation mobile network coming after the current 4G LTE-Advanced. It is still under research and development, but we can expect it to hit the market in near future.

What can we expect from 5G enhancement from the current 4G technology?

• Up to 1000 times increase in bandwidth per unit area
• Up to 100 times more connected devices
• Up to 10 Gbps connection speed to mobile devices in the field (see picture below for comparison with older technologies)
• Perceived network availability of 99.999%
• Perceived 100% network coverage
• Maximum of only 1ms end-to-end round trip latency delay
• Up to 90% reduction in network energy utilization

So, 5G is the next generation mobile technology well prepared for the world of IoT, with significantly improved bandwidth, connection speed, stability, reliability, coverage, etc.

With 5G, the necessity of laying fibre landline will be greatly reduced. The world will truly enter into Gigabit Internet era.

Huawei which has just received the "Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G" award at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 is among the industry leaders who lead in the worldwide 5G development. (Unfortunately to investors, Huawei is not a public listed company)

TM UniFi free bandwidth upgrade 2017

Under budget 2017, the Malaysian govenment has initiated a move to increase the broadband Internet speed in the country while reducing the broadband subscription fee.

Following the budget announcement in October 2016, broadband service providers in Malaysia, both wired and wireless, have respectively announced their bandwidth increment and/or price reduction plans.

For domestic TM UniFi and Streamyx users, TM has promised to provide free upgrade to existing bandwidth subscribed by their users, at no additional cost. Now, this has come to reality!

If you are existing domestic TM UniFi or Streamyx user, you can check for the free Internet speed upgrade detail of your subscription with this webpage:

https://www.tm.com.my/thankyousurprise/

In general, if your existing UniFi package is 30 Mbps, you will be upgraded to 50 Mbps, at the same subscription fee as before, and all the components in your package remains the same except for the increase in bandwidth. If your existing UniFi package is 50 Mbps, you will get 100 Mbps after the upgrade.

This bandwidth upgrade exercise is called the "TM Thank You Surprise Free Speed Upgrade Campaign".

Eligible TM broadband customers will receive email and/or SMS about this campaign, together with the link above. If you have not received the message from TM, you can still click on the above link to check for your eligibility.

To accept this offer, you need to visit to the above link, and fill in your basic personal details.

Before filling up the online form and giving out your personal detail, it is always advisable for you to check for the validity of the website's SSL certificate to ensure the website you visited is genuine.

If you are using Google Chrome browser, click on the word "Secure" with lock icon at the left of the URL address bar, then click "Details" under "Secure connection", then click the "View certificate" button.

If you are using Internet Explorer browser, click on the lock icon (security report) at the right of the URL address bar, then click "View certificates".

You should then be able to see that the SSL certificate of the website is issued to www.tm.com.my and the expiry date is in the future.

After submitting your details which include your UniFi phone number, the screen will show you your eligible upgrade. You can then choose to accept or decline the upgrade offer.

Note:

• If you declined the offer, nothing will happen. You will continue to pay your UniFi subscription fee at same amount, and your bandwidth remains the same as before. All the components in your package: voice calls, HyppTV, TM WiFi, ... remains the same.
• If you accepted the offer, your bandwidth will be upgraded in a future date (before July 2017). Your subscription fee remains the same as before the upgrade, and all the components in your package: voice calls, HyppTV, TM WiFi, ... remains the same.
• If you do not indicate accept or decline, I'm not sure it will default to which option. Most likely it will default to declined.

Important: if you wish to accept this offer, you need to click on the Accept button in the website latest by 31 January 2017.

According to TM, once your bandwidth is successfully upgraded, you will be informed by email and/or SMS. You will need to reboot your modem or CPE equipment for the new bandwidth to take effect.

MyCelcom Postpaid App to track your Celcom mobile usages

Celcom is now at the final stage of developing their MyCelcom Postpiad App for Android, for their Celcom First postpaid mobile plan users. Apparently, this mobile app is going to launch soon, and already available for free download in Google Play Store.

This is how it looks like:

The app shows your billing amount due, and you can pay your Celcom bill directly in the app. It is also able to show your last 6 months billing history.

With the app, you can instantly check your up to date usage of the current billing month on Internet data (free quota - weekdays, free quota - weekends & top-up quota), phone calls (free quota & pay per use), SMS (free quota & pay per use) and international roaming.

If you used up your free Internet data quota, you can also buy add-on Internet quota in the app (2GB for RM18).

You can get the detail information about your Celcom postpaid plan in the My Plan Details screen as below:

Last but not least, you can also use this app to check for your SIM card PUK number.

Click here to download the MyCelcom Postpaid App for Android.

How to open the menu / more options in Android devices without the menu navigation button?

One of the problem I faced with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 (10.1", S Pen, LTE, SM-P585Y) Android tablet is that, although it has a Home button, a "Recent Apps" button and a "Back" button, it doesn't come with a "Menu" button which certain apps rely on to bring up their More Options menu.

Anyhow, there is a workaround solution for this, by using the Accessibility Assistant Menu.

To enable this, go to Setting > Accessibility and select the "Dexterity and interaction" option.

Then, select the "Assistant menu" option inside the "Dexterity and interaction" menu.

Switch on the "Assistant menu", and you will see this floating action button appear on the screen:

Tap on it and you will be able to see the "More options" soft button.

In your app, tap on this "More options" to bring up and access into its menu settings.

You can switch off this "Assistant menu" after use. The floating action button will disappear from the screen when it is switched off.

My 10.1 inches Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 with S Pen and LTE phone function (SM-P585Y)

I used to read subscribed electronic magazines with my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet when I am on the move. In many occasions, I found its screen too small to display the text in the electronic magazines to be readable without having to enlarge the pages.

Recently, Samsung launched a new Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablet with 10.1" TFT LCD screen that comes with S Pen and supports both WiFi and LTE cellular network. It has full phone feature and can be used for phone calling and SMS function too!

I found its price of around RM1,500 to be reasonable, and therefore bought one to serve for my electronic magazines reading.

This Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 with S Pen (model: SM-P585Y) is a mid-range Android tablet, powered by the Samsung Exynos 7 Octa 7870 14nm processor.

Specification wise, it is much better than the 9.7" Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S Pen and LTE support. The 9.7" version only has a screen resolution of 1024x768 while this 10.1" version one is 1920x1200. In addition, the 9.7" version has quad-core CPU and 2 GB RAM, while this 10.1" version has octa-core CPU and 3 GB RAM.

However, being a mid-range tablet, its specification is lower than the high spec Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (9.7", LTE). The S2 has 2048x1536 super AMOLED screen and more sensors, but doesn't have S Pen.

What I like about this Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 with S Pen (10.1", LTE)?

• Its 10.1" screen is large among the tablets in the market.
• It has a high capacity Li-ion battery of 7,300 mAh which can last for long hours of usage.
• It supports multi-user usage, whereby each user can login with separate account.
• It supports split window and also multiview for multitasking.
• Its S Pen is nice for drawing or writing quick notes. Comes with S Command function too.
• It has sufficient RAM to run smoothly.
• Its price is reasonable.

What I dislike about this Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 with S Pen (10.1", LTE)?

• It does not have a "menu" navigation button, which need some software workaround to bring out the setting menu in some apps.
• It is quite heavy, probably due to its high capacity battery. It is even heavier when its book cover case (EF-BP580) is put on.
• It only has 16 GB internal storage, which is pretty small. Its official firmware does not support for Android 6 adoptable storage, so even if you add in a micro-SD card to expand its storage capacity, most of its storage usage is still residing within the small 16 GB internal storage.
• It does not have accelerometer, fingerprint sensor, gyroscope, geo-magnetic sensor, infra red blaster, NFC, etc.
• Although the Samsung Exynos 7870 supports LTE Cat.6, it only support LTE Cat.4.
• It does not support 2x2 MIMO Wireless-A WiFi. Its maximum connection speed at 5Ghz WiFi is 433Mbps only instead of 866Mbps.

Mcdodo 2-in-1 USB type-c and micro USB fast charging data cable

If you bought a latest smartphone that uses USB type-c connector instead of the old style micro USB, you might probably want to search for some 3rd party fast charging and data sync cable for it.

If you still possess other smart mobile devices that use micro USB, a 2-in-1 cable that supports both USB type-c and micro USB will be very nice. If you also have Apple iPhone, perhaps a 3-in-1 cable that supports USB type-c, micro USB and lightning will be even better.

For this reason, I have recently bought some Mcdodo brand 2-in-1 USB cables. They have another 3-in-1 model as well with the Apple lightning connector.

This cable is 1 meter long, and supports fast charging with 2.1A current output. One end of it is normal USB connector, and the other end of it is a micro USB connector. What makes it special is it also comes together with an adapter that tied with it, which can be connected to its micro USB connector to convert it for USB type-c connection.

It also comes with a handy silicon belt that can be used to tie the cable up nicely in an organized manner for easy carriage.

Its cable is insulated with thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) material, which is robust, durable, anti-abrasion, anti-pull, anti-wrap and has high resistance to heat, oil, direct sunlight, flame, water, acid, alkali, alcohol, etc.

Pisen TS-D192 4-in-1 presentation laser pointer pen and power bank (2nd generation)

If you do a lot of public presentation or classroom lecturing, you will find a presentation laser pointer pen as a very useful gadget for you to remotely control the flow of your presentation which run from your laptop and projected on a screen, as well as using its laser pointer to draw the audients' focus onto a particular area in your presentation screen.

I am using the Pisen TS-D192 4-in-1 presentation laser pointer pen and power bank for that purpose. In fact, it is more than just a presenter pen, it is also a 2,500 mAh power bank. It cost around RM70.

The Pisen TS-D192 has 3 buttons and can serve 4 features:

• Laser pointer
• Presentation remote controller
• Video remote controller
• Power bank

When you press its middle button, it will shoot up a red laser beam, with a long shooting range of up to 100 meters.

This Pisen TS-D192 comes with a nano USB receiver, which you can plug into your computer's USB port. It is really plug-and-play and can function immediately in Windows XP and above, even without the need of installing driver.

Its wireless transmission is using 2.4 GHz frequency band, with effective transmission range of about 10 meters. Unlike those infrared presenters that you need to aim the pen to the receiver, this Pisen TS-D192 which use 2.4 GHz wireless technology can work well regardless of its angle and direction, as long as it is within the 10 meters transmission range.

When your computer is running PowerPoint or Adobe PDF Reader, its buttons function like this:

• Press top button to Page Up (go to previous slide)
• Press bottom button to Page Down (go to next slide)
• Long press top button will toggle full screen presentation
• Long press bottom button will toggle a black screen on the display
• The middle button will trigger its laser beam

When your computer is running Windows Movie Player or VLC Media Player, its buttons function like this:

• Double press middle button to toggle between Play and Pause
• Press top button for Forward
• Press bottom button for Reverse

Most of the presenter pens in the market are powered by either AA or AAA size normal battery. This Pisen TS-D192 is powered by an internal rechargeable 18650 Li-ion battery with capacity of 2,500 mAh.

It can be recharged using a normal USB charging cable connecting its micro USB charging port to either your computer or a USB charger. There is a USB charging cable included in its packaging.

It is said that you can use it as a presenter pen for about one year with just a single charge. With its abundant power, it can also serve as your emergency power bank with 5V 1A output to charge up your phone or gadgets.

This is an interesting USP for the product, as you can still making use of it as a power bank when you are not using it for presentation.

UniFi goodies: Switch to HyppTV Ruby Pack at no additional cost and get RM30 AEON Shopping Voucher

Today, I've received an email from TM Takeout with their HyppTV Mooncake Festival Ruby Pack Migration Campaign 2016 promotion as follow:

I have carefully checked the sender's email. It is not a scam and is really sent out from TM email server.

I clicked on the link and checked the URL of the webpage opened by the link. It is an HTTPS secured webpage, with valid SSL certificate issued by Entrust CA.

So, it is real!

I then checked on the Terms and Conditions that I need to agree in order to accept the offer.

The Terms and Conditions states that:

• The Campaign starts from 1 September 2016 until 15 September 2016.
• Only eligible to existing HyppTV subscribers of Aneka or Varnam Pack.
• The migration to Ruby Pack is free of charge, and there will be no additional monthly charge as long as the migration was done within this campaign period.
• Subscribers who have done the migration within this campaign period are eligible to receive a HyppTV Moon Cake Festival AEON shopping voucher worth RM30.

Its too good to be true as there is nothing to lose for the subscriber to accept the migration offer, and at the same time can get a RM30 voucher too.

Normally, the Ruby pack is RM10/month more expensive than the Aneka and Varnam pack for TM UniFi subscribers.

The Ruby pack consists of Chinese channels including tvN HD, Channel [V] Taiwan, now Baugu Movies, now Chinese Drama, now Jelli HD, Red by HBO, SCM, SCM Legend HD, SETI, Star Chinese Channel and TVB8.

So, if you also received this offer email from TM Takeout, think carefully first before trash it away. If you haven't received it, you might probably want to find it in your spam folder, or call 100 to find out from TM about your eligibility.

MEGA cloud storage with 50GB free quota and secured RSA-2048 encryption

Nowadays there are at least twenty over cloud storage service providers. Some of them provides free quota usage, such as the famous Dropbox (2GB), Google Drive (15GB), Microsoft OneDrive (15GB), pCloud (10GB), etc. while some other don't.

If you are looking for large amount of free storage, probably to store your precious videas, photos, disc images, etc., you should take a look at MEGA which generously provides 50GB free quota.

MEGA was founded in New Zealand by Kim DotCom in 2013, who was also the founder of the famous file-hosting website Megaupload. Megaupload was shut down by US government after being accused for copyright infringement. Anyhow, MEGA says Kim DotCom has already resigned as director since August 2013.

MEGA has on 23 August 2016 announced that they've reached a milestone of 50 million registered users with more than 20 billion files stored in their cloud service.

There is an article in Cloudwards posted in 18 September 2015 comparing MEGA with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SugarSync and SpiderOak, and concluded with the following comparison table:

(Comparison table from Cloudwards website)

MEGA can be accessed with any one of the following medium:

• MEGA Sync client for Windows, Mac or Linux
• MEGA mobile app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone or Blackberry
• MEGA web browser extension for Chrome or Firefox

Its usage experience is similar to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. Its upload/download speed for free users is OK, I can get about 2 Mbps speed as shown below.

With its generous 50GB storage for free users, I find MEGA pretty attractive as a cloud storage for my videos, photos, disc images and other big files.

Note that users of Microsoft Office 365 are getting 1024GB bundled quota in OneDrive, which is much more larger than this 50GB. So, if you are genuine user of MS Office 365, you can make good use of your bundled 1TB space in OneDrive too.

HTC flagship smartphone users can also claim for 2 years usage of 100GB free additional storage in Google Drive through the pre-installed Google Drive app in the new phone. Beware that after 2 years, this 100GB additional storage quota will be revoked, unless you buy another new HTC flagship smartphone, and provided this offer is still available by then.

Wireless-AD - the next generation WiFi (WiGig) with Gigabit per second speed

Perhaps many of you have just upgraded your WiFi network from Wireless-N to Wireless-AC just like me, the next generation of wireless network namely IEEE 802.11ad has already come to the market.

Instead of operating at the highly congested 2.4 GHz band or the less congested 5 GHz band, wireless-AD (a.k.a. WiGig) operates at a new 60 GHz band. The key selling point of this wireless-AD network technology is that it is able to provide an unprecedented  throughput as high as 7 Gbps, which is even much more faster than the wired Gigabit Ethernet network!

However, the wireless-AD network, operating at 60 GHz band, has even shorter range than the 5 GHz band WiFi, and it find itself more difficult to penetrate through walls and other physical obstacles. In addition, its performance is degraded by the amount of oxygen in the air!

With these limitation, wireless-AD might require an open space environment with less oxygen in the air (such as at high altitude places) to transmit data at high speed to nearby devices that support the technology.

Some possible uses of wireless-AD could be media server transferring super UHD movie to nearby TV, "wireless external SSD hard disk", "wireless thumb drive without USB need", etc.

TP-Link has already come out with the Talon AD7200 Multi-Band WiFi Router that supports wireless-AD technology. However, many wireless devices are yet to catch up with this new technology.

Anyhow, it is already supported in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor which is inside the Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, LG G5, Moto Z, Sony Xperia X Performance, XiaoMi Mi 5, and the newly launched HTC 10.

It is expected to be also supported in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 7. However, it is still unclear whether Apple iPhone 7 will support wireless-AD or not.

My TP-Link AC2600 wireless dual band gigabit router Archer C2600 with TM UniFi and Maxis Home Fibre support

I have been using TP-Link TL-WDR3600 dual band wireless-N router for home Internet access for about 3 years, and have just changed it with a new TP-Link AC2600 dual band wireless-AC router.

The TL-WDR3600 router is still functioning well, and I changed it for better home network experience. The reason for the change includes:

• The 5GHz WiFi band of TL-WDR3600 has a short coverage area. I can only connect to this 5GHz band when my mobile device is near to the router. Further away, the connection speed on 5GHz band dropped drastically, and I ended up only have the choice of using the 2.4GHz band.
• The TL-WDR3600 is a wireless-N router and does not support wireless-AC connection. As more and more wireless devices at my home are supported with dual band and wireless-AC, I have to retire it and change to a newer router with wireless-AC support to enjoy the benefit of wireless-AC network and new features such as Beamforming and MU-MIMO. I have chosen the Archer C2600 as its successor.
• The price I paid for the TL-WDR3600 3 years ago was RM17x. Depreciating this cost over a 3 years period, it cost me less than RM60 per year. I don't feel financially guilty to replace it with a better one after using it for over thousand days.

Other than the limitation on 5GHz band coverage and lacking of wireless-AC support, I would say the TL-WDR3600 is a great WiFi router with stable, consistence and quality performance.

Coming on stage is my new TP-Link Archer C2600 router, which I purchased online at the price of RM68x (RM64x +6% GST) with Hari Raya promotion. At the front cover of its packaging box, there is a red sticker about its 2 years warranty support, and a blue sticker stating its UniFi and Maxis Fibre support.

At the back of the box, there is a comparison table for Archer 2600, Archer C9 and Archer C5.

I have also made a comparison table for Archer C7, Archer C8 and Archer C9 in March 2016. (Yeah, I have been surveying and researching around for the router replacement for quite some times, before finalized to this Archer C2600.)

The size of this Archer C2600 is larger than I expected. It is 10.4" X 7.8" which is about the size of a 10-inch netbook.

It has a larger power adaptor than the WDR-3600 too, and is of the same type with the laptop power adaptor. The adaptor converts AC current from wall socket into 12V/4A DC supply to power up the router.

The Archer C2600 is a MU-MIMO router with 4 antennas, which mean it is able to individually serve up to 4 MU-MIMO supported devices at full bandwidth on the 2.4GHz band and another 4 MU-MIMO on the 5GHz band. If the connecting wireless device does not support MU-MIMO, or the amount of MU-MIMO connections at the router has reached the maximum, the connection will fall into SU-MIMO mode, which means its connection bandwidth will be shared with other SU-MIMO connected devices. (For MU-MIMO routers, the more antenna the merrier, so this type of wireless routers usually have more antennas than the older non-MU-MIMO routers)

The Archer C2600 also comes with a modern looking web user interface, which looks nicer than the traditional TP-Link web interface for router administration. Anyhow, there is not much different in features and functionalities between the newer and older interfaces.

Setting up for UniFi IPTV is much easier than before, just a 2-step action of select and save.

Special note on turning on the UniFi IPTV setting:

• Do not access the router administration web interface by connecting your PC to LAN Port #1 of the router, you should connect your HyppTV STB to that port instead. If you connect your PC to that port, you will end up unable to access the administration web interface after you click on the Save button, because that port will be assigned to a separate VLAN.
• There is an option for IGMP Version 2 and Version 3. If you choose IGMP V3, your Internet link will be down. Your Internet link can only work properly with IGMP V2.
• Certain function of the router, such as QoS, will need to be disabled once you enable the IPTV setting. Probably because they are not compatible with each other.

This Archer C2600 also supports the TP-Link Tether mobile app for you to manage it with your smartphone.

My experience of using the Archer C2600:

• The LED is less brighter than the WDR-3600, which is good after you turned off all your lights for sleeping at night. In fact, the LED of the Archer C2600 can be configured to turn off by itself during sleeping time too. There is also a button on it to manually turn the LED lights on/off.
• The 5GHz band coverage improved a lot. Now my Samsung UHD 4K smart TV downstairs is able to connect with it using the 5GHz band. Previously it can only connect with my WDR-3600 using the 2.4GHz band.
• The overall WiFi coverage (2.4GHz band and 5GHz band) is much larger than the WDR-3600 too. Previously I can only get a poor 2.4GHz connection with very low speed at my car poach area outside the building, which is a few walls and some distance away from the location of the router. Now my mobile devices still able to detect the 2.4GHz WiFi with moderate signal at the car poach, and able to connect to the router at speed of single digit Mbps only. The 5GHz WiFi is also detected but signal is much weaker than the 2.4GHz. 
• The connection speed improved a lot too. My HTC One M8 smartphone used to get a 150Mbps connection at home, now can get a 433Mbps connection. My newer Samsung Galaxy Note 5 smartphone is able to get a 866Mbps connection, with its dual channel support.
• My external harddisk connected to the router's USB 3.0 port has faster read/write speed too. Time taken to copy large file is shorter.

Therefore, I can say that the performance of this Archer C2600 wireless router is as advertised. At the price of RM68x, it really worth the upgrade from WDR-3600.