My Choice Tablet - Dell Venue Pro 8

Like so many others, after agonizing over the myriad of available choices across OS, form factor, features, brand etc., finally, last week I ordered two Dell Venue Pro 8 tablets, one for my self and another for my college going niece. Both of us need a tablet, not just for content consumption/entertainment, but also for everyday productivity as well. I am looking for a tablet that I can take on an occasional business trip/office visit, or my niece to a class room on a daily basis, and for getting some work done, while relaxing on a sofa. Also, all my book purchases in recent years on Amazon, as well as most of my local library borrowings, both are in Kindle format. I also subscribe to Zinio monthly service for magazines. So, I need a light weight tab that fits easily in one hand, and allows me to read comfortably in bed. My previous 10" tab isn't very convenient for heavy reading.  Given these specific needs, after weighing pros and cons, an 8", light weight, windows productivity, with light note taking capability seemed the way to go. Finally, I did not want to spend too much on one device, and be stuck with it for too long, but rather let my 4 years old upgrade to this from his current Acer Iconia A500 tab :-)

Linksys E3000 Router - Upgrading to latest Toastman TomatoUSB build

These are instructions for upgrading your older Toastman build on Linksys E3000 router to the latest firmware version. If you have never installed a TomatoUSB on this model router, you may want to start here first.

Upgrading is straight forward if you follow these simple steps..

How fast is your Home Network?

Typically, most of us, at some point or the other, get concerned or pay attention to our internet connection speed at home. If you haven't done already, there are good online tools like SpeedTest.net to measure the throughput from your ISP. So, it's a good idea to use these occasionally and check you are getting what you are paying for (though keep in mind, speeds at your end will never be 100% of the service level you are paying for. 80-85% of contracted max is a reasonable expectation). For long, I know i am not getting any where near the reasonable performance from my ISP. So, finally I picked up the phone this week and lodged a complaint.

Flashing TomatoUSB on Linksys E3000

This thanksgiving weekend, i bought a Linksys E3000 router. Besides upgrading my home network, one of the things i was excited to try with this box is to replace the factory installed firmware with either DD-WRT or TomatoUSB and turn it into a really cool router.  So, after long research, i decided on TomatoUSB instead of DD-WRT. Unfortunately, Tomato is light on detailed documentation and hence i couldn't find all the information I need (specifically installing on E3000) on a single page for flashing this specific combination. I had to jump around and a lot before i felt confident to start risk turning the brand new router into a paper weight. So, now that i have done, here it is..