Good morning!!!!

[hawkeye08]

Not mine.

Ron, you might want to check out the AT&t unlimited data plans -2 phones, $80 mo. after taxes.

Standalone hotspot from AT&T for $20/month with unlimited data (may throttle speed after 22GB). It uses the Connected Car hotspot (RV.Net Open Roads Forum: AT&T Unlimited LTE Hotspot $2 without AT&T phones). You can get a power supply that plugs into 120v off ebay or Amazon.

 

[toppop52]

29° going to low 60's. A chance of a shower around noon they say. Gotta wash the wifemobile, clean the garage and anything else she finds for me to do!

 

[sodamo]

Just curious, have you tried applying with 4GAS? Usually services like this offer an on line, no obligation form that will tell you instantly if you are within the coverage area. This one seems to need a lot more info, and requires a follow up contact, which seems odd.

Did the initial form, had a follow up email to which I responded with more info/questions and my take on the various carrier coverages. Hope to hear back today.
Found an app, Open Signal, which seems to think Verizon is my best bet. Likely as the V Tower is upslope from the house less than 1/2 mile away.

I did chat with another neighbor just waiting to get off Satellite, may not wait until end of contract.

4GAS has a decent write up on an RV site.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Off today. Just got a shower of needed rain. Now I REALLY WILL have to mow...

Sent the bad boy computer back. Dell let me slide a bit on the length of the warranty. We had determined the video card was overheating and shutting things down. I was worried about the complexity of the whole system. It weighed a bit over 40 lbs. The 2nd Xeon chip and it's memory, was on a daughter card that had it's own radiator for cooling it. I was afraid of this long term. Dell support offered to take it back, they gave me a shipping ticket for free shipping to return it. I will say it spoiled me as fast as it was, with 12 cores and 12 gigs of ram.

I plan to buy a simpler computer, probably an i5 or i7.

So now I'm trying to offload pics and music off of my old 2008 Dell e8200 pos. This thing is slow as molasses on a cold day. I can't quite figure out what is making it so slow, possibly just windows Vista. I tried to move the pics to a 64 gig thumbdrive, but it said I had about 2 gigs too much. Crap. So I'm going through 14 years of pictures and trimming many that should have been deleted long ago. Fun reminiscing through old pictures. A trip down memory lane. I have some from when we put the tin on Don's metal barn. Oct 28, 2006



Harv is in there too.

I need a battery bike that can go 150 miles to work and back.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Found an app, Open Signal, which seems to think Verizon is my best bet. Likely as the V Tower is upslope from the house less than 1/2 mile away.

If you have a Verizon phone you can see how many bars you have for signal strength and get a pretty good idea if you'll have reception at your site. Be sure to test both inside and out, especially where you plan to use the devices inside. If you have an iPhone, you can put it into diagnostic mode with a few key presses and get a measurement in dB. My experience is that a good reading may not necessarily correlate to good reception with your carrier, do Open Signal may be a better way to go.

Here are my notes:

iPhone diagnostics mode:
dial *3001#12345#*
press Call
then terminate the call

The signal bar will be replaced with a numeric signal strength in dB
-51 - full signal
-105 - no signal
Frequency - select UMTS RR info, then UTMS RR info
850 MHz - 4132-4233 - uplink
4357-4458 - downlink
1900 MHz - 9262-9538 - uplink
9662-9938 - downlink
To replace the signal dots in the upper left side of the screen, hold down the power button until the slider appears, then hold down the home button until test mode exits and you're back at the home screen.

Making Sense of Signal Strength:
Industrial Networking Solutions Tips and Tricks

Good luck in searching out your new Internet connection. It sounds like the current operator somehow wants some kind of leverage over the installation without actually doing anything to support it, and I don't blame you for not wanting to put yourself in that position.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I plan to buy a simpler computer, probably an i5 or i7.

So now I'm trying to offload pics and music off of my old 2008 Dell e8200 pos. This thing is slow as molasses on a cold day. I can't quite figure out what is making it so slow, possibly just windows Vista.

You'd be surprised how much improvement switching over to a Solid State Drive will make. And faster USB ports help a LOT if you have any data hungry peripherals like disk drives as well. I've always believed in buying as much speed as is available to make the machine viable as long as possible. There always seems to be a new killer app or capability that comes along and makes even the fastest obsolete, but it may take 5 or 6 years.

FWIW, this new MacBook Pro uses a four core i7 and it's been kernel panicking after a long string of DVD file format conversions. I haven't been keeping an eye on CPU temperature, but I think I'll take a look next time to see if that might be the problem. Wouldn't surprise me, as laptops aren't known for having good cooling systems.

Good luck in your search for a replacement rig.:thumbsup:

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I did chat with another neighbor just waiting to get off Satellite, may not wait until end of contract.

Can't blame him one bit. This new HughesNet setup has been good until last night. At about 9PM it went dead as a mackerel. My LAN was fine, but only two of the six LEDs were showing on the satellite modem. Had to call HuguesNet on the land line (cell phone had no reception as usual), waited five minutes on the line, CRS said there was a scheduled outage in my area and service would be back on by morning. I asked if any notice had been put out in advance and could I be added to that notification list. She explained that no notification list was available. I asked if I would get an email when service returned. She said that there was no plan to do that, but she would be sure to pass my questions to upper management for their consideration. If I managed the WiFi LANs that way for my former employer I'd have been fired in a week. I can't believe how poorly HughesNet treats their customers. No wonder they have to set the data caps so high to attract new customers :mutteringhe mutters to himself feeling like a sucker).

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Used to have hughesnet, don't miss it.

There are lots of apps to show cell signal strength, direction, etc. I tried a few, none I really liked as far as locating cell towers.

 

[riptides]

Used to have hughesnet, don't miss it.

There are lots of apps to show cell signal strength, direction, etc. I tried a few, none I really liked as far as locating cell towers.

A while back I used the opensignal web site and plane GPS with a compass. The key seems to be 4 to 5 miles.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

You'd be surprised how much improvement switching over to a Solid State Drive will make. And faster USB ports help a LOT if you have any data hungry peripherals like disk drives as well. I've always believed in buying as much speed as is available to make the machine viable as long as possible. There always seems to be a new killer app or capability that comes along and makes even the fastest obsolete, but it may take 5 or 6 years.

FWIW, this new MacBook Pro uses a four core i7 and it's been kernel panicking after a long string of DVD file format conversions. I haven't been keeping an eye on CPU temperature, but I think I'll take a look next time to see if that might be the problem. Wouldn't surprise me, as laptops aren't known for having good cooling systems.

Good luck in your search for a replacement rig.:thumbsup:

So are you happy with the i7's performance?