Tomizone

So, you want to make money from selling your wifi? Not to worry, now you can. Before, setting up a hotspot where users would pay was very difficult and something that only those who had the time and money would do. Today, it isn’t so had to do at all. In fact, there are a few ways that you can.

Firstly, if you are still a little bit more tech savvy, you could set up a linux server and a capture web portal so that you can bring your clients to a splash page for them to pay you. Most probably and the easiest way would be to get them to buy vouchers from you or alternatively by using paypal. This is the hardest of all the solutions

Secondly, you could tone it down and buy a linux based router, some of the linksys ones come to mind, and install DD-wrt or openWRT and then chillispot. Basically, this solution is no different from the last apart from the fact that you don’t have to have a full computer running all the time.

The third method would be to use something like FON or Tomizone. Tomizone allows paid users while FON doesn’t. Tomizone is also available preinstalled on some routers in NZ and Orcon has some sort of partnership with them too. The D-link 300 router is probably the most popular router that comes with Tomizone. Tomizone is also based on Chillispot and the associated customized firmware; however, you don’t have to worry about the billing, marketing or the pricing. It is all done for you. You get put on a map of all the hotspots Tomizone has and mind you they also do the hotspots in all the Esquires and Starbucks coffee shops in NZ. The price is set to $3 an hour or 60mb, $6.5o a day or 160mb or $30 a week for 1.2GB. It’s either data or time whichever comes first. The hotspot provider gets 50% of that amount and tomizone keeps 50% for itself, but at least they save you all the trouble of setting up and managing your own and not to mention handling the billing. You are allowed to give guest access to people you know. The D-Link 300 also has dual SSID, so you can use one of them while the other is for the hotspot.

I have an unlimited data plan, so I have no data cap. My traffic is shaped and prioritized, so VOIP then HTTP and the like then other things and then P2P. So any thing I sell won’t affect won’t really affect me. Plus, you can set a maximum bandwidth for the hotspot side. So far in the last 1.5 weeks I have made $45. This is not bad considering that the connection only costs me $50 a month. I think the reason for my success is that an AUT building is right behind my apartment and someone buys a pass every now and then.

Overall, very good. At least I got some income going. I wish I thought of this earlier. The money from the first two weeks will practically pay for the router.

The Spray Can

Windows 7 – Free for UoA Students

Well well folks. Windows 7 has gone to manufacturing some time this month and has already become available for subscribers to MSDN and to volume license customers. It will be released publically on 22nd October.  Obviously people buying computers with Vista Home premium and above will be eligible to upgrade for free if they purchase a computer after Some time in June.

Why have I said all this?

Well. I have got a copy of the final release and have installed it on my Macbook. Basically, dual booted it.

How have I got a copy?

I got a copy from my university: the university of Auckland. All students doing any of the information systems and operations management courses can get a copy for free along with other software as well. This is the reward for going to one of the leading universities in New Zealand and a top 50 university in the world.

Review

Windows 7 is quite an improvement over its predecessor in quite a few ways. Firstly, it looks and feels slightly better and is move responsive and has a decent boot up speed. It jams well with my mac and all the drivers that Apple included for Windows. I managed to install some games that were meant for XP and Vista without too much trouble and they worked fine. I must say that the annoying UAC thing is much better and overall the system feels much more lightweight and faster.

I really haven’t done much with it yet, but the system is looking hopeful. Commercially, Windows 7 will probably the success that Vista never was. It is good enough to run on a netbook and hat means Buh bye XP. Expect prices of Netbooks to rise as many of them will start to ship with windows 7.

Overall, very pleasing indeed, especially for free!

The Spray Can

Hard Drive Failure (Maxtor)

Well, here is something to talk about and think about. Hard drives. We all have one in our computers to store our “digital lives”. We all dread the day that we might lose this “life” of ours. Thanks to the internet most of the important stuff like emails are safe. Well I have had a rather tragic incident in the past week.

My external hard drive kinda died on me. Well not really died, just having some power supply problems. It had been set up to back up my computer with time machine every hour and this was all fine and dandy for a week while it worked. One day I just put the mac to sleep and went out, when I got home although I hadn’t realized until late in the night the drive had stopped working. There was no power coming to it. This was on a Saturday. May I just point out now that it is a Maxtor Basics drive made by seagate so it has three year warranty. I had to wait till Monday afternoon to call tech support to have it checked out. They concluded that the power supply might be the problem and obviously said that they would send me a new one in about two weeks time. It hasn’t been two weeks yet so I’m still waiting for it.

The bad news is that if the power supply is not the issue, the hard drive is. I will have to send the drive back to Singapore from New Zealand to have it replaced and this could cost me about $40. I am hoping this does not happen and the new power supply fixes it up.

The overriding concern here is that some brands and makes are just better than others and Maxtor has had a bad spell for a while now, I was just silently hoping I would not become part of the lot that was bad; however, I’m happy that it happened early on so that I will be compensated within warranty. The other concern is my cost to send it as well as the risk to send it so far away for replacement; who really wants to do this? Thirdly, they will not send a new drive but rather a refurbished one (aka repaired one). This drive could possibly be a four year old drive that they have repaired compared to my 3 month old drive.

Some thing to think about Seagate. Ideally we want a new drive.

Anyone have any similar experiences with Maxtor or Seagate or any comments let me know.

The Spray Can

Cell Phones- Cheap like chips; Cheap on quality

Having moved back over to New Zealand I had to buy my self a new phone. The one that I had from Fiji was obviously locked and wouldn’t work here. I got one of the starter packs for prepay from Vodafone like most folks do; it cost me $35! I then slowly looked for a handset.

There were many models, but my observation was that the market mostly liked phones from over $200 to about $1000. I just wanted something that texts and calls and none of the fancy stuff, but I suppose it was hard but I finally managed to buy the cheapest at the time. I got myself an LG flip phone that cost my $99 and also included a starter pack. The starter pack was basically put aside. I liked the phone, it wasn’t bad though it wasn’t like my old (more like my other) Nokia 1680c.

There is just one problem. After about a week or two, the sound quality deteriorated and finally I would not be able to hear the phone ring or hear the other person over the phone if I called someone. So naturally, I went over to have it sent away to be fixed. I had to use Vodafone so that I would have a loan phone in between, since the store I bought it from wouldn’t give me one. The phone came back after about two weeks.

Here’s the bad news, the same problem occurs again after it is fixed. This time I’m furious. If it happens once, it is ok just a faulty part. When it happens a second time, that just means that the phone is just no good and it is likely to occur over and over again. I took it back to vodafone and thought that I wold have to accept that they would send it over to the repairing folk again, but I was so furious at the time that I took it over to Dick Smith and had a great big fuss with the manager. He finally agreed that if he had one in stock, he would swap the handset only. He apparently had none. He checked if I had everything from the box and lucky for me I had not used up the starter pack. I inevitably, ended up choosing to go with a Samsung slide phone which was $109. It is dearer by more than $10 since I lose out on that additional starter pack, but at least I have a working phone now with two more years of warranty.

At the end of the day, the moral of the story is that everything is cheap these days but it is also cheap quality. Though, even the best of them are just as bad (or as good). You just have to be assertive about standards.

The Spray Can

My New Macbook White

Well it has been a while since I last wrote any new post; I have moved to New Zealand since then. More importantly, I bought a new computer since then. I was thinking to buy one of those net-books that everyone is raving about especially since I had been using linux for a while. I had thought they would cost around $600-700 but when you really look at the shops here they usually just have the Windows versions with HDDs instead of flash memory and often are in the $800-1200 range. It really isn’t worth it at that price point. I naturally would have bought a desktop to go with it but for me in my studio accommodation I had to be considerate of desk space plus weight in portability. Eventually as the title suggests, I bought a new Macbook white.

What I eventually figured in to my decision was the space it took up, the price, what operating system it really ran as it had to be stable and robust. also, the new windows 7 is about to rear its ugly head, so I would not like to be stuck with an old system in a year or so and finally it’s portability and battery life.

The net-book (linux) and desktop (windows) combination would have worked out well, but the desktop would have been too bulky and take up too much space. Added to this is the fact that it would have taken me a while to build one if I really wanted to get a good deal. The other side of the story is that the net-book may not have been more than a fancy gadget with it’s relatively small screen although quite portable and they do have long battery lives up to 8 hours. Having vista on the desktop would mean changing the operating system in a year or so and this would just be a pain. The other fact is that buying two computers is okay but a little over the top in terms of cost plus files have to be synced up all the time.

The other most obvious choice is simply to buy a nice sized laptop(windows). The standard size these days is 15.4 or 15.6 wide screen. Usually available cheap and for as little as $900, but the ideal price is around $1500 for decent one with a T6400 processor and if you really want the latest processor then around $2000 for a P8600. This is not a bad price range and usually they would be more than enough. The two down sides here are obviously the size as it is not ideal to be lugging around a laptop that big all day. It would have a short battery life and also that problem of being outdated quickly.

In the end I picked a Macbook white. Why? Well for starters it is a laptop and it is portable. It has a 4.5 hour battery life. It is a compromise between the 9 inch of a net-book and the 15 inch screen of a normal laptop with its 13.3 inch screen. It is about an inch thick so that is good as well. It runs a brilliant OS for day to day productivity and it is a robust and reliable being a unix based OS. It sits well in terms of price at $1749 NZD. It is also an excellent opportunity to see how good Mac really is. At this price I could also add a bigger display to make it more desktop like if I wanted to and still be under $2000. I can also always buy  another computer later if I want to like a desktop and still have this one which is a perfectly functional machine.

Take note that the Macbook white itself is a great deal because it can be relatively compared to windows laptops and it won’t be so bad. It will have a smaller drive, 250-320gb in a windows one while this one has just 120gb. It has comparable ram as it has DDR2 2gb, which will be around the same in a windows one. On the other hand, it has much better graphics processor, a Geforce 9400M; many windows ones will have a lower one or an integrated one. Also, the new Macbook white has the new P7350 processor which is a bit better than the T6400 of the windows ones. Generally the macbook is still dear but by just a margin, but consider that if you bought a 13 inch windows one specifically then it would be dearer than the Macbook. On a side note, the new macbook is really nice and all with its unibody design DDR3 ram and LED display, but I’m not so sure it is worth the additional 550 dollars and it does break that $2000 barrier.

I have bought my Mac from the Campus reseller which gives the educational discount, in my case 100 dollars. Plus a 100 off Microsoft Office 2008, so that made that 160. Apple also offered a 219 dollar rebate on a purchase of an ipod nano or touch. That meant that I could have got my ipod for as little as 30 dollars, but I’m not so cheap. I got the 16GB iPod touch. The rebate will basically be 40% of the purchase price. I have sent in the rebate from, but I’m not so sure they have got it and whether I will get my money. The other disappointment was that the Laptop they had given me initially had scratches on it and looked like it had been double sealed. I obviously got it replaced and have had no problems since then.

Digicel Fiji

Well, the opening of the new mobile phone giant in Fiji was done in one of the most extravagent ways with Sean Kingston performing live before a crowd of thousands for FREE. This is in line with many other launches in the Pacific where stars like Shaggy were brought in to promote the company. Local artists were also present at the event.

The day was filled with lots of hype and the media were having a feild day with it. The Fiji Times and The Fiji Sun being filled with advertisements from all communication companies, namely Vodafone, Inkk, Telecom and of course Digicel. Digicel went on further to subsidise the Fiji Sun which costed 40 cents on the day. Digicel offered phones at cheap prices and had some free credit up for grabs for all new customers in October.

The thing to analyse now is whether the company will make any headway in trying to gain significant market share as Vodafone has been deep rooted here on the account of its 14 year long reign. Though it seems that people are eager to switch if the price is right, they are not blind. The firm advertisers free credit but the credit comes with significant disadvantages. The bulk of the credit can only be used for calls and texts to other Digicel phones, which is not very useful as existing customers are on rival networks and for a new Digicel customer that means they can’t call anyone else for that credit unless their friends switch also. Secondly, the cheapest phone they have at $19 does not have a radio though were advertised to have such a feature. Thirdly, their rates aren’t all that cheap; 30 cents is only for off peak Digucel to Digicel and other charges work up from there. and climb to 45 cents, though it is good to note that the charges are all per second based which is unlike Vodafone and Inkk which charge per block on at least landline calls. You can check this all out at www.digicelFiji.com

On the other hand, they are giving more than you are paying for at the moment. $75 credit is something for nothing even though there are strings attached. The Cheapest phone they have will at least get you on their network if that is what you want. They also have phones that are better and it is good to note the F250 from Samsung which has a whole heap of features for just $125. They have even better phones like Blackberries and Nokia N series phones for cheap as well. The firm will further enhance your experience in the first month by offering free MMS messages. They basically allow pictures with text to be send together; they will later charge 50 cents for this service which is basically half the price to Vodafone which does it at 99 cents. Oh and yes, their texts cost 15 cents! Voice mail is customisable and free to access too.

Further on, the network of Digicel is 2.75G, i.e it is an EDGE network; the network is faster than the standard 2.5G GPRS networks. Digicel, according to their site will offer data plans and data even for prepay users at the rate of 1c/1kb, which is $10/1MB. Certainly not cheap. They also have no inbetween plans just a 2mb and 1gb plan. They really ought to have one at 50mb or something like that so that people can atleast check mail and access a few web pages per month.; it would be nice at around $12.

Overall, Digicel has got some competition coming up against it, though temporary; Inkk gives 30 cents all day rate and Vodafone has got the My Gang thing going for it as well. The next thing that Digicel needs is the ability to convert their Vodafone number to their network so that clients find it easy to switch, but that might never happen even thoughi tis done in countries like New Zealand. On the whole we’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with for us, but they certainly are looking promising.

The Spray Can

Samsung LCDs are a No GO!

Here’s the deal. Samsung is a well known producer of LCD T.V. They are even cheaper than most other brands out there; however, their quality is lacking. Samsung producers many of the same things as most other brands like LG and Philips and Panasonic for example. They even produce some computer parts too. In the computing realm, Samsung might earn itself to be a premium display; its screens are dearer than other brands and often preferred; needless to say, there are other good brands too. The problem though is with T.Vs only.

Having said all that, the problem isn’t with their build quality; but with their picture quality. Basically, the processors that convert all those standard definition images to fit the native resolution on the screen are not very good at all. The image is highly jaggered around the edges and text as well. This is extremely annoying when watching a DVD from a short distance away. The sharpness has to be toned down drastically to attain any good viewing condition. This is really poor quality, you would expect these sought of problems on an unbranded television set, not on a name brand like Samsung.

I suppose it may not be on every model in their range, especially since the one I have is a series 4 model. The picture quality from any High Definition source is very good and the problem does not exist with that. It’s just noticable in DVDs and especially when there are many moving items in the frame; the picture begins to distort badly there. All in all, much can’t be said, the set is still a good deal for its price.

HD Home Theatre System- My Experience

Here in Fiji Hi-Def home theater is mostly for the crazy audio and videophile. Only one shop is renting out hd-dvd movies and that is IMDVD. Heaps of amplifiers and speakers and cables and t.vs and projectors are available too. But how many can afford it all? Well not many actually; however, I have had the good pleasure setting one up and using it too.

The worst part of setting it up is that most folks don’t realize that hd stuff is not like standard def. you can’t use coaxial or optic to get the true sound. you cant expect everything to be fast because it all works like computers more than consumer electronics.

But look on the brighter side of it, at least it sound s better and looks good on bigger screens. Remember that not all players support bitstream output and even though you have some of the latest amps out there the amp won’t be able to decode the sound if the player can’t output bitstream audio. This includes the PS3 for now until they an come up with a firmware upgrade to fix it.  So most folks should try to get an amp with hdmi input but note that some are just video switches and will not accept audio through that port. Yamaha amps are good. They aren’t cheap but they are reliable and do decent sound processing. Or the next best thing would be to use the external 6 channel input. Running 3 pairs of analog signal to the amp from the player is the next best thing. This again excludes the PS3 as it only has HDMI output. The only HD-DVD players out there that provide bitstream audio or possibly 6 channel output would be the upper end 2nd and 3rd gen players. So only the A35 toshiba can do it really or else other players can only output 6 channel pcm through hdmi which needs a relatively new amp. The newer ones are ok too but if you want the amp to process and decode the sound you need a combination of a high end player like A35 and also a new amp like the onkyo 605 which can decode hd audio.  Optical in the end only gives SD sound not Hi-def.

On the picture side of things, 720p is minimum to enjoy this thing but a normal SD T.V could do as well, the picture just might not be as good, but it will be better than normal DVDs. The picture vastly improves as the screen gets bigger, so projectors benefit the most. HDMI and DVI are both good as long as the screen supports HDCP. Component will be O.K too. It will give HD picture according to the native resolution of the HD movie rather than the screen but it will not work on those movies which are protected with HDCP. So HDMI it is then.

Overall the experience is way better than DVD and far far better than going to a movie theater if you have a projector. And the only downsides are cost and the fact that there is a format war ensuing. Apart from the fact that also the whole audio side of things is in a bit of a mess and that all the HD-DVD players are really slowwwwwwww; press the eject button and the tray comes out like half a minute later.

All good I say

The Spray Can

Temporary Email Service

It’s been a while since I posted anything.

You know something; there are times when you go to some random site and they tell you to sign up for something. You give your email address to them oh so relunctantly and regret it later for they send you nothing but spam.

Your mail box fills with this stuff and you know what you got to get rid of the account. Get a new one and start life as you knew it all over again. Not good!

So what is the answer to the problem you ask. The answer is to use a temporary email address from one of the many providers out there. They all have their own system of dealing with mail.

Example is pookmail.com which lets you have an address for a day. Well not really. Anyone can see the mail, not just you but just pick a real random name and you should be fine, I suppose anyway.

some of the providers give you around five minutes to receive mail and then poof, its all gone, no worries, no spam, no restarting life. Great isn’t it.

The Spray Can

The computer cases I like most

There are many computer cases out there, but my favourites are:

Antec P180, P182

Lian li anniversary edition snail like case

Asus Vento 3600

Asus Vento 7700

The most underrated of all but most liked by me:

The Spire pininfarina case, (a designer case)

Enjoy!

The Spray Can

Ubuntu installed with less than 3gb space used (Windows struggles)

I installed and am using ubuntu on a partition that is around 3GB with around 300mb free so it’s around 2.7 gigs. My system has all the basics you really would need and more including beryl and wine, all the extra stuff from easyubuntu, pidgin, skype, thunderbird, etc.

If this were Windows, I would struggle to keep the limit at this kind of space. Actually I have experience. My wimdows partition with not much on it just grew and grew from what it should have been, around 4-5Gb upto 12GB and over. Wow it doubled without much effort. Ubuntu remained a small partition even though I added stuff like the above. Just goes to show you how linux can still work on older machines with less resources.

Linux 1, Windows 0

The Spray Can

My Ubuntu Desktop

I love Ubuntu for many reasons. It is open source, free to obtain, it is very stable, etc. The one I did not mention would be its looks, functionality and the blingbling. Beryl and emerald themes for the Linux desktop means that at least some folks might adopt it as their O/S even if it is just cause of the looks.

Here is a look at my desktop

I am using the solidline theme for emerald. The icon set is nuove-XT 1.6. The candido engine and my wallpaper is ‘Hole by cesconetto’.

Links coming soon for the above!

Enjoy!
The Spray Can

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

Next month’s release of the new version of Ubuntu is going to be big. The final release day is  18th. Cancel all your downloads, meetings, dates and mark it on your calender cause it is going to be one hell of a day.

Expect server downtimes on the release date just like last time, increased talk about it as the date gets nearer and the excited faces of thousands of Linux fans

Is proprietory software ethical for schools

A long post here.

I had to think heavily about this. I come from a country where most schools would not usually have computers, let alone a good library. Many of the schools which do have computers are in urban centres, rural schools would likely only have one, the one in their office. Schools often seek funding from parents, sponsor companies or simply attempt to fund raise for any projects. Unlike many developed countries computing is offered as a subject in schools and mainly aims to fulfil the basic training to own and operate a computer up till senior high school, around sixth form when basic programming is taught. Only schools who have computers (mainly urban schools) usually offer the subject, rural schools who don’t have any or just have a few may offer but usually teach directly from textbooks, little practice would be given to the students.

The main issue here is that the curriculum is based around Microsoft office and off course Microsoft Windows. This I reckon is totally unfair, many kids probably can’t afford the software let alone what it takes to own hardware to run it properly. Piracy in the country with regards to MS are high, and students are almost certainly  using it. The unethical part is that the government is indirectly supporting it my making the curriculum based on MS software.

Really, I think that the schools and the government should switch to open source software as an alternative, a good example would be Ubuntu, or better yet Edubuntu seeing as some schools probably have some old PCs which they can turn into dumb terminals and for those who don’t, cheap pentium 2s ans 1s are available as well. All they need is a good server. This also means easy management of the network, they can give internet access as well. The library can finally have a system for book management seeing as most schools don’t have that either. Filtering sites would be easier and Linux is also pretty much immune to viruses so that solves that problem too.

Only problem is training, and I suppose a little convincing.

The Spray Can

So many internet cafes are not up to scratch

If you walk past web cafes in most third world and developing countries it is hard to miss the fact that they would usually lack management software. They would normally manage the time manually, filtering sites is a long way away and their would be no VIP treatment for anyone let alone blocking access to other programs and services on the PCs themselves. To most, a few computers hooked up to a basic router is the equivalent of a good cafe.

Most of them can’t stop users from accessing unwanted material or manage their security in terms of virus infections an hacking. Sometimes users are getting more than what they paid for or just not the real deal at all. Many leave the PC in an extremely dilapidated state, riddled with adult content and viruses galore.

It would be nice to go into a cafe that is well managed. Using some management software I suppose you can really improve profits as well, less wastage, better customer experience, easy maintenance and less headaches.

It so hard to find good net cafes these days, people opt to use wifi hotspots a lot more. I suppose that is a lot better in all respects. Maybe the humble net cafe will slowly phase out as more and more people attain notebooks and mobile devices.

What is Broadband Internet?

hmmm. Difficult question it is really. what really is broadband, an always on unlimited type connection. Maybe its anything 256k and above and up to 56k is narrowband. So where does that leave 128k, 144k etc. Is it mid-band?

If we take the first definition, always on, does that mean 128k Adsl or wireless is broadband and dual ISDN is not because you need to dial.FCC states somewhere that a connection over 1Mbps is broadband, less than that and above 56k is midband.

OK, another situation, we mostly consider downstream speeds, what about upstream speeds, is say 256/256 broadband or is 1024/128 broadband. Most Adsl providers give less than 256 upload speed so does that count as broadband?

My situation, 128/128k always on Wimax connection with unlimited downloads and no shaping or throttling. Is that broadband or mid-band? Although download limits don’t count but what about symmetrical speeds?

Wikepedia talks about multiple streams or pieces of info travelling at the same time. Ok, say the line is full duplex (Adsl) but say 64k or 32k speeds is that broadband?

Conclusion: I think some people need to get together and sought out this definition dilemma. So many things specify a need for broadband connections to the internet but they fail to standardise the meaning of the word, in essence people are twisting it to suit themselves which is not right. ISP might say that it is broadband but you can’t play a game on it which requires broadband: disappointed non-geeks are not a good sign of progress.

The Spray Can

Bloggers Blocked Out

Recently after the coup in Fiji took place, the government decided to block certain blogs that were against it. Fair enough, some of the blogs were certainly beyond their limits legally both U.S laws and Fiji law. Some described how a bomb could be made. I obviously do not encourage any such activity. There are, however some people who are needlessly blocked out of some internet services.

One of the ways to gain entry to some services would be to use a proxy that is not located in your country or a better one would be an anonymous web proxy. This will at least bypass some of the restrictions. Another solution is to change DNS providers to a free and public one, an example is OpenDNS. This helps people in certain countries like China to possibly gain entry to sites which are filtered. It could even work for Fiji I guess.

Just another tip for maintaining privacy. Try to spread your emails, IM, blogging email addresses over different providers so that it becomes hard for companies to build a complete profile of you. Make sure you can quickly switch providers in case of increased spam or other problems.

The Spray Can

*Amendment: It’s funny really, in less time it would take me to go to my local supermarket and back (less than an hour), this post makes it onto an anti military website news page. This post was mainly just to show others, not necessarily Fijians about circumvention. Fiji was just used as an example, mainly cause I live there and have seen it happen. So think again about what the article is implying, don’t be mistaken.

Alvarion Networking Gateway/Router NG-4D1W

For all of those like me who got a router from their WISPs. To be specific the Alvarion equipment, then you would not be given a manual for that equipment. So after having searched up the manual from the web, I have decided to upload it here onto my blog. It is a shame how Alvarion does does not make this info available to all people, especially since those ISPs would usually not give you the manual anyway. Hopefully this might make it easier for you to configure your gateway correctly.

The file is on the right hand corner at the bottom, under the box My Stuff.

Enjoy

OpenDNS

I recently tried the free domain name service OpenDNS after my ISP’s DNS servers suffered some problems. Although the ISP DNS servers were O.K at first, they began to show problems like blank pages and occasional service shut-downs. Although at the time I had not read any reviews of the service at the time. Most of the time people don’t have issues with their DNS service but chose to use OpenDNS because of the features that they offer like spell correction, faster load times and anti-phishing filters. In my case I was really looking for a solution to a problem, however, my experience was rather short lived. Since I do not reside in the US which is where most of their servers are located, I ended up getting certain sites in the US edition rather than the localised editions of the sites. Having also read of some reviews and a few comments about the service, I have since then decided to use the openDNS server only as my secondary DNS. The primary remains to be my ISP’s DNS server.

Has anyone else had the same problem? What are your views, post your comments.

later