Ooh, the Shiny!
May. 10th, 2005 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
willow_redI got a rather nice tax refund this year (thank you, mortgage!), and for once, I decided to blow it all on me. Translation: I got very shiny computer hardware. I've been needing to upgrade a number of things for a while now, so this made a good excuse.
First, I replaced the crappy, broken-ass cable modem Comcast (then AT&T) gave me almost three years ago and has refused to replace ever since. This is the new one. I decided on a wireless modem on the off-chance that work ever gets me a laptop, or more likely, that a friend might come over with a laptop and want internet access. However, since I know zilch about securing wireless access, I simply removed the antennas. Computer types reading this: will that do the trick until I learn how to do it a less brute-force way? Installation went quite well, only requiring a short phone call to Comcast, and I only had to pry the antenna out of Akito's mouth once.
Second, the monitor. This was the real expenditure. I've been trying to control my feelings of buyer's remorse...until I took it out of the box. this is the one I bought. 24" cinema screen LCD, baby! Only problem so far is that at the resolution it's made for (1900 x 1200), everything is a little stretched out sideways, and doesn't fit on the screen. Hmm, maybe I should try, I dunno, the *actual drivers* that came with the monitor. Probably do that tomorrow.
The other two items I bought were a DVD burner and a ridiculously large hard drive to backup/replace what I've got now. My CD burner is dead, DVD-ROM is dying, and my hard drive was filled a few months after I discovered bittorrent ;).
Okay, back to looking at pretty things on my new monitor!
First, I replaced the crappy, broken-ass cable modem Comcast (then AT&T) gave me almost three years ago and has refused to replace ever since. This is the new one. I decided on a wireless modem on the off-chance that work ever gets me a laptop, or more likely, that a friend might come over with a laptop and want internet access. However, since I know zilch about securing wireless access, I simply removed the antennas. Computer types reading this: will that do the trick until I learn how to do it a less brute-force way? Installation went quite well, only requiring a short phone call to Comcast, and I only had to pry the antenna out of Akito's mouth once.
Second, the monitor. This was the real expenditure. I've been trying to control my feelings of buyer's remorse...until I took it out of the box. this is the one I bought. 24" cinema screen LCD, baby! Only problem so far is that at the resolution it's made for (1900 x 1200), everything is a little stretched out sideways, and doesn't fit on the screen. Hmm, maybe I should try, I dunno, the *actual drivers* that came with the monitor. Probably do that tomorrow.
The other two items I bought were a DVD burner and a ridiculously large hard drive to backup/replace what I've got now. My CD burner is dead, DVD-ROM is dying, and my hard drive was filled a few months after I discovered bittorrent ;).
Okay, back to looking at pretty things on my new monitor!
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 04:34 am (UTC)(However, I find it extremely likely that the engineers accounted for that, considering the target audience).
The Linksys has a really simple web interface, from which you can just say to turn wireless access "off", that's best for now if you don't want any of it in use. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 02:09 pm (UTC)Thanks for the advice. I'll install the interface and poke around with it later today.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 05:39 pm (UTC)