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Donald S.

Donald S.

Joined on 12/15/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review

Impressive

Connectland CL-MOU23008 5 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB 2.4 GHz Wireless Optical Mouse
Connectland CL-MOU23008 5 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB 2.4 GHz Wireless Optical Mouse

Pros: Works great, crisp buttons & wheel, nice feel. Good range, works clear across the room. A real value.

Cons: In use, none what so ever.

Overall Review: Don't know if this is the fault of the mouse or Asus laptop? But while the M$ driver allows unchecking "Allow this device to wake the computer", it still will if moved? A USB connected drive will also re-power if unplugged and re-plugged while the machine is "sleeping". The easy work-a-round is to turn off the mouse with it's switch (and save batteries) before closing the lid and putting the thing to sleep. When turning back on, the USB ports power up immediately, then switch on the mouse and it's instantly ready to log on. At 1600 DPI it's almost to frisky! But by choosing 800 DPI, and slowing the mouse slightly in the M$ driver, behavior becomes practically identical to the Logitech MX400 it replaced. Some may even like this Hyper Mode!? And I haven't missed the tilt wheel yet. I'm thinking about buying some more of these for a couple of desktops.

Most Critical Review

Update to USB file system problem

NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wi-Fi Router, Gigabit Router, Open Source Support, Circle with Smart Parental Controls, Compatible with Amazon Alexa (R7000)
NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wi-Fi Router, Gigabit Router, Open Source Support, Circle with Smart Parental Controls, Compatible with Amazon Alexa (R7000)

Pros: After posting this below... "Netgear has finally been able to reproduce this problem and is working on a fix, no ETA"!

Cons: That only took 2 months and some of the dumbest exchanges I've ever had... but maybe they'll actually fix it? I had actually given up on them prior to this communication.

The CATCH

APC Back-UPS BGE90M 125 VA 75 Watts 3 Outlets 2-USB Charging Ports UPS
APC Back-UPS BGE90M 125 VA 75 Watts 3 Outlets 2-USB Charging Ports UPS

Pros: Nice little unit that does what it's supposed to.

Cons: The check out sheet included in the literature says the unit(s, I bought 2) is "4" years old. I.E. the 3-5 year "up to 5 years of standby service" battery included. A supposedly fresh replacement battery costs more than this UPS. Beware! I should have known!

Undocumented Possibly Fatal Feature

ORICO 2588S3 Tool Free 2.5-Inch SATA to USB3.0 External Hard Drive Disk Enclosure, Optimized for SSD, Support UASP Transfer Protocol - Black
ORICO 2588S3 Tool Free 2.5-Inch SATA to USB3.0 External Hard Drive Disk Enclosure, Optimized for SSD, Support UASP Transfer Protocol - Black

Pros: Actually have a 2588US3-SV (Silver). Reviewing here for better coverage as this "feature" surely applies to 2588US3's regardless of color. Also have an older 2595US3-BK which has the same "feature". Unit(s) work fine as a USB 3.0 to SATA Drive Enclosure with the following exception.

Cons: The enclosures "go to sleep" after approximately 5 minutes. For one containing a mechanical HD connected to the router as NAS, this is fine. The file system there deals with it OK and wakes it up in a few seconds. Actually saving spin time on the drive which is powered 24/7. But another containing a SSD serving as backup for a Windows 8.1 Ultrabook is a disaster. Unless the drive is written to every 5 minutes to keep it awake (not best for SSD) Windows 8.1 can loose it periodically creating serious problems. Not to mention that "spinning down" a SSD drive looses meaning! I've written [email protected] with no response as yet.

Waste of time & money so far

Super Power Supply® 3 x 9dBi 2.4GHz 5GHz Dual Band WiFi RP-SMA Antenna for Routers Asus RT-AC66U RT-N66U RT-N16 RT-AC68R RT-AC68U R700 Linksys EA6900 Netgear Nighthawk R7000 TP-Link
Super Power Supply® 3 x 9dBi 2.4GHz 5GHz Dual Band WiFi RP-SMA Antenna for Routers Asus RT-AC66U RT-N66U RT-N16 RT-AC68R RT-AC68U R700 Linksys EA6900 Netgear Nighthawk R7000 TP-Link

Pros: Nothing I can find.

Cons: Length is a major pain in both my locations.

Overall Review: Bought 2 sets for a pair of Netgear R7000's, main wireless router/access point and media bridge. During configuration in the same room the bridge originally reported 1,100+Mb/s link rate. In the working locations; about 40ft distance, up ½ a floor, through 3 walls, one behind kitchen cabinets it reports 702Mb/s max. I was trying to see if this could be improved any (as if it was bad to begin with)! If anything it was worse with the aftermarket antennas. And a Chromebook & tablet reported identical signal strengths back to the wireless router. With considerable antenna manipulation (tilting the main disk patterns at each other) I did get it back to same as stock antennas only, and that was very touchy. Just not worth the effort & additional cost. It "seems" the replacements should help but they don't and I'm out of ideas? DES

Overall bad experience

ASUS AC1900 Wi-Fi Dual-band 3x3 Gigabit Wireless Router with AiProtection Network Security Powered by Trend Micro, AiMesh Whole Home Wi-Fi System Compatible (RT-AC68U)
ASUS AC1900 Wi-Fi Dual-band 3x3 Gigabit Wireless Router with AiProtection Network Security Powered by Trend Micro, AiMesh Whole Home Wi-Fi System Compatible (RT-AC68U)

Pros: (Copied this over from the RT-AC68R page as these are physically identical and it will get more exposure here). Seemed to be a decent router. But I bought a pair of these specifically to establish a Media Bridge. Which did eventually work. But other problems I'm not willing to wait out the solutions of forced abandonment.

Cons: The manual directions leave out the most critical thing. It took 2 days to discover the LAN IP of the bridge device must be manually changed to something other than default and the DHCP server disabled on the bridge device. Even putting the device in Bridge mode in Administration (which isn't mentioned in the manual's Bridging directions) and connecting to the Wireless Router leaves the bridge on the same LAN IP. After finally establishing the bridge, neither unit would recognize my Orinco 2595US3 enclosure connected to the USB 3.0 port, but would connected to the USB 2.0 port? Even my lowly Chromebook has no problems with this enclosure. And neither the NAS or my XP computer were presented in Network Discovery. Windows 7 shares could be manually added in XP's Network Places but Windows 7 couldn't find the XP shares or the NAS?

Overall Review: The forced initial setup won't accept manually entered DNS Server IP's. You must allow it to go Auto to get by that and then manually change the WAN settings after the fact. It's just generally dumb! After many trial and error attempts I finally determined the way to do it was to setup the bridge device first without the wireless router on to prevent it entangling with the router. Then setup the wireless router with the bridge device off. Then turning the bridge back on, if you've got it all right it will work! For how long I didn't bother to find out. The apparent abandonment of Windows XP in network discovery was enough to look elsewhere.