Been using this Aztech wireless router for sometimes now. As I blog in the past, having to transfer big files via network to and from NAS, it is quite time consuming on the 100Mbps network that I’m in at the moment.

After much thought, I just decided to get this D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Gigabit Router. Come to think of it, I don’t really need it that much, but since I’m running of my media serving on NAS, and downloading torrent on NAS, which faster connection will favor the speed of the transfer, I close one eye and get this.

And here are the content of the box.

And here are the ports….. well, lets remove the sticker first.

That’s better. And here are the ports that this router has.

Next step, is deciding the orientation that I want to put my new router. Should I use it horizontally,

or should I use it vertically?

Finally, I decided to use it vertically. I save a bit of space on my cramp desk. This new router really perfectly compliment my D-Link NAS.

Starting to notice that my latest gadgets start to go to white/greyish color, starting from Xbox 360 to D-Link DNS-323 to Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB external harddisk to Canon Selphy CP780 compact photo printer to Canon PIXMA MP198 printer. This is really unplanned, and a very interesting coincidence.

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There one thing about me is that I can’t stand knowing something that I own doesn’t work properly. I really want to get it fixed, and if can’t, I really want to get replaced.

I kinda lost track of when I bought my current all-in-on Brother DCP-150C printer. Well, it works like charm, with memory card reader, tray paper input and scanner. But just recently, something wrong with the yellow. I guess the nozzle got blocked. I tried so many ways of cleaning it, but to no success. Black, cyan and magenta works ok. So, I will give this to my brother. He’s quite a computer technician himself. Hope that he can fix the problem with the yellow on this printer. And whatever it is whether yellow will work again or not, this printer will be his.

Printer is so cheap nowadays, but not the consumables (i.e. the ink cartridge). I’m quite shock to see when I first bought this printer and using the supplied ink catridge, it only last for a very short of time, then the ink needs replacement.

But thank god there is CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System). This is one of the best thing ever created. This is the CISS that I got for this printer. Using this, you can you a RM15 per bottle ink, and it last really long. I’m a quite have printer user too, printing photos myself, and suprisingly, the ink refill that I bought long time ago still untouched.

So, it looks like that I need to get a new printer then. Touring around at Low Yat plaza today, I found this RM188 Canon PIXMA MP198 printer at All IT Hypermart. Can you imagine, all-in-one printer, with scanner and a good built costs only RM198?

Well, CISS is a must then. I bought the CISS for this printer too, and the shop will assemble it to your printer as well. Sorry, no unboxing process this time as the box has already been ripped at the store for them to take out the printer and install the CISS.

Here is the tank for the CISS, where ink to be refilled when its depleted.

3 new toys in the first month of 2010. Yay!

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My sleep tonight is disturbed with my Penang friends arriving at my home at around 1:30am, but their arrival is something that I’m waiting since earlier. My friend got this from the company dinner. Not using it, he decided to sell this cheap for RM200. Well behold, my new Canon Selphy CP780 Compact Photo Printer. This will be a really good complement to my Canon EOS 40D camera.

The usual unboxing again. Here are the contents of the box.

And this is the printer unit itself. I still can’t do anything tonight. Got to get the specialized photo paper for this printer tomorrow.

It’s still the first month of 2010, and I got 2 new toys already (first one being Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable Drive) I likeee….

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So, how’s your first day at work for 2010? Well, it’s rather a bad start for me. I’m on EL. LOL. Just not feeling well. I guess the sudden temperature change (it’s quite cold at Cameron Highland, and very hot in KL) and the sudden pressure change (my ears still feels the effect) make my system goes haywire. So, I decided to call for an EL this morning. Don’t feel like going to doctor as I will take existing medicine.

Who said that only girls use “shopping” as a theraphy? It can happen to guys too. Well, for me, it’s only one stop that will make me feel like in heaven – Low Yat Plaza. LOL. Since my portable hard disk crashed last Hari Raya Aidilfitri holiday, I yet to get a replacement. So, I’m getting Seagate FreeAgent GO 320GB together with the FreeAgent Go Dock.

Here are the contents of the hard disk box,

and here at the contents of the dock box. Kinda like the pouch that comes with the dock.

Here is the hard disk connected to the dock. Red and white color combination always work for me.

And here is how the hard disk on the dock looks like from the side.

Like I said previously, I like the carrying pouch that came with the dock.

I guess this is the very first new toy for 2010, with a total damage of RM268 ;)

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The newly bought Xbox 360 starts milking money from me. With Xbox 360 connected to Xbox Live, you have a vast options of downloading game trailers, and even game demo, but each download can easily cost you almost 1GB of storage space. The 512MB built in memory is good for storing profiles and game saves, but obviously not enough for such thing as downloading other stuffs from Xbox Live.

Searched lelong.com.my again and found this 120GB hard disk for Xbox 360.

It’s not the official Microsoft product,

but hey, it looks good on my Xbox 360.

With hard disk this big, I can even install the Xbox game to it, and run the game from the hard disk. Man. I love that. No more roaring sound from the spinning disc, and the load time of the game, especially when you transit from scene to scene is very fast.

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Knowing that I have non-utilized 1TB hard disk makes me an uneasy. I better use that for something. Last time, I did mentioned that I’m thinking of getting NAS. Well, I do get one today. And I bought another the same Seagate 1TB harddisk. So here are my new D-Link DNS-323 NAS and 2 Seagate 1TB hard disks.

Here are the contents of the box of D-Link DNS-323 NAS – The enclosure itself, power cables, network cable, documentations and CD-ROM.

Looking at the unit, you will see this big and bright instructions on how to open the front panel.

Well, lets remove the label, and this is how the front panel looks like. Plain simple, with just one on/off button .

And this is the back panel. Power slot, gigabit LAN slot and USB slot. Well, the USB port is not for you to connect your external hard disk, but rather your USB printer as it can also act as printer server. But didn’t I mentions that DNS-323 is running on Linux? There’s a forum here on how to load USB driver into the kernel that enables external disks to be able to be mounted to this USB port.

As stated earlier, it’s quite easy to remove the front panel. No screw driver needed. Upon opening the front panel, you will see 2 hard disk slots.

Here are my 2 1TB hard disks, ready to be slot in.

And again, no screw needed to install the hard disks. I just need to push the hard disk in it clicks,

and walla, both of the hard disks in.

Lets connect it to the router, and lets power it up. My D-Link router has finally died after serving me for 3 years. Temporarily using the Aztech router. Was thinking of investing on a gigabit router in the nearest future.

This is my first time setting up RAID array ever. So I have a little learning curve at the beginning, but everything went really smooth. The hardest part of this exercise is deciding which hard disk configuration to use. The first options is to use RAID 0 configuration, where you’ll see the performance of the drive, and the coolest thing is, you’ll get 2TB of hard disk space.

The other option is to use RAID 1. With this configuration, you’ll only get 1TB of hard disk space, but there’s an added guarantee to the data lose as the data are mirrored on both of the hard disk. In case one of the hard disk fails, you just need to replace the failed hard disk, and the data will be synchronized again across the 2 hard disks.

So which one I choose? It’s so tempted use RAID 0 configuration. And there’s a lot of discussion saying that RAID 1 is not really necessary for home use. But in the course of my life, I’ve experience several daunting moments already with data lost due to crashed hard disk. So I settle down to RAID 1 configuration.

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Since I first join High Definition World, the quest of getting myself equipped with HD peripherals has begun. I’m all set with playing Blu-ray media, and I’m all set with playing downloadable HD media too.

The only area that I haven’t moved to HD is my gaming area. So behold, the third installment of the entry about me getting high definition, and behold, my new Xbox 360.

But why Xbox 360 and not PS3 Slim? Well, if you live in Malaysia, you know why ;) Anyhow, here is my new Xbox 360 out of the box with all other thing inside the box.

I like white colored gadgets and black colored gadgets equally. White colored gadget has its own distinct appearance too.

Going HD, of course it has the HDMI port on the back.

Hhmm.. What a sexy thing to look at. The Xbox 360 unit with the wireless controller.

The only drawback of getting wireless is, you need to power the thing with battery. And with the things that you will use for hours, the battery will drain just too fast. So I’m investing a little in buying rechargeable battery for the wireless controller.

So there you go, my HD experience is complete for now, and will last until I started craving for PS3 Slim, which I think will be soon (it almost bonus time!)

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Below is the current configuration if the HDDs on my PC. Having only 6 SATA ports on the motherboard, this is basically the max HDDs that I can have (the other 2 ports used by DVD-ROM and DVD-Writer). The WDC 320GB is used as system drive, and the other 3 are for storing various files that I have.

But just before I went back for Hari Raya leave last time, my system HDD is having problem. I works OK for an hour, then suddenly the HDD stops spinning, and after rebooting the PC, the Windows installation is corrupted. Then I reformat the HDD, reinstall Windows, but same thing happened.

Oh dear. It seems that the hard disk is unusable anymore. So I decided to make the Seagate 320GB as the system drive (after discarding Western Digital 320GB). But I also need a replacement, so it means it’s another trip to Low Yatt, and I’m getting a new 1TB Seagate SATA2 hard disk. Well, this is my first hard disk with the Tera size ;)

Then I put the hard disk at the removable HDD enclosure,

and slot it in to the HDD bay. I love my chassis for this feature ;)

Then it’s another round of Windows installing again. But the hair pulling situation that arise after that is, the same thing still happened. It’s not the hard disk problem then. After several round of diagnosis, the power cable converter is the culprit. Turn out that the molex pin is bit loose, and it doesn’t supply power to the hard disk. Darn!

I put back the original Western Digital 320GB hard disk, then I pack up my PC again. Wow. It looks really dusty in the photo. Well, the mesh design of the chassis really acts as cat’s fur filter. LOL.

Then what to do with the 1TB Seagate hard disk one? Like a bright bulb hovering my head, I just have another idea. With my portable hard disk crashing event that happened recently (which I lost all of my office email), I really need to have a peace of mind when storing backup of my files. Straight away I’m thinking of getting this D-Link DNS-232 NAS (Network Attached Storage) device (review is here).

I will use the RAID 1 hard disk configuration for data mirroring. But this not going to happened so soon. I guess I have to wait for the bonus time, which is around 3 months away.

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My journey of getting into HD world started here, and as always, more and more things need to be added to your system to make it somewhat complete. Immediately I have the two following additions that I want to make.

Addition 1
Internet is the source of many videos, and I’ve been downloading them a lot on PC, and some of them are really high definition. In the past, I’ve been using my Xbox to stream video files from PC to TV.

And later after that getting abigs Multimedia Player.

But the 2 methods only can output SD (Standard Definition) video. I somehow need to get something that is capable of outputing HD video.

Addition 2
PC and TV are two different world in the past, only until recently. Most modern HDTV now has PC input port at the back. And the term Home Theatre Personal Computer (HTPC) emerges. Imagine while you are watching your favourite movie on your big screen TV, the landlord suddenly calls you of the overdue rental payment. It would be nice just from the comfort of my sofa, I quickly go on to Maybank2u.com for money transfer, right on the TV itself.

This is what I want too. Remember the Power Logic chassis that I ditch away last time since I get a new Cooler Master Chassis?

This is just the perfect time that I will make use of it.

With the above 2 things, that bring me to Low Yatt again, for another round of shopping.

The first thing that I get is WD TV HD Media Player. This thing has received a very good review for your high definition multimedia needs.

This is not actually a hard disk media player, any USB hard disk can be connected to this – as what the marketing tag for this says – Turn your USB drive into an HD media player. Time for unboxing.

These are the contents of the box.

And this is the unit itself. Being a HD multimedia device, the HDMI port is a must. But there are also RCA output jacks in case this needs to be used on older TV.

The remote controller is rather tiny. As using remote controller is the only way that you can control WD TV (there’s not buttons on WD TV itself), I can’t really afford to lose this.

Next, additional HDMI cable is needed, and trust me this thing is not cheap. Well, I tried to get the RM20 one from Carrefour, but it turned out that it doesn’t work on WD TV. I’ve been reading an article on CNET HDTV World that it doesn’t make a difference of using cheap or expensive cable. But how cheap is cheap?

Even though I’m just getting the RM65 one (compared to Philips one that priced RM480, and Monster Cable that is ridiculously priced at RM800), the cable feels quite high quality already, with the mesh wrapping around the cables.

Next is the motherboard for the Power Logic chassis that I have unused from the last time. I have Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB DDR2 RAM lying around somewhere. Since this is for HTPC, and not for gaming rig, I’m just getting a cheap entry level motherboard. Furthermore, this will only be used for internet surfing and movie playing on the HDTV. It doesn’t need to be that high end.

And here are the content of the box.

Being an entry level motherboard, you cannot expect that I will have 7.1 audio jack, digital audio jack and more USB ports.

Even though the motherboard has VGA port on-board, but connecting this to HDTV won’t really give a good visual. Therefore, I get this very cheap, RM125 entry level PCI-e VGA card – Sapphire HD 4350.

And here are the contents of the box.

Even though being quite cheap, but this VGA card is not shy of connectors – VGA, DVI and even HDMI port is there. This would be perfect – connecting it to my HDTV using HDMI cable.

As I get more things to be connected to internet (my Blu-Ray Disc Player is also connectable to the internet for the firmware upgrade and BD-Live feature), really need a switch for this. This 5-port D-Link switch is quite cheap too (RM45)

And here are the content of the box.

Well, it’s going to be a busy weekend again this week, which I’m really looking forward to ;)

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Let’s continue from where I left off last night. It’s time to hook up everything to the receiver. First this is the Blu-ray disc player.

The Blu-ray disc player’s box ripped open.

And here are the content of the box.

I didn’t actually do any photo taking for the unboxing of the LCD TV. That this is very heavy, and very delicate, that I need to attach to the stand quickly. Don’t really have a chance to take any photos in between.

However, it’s great that I have 2 models tonight that showcasing my new TV and Blu-ray Disc Player.

So everything now is hooked up together, and let’s test the TV. Wow. The TV looks really big in my living room. It didn’t look that big when I saw it in the showroom before, I guess when it’s sitting around other big size LCD TV, the size of it looks normal.

Anyway, it’s not the end yet. I still have to tidy up the house. Hoping to have another entry me enjoying the high definition media on this TV. Can’t really wait to slot in the Surf Up Blue-ray movie in.

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