Sierra Wireless Overdrive 3G/4G Performance
March 6th, 2010
A couple of days ago, I ordered a Sierra Wireless Overdrive 3G/4G wireless hotspot from Sprint. I’ve only had the chance to use it a couple of times so I’m withholding judgement on performance until I’ve tried to use it in real world situations. I live in Raleigh, NC which is one of Sprint’s 4G markets, so I should get the excellent 4G speeds advertised. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype. I’ll continue to post Speedtest.net results as I accumulate them from geographically diverse locations.
4G Speedtest Results for Apex, NC
One thing I noticed as I’ve been testing the device is that Sprint’s 4G network connects to the public Internet at different locations nearly every time it establishes a 4G connection. So in the Speedtest above, the closest test server was located in Tampa, FL. It’s been different every time I’ve used 4G, even from the same location (my home, for example).
Another thing to note: it takes a long time for the Overdrive to start up and make a 4G connection. I used to use my iPhone in tethering mode for Internet access on business trips. Obviously, establishing an Internet connection with my MacBook Pro was much faster because the iPhone had already gone through it’s startup sequence and acquired a 3G connection. So, it’ll take a little getting used to the delay in starting up the Overdrive and actually being able to connect to the Internet.
Fixing SNMP in Mac OS X Server 10.5.7
September 10th, 2009
I monitor my network with PRTG Network Monitor. After recently upgrading our Xserve from 10.5.4 to 10.5.7 (server), its status changed in PRTG to “in alarm” and was unable to connect via SNMP to collect any data. It turns out that the default configuration of the SNMP agent changed with the 10.5.7 upgrade, tightening access restrictions for the community string “public”. The fix is fairly simple. Edit line 97 of /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf and restart the SNMP daemon to reload the config file. Continue reading this entry »
In-Depth Review of Snow Leopard
September 3rd, 2009
John Siracusa has posted an exhaustive review of Apple’s latest OS release, Snow Leopard. Great read if you really want to learn why you need to upgrade.
HM&P Launches Redesigned NutriDense.com
August 7th, 2009
Howard, Merrell & Partners recently launched the redesigned NutriDense.com. See before and after images after the jump. Continue reading this entry »
Twitter Fail
August 6th, 2009
Twitter experienced complete failure today due to a massive DDoS attack. It appears to be under attack again now as it is completely unresponsive. Kinda scary to think that web services are that vulnerable. As more and more of our lives move to the digital space (communication, banking, etc) we are becoming increasingly vulnerable and affected when outages like this occur. And they will continue to occur.
Dixieisthebest.com Goes Live!
May 18th, 2009
The supporting site for the “Dixie Is The Best” campaign went live today.
Latest Videos for Dixie
May 1st, 2009
More good work from HM&P:
Go to the Dixie Products YouTube channel to see all three videos.
WWDC Sold Out!
April 28th, 2009
For the second time in history (and second year in a row), Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference has sold out. This seems to support my theory that WWDC is “the” Mac conference – eclipsing the once-mighty MacWorld Expo.
Honda Insight – The Making of “Let it Shine”
April 27th, 2009
Very cool video showing how the Honda “Let It Shine” spot was made.
Apple Reports $1.21 Billion Profit for Q2 2009
April 22nd, 2009
“We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, in announcing the company’s March quarter financial results. In its fiscal 2009 second quarter, Apple posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Apple shipped 2.22 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, a unit decline of 3 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 11.01 million Pods during the quarter, representing 3 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 3.79 million, up 123 percent from the year-ago-quarter.
