Computer and Technology News Blog

Hello everybody, now a days people use router for wifi connections, sharing more than 2 computers. Every router comes with its firmware. But what is firmware ?

In electronics and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices.

People use different firmwares to make router more powerful. One of the famous firmware is DD-WRT.

DD-WRT is a Linux based alternative OpenSource firmware suitable for a great variety of WLAN routers and embedded systems. The main emphasis lies on providing the easiest possible handling while at the same time supporting a great number of functionalities within the framework of the respective hardware platform used.

DD-WRT is a Linux-based firmware for several wireless routers, most notably the Linksys WRT54G (including the WRT54GL and WRT54GS). Like other similar projects, DD-WRT is considered a third-party firmware solution designed to replace the firmware that ships pre-installed on many commercial routers. This is done for a variety of reasons; including but not limited to the addition of features which are not typically included in a manufacturer’s router firmware.

DD-WRT includes such features as support for the Kai network, daemon-based services, IPv6, Wireless Distribution System, RADIUS, advanced quality of service, radio output power control, overclocking capability, and software support for a Secure Digital Card hardware modification.

Watch the following video before installing DD-WRT on your Router

Doesn’t sound very business like does it? On the other hand its not exactly designed to be purely for business either. The ‘Play Pad’ will be smaller than Apples Ipad at approx 7 inches square as opposed to 9 inches square. Its also lighter than the Ipad. Rear and front facing cameras…ooo gotta like that, will be neat to be able to video talk to your clients and I hear that there won’t be any separate data plan required, if you have a blackberry you’ll have wireless access via tether on the ‘Play Pad’.  Not sure how correct that is, but if that’s correct its a winner. Power comes in the form of a 1GB of Ram and it looks like it will be able to multi task apps…neat! So I am an Apple I phone user and have never been overly impressed with the reliability of the Iphone and also the speed at which the battery drains. This is the kind of development that could make me reconsider. Not sure what any of this has to do with the Barrie Real Estate market, however, I can tell you that Real Estate is becoming more on more online, viral and at some stage in the near future the MLS system as a stand alone device won’t be the centre of the universe.

I suspect that being able o demonstrate to your client what the inside of a home looks like on spec will become paramount to a standard service. This is the kind of device that would make this a reality and hence in-demand from every serious Realtor out there. I could be wrong but I feel this is going to be a hit!

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/

Zacate is AMD’s 18W APU aimed at the mainstream notebook market (~$500 notebooks). The APU features a pair of Bobcat cores and a Cedar-class AMD DX11 GPU. Spending some time with the physical Zacate package, it seems to have a single 64-bit DDR3 memory interface ala Atom. Unlike Atom however, both the Bobcat cores and the DX11 GPU should be relatively high performance.

Earlier this week, AMD showed us the first public demonstration of Zacate. In its suite were two systems: a Zacate test platform and a Core i5-M 520 notebook from a major OEM. Both systems were configured with 4GB of memory and were running the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Premium.

The first demo we saw on Monday was the system running City of Heroes. In CoH Zacate managed to reach frame rates around 2x of what we saw on the Core i5-M 520. AMD also ran through a number of IE9 performance tests including the Psychadelic HTML5 benchmark and the Amazon Shelf test. In both of those tests, the Zacate platform was significantly faster than the Core i5-M 520. And it was those IE9 tests that seemed suspect.

I didn’t think much of it at first, but Zacate managed a ~10x performance advantage in the IE9 Psychadelic benchmark. While Zacate should have a higher performance GPU, it shouldn’t be that much faster. Something was amiss.

I borrowed a Core i5 notebook from Intel (we are at IDF after all) and ran the same tests on it. The performance was much better than what I saw in AMD’s suite. I went back to AMD to find out exactly what was going on.

A very smart man once told me that absolute performance doesn’t matter, it’s performance at a given price point that makes a product successful. While AMD hasn’t held the absolute performance crown for several years now, that doesn’t mean the company’s products haven’t been successful.

During the days of the original Phenom, AMD started the trend of offering more cores than Intel at a given price point. Intel had the Core 2 Duo, AMD responded with the triple core Phenom X3. As AMD’s products got more competitive, the more-for-less approach didn’t change. Today AMD will sell you three or four cores for the price of two from Intel.

In some situations, this works to AMD’s benefit. The Athlon II X3 and X4 deliver better performance in highly threaded applications than the Intel alternatives. While Intel has better performance per clock, you can’t argue with more cores/threads for applications that can use them.