At the last Mullies meeting we discussed what IPv6 is and the fact that soon all internet connected devices will need to use IPv6 to access the net.
The article below from WIndows Secrets is a good introduction to IPv6 and what using it means for most of us.
Enjoy

Caution: Bumps in the road to IPv6

By Woody Leonhard

Although the consequences aren’t as dire as it sounds, the Internet ran out of IP addresses (roughly analogous to telephone numbers) last month.

While the Web won’t come crashing down anytime soon, you’re going to be affected by the new numbering scheme — and some details may catch you unawares.

Last October, Fred Langa talked in his LangaList Plus column about the changes under way. Simply put, the Internet has run out of IP addresses under the old IPv4 scheme.

This is no namby-pamby upgrade. The current 32-bit IPv4 scheme can handle just under 4.3 billion different Internet addresses. And we’ve used them up. (That represents an astounding number of networked devices potentially in use.) The new, 128-bit, IPv6 numbering method can accommodate 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. It’s, ahem, unlikely that we’ll need that many addresses anytime soon.

But IPv6 incorporates much more than added addresses. There’s a complex scheme of layering, protocols, security, and communication enhancements buried in the standard. For the most part, you won’t have to worry about the details. But there are a few areas where you can help — and where you can be taken in. Caveat surfor! (Web-surfer, beware!)

Moving to a new format for IP addresses

An IP address identifies a specific piece of hardware on a network — one device, one unique IP address. And the Internet has grown into a mighty big network — with far more devices attached to it than anyone could have imagined back in 1977, when IPv4 was invented.

IPv4 addresses are expressed in four groups of numbers between 0 and 255. For example, 74.208.121.252 or 192.168.1.0. No doubt you’ve struggled with them at some point.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns IPv4 addresses in blocks of 16 million addresses to each of five Regional Internet Registries. There are RIRs for Africa, the U.S. and Canada, Australasia, Latin America, and Europe/Middle East/Central Asia. Each RIR in turn assigns blocks of addresses to Internet Service Providers and other organizations. On Feb. 1, IANA gave out the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to its five RIRs.

That does not mean we’re facing an imminent crisis. It’ll take years for all RIRs to allocate all numbers, and there are tricks that can shuffle numbers around (prompting worries of a possible black market in IP addresses). But the writing’s clearly on the wall — we’re running out of the Internet’s phone numbers.

(IP addresses should not be confused with MAC addresses. IPs are issued to networked devices by the Internet service provider. In most home networks, the IP address is dynamic — it can change when you connect to an ISP. Mac addresses are assigned by the device manufacturer and are essentially a unique, fixed identifier for the device’s network interface — and thus for the device.)

To handle the vast number of computers and other devices now connecting to the Internet, the IANA and ISPs are in the process of rolling out IPv6. The new IPv6 addresses appear as a group of eight numbers, each with four hexadecimal digits, such as:

2001:cdba:9abc:5678:ffff:ffff:face:b00c

Clearly, we aren’t going to wake up one morning to find the Internet working with IPv6. Instead, there will be a period of years — probably many years — where IPv4 and IPv6 need to peacefully coexist.

And that’s where the so-called dual stack comes into play.

Testing for dual-stack compatibility

Running IPv6 on Windows is a piece of cake: IPv6 has been built into Windows since XP Service Pack 2. If you are using HomeGroup on Windows 7, you already have IPv6 up and working between your homegrouped PCs. Similarly, all modern versions of Linux and Mac OS speak IPv6, as do most smartphone operating systems.

The problem isn’t on your desktop, laptop, or phone. The problem lies in all of the gear between you and your destination. You may or may not be able to get through on an IPv6 connection because your router or your ISP’s equipment can’t handle it. That’s why, for the foreseeable future, most major websites will be running dual stacks, which allow you to get into the site on either an IPv4 or IPv6 connection.

If you’re running only IPv4, you’ll be just fine for the foreseeable future; your equipment speaks IPv4, and the Internet location you’re connected to still speaks IPv4 (and IPv6 with a dual stack).

A problem arises, though, if your router or your ISP’s equipment thinks it can handle IPv6 and really can’t. Your PC tries to connect via IPv6 but something gets lost in the communication. You might experience delays of a minute or more while your PC battles with the site’s IPv6 stack, can’t get through because of intermediary problems, gives up after a while, and finally falls back to IPv4.

For that reason, the international Internet Society (ISOC) is throwing a World IPv6 Day on June 8 — 24 hours for website owners, ISPs, and network users (that’s us) to take an IPv6 test flight. ISOC has arranged for Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and a hundred other sites to turn on their IPv6 stacks. Two of the biggest Internet plumbing organizations, Akamai and Limelight Networks, will also enable IPv6 on that day. The idea is to test all the intermediaries — ISPs and other network operators, plus router hardware manufacturers — to see which of them will fall over when dual stacks become commonplace.

On a Facebook blog, Donn Lee put it this way:

“Testing IPv6 is important because recent studies indicate about 0.05% of Internet users (1 in 2,000) can’t reliably connect to websites that enable both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (known as “dual-stacked” websites). This has resulted in a classic chicken-and-egg puzzle right now: websites don’t want to enable IPv6 because a small number of their users may have trouble connecting.”

As June 8 rolls around, you might want to let your friends and colleagues know that they’re going to be part of a huge test. Have them go to one of the test sites and see whether the connection goes through. If it fails, have them complain — loudly — to their Internet Service Provider.

You don’t have to wait for June 8, though. ISOC has a website set up to perform a one-off test of your current configuration. Go there now, and you’ll receive a report like the one in Figure 1.

Figure 1. ISOC’s test page tells you in advance whether you’re going to have trouble on June 8.

Make sure you buy IPv6-capable routers

Incredibly, some router manufacturers are peddling goods that aren’t yet IPv6-compatible. If your ISP provided the router you’re using now, you don’t need to worry about it — sooner or later, they’ll have to ensure it runs IPv6 and the swap-out shouldn’t cost you anything. (Not directly, anyway.)

But if you’re buying your own router, be very aware of the fact that most consumer routers don’t run IPv6. Julie Bort at InfoWorld reported that, as of a month ago, none of Cisco’s consumer Linksys routers runs IPv6. For a follow-up story, Cisco stated that “Linksys routers being launched this spring will have IPv6 support” and that the “Linksys E4200 router we launched in January will have an [IPv6] firmware upgrade planned for April.” But there’s still no word about which, if any, of the zillions of legacy Linksys routers will run IPv6.

If you’re thinking about buying a router and want to make sure it’ll run IPv6, you can look on the box to see whether it’s certified by the IPv6 Forum. If you want the full details, though, check whether the router is listed on the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Broadband CPE analysis site. Bet you’ll be a little bit surprised — and not pleasantly.

Hi all

At last week’s Mullies meeting we discussed the new range of Intel processors – specifically the i3, i5 & i7 CPU’s

This discussion then flowed on to the merits of the Laptop which will be available from Aldi this week

Here is an article at PC Authority I read discussing the merits of the i3 processors. It seems that the benefit of these new CPU’s is not that they are faster but that they may be more power efficient especially as the graphics processing is built into the CPU chip. So one chip performs both functions rather than 2 separate ones which reflects well on battery life in portable devices.

You can see a review at PC Authority for the Sony Vaio EB series laptops which is interesting in light of the above. The Sony’s are good performing machines but the battery life isn’t great – but they are using a separate GPU.

When we compare the Medion laptop available at Aldi this week you can see it has the same i3 CPU but is using the Intel graphics and not a separate GPU. Depending on all other factors this could mean better battery life than the Sony. In fact given that the Medion has an 8-cell battery I would expect battery life would be quite good. With a decent size screen of average resolution, a large 500GB harddrive and 4gb of ram the machine seems quite reasonable for average use. Windows® 7 Home Premium 32 bit comes preinstalled  & 64 bit can be installed instead from Recovery DVD included. The only downside I can see is that there is little software of value (which is typical) and that the machine is probably not as attractive as others available (at higher cost). There’s a review of the actual laptop available here at PCworld.

So if you are in the market for a laptop this would seem to be very good value at only $799. Plus of course Aldi offer a 60 day simple return policy so you can buy the machine and try it for 2 months with no risk. I suggest you line up early if you want to get one – and make sure to bring it in to give us all a look

Hi Matt

Can you help me with "grounding" I wish to add RAM to my computer but whilst reading up noticed numerous references to "grounding" I don’t want to stuff it up, what's the easy way to eliminate the chance of a spike? Cheers Brian   

 

Hi Brian – good question! Whenever we stick our hands (or heads) inside a computer case we should be very cautious about the possibility of zapping the components with a static electricity discharge. Static electricity can cause quite a lot of damage to sensitive parts, such as ram, inside your computer.

Professional repair shops probably have specialised equipment for grounding themselves and the simplest of these is an ‘earthing strap’ which is basically a little wrist strap you put on your wrist and attach to the computer case. This basically levels out the static charge between you and the components so you don’t zap them. Really professional operations might have grounding mats and all sorts of other devices including temperature and dust controlled environments.

I have been fiddling with PC bits for years. I have never used a strap or other device and to my knowledge I have never stuffed anything. Just be aware of course that once you open your computer case you do need to be cautious. No only could you damage the components but there could be residual current and you could injure yourself. I have scratched and cut myself on sharp corners in there and your blood will do nothing to lubricate the performance of your PC!

The only precautions I ever take is to have clean hands and to touch the case and power supply before touching any other parts like the ram or motherboard. Unless you have been running on the carpet and rubbing a balloon on your tummy this should discharge any static electricity difference between you and the PC.

Below I have linked a couple of articles that may give you some more information on the topic. The first link is the Google search I did to find the other sites.

Of course you know that upgrading your ram will probably be like getting a whole new computer. Win XP struggles with less than 512mb of ram but will really fly with 1G or more. Vista needs at least 2Gb but that's progress for you! Let us know how you go Brian

Google Search

What is the best way to ground myself to discharge static electricity?

Avoid Static Damage to Your PC

How To Upgrade Your RAM

How to Add Memory Modules To Your Computer To Boost Speed

Have you ever lost a user manual or instructions for an item? Of course you have – I know I have!

It could be a TV or a DVD player, a food processor, an air conditioner or some other complicated piece of equipment. Or maybe you bought it second hand and the booklet didn’t come with it. And the frustration mounts!

There are a number of places on the web you can look for a copy of the user manual. An educated Google search can often turn one up and of course try the manufacturers own site too. But there are also some places on the net that accumulate the manuals for you and one of these is SafeManuals.com. Apparently they have over 800,000 guides saved and growing.

I have included their search function in this post – click the buttons below and give it a try. You might just find something you are missing!

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://mesnotices.fr/partners/partners.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">SafeManuals("eng","","multi","pop","0x000033","0x000099","0x000000","0xFFFFFF","","#FFFFFF");</script>

As usual it's "buyer beware" on eBay. Hey Ross - have you checked out the full capacity of that 32GB drive you have? :)

China is a genius factory, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. The latest tech gimmick to flood the market are some naughty USB keys containing a hacked controller and only half as much physical flash memory as they claim.
A lot of these cheap keys find their way to Ebay, advertised with a large capacity – usually between 1 and 8GB. When you plug it in, your OS will report the full capacity, however half of that doesn’t exist. Filling the key more than halfway writes to its imaginary memory and throws that data into a black hole. During normal use, the hack is a bugger to detect and will no doubt turn your day into a bed-wetting nightmare when crucial files are lost in the void.
While a similar trick has been around before, where 16MB was being exaggerated to multiple gigabytes, the problem this time is quantity: hundreds of these things get sold a day to Australians alone. eBay is so saturated with these things and you have to search hard to find the genuine article.

The hack works by tricking the controller into believing it has a larger memory chip attached than it actually does. If you open up a key, you will find two main chips soldered on: the flash memory (the large rectangular IC) and the controller (the smaller square IC). This exploit seems to be isolated to keys with an iCreate controller. However, without disassembling the key, there is no way to know what you will get. Pictured is a dicey iCreatei5127-lg based stick, but there may be others out there.

For now there are some simple ways to test if you‘ve been duped. The quick way is to get your hands on a copy of HD-Tach (the trial version is fine), and run a benchmark on your key. If there is a sudden spike or dip , like the one in the image below, you might have purchased from wallet-rape central. If it stays flat you’re probably in the clear

The more thorough test involves filling your key and seeing if anything falls into the void. We suggest taking as many mp3s or similar as you can fit on the key and splitting them up into a few folders (8 is a good number; try and have folders of equal size). Copy them all to the key and unplug when done. At least a minute after unplugging the key, insert it into a different computer and test a few files from each of your folders. On a bad key, about half of these will be corrupted.
If you’re one of the poor sods who have one of these dodgy drives, all is not lost. First you should try and raise a dispute through the appropriate channels. Ebay in particular has facilities for this.
If you’re stuck with it, however, you can cut your losses and reformat it to the correct size. iCreate provide a tool called iFormat. We had a little trouble with this version, but there is an older (more stable) version available, which will correctly detect how much flash you have and repartition. As your drive shrinks, the pangs of buyers’ remorse may kick in, however the danger of losing files is now gone.

If you’re about to buy flash storage from Ebay, be very careful – and remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The example is just one that we’ve noticed -- there are probably many others out there. If you are key hunting on Ebay, remember to use everything at your disposal. There are some good fraud-detection guides out there, and it always helps to double check seller feedback and use PayPal. Sudden up-crops of negative or neutral feedback in the last month are big warning signs. Spend the time to find out what those bad ones were about. Make sure you do your research and don’t buy impulsively if you’re in a hurry or you’re looking at a sale that ends soon – just like Dell specials, there will be another similar sale almost immediately afterwards. Good Huntin’.

This article can be seen at http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=20&CIID=105823

Hi

Lynette has a problem with a Vista PC

My daughter has a new computer with Vista on it. She has problems getting things like digital cameras that will work on Vista do you have any suggestions, she is already having trouble getting a refund for one camera, and the second one needs some additional stuff to go with it, should all this be happening? She asks if it works with Vista at time of purchase and the answer is always yes, but unfortunately it doesn’t work!
Many thanks, Lynette

Hi Lynette & Sorry for the slow reply
Did your daughter buy the PC with Vista installed or did she install it after?
Is it new from a big manufacturer or a 'white box' built in a local shop or by herself or a friend?

If it came with Vista installed from a big manufacturer then it should be set up properly
I installed Vista on my laptop (it had XP before) and it took a while to get all the drivers and things set up correctly
The wrong driver etc would stop some USB items from working properly when plugged in inc cameras

I have 2 quick thoughts that may help:

1. She may have some tech support or warranty that came with the PC
   Has she tried calling them
   Ditto tech support from the Camera company
2. Try plugging the USB cable from the camera into different ports
   The ones on the back of the machine built onto the motherboard (near the keyboard port) are usually the most responsive.
   In theory all ports should be the same but in practice often the front or extra usb ports on the back don't work properly or run at full speed
3. Maybe the software that comes with the camera is not Vista compatible
   Try just plugging the camera into the PC without loading the software CD first (or uninstall the software, reboot and try)
   I find that the software that comes with a lot of cameras and cheap printers has loads of stuff on there you don't want
   Often it is set to auto load at start up and sets itself as default - neither of which you may want
   Win XP and Vista should recognise any camera without other proprietary software and offer to copy the pics to the PC

If the above doesn't help can you get her to give us a few more details:
PC Details including when and where purchased and components (if she knows them) particularly the motherboard type
The Version of Vista and type of camera etc

If anyone has experienced similar problems with a camera please offer Lynette and her daughter some more suggestions
Thanks everyone

We have had some great feedback on this problem
Original post is down the page or click here

Here's Wendy's reply:

Thanks for all your help.
The CD Drive does light up but does not spin. I did check all the cables and they seem to be firmly in their places.
Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager, the CD Drive is there but has an alert symbol beside it!
When booting up it goes too fast to access the screen to see the list of drives.
Everything else seems to be OK.

Here's the feedback we have had from some other members:

1. Howdy from the US and a friends of Ross's
   Sometimes the E drive is replaced on the list of drives by a portable device such as a removable USB or a camera or something else. All that may be required is re-mapping the E to the CD drive.
   Just a thought. Peace, Jef
2. Hi, I had a similar problem. CD/DVD drives just died. They didn't even show in 'My Computer'. I did a 'System Restore' and that fixed the problem. Lou Gardner

Ok - so Lou has suggested a system restore. This is likely to fix the problem if it originates from Windows, e.g. a corrupt driver or similar. If you have a recent restore point set (in Win XP or ME) then try rolling back to the earlier restore point and see if it helps.

If not then I suspect we have a drive that has died. One way to test it would be to take the drive out of your PC and plug it into someone else's. If it doesn't work there then it is likely gone to heaven.

Like anything electronic CD drives are susceptible to power surge and the like. And anything with moving parts can break or wear out. CD burners are pretty cheap these days and if you took it to a PC repair place they wouldn't even look at it they would just give you a new one.

So Wendy - try the system restore and if that doesn't work send me an email and I will give you a replacement drive to try in it's place.

Thanks everyone for the advice on this one