We finally bought a nifty new iPad 2, just in time for the iPad 3 to come out. No worries, I don't use the camera for much that is going to matter between 720p and 1080p, although I do get a little bummed that my phone is faster than my iPad. While I'm really liking the iPad overall (when I thought I wouldn't), I must say that I'm also finding little annoyances along the way. One such annoyance is the inability to play flash video on the iPad. In this article I'm going to highlight two ways to reliably watch internet flash video on your iPad.

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ecobee has recently announced a brand new model of the incredibly feature-rich ecobee Smart Thermostat called the ecobee Si at the AHR Expo in Chicago. Since it has been announced I find myself being constantly asked what features this new product would offer and how would it compare to the ecobee Smart Thermostat that is being sold today. First and foremost, I do not work for ecobee and I do not speak for them. I just happen to work for a company ( Eden Energy Equipment ) that has been selling them for some time and have direct contact with ecobee on their existing products and products in development.

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It seems like I've spent a little more time lately than I would like recovering failed hard drives for people. How I do it is a topic for another complete article, but there's also a common thread and question involved with these recoveries. The common thread is no files are backed up, usually people had a USB drive, but never took it out or hadn't backed up to it for quite some time. Even worse was using the USB hard drive as their main datastore. The question I always hear after saving the irreplaceable pictures and data is, "How can I keep this from happening again?" In this article I want to explore a few options of building a solid home network on the cheap. The avenues to get it done can vary, but the solution to the data loss problem is common, back up to the network and have it be automatic, or it will never happen.

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One of the perks of my day job is a nifty new Smart phone every year. This year I got to replace my "aging" HTC EVO 4G with the shiny new Samsung Galaxy S™ II, Epic™ 4G Touch SPH-D710 (now that is a mouthful!). Some people may call me crazy, but I chose that over the new iPhone 4S. I liked the new Personal Assistant on the iPhone, but I also like all of the Android apps I'd been using for my home network. Realistically I can't even say there was a thing wrong with my EVO, except that I got tired of constantly trying to clean up internal storage when apps would get me under the low limit. The new Galaxy S II afforded me 16GB of internal storage vs. the 1GB on my EVO. Added to that is a dual core 1.2GHz processor vs a single 1GHz processor, and wireless N, on top of a beautiful screen. In a phone I was really skeptical of the benefit of wireless N, but as I proved in the old laptop wireless upgrade shootout, it might be a benefit, even on the internet.

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When we picked up an old, but reliable, Dell Latitude D610 on a NewEgg Shell Shocker deal, I felt it would be the perfect time to do an old laptop upgrade wireless card shootout. The D610 still uses the old 32-bit Mini PCI Intel 2200BG wireless card, which is good for its time, but falling behind as it relates to wireless N. Upgrade options for this slot are slim as all new laptops are Mini PCI Express slots. This left me wondering why all of the upgrade options are sparse or non-existent. Was it just the new technology and abandonment of the old, or was it simply that the older laptop couldn't take advantage of wireless N anyway? I aimed to answer those questions with a Mini PCI wireless N in an old laptop shootout.

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