3G Coverage Maps

Looking for 3G coverage maps from the major carriers?AT&T: www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer Expanding network support for 3G speeds, also supports FLO television which is digital TV over UHF channel 55.BTW coverage.att.com is an interesting site although it’s more an ad than useful tool.Sprint: coverage.sprintpcs.com  Starting to roll out EVDO Rev A in some markets which is even faster.Verizon: reallylongurlsojustclickhere  Ton’s of coverage obviously. Supports VCAST technology (same as AT&T’s Flo)T-Mobile: coverage.t-mobile.com T-Mobile is still at the very beginning of rolling out a 3G network so the majority of the time you’ll be operating at EDGE speeds.

Laptop Wont Turn On

• Scenario: Laptop went into standby or hibernation mode and now won’t turn back on.
• Symptoms:  Laptop power led is lit, indicating it is getting power from the AC adapter, but the laptop appears dead or there will be fan noise, but the display is blank and the system will not respond to the usual action of opening the lid or pressing the power button to turn it on.
• One Solution: You need to do a hard reset.  Try GENTLY pressing the power button and holding it down for 10-20 seconds.  You may hear the fan turn off or the hard drive shutdown.  If the system doesn’t respond to the hard reset, try removing the battery, wait a few seconds, and then reinstall it. Count to 30 and then press and release the power button. 
• If this doesn’t work, please consider calling us to discuss onsite service in the Charleston area.

3G Network’s On 2G Foundation

Interesting article about new 3G Cell networks. Upsides versus current downsides.

Unfortunately, they are faster but can be less reliable. Also, they often reduce battery life compared to older networks like Edge.

Here’s the link

Browser Usage Stats

Statcounter is a service used by webmasters to track how many visitors come to their site,  it’s what I use here at digitalblade.com. According to Statcounter, they track over 4 billion page loads a month. They have just introduced a new free service that provides statistics on browser global market share.Statcounter’s main siteStatcounter Global Stats site

Avoid The Mobile-Pre USB Latency Issue

I own a Mobile-Pre USB, this is a great little box that connects to your computer and provides the following inputs: 2x XLR(with phantom power), 2x 1/4″, 1/8″ Stereo Mic. You also have 2x 1/4″ out and a 1/8″ Stereo out (for monitoring) . The sample rate can go up to 48khz (better than CD quality). All while running off a USB cable with no other power required.

One of the issues that I encountered was a significant latency between speaking into the mic and what I heard in the headphones. If you search Google, this is apparently a pretty common problem.

My first attempt at using the Mobile-Pre USB box was with an older laptop running XP. The initial results were dissapointing. I had the latency issue so I couldn’t monitor my levels live, I had to record and then play back. I also was unable to use Audacity, it simply didn’t see the mic I had hooked up. I found if I installed the ASIO4All driver and then used the version of Ableton Live 6 that came with the Pre USB I got pretty good results.

Recently, I was installing XP into a partition on one of my desktops. I thought I would try an experiment. After installing XP and only the most basic drivers it needs, ethernet, video card etc, I installed the Mobile-Pre USB driver and then Audacity. Audacity worked right off the bat, and the results were fantastic. NO LATENCY AND NO DISTORTION!

I would advise anyone who has one of these devices that they are capable of very good sound.  Due to the fact the Mobile-Pre runs off  USB completely, it’s great for laptops.  It can operate with no latency without special drivers. Issues to consider are the amount of ram in your system and CPU, more and faster are always better. I believe that the issue I was encountering with my laptop is the typical Windows issue that over time there is a general slowdown in performance that can really only be alleviated by a fresh install of the OS.

BTW, when I say No Latency, I really should say no detectable latency. Technically there may be a few millisconds, but subjectively I am not hearing it.

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