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  • Is reliability reputation of mechanical keyboards overblown?

    - by Rarst
    A while back I worked up to finally buying mechanical keyboard (~$100 range, "black" switches) and was initially quite content with purchase. However just outside first year (read it - as soon as warranty expired) it started to develop repeat issues (press once, get chain of letter repeated) on multiple keys. It doesn't react to generic cleaning (up to compressed air) and searching Internet shows noticeable amount of people with similar-to-identical issues, spanning years. This makes me severely hesitant to buy another mechanical keyboard, considering: every other keyboard I ever owned, including ultra-cheap crap managed to last longer than that typing experience is nice, but not lifechanging-fan-forever nice for me my choice of mechanical keyboards is severely limited not many brands represented in local market and primarily crazy looking gamer models russian (not to mention russian and ukrainian if possible) layout excludes international ordering price tag for a meek year of use I got our of it is plain demoralizing It is obvious mechanical keyboards have their fans, but shopping around for "best fit" or getting into multiple hundreds price tags is probably not something I am highly interested in. Considering my constraints and bad experience with reliability, is it practical for me to sink more money into buying mechanical keyboard(s) again? In other words - manufacturers are beaming about how crazy reliable mechanical keyboards are. Are active long time users of such keyboards confidently of same opinion?

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  • Is 1GB + 1GB RAM better than 2GB +0.5GB?

    - by pibboater
    My laptop has two slots for RAM, and currently has two 512 MB chips, for 1 GB. Windows XP is running terribly slow on it, so I want to upgrade the RAM. I could buy two 1 GB chips to replace both of the current 512 MB chips, to give me 2 GB of RAM. Or, the price is the same to buy one 2 GB chip, to replace just one of the 512 MB chips, and give me 2.5 GB total. The RAM it takes is PC2-4200 533MHz DDR2. What do you think would be better: buying two 1 GB chips so it can take advantage of dual-channel operation, or buying one 2 GB chip to end up with more total RAM but not dual-channel operation? Like I said, price is the same, so performance is the only consideration. I'm not doing anything especially intensive like video or photo editing -- just having multiple Office programs open, playing music, browsers, etc., but currently even opening the first application takes forever. If it matters, the laptop is a Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513 running Windows XP Media Center SP3. Thanks! Kevin

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  • How can I monitor network traffic?

    - by WIndy Weather
    I have a home network with about 10 devices including BluRay player [netflix] and both windows and linux machines. I need to collect network traffic statistics so that if questions come up about how much traffic I'm using I have the answer independent of my ISP. I've looked at DD-WRT, but I see that even buying a new router that will be supported is a problem since I might get the wrong version of the hardware. I have a DIR-655 and a DIR-501 - neither of which is supported. I don't mind buying new hardware, but it looks like a crap-shoot to get one that will work. DD-WRT looks like a bad solution unless someone knows of a place to get a router that is guaranteed to work. Does someone know of an arduino or other SBC solution? I have plenty of NAT routers already, so I just need traffic statistics for external traffic. The network is GBit Ethernet inside and Cable / soon to be DSL outside. The DIR-655 only gives me "packets", not bytes transferred oddly enough. Thanks, ww

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  • Pondering New Technology

    - by MOSSLover
    So I have been standing at the end of a fork for a year peering down a corner looking at this way and that way trying to figure out where I fit in.  I was so enthusiastic and excited about Silverlight when it came out.  It was this amazing awesome technology that had this really cool animation and webcam/multimedia piece.  I thought if I put my money on Silverlight it’s going somewhere, then HTML 5 came out and the wind shifted.  I realized times were changing. I have been working with web technologies since I was 15 years old.  Playing with html and javascript and even css back when it first came out.  In tech years 15 years is forever.  Things change so quickly and so often.  So I guess the question is where am I heading?  The answer is mobile technology.  For some reason I was resisting change and I have no idea why.  I guess I really wanted to see more than one player.  I didn’t quite feel that Microsoft was ready with Windows Phone 7.  It was a great start, but it just didn’t feel like they went all the way.  Now with Windows 8 it feels like they are at version 2.0.  It’s like hitting Silverlight 2.0 where they finally added the .Net bits.  The path is paved, but we don’t know where it’s leading.  Then we had 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 to mature the technology into what it is today (man I’m hoping they are going to roll some of the cool bits into other tech if they don’t exist). Anyway, I’m on board, but I’m not buying a Windows Tablet just yet.  I was hoping for a 7 inch screen from Apple around $300 or just above and a 7 inch screen from the MS side around the same price.  What I got was the Apple side, but nothing from Microsoft.  I was pretty disappointed with the $500 market price on the RT version.  I realized Microsoft is close, but not quite where Apple is today.  Yes the devices have Office that they are offering, but the sticker is just too much for a first generation device.  If you guys remember correctly the first generation iPad was quite expensive.  I guess for a 1st generation device $500 is pretty good. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am shifting my focus entirely away from Silverlight and more towards mobile.  I will be doing a lot of postings on iOS, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8 with SharePoint 2013.  Since I don’t have a tablet and don’t foresee myself buying one just yet it might be mostly on the phones for right now.  I want to do a bunch of testing on various devices on what needs to be done in apps on each device.  I might add a bit on porting code from one to the other.  I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and make things flow a little better for me.  In a way it’s kind of like Star Trek 6 where they talk about the Undiscovered Country.  I’m going to jump forward completely and see where I land. Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013,Mobile,Windows 8,iOS

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  • Exposed: Fake Social Marketing

    - by Mike Stiles
    Brands and marketers who want to build their social popularity on a foundation of lies are starting to face more of an uphill climb. Fake social is starting to get exposed, and there are a lot of emperors getting caught without any clothes. Facebook is getting ready to do a purge of “Likes” on Pages that were a result of bots, fake accounts, and even real users who were duped or accidentally Liked a Page. Most of those accidental Likes occur on mobile, where it’s easy for large fingers to hit the wrong space. Depending on the degree to which your Page has been the subject of such activity, you may see your number of Likes go down. But don’t sweat it, that’s a good thing. The social world has turned the corner and assessed the value of a Like. And the verdict is that a Like is valuable as an opportunity to build a real relationship with a real customer. Its value pales immensely compared to a user who’s actually engaged with the brand. Those fake Likes aren’t doing you any good. Huge numbers may once have impressed, but it’s not fooling anybody anymore. Facebook’s selling point to marketers is the ability to use a brand’s fans to reach friends of those fans. Consequently, there has to be validity and legitimacy to a fan count. Speaking of mobile, Trademob recently reported 40% of clicks are essentially worthless, because 22% of them are accidental (again with the fat fingers), while 18% are trickery. Publishers will but huge banner ads next to tiny app buttons to increase the odds of an accident. Others even hide a banner behind another to score 2 clicks instead of 1. Pontiflex and Harris Interactive last year found 47% of users were more likely to click a mobile ad accidentally than deliberately. Beyond that, hijacked devices are out there manipulating click data. But to what end for a marketer? What’s the value of a click on something a user never even saw? What’s the value of a seen but accidentally clicked ad if there’s no resulting transaction? Back to fake Likes, followers and views; they’re definitely for sale on numerous sites, none of which I’ll promote. $5 can get you 1,000 Twitter followers. You can even get followers targeted by interests. One site was set up by an unemployed accountant out of his house in England. He gets them from a wholesaler in Brooklyn, who gets them from a 19-year-old supplier in India. The unemployed accountant is making $10,000 a day. That means a lot of brands, celebrities and organizations are playing the fake social game, apparently not coming to grips with the slim value of the numbers they’re buying. But now, in addition to having paid good money for non-ROI numbers, there’s the embarrassment factor. At least a couple of sites have popped up allowing anyone to see just how many fake and inactive followers you have. Britain’s Fake Follower Check and StatusPeople are the two getting the most attention. Enter any Twitter handle and the results are there for all to see. Fake isn’t good, period. “Inactive” could be real followers, but if they’re real, they’re just watching, not engaging. If someone runs a check on your Twitter handle and turns up fake followers, does that mean you’re suspect or have purchased followers? No. Anyone can follow anyone, so most accounts will have some fakes. Even account results like Barack Obama’s (70% fake according to StatusPeople) and Lady Gaga’s (71% fake) don’t mean these people knew about all those fakes or initiated them. Regardless, brands should realize they’re now being watched, and users are judging the legitimacy of their social channels. Use one of any number of tools available to assess and clean out fake Likes and followers so that your numbers are as genuine as possible. And obviously, skip the “buying popularity” route of social marketing strategy. It doesn’t work and it gets you busted…a losing combination.

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  • A view from the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon

    - by Rob Foster
    I want to break away from my usual topic of something technical and talk about what I experienced tonight while working in the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon, which was broadcast on WSMV, CNN, and The Weather Channel.  We started receiving calls about 7pm local time and to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when going into this.  I mean, I'm a pretty good talker, but this is different...We had a good script of what to say and how we were supposed to say it, as well as paper forms and pens that we used to collect information from people who wanted to donate their money to help.  I took my first few calls pretty easily and it went pretty quick and easy.  Everyone was upbeat and happy to be in the call center as well as people happy to be donating money. Pizza, snacks, and soft drinks were flowing well.  Everyone is smiling and happy.  :) About 3 or 4 calls into my night, I got a call from a lady that had lost 2 family members in West Nashville who drowned in the floods.  She was crying when she called and I of course tried to console her.  She told me how bad her situation was, losing family members and much of her neighborhood.  After all this, she still just wanted to help other people.  She was donating all the money that she could to the telethon and I want to share a direct quote from her: "I want to donate this instead of buying flowers for my family members' funeral because people out there need help.". Please let me pause while I get myself together <again>.  That caught me so off guard (and still does). I had kids calling wanting to donate their allowance, open their piggy banks, whatever they could do.  These are kids.  Kids not much older than my boys.  Kids who should be focused on buying the next cool video game or toy or whatever but wanted to do something.  Everyone just seemed to want to help. I took calls from as far away as British Columbia as well and pretty much coast to coast.  how cool is that? Yet another thing that caught me off guard.  This kind lady that called from British Columbia told me how much she loved visiting Nashville and just hated to see this happen.  I belive that she said that she will be attending the CMA Fest this year too.  I was sure to tell her not to cancel her plans!  :) It felt like every call I took (and I took A LOT, as did everyone else) was very personal and heartfelt.  I've never had the privelage to do anything like this and fell lucky to have been able to help out with answering phones and logging donations.  Nashville will bounce back very quickly, people are out there day and night helping each other, and the spirits are very high here.  I hope that one day, my kids read this blog and better understand who they are, where they come from, and what the human spirt is and can be.  I love this city, I love the people here, I love the culture and even more than ever am proud to say that this is me.  This is us.  We are Nashville!

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  • How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

    - by Mike Stiles
    Philosophers have long said if you find out where a man’s money is, you’ll know where his heart is. Find out where money in a marketing budget is allocated, and you’ll know how adaptive and ready that company is for the near future. Marketing spends are an investment. Not unlike buying stock, the money is placed in areas the marketer feels will yield the highest return. Good stock pickers know the lay of the land, the sectors, the companies, and trends. Likewise, good marketers should know the media available to them, their audience, what they like & want, what they want their marketing to achieve…and trends. So what are they doing? And how are they doing? A recent eTail report shows nearly half of retailers planned on focusing on SEO, SEM, and site research technologies in the coming months. On the surface, that’s smart. You want people to find you. And you’re willing to let the SEO tail wag the dog and dictate the quality (or lack thereof) of your content such as blogs to make that happen. So search is prioritized well ahead of social, multi-channel initiatives, email, even mobile - despite the undisputed explosive growth and adoption of it by the public. 13% of retailers plan to focus on online video in the next 3 months. 29% said they’d look at it in 6 months. Buying SEO trickery is easy. Attracting and holding an audience with wanted, relevant content…that’s the hard part. So marketers continue to kick the content can down the road. Pretty risky since content can draw and bind customers to you. Asked to look a year ahead, retailers started thinking about CRM systems, customer segmentation, and loyalty, (again well ahead of online video, social and site personalization). What these investors are missing is social is spreading across every function of the enterprise and will be a part of CRM, personalization, loyalty programs, etc. They’re using social for engagement but not for PR, customer service, and sales. Mistake. Allocations are being made seemingly blind to the trends. Even more peculiar are the results of an analysis Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins made. She looked at how much time people spend with media types and how marketers are investing in those media. 26% of media consumption is online, marketers spend 22% of their ad budgets there. 10% of media time is spent with mobile, but marketers are spending 1% of their ad budgets there. 7% of media time is spent with print, but (get this) marketers spend 25% of their ad budgets there. It’s like being on Superman’s Bizarro World. Mary adds that of the online spending, most goes to search while spends on content, even ad content, stayed flat. Stock pickers know to buy low and sell high. It means peering with info in hand into the likely future of a stock and making the investment in it before it peaks. Either marketers aren’t believing the data and trends they’re seeing, or they can’t convince higher-ups to acknowledge change and adjust their portfolios accordingly. Follow @mikestilesImage via stock.xchng

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  • Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

    - by BuckWoody
    I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.  

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  • What is the difference between the Lego Mindstorms 1.0 and 2.0

    - by Gavimoss
    I am thinking about buying a mindstorms kit (I don't currently own one but I have used 1.0 at university) and I am a bit unsure as to the benefits of 2.0 over 1.0. I have seen other posts on the subject all saying generally 2.0 is better but I have some more specific questions about this that I can't seem to find any answers on. Apart from the different lego pieces and sensors you get with the 2.0 kit, is there any difference between a 1.0 nxt brick and 2.0 nxt brick? From what I can determine from other sources, they are the same except for the firmware installed. Am I right in saying I could buy a 1.0 kit and install the same firmware that comes with the 2.0 kit and the bricks would be the same or is the 1.0 brick not compatible with the 2.0 firmware??? Also, I plan to use a different programming language like c or java so I need to install specific firmware for that anyway like librcx or lejos right? So if using c or java as opposed to the provided lego coding methods it doesn't matter if I am using 1.0 or 2.0 (except for the lego pieces in the kit) am I right? In a nutshell, assuming I am using librcx or lejos and I don't care about the sensors and lego pieces included, is there any benefit to buying a 2.0 kit over the 1.0 kit? Thanks in advance

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  • Business Logic Layer Pattern on Rails? MVCL

    - by Fabiano PS
    That is a broad question, and I appreciate no short/dumb asnwers like: "Oh that is the model job, this quest is retarded (period)" PROBLEM Where I work at people created a system over 2 years for managing the manufacture process over demand in the most simplified still broad as possible, involving selling, buying, assemble, The system is coded over Ruby On Rails. The app has been changed lots of times and the result is a mess on callbacks (some are called several times), 200+ models, and fat controllers: Total bad. The QUESTION is, if there is a gem, or pattern designed to handle Rails large app logic? The logic whould be able to fully talk to models (whose only concern would be data format handling and validation) What I EXPECT is to reduce complexity from various controllers, and hard to track callbacks into files with the responsibility to handle a business operation logic. In some cases there is the need to wait for a response, in others, only validation of the input is enough and a bg process would take place. ie: -- Sell some products (need to wait the operation to finish) 1. Set a View able to get the products input 2. Controller gets the product list inputed by employee and call the logic Logic::ExecuteWithResponse('sell', 'products', :prods => @product_list_with_qtt, :when => @date, :employee => current_user() ) This Logic would handle buying order, assemble order, machine schedule, warehouse reservation, and others. Have in mind that a callback on SalesOrder is not enough, since it depends on where it is called (no field for that), depends on the class of the user, among other stuff not visible for the model, or in some cases it would take long for the model to process.

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  • Business Layer Pattern on Rails? MVCL

    - by Fabiano PS
    That is a broad question, and I appreciate no short/dumb asnwers like: "Oh that is the model job, this quest is retarded (period)" PROBLEM Where I work at people created a system over 2 years for managing the manufacture process over demand in the most simplified still broad as possible, involving selling, buying, assemble, The system is coded over Ruby On Rails. The result has been changed lots of times and the result is a mess on callbacks (some are called several times), 200+ models, and fat controllers: Total bad. The QUESTION is, if there is a gem, or pattern designed to handle Rails large app logic? The logic whould be able to fully talk to models (whose only concern would be data format handling and validation) What I EXPECT is to reduce complexity from various controllers, and hard to track callbacks into files with the responsibility to handle a business operation logic. In some cases there is the need to wait for a response, in others, only validation of the input is enough and a bg process would take place. ie: -- Sell some products (need to wait the operation to finish) 1. Set a View able to get the products input 2. Controller gets the product list inputed by employee and call the logic Logic::ExecuteWithResponse('sell', 'products', :prods => @product_list_with_qtt, :when => @date, :employee => current_user() ) This Logic would handle buying order, assemble order, machine schedule, warehouse reservation, and others

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  • Dell Poweredge 2650 RAM Upgrade

    - by Vik
    Hi, I bought an old Dell Poweredge 2650 off ebay to use as a dev server, but I need to get more RAM for it. From what I understand there were 2 versions of the 2650 released, with the older version only supporting PC1600 RAM (200MHz) and the 2nd version supporting PC2400. Unfortunately Dell thought it wasn't necessary to label their servers as such so I can't tell what version I have. Does anyone know if there is a way to tell without buying and testing RAM in the server?

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  • Will An External Audio Interface Reduce CPU Load?

    - by Yar
    I am considering buying a very-low-latency audio interface like this one. One question is if it will reduce CPU load (I'm at about 60%+ and my Macbook has 2.4ghz and 4gigs ram) during intensive audio processing. If the answer is "yes," how will it compare to a different, cheaper firewire audio interface? My thought is that offloading the processing is always the same gain, regardless.

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  • Bluray Drives: 2x vs 4x vs 6x vs 8x read/writespeed.

    - by Wesley
    Hi all, I couldn't find a duplicate question, but I was wondering what the differences are between different read/write speeds for Bluray drive. I'm planning on buying one for a build but don't know if I can cheap out on getting a Bluray 2x drive or spend more money for a quality Bluray 8x drive. Will I just experience more lag/buffering times for Bluray discs on a 2x and none for a 6x or 8x? Thanks in advance.

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  • Can you run Snow Leopard Server on a VM?

    - by Crash893
    I'm thinking of buying a mac mini server for my email needs (small office server for 999 with all the features i want build in) I wanted to give it a test drive before i commit so i was thinking "hey this sounds like the perfect job for a vm" however i havent been able to see any examples of running snow lepoard server on a vm does anyone know if its possible and/or there is a premade vm package to test it out with?

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  • Google Chrome OS ISO

    - by Taylor
    First of all, a few questions as I'm a bit confused :P Is the Chrome OS that is shipped on Chromebooks "Chromium"? I'm wanting to buy a Chromebook, but I want to download an ISO or other similar format first so I can try it out in VMware. To be clear, I'm wanting the exact version that ships on Chromebooks, as I want to get a good feel for what I'll be buying Where can I find this? I've found other things but I'm not sure they're the actual Chrome OS

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  • Output Audio via HDMI and Analog Out Simultaneously

    - by Alex Miller
    I need to output the system audio from a desktop to both the HDMI output (sending to the display that functions as the room speakers) and via the analog stereo output (to feed the reference input on a microphone array for Skype). The only solution I've found so far for this is an HDMI Audio De-Embedder, but I'd really like to avoid buying another piece of hardware, so I'm hoping there's a way to do this inside software. So: Is there any way to make Windows 7 output all audio over both HDMI and Analog outs, simultaneously?

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  • How long do Lithium Ion batteries normally last?

    - by Zifre
    On the laptop I have, I've had to buy a new Li-Ion batter roughly every year. I do use this computer quite a lot, but I'm wondering if this is normal. Right now, my battery is completely dead (it lasts for about 0.1 seconds), so I plan on buying a new one soon. Is there anything you can do to prevent Li-Ion batteries from going dead so quickly?

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  • How to upload stuff to Amazon EC2 Windows instance?

    - by JohnIdol
    I've never used Amazon EC2 - I am thinking to test a few instances for running intensive computation processes I have a requirement for rather than buying real hardware. I am given to understand the thing is quite easy to setup - but I have no clue of how it actually works, in terms of transferring data to my ec2 instances. So the question is how can I upload stuff to my instance? Any help appreciated!

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  • Intel atom and overall power consumption

    - by amorfis
    I am considering buying of Intel Atom machine. Power consumption is one of my concerns (it is for small server). I know CPU itself consumes a little power, but I heard that chipset consumes much more. Anybody knows how much can such machine consume? I am considering Intel MoBo BLKD945GCLF (chipset: Intel® 945GC Express Chipset with ICH7)

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  • Does ArchLinux running on PogoPlug boxes support Tenda W311MI Wireless N Pico Adapter?

    - by MauricioOtta
    I've did my homework and since cabling is an issue, I'm planning on going wireless. Can anyone confirm these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833555011 work on Linux? I've found this page http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/Tenda_W311MI and found that Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx (USB) support in the kernel supports RT2770, RT2870 & RT3070, RT3071 & RT3072. So I'm buying this and reporting back after I receive them

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