Here’s another case for the Motorola Atrix 4G, Rearth’s Ringke Case. This case is developed by Rearth USA and they do ship internationally (for a price of course). It boasts having a three layer silicon polymer material which makes it stand out from the rest. Anyway who cares what material that is used. What we want is results. How well does this case perform? Read on.

Apparently it is made in Korea as it is printed there, have Korea printings on the box and coincidentally, they seem to have cases for all the Cowon MP3 Players. Anyway enough of the company already. Here’s the case. It came with a really nice packaging with transparent front and back “windows”. Let’s tear it down and see how well it fits on the Atrix.

Looks: The Rearth Ringke case looks ATTRACTIVE. This case really makes the Atrix noticeable from anywhere.

Size: The casing has a slim form factor, though it does not protect the phone from heavy bumps like the Otterbox Defender, it does provide a basic bump protection and scratch protection on the back.

Design: Again about the design, it is really detailed and I mean it when I say detailed. The sides of the casing resembles the original side of the Atrix which has a fine line at the sides (look at the photo) . It feels like they’ve dipped the whole phone into the silicon liquid to create the case. Nice one there. Cuttings were perfect and the whole thing looks good. The fitting of the case on the phone was superior to the OEM silicon cases, the phone does not slide around when its on the case which I really hate on “cheap” cases. Nevertheless, it was mentioned on the Rearth website that the case should not be removed that often as it will cause the material to stretch, so use with care.

(Back view)

Feel: The Ringke case somehow feels different from the previous silicon based cases that I’ve used. The case has a smooth like feel with a little powdery feeling on it but it is not powdering. Get that? hahaha. This is only case that I’ve used so far that does not attract that much lint. The 3 layer special material is probably the reason behind this.
Verdict: I’m really impressed with the Rearth Ringke case for the Motorola Atrix 4G. It gives me a nice feeling and maintenance is kept to a minimum level. Compared to the other cases that I have, I won’t have to keep wiping them to remove lint. One thing, although this case is thin, (which I like) somehow I don’t really feel secure carrying it around after having used to the Otterbox Commuter or the Seidio Active case. Those cases provide me with excellent bump protection but on the downside, bulkier appearance. However, I reckon this case would be good if you can assure that it’s gonna be mildly abused on a daily basis. The price tag for this case is $16.99 (without shipping) and if you’d like there is an option to add in rubber caps for the 3.5mm audio jack to keep dust out at $1.99 each. However these were not provided on my review unit so I can’t test them out. It costs much more than the OEM silicon cases but then good quality products come with good prices as well =P. Recommended product.

I bought the TP-Link WR-1043ND Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router since my supercharged buffalo suffered from a heart attack and died.

Guess why TP-Link calls it the Ultimate model?

Exterior wise, the TP-Link resembles the look of all its other wireless devices in the family.  It looks pretty good to me but I don’t really care because I don’t stare at the router at all.

The front panel has green/yellow LED lights to show the status of its POWER, SYSTEM, WLAN, ETH 1, 2, 3, 4 WAN, USB and QSS status. It goes *blink blink blink* till you get seizures. haha.

A side view of the router. Did you notice that there are NO vents at all on the top? The vents were situated at the sides and the bottom of the router. I don’t get why it was done like this but wouldn’t it cause the hot air to get trapped longer in the case? I’m using this router the other way round where the top faces the floor and the vents are at the top. You could easily drill a 12cm 90cfm fan on the top of the case and solve the problem too. [fan mod]

At the back of the TP-Link WR-1043ND .

RP-SMA antennas – The router comes with 3 antennas to enable MIMO wireless N connections

Power jack – Common sense

Reset button – Common sense again

USB port – This enables the router to function as a NAS (Network Attached Storage). You can plug in any flash drive or hard disk drive into it. This port also allows the 3G modem to be plugged in and it will pull the WAN connection off the USB port.

WAN port – Your internet connection goes here.

Gigabit ports – These ports runs at 1Gbps

The router comes with a TP-Link firmware but there is a DD-WRT build for it. I did not do any testing on the original firmware as I flashed it to DD-WRT the moment I started using it. However as this is a fairly new router, the firmware for this router is said to be unstable but currently I’ve been running it for 5days ++ without any hiccups.

Lots of things to play with as it has a 8MB Flash Mem and 32MB ram.

You might be slightly disappointed on the wireless performance as it is no where near the performance of the Buffalo WHR-HP-54G (built in amplifier). Wireless performance is still good on this router, but if you are planning to do long range connections ( 2-3km links) with stock antennas, I wouldn’t recommend this router. Nevertheless, all the other hardware specifications pawn’s the Buffalo and costs cheaper than it! It really depends on the purpose of getting the router. Another good choice is the Asus RT N-16 but the cost doubles.

Wireless “Repeater” mode is not available on routers which run on Atheros processors so you would have to do this to get the repeating function working in DD-WRT. (This should work on all Atheros based routers). “Repeater” modes are only available on Broadcom devices.

1. Set the ath0 as Client mode

2. Create a Virtual AP

3. You’re done!

The TP-Link WR-1043ND is a really awesome device considering its low price tag . I bought mine for RM160 and you can’t even get anything near these specifications from other brands with this price. Good job TP-Link.

So how well does this router perform? I’d give it a 4.3 out of 5 star rating.

It has been many years since I got hold of a Dell notebook. The one with me now is currently turning 8 this year and today I got hold of this red Dell Studio 15. W00t call me jakun or whatever, but I think the bag looks quite good. Though the bag capacity is rather limited, it can still hold a couple of things like your external drives and stuff in it and still look slim.

Here’s the Dell’s version of Targus notebook bag.

This thing looks gorgeous from the outside..

The inside, hmm.. not so good. Looks rather plain with the grey/silver finish. The keyboard was slightly on the “bendable” side because during typing you could actually see the whole keyboard moving slightly.

Call me jakun again but it look me a minute to figure out where the power on button was! HAHA!

As usual, the Dell Studio LED screen did not fail to impress me. Colors were vibrant and text was sharp. The blacks weren’t black enough though..

At a certain angle I could see some line scanning going on, I’m not sure whether this is a problem with the screen or it is meant to be like that. Anyway it is only visible if you really stare at the screen properly. Will check it out once the setup is complete.

Again! the 90w power adaptor has been trimed down to a size thinner than my phone. Nice one. It runs pretty hot though. The notebook itself runs quite hot during idle times too.

Overall, the Dell Studio 15 is a quite a powerful machine here. Equipped with the Core i5 2.4ghz , 4gb DDR3 ram, 1GB ATi HD5740, 500GB hdd, this notebook is perfect for watching my TVB dramas!! AHHAHA.

Special thanks to Ivy and Eddy for letting me molest their very new toy. I couldn’t resist myself from snapping photos of your notebook. It was simply a natural poser.

Here’s another contender in the plastic skin protection industry. GadgetShieldz. Its supposed to be “again” the same material used in other brands like InvisbleSh*eld and BestSk*nsEver. However GadgetShieldz promises a lower price compared to the other two brands and after browsing their website, it really does turn out to be cheaper with its free shipping worldwide.

Well, does this product really live up to its ” cheap but same quality as the more expensive brands” standard? Hmm.. yes and no.

YES / PROS

1. GadgetShieldz gives an almost perfect cut on the skin letting very little of the phone surface exposed.

2. GadgetShieldz offers a more variety of skins, ( more than the BSE but rather the same or less than IS). They didn’t have the skin for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 on the BSE but they did have them on the IS site with a much much higher price.

3. GadgetShieldz comes with free worldwide shipping via courier.

4. Like the others, it does give some scratch protection.

5. It’s reasonably priced.

Here’s how the screen protector look like once it is applied on the screen. Pretty nice almost-perfect cut.

NO/CONS 

1. Some of the skins arrive with a little scratches on them already. One of the review units had a pretty long but fine scratch on it.

2. The skin magically turns black / oil-mark stain if too much pressure is applied on it after some time. I had a few cases of this happening already. Even though I was given the replacement for the skin, this phenomena repeated. Shame on you GadgetShieldz.

Anyway, I was told that this phenomena does not happen on every skin. Probably the batch that I received had some problems during manufacturing.

Left: A new piece of GadgetShieldz. Right: The “oil-stained” GadgetShieldz.

Verdict: The only reason I’m using GadgetShieldz currently is because they have the full body protection for my SE Xperia X1. Otherwise, I’ll rather spend a little more and get the BSE instead. Although that skin costs a little, yes a little only bit more, it would save the hassle of replacing the “oil-stained” skin from GadgetShieldz.  Anyway, if you’d like to get some GadgetShieldz for your devices and keep them scratch free thoughout their lifespan, I’m selling them too here. Oh yes I know that contradicts my sentence above.. but oh well.. as I said, it only happens on some skins and it can be replaced for free.

Thanks to GadgetShieldz for the skins =) .

Alright, there was this Samsung T400 phone lying around because the screen was supposed to be “not working” . Sent it to the repair shop for a checkup and was told that RM80 would be needed to get it fixed. The ribbon connecting the main board to the LCD screen was “supposed” to be broken.

Heck.. for a 7 year old phone, RM80 isn’t worth the money. So lets get dirty and break it up.

The Samsung T400 was only secured by 5 screws on the lower part of the phone while only 2 screws held the screen in position. Unscrew them, un-clip the plastic holders securing them together and its open. Easy huh?
The phone consists of only 2 parts which are the screen and the main-board. LOL.

Once opened, the whole board looked like a “forest” of IC’s and pins. I’m no expert in this so I’ll just have to do it the usual NBTD way, which is to remove all removable pins/plugs and simply clean the device. The chances of getting your stuff repaired this way are close to ZERO but then what else can be done? Just trying my luck.

The phone was simply powered up to see what comes out and *pooof*
It lights up!

Before assembling back the parts together,  the keypad of the phone was slightly modified by adding some supporting pads on some of the keys. Due to wear and tear, some of the keys are no longer that sensitive and they needed more contact pressure to work.

There you have it, another device brought back to life!  My X1 would be having a good rest now while I’ll get this Samsung T400 up to a good stress test.