Review of TP-LINK’s TL-WR1043ND Wireless Router, Power Packed and Feature Rich

After writ­ing a review on Newegg.com regard­ing this router, we fig­ured it was worth men­tion­ing in our blog. It’s rare that a prod­uct catches the eye of the Guru’s. But this router stands out from the pack. With a com­bi­na­tion of low price, unmatched fea­tures, and all around func­tion­al­ity, make TP-LINK’s TL-WR1043ND wire­less router a stand­out from the pack. Typ­i­cally fea­tures found in this router are only avail­able in high dol­lar, or appli­ca­tion spe­cific routers. That cou­pled with the abil­ity to flash open source firmware’s, such as DD-WRT, opens the door to seem­ingly lim­it­less con­fig­u­ra­tions and abil­i­ties. At the time of our review, this router was sell­ing for $59.99, with free ship­ping form Newegg.com. There’s cur­rently no other router that can match this routers fea­tures and func­tion­al­ity, in both bud­get price range, and full blown gam­ing routers.

Update:
Like we said, this is an amaz­ing prod­uct. Not one day after our review of the TL-WR1043ND, it not only sells out com­pletely at Newegg.com, but the price increased $10 and ship­ping is no longer included. The router is still well worth this min­i­mally inflated price. But its makes us wish we had bought more.

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On a scale of one to five, we rated this router a Five. Our review reads as follows:

Pros:
This router is amaz­ing. I didn’t even bother with the fac­tory oper­at­ing sys­tem. I flashed DD-WRT as soon as I got it, and I couldn’t be hap­pier. This was an upgrade from a WRT54GL, and let me just say that if you’re even con­sid­er­ing this as a sim­i­lar upgrade, DO IT... Giga­bit Lan, I really don’t know how I lived with­out it. Plus a USB net­work share drive, or ftp server, or what­ever else you’d like to do with it. With this I was able to ditch a small file server I had run­ning as well. That’s $50 a month off my PG&E.

This router puts my old Linksys GL router to shame. The GUI, run­ning DD-WRT of course, is light­ning fast. There’s no notice­able lag or delay what­so­ever between page refreshes. At this price, and with all the included fea­tures, I really don’t ever see myself buy­ing any other router in the fore­see­able future. That’s for both me, and my clients. Bravo TP-LINK…

Cons:
ummm.... 5 year war­ranty? That’s just too long. lol... Not a one!!!!

Other Thoughts:
If you’re even con­sid­er­ing this router, BUY IT!!!! You will not be dis­ap­pointed. There’s noth­ing in this price range that even com­pares, at the time of my review. And I don’t see that chang­ing any­time soon.

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Sources:

Cur­rently on sale for $59.99, with free ship­ping form Newegg.com

DD-WRT open source firmware. Warn­ing, this will void your war­ranty and can turn your router into a paper weight. Flash at your own discretion.

May 15, 2010 | Web Design | Leave A Comment »

PNRPsvc Failed To Start, HomeGroup and Peer Name Resolution service Problems

We recently con­fig­ured a cus­tom sys­tem for a client using Win­dows 7 Home Pre­mium. Every­thing was run­ning great until recently when our client said they were receiv­ing blue screen errors, and hav­ing net­work prob­lems. A quick review of the error logs showed that the prob­lems were all stem­ming from Peer Net­work­ing Ser­vice, PNRPsvc, and other depen­dent ser­vices and there fail­ure to start. After research­ing the issue we found that the prob­lem relates to a file named “idstore.sst”. This file is encrypted, and con­tains infor­ma­tion relat­ing to your Home­group, and Home­group set­tings. In our case, we believe an out dated ver­sion of Syman­tec cor­rupted the file while con­fig­u­ra­tions were being made.

So our solu­tion is as fol­lows. First we updated our anti-virus client, as well as con­fig­ured all related secu­rity ser­vices. We then deleted the fol­low­ing file...

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C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\PeerNetworking\idstore.sst

You may need to show your hid­den files and fold­ers in order to nav­i­gate to this loca­tion. Once that was done we restarted the com­puter and again tried to con­fig­ure the Home­group. At this point our issue was resolved. We’re able to make changes in the Home­group con­fig­u­ra­tion, and our error log is clean, clear, and free of errors.

Let us know if this arti­cle was help­ful by leav­ing a com­ment below. Happy computing.

Feb 15, 2010 | Web Design | Leave A Comment »

Having Strange Errors Utilizing Gzip in WordPress 2.9 and 2.9.1?

For­tu­nately your not alone. A recent bug fix was just released which addresses an error which is received while updat­ing the Word­Press core, as well as Word­Press plu­g­ins. This error typ­i­cally effects http.php, located at wp-includes/http.php, and looks sim­i­lar to the code listed below.

(more...)

Jan 10, 2010 | Server 2003, Web Design, Wordpress | 2 Comments »

We Hate Spam, So Here’s A Fresh List of Spam Bots For Your Blocking Pleasure...

We main­tain a vari­ety of web­sites, blogs, con­tent por­tals, mail servers, and other online resources. We’re forced to deal with a daily task of Spam removal and pre­ven­tion. Be it spam-bots, human spam­mers, com­ment spam­mers, and on and on. The major­ity of the time its no more than a nui­sance, and a sim­ple admin­is­tra­tive task. The num­ber one goal of any admin­is­tra­tor is to pre­vent these spam­mers from ever accom­plish­ing their intended goal of com­ment hijack­ing or gain­ing some con­trol over web­site con­tent. But these days spam­mers are get­ting quite sneaky, in fact we’d even go as far as say­ing that some of them are quite good at what they do.

But since they bug us, we’re going to help you in the fight against them and their evil deeds. Below you’ll find a list of IP addresses we’ve per­son­ally com­piled. All the addresses below have recently spammed our servers, and have since been banned.

The first list is sim­ply a list of IP addresses that you can eas­ily load into you favorite anti-spam plu­gin. The sec­ond list is from a .htac­cess file we pro­vided to a client. Have fun, and happy com­put­ing.

Recently active spam­bot IP addresses...

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8.17.84.65
58.137.132.100
63.171.182.6
63.227.242.5
63.253.158.220
67.61.143.217
67.163.0.220
67.181.166.121
78.26.187.114
78.152.106.43
80.38.103.231
83.69.209.194
83.103.113.124
85.112.166.65
88.46.239.43
93.62.4.207
93.81.251.193
110.138.31.73
115.119.35.194
119.225.109.37
120.124.176.217
130.105.36.54
131.107.33.62
144.140.46.10
158.59.200.109
159.214.87.245
161.159.4.33
161.254.6.55
170.207.128.4
174.142.166.205
180.130.166.89
188.73.138.24
189.45.59.76
189.76.222.229
190.2.14.129
194.8.74.220
194.8.75.40 - 194.8.75.163
194.183.86.25
196.211.9.210
200.181.124.57
201.67.137.247
202.108.50.75
202.229.143.64
203.63.26.200
206.123.106.141
208.88.124.83
208.91.245.90
212.113.74.186
212.131.202.194
213.230.22.142
213.130.121.51
217.6.171.194
217.72.242.60
217.196.65.115
218.126.216.117
220.116.127.192

This list can be dropped right into your .htac­cess file...

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order allow,deny
deny from 8.17.84.65
deny from 58.137.132.100
deny from 63.171.182.6
deny from 63.227.242.5
deny from 63.253.158.220
deny from 67.61.143.217
deny from 67.163.0.220
deny from 67.181.166.121
deny from 78.26.187.114
deny from 78.152.106.43
deny from 80.38.103.231
deny from 83.69.209.194
deny from 83.103.113.124
deny from 85.112.166.65
deny from 88.46.239.43
deny from 93.62.4.207
deny from 93.81.251.193
deny from 110.138.31.73
deny from 115.119.35.194
deny from 119.225.109.37
deny from 120.124.176.217
deny from 130.105.36.54
deny from 131.107.33.62
deny from 144.140.46.10
deny from 158.59.200.109
deny from 159.214.87.245
deny from 161.159.4.33
deny from 161.254.6.55
deny from 170.207.128.4
deny from 174.142.166.205
deny from 180.130.166.89
deny from 188.73.138.24
deny from 189.45.59.76
deny from 189.76.222.229
deny from 190.2.14.129
deny from 194.8.74.220
deny from 194.8.75.40 - 194.8.75.163
deny from 194.183.86.25
deny from 196.211.9.210
deny from 200.181.124.57
deny from 201.67.137.247
deny from 202.108.50.75
deny from 202.229.143.64
deny from 203.63.26.200
deny from 206.123.106.141
deny from 208.88.124.83
deny from 208.91.245.90
deny from 212.113.74.186
deny from 212.131.202.194
deny from 213.230.22.142
deny from 213.130.121.51
deny from 217.6.171.194
deny from 217.72.242.60
deny from 217.196.65.115
deny from 218.126.216.117
deny from 220.116.127.192
allow from all

Jan 10, 2010 | Magento, Server 2003, Web Browsers, Web Design, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »

Utilizing GZip with WordPress, Finally a Fast Blog...

The first half of this arti­cle will be taken directly from our pre­vi­ous post, as the need for a sin­gle default php.ini is nec­es­sary to con­fig­ure gzip. If read­ing our Magento post is what brought you to the site, and you’ve already con­fig­ured your default php.ini, than skip to the .htac­cess por­tion of the post. Oth­er­wise, were off...

(more...)

Nov 30, 2009 | Magento, Web Design, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »

Magento Terms and Conditions Missing

This was an inter­est­ing issue we ran into recently while build­ing an E-commerce site for one of our clients. Typ­i­cally “Terms and Con­di­tions” is eas­ily enable in the admin­is­tra­tive sec­tion by first going to Con­fig­u­ra­tion -> Sys­tem -> Check­out ->Check­out Options and choos­ing yes to enable “Terms and Con­di­tions”. Then going to Sales -> Terms and con­di­tions and typ­ing in your terms. With our setup, we were able to choose yes to enable “Terms and Con­di­tions”, but we were not able to see the option under sales to fill in a list of terms.

(more...)

Oct 31, 2009 | Magento, Web Design | 2 Comments »

Enabling HTML in Magento Terms and Conditions

We’ve recently been work­ing with a new E-commerce plat­form called Magento. Its a very pow­er­ful open source prod­uct, with tons of fea­tures, and open source good­ness. We recently ran into an issue where we needed to enable HTML con­tent in the “Terms and Con­di­tions”. The fix was actu­ally quite simple.

(more...)

Oct 31, 2009 | Magento, Web Design | 1 Comment »

How Do I Specify a Class For IMG Inserted With Visual Editor...

The fol­low­ing is in response to a ques­tion on WordPress.org. We’ve become extremely pro­fi­cient with word­press in the past few years, and we’re always com­ing up with inno­v­a­tive ways of using this amaz­ing prod­uct. We try to post most all our fixes, hacks, and tricks, in the hopes that it will prove use­ful to some­one. Hope­fully this will be no different.

(more...)

Aug 24, 2009 | Web Browsers, Web Design, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »

Putting the finishing touches on Monster Photography

Today we’re putting the fin­ish­ing touches on our good friend Mike’s web­site. He’s a pho­tog­ra­pher cur­rently located in Anti­och Ca. The pic­tures may be a bit racy, but the site is beau­ti­fully built, with tons of trick fea­tures and a beau­ti­ful gallery setup. The site is still a lit­tle buggy, but we’ve released it early in order for Mike to have exam­ples of his work for his upcom­ing Play­boy debut. Have a look and tell us what you think. Thanks for vis­it­ing the site.

Apr 27, 2009 | Web Design | 1 Comment »

We’re Adding a Search Function To Our Web Site......

We real­ize that you value the infor­ma­tion we release as part of doing busi­ness. We are not only Google seach­able. But we will soon be adding a local search func­tion to the web­site. We appre­ci­ate the feed­back, and encour­age more of your ques­tions and com­ments. If you need help with an issue we haven’t cov­ered yet, please ask us. Thanks for visiting.

Oct 12, 2007 | Web Design | Leave A Comment »

Today We Finished FastTracAutomotive.com…..

We’re always inter­ested in a good barter, and ours friends over at Fast­Tra­cAu­to­mo­tive had some­thing good to offer. One of the Gurus needs auto­mo­tive work done, and the guys at Fast­Tra­cAu­to­mo­tive were will­ing to do the labor in kind for adver­tise­ments, and a sim­ple web­page. We’ve put together a sim­ple adver­tise­ment that they can now use on Craigslist, as well as a sim­ple page that will get them expo­sure on the inter­net. (more...)

Mar 14, 2007 | Web Design | Leave A Comment »

Today We’re Starting A Site For Tony Barriere Interpreting....

Tony Bar­riere is the owner and oper­a­tor of Tony Bar­riere Inter­pret­ing Ser­vice INC. based in Bur­bank CA. They pro­vide Inter­pre­ta­tion and Trans­la­tion ser­vices for civil cases, per­sonal injury, as well as social secu­rity and immi­gra­tion. We’ll most likely be build­ing a sim­ple but ele­gant CSS based web­site. At this point the sites bare bones, but there’s more to come. TBInterpreting.com Check back soon for updates.

Mar 13, 2007 | Web Design | Leave A Comment »

How I Made Our Background Image....

The image you see in the back­ground is actu­ally 8 images all pieced together to make my vir­tual desk­top. I was hav­ing an inspi­ra­tional day and decided I would take pic­tures of every­thing on my desk. I then took those images, with the help of Pho­to­shop CS2, and com­bined them into the image you now see. It’s amaz­ing what you can do when you’re inspired.

Feb 15, 2007 | Web Design, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »