My Review of Thomas Wooden Railway Talking Series - Stop & Greet Station

Originally submitted at Toys R Us

Bring the world of Thomas & Friends to life with engine recognition technology. Talking Railway Series engines unlock special personalized greetings as they pass by Talking Railway Series destinations. The more talking Railway Series engines and destinations you add the more interactive your wo...

Thomas Wooden Railway Talking Series - Stop & Greet Station

WorksWonderfully!Your's doesn't? Read on

By sflesch from Rochester, NY on 8/5/2010

 

5out of 5

Pros: Easy To Operate, Fun, Quality Construction, Durable, Attractive Design, Easy to Assemble

Best Uses: Entertainment, Young Children, Imaginative Play

Describe Yourself: First Time Parent, Working Parent, Education Oriented

I have three of these talking destinations and so far they all work wonderfully. They are far more sturdy and better built than the store brand tracks and trains!

Take a 1 star review with a grain of salt. They don't tell you if they tried to get it fixed or even read the instructions. Part of the instructions say removing the batteries will reset the unit. That may help.

If not, I have dealt with Learning Curve for a toy that had backwards magnets and they were wonderful help.

(legalese)

Excel opens without displaying a workbook

Excel opens without displaying a workbook

We have run into this a few times, so I wanted to pass on the fix for it that worked for me.

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs

Nice site which compares various processors. Not sure if that 1.3GHz mobile processor is better or worse than the 1.6GHz Atom? (Hint: It is much better!) It shows that http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/1dc4dc81-fad1-4e60-8fd2-baacae24cec7/acer-aspire-3810-notebook-1-3ghz-pentium-13-3in-display#77892155-8859-47a6-9cfe-ca7cb40e1cfd isn't really a bad deal after all!

Intel network card MAC address all zeros

I spent nearly two weeks trying to figure out why my freshly sysprepped image worked fine on any one PC, but when I brought it down on multiple PCs, I lost connection on all but one. I remembered interrupting sysprep on one of my images, but couldn't remember which one, so I thought that was the issue. I re-sysprepped and "YAY!" - it worked...or NOT!

Checked with our admin guys, and I ended up posting a question on Experts Exchange to see what they could come up with.

Well, in the end, someone there pointed me to the faulty Intel drivers link above and sure enough, with "ipconfig /all" I got all zeros for my MAC address. Apparently you can get an IP in DHCP with an all zeros MAC - but all the PCs with this MAC address get the same IP.

OK, the link says to load the old drivers. I browse to my motherboards website, sort to the NIC drivers, then XP and scroll down and...ummm....ok. The Intel guy on the Intel site said to download and install the older driver. Wouldn't you think they would have an older driver on their site? Nope.

So, a word of caution before you update your XP Intel NIC drivers - don't!

How to set a printer to duplex by default

From the HP site linked:
Go to the printer properties and click on the "Advanced" tab.
Click on the "Printing Defaults" button on the bootom left.
On the "Finishing" tab, select "Print On Both Sides" and then click "OK" all the way out.
Make sure the printer itself has duplexng turned on.

Home Server?

I've been toying a lot with Virtual PCs lately, trying to decide how I want to set up my home system. The basic functions I need are Web Server, maybe FTP, and Remote Desktop (for all of my PCs) from the outside.

From home, I am trying to minimize the number of PCs I run on a concurrent basis. Obviously the web server needs to be running all the time. I also run eMule most of the time so that would probably run on the same PC. I sometimes access my PC remotely at home. At this point, I think it would be to access the web server on the rare occasion that I need to make a change or to access various documents or pictures. For instance, if I need my taxes from last year or a specific picture.

I have an X-Box 360, as well as pretty much every version of Windows from XP to 7 and Server 2003 , 2008 & 2008 R2. I'd prefer to avoid Linux since I'm not as familiar with it. Hardware wise, I have plenty of "PCs", each about a year older than the next. The newest one being about two years old, but a rather decent PC. I use quotes because they are all systems I made from Intel boards from when I worked at CompUSA that can be changed around if need be.

Some prerequisites: The movies and TV I tend to watch are in Divx format, and I usually delete them when I am done, so I'd rather not convert them to take up more room then to delete them. If there is an option that will allow me to watch these on the X-Box, then I would consider that. Backup is very important. I am really bad at doing that, so Windows Home Server would be a really great fit. If I can run eMule, host my home page on there, stream divx to my Xbox and maybe even host virtual PCs, that might just be the ideal option, but I haven't found much info on these things.

I do have 8 250GB hard drives that I would likely use in a RAID for WHS or whatever backup option I have. I also have a 1TB Buffalo NAS & a 1TB Seagate USB drive to maybe back these up?

So, I am asking for suggestions. Should I run WHS on a Hypervisor such as the free GSX so I can also run another OS on there, like one of the Media Center ones? I know with GSX I would still need another PC to remote into the PCs. What about 3D support for games? I don't play a lot, but I do want that option available.