My darling is a student at my former university (UiTM Shah Alam) where I used to go to. She lives in a hostel inside the university called Kolej Melati. She said that nowadays, every student is encourage to own a laptop or at least a computer. It has been a couple of years since UiTM has introduced online registration each time a new semester is opened. Because of that, every UiTM or generally most of university students in Malaysia should have at least a basic understanding of how to use a web browser and the internet.

With this online trend going strong, having access to the internet is getting more and more a necessity in a life of a student. The sad part is, Wi-Fi areas where a lot of students could access the internet easily is very limited. Fortunately, at my darling’s hostel, they provide a WiFi coverage called Kolej Melati Wi-Fi Hotspot Instant Surf (WHIS). They’ve already installed the service for over a year now and they’ve recently extended the service to the hostel next to it (Kolej Mawar).

The WHIS service is not a free Wi-Fi. To subscribe, after paying a registration fees to get a username and password, a RM50 fee per semester has to be paid to enjoy the service.  My darling was one of the first to register and during the early deployment, the connection was quite good. From my observation (yeah, I went into her hostel area many times..hehe), the Wi-Fi source was a cybercafe inside the hostel and they broadcast the signal from an antenna just outside the cafe. Problem arises when more and more student subscribe and connection became unstable probably because of the demanding traffic I supposed.

There was one Wi-Fi service provider a few months back came to the hostel and launched another Wi-Fi service called Blue Dream. They gave out a free trial for a week and was going to charge RM40 per month. My darling tested that one and the connection was blazing fast. For me, RM40 per month is too steep for a student to pay plus wireless environment is not something reliable you can trust yet. Apparently, the service provider got chased out by the hostel management from what I heard so the WHIS is still the sole Wi-Fi provider for UiTM’s Kolej Melati and Kolej Mawar. I wonder why TMNet hadn’t install their Hotzone service for UiTM’s residential college such as what they did at Universiti Teknologi Petronas the past several months.

Unfortunately, the WHIS is not working the past several weeks now. Basically, it’s useless and not worth the money paid. She recently found out a friend of hers who is using Maxis High-Speed 3G Broadband a couple of floors up from where her room is. The network is utilizing the Maxis 3G network for internet access. I did some reading on that last year and was taking it as an option to my highly unstable Streamyx connection. Last night, I also did some readings on a few blogs and forum as listed down below this blog post. There’s a lot of things to consider because from most of my readings, a lot of them are negative feedback. However, we all know that we tend to complain far more than praising so it’s not really fair to judge before trying right?

So earlier today, after being begged by my darling plus my eagerness to try out something new, we head down to Maxis Centre downtown Suria KLCC. Stepping inside Maxis Centre got me kind of impressed with a lot of decorations and with so many terminals promoting the latest handphone craze. After asking the officer about the product, I finally signed on the dotted line upon agreeing for a trial 30 days run of usage for the Maxis Wireless High-Speed 3G Broadband. Just to let you know, the modem is actually really bulky. I mean, your TM Net Streamyx  DSL modem is a lot smaller. So, it’s not really mobile after all. Drop by Maxis Centre if you happen to go there to see it for yourself. It’s just in front of the reception area.

Actually I don’t really need another internet connection as my house is already equipped with Wi-Fi powered by a 1MB TMNet Streamyx connection but this is a chance for me to test out this product first before handing it over to my darling for her to use. Of course I’ll do a review of it when I get my hand on it, so stay tuned.

By the way, the Maxis guy told me that they are currently receiving a lot of applications so it may take up to one month before the installation can be done. The guy also told me that a lot of people are returning the modem and asking for their money back after trying it out less than a month. Oh well, I guess I’d better wait and try it for myself before jumping into conclusion.

Related info for you to munch:

• Maxis High-Speed 3G Broadband for Home
• Maxis Broadband to broaden TMNet’s Narrowband -Alex Allied
• Sign Up Maxis Broadband -A simple & beautiful life
• 3G Broadband On The Go? PC Fair 2007 -Boredworkers.com
• Maxis launches 3.5G or HSDPA Residential Broadband -MyPDACafe.com
• Quest for Mobile Internet Connection -shutterspeaks.com
• Maxis broadband, anyone? -Jeffooi.com
• Finally,I’m back online (Using Maxis Wireless) -The Anything Goes Blog
• Should I switch to Maxis Broadband -Zeo
• Maxis HSPDA? -Bernard Travelogue & Random Ramblings

Update: I’ve wrote about my experience with this service: Maxis Wireless Internet 3G Broadband Review.

After 642-436, many students aim for 1Y0-259. Those who don’t, usually decide upon 70-536 or 70-642, before thinking of the advanced 642-642 certificate.

After reading my former blog which was hosted on Xfresh.com way back in 2004, I realized something significant, I am still using my freaking old obsolete computer!

Nevertheless, this old computer that I’m using can still handle a lot of my web projects and serve me alright. Here’s a picture of my freaking old computer:

This picture was taken back in 2004 which was almost 3 years ago and it is still the computer that I’m still using until today. If you are wondering where’s the cover, most of the time I like to keep the air flow flowing because the casing cover is made of metal so it consolidate the heat inside eventhough metal is a heat conducter. The processor is a 1.7 GHz Intel Celeron. If you have never used an Intel Celeron processor before, this kind of CPU will get really hot in a short period of time especially when you are the kind of person who tend to abuse your PC’s resources. How do you know if you are abusing your own PC or not? Take a look at this screenshot:

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and the Windows Task Manager will pop up. This is where you can see what program you have opened, how much resources is still available and the whole inside engine of Windows Operating System. You will know that you are abusing your PC when the CPU usage graph is stuck at 100%. If you have a poor PC cooling system, your computer will automatically shut down without warning. This is one of the reason it is advisable to place your computer in an air-conditioned room. Apparently, I don’t really like being in an air-conditioned room for too long so my room normally doesn’t have the air-conditioned switched on. Fortunately, my PC stays alive until today.

So, how can we learned and get to know your own PC the easy way? Get Belarc Advisor and Audit your own PC. You can also recover your original Windows XP Installation key using this software. Just don’t publish what you have on the internet like what recently happened. You can read more about Belarc Advisor here. Anyway, here’s what I find out about my computer:

I kind of symphatize myself for still using a computer with such an obsolete specification. I don’t have enough resources yet to buy a new PC. My Intel Celeron CPU is really slowing my job efficiency especially during multitasking. I’m heading to a used computer shop nearby my house to see if I could find a cheap used Pentium 4 CPU so that I could have more CPU power for my web projects.