Network Magic – No Magic Here

Although I have been using HomeNet Manager on our wireless home network with success for the the past year, I thought I would try Network Magic since we use a Cisco/Linksys Router (WRT54G2), and since Pure Networks has recently come under the Cisco umbrella. I thought that this switch might clear up some minor issues I have had with SingleClick Systems HomeNet Manager. NOT TRUE! I completely uninstalled HNM from all our computers, rebooted and installed Network Magic. The problems were immediate. Network Magic could not identify my router – not a good start. It then could not recognize that Network Magic was installed on the other computers – giving warnings that Network Magic needed to be installed. Finally, it could not access the HP printer connected to one of the computers. I went through the help files to attempt to resolve these issues with no success. I have since reinstalled HomeNet Manager, and things are working once again. No, it’s not perfect, but it is immensely better for our wireless home network than the “magic” of Cisco.

del.icio.us Tags: network magic,cisco,linksys,router,wrt54g2,pure networks,homenet manager,singleclick systems,wireless network,hp printer

4 NETFLIX® Priority Codes Up For Grabs

I just received 4 NETFLIX Priority Codes cards to give away. They are redeemable for another week (until October 31, 2008) for a free one month trial to NETFLIX service. We have been very happy with the service thus far and recently installed the "ROKU Player" that allows you to view some of the movies available through NETFLIX on your TV. The player connects to your television and receives movies from NETFLIX over your broadband service via a connection to your router.

After a few hiccups, we were able to get the service working with our "old" router - a D-link Dl-614+ router. For some reason, the ROKU player was hijacking the IP address of my HP laptop, so I was not able to connect to the Internet when the ROKU player was connected. Updating the driver for my laptop's Broadcom adapter did not help, but updating the Broadcom's WLAN utility did. For some reason the new version of the Broadcom WLAN utility is able to reserve an IP address for my laptop with my router and keep the ROKU player from taking it.

Anyway, back to the NETFLIX Priority Codes - if you are one of the first four people to reply to this post, I will provide you with a code and the URL to activate your free month.