As I mentioned in my previous post, I did order TP-Link Archer C7 router and finally it arrived. And I decided to create small unboxing post :)

Router arrived in nice looking box:

Back side:

After I removed plastic film from box I finally can see that I have i have US model and hardware version is 5:

This is latest version and it is even still supported by TP-Link. Here is box content:

as you can router is

Recently I decided to upgrade one of my routers and I begin my search. Number one requirement for my new router is compatibility with free open source firmware called OpenWrt. I wrote more about why you should use it here.

I don’t want to buy expensive router for $200. About half of the price of such router are features that I can get for free from OpenWrt. Also, many these routers are quite powerful and hot, and my router will be in room that is not ventilated well and close to quite hot cable modem.

As result here is list of requirements for new router:

  • Price between $50-$90
  • It should not be hot
  • Minimum 16MB of flash. It is space is used for OpenWrt and any additional packages. The more flash you have the more stuff you can install. My current router has 8MB of flash and in some cases, it became limiting factor.
  • At least 64Mb of RAM, so I will not be limited by it now or in future
  • Gigabit ports because 100 megabits are not enough in 2019. My internet speed already is 200 megabits
  • Router should support WLAN 5.0GHz ac
  • Router should have USB port as I could use it to store some data. It is optional, but it is great to have because to save something permanently you have to write it to router’s flash memory and it will wear. can replace USB flash drive, but I cannot replace flash inside of the router

Today I want to talk about gaming on notebooks. Many people believe that notebooks are as fast as desktops and they are wrong. Let me explain why.

Power consumption

High end components like CPU, Video card consume a lot of power. High-end CPU and high-end video card can draw 300W-500W of power on high load. As result just for these 2 components you need at least 400W-600W power supply. These kind of power supplies actually not that compact, and it will be really hard to put in compact notebook case. Also, such power supply will be too heavy for notebook.

Cooling

Most of electricity consumed by electronic device will be converted to heat. Normally desktop CPU has 75C-80C on high

As I wrote in previous post purpose of playing game is to have fun. Let me share my road of finding ideal kind of games to play on mobile phone.

One of the longest games I played was Clash of Clans. I played more than 2 years. Game was fun to play in the beginning. You do couple of attacks, started upgrade, chat with players in your clan. You get new gear, learn how to use it, try different things, learn. But with each level, upgrades will need more resources and upgrade will take more time. And as result you slowly spending more and more time to get resources for next upgrade. In the beginning you can start upgrade in

I know many people play on mobile phone in some games. Quite often you have to wait for something like at doctor appointment and you have nothing else to do and game on your phone looks reasonable thing to spare time. I played many types of games, but I still don’t understand how people are spending money on certain things in games.

1% Spending

For example, Clash of Clans and many similar games. Say to upgrade some tower, you need 20K gold. Your gold mine produces 20K per day. Your successful attack will bring you 40K. So, you wait day, or attack somebody and got enough money to start upgrade. Looks reasonable. But next level you will need 40K, then

Let’s assume you have following C# interface on .NET:

[ComVisible(true)]
[InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)]
[Guid("1A6CC729-1D5C-4A5E-975E-1B34AD7AF6B4 ")]
public interface IFoo
{
    int CreateNew();
}

You implemented this interface in some object and passed it to native side as IUnknown. And now you want to consume this interface as IDispatch. Scripting is good example. But If you try to call QueryInterface for IDispatch on this interface it will return E_NOINTERFACE. Looks like you out of luck.

But if you try to open mscorlib.tlb you will find interface _Object with GUID {65074F7F-63C0-304E-AF0A-D51741CB4A8D} that inherits from IDispatch. And if you call QueryInterface for _Object

I strongly advice you not to buy most OEM systems. Specially Dell and HP. I will explain why.

Custom components

Very often big stores like Dell or HP will build and put custom components in their PC. As result it is not possible to upgrade them. Imagine you bought Dell PC. After some time, you would like to upgrade your video card. But this video card requires more power, so you have to upgrade power supply. But they use custom power supply with different mounting, so it is simply not possible to unscrew old one and put new one. So, you will have to buy power supply from Dell and that will be much more expensive. And actually, in some

Imagine you are tough on money but would like to buy computer. And you see relatively cheap OEM system with say Intel Core i5-4690, 8GB DDR3-1600 memory. You think that i5 has specific specs and should work with same speed everywhere. But after you bought it you will be unpleasantly surprised.

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ESkYHzT8LU

As you can see in this video, after they moved CPU and memory to different motherboard and power supply, performance of system increases a lot. Basically, Intel allow to fine tune power package and while it will be same Core i5-4690 it will work much slower in such OEM system with tuned down power package.

Firstly, I blame Intel for this situation. The

As I wrote before, finally I had to update to Skype 8. I was experiencing strange glitches and at the end I was forced to update. It still looks extremely bad but couple of most annoying issues was fixed.

But today I want to talk about Skype icon in notification area. After some time after I did upgrade on my home computer, I did notice strange empty space as shown on picture below:

After some time, I did realize that it is actually Skype that lost its icon. Strange but well and I did restart Skype. After some time, icon did disappear again. Then I did realize that icon did disappear