Oh yeah, if you live in an apartment building (or any place that shares power lines) it might be weird. 

for all the information!

So I think I will stick with the wired connections for now then. I had never considered PLC but have no idea how many power phases this house has, any quick and easy way to find out, perhaps its on the meter somewhere? 

you can network through power lines?? 

Yep. It sounds like science fiction, I know, but I swear it works. I have my consoles running on it and it works great. 

I use my wireless over 1 floor and at any one time can have three units (2 laptops, 1 PC) accessing the same system. I have never had any drop out over the 5 years I have had it. I have a mixture of equipment by Belkin, Thomson and Intel, all G standard. I am with BT.

I also use a laptop in the garden in the summer at a range of about 50 feet, with four 9 inch walls between.

I can also pick up my neighbour's system four houses away, and used it on more than one occasion in the early days before he made it secure. I have just had a quick check and there are 8 other wireless connections that I could get onto right now in my immediate vicinity.

Go for N technology, not G, if you have the choice. There's realy no difference between the common players - Netgear, D-Link, Belkin etc, just buy the best you can afford. 

Go LinkSys tbh. It's basically budget Cisco stuff. 

Plug the router in and get a friend with a laptop to wander around the house reporting what the signal strength is like? 

tie one end of the ethernet cable to a rat, then push it into the nearest mousehole. Then, put some cheese near a mousehole in the room with your computer. When the rat comes out of the mousehole, grab the rat, untie the cable and plug it into your computer. 

 

ratin likes mouses 

Compusa.com is having a decent sale on a 52" Phillips HDTV 1080p 1920x1080 for $1000 - any idea how good that particular model/brand is?

* 52-inch LCD with a 16:9 aspect ratio
* 33,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio
* True 1080p signal compatibility
* Integrated USB port
* Settings assistant
* Pixel Plus HD
* Four HDMI inputs 

Only 30000:1 contrast? Lol, the colors will look like shite on it. 

Can't help you - the concept of spending that much on a tv is mind blowing to me right now... 

I looked at the price tag on the TV, then looked at a news clip about Haiti, then back to the TV, and I think I would just feel like an asshole if I purchased it. 

You are doing it wrong, such purchases are supposed to make you feel better about yourself, unless you are the kind of person who actually spends time wondering how it's "wrong" that in a day of active use, your gaming videocard alone uses as much electricity as an average african family in about 6 months.

Note: you don't have to give a shit. Really. 

The way to look at it, IMO, is that Haiti is not my problem to fix. Now, I sent money to Doctors Without Borders because I wanted to but it wasn't out of a sense of guilt. I wanted to help those people so I did it in the only way that I realistically can.

Buy whatever you like, Haiti or any other world disaster is not your personal responsibility. Donate if you feel strongly about what happened, though. 

You only care about Haiti because you saw it on television. You did not care about the people's situation before. You should buy a bigger TV so when the next natural disaster is live, you can more than now. 

 

Well, they didn't HAVE this situation before. Their entire capital city is leveled and there's something like 100,000+ dead. This isn't an every day occurrence in Haiti. 

If I bought the tv I would just be watching the suffering of millions of Haitians in glorious 52" 1080p HD. That would bother me. 

I generally feel guilty when I buy big-budget items, because I normally do so when I don't need to. I mean, I don't know if I ever need to, but the point being it's sort of a "I should have saved my money" feeling instead. 

Zwiffle

Well, that's a different issue. If you aren't saving any money and you buy something like that then, yeah, maybe you're being dumb. 

Well I do save, but not as much as I think I should be saving, considering the economy and stuff. I would like to have enough saved up to cover me for a few months if things go sour. 

at least with a CRT, you could live in the box when things go sour. LCD boxes are too thin. 

also, as a self-righteous communist (aka humanities graduate) - JOKING - I think there's a good argument that most people in the west live way above what a reasonable standard of living would be before you start putting your money toward fixing some of the world's many problems. One person can't change much, but when I do make money that I consider above that standard, I'll feel better knowing that this extra money will be going toward getting rid of corruption, stupidity, and the particular combination of both known as religion.