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ForrestGump

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  1. Last year, a lot of new company's developed their version of an electric skateboard. Now you can choose between fully equipped electric longboards or DIY solutions. Depending on what u choose, price are gonne varie between $300 - $1400. A Full in detail guide on what to expect when spending what kind of money can be found here: http://st-guide.com/#/electric-skateboards/ How many of you already own an electric skateboard or wanne buy/ build something? What are your suggestions if you want to get in to the game?
  2. Sitecom comes to the market with the claim to have built the best router we’ve seen so far. The company already has a long history when it comes to routers but never really the high end stuff. So when we speak of routers we speak of great Wi-Fi speed, range and stability. We will find out if it fills in these requirements but first a physical tour of the device itself. PHYSICAL TOUR As far as routers I never really care about the exterior as we hide it away in a dark room or such but Sitecom has really took it up a notch and made the greyhound really standout. Most people won’t place a router in direct sight but would you ever put your router in sight you might as well take the greyhound as it probably the sexiest router on the market today. When we look at the front of the device we see the brushed aluminum look with the engraved logo in the center which will illuminate when powered on. You can whoever turn this off if you desire to do so. On the right side we have 2 buttons to enable or disable both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands with accordingly 2 activity lights to show which ones are being used. On the left we see a whole lot of activity lights to inform you if a given connection is active. On the top we see the unmistakable antennas who are non-removable with the greyhound and each have an extra gain of 5dB. When we move to the back we can see some venting holes in the shape of lightning flashes. And on the bottom a whole series of connectors. Starting from the left we have 2 audio connections, one optical connection and one normal 3.5mm audio jack. Followed by a USB 3.0 connector and 4 gigabit Ethernet connections. Next we have the Wan port, the on/off switch, power connection and reset button. When we move further to the sides of the router we find another USB 3.0 and SD card slot. But wait 2 audio connections on a router? What do we need that for… Well the idea is that you connect, well any kind of speakers or receiver to the router and from there on you can stream music to and from every device connected to the network. The idea is nice but the implementation is not there yet. For instance streaming from Spotify or other streaming services is not possible yet. To me this is not something I’m looking for in a router but is nice to have should I ever find the need for this. FEATURES Ok so I’ve talked about all the external features but actually it’s the inside that has the most interesting features. So let’s take a look on what’s inside. We can get a good idea of what’s inside by taking a glance at the box it came in. The greyhound uses a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm internet processor with 512MB of DDR3 memory. It comes with an advertised Wi-Fi speed of 1750Mbps on 5GHz and 800Mbps on 2.4GHz It comes with 4 external antennas with each 5db gain which will result in an increased range. It Supports beamforming, band steering, Qualcomm Streamboost and Qualcomm Multi user EFX. Next to the supported features and great hardware one of, if not the biggest selling point is the firmware the greyhound uses. It is one of the first routers who comes standard with the openWrt system. If you are a person who likes to tinker around with the firmware of your router or if you are someone who just want’s the minimum and ease of use. Both will find what they need in the OpenWrt system. I will add an extra topic just on openWrt but for this review it would have been to much info. REAL LIFE TEST At last we come to the tests that where performed. The test we performed where to see which speeds we could reach in normal use circumstances. We tested both the 802.11 ac newest WiFi version as the older 802.11 n version. First tests were performed when router was in line of sight on a distance of 10 meters. Next tests were performed on an other floor so signal had to go through ceiling with an approximate distance of about 4 meters. Tests were performed 3 times and average was taken with results as shown in the graph. So results speak for them self, on 5GHz band speeds are around twice as fast as on the 2.4GHz band as well on line of sight as on the different floor measurement. Other findings I had whilst using this router is that my belkin wemo switches perform a lot better than before. Before switches where only half of the time detected witch meant I had to manually turn the switches on and off. But since using a decent router al problems have disappeared. CONCLUSION The sitcom Greyhound is in many ways the ultimate router. It offers many connections, good Wireless performance and runs on the versatile OpenWrt. The additional connectors are handy if you just need those but would not immediately tempt me to consider this model. OpenWrt on the other hand makes my heart beat faster. The abilities you unlock are virtually endless due to the open source firmware. In a next topic I will further dig in the usage and advantages of OpenWrt but for now we can agree this is a big plus. The router is for sale at the moment for a hefty 299 euro’s which isn’t cheap but gives you a router who will be able to compete with other similar routers to come next few years.
  3. I recently bought the new sitecom greyhound. Great device! more info on my blog http://www.st-guide.com/greyhound
  4. I'm saving for a new desktop as my laptop is over 5 years now and it is really running on his last legs... So come over to Belgium you little beast!!!
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