Disable Actiontec M1000's Router

If have a DSL subscription and are using the default settings on the Actiontec M1000 modem as well as another wireless router you aren't getting the most out of your internet connection.  Because the M1000 has the ability to add a wireless adapter and be a wireless router the M1000 acts like a router by default.  If you have another wireless router which you are actually connected to, your internet connected device is going over an additional hop to get to the internet.  Here is what you need to do:

Configure Your Modem to be a Transparent Bridge

First, you need your DSL subscription login name and password.  These will be what you used to set your modem up for the first time.  If you don't have them, you can call your provider and they should be able to give them to you.  Second,  you need to configure your modem to be a transparent bridge.  Go into the modem configuration page by typing 192.168.0.1 into a web browser.  Go to the Advanced Setup section.  Select WAN IP Address in the left-hand column.  Select the button next to the RFC 1483 Transparent Bridging and click Apply.     

Configure Your Router to Connect with PPPoE

This article is going to use a LINKSYS router for the configuration.  Go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser and enable PPPoE.  You will have to use your DSL login name and password here. Once you have done that save your settings and wait for your internet connection to reconnect.  You have now removed one of the hops in your internet connection.

I didn't see any kind of performance increase in my internet after changing these settings but it doesn't make sense to use two routers either.  My hope is that this will help with using remote desktop when I build my new machine later today (more on that in a later post!).

How To Get the Most out of your Netbook

There are a lot of articles out there telling people how to get the most out of their netbook and some of the articles are pretty good but others are downright awful.  So this is going to be my list of suggestions and what I personally have done to my Lenovo S10-3 to get it to perform the way I need it to perform.

First off, if you are new to using netbooks you have to lower your expectations.  You are not going to be able to start-up and shutdown as fast as you can on a full size laptop or desktop.  You won't be able to play graphic intensive games.  Your netbook first and foremost is a portable internet browsing device.  It is a compromise between a smart phone and a laptop.  That being said, let's get on to the list!

1. Most other articles out there are going to tell you to remove the manufacturer's bloatware somehow.  Whether it be manually or with the assistance of a program like PC Decrapifier.   I am going to tell you that you will get the best performance out of your netbook by doing a clean install of Windows 7 all together.  Now if you don't have access to a copy of Windows 7, I don't suggest you go out and buy one.  Getting a little extra performance isn't worth spending an additional $130, but if you are like me and have access to Windows 7 downloads then you can't beat the performance boost that a clean install will give you.  There are plenty of ways to get a clean install of Windows 7 on your machine.  You can either burn the image file to a disc and install it with an external DVD drive or you can create a bootable flash drive with software like Microsoft's own bootable USB creator.  Regardless of the method you choose the end result will be the same.
2. The next best thing that you can do is upgrade your RAM from 1GB to 2GB.  Most, if not all netbooks are capable of using 2 GB of RAM and there is no reason you shouldn't do this simple upgrade.
3. The standard resolution on netbook screens is 1024x600.  That means that a lot more stuff fits on your screen from left to right than it does from top to bottom.  So why would you leave your task bar at the bottom of the screen?  Move the task bar to either the left or the right side of the screen.  Your other option is to automatically hide the task bar but when things disappear and reappear on their own on my screen it gets a little annoying and I opt to keep the task bar to the left edge of my screen.
4. Use an antivirus other than Norton!  I would opt for one of the freebies like Avira or Avast.  Antivirus software is one of the largest memory hogs your system is going to have so in order to minimize the impact I would go for something a little easier on the machine.  

There are certainly more ways that you can optimize your machine but the above four will get you started.  After upgrading to 2GBof RAM my machine consistently idles at about 30% of memory usage, leaving over 1.5GB for any other task I throw at it.  Please leave your thoughts and comments!