I purchased my D-Link DNS-323 on the 1st September 2008 during Comex 2008.

3 days ago, my DNS-323 decided to give up on me, just after 1 year and 3 months! The warranty for the DNS-323 is only 1 year so my warranty had just ended! Argh!

I thought I might try my luck, I wrote in to D-Link saying I am a blogger blah blah blah and a huge fan of D-Link, spending SGD$519 worth of D-Link products during IT Show 2009 and to see if out of goodwill, they can RMA for me. But if it fails, at lest I tried and time to hoot a new NAS.

Here is what happen:

• I found my DNS-323 switched off and immediately power it back on.
• Works normally after powering it on, but after an hour, the DNS-323 disconnect itself from the network.
• I tried powering it off and on again by pressing on the power button but to no avail.
• I have to manually plug out the power cable and plug in back in again and press the power button to power it on.
• Works normally again, but as usual, after an hour, it disconnect itself from the network again.
• Power button still does not work, have to manually plug out and in the power cable to reboot it.
• This time round, the power LED light blinks non-stop after booting up
• I tried hard reset, swapping the harddisks, removing the harddisks, all could not work, the power light continue to blink.
• I seek help from my friend, Andy, who is an expert with D-Link products, tried some of his method but still could not get the DNS-323 to hard reset

While waiting for D-Link to reply me, I did some research on 2-Bay NAS and have narrowed down to the following 4 choices which is within my budget.

SYNOLOGY Disk Station DS210j

Price: SGD$408
Official Link: SYNOLOGY Disk Station DS210j
Memory World Link: SYNOLOGY Disk Station DS210j

QNAP TS-210

Price: SGD$514
Official Link: QNAP TS-210
Memory World Link: QNAP TS-210

NetGear ReadyNAS Duo (Diskless)

Price: SGD$429
Official Link: NetGear ReadyNAS Duo (Diskless)

Thecus N3200 Pro

Price: SGD$499
Official Link: Thecus N3200 Pro
Note: This is 3-Bay NAS, but I included it because it is within my budget.

The purpose of me using a NAS is to share files within my home network and to use it as a BitTorrent machine. I also backed up my files on it, so I will definitely run RAID1 with it. Any recommendations on which one I should settle for eventually? Please leave a comment. Thanks a lot!

Woke up at 10am today, left my house at 10.30am to Suntec City with my brother for the IT Show 2009. I decided to park at Marina Square instead of Suntec City to avoid jam at the carpark. Reach Marina Square before 11am, and still manage to eat McDonalds Breakfast.

After breakfast, immediately went to wait outside level 6 of the Suntec exhibition center. While waiting, there is this lady from MediaCorp Radio approaches us for interview. She talked to me in English first and then ask me whether I can do a Mandarin interview, I agreed since I got nothing to do. She ask some questions like what are you buying at the IT Show, how often you come to this type of fair and how much savings you can save. I am so handicapped in Mandarin. I have no idea how to translate laser, router, switch, wirless USB adapter to Mandarin!

Exactly at 12pm, the doors are opened and the security personnel got Zerg rushed! Went to the Ban Leong booth first as my brother wanted to take a look at Razor mouse as his is dying soon. As usual the promotion for Razer is nothing fantastic, I think you can get even cheaper outside for certain Razor products (eg: Lycosa Keyboard).

Went to the D-Link booth and asked if I buy above SGD$500 got discount, the sales guy said only if I pay cash he can give me 2% which I thought it is definitely not a good promotion at all. If I pay by credit card, I get free gifts as well as points! UOB is having some promotion, I think if you spend above a certain amount, they will give you some things free. I am aiming on the sure-win lucky dip if you spend more than SGD$850.

Damage at D-Link Booth

• D-Link DIR-855: SGD$299
• D-Link DGS-1008D: SGD$100
• D-Link DWA-160: SGD$119
• Total: SGD$518

After getting my networking stuffs, went to level 4 to Samsung booth to get my multifunction color laser printer. Saw Kelvin from Fuwell and Daniel’s Samsung colleague which I met at BlogOut! 2009. Fuwell is selling Samsung LCD Monitors whereas Harvey Norman is selling the Samsung printers. Samsung printers come with trolley but pushing the trolley though the crowd is no easy task! The printer box is quite bulky whereas the printer is quite small itself. The price for the CLX-3175N is still the same but this time instead of giving Abalone (during Chinese New Year promotion), they are giving a free black toner and you are entitled to buy additional toners at 20% off. Pretty good steal I would say.

Wanted to pay by UOB for my printer and toner but it got rejected! My mom literally max out every credit card when she is in Japan as well as for the down payment of the BMW. So end up paying with HSBC and there goes my sure-win lucky dip. Instead I got a SGD$5 Starbucks voucher for spending above SGD$350 for my UOB card. I kinda like the lucky draw form in IT Show 2009, every SGD$100 spend entitled you for one lucky draw form. I don’t really make an effort to get the lucky draw forms normally so I maybe a bit noob in this area. The lucky draw is carbonized, so you just have to write on 1 and it will be carbon copied to 4 other copies! Also the forms are short and sweet, just fill in your name, NRIC and contact number!

Damage at Samsung Booth

• Samsung CLX-3175N: SGD$698
• Samsung CLT-P409C: SGD$184 (Toner Value Pack)
• Total: SGD$882

After buying all the stuffs that I set out to buy, we went home to put the stuff before my brother send me to school for my Statistics tutorial at 3pm to 4pm.

D-Link Networking Products + Samsung 3-in-1 Multifunction Color Laser Printer And Toner

After my tutorial, went to the IT Show again with Kelvin and Hong Jun. Kelvin went there and got a ViewSonic 24″ monitor with built-in speakers and he helped his girlfriend to get an iPod Nano (Black). Saw Rayman : Raving Rabbids for Xbox 360 at the PlayCraft booth and I immediately bought it! Finally there is a “family” game on my Xbox 360 besides Bomberman to play with Li Xiang. I wished that Raving Rabbids 2 will also be out on Xbox 360, but I think that will not be the case.

Rayman : Raving Rabbids For Xbox 360

Damage at Playcraft Booth

• Rayman : Raving Rabbids (Xbox 360): SGD$49.90
• Total: SGD$49.90

Saw from Hardware Zone that the Ovation booth are selling Western Digital internal harddisk, so went there to get 1TB Western Digital Green Power for Li Xiang, but it is out of stock and the stock will be coming in at about 7pm.

Instead of waiting there till 7pm, the three of us when for dinner at Marina Square food court. Hong Jun, my family and I Just love the curry noodle there! Met up with my secondary school friends there as well. When they came, Hong Jun and Kelvin went home.

After dinner, I went to the IT Show the third time within the same day and immediately went to buy Li Xiang harddisk. This time it is so crowded that I could not even make a call out when I am in the hall! It seems that the base station has been overloaded either that of my iPhone 3G sucked.

Li Xiang’s Damage at Ovation Booth

• Western Digital Green Power (1TB): SGD$165
• Total: SGD$165

I injected SGD$1,449.90, Li Xiang injected SGD$165 and Kelvin injected about SGD$600+ into Singapore’s economy!

Went to Sitex 2008 yesterday with Julian, Kelvin and Weiquan. Surprising it was not very crowded. Now I am starting to dislike exhibitions at Sitex because it is so far! This year Sitex is quite a disappointment, Ban Leong did not take part and hence no Razer products. After walking Hall 5 and 6 of Singapore Expo, it makes me feel that this exhibition is selling TV instead of computer! The prices for some of the stuffs are not that cheap at all. I got my D-Link DNS-323 at SGD$199 from Comex 2008 back in August 2008 but now they are selling at SGD$209? Prices should drop and not increase!

I think the most value for money are the memory cards, thumbdrives and portable hardisk. Kelvin and I got the SanDisk Ultra II (Class 4) 8GB SDHC for just SGD$33. Julian got the SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin 4GB Thumbdrive for just SGD$12! I bought the exact same thumbdrive for SGD$19.90 at Giant Hypermarket a few months back!

I also got my brother a TravelPac Memory/SIM Card Reader for SGD$26.90.

I did not get for Li Xiang the Samsung 2233SW 22” widescreen LCD monitor because the images look squashed on the monitor perhaps due to the long width and short height and a weird resolution of 1920×1080 and an aspect ratio of 16:9 whereas widescreen monitors all have an aspect ratio of 16:10.

After Sitex 2008, we proceed on to Bugis to have lunch and then went to Sim Lim Square! Julian bought Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir for SGD$39.90, Weiquan bought the X-Mini Capsule Speakers for SGD$35 and Kelvin bought a memory card reader for SGD$12.

Judging from what we buy at Sim Lim Square, there is nothing much to buy at Sitex 2008 actually.

I am aiming for the D-Link DIR-655 wireless N router to upgrade my home network “infrastructure”, it is selling at SGD$139 during the special promotion but it is limited to the first 30 customers at 6.30pm yesterday. The usual price is SGD$229. Hopefully the next IT exhibition (IT Show 2009) on the 12th March 2009 will have better promotions for it.

Schedules for 2009 IT exhibitions:

• IT Show 2009: 12th March 2009 to 15th March 2009 (Suntec City)
• The PC Show 2009: 11th June 2009 to 14th June 2009 (Suntec City)
• Comex 2009: 10th September 2009 to 13th September 2009 (Suntec City)
• Sitex 2009: 26th November 2009 to 29th November 2009 (Singapore Expo)

Comex 2008
Comex 2008 was held in Suntec City Convention Center from the 28th August 2008 to the 31st August 2008. I hooted the following:

For My Mom:

• Canon Color Ink For Canon Printer MX700 – SGD$50 (Free SGD$10 NTUC Vouchers)
• 2x Canon Black Ink For Canon Printer MX700 – SGD$44 (Free SGD$5 NTUC Vouchers)

For Li Xiang:

• Canon Color Ink Value Pack Canon Printer MP160 – SGD$55 (Free SGD$5 NTUC Vouchers)
• Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse – SGD$19.90

For Myself:

• D-Link DNS-323 – SGD$199 (Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell selling for SGD$235)

D-Link DNS-323
I have been aiming for the DNS-323 for quite a couple of weeks, Fuwell is selling for $235 which is a little steep. I am quite surprise Comex is only selling for $199 as from what I heard PC Show 2008 which is held back in June is selling for $189. But nevertheless, it is still cheaper than $235. I went to Comex on Thursday, 28th August 2008, and at 12pm sharp, when the doors are open, I headed straight to the D-Link booth. I have already did my homework on where the booth is located. Once I am at the booth, I told the temp staff I want the DNS-323 and he got stun for a few seconds as I think he didn’t expect me to buy it so fast, if I am not wrong, I am the first customer of the booth.

2 weeks before Comex 2008, I have already went to Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell to buy Western Digital Caviar Green Power (GP) 1TB for SGD$220. At that time I did not want to run RAID 1 and hence I only bought 1 HDD. But after getting the DNS-323 and playing it on Friday, I decided to try RAID 1 and hence the next day I went to Sim Lim Square’s Fuwell to get the exact same hard drive which I bought 2 weeks ago. The price is still the same.

Western Digital Green Power hard drive is fantastic, it is very quiet, even when I put the 2 hard drives into the DNS-323, overall it is still quiet. The only irritating thing is the blue LED lights which is so bright when all the lights are off.

I got a major problem when running RAID 1 on the DNS-323, the formatting of drives always get stuck at 94% and after lots of goggling, I realized that it is a firmware bug. I downgraded to 1.04 (currently is 1.05) and set the inactivity timer to 90mins instead of the default value and that seems to solve the problem.

D-Link DNS-323 Box

D-Link DNS-323 Box Contents

Western Digital Caviar Green Power (GP) 1TB

Space Chimps
Caught Space Chimps a couple of weeks ago and the movie was just average, the funniest part of the movie are all in the trailer.

Death Race
Caught Death Race last week, starring Jason Statham, Joan Allen and Ian McShane. It is directed by Paul WS Anderson. The movie was good and basically it is a action packed movie almost throughout the whole movie.

WALL-E
WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class and EVE stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. I have been wanting to watch this movie since the trailer aired in Singapore quite a number of months ago. Managed to catch it at GV Max on Friday midnight show. The show was good in terms of both storyline and humor. Go and catch it.

I saw the toy selling for SGD$19.90 for both WALL-E and EVE. So tempted to get it but in the end didn’t get it. You can view the toys here.

Dad’s Back For 4 Days
My dad came back on Saturday for 4 days and will be leaving on Tuesday, 2nd September 2008. Vietnam has a public holiday and his company give them another day off and my dad just need to take 1 day leave and he can come back for 4 days.

We have been bringing him around eating and eating as Hanoi food is not suitable for him. He lost about 2kg and now I can see his 6-pack.

The next time he will be back shall be in December 2008 where his contract ends. He might renew his contact if the offer is good.

Been a long time since I blogged about my personal life because there is nothing much to blog about. Also I have not watched any movie for the past 1 month plus! The last movie that I watched was The Dark Knight in KL!

School
Just ended my first week of school. It is a 4 day week for me where Monday is my off day. Just when I thought I have to take 4 exams for this semester, I was wrong, the new module CS3361 do not have an exam! Our lecturer who is the CTO of IBM Singapore, told us this piece of good news today. So now I have 3 papers to study for and my last date of my examination is 27th November 2008.

Taiwan
I will be going to Taiwan with Li Xiang during December. My mom got 2 free tickets for a 6 days 5 nights trip to Taiwan as she bought 2 lorries for her office and each lorry is entitled to 1 ticket. Li Xiang and I was thinking of extending the trip to about 2 weeks instead of just 6 days so that we can explore more. Hopefully we are able to do it. Keeping my fingers cross.

Wanted to wait till I am in Taiwan before I get the Asus EEE PC, but apparently the price difference is not that great. According to some online site I checked, it is just a different of SGD$50 and the keyboard layout maybe in Chinese and Taiwan has different voltage from Singapore. Since there are so many factors to consider, I think I shall get my netbook in Singapore. Now I am considering between Dell, Lenovo and Asus. Dell and Lenovo will launch their netbook soon.

Comex 2008
Comex 200 will take place on the 28th August 2008 till 31st August 2008 at Suntec City Exhibition Center (entire levels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6). The opening hours is from 12pm to 9pm.

Thinking of getting the D-Link DNS-323 (2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure) and along with a 1TB Western Digital Harddisk Drive for my home. The DNS-323 is running on Linux and hence I can do a great deal of stuff on it like use it as a Torrenting machine, FTP server and even a Web Server.

Going to get Li Xiang a USB mouse as her mouse gave up on her a few months back.

Apple iPhone 3G
Singtel will be announcing the price plan for Apple iPhone 3G next week before officially releasing it on 22th August 2008. I have gotten all the documents (authorization letter and my mom’s NRIC) ready for me to jump ship from M1 to Singtel. Apparently when doing the true number portability from one operator to another operator, the account name must be the same for both operators. My M1 line is under my mom’s name and hence when I use the true number portability in Singtel, I need to apply under my mom’s name as well and not mine.

The funny thing is that my mom is using my name for her Singtel line as last time when I was in National Service (NS), they offered discounted plans for NSF and hence my mom switch it to under my name.

My M1 plan will end officially on 24th August 2008 and Singtel will launch the iPhone on the 22nd August 2008. This means that I have to sign up an account with Singtel on the 22nd August 2008 as well. I called Singtel to ask whether 2 days does make a difference in the true number portability as technically my plan with M1 have not ended yet and the CSO said it is fine. Woot!

I am using the iPod Touch and I dare to say that no other devices can come close to the iPod Touch/iPhone in terms of web surfing experience.

With the voice and data plan bundled together with the iPhone, I can surf the Internet wherever I go without worrying about the data charges.

Now the only thing we can hope is Singtel don’t disappoint us with the pricing.

Dad Coming Back For 4 Days
My dad is coming back on the 30th August 2008 for 4 days as there is a long weekend in Vietnam during that week and my dad just need to take 1 day of leave. I have already planned on where to bring my dad go eat to make my dad gain back the weight that he lost in Hanoi.

2 weeks ago, I have already book a table at MELT for Lunch on the 31st August 2008.