I played w/ OpenVPN 2 release candidate a couple of months ago. Mostly likely my own fault for not RTFM, but I couldn’t get it to work then. I gave up w/o much trying. James’ acquisition of a Wifi broadband…

It took me a long while to figure out what is color space and what is profile. The are different.

The reason my cousin-in-law and I wanted the HP8750 is its stunning Black and White printing. I was looking at the B&W sample print outs and couldn’t believe my eyes how good they looked. Even better than Dai c’s silver prints if I may add ;-p. If not for the B&W prints I would opt for an even larger printer. Unfortunately, none of the current larger printers have this kind of print quality either Color or B&W. Perhaps the latest Epsons like the 9800 could beat the HP8750 quality, but it’s probably over HK$20K which is way way over my reach. And that’s close to Plasma price and we are back to the same question – why bother printing if we could do slide shows.

I already have a Epson 1270 and I can print my own A3+ photos. However, I just begin to understand the color management workflow, and now I am geting better matching color with download profile for my printer/paper together with the soft-proof function of PS.

The result was quite disappointed without color management.

I would imagine that the only time saved having it printed over the net would be the first batch or even just the first page of the print jobs. Should the print results not being satisfactory, subsequent reprints would still have to be done on-site. Which is both more and less desirable since no 2 monitors are color matched to the exact. So even if it is technically possible, it may not be all that convenient as ideally. While my cousin-in-law is willing to pay half of the price of the printer without knowing he could print over the net, this is something I’d have to discuss with him.

Like Roy said, the fun is in watching it print.

All I know is the cheaper routers that say VPN does not work the way I need it to, and all other ones that do work cost over HK$1200 with the exception of this Buffalo one. Captain Tin is in charge.

With the appropriate router in place, it should not be too difficult to set-up a VPN tunnel because the hardwares have did the trickest part for you. You are not setting up a M$ or Linux VPN server. That should be easy. I would also suggest to select an odd port and block all other port access with the firewall function of your router (all VPN router should comes with firewall as well).

No much idea about wifi security, but many of router has backdoors, and very easy to crack in if you know the router’s model and the concerned backdoor. Otherwise, if you properly set-up the security function, it’s almost impossible to hack you.

In my neighborhood, I have some 6 wi-fi signals broadcasted with some non-secured lines. There are planty of breadcrumbs for the stray cats. If they got hacked, it’s their own fault for not RTFM.

I was rather amused when that first sales today asked me if wireless is all that necessary for me. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be looking for one. Once notebook is used, wi-fi pretty much became a necessity; and like smoking and drinking, although I don’t smoke and I have quit drinking myself, one just can’t worry too much about every single detail when reasonable or max affordable security has been setup.

On an other kind of security, my brother-in-law laughed at me for not opening and trashing any email that’s irrelvent even if they were from “known” people for he thinks there could be important email. If any thing were important enough, don’t send them via email. If they were sent, any senders who do not receive my reply, send again by other means. In email, nothing is worth more than a system crash by a virus. If people sent me something via email, there is nothing important.

Leon would be the man the answer whether an AP is really that much better than a wifi router.

As the wireless LAN is an extension of your LAN, security is most important. I recommend coop members to access IMAP via SSL, and send email via mother w/ TLS. In a wireless environment, it just isn’t too difficult for any competent hacker to be able to read one’s email if one receives/sends one’s email via unencrypted POP3/SMTP.

Not to mention the airpwn plank http://www.evilscheme.org/defcon/.