Thankfully the router’s webmin was in English so I wasted no time in setting everything up. Or at least, to a point because I quickly discovered that there was no in-built modem and I’d have to use an external modem to connect to my ISP. That’s not really a problem because the Netgear DGN2000 that I’ve used for two years has been great in every way apart from it only being a 10/100mbit unit which is too slow for the Thecus – but obviously fast enough for internet access. I thought I’d set up the network with the D-Link and then connect that to the Netgear for internet access – should be easy enough, right?

Without an appropriate manual, I was left to Google to troubleshoot when my initial attempt failed. The D-Link seemed to connect to the internet as it was successfully checking for the latest firmware, but nothing that was connected to the D-Link could get out.

Over an hour was spent reading various forums, reviews and articles to try and get the information I required, when I then concluded that the internet is FULL of people who have NO IDEA what they’re talking about. One person would claim that the way forward was to disable DHCP on the D-Link; another to disable it on the Netgear. One person would claim that you put the ISP settings into the D-Link and use the Netgear as a pass-through; the other that you put the settings into the Netgear and let the D-Link piggy-back on it. In short, no-one had a bloody clue.

While searching for answers I also found this thread on the D-Link support forums where someone else was experiencing problems with the 655. I was distinctly unimpressed to see such a haughty attitude on Lycan, the “Technical Engineer Global Moderator” of the forum, as he proved particularly unhelpful to anyone who asked any valid questions about the unit. Idiot.

In the end I stumbled across a short discussion about Netgear. Some guy was looking for a way to set his router as a modem but couldn’t find the necessary option, and someone posted a link with a “try this” suggestion. The link was http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm, and opening this link myself brought me to a minimalist page with nothing other than router mode: modem/router or modem only. I selected modem only and immediately the machines connected to the D-Link had internet access. For some really stupid reason, this page is only available to you on the navigation pane once you’ve already set the router to modem-only – when in router/modem mode, you’ve got to type in the address which means you need to already know it’s there. Who’s the Einstein that came up with that idea?

As for the other settings that I’m using, the Netgear has a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1, DHCP and wireless are both disabled and the ISP details are specified. The D-Link has an IP of 192.168.0.10, DHCP is enabled with a range of 192.168.0.50 – 192.168.0.254, the wireless is enabled and the ISP details are also specified (manually). The internet port is connected to one of the Netgear’s LAN ports.

Hopefully this post will prove useful to others who find themselves with zero documentation and an internet-full of useless guesses!

Rather than spend a few hours trying to hack something together with drivers from the four corners of the internet, I decided that I’d buy a new scanner. After all:

1. Scanners aren’t expensive;
2. Technology has moved on a lot since I got that old Mustek and a new scanner would give better results, faster;
3. A new scanner (and its software) would actually work on 64-bit Windows 7.

I needed to scan some documents to send over to my graphics designer ASAP, so rather than place an order online and wait a few days I decided to pop down to the local industrial estate and get something from Currys/Comet.

Both Currys and Comet are right next to each other in Southport, so I went into Currys first with a view of seeing what they had available and then going into Comet to compare. On the way in I noticed a huge “Our price promise” sign next to the door that claimed that Currys would beat the price of a range of local competitors including “Argos, ASDA, Comet, Jessops, Tesco, John Lewis… in fact any local retail store”. Impressive.

Inside, Currys had three scanners – a Canon LiDE 100 for £69.99, a Canon LiDE 200 for £89.99 and a Canon CanoScan 5600F for £149.99. Thinking those prices were on the high side, I went into Comet to see what they had. Nothing. Some laptops, some printers, but no scanners. Back to Currys.

At this point I decided to check Currys’ website because I knew their products were cheaper on there, so the plan was to go in and ask for one of those scanners for their online price – something that I’ve done before with positive results. After all, if a company is willing to beat its competitors in price then it should happily match its own website. I got my phone out and navigated to the Currys website where I found that the scanner that I was most interested in (the LiDE 200) was indeed on there for a reduced price – a full 25% off in fact at £68.28.

I approached a member of staff and asked if the store would match the price they had on their website for a scanner. The assistant said no, they don’t match websites. I pointed out that this was Currys’ own website, to which he enquired if I meant Dixons. No, I was talking about Currys. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to price-match his own website, so he went off to check. A few moments later he returned and said that no, he couldn’t price-match his own website. So much for their “price promise”.

I noticed that there was a “Reserve and Collect” facility on the website, which upon closer inspection allowed me to reserve an item online for local store pick-up. I hit the button, selected the store at which I wanted to reserve my item (no prizes for guessing which store I selected), entered my name and email address and then went to the till where my reservation was already printing out. With the ink on my reservation still wet, the assistant asked a colleague to fetch the scanner for me. I paid the £68.28 (I know it’s available cheaper still online, but I really needed it today), got my receipt and walked out.

This was the most bizarre case of red tape that I’d ever experienced when making any kind of purchase. Were it not for the mobile internet exposing this blatant case of double standards, I might actually have been forced to pay £89.99 for a scanner just so that I could take it away today. Thanks to this technology however, I saved myself 25% without even leaving the store.

I contacted Currys about this and referred them to this blog post and asked them for their opinion. They made no comment.

Just use the code AD25 at checkout to apply the discount.

Jay Charles, a programmer from Virginia in the US doesn’t think so.

He bought and paid for Amayeta’s SWF Encrypt and was taken to a download page that didn’t work. His emails to customer support went unanswered, so he posted on the MDM support forums instead where he did get a reply – and was told to email support! A full six days later – after several progressively angry messages, he finally got his software.

A copy of the discussion has been saved here, just in case Jaspal goes on another thread-deletion spree. Please note that I have altered the image to take out my new username (my original account was banned for pointing out problems with MDM’s Zinc software), but everything else is 100% genuine.

Back in the Flash Studio Pro days, MDM hired Xtrabass (Jethro Grassie) to make their first OSX-supported software, Zinc 2.0. We all know how well that turned out. Jethro disappeared after that and OSX support started to falter with no-one there to support it.

MDM then hired Kevan Harriman as their lead developer (according to a news item on their website), and he worked on the Windows and OSX rewrites which gave way to the now infamous Pandora/Zinc V3. Kevan disappeared from the forums about a year ago and now runs Deep Cove Software (according to DNS records for deepcovesoftware.com), and it’s these guys that have built Inferno for MDM. That’s right, Inferno, MDM’s newest application, was developed outside of MDM because MDM currently lacks the development capability in-house. For a company that sells software, this is a serious problem, the results of which we are seeing today with Zinc V3 being so bug-ridden.

Anyway, Viper (Matthias Davis) disappeared from the MDM forums over a year ago and his website (fatal-exception.co.uk), which used to be full of Zinc-related posts, has been completely overhauled. I don’t know if Matthias was doing development or just support but that pretty much left Peter and Gambini holding the fort at MDM.

The departures of Jethro, Matthias and Kevan have had a big impact on the level of support at MDM and Gambini himself has been distracted doing stuff for his other venture, Amayeta. With no in-house expertise in the technology it’s not surprising that support sucks and they can’t get bugs fixed in a timely fashion, and with Inferno being developed externally you can bet there will be support issues with that software too.

By all accounts from people that I have spoken to, Gambini is a bit of an idiot and he’s managed to alienate pretty much everyone he’s ever worked with. It will be interesting to see if he can hold onto a decent developer long enough to fix the issues with Zinc V3 once and for all, though his other option is to do what he did with V1 and V2 before it and just ditch the software overnight and launch a new version and charge everyone an “upgrade” fee for continued support.

Think I’m making this up? Check out their forums from about 2 years ago.

Consider yourselves warned.