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Given the advances of the past couple decades, ice fishing equipment has come a long way.  Gone are the days of freezing your tail off, hunched over a hole with a rod cut from a summer pole attempting to catch fish through a hole in the ice.  Today’s equipment allows for unprecedented mobility as well as great comfort to allow for longer and more successful trips to the ice.  Below is a list of the top 10 things that you can get to make your time on the ice more productive and enjoyable.

    10) Ice Fishing Plastics   

Today’s plastics are revolutionary in that they at times catch more fish than live bait.  This normally comes from their scent and durability.  Using one piece of Berkley Powerbait to catch a dozen fish is not uncommon.

    9) Wheel House

Gone are the days of 3 hours to move your permanent ice house.  With a wheel house you can jack it back up, hook it up to the truck and move on down to your next ice fishing destination.  A great way to cover more ice and not dread moving from a hot spot that has gone south.

    8) Glow Jigs

Perfect for those low light times or when fishing water that is murky, many of today’s jigs come with glow paint on them that often increases catch rates immensely.  Popular models include the Lindy Frostee and the Genz Bug.  Simply place the jig next to a light source, preferably an LED light source, and your jig will illuminate very bright to draw in the fish.

    7 Underwater Ice Fishing Camera

Nothing has increased people’s understanding of the underwater world more than this piece of equipment.  The underwater camera allows you to watch everything that is going on beneath the ice on a TV screen.  It allows you to use minor adjustments to coax more fish into biting your bait.

    6) GPS with Lake Contour Software

The advent of the GPS allowed for people to bring high technology with them wherever they went.  Couple that with lake contour software, and we can go directly to the structure we see on our GPS.  This saves unknown time finding new spots as well as pinpointing the exact spot that was successful in the past.  Lakemaster makes excellent contour software for Garmin and Lowrance devices.

    5) Modern Ice Fishing Rod

Today’s ice fishing rods are built specifically for high performance ice fishing.  With a spine that allows one to play the fish as they fight, these rods are far superior than the rods of yesteryear.  You can even tailor the action of the rod to fit the fishing you are doing from ultra light for panfish to a heavy duty ice rod for northern pike. 

    4) Portable Propane Heater

Nothing is worse than being cold while a hot bite is on.  The beauty of today’s heaters is both their portability as well as their heat output.  Some models are even safe indoors, and are great for heating up your portable or permanent shelter.  Mr. Heater and Coleman are the major brands in this space and both produce excellent heaters to keep you on warm and content on the ice.

    3) Portable Ice Fishing Shelter

Lightweight and extremely portable, the tent-like ice shelters you can purchase today allow for comfort, style and charm all while providing you opportunity to follow the hot bite.  The shelters go up and come down quickly and really keep the elements at bay.  Clam, Eskimo and Eastman all produce a high quality portable ice shanty for your ice fishing needs.

    2) Gas Powered Ice Auger

Today’s ice angler is all about moving to keep on the hot bite.  Couple that mentality with an ultra sharp gas powered ice auger of today and you can make swiss cheese of any lake you are on.  By punching many holes before you start fishing you can move at will and not spook the fish if they have moved slightly in one direction.  You will find high quality models from Strikemaster, Jiffy, and Eskimo to quench your thirst for catching more fish.

  1) Ice Fishing Flasher

 Perhaps no tool is more powerful than the ice fishing flasher.  Allowing the fisherman to see the entire water column as well as their bait leads to more fish on the ice.  Utilizing a flasher combined with the many holes you punched with your ice auger you can move quickly if no fish are below a hole.  With varying colors to mark how big an object below the flasher is, you can see when a fish rises to take your bait.  They are invaluable when fishing for suspended fish like crappies which would otherwise be overlooked.

With all the technology and innovation afforded to ice fishermen today there is no reason catching more fish needs to be a pipe dream.  If you combine even 3 of the items listed above you will greatly increase your chances are catching more and bigger fish.

Alienware Area 51 – M7700 – The Dream

Flashback year 2006, everyone in the computer world got stunned as Alienware unveiled their new breed of customizable gaming laptop, the Alienware Area 51. Back then, this gaming laptop was hands down every gamers’ dream for a gaming laptop. If not for its steep price back then, everyone would probably work double jobs just to get their hands on this formerly jaw-dropping gaming notebook – including myself.

What more could a gamer ask for in a gaming laptop? What game or 3d application do you think would not be running without a snag on the Alienware Area 51 M7700’s 3.8 GHz of hyper threading raw processing power provided by Intel’s Pentium 4 processor? Add Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GTX with 256mb of dedicated memory for stunning visuals. Not to mention its 4 GB of PC5300 DDR 2 of ram. And of course, nobody with a right mind would settle for less than 7200 rpm for a hard drive given you already have all the previously mentioned top performing specs. Definitely not I!

Oh well, those were the days when all I could do is daydream on getting my hands on the world’s best gaming laptop. Luckily for me, the time for daydreaming is over. Even with our present economic challenges, I have managed well enough to be able to finally get myself the gaming laptop that I deserve.

Dilemma to get Alienware Area 51 – M7700

Ok. Now here is the funny part. I finally got enough cash to splurge on my dream gaming laptop right? So shopping I tried to do. And guess what? Alienware does not sell my dream no more! How ironic. How ironic indeed. I guess my dream will have to remain a dream for a little bit longer – Oh yes! I definitely am not giving up on this baby!

After countless hours trying to get quality information from Alienware’s customer support on how I could get my hands on the Alienware Area 51 M7700, I gave up on the Alienware’s horrific customer service and I took a step back to assess what options I got left in getting what I have dreamed of.

Then it hit me. EBay! There, I finally found one Alienware Area 51 M7700! Right then and there, I almost purchased it outright specially with it’s less than $ 1,000 price tag. Lucky for me I did not let my emotions get the better of me. I checked on the details of the unit being sold by this EBay seller. It does look like it’s in excellent condition; I will give the unit that. However, the configured specs are a little low for my taste. And the worst part? No option for a warranty! Oh no! Definitely not going with that one now. Not unless I want to end up going bald for issues that might arise after buying the rig.

The Solution

Just when things seemed too dark, a light shined at service.ztronics.com. They had some of the few Alienware Area 51 M7700 left on the planet. And not just that. There units are configured even better than how I dreamed it should be years back. And the best part? They have a 1 year warranty as an option. Need I say more?

At long last, I’m off gaming with what the critics and gamers alike dubbed as the best gaming laptop for months on end. All thanks to everyone at service.ztronics.com specially their top-notch customer service!

For more details on any variant of Alienware Area 51 you may contact http://service.ztronics.com or call at – 714-979-9877

Most Internet service providers (ISP) have made it part of their package to change IP. The Internet Protocol address, or the IP address, of a computer is that computer’s unique address in the online network. And in offering online security and privacy to its customers, the Internet service providers have gone on to use dynamic IPs instead of static IPs.

In your quest to choose an Internet service provider for your home computer or your office connection, you should consider the type of IP address that the service is providing. The recommended one of the two would by the dynamic IPs.

Let us first be familiar with the two types of IP addresses. The first is the static IP, which is assigned to the computer by the network. This address does not change whenever we connect to the Internet. The settings of your computer will remain the same and intact, allowing the computer to connect to the Internet and get data faster.

In contrast to the static IP address, the dynamic IP address is allocated by a router, and it uses DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The DHCP allows for the allocation of an IP address to your computer when you connect to the Internet. It picks up the allocated IP address from a pool of IP addresses available, and every time you connect to the Internet you will have a different IP address. Most Internet service providers use this for their customers. Not all, though, and we have to know what kind of address system the Internet service providers are running on.

As stated above, dynamic IPs are the preferred one of the two. They were made to change and go to another computer user, giving another user that IP address. Your IP will also will be a different one the next time you log onto the Internet. It’s a change “wheel” going on with dynamic IPs, and it is an advantage for us. The change in IP leads to a hack-proof system, as it will give a hacker or any malicious attacker a hard time to get to your data when your address is always changing.

But, of course, static address is also commonly used. Many businesses prefer to run a static IP because of the data that they want to give to the customers they have visiting their website. There’s also the issue of the business employees working in various locations but needing to connect to the company’s data. This would require static IP. Among businesses and companies, the static IP running system is much more in demand.

When we are browsing the Internet on our personal time and our personal computer, though, changing or hiding our IP address is important. Our personal files and accounts may be at risk if we have a real and static IP as our online address. This is not the right precaution if we want to protect our online privacy. For us personal users, it is better to choose an Internet service provider with a system to change IP.