Step 1: Identify Your Networking Needs
This is a very important step that you will ideally perform before purchasing the ingredients listed on the previous page. As noted above, the key considerations are:

a. How many wired Ethernet ports, if any, will you need?

b.Where will these Ethernet ports need to be located? (In other words, where will the PCs and other equipment that will be plugged into these Ethernet ports be located?)

c.Where will the router and high-speed modems be located?

View: Full Story @ informationweek.com

So, you’re getting tired of your processor’s and graphics card’s stock coolers and you start thinking, “What next can I try?”. The answer is simple - get an after-market replacement cooler! But which one, you may wonder.

The most common option is to get an air cooler. Air coolers are cheaper and easier to install, but their performance will suffer as dust accumulates, necessitating periodical cleanings. Noise from their fan can also be a really big problem, especially if you are looking for cutting-edge performance which is only possible with insanely fast (and noisy) fans.

But what if we want great cooling performance without the noise? Is that even possible? Yes, it is. Go water-cooling!

View: Full Story @ techarp.com

The Energy Star program is set to release the first revision to the specification for PCs since 1992, which was practically the Bronze Age of the PC industry. Energy Star stickers are familiar to those who have shopped for household appliances over the last few years; it designates appliances or electronics that meet certain specifications for energy efficiency.

The Energy Star program–a joint project of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy–is most important to government and corporate buyers, Abelson said. The government is required to purchase Energy Star-labeled products, and corporations can receive tax breaks for purchasing Energy Star products. Plus, the power saved by using efficient products really adds up when looking across a large network of PCs, allowing those organizations to cut on power bills or expand their hardware at the same cost.

The new specification targets two areas: the power supply and the amount of power used in “idle mode,” said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council, which helped the Energy Star program come up with the technical requirements for the new specification.

View: Full Story @ News.com

Earlier today Slashdot pointed me to a CBC article citing unnamed sources at Microsoft decrying the state of “craplets” on PCs. Just what are craplets? It’s a cute nickname for all of the software an OEM installs on your new Windows PC before it arrives on your doorstep. Think: 2 or 3 ISP sign-up applications, instant messengers out the wazoo, and software for updating all of this software. And a lot more. Check out the CBC article for more basic details on what craplets are and why they make people, including Microsoft, angry.

Why do we get craplets on our machines? The answer, as you probably could already guess, is that OEMs make money from crapware (a collective term for all craplets). Companies like RealNetworks or JASC Software will pay to have their applications (say, PaintShop Pro) pre-installed on a PC. It’s even more lucrative, sources tell us, when these applications can be established as default handlers for as many file types as possible. It’s advertising, OEM-style.

This is also partially how Microsoft got into trouble back in the days of Netscape vs. IE. Telling OEMs what to do turned out not to be as kosher as Microsoft thought, and they got a hand upside the head for it. Microsoft now complains that this puts them in the position of not being able to do anything about crapware.

View: Full Story Via: ArsTechnia

Notebook PC users who upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows Vista may have to disable some of the new operating system’s flashy graphics features to avoid seeing a decrease in battery life compared to when running Windows XP.

The drop will come from the extra power needed to run the high-end processors, graphics cards, and memory capacity required to support Vista. Microsoft has designed the new OS to deliver novel visual effects such as the translucent “Aero” windows on the desktop interface and to offer improved performance as a digital media hub. The business version of the OS was released last month, with the consumer version due out next month.

“Vista demands more computer resources for a given application than XP does. So you need a heavier battery, or you will have shorter battery life because of the greater demand for watts,” said Phil Hester, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices, in remarks made at the company’s annual analyst day in New York last week.

View: Full Story Via: PC World

The amount of energy wasted by UK office equipment left on standby over the ten-day Christmas period would be enough to roast 4.4 million turkeys, predicts hardware maker Canon.

With offices deserted, devices left running will use 43.6 million kWh of electricity. In total, the energy wastage will cost UK businesses around £8.66m.

In environmental terms, Canon’s research suggests that around 19,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be produced unnecessarily - enough to fill the same number of 25-metre swimming pools.

PCs are the worst energy wasters with the prediction half of them will be left on over the Christmas holiday, using 37.8 million kWh of energy. Other equipment will contribute with all fax machines expected to be left running.

View: Full Story Via: silicon.com

Dell announced a new operating structure Tuesday that divides the company’s product business into new blocks. At the same time, several new executives are arriving at the Round Rock, Texas, company’s offices in a bid to inject some new thinking into management ranks.

Product development at Dell is now divided into two distinct groups: the Business Product Group and the Consumer Product Group. Brad Anderson, the company’s top server executive, and Jeff Clarke, Dell’s longtime PC group leader, will share responsibility for the Business Product Group. Alex Gruzen, brought into Dell from Hewlett-Packard two years ago to run the notebook operation, will head up the Consumer Product Group.

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News source: News.com

AirMagnet Inc., the award-winning leader in wireless network assurance, announced the results of a recently conducted survey measuring wireless signal strength in a standard office setting both before and after introducing a change in the office environment — holiday decorations. While decorations are relatively commonplace at this time of year and might seem innocuous, as with any change introduced to a wireless environment, it’s difficult to predict how new elements might affect wireless performance - but proper planning can help reduce the negative effect on wireless networks. AirMagnet’s survey, using AirMagnet Survey PRO and AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer, showed the decorations had a significant impact on the Wi-Fi network, with:

* Signal strength decreased by 25 percent
* Signal deterioration increased over distance by one-third
* Signal distribution uneven in some locations, deteriorating signal strength by an additional 10 percent

View: Full Story
News source: AirMagnet.com

Parents and teachers are forcing some schools to dismantle wireless computer networks amid fears that they could damage children’s health.
More schools are putting transmitters in classrooms to give pupils wireless access from laptops to the school computer network and the internet.

But many parents and some scientists fear that low levels of microwave radiation emitted by the transmitters could be harmful, causing loss of concentration, headaches, fatigue, memory and behavioural problems and possibly cancer in the long term. Scientific evidence is inconclusive, but some researchers think that children are vulnerable because of their thinner skulls and developing nervous systems.

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News source: Times Online UK

Seeing I have been in the PC business for over seven years I have noticed something about the support industry.

PC support companies build their business on the backs of high school and college graduates, the people who get a job just to get by until something better comes along. These people are called hardware technicians; they bare huge responsibility and work for low pay, often for little better than minimum wage. Hardly any of these people take their job seriously and those that do are usually looking to get into a more prestigious field like Network Administration or Security. Who could blame them with such a poor pay rate? But there are a few, such as myself, who specialize in this area. The problem is this, although the market for our skills is virtually limitless, the pay is scant. The only way for serious hardware specialists to make money is to “go it alone” or start their own tech company. When we start our own firm we then have the problem of finding reliable staff. Now, considering that WE started our own firm because we were not satisfied with low pay and an excessive workload, the odds are that anyone else who we would consider reliable would be looking to do the same. So, we are left with one option: Training the staff ourselves. Naturally, just when you have someone trained, they leave and try to “go it lone”. You can see how this becomes a problem.

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News source: Tweak News