Cactus TurboNet Newsletter December 2007               

 

We sell Routers…

 

A customer came in today with his router and asked us to help him set it up.  We did, of course, but it came out in the conversation that he would have bought his router at Cactus if he’d known we sold them.

 

Yes, we sell wireless routers, wireless cards, and even external wireless radios which are much more powerful than anything you can buy at other local stores.  We have an external radio (plugs into your ethernet port) which uses MIMO technology to see around corners (it uses reflections), and we also have a wireless router which can double as an access device, and triple (????) as a bandwidth manager – all for only $99.00.  Lots of neat stuff!

 

And Computers…

 

Laptops starting at $599.00 – desktop computers starting at $499 (We have some on special as of 11/28/07 for $399.00, but I’m not sure how long that will last.)

 

 

Don’t turn on a cold laptop

 

Bring your notebook computer inside for a couple of hours before turning it on.  That’s a couple of hours if it’s out of its carrying case, and about four hours if it’s left in its case.  If the notebook is cold to the touch, wait longer. 

 

Turning on a cold notebook can do several things:  (1) The hard drive may not read or write properly, because the platters shrink with the cold at different rates than the arms which read and write on them.  Writing improperly leads to corrupted data on the hard drive.  (2)  We have seen notebooks which died from being turned on cold.  The electrolytes in the capacitors have different electrical properties when they’re cold, which can lead to improper voltages, or improper voltage sequences (the voltages have to come up in a particular sequence or the notebook won’t boot).

 

Just be patient.  Putting the notebook in a warm room is fine, but don’t put it on a heating register.

 

 

Keep yourself healthy, too!

 

In the winter months around here, most people become deficient in Vitamin D because we do not get much sunlight.  Whether you go to a tanning parlor or take supplements, you’ll be healthier if you do something about it. 

 

Vitamin D deficiencies lead to more colds, more flu, weaker bones, and a host of other ills.  For instance the frequencies of MS, type 1 diabetes and several cancers are higher in northern latitudes, where “sunlight deficiencies” (and thus Vitamin D deficiencies) happen every winter.  There are several articles at http://LEF.org (search for “Vitamin D”) which give the scientific details.   A winter’s supply of  1000 IU Vitamin D capsules for two people is around $10.00.