jeffRASH

by Ben Crowell, lightandmatter.com

It was time to buy my daughter a cheap Linux system to be used for schoolwork and playing flash games — well, mostly for playing flash games. In the past, I’ve bought the $200 Great Quality boxes at Fry’s, and they’ve proved very reliable, but the salesman at Fry’s told me that they were no longer carrying them, so in search of my cheap Linux fix, I decided to buy the new Everex TC2502 Green gPC being sold at WalMart. Er, supposedly being sold at WalMart. WalMart has sold Linux PCs in the past, but what was supposed to be different about this one was that it was going to be available on the shelf in stores, not just by mail order. However, a bit of searching in the WalMart web site showed that the machine wasn’t really in stock at any of the stores that were listed as having it. What was in stock was the GC3500, a $300 model that comes with Windows Vista preinstalled. (Since then, Everex has lined up a bunch of other distributors; since I’m not a big fan of WalMart, I’d probably use one of them if I was doing this over.) I ended up ordering the $200 machine I wanted via WalMart’s “Site to Store” service, where they ship it to the local store (at no extra charge), and send you an email when it’s arrived so you can come and pick it up. The price was $199, plus tax. A monitor and wifi card basically doubled the price.

The default gOS desktop.

Click here, to view the complete review.

Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil | Toms Hardware
Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil

Frank Völkel

January 9, 2006 06:00
Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Common sense dictates that submerging your high-end PC in cooking oil is not a good idea. But, of course, engineering feats and science breakthroughs were made possible by those who dared to explore the realms of the non-conventional. Members of the Munich-based THG lab are only too happy to confirm this fact. And not only did we find that our AMD Athlon FX-55 and GeForce 6800 Ultra equipped system didnt short out when we filled the sealed shut PC case with cooking oil - but the non-conductive properties of the liquid coupled created a totally cool and quiet high-end PC, devoid of the noise pollution of fans. The PC case - or should we say tank - also offered a new and novel way to display and show off your PC components.

Look ma! No wires, no software, no cell cards!
Simply turn on, log on and surf. No cellular data cards or special software required. And because Autonet mobile makes your car a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can pull off the road, go sit under a tree and stay connected outside your car.

Very promising technology. I’m sure someone will be taking this beyond Autonet and into places that want to provided an Internet Hotspot without having to pull cables. I look for big things from this technology. The market it ready and the price is right.

AutoNet Mobile

Jeffery S. Rash
Infrastructure and Technologies Manager EquiFirst Corporation

“EquiFirst Corporation is one of the premier wholesale mortgage lenders in the United States. We offer a wide range of mortgage products to independent mortgage brokers throughout the country. Our innovative products help brokers close loans faster by making the assessment process more straightforward and reliable.

“Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have more than 180 account executives working with more than 4,000 approved mortgage brokers around the country. The Charlotte headquarters is also home to our 120,000-square foot, state-of-the-art underwriting and processing center.

“My job is to keep everything running in our fast-paced environment: the networking, computers, voice and IT-related infrastructure. The unprecedented demand in the real estate market has spurred a significant amount of growth for the company, adding pressure to our technology infrastructure and presenting a challenge for my department.

New Business Growth Spurs Data Center Upgrade
“We recently had to update our IT systems and network. We needed to process much larger quantities of business and our ability to quickly adapt to the new growth determined how much our department could contribute to the bottom line. Any downtime is devastating, and could cost us thousands of dollars per hour in lost revenues.

“As we implemented the newest, fastest information systems technology, we had to find a redundant power protection solution that could scale along with our systems and one that was easy to maintain.

More Functionality For the Money
“Initially, we thought we only needed a bigger UPS with more kW. Then, our APC rep introduced us to the new InfraStruXure™. We quickly recognized the business value of its modular architecture. InfraStruXure offered us so much more than a standalone UPS. The fact that the UPS, PDU, remote monitoring, and cable management are all incorporated into self contained high quality racks is priceless to us. Each of the InfraStruXure’s key components have been field tested over the years and are proven winners. The genius of the InfraStruXure is that these components are now available to us as an integrated, easily scalable architecture.

“In the case of our old UPS, whenever we needed an upgrade, it would take an electrician eight hours to hard-wire the conduits in the floor. With InfraStruXure, the same task takes less than an hour.

High Manageability and Increased Reliability
“Our old system could not communicate to us when the power went out. With InfraStruXure, APC is automatically contacted. By the time we find out a problem has occurred, APC is already working on it. Our account executives and brokers are completely unaware that anything has happened and their work is not impacted. It all stays behind the scenes.

“InfraStruXure’s modularity also sets it apart from the competition, enabling us to easily hot swap battery or power modules without having to take the system down. We like InfraStruXure’s scalability as well. It fits right into our long term strategy of shifting to more compact and dense processing in our racks. Over time, we will realize a huge savings.

“Traditional three-phase competitors still subscribe to the old way of doing things: complex installations and high-cost maintenance because the power distribution is hard-wired. No one else can offer anything close to InfraStruXure in terms of easy scalability and manageability.

The Benefit of a Sharp Image
“InfraStruXure’s good looks have also turned our data center into a showcase. Employees and clients walking by our data center look in through the glass walls and are impressed with the clean, shiny rows of black racks. It reflects well on our department’s professionalism and imparts a sense of confidence to fellow employees, partners and clients.”

03/28/2003

Here’s a link to the original article on APC’s website