Sometimes you have to read the reviews to really, really appreciate all the uses for a product. This NUCLEAR duct tape at Amazon is just one of those products. Whether you’re sealing cracks in a reactor core or fixing your type 40 Tardis, you’ll just find these product reviews really special…
Jerry Stern is webmaster at PC410.com and Startupware.com.
Written by Jerry Stern
There was a power failure here a few months back. 14 hours with no power, and then there were lights outside my window in the dark, and there was a power company truck with cherry picker, a portable lighting truck, and cable truck, all lined up at the power pole, and working in cold rain at 3am. And then the next morning, a fire on same pole took out the other leg of the 240 volt service, just not the 120-volt service I depend on here. I thought I had my communications reasonably well-diversified; now, I still think so, but I made changes, and will consider more.
There was a time when I had no problem turning off the internet, and replying to emails a week later, if that’s when I got back to my desk after a vacation. That was 15 years ago; the world has gotten considerably faster since then. Now, if my business is offline, I can’t monitor websites–can’t really edit them offline because of all the Content-Management Systems (CMS), can’t get to email, can’t get to voicemail, can’t do much at all.
To protect myself from outages, I have backups and redundancies. My business phone is a traditional land line, sometimes called POTS as an acronym for ‘plain old telephone service’, but my personal phone line is from the local cable company, where it is half the cost, and just having it results in a discount on my internet service, so the net cost is that it reduces my bill by $8 a month to have it. OK, the business line stayed up in the outage; cordless phones failed, but there’s one corded phone on each floor of the house. The personal phone line failed, despite having built-in battery backup and being plugged into an Uninterruptible Power Supply; when the system dies at the pole, there’s nothing to do.
Internet is another matter; when power came back on, the internet and the private phone line stayed down. The cable company was able to reset the phone remotely after I called in on the land line, but Internet was still down, and they scheduled that repair for four-days out. In typical clueless-cable fashion, they neglected to find the regional outage, which was fixed some 12 hours later, but still, I had no internet, and a promised 4-day outage, on a Monday of what was going to be a very busy week.
Backups Chosen
I added a smart phone with a good data plan. That gives me options that don’t rely on any cables coming into my office, either internet or power. It’s not a fix for every problem in an outage, but it’s a start. Next: How to filter spam on a smart phone. (to be continued…)
OK, I get to order neat computer parts. There are computer cases of any size, routers, SSD drives, boards, nearly anything a client needs for their office technology solutions. So I keep up with the new stuff, and sometimes, I just kinda ask, “What? Why would anyone buy that?” Here are my suggestions for geek toys, er, I mean computer hardware, starting with practical, and ending with insanity. I can’t work without the first three of these gadgets. The last two, well, not.
Computers with Multiple Personalities
I have a testing computer with multiple personalities. I’ve had a few of these over the years, and have used drive racks, virtual machines, multi-boot drives, each of the usual methods more than once. Here’s what I like now:
Antec Easy SATA
The Antec Easy SATA is a hard-drive docking station with eSATA Port, under US$30.
This is a drive holder for a computer, but unlike most holders, it allows sliding in a bare drive, with no carrier. You can have a hard drive for each operating system, and a few for testing. I have a drive for Vista, Windows 2000 Pro, Linux Mint, a few others. It’s also handy for when I have to test a hard drive quickly and don’t want to open a computer, or need to run a security erasure program on a drive.
There’s also an eSATA (external SATA) port on the front for running backups, if you have an eSATA external drive (see below). The eSATA setup requires a second SATA cable inside the computer. That’s a lot of options for the price; an external eSATA adapter usually costs around $15 to $20 all by itself. No, it’s not hot-swappable, but it’s still very useful.
Malware Rescue Kit
OK, computer programmers always get asked to fix their friends’ computers. And it’s usually a malware infection, and it’s been lingering a while, so it’s really, really bad. So the first thing you do is load up some cleanup software onto a USB flash drive and take it and plug it into the infected computer. Oops. Really bad move. Some malware will infect flash drives and add nasty stuff as autoplay files in the root folder, so that it can send badness to other computers–it’s the computer version of coals in a stocking. What you need is a small drive with a write protect switch. I’ve checked–none of the name-brand manufacturers of flash drives have a product with a write switch anymore. Must have been too expensive to include a little slide switch.
SD Card Reader, under $5.
These mini card readers tend to be a little larger than a flash drive, and may not fit in some computers without moving surrounding cables, so take the shortest possible USB extension cable with you on repair trips. Startech has a 6” cable for around $4, model USBEXTAA6IN. For other brands, look for the ends to be one each of type A male and type A female.
Multiple-Access Method Backup Drives
External hard drives are everywhere. I’ve had at least six of my own, going back as far as a parallel-connected IDE case that held a 40 Mb hard drive. It weighed around nine pounds. Found it at a hamfest back around 1988, and never could get it to work in Windows 95… (sigh)
Macally T-S350SU, under $30.
This is vastly better than a sealed unit, which can’t run drive diagnostics software, as those are mostly USB-only, unless you want to break the case to hook up a SATA cable.
Solar Power
Want to be truly mobile? How about a computer bag that recharges your toys? Well, it doesn’t exist yet. Soon, though.
Traveler’s Choice Solar Messenger Bag ET0120K ECO, around $150.
Yes, that’s a solar panel. No, it won’t charge your notebook, but it will charge cell phones and other gadgets of a similar size. There’s a whole line of these by Eco Traveler, in messenger bags, backpacks, soft-sided coolers, and they’re in multiple colors. Some are Checkpoint Friendly, so they can go through USA-based airport scanning laid unfolded and flat on the XRAY belt with a notebook still inside.
I think I’m waiting for the version that can charge my notebook, but that’s probably a few years off yet.
Show-Off’s Computer Case
Finally, nothing beats a neat computer case as a geek gadget. Well, not this one, anyway.
Antec Skeleton
I can’t begin to describe this construction, so here’s the official scoop:
The Skeleton open-air, easy access case is a revolutionary step forward in enclosure design, perfect for the gamer enthusiast or constant hardware tinkerer. This enclosure features four internal drive bays and seven expansion slots with four optional 3.5" device external mounts for a truly unique aesthetic. Internal components mount on a removable, dual level component tray in a reinforced, durable plastic frame with rackmount quality side rails. This uniquely designed tray is capable of supporting up to three 11" graphics cards in SLI configuration and a standard ATX size motherboard for maximum power and versatility. In addition, the overhead "Super Big Boy" customizable 250mm multi-LED fan keeps the motherboard, graphics card and memory chipsets cool, while a dedicated 92mm fan cools your hard drives. The Skeleton also offers a versatile array of front ports, including USB, Firewire, eSATA, and high definition audio functionality. 0.8mm cold rolled steel component tray and high density ABS frame reinforced with with 0.8mm cold rolled steel for durability.
Jerry Stern is the editor of ASPects, the ASP’s Coordinator of Anti-Spyware Operations, and is online at www.pc410.com.
