The Mini Token Blog

Networking equipment is a huge investment for virtually all businesses, especially when it relies on a computer network and the internet to run efficiently. some costly IT professional services company. And everybody understands that having a computers off-line whether for scheduled upkeep or emergency repairs results in a notable notable drop in profit.

Refurbished networking equipment can keep costs down by a significant sum and appeals in particular to new businesses and professionals working solo. Therefore, sourcing used servers and second hand zip drives is very alluring. Just about any computer equipment required to run a company may be sourced, making an enormous saving overall.

When you choose a piece of second hand equipment, you can rely on it to perform exactly as you want it to. Yet buying refurbished equipment to fulfill your demands can seem to be an overwhelming task, especially if you know precisely what you need. When using IT asset disposal services who feature used servers and second hand data storage, it is no hassle at all. Normally you will find your preferred manufacturer or model. Lots of the issues with new technologies don’t appear until the hardware has already been launched. System shutdown due to patching and upgrades is common following the release of brand new equipment. As a matter of fact it is not unheard of for some organizations to just absorb the loss and replace that new networking equipment entirely. This isn’t a problem with used servers and other hardware because they have usually been in use for some time. You won’t have to spend time ironing out the issues often associated with the most recently launched equipment. Reliability isn’t a cause for concern either as everything is carefully checked before being shipped.

Finding quality IT asset disposal services is the secret to getting the best deal. Take your time and find one that in reality has the experience to do the job effectively. Doing this ensures the units you purchase are fit for their purpose. It’s a good idea to make sure the goods have a warranty as well. For companies that make the decision to skip new networking equipment and purchase used IT equipment, used servers, and used data storage, the benefits encompass more than simply price. So make the effort to research all the options and IT financing options when you are looking for the latest computer hardware.

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds many complexities, and a lot more matters to think about…and be wary of.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a personal, very directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job information.

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job site and got 600 plus responses in a calendar week. For a single opening. That’s increased competition.

Had a strong candidate contacted us before we posted the ad, they could have landed the position before getting all that competition. How? By finding someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 7 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be careful to check your application materials thoroughly before submitting them. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily removed with a speedy triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us reasons not to hire them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by passing over job hunters who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job boards give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well honed resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another downside to be aware of is how quickly you can be checked out on the web. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to swing our thinking about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a encompassing set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

K-Designers continues to build on their 30-plus years of design knowledge with 11 locations in the Western United States. Starting with their first location in Laramie, Wyoming and up through to today, K-Designers offers a full complement of home renovation services. When it comes to home improvement, K-Designers is commited to client satisfaction.

Products provided by K-Designers source from major suppliers in the home improvement market. of products offered to their customers include energy-efficient windows, quality exterior coatings, and patio doors. K-Designers also offer security doors, garage doors, and exterior siding in vinyl, aluminum, and steel. K-Designers also offers a gutter protection system as well as exterior window and door decoration.

K-Designers has a full staff of design masters with first-hand knowledge in working with a wide-ranging mixture of home fashions. In their thirty-first year of operation, K-Designers persists to garner the confidence of their clients. They grant these design pros to willing homeowners who solicit info and guidance on how to go about a home renovation project. K-Designers sends the designer to the clients home where they in turn assist the client in planning a project that best suits their needs.

Larry and Lee Judson formed K-Designers in 1978. They began in 1978 with four employees and a commitment to giving customers value for their money. Many years later, they have over 900 employees across the country. Committed to design and remodel with excellence, K-Designers offer a wide selection of products to their clients. They then combine this with expert advice on how a home improvement project should proceed depending on each home owner’s unique situation.

K-Designers strong suit as a company is their grand tradition of design and remodeling wisdom. They continue to build on this experience to provide solutions for today’s homeowners. Via their 11 locations in the Western U.S., they work to provide the products, personnel, and precise artisanship that their customers demand.

People keep asking me where I’ve been so I thought this would provide insight. I’m a sharing guy. Here are some valuable sites. I can’t believe how these sites helped me recently.

Tents

I went on a week long fishing trip last week. It was lucky that we found the rest of the family camped out a ways off the beaten path. Can you believe how long it took to find the right camping tents for this escapade? We were stressed that the tent wouldn’t make it to our house on time. It did! It sure was a relief to see that we had the right product tent shipped direct to our house. The package arrived super duper fast. I will enver get tired of hiking or biking into the back country for camping trips. Astonishing time!

Home Security Systems

In planning for a week long camping trip, I thought it would be a good time now to get a security system for the house. What do you do if your pics are all on your computer and a breakin happens? Sad day. If the computer were swiped, man…that might end us. We got a security system installed after bouncing around online looking for a good local reputable company. I was surprised how easy it was to get it installed. Never felt safer.

Good Drinks for Camping

Energy is required in large amounts for hiking, cooking, living in the wild. We decided to take some of our efusjon energy drinks along with us and let me tell you, they kept us sane! Everything we did while camping was so draining. I know I need to hit the gym when I get back but these drinks helped a lot. The ‘a’ team at efusjon has a home at STartup4less.com. Go check ‘em out. Get in before it’s too late - get on the ‘a’ team at efusjon. Get in on the opportunity now!

See you later dinosaur. Enjoy the sites!

One of the latest services that is growing steadily is “email to phone”, whereby you can receive email messages by voice over the phone, or send voice messages as emails from any phone - cell phone, satellite phone or a regular land line.

When I first heard of this, I wondered, “Why would I want to listen to my email instead of reading it?” But I soon learned that there are a great many people who can stay in much better touch receiving email messages by phone. Here is a list of the top ten reasons I have complied to use an email to phone service:

Email to phone for busy people on the run

1. You can pick up a message any time, any where, even if you had not planned to. Have you ever had that eerie feeling there was an urgent email waiting for you? Now you can relieve your curiosity, deal with the email and feel 100% assured that landing the sand trap was not a result of email anxiety.

2. Receiving emails by phone is ideal for a busy person on the run. Between the meetings and the restaurant and the cab, a busy person does not always have the time to sit down in front of a computer. But he always has time for his cell phone (You might have noticed this in restaurants, theatre shows, etc.)

3. International travelers have a great use for email to phone services, as they cannot always foretell the availability of a computer or an Internet connection, nor how much time they might have between flights, meetings, etc. This way, they can keep monitoring all their urgent messages wherever they end up, and delayed flights will no longer mean delayed business.

Email to phone for constant access

4. There are some places where you just can’t plug into your computer (or would not want to). On a boat, for instance. With email to phone messaging, you can receive email while you relax on a boat, far from an Internet connection. And yes, it IS relaxing to know you don’t have to fret about a missed email that could bring down the company or cost you your job.

5. On a hunting or fishing trip, you might often find yourself with no Internet connection. And you certainly won’t have a computer with you (I hope!). But you might have cell phone access. And if one of your hunting buddies does drag along his PC from home, you can tell him to get an email to phone service instead.

6. Check in at the cottage, without lugging a computer around. Need I say more. It is indeed relaxing to know you don’t have to fret about a missed email that cost you your job. It is NOT relaxing to have to open your eyes to look at a computer monitor.

7. There are also many countries where Internet access is not reliable, even in parts of well-traveled countries. Who needs Internet for emails, when you can receive them by phone?

8. Indeed, even in your own country, there might be areas you frequent that are outside of the digital coverage area, where SMS and text messaging are unavailable, such as driving through deserts or mountains. Even with analog coverage or a regular phone line, you can keep monitoring your email.

Special monitoring email by phone

9. Some people need instant alerts, and have to be in touch even while in the lunch room or traveling between meetings. IT support people, who subscribe to a website monitoring service are a perfect example. If a company’s website goes down, the CEO won’t be pleased if 45 minutes later the IT manager says, “Sorry, I was out to lunch.”

10. Some people have the misfortune of having to communicate with high-tech show-offs like me who use email to communicate. For these unfortunate people who might otherwise be forced to adapt to 21st century technology, email to phone messaging rides to the rescue. “Hah! Now I can listen to email messages on my cell phone. And they thought they could force me to adopt modern technology. Hah! I sure fooled them!”

There you have it - my top ten reasons to use email to phone services. Amazing how new ideas can turn even a stone-aged telephone into a technological leap forward. Imagine what they’ll do with boulders next.

David Leonhardt is a web site marketing consultant from Canada and a freelance copy editor. Read more information at an email to phone web site or read the email to phone FAQ

The USB standard has become the universal means of connection peripheral devices and equipment to the computer. Computers have either two or four USB port connectors. Each of these can support a large number of connections but to be able to attach more than two or four devices requires a multi-connection hub. There are many different types of hubs and this article seeks to explain some of the important considerations in selecting the best choice of hub for your system.

The USB bus system in computers was introduced in 1996 and has gone through a number of developments and enhancements. It started out as USB 1 which was very slow and had many bugs. Version 1.1 brought a higher bandwidth of 12 MBits/second. The latest version of 2.0 gives a bandwidth of 480MBits/second and is fully backward compatible with USB 1 and 1.1.
Link to a table showing differences between USB speeds (http://www.usb-products.com/usb-speed.aspx)

Port Connections and Power
All USB standards support up to 127 connections (or devices) per computer port. It is unlikely that this would be achievable as the port can only supply 0.5 Amps maximum. Some devices consume a full 0.5 Amps, so are powered from a power adaptor from the mains supply.

Bandwidth Sharing
Generally, the bandwidth of the port (http://www.usb-products.com/usb-port.aspx) is shared between all the devices that are attached through a hub. This means that if you want to add two USB 2 devices with a USB 1.1 device, the bandwidth is shared between all three devices. However, there is an extra complication. Most hubs (http://www.usb-products.com/usb-hub.aspx) have a single chip controlling the bus. This means that the hub will work at the lowest bandwidth determined by the connected devices resulting in the USB 2 devices working at much lower transfer speeds. Nearly all USB hubs on the market today (passive and powered) operate like this.

Multiple Chip Hubs
The transaction translator (TT) is the name for the controlling chip that assigns bandwidth to each connected device. In hubs that have one TT all devices share the same bandwidth and operate at the speed of the slowest. In hubs with a TT per socket, each receives a share of the bandwidth, but this is not restricted to the slowest device.
Examples of this type of hub is the Belkin Tetra hub (http://www.usb-products.com/Products/Hi-Speed-USB-2-0-4-Port-TetraHub.aspx) This has 4 ports each with its own TT.

What this means in reality is that a multiple TT hub will provide much higher bandwidth per port when several devices are connected from one hub.

Maximum Performance and choice of Where to connect a device
If you are after maximum performance for each of your USB 2 devices, each device should be plugged into its own USB port in the computer. Additional plug in cards can provide a vast number of USB ports for most needs. However, this situation might be going too far except for the most demanding of situations. Although several USB devices might be connected at the same time it is unlikely that they will all be in use together.

A useful compromise is to plug small bandwidth devices together into a single hub. These would include: mice; keyboard; Speakers; little used devices.

For devices that require a high bandwidth and are used often, direct connection in to a USB port is the best option. Devices would include: Flash memory drives; external disks; Web cams; Other frequently used devices.

If you don’t have sufficient ports then either more ports should be added with a plug-in card or a good quality hub with multiple transaction translators should be used. The devices placed on the hub are those that are used less often. Those devices placed directly on the port are used most often.

Link to a selection flow chart that helps in selecting a hub (http://www.usb-products.com/USB-Hub-Selection.aspx)

Access Considerations
What type of configuration and mix of port and hubs will depend on the number of devices that you wish to attach. Desktop computer cases usually have ports in the front of the case for easy access. These can be used for devices that are often plugged / unplugged and require the highest bandwidth. These are flash memory drives and portable external drives and MP3 players.

USB hubs tend to clutter up the area with cable connections and power lead. These naturally go out of sight if possible or behind the monitor. For mobile computers, a small compact hub can be obtained. These may have there own wind-in or tidy away cables.

Powered and Passive Hubs
Hubs may be restricted in their use without a power connection as passive hubs rely on the power of the USB bus. Powered hubs have a mains power adaptor to provide additional power for devices. These devices range in the power they require. It is possible to run a number of different devices all from a single passive hub running of a USB port as long as they have low power requirements. With only 0.5 Amps current it only takes one of the devices requiring the full power requirement for the hub to be overwhelmed. Nothing serious is going to happen though except that the single will degrade and many or all the devices will loose connection with the computer. To avoid this situation a powered hub should be used.

Nigel Stephens heads an online business at http://www.usb-products.com supplying computer hardware products. Nigel’s emphasis is in providing useful information so that consumers can make more informed choices.