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

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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

Running your computer is pretty darn cheap when viewed at an hourly rate – approximately $0.02 an hour. This figure was obtained with the following assumptions: The typical desktop computer uses around 200 watts of energy per hour (with a 50% / 50% split of energy consumed between the computer and the display screen). We pay about $0.10 per kilowatt hour for electricity where I live (this varies across the US, so you can put in your actual rate here). From there you simply divide the watts used by 1000 (since electricity is charged at a rate in kilowatts – 1000 watts) multiplied by the rate charged: 200 divided by 1000 = 0.2 x $0.10 = $0.02.

With the cost of using a computer so cheap, many people believe that it isn’t worth the time to bother turning it off. When multiplied over time, however, it can add up. That $0.02 an hour comes to $0.48 a day, $3.36 a week, $13.44 a month and $175.20 a year if you leave your computer on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

That means if you turn off the computer for half the day while asleep, you have saved $87.50. Add in a few extra hours it will likely stay off on the weekends, and you have reached $100 a year in savings by simply turning off your computer. If you have a small business with 10 computers, making sure they get turned off at night means an extra $1000 to your bottom line (and if you work for a business that rewards employees that submit money saving ideas that get implemented, you could even earn a bit of money by suggesting this).

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News source: pfadvice.com

The extrapolation of a trend that was becoming clear even as long ago as 1965, and has been the pulse of the IT industry ever since will eventually end, said Moore, who is now retired from Intel.

Forty years after the publication of his law, which states that transistor density on integrated circuits doubles about every two years, Moore said this morning: “It can’t continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.

“In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we’re approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it’ll be two or three generations before we get that far – but that’s as far out as we’ve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they’ll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions.”

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News source: Techworld.com