Archive for May, 2018
After Market SSD Upgrades
by Grant Burton on May.15, 2018, under Hardware
Unfortunately many computers shipping with SSD drives add an unusually high price tag for a mid-quality drive. We’re also seeing systems with relatively decent hardware, plenty of available RAM, and well less than 75% CPU utilization performing poorly. Putting a decent SSD drive into the computer greatly improves performances.
Here’s a list of drives that we update periodically, which have performed well in the field. You can view them on Amazon below:
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E2T0B/AM) – (Amazon http://amzn.to/2APTyVL). Here’s a bundle with the mount for a desktop (http://amzn.to/2C6z375).
or
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM) – (Amazon http://amzn.to/2DnkUWZ). You can also get a desktop mounting bracket on Amazon http://amzn.to/2Djp4z1
The data migration software is free on the Samsung support site and it works decently.
Ubiquiti AirFiber PoE
by Grant Burton on May.04, 2018, under Hardware, Wireless Networking - 802.11 WiFi
Ubiquiti’s AirFiber is a great product for point-to-point wireless bridges. We’ve set up these units to connect buildings that have line of site and tunnel all internet and voip traffic over the connection. Unfortunately the devices require a 50V PoE injector which occasionally fails. Luckily they are easy to source on Amazon – http://amzn.to/2rll3BP.
Wireless Mesh Networks for small businesses
by Grant Burton on May.01, 2018, under Hardware, Wireless Networking - 802.11 WiFi
Mesh network devices are beginning to become more popular in the home and small businesses. While I prefer Unifi devices for most small business installations, Netgear and other manufactures have easy to use apps for home users. You can see a variety of these devices on sale at Amazon http://amzn.to/2HJXx7v.
These devices work best if you have a wired back-haul network using a log CAT6 cable (like these on Amazon http://amzn.to/2Euw4sW) to coordinate the hardware, but they can be used as wireless bridges for hard to reach locations. It will be interesting to see this technology mature over the next few years.