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Welcome to another edition of the Florence I.T. newsletter $contact_first_name!

Faster bootup and shutdown in windows

Laptop users will be familiar with “Hibernate” as one of the shutdown choices in XP and Vista. It’s a quick way to shutdown your laptop in an “as-is” state, while consuming no power while off. The largest advantage is speedy shutdowns and startups of your laptop. This is very different from “sleep” shutdowns where the pc is in a low power state, yet still consuming power. I just thought I’d mention that I’ve been using hibernate on all my computers as a time saver when it comes to startup and shutdown, and there’s nothing stopping you from using it on your desktop either.   If you don’t know where to turn it on give me a call. You can program your power button in the control panel to do a hibernate if you like the results. Go ahead, save a few minutes every day, my treat

Vista Folder layouts, enough already

Vista’s file and folder layouts using explorer is pretty cool, but sometimes I fiond that it’s assumptions about what types of file info i want highly annoying, here’s an article with directions for a workaround.

Thanks for telling your friends!

Last month I forgot to thank Sheldon of Jagfly Hosting for recommending Florence I.T.  to an area business. As one part of our thank you for referring us we make a donation to an area nonprofit, which we suggest you choose from our “Recommended Area Nonprofits” list. He chose $100 to the Northampton Survival Center. Is your nonprofit on our list? Call or email to find out how to get listed. Do you know of any area business that could use Florence I.T.’s services? Call or email to find out about our very generous referral thank you program (up to $300 each customer referred!) that benefits not only the community we live, in but your wallet. Thanks this month to Chelsea!

Open source of the month: DD-WRT router firmware replacement

This time it’s a doozie – a firmware replacement for your old cheap router – but be warned if you’re not technical at all this will be a snoozer. I recently had reason to replace my office router, and knowing it was NOT going to be linksys, I felt good alternatives would be Netgear or Dlink, both having nice quality business class products that also handle VPN and also come in at a price point that’s attractive to small business. I ended up getting a DLINK DIR-330 (we’re a DLink reseller) as it has VPN compatible with Vista clients, usb port, a good firewall, wireless and a 4 port switch- all things I need. Unfortunately it didn’t have one thing I needed: reverse NAT loopback. Basically this means that the many internal public websites I run couldn’t be accessed internally. This turned out to be a problem for my particular network. One example is that I have my Outlook 2007 contacts syncing to my web based Sugarcrm for easy access to customer data while I’m onsite visiting you nice people like you.

— What’s it do? —
DD-WRT works on a surprisingly large amount of hardware, including my new Dlink DIR-330.  This was a shock as I HAD heard of this popular open source project, but thought it was only for the old Linksys WRT router. Not so!  See if your router is listed here. With the incredibly powerful DD-WRT I was able to add missing features, setup free open source (license free!) VPN capabilities, far more powerful logging, VLANS, wireless bridging, QOS and usb file storage. You can even setup a wireless hotspot with a customized splash page for disclaimers or advertising. The feature set is loaded so you may have to choose some features over others on lower end hardware. My DIR-330 Dlink has enough memory for the complete install and I am having a blast exploring the features. This so far seems a reliable alternative to higher end routers and am very glad I came across this project through chance.

Energy Savings Promotion by D-Link!

D-Link GreenTM devices are about providing eco-friendly alternatives without compromising performance. They are designed to conserve energy, protect our environment from harmful substances, and reduce waste by using recyclable packaging. From August 1st to September 30, 2008 – D-Link is offering Instant Rebates on select Green products. Selections include 16 and 24 port managed and unmanaged switches priced from $210 to $350.00.

Portable, free, up to date encyclopedia

We’ve all used wikipedia to lookup definitions, now you can download the whole thing and take it with you with wikitaxi!

Only DAYS left on low pricing for our incredible Acer specials!

And finally, there’s only DAYS left on our excellent Acer PC, laptop and monitor specials at super low prices that BEAT many of the big retailers like CDW! How often can the little guy compete on price alone? Take advantage and support your local economy if you’re looking for a new pc.

Finally, I really hope you all enjoy the rest of your summer, get on out and savor every last bit, do it for me
–
Thank you,
Matt
Florence I.T. – A Community IT shop.
413-303-9167 or @ florenceit.net