They came here to work on my computer. They had to take it to the shop and fixed it and brought it back to me.
Did everything they said they would do and more. They explained everything which was wonderful. They were very good…the best. I would work with them again in a second.

Computer Repair in Cincinnati

Some Warranties cut by 60%

Western Digital sent out a letter to its channel partners informing them that Caviar Blue, Caviar Green, and Scorpio Blue drives will have their warranties slashed from three years to two years beginning January 2, 2012. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives will still carry their existing five-year warranties.

Not to be left having the longest warranty in the business, Seagate announced that they are also cutting their hard drive warranties.

Here are some of the “details”;

• Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 5 years reduced to 3 years
• Barracuda and Barracuda Green drives: 5 years reduced to 1 year
• Barracuda XT: 5 years reduced to 3 years
• Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 5 years reduced to 1 year
• Momentus XT: 5 years reduced to 3 years

How does this affect me?

Most low end desktops ship with Barracuda Green drives. If you go into one of the box stores and buy the el’ cheapo’ drives they stock, it is probably a Barracuda Green.

Hard drive failure rates are much higher than they should be already. At least with the longer warranty, you could get a replacement.

Either they have no confidence in their products, or due to lack of competition, they feel can do whatever they want.

Lack of competition

There are only three main hard drive manufacturers left. We have Western Digital, Toshiba, and Seagate. Here is a nice little diagram I found to illustrate;

As you can see we went from 12 down to three. This makes it much easier for them to set pricing and warranties terms. This doesn’t sound good for any of us. Not sure if there is anything we can do buy stop buying the drives with the lower warranties.

What is WPS

WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) is a computing standard created by the WiFi Alliance to ease the setup and securing of a wireless home network. WPS contains an authentication method called “external registrar” that only requires the router’s PIN. By design this method is susceptible to brute force attacks against the PIN. When the PIN authentication fails the access point will send an EAP-NACK message back to the client. The EAP-NACK messages are sent in a way that an attacker is able to determine if the first half of the PIN is correct. Also, the last digit of the PIN is known because it is a checksum for the PIN. This design greatly reduces the number of attempts needed to brute force the PIN. The number of attempts goes from 10⁸ to 10⁴ + 10³ which is 11,000 attempts in total.

It has been reported that some wireless routers do not implement any kind of lock out policy for brute force attempts. This greatly reduces the time required to perform a successful brute force attack. It has also been reported that some wireless routers resulted in a denial-of-service condition because of the brute force attempt and required a reboot.

Impact

An attacker within range of the wireless access point may be able to brute force the WPS PIN and retrieve the password for the wireless network, change the configuration of the access point, or cause a denial of service.

What can I do?

DHS has suggested that people disable the WPS service until there is a fix.

Custom PC Suggestions

I never did trust WPS. It didn’t require any sort of password, all you did was push a button and you could get connected. I always wondered what happened if someone tried to connect to your router at the same time you did. Could they get connected? Seemed to much of a chance for me so we have had WPS disabled on all our company routers.

It does make it easy for the average person to get connected so I’m sure they will come out with a fix at some point. For now, disable the feature.

If any person is planning on being a serious online poker player, they will need to learn how to multi-table at their home poker room. Once a player becomes proficient at multi-tabling, some an play as many as 20 to 30 games at a time. As such, a player is going to need some type of multi-monitor setup if they want to make multi-tabling easier. A top of the line video card is helpful, but nowhere near necessary since many online poker sites do not have highly intense graphics.

Next, consider going the ergonomic route in your gaming setup. This means look into both an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and even consider investing in an ergonomic gaming chair. Online poker is the epitome of repetitious movement and you want to do what you can to prevent wear and tear on your wrists and prevent carpal tunnel.

Finally, make sure you have enough RAM. While many can get away with a standard 2 to 4 gig of RAM, you might want to think about going up to at least 8 gig of RAM. This will guarantee that you have enough RAM to handle the load for your apps, internet, and online gaming programs.

Many players that start playing poker tournament using Mac or Windows think that that it is as simple as installing the poker software. However, if you don’t have the right setup, you may experience decreased performance and other problems that could cause you to not play as efficiently or may even cost you if your PC locks up during a key hand. Having the right setup will help those wanting to play online poker for a living to be more successful.