Raleigh Internet Outage 12-21-2006

Thousands of Time Warner customers in the Triangle lost their Internet service today. Also lost was everything related such as IP phone & cable television service.

According to a news report on WRAL around 250,000 people are out of service due to a construction accident which broke a fiber-optic cable in Raleigh that housed 144 fiber optic lines.

One cable break took out Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Wilson and Goldsboro! In the future we’ll be able to look back at this blog post and laugh at this horrible network setup.

Our incoming web orders, email, VOIP, Incoming faxes, point of sale and shipping services are all done online. We borrowed a Clearwire modem from a neighbor to get our network back online, which is working great! We had wanted to try Clearwire anyways. Here is a link to the Raleigh clearwire website.

At least Time Warner repaired the fiber-optic lines quickly. According to the news, total downtime was 4 hours.

Raleigh Craigslist

It is surprising how often we bump into people in Raleigh who aren’t familiar with Craigslist.org.

For those of you who don’t know, Craigslist is a free, local classifieds service. Go here to see the local Raleigh area Craigslist.

If you would like to find out what Craigslist is all about and its history, read here.

Geomagnetic Storm today?

NOAA is tracking this space weather event as noted on their site.

Later today, 12-14-2006 around 1PM ET, Earth is supposed to receive effects from a geomagnetic storm.

Quote from NOAA's site here: "A significant geomagnetic storm is expected to impact the Earth beginning early Thursday afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time, according to forecasters at the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo. Impacts from this event can cause problems with High Frequency communications, satellite operations and induce currents in power grids."

In Raleigh: Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Yes, it is true. Extreme Makeover Home Edition is here in Raleigh.

Now everyone will get to see the Sunny weather! It is supposed to be a very cold week.

Our newspaper also has an ">article...

Lenovo Z60m laptop LCD killed by a Lollipop

Lenovo Z60m laptop killed by a Lollipop.

Yes, it is true. A lollipop killed a Z60m. It needed a new LCD.

Whenever a laptop comes in with a broken screen we try to get the scoop. This one was really funny.

A guy was messing around at work and threw a lollipop into a coworker’s cubicle. It must have hit the screen just right, because… it really smashed this LCD.

Lenovo depot repair quoted the customer $680 to replace the screen. Out price was exactly half of that, and we expect it to go down even more once we get to cross reference the LCD.

Our customer had been checking prices and really couldn’t believe it until he came to pick it up, and there it was, running like brand new. We try to keep it reasonable. We don’t even bother checking anyone else’s pricing since ours is almost always significantly less. We repair a lot of laptops and have repaired thousands of ThinkPad laptops- this is a pretty good combination for the end user.

Related page:
ThinkPad laptop repair.

HP DV2000 Laptop REPAIRED

HP DV2000 Laptop REPAIRED.

Out first HP DV2000t laptop computer came in for repair this week. This one had a bad power jack. It was running on battery only. It was repaired under our flat rate power jack repair service of $149 which covers both parts & labor.

Due to the jack’s design, we have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot of DV2000 laptops in the near future. This one uses a very unique jack. If you are repairing this laptop yourself & would like help getting the part please contact us.

Dell Inspiron B130 Laptop – Fixed!

Dell Inspiron B130 Laptop – Fixed!

A Dell Inspiron B130 laptop came in for repair recently. This was another one in for our power jack repair service.

It would switch from running on power to running on battery intermittently. The customer purchased a new “power brick” (AC adapter) but, it didn’t help. Then, they found us. For a flat rate fee of $149 we repaired the laptop.

We expect to see many B130 laptops in the near future.

Note: Here we have commercial soldering and desoldering equipment running all day long. and we specialize in this type of laptop repair. Some people or technicians want to install their own jack- you can go here to purchase a Dell power jack.