We collate system component defect statistics religiously as a means of measuring and controlling our system quality. Seagate has been under the spot light for a while.  Its defect rate has gone above 4% which is the norm published in industry literature- the figure is based on 1 HDD per system.  Many Compucon systems have 2 or more HDD per system and as such we know that our defect rate is close to industry findings and have applied CARE of handling as the only preventive measure so far. Common problems reported include noise, RAID failure, and SMART test failure.  Seagate has rejected some claims when they went through their own diagnosis.  Should we try Western Digital or another brand anyway?  The supply chain nowadays is fragile and loyalty is important.  Has Seagate reached the limit of our tolerance?  We have kept evaluating these balances and have privately done tests on WD but are not convinced WD is better.  We would like to hear your opinions on this subject matter please.  Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on this.

Our last review was published in June 2009

Not too soon after we released Thunderbird 880G, we introduced a minor upgrade to Superhawk Plus to X58.  AMD 880G is a quantum jump from GeForce8200 in terms of graphic engine performance and support of the 6-Core Phenom processors.  X58 is not a quantum jump because the previous version P6T is in fact the same chipset which is officially called X58 by Intel.  P6T and X58 are names created to denote the release timing of 2 generations of Intel CPU process technologies- Nehalem (45nm) and Westmere (32nm) respectively. The new motherboard does have 2 significant functional gains and they are the introduction of USB3 and SATA revision 3 (also known as SATA 600 or SATA 6Gb/s) interfaces.  USB3 has 10 times the bandwidth of USB2 and has reached 480MB/s.  SATA3 is double that of SATA2 and has reached 6Gbp/s.  Without doubt X58 should perform better with 6-Core processors than P6T since P6T was designed in the absence of 6-C.  The spec for public eyes can be found here.   http://www.compucon.co.nz/content/view/3/200/

Trade Me makes a lot of money not just because it handles millions of business a day but because it is web based and incurs a lot less overhead than bricks to operate.  Modern businesses shall look to web based processes to gain business and productivity.  Along this line, we have been diligent in upgrading the Compucon website.  Does diligence convert naturally to effectiveness?  The answer is no.  We have tried hard to find the correlation between efforts and effects for a while and could not say we have found it.  For certain reasons, Compucon and CNZ web visitor numbers have gone up by 20% in March and April.  The good news is that the numbers have converted to business as far as this period is concerned.  This is a found temporary correlation!  As of 1 May 2010, Compucon has grown to 593 pages & CNZ to 54 pages.  A new effort is to develop a section called “Connectivity” which contains crossovers from PC to Engineering.
http://www.compucon.co.nz/content/section/15/224/

We have taken a very long time to find and test an outdoor wireless product on project grade (as against SOHO) and to negotiate with the vendor for the supply and support of this product to our channel.  At last we are able to announce WAP-5015D here.  Price is given in the Members Area.

This product can serve as an Access Point or a Bridge.  It is capable of point to point connections to construct a Wireless Distribution System.  It operates in the 5GHz spectrum and is complaint with IEEE 802.11a & n standards.  It has an integrated 15dbi gain antenna, is supplied with POE adaptor, and these simplify things a lot! It has been certified to be compliant with EN55022 electromagnetic interference standards.  Our vendor has shown us a test report which records an average of 80Mbps throughput over 1.7KM. http://www.compucon.co.nz/content/view/658/46/

The product has provisions for Quality of Service and up to WPA2 level of security.  You will like this product.