In my line of work there is nothing more important than reliability. My network has to function at 100% every day! With the some times thousands of file transfers between my workstation and test server here at the house there is no room for error, and the speed must be unrivaled! Especially since Google will be installing gigabit internet here soon and I will be running a webserver from my house there isn’t anything that comes in priority over a fast, reliable switch. Cisco SR2016T 16-Port Rackmount 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch allows me to get my work done fast, transfering files, updating test sites, saving backups, you name it and this little beast of a switch handles it for me! I’ve been running a Cisco SR2016T 16-Port Rackmount 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch in my home for years, even used it at a few LAN parties with over 150 people hooked up to this thing and it never flinched!

I’ve been spending a lot of time working from the laundry room on my linux box as Connor watches his movies on my main computer… It’s not so bad I get to lounge in my hammock chair… What is bad is I’m reduced to an old straight keyboard… man it’s been causing me pain! I need my Logitech Wave keyboard back! Well, not that it has gone anywhere… just gonna have to get another one so that I can wave it up on both of my computers Seriously the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used! Nothin’ like a good keyboard! Well in my line of work where you are typing all day the Logitech Wave keyboard can feel like it has saved your life! Had mine for a couple years now and I love it obviously, mine is an older wired logitech wave keyboard, but seems that they only make it wireless now. I paid quite a bit for my logitech wave keyboard when it first came out, best investment I’ve ever made in a computer peripheral. Now I’m going to get a wireless logitech wave keyboard I’ll test that 2 year battery life for you guys and let you know if logitech is tellin’ some fibs (of course that is a maximum of 2 years, and with how much I use my logitech wave keyboard and mouse it will probably be much less than that.) Heck I might pick up a pair of new Logitech Wave Keyboards since they’re under $50 now!!!

I’ve been in the website building, artistic creation business for a long time. Long enough to have learned the hard way that hard disk failure can ruin your day… week… or even month. I’ve started to use a RAID 5 array for all of my information, which I backup on my test server weekly. But hard disk failure doesn’t have to be something that ruins your day. One of my favorite artists (I constantly stream his music while pounding out code through the wee hours of the morning) had hard disk failure to one of his drives that he stores most of his beats to. No doubt he was feeling pretty down, as all his new songs were there, and he didn’t have the opportunity to back them up yet. Desperate to find a solution he called around several places, when he called Datalabs they were able to diagnose the problem over the phone. The next day a courier showed up at his house to pick up the drive, Datalabs kept him in the loop the whole time while they had it at their facility. After only a couple of days the recovered the messed up data, downloaded it to another drive, packaged it up and sent it back to Refracture, it was at his home the next day. Refracture was so enthusiastic about getting his work in progress beats back that he posted this message to facebook: “These guys saved my music and kept Refracture up and running! Last week my hard drive went down…I hadnt backed up some of my best and newest material. Needless to say I was devatated. Gave these guys a call, very friendly and kept me updated throughout. Whats more they were loving the breaks! If any of you guys have an hd problem I couldnt higher recommend datlabs.co.uk”

Oreck is great too for the same reasons… Beyond those two they’re all pretty freakin’ boring. Miele sells the same vacuum cleaner over, and over, and over again one for $550 it’s blue. Then they paint it “melon yellow” add an LED light bar and resell THE EXACT SAME MACHINE for $750… oh, then they switch it up and add a HEPA filter paint it white and sell it for $800 then if you really want the best possible Miele they take their white one paint it red give you an extra crevice tool for cleaning keyboards and blinds and sell it to you for $950. You think I’m exaggerating? No seriously do some research all of their models use the exact same engines, basically everything is the same except the few differences that I pointed out between their low end model and their top of the line model you pay $400 for an LED light bar, HEPA filter, and a crevice tool… oh, and a different paint color, that I’ve heard chips off if you bump anything hard enough to bend the plastic.

Hoover and Dyson seem to be in a competition to see who can create the most bland machine possible. They use each others designs so that you see not one, or two, but ten or so “models” of the same vacuum cleaner with varying price ranges and attachments that accompany them, oh and cord lengths.

Bissell and Electrolux seem to be in competition to create the UGLIEST machines possible. And they can’t decide if they want to compete with Dirt Devil and Shark for the worst vacuum cleaners possible, or if they want to fight for the mid range vacuum cleaner spot against Hoover and Dyson. One minute I’m reviewing a $40 Bissell that looks as though you may be lucky to even get it home without breaking it, the next they’ve got a $500 machine that has the same core design aspects as Hoover and Dyson with a little Bissell ugly flare thrown in to mask some of the more generic parts of the vacuum cleaner.

So yeah… as a reviewer that is why Eureka and Oreck top my list of favorite vacuum cleaners to add to the site. Don’t get me wrong, if I were trying to do something other than make money with the site… if every “review” wasn’t just a sales pitch in disguise I would point everyone to the Kirby website to save money. It may sound ridiculous that a $1,500 machine would save money, but think about it for a minute. The average lifespan of a modern Hoover or a Dyson is 2 years… that’s $400 every 2 years. Now if you want to throw in a carpet scrubber that’s another $250. A Kirby will last you 100 years without breaking a sweat… but lets be nice to the other vacuum cleaners and say you treat your Kirby REALLY badly and give it a very short life span of 20 years. That’s $4,000 just for vacuum cleaners (that uh… BTW don’t do as good of a job cleaning the carpet so you need to buy a new carpet scrubber once every 5 years since you don’t use it that frequently) $5,000 if you go the traditional route of cheap POS vacuum cleaner and cheap POS carpet scrubber keeping it alive as long as you can. Or you can go the route of $1,500 for a vacuum cleaner that when abused to death will only last you 20 years. Unfortunately there is no money in Kirby’s for me on the website. I’m trying to point people to Amazon.com to buy their vacuum cleaners where I get 4% of the action (unless I sell 7 items in the month then I get 6%). So you go right on ahead and follow the usual route of buying 2-3 Sharks or Dirt Devil’s at $50 a piece… then when you realize that they barely last 3 months and their warranty is crap go get yourself a Hoover or a Dyson that will last you 2ish years, you’ll love it I promise… oh and make sure to hit up the links on my site before each purchase… shoot man that’s a good $20 every 2 years for me!

And with that I think I’m going to stick with just the one review for the day. After doing 7 yesterday I think it’s about time that I got an easy day.