Found: A Car Charger with Two 10 Watt (2.1A) USB Ports!

After a number of days looking around for a charging setup that can accommodate at least two devices that require a 2 Amp draw on the USB port we settled on the following:

• Scosche reVIVE II - Dual 2.1A USB Car Charger for iPod, iPhone, and iPad IUSBC4

The reason we ordered these units was that the basic USB chargers we have in our vehicles only support 500mAh draws. That is one quarter the capability of these units.

So, when using a Windows Phone like my HD7 or Monique's Lumia 710 while plugged in they were still losing charge if frequent calls were being made or we were streaming 8Tracks or listening to Zune content.

The HTC HD7 charger's USB port has a little over 1A at the port. The Nokia charger has 1.2A at the port.

So, we figure that 2.1A should be more than enough to provide a charge and run the phones at 110% _all of the time_ and not be stranded with a dead phone at our destination.

Next up will be to pick up their ISUBH4 wall wart (dual 2.1A USB port A/C charger).

We may also pick up a couple of the goBAT II - Portable Charger & Backup Battery units for those days when out and about to provide a backup power source while at a client site. They would be handy for long plane trips too.

Have any pointers to power accessories used to keep things charged up? Please do point them out to us!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Vista – No Network Connectivity (H/W)

We recently completed a hardware upgrade for one of the partners at a client.

The upgrade was pretty straight forward. New hardware included an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and an Intel DP45SG Extreme series desktop board.

We put a fresh copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (FPP) on the box, installed the most recent hardware drivers, updated the OS and Office 2007 installs, and ran through a burn-in.

The system passed with flying colours.

Out the door it went. That was late last week.

After a successive number of phone calls from the partner saying that he could not, no matter what he tried, get the system to connect to the Internet we figured his 2-3 year old Linksys WRT45G router was toast.

His ISP had sent him a new 2Wire modem/router combo box, so we figured we would put in a new high performance N series wireless access point. We set both boxes up to work together (DHCP off on the N AP and a static IP on the 2Wire subnet), and tested everything successfully.

After taking the 2Wire and N AP home and setting it up, his laptop connected to the Internet effortlessly via the new N series AP.

But, the upgraded system still refused to pull an IP address from the 2Wire device!

So, we had him drop the system off here at the shop so we could have a look at it. We ran several tests that included plugging the system into our workbench network, our own internal network, and a couple different routers with DHCP enabled on them and all of the devices were successful in delivering an IP address to the box.

Scratch the head time

He came and picked up the box this morning and was going to put things back together and see if it worked. He stood here in the shop and watched me plug it into the different devices to get an IP successfully, so he knew it should work!

Well, at lunch time he called and said that the box was still not pulling an IP address.

It is now a pretty clear thing that there was something about his environment that was mucking things up.

So, out come the 50 questions:

• Where is the 2Wire and N series AP plugged into? The wall.
• Where was the system plugged in? A power bar.
• What else is plugged into that power bar? Another PC, two LCD monitors, a LaserJet printer, and a couple of other doodads.
• Is there a UPS? No.

On the off chance, we had him shut the system down, plug it into the wall, and plug either the 2Wire or wireless N access point into the power bar.

He called back about 15 minutes later absolutely ecstatic! The system pulled an IP address and was now connected to the Internet!

We had a good laugh over the situation, but it sure was frustrating getting to the bottom of it.

So, we are ordering up a couple of APC 1500VA voltage regulation based UPSs (BR1500LCD) to split off the two PCs and will make sure that the laser printer is plugged into the surge port and not a battery backup port.

It just goes to show you, there can be any number of physical reasons behind a system’s strange behaviour. One of those reasons is enough A/C power to bring core system components online, but not quite enough coming in from the A/C side to get everything running properly.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Intel SR2400SYSD2, SR1530AH, and SR1560SF Power Consumption

We have an APC BR1500LCD UPS unit that we leave sitting on our bench.

It has the facility to provide live readouts on its LCD panel of various power and UPS events.

One of them is the amount of watts that a device uses while connected to it.

So, to get an idea of what each unit uses for power we plugged each unit into the BR1500LCD on its own and fired it up.

Here are some of the results:

• Intel SR1560SF 1U with Dual E5440 Quad Core Xeons and 3x 750GB Seagate ES SATA
• Power Up POST: 205 Watts Peak
• SBS Boot: 175 Watts on average
• SBS Online: 145 Watts on average
• SBS at rest: 110 Watts on average
• Intel SR1530AH 1U with Intel Xeon X3230 Quad Core Xeon and 2x 750GB Seagate ES SATA
• Power Up: 175 Watts Peak
• Server 2008 Core Boot: 125 Watts on average
• Server 2008 Core online: 80 Watts on average
• Server off but plugged in: 8 Watts
• Intel SR2400SYSD2 2U with dual Intel Xeon 3.0GHz HT and 6x 500GB Seagate ES
• Power Up: 525 Watts Peak
• POST Initialization phase: 235 Watts on Average
• Windows Server 2003 scroll Portion of OS startup: 250 Watts on average
• Windows Server 2003 network and computer startup portion: 205 Watts on average
• SBS at work: 225 Watts on average
• SBS at rest: 205 Watts on average
• Server off but plugged in: 30 Watts

It looks as though the newer technology really shows its efficiency when running full tilt or at a relative idle as can be seen by the above numbers.

Obviously the 2U will consume a bit more power due to the additional hard drives and a more powerful fan setup. However, the older 2U still has a big hit against it in the form of power savings relative to the new 3000 and 5000 series Xeon setups.

In a high density data centre situation, that 50 watts at idle on the newer technologies spread across hundreds if not thousands of servers means a huge savings in power consumption for the server systems themselves as well as the power required to cool the centre.

The neat thing is, there are even better power efficiency enhancements coming down the pipe in future versions of Intel CPUs, the server boards they plug into, and the plug in peripherals. All of this translates into a bit of relief for those data centres already pushed to the limits on their floor space per compute capability, power consumption, and cooling capacity.

For us, it means we have seen a significant drop in our power bill with every NetBurst Xeon server we have replaced with a Core Xeon technologies based server.

That practical experience for us translates into a good selling point for the newer technologies with our clients. A server that saves them money even when they are not in the office is a good thing!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.