Hi everyone,

Here we are… 2005! One step further into the 21^st century. We are still far from driving flying cars but our homes are beginning to live up to expectations. We are now able to enjoy many benefits of the digital home, such as high speed internet, computing and home entertainment.

This year promises to be exciting and challenging as we are ready to implement our vision of the digital home.

Appearing on our website in the next few days will be the PF Systems Virtual Home which you can use to explore our vision for the digital home. Such a home will focus on hidden and user friendly technology from home entertainment systems to Pocket PCs. The wired home will consist of a network of digital devices which seamlessly act together to make your home experience more productive, enjoyable and entertaining.

With Windows Media Center Edition, wireless technology, high-speed Internet and Digital TV, the digital home is in our hands, and affordable!

Here’s our first newsletter for 2005:

· Backing up

· Sign up for Broadband

· “Back to School” news & specials

Backing up

Back it up!

We used to have a big cupboard of files and a shelf of photographs and music. Increasingly, we keep many of our treasured things on a hard disk drive. Unfortunately, it only takes the failure of this hard drive (a common occurrence) for all this information to disappear and if it is possible to retrieve, you will be faced with $1000s of dollars worth of recovery costs.

We all have to keep in mind that data storage is not permanent. As the winds erode etchings on a rock wall, so too our etchings disappear from our video tapes, CDs, DVDs and hard disks (HDD).

For personal and business taxation, data retention laws stipulate that we must keep complete records for 7 years. Therefore it is our legal responsibility to ensure that our backups will last the distance.

Hard Disks (HDD) have a built in tolerance for errors. They are manufactured with spare sectors of information to replace failing sectors as your hard drive ages. SMART technology monitors these sectors (as well as other critical life-time usage data) and tries to estimate when the HDD might fail and pre-warn against such an occurrence. However, power surges and other unpredictable occurrences can see your drive going from operational to ‘non’ in a twinkling of the HDD LED.

RAID systems are Redundant Array’s of Inexpensive Disks. You can prevent data loss from HDD failure by using a system of multiple hard disk drives in various RAID configurations. However, array corruption can still occur if, in a less likely situation, a RAID controller fails. So you are still in a position of having to keep an independent backup anyway.

So, what to do with the precious memories? The only option is to juggle your information from media to media for as long as you want to keep it (or you could upload it to a datacenter and let them handle it - if you trust them). Stored digital data is still increasing exponentially and with 5 exabytes (18 zeros) of new data being produced in 2002, the main question may not be how we store all our new data but rather what we let slip gently away into the mists of time.

Our recommended option is to use a RAID system on your main PC (or server) which holds all your household data. Critical data could be regularly backed up on a HDD independent of this RAID array on a regular basis.

Sign up for Broadband

· 500MB Basic Plan now $24.95

· $0 installation

· 6 month contract

· From $29.95/month

· Free 1 port modem on a 24 month contract for all plans

“Back to School” news & specials

What’s news?

All-in-one PC – the future of computing

Compact and capable unit for suitable for small spaces

Budget Solidstate MP3 Player

Now 512MB (instead of 256MB)

$140

17”LCD AOC LM726

· Contrast ratio: 450:1

· Response time: 16ms

· Built-in speakers

· 3 year warranty

$434

Belkin Wireless Keyboard & Mouse

$75

Special offer until the 1^st of March

Budget

$1499

Value

$1864

Performance

$3195

Mobility Budget

$1599

Mobility Value

$1940

Mobility Performance

$3199

Purchase a laptop and get one of the two following items for free:

Trend Micro PC Cillin Internet Security 2005

Best antivirus in 2004

128MB Transcend JetFlash

USB memory key

Please email us any feedback or suggestion in regards to our newsletter.

Best regards,

Ben Druitt & Phuong-Dung Hoang – PF Systems

PS: If you want to unsubscribe from our mailing list, fill in the form in the Mailing List section on our homepage www.pfsystems.com.au and we will remove you from our list or send an email to unsubscribe@pfsystems.com.au.