PunaroTech

12/31/2025

URGENT! Google is ending support for connecting 3rd party email accounts to your Gmail via POP3 in January! If you use this to get mail from your own domain, you MUST change your settings at your email provider to forward all email to your Gmail account, or set up an email client to pull email via IMAP. While you can use the mobile Gmail app for this, you can no longer use Gmail via the web, so that solution doesn't work on a PC.

Read more here:

Starting January 2026, Gmail will no longer provide support for the following features: Gmailify: This feature allows you to get special features like spam protection or inbox organization applied

11/29/2025

Gearing up for a big network revamp, so all the gear is getting set up on the bench and preconfigured to reduce time at the client's site.

11/07/2025

Was called in to help a new business owner that just closed on a building "understand what all these wires are for". Was not expecting to find wall mounted 10Base2!

Luckily they also have fiber and Ethernet so they don't have to worry about saving the coax when they remodel, but it was a treat to see this still in the wild!

10/20/2025

09/26/2025

Support for Windows 10 is coming to an end in October, however Microsoft has opened up the extended security update program at no cost for a wider group of customers. If you're still happily running a Windows 10 PC, see this article for steps to follow to sign up for an extra year of security updates.

Keep Windows 10 secure with updates after 2025 by enrolling in the Extended Security Updates program.

08/03/2025

"The internet is out in half our complex" was the challenge, traced back to a poor termination plugged into a shady coupler, wrapped in electrical tape, patched to an old wall jack shoved into a wall cavity... and exceeding the maximum length of a run between switches.

Fixed by replacing the coupler with a switch and reterminating the cable... at least until a new backbone line can be run directly between the switches.

07/22/2025

This was a colorful one! Always nice when everything lights up on the initial boot! This is an Intel Core-i5 moderate gaming build with GeForce RTX 5060 graphics, 2 TB SSD drive, and 32 GB RAM. With Windows 11 installed, this can be built for about $1700. If you're interested in a custom built PC, drop us a note!

05/05/2025

Finished up this residential Unifi network install, with a Reolink NVR system and cameras to cover their house and barn. All the equipment is tucked away neatly in a cabinet in the basement, and HDMI over Ethernet extenders were used to send the NVR feed to a monitor in the living area.

If you're planning to build a house, call us to help you plan a technology infrastructure that will meet your current and future needs! If you're looking to improve your current house, we can help with that too!

01/02/2025

Happy New Year to all our clients! We're happy to have been able to serve you in 2024 and are excited to see what new and interesting projects we can help you with in 2025!

11/26/2024

This weekend I upgraded a client's network, replacing their old Belkin router with a new UniFi Dream Router and an additional access point for better coverage in their house. But... something still didn't look right. Their internet speeds were not great, especially considering how much they were paying Spectrum. The UniFi network app hinted at a possible issue - the uplink port to the cable modem was only showing up as FE (Fast Ethernet, aka 100 Mbps). So I swapped in a new cable and it instantly switched to a Gigabit link! Rerun the speed test and... now they're getting 5x faster download speeds!

The cable company is always happy to sell you upgraded speeds, but that won't necessarily fix your home network. If your home network doesn't feel like you're getting what you're paying for, PunaroTech can help!

11/10/2024

Who needs daylight when your tester has a backlight ?

09/14/2024

An important article came out recently on the deteriorating state of archival hard drives. Iron Mountain noted that about 20% of the drives they're asked to pull from their archives from the 90s are dead. The article focuses on the impact to the music industry, which largely moved to digital storage in the 90s and the impact lost recordings may have, but it's also a cautionary tale for all of us.

What it means is no storage medium is "permanent". If you have important files on an old external hard drive that's been shoved in a closet, basement, or an attic for years, that drive is deteriorating. CDs and DVDs burned on a home PC also deteriorate. USB drives and memory cards were never designed for long term storage.

So how do we keep our ever growing treasure trove of digital files safe? Keep them alive! Make sure there's a copy on an active computer, NAS, or cloud storage service. Plug in those drives and make sure they're readable, and when you do make another copy of the files. I'm a proponent of home Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices as they give you expandable space that can store your whole family's photos, videos, and files and keep the data in your own house, but can also be easily backed up themselves.

If you have questions on safe data storage for your business or home, please reach out and we can discuss options!

By Steve Harvey. Iron Mountain sounds the alarm: Aging tracks created through an all-digital workflow aren't guaranteed to play back.