Keeping Your New Car Shining

One of the best things about owning a new car is its smooth, shiny "showroom" look. Maintaining that look-by washing and waxing your car regularly and touching up any scratches-can keep it looking new longer. 


Fortunately, the latest cars are finished with a high-tech process that makes it easier for car owners to maintain that new-car look. Many cars on the market today have a powder coated finish that helps protect them from chips and scratches, as well as damage caused by UV rays, harsh weather, salt spray and acid rain. 


A clearcoat can protect the car's high-gloss finish, which keeps your car looking new longer. 


Several of America's car manufacturers have discovered that this technique offers many advantages over liquid paint. The environmentally friendly finishing process eliminates the need for costly waste-disposal equipment and oversprayed powder particles can be recovered and reused. 


Some of the manufacturers using this process include GM, Chrysler, BMW, Volvo, Lincoln, Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz and Dodge. Every bit of exposed metal in DaimlerChrysler's European Smart Car has been powder coated. 


It's not just the outside of the cars that benefits from powder coating. As well as having an exterior clearcoat, many new cars also have powder coated decorative wheels, hubcaps and trim. It's even used on truck beds, door handles and engine parts. 


It isn't only car manufacturers that have discovered the process. It's found on thousands of home and garden products, as well as sporting goods, recreational vehicles and office furniture and equipment. 


It has become a universally preferred method of finishing for all the same reasons it has been so enthusiastically adopted by car manufacturers.  

Despite Video-Game Mania, Little League Baseball Still Hits It Off With Kids

Having conceded some time ago that the usual childhood in America is being despairingly twisted by the current popularity of moronically violent video games, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the nation's young have not been entirely removed from what is generally considered a bedrock of normal American development: Little League Baseball.

Cabling your home for computer network - still a requirement?

Cabling your home for computer network - still a requirement?

With proliferation of wireless networking and communication equipment it is oh-so-tempting to cut the cord and save a significant sum of money in the process. But is everything that a regular computer networking user needs can be done using just wireless network? Let's take a look at some pros and contras:

1. One important advantage of having a cabled network is the available bandwidth or simply speed. At the present point in time the speed of connection via a simple and inexpensive CAT5E cable can be 1000Mbit/sec, whereas the best that IEEE802.11g (one of the many flavors of Wi-Fi) can offer is only 54Mbit/sec. It may not seem so significant if you think you are only browsing Internet, and the DSL speed available to you is 1.5Mbit/sec. However, if you need to print via your network connection on a remote printer, you should realize that the print jobs, depending on the amount of graphic data in them, can easily reach dozens and even hundreds megabytes. Since 1Byte=8bit one 100MByte print job will take 15 seconds (and in reality this time can be much longer) to transmit via a Wi-Fi wireless connection, and this time shrinks to mere 1 sec or less on wired 1000MBit/s Ethernet connection. Same principal applies to transferring files, backing up files on other computers in the network etc.