Last weekend those dedicated StarTech.com employees were at it again, raising money for another great cause, The American Cancer Society. Employees from our Groveport, Ohio location participated in the annual Relay for Life event held in Groveport and raised an incredible $1500 to support this worthy cause!

In addition to running the track, the team also participated in other activities and took first place in the competitive box car race. We like to win at StarTech.com!

Not content to stop there, the team will be continuing its fundraising efforts through August so there's still time to help out!

A special thank you to everyone who represented StarTech.com at The Relay for Life, participated in the fundraising and made contributions to support a very worthy cause.

In addition to the CAT5 VGA Extender Audio Video Wall Plates I mentioned in my post last week, I am pleased to mention that we will be introducing the new CAT5 Composite Video Extender Audio/Video Wall Plate (COMPUTPWALLA) and CAT5 Component Video Extender Audio/Video Wall Plate (CPNTUTPWALLA) in the coming weeks - both currently available for pre-order!

The Composite video extender A/V wall plates and the Component Video extender A/V wall plates include stereo audio capability, providing a single Cat5 extension that ensures a simple, straightforward installation, overcoming the need to extend the corresponding audio signal separately.

Our "UTPE" family of Cat5 VGA extenders is growing in the coming weeks, with the addition of our VGA extender video wall plates, including: 

• CAT5 VGA Extender Video Wall Plate - Transmitter (STUTPTXWAL)
• CAT5 VGA Extender Video Wall Plate - Receiver (STUTPRXWAL)
• CAT5 VGA Extender Video Wall Plate - Transmitter and Receiver (STUTPWALL)

 The video wall plates provide a very neat and professional approach to extending VGA video signals, supporting a broad range of display resolutions as determined by extension distance:

• 300m (950ft) / 800x600
• 200m (620ft) / 1024x768
• 180m (550ft) / 1280x1024
• 100m (300ft) / 1600x1200
• 50m (150ft) / 1920x1200

One of the key, most cost-effective benefits of our VGA extender wall plates is that they use non-proprietary cable, instead of specialized cabling. Not only is network cable cheaper than specialized cabling, it's also less bulky than any of the proprietary cable I've seen so far, which can be a definite installation time-saver. 

In the coming months, we'll also be releasing Composite, Component, and HDMI video extender wall plates, in addition to our CAT 5 VGA video extender products, adding to the value of the VGA extender wall plates by adding scalability. Unlike proprietary video extender wall plates, our VGA, Composite, Component, and HDMI wall plates would only require swapping out the wall plate in the event of an upgrade or migration to another A/V format. With systems using a specially-fit cable, you'd also need to re-install the necessary cable based on the format you'd be using, adding not only to the expense of such a project but also the time and hassle.

The video wall plates are available for pre-order, and are expected to arrive within the next 4-6 weeks!

Over the weekend of June 13th-14th, a hearty group of StarTech.com employees participated in the annual Labatt 24 Hour Relay to raise money for the Children's Aid Society. Through various fundraising activities and generous donations, our team raised an impressive $3795 to help this worthy cause.

To complete the event, teams were required to have a runner on the track continually for 24 hours straight, no easy task! We also participated in many challenging competitions such as the tug of war. As you can see from the photo, team StarTech.com plays to win!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the event and fundraising. Together we supported a great cause and had some fun at the same time.

Another new addition to our line of do-it-yourself SSDs, the 2.5in SATA or USB to Dual Compact Flash SSD Adapter with RAID (2FC2SATAR) is now available for purchase.

Built to support RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring), and BIG (Concatenation), the CF hard drive adapter allows Compact Flash/Compact Flash II, or MicroDrive media to be used on a laptop computer as a bootable hard drive.

When the USB/SATA CF SSD Adapter is linked using USB, power and data transferred through the USB 2.0 interface allows the attached desktop or notebook PC easy and efficient CF card access. The CF adapter card also contains a SATA male power connector and SATA male data connector to give an alternate handy connection option for users. 

Our newest Ethernet Serial Device Server (NETRS2321POE) is now available, adding to our line of serial to Ethernet device servers.

Distinguishing the NETRS2321POE from earlier releases, this new serial device server offers a Power over Ethernet (PoE) connection, which eliminates the need for an external power source by utilizing the power drawn from PoE switches, hubs or other PoE devices. This feature is of major value for installation locales that have limited access to available power outlets.

Much like our previous serial device servers, the NETRS2321POE offers a simple way to install RS232 serial devices anywhere on a TCP/IP Ethernet WAN/LAN, allowing users access to shared RS232 peripherals through a connection established over an intranet or the Internet.

The newest additions to our "DIY SSD" lineup of Compact Flash adapters are now available for pre-order.

The 1.8” 50-Pin IDE SSD CF Enclosure and 1.8" Micro SATA SSD CF Enclosure let you turn a Compact Flash card into a bootable 1.8in IDE or SATA Solid State Drive (respectively).

The adapters offer very simple and cost-effective do-it-yourself Solid State Storage that can be used to replace a conventional laptop hard drive, harnessing the benefits of SSD.