Cruzio Newsletter - Number 89, November 14, 2005
1. Small Business Fair This Wednesday, November 16th
2. Cruzio Technical Support Hours Expanded
3. We'll Match Your Donations
4. Cruzio DSL Upgrade
5. Free Brown Bag Workshop December 1: Computer Security
6. Faster, Faster!
7. Buddy Bucks
8. About This Newsletter
9. How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
1. Small Business Fair This Wednesday, November 16th
"Growing a Sustainable Small Business"
On Wednesday, November 16th, 4 to 9 pm
At The Attic, 931 Pacific Avenue, in Downtown Santa Cruz
Registration is $35 in advance, $40 at the door
A delicious dinner is available for an extra $10
For more information, and to register, go to
http://www.smallbusinessfair.com
Small businesses thrive in Santa Cruz County, with new ones starting
up every day. How do you move from the idea stage to an initial venture
to a sustainable enterprise? And how do local small businesses succeed
(and perhaps become less small)? If you own your own business, or are
thinking about opening a business, this event will help you navigate
the transitions.
It's helpful to hear from others who have been in your shoes, and
have come through your situation successfully. That's why our panels
are mainly composed of well-known local business people, such as (among
others): Gayle Ortiz, from Gayle's Bakery; Eddie Scher, from Soy Vay;
Tony Robinson, from Martinelli's; and our own beloved founder, Chris
Neklason, from Cruzio. We'll also be presenting experts who are
familiar with the different stages of a successful business.
Cruzio will present three workshops in one evening:
"Growing Your Small Business"
"Finding and Keeping Customers"
"Marketing Basics and Beyond"
There will be plenty of opportunities to ask questions of our
distinguished panelists, and also to get to know other local
business people who are attending. Please register soon, as
we have only limited space left:
http://www.smallbusinessfair.com
2. Cruzio Technical Support Hours Expanded
Need computer help first thing in the morning? Cruzio Technical
Support is now available from 8 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday,
10 am to 2 pm Saturday. In addition, as always, our engineers and
support staff monitor the network and respond to system problems
24 hours a day.
When someone at Cruzio answers the phone, he or she can almost
always solve your problem. Unlike many companies, Cruzio's Technical
Support staff are all
a) local, and
b) knowledgeable
-- and you rarely have to wait to talk to someone. We have chosen to
provide high quality support for as many hours as possible rather than
watered-down, contracted-out support for longer stretches of the night.
If you'd like to send suggestions on how we could improve our hours or
our service, please contact us by clicking the "Suggestion Box" at the
bottom of any page on our Web site, http://www.cruzio.com .
3. We'll Match Your Donations
Please help Cruzio feed the hungry this year. We are offering
to match contributions from our members and staff to the Second
Harvest Food Bank up to a combined total of $1,500 between
November 28th and the end of the year.
The Food Bank is a worthy organization which fulfills the very
basic need of feeding the hungry in our community. To learn more,
please see their Web site:
http://www.thefoodbank.org
Along with this local cause, we will also be matching donations to
an organization assisting earthquake-stricken Pakistan. Doctors
there are still climbing over boulders to reach the injured and sick;
housing is short, and the winter is cold. We usually focus our
holiday giving on local folks in need, but certainly, Santa Cruz
County residents understand the devastation that an earthquake can cause.
We'll match contributions to Medecins Sans Frontieres -- also known as
Doctors Without Borders -- up to a total of $1,000. You can learn more
about MSF by going to their Web site:
http://www.msf.org/
Whether you choose to donate to Second Harvest Food Bank, or Medecins
Sans Frontieres, or both, Cruzio will match your contributions if you
make the check out to "Second Harvest Food Bank" or "Medecins
Sans Frontieres" -- separate checks, please, if you donate to both.
Send your contribution to Cruzio, 903 Pacific Avenue, Suite 101,
Santa Cruz 95060. When we get the check, we will log it and increase
our contribution accordingly (until we top out). Then we'll pass along
your original contribution, matched dollar-for-dollar by ours. We will
send you a confirmation that you can use for tax purposes -- donations
to both these causes are tax-deductible.
Cruzio also accepts cans of food for Second Harvest Food Bank. As always,
if you are late on a payment, you may bring in 3 cans for the food barrel
in lieu of a late fee.
Thank you for helping.
4. Cruzio DSL Upgrade
In late October Cruzio upgraded all our DSL lines and equipment.
The improvements are needed to handle ever-increasing Internet traffic:
many Cruzio members have recently switched from dialup to DSL, and
from slower DSL to faster DSL speeds (Cruzio DSL 3.0 and 6.0).
Certainly, our low prices have helped spur the change.
This is a trend across the Internet. 60% of home users, and about 85%
of business users in America now have broadband -- DSL or cable. Those
who still have dialup have access to accelerators (such as Cruzio's free
Web Accelerator.) All this speed means that Cruzio has to keep up by
purchasing huge new routers and locking in high-capacity data lines to
bear the load. The recent improvements mean that we are ahead of the game
for now -- but we are already planning our next upgrades.
If you're interested in the growth of the Internet, you'll find a lot
of raw numbers at this site:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/
5. Free Brown Bag Workshop December 1: Computer Security
Thursday, December 1, 12-1:30 pm
"Computer Security for Home or Office"
At Cruzio's Downtown Santa Cruz Storefront, 903 Pacific Ave
Every so often Cruzio publishes information -- in this newsletter
and on our Web site -- about viruses, worms, spyware and adware that
can affect your computer's performance or even destroy data. We can
help you react to problems after they occur, but a better plan is to
guard against them in the first place. Learn how to practice safe
computer use with our friendly, helpful Technical Support staffers,
Stephen and Mike. Bring your questions! The event is free, and you
can order a sandwich for $7. To register, please visit:
http://events.cruzio.com
6. Faster, Faster!
Many have heard of Moore's Law for computer circuits. The law
states that computing power doubles every 18 months.
Until recently, speeds in telecommunications weren't doubling at
anything like that rate. As a young man, my grandfather had a
telephone very like the one we have in our house today. Higher
bandwidth for consumer telecommunications wasn't needed for
over 50 years.
All that has changed. Computers eat data at a rate much greater
than an old-fashioned telephone. There's been a shift in human
interaction -- communication, performance, record-keeping, research,
commerce, games -- onto the Internet. Want to download music or movies?
You'll need a bigger line. What about telephone over the Internet?
That will take bandwidth, too. In fact, you'll probably find yourself
using more and more as the years go by. That's been the trend since
the Internet began. Some say traffic on the Internet is now doubling
every six months -- faster than Moore's Law.
Here's the history: when the Internet first began, its data
traveled over Plain Old Telephone Service lines, or POTS. The
Internet took less data than a phone call. Fiberoptics were used
by big telecommunications companies to carry long distance calls,
but line capacity wasn't an issue on the consumer side.
As companies realized the different kinds of data that could go
across the Internet -- not just text, but graphics and sound --
there was pressure to increase Internet bandwidth. Consumers began
to want lines to their homes as big as the ones telecommunications
companies had been using to transport interstate traffic.
Replacing lines to homes and offices -- the "last mile" -- is
prohibitively expensive, so consumers and carriers have instead found
ways to put more and more data on existing telephone and cable TV
lines. You don't have to lay new cable to get broadband Internet.
You just need to put new equipment on the old connection. DSL is a
technology that uses the same old POTS lines -- but equipment at each
end of the line increases capacity to broadband speeds.
What will happen next? Clearly we'll need to go faster and get more
data to more devices. Even your coffeepot may be using the Internet
someday. Demand for more capacity has pushed businesses to invent new
technology and invest in infrastructure. That's likely to continue.
Where does Cruzio stand in all this? We currently lease POTS lines
from SBC, providing our own DSL service through their copper.
We pay wholesale prices and pass the savings on to our customers:
currently Cruzio's prices for a year of DSL are lower than SBC's
and our speeds are just as high. We lease fiber circuits from
high-speed telecomm "backbone" companies to relay data between our
customers and the greater Internet.
We'll continue to look for the best uses of new technology, and to
push the bar higher. It's exciting to be in this field -- a business
of exponential change.
7. Buddy Bucks
Recommend us to friends, family, colleagues: if a new customer
gives us your email address, registration number, or full name when
they sign up you'll get $10 credit to your account. If two friends
sign up, $20. Three friends, $30. It just goes on and on.
8. About This Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra email, but we sometimes
have events and announcements that users need to know about. This seems
like the most efficient way to let people know what's happening. Hope
it's helpful. Please email support@cruzio.com with any comments or questions.
By the way, we would love to have a regular, predictable schedule
for this newsletter...but we simply do not send it unless there is real
news enclosed. Thus the haphazard datelines.
9. How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
To reach the Cruzio Information Center, for online technical and
sales information:
http://www.cruzio.com/support
To dial in to Cruzio, set your software to dial one of the numbers
below (note: we've expanded and joined modem pools, so you may be
using another number. If so, don't worry, it still works just fine).
Dialup (in Santa Cruz County): 459-9408
Nationwide Dialup: Look up local number on our Web page:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/dialup_isdn/nationwide_numbers.html
or call Cruzio toll free, 1.800.303.3302
To call Cruzio:
459-6301............Use this number to check Cruzio's system status,
pay your Cruzio bill, find out more about our hours and location,
or to reach someone in customer service and technical support.
722-6200 .......... Cruzio's number in Watsonville.
To send email to Cruzio, use one of these addresses:
support@cruzio.com ......for technical support
office@cruzio.com .......for billing and ordering information
Cruzio's locations:
Santa Cruz: 903 Pacific Avenue, Suite 101, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Watsonville: Plaza Vigil, 23 E. Beach Street, Watsonville, CA 95076
Cruzio's hours:
Sales hours: 10am-6pm, Monday through Friday; 10 am - 2 pm Saturday
Technical support: 8am to 6pm, Mon to Fri, 10am - 2pm Saturday
System monitoring, including customer-alerted emergencies, 24 hours
per day, 365 days per year (leap years, 366 days)
Thanks very much from Cruzio:
Chris, Peggy, Julianne, Kathy, Mark, Tapati, Stephen,
Paul, Gershom, Jessi, Michael, Maria, James, Juana,
Krissie, Nikkie, Mike, Don, Bruce, Edgar, Brian, Westi,
Andrew, Jaime, another Chris, and yet another Chris; Marco,
Tiffany, and even another Chris (!), our helpful interns;
Jake, Annika, and Carly (the kids)
Jake, age 13: "Can I borrow your umbrella?"
Carly, age 8: "No, I don't want it to get wet."
