Monthly Newsletter · August 2026

New Technology

Intel's newest chip is now shipping in business laptops

Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 (codenamed Panther Lake) launched at CES in January — the company's first chip built on its new 18A manufacturing process, designed and made in the United States. It's now powering more than 200 laptop and desktop designs from Intel's partners, with broad availability rolling out through the first half of this year and edge/embedded versions arriving in Q2.

The practical gains: notably better battery life, a meaningfully faster integrated GPU, and dedicated on-chip AI acceleration for running AI features locally instead of relying entirely on the cloud. For a business laptop, that translates to less time tethered to an outlet and snappier performance on the AI-assisted features increasingly built into everyday software.

If your team is due for a hardware refresh, this generation is worth waiting for rather than buying the outgoing lineup at a discount. We can help you figure out which Series 3 laptops make sense for your business and budget.

Security Issues

A WordPress flaw is an easy fix if you catch it early

A critical vulnerability disclosed this month is being actively used to gain administrative control of unpatched WordPress sites — a platform that powers a large share of small business websites, including many we manage for clients. The fix itself is simple: an update closes the door. The risk is only in the businesses that don't know to check.

Three things worth doing this week:

• Confirm your WordPress core, theme, and plugins are on the latest versions
• Use strong, unique admin credentials with multi-factor authentication
• Keep a tested, offsite backup so a compromise is a rollback, not a rebuild

If CTS hosts or manages your website, this is already handled. If you manage your own site, it's a five-minute check — happy to walk you through it if you're not sure where to look.

How-To: Microsoft Office

Stop retyping the same email — use Outlook Quick Steps

If there's an email action you repeat several times a day — forwarding invoices to accounting, replying "received, thank you," or moving a message to a project folder and marking it read — Quick Steps in Outlook turns that into one click instead of four or five.

To set one up:

1. On the Home tab, find the Quick Steps section and click the small arrow to open "Manage Quick Steps"
2. Choose "New" and pick a starting action (Move to folder, Forward, Reply and Delete, etc.)
3. Add any extra actions you want bundled in — for example, forward and then mark as read
4. Name it something you'll recognize at a glance, and optionally assign it a keyboard shortcut

Takes about two minutes to build the first time, and pays that time back every single day you use it. If you'd like help setting up Quick Steps — or want to see what else Office can automate for your team — reach out to CTS support.

The Computer Business

Belden closes $1.85B deal for RUCKUS Networks

Belden Inc. has completed its acquisition of RUCKUS Networks from Vistance Networks, a deal valued at approximately $1.85 billion. RUCKUS brings enterprise Wi-Fi, switching, and AI-driven network management to Belden's existing industrial networking business, positioning the combined company as a full-stack provider across both enterprise and industrial environments. The deal, first announced in April, officially closed on July 1.

Separately, Anthropic — the AI company behind Claude — announced in June that it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, following a similar move by OpenAI earlier the same month. Both filings come during one of the strongest years for tech IPOs since 2021.

Consolidation in networking and a wave of AI companies heading toward public markets both point the same direction: the infrastructure and tools businesses depend on are consolidating into fewer, larger players. We'll keep watching for anything that could affect the vendors our clients rely on.

49 years in, still fixing what matters

Cavalier Technical Services has been keeping New York businesses running since 1977 — long before "IT support" was a category, back when it was just fixing what was broken and making sure it stayed fixed. Nearly five decades later, that's still the job, even though what we fix has changed a lot: from typewriters and early PCs to cloud infrastructure, managed security, and the software stack your business runs on today.

We're based at 224 West 35th Street in Midtown Manhattan, and our team handles everything from same-day repairs to ongoing managed IT, cabling, cybersecurity, and web and marketing services for businesses across NYC.

Thank you for being one of the clients who's made 49 years possible. If there's anything we can help with — big or small — just reply to this email or give us a call.

Cavalier Technical Services · 224 West 35th Street, Suite 202, New York, NY 10001 · Since 1977

t. 212-682-1780 · info@ctscts.com