Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

Recent research by hardware manufacturer Intel (and supported by the Confederation of British Industry) has highlighted the lack of investment and expertise in IT in small businesses in the UK. Their study of 3000 IT decision makers for businesses of 250 users or less shows:

• the majority still use fax machines more than smart phones
• a large percentage expose themselves to security risks by using personal laptops and mobile devices for work and are unaware of the data protection rules they’re potentially breaking by doing so
• most did not know what ‘the cloud’ is, even those that were using it already (e.g via Gmail)

There were several other worrying facts relating to investment in IT equipment (a third do not intend to buy new laptops or tablets for at least a year) and security (two thirds spend under 10% of their IT budget on protecting against attacks).

It’s disappointing that in this digital age many small businesses still do not appreciate the efficiency improvements that can be attained by updating IT infrastructure or the importance of maintaining IT security. At Glo Networks we are proud that none of our customers fall into this group (and those that may have previously have had our help to make the required improvements). Don’t let your business your business be one of those stuck in the IT ‘dark age’!

Posted by James in Desktop Hardware, Desktops and Laptops, General, Hardware, Laptop Hardware, Mobile, Servers, Small Business Software | No Comments »

We currently use Glo Remote to look at a users screen and diagnose a problem. This enables us to effectively cover a much larger area of the country than before (who is going to wait 6 hours for me to drive there!)  with response times in the minutes (average response last month was 3!).

HP Server’s have had something called Integrated Lights out  (iLO), IBM have Intergrated Management Module (IMM) they all do similar things they allow out of band (not running an OS) access to the Server, allowing for restarts, bios updates etc.  However, we haven’t in the past been able to look at a PC at these levels or that are not booting, have crashed, or are off.  All this is going to change in the near future, with new technology being brought in by Intel. It’s calledAMT and is available on Laptops and PC’s with core i5′s and i7′s (there are rumours of it working on lesser processors).

Requirements:

Processor with AMT support.

Intel PRO network card ( again it needs to support AMT)  installed to work with it. Be careful of this  as it won’t work with others!

We are starting to look at this great piece of tech, and once we have got our heads round it we will give you  more of an insight on how this works in the early new year.

Posted by JamesC in General, Laptop Hardware | No Comments »

Take a look at a Macbook Pro, specifically the USB ports. Spot any differences? Anything to suggest one may be hiding a secret? No? Well although the USB ports on the Macbook Pro look identical it seems Apple has a little surprise attached to the rear port (closest to the screen).

The rear USB port actually connects to a hidden (internal) USB Hub, which is also shared by the keyboard, Bluetooth, track pad, iSight camera and the infra-red receiver. While it is still a functional USB port for the most part, certain devices can have problems, caused by the USB hub.

Our attention was brought to this issue when we tried to use a USB hub on one of our own in the rear port. It seemed to be working as expected at first, however we were confused to find that when we attempted to use a USB headset in the external hub we found Skype calls would have quality issues. We also noticed a form of lag when using a mouse in the hub.

We found that a simple swap of the USB hub from the rear to the front USB port on the Macbook cleared all the issues! A little investigating  and we uncovered the Macbook Pro’s secret hub. This explained the problems we’d experienced, considering having a USB hub plugged into a USB hub has never been a recommended setup!

Posted by James in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 3 Comments »

It seems what was left of Microsoft’s diminishing lead in market capitalisation has finally been eaten up by Apple (or at least by one measure of market capitalization). While this probably will not come as a surprise to those who are interested in such things; when looking at the history of both companies it does mark an important milestone.

With both companies founded in 1975 this has been no short journey for either. However since that time Microsoft has maintained its dominance pretty much consistently, and it has only really been in the last 10 years (which has seen the release of such iconic Apple products as the iPod, iPhone and the Macbook) that Apple providing a challenge to Microsoft’s market supremacy.

Through out the ’00′s Apple  created several iconic, genre leading products with which Microsoft have seemed to struggled to compete . Business products aside, we would challenge you to offer a Microsoft product in the last 5 years that rivals Apples innovation. One possible exception worth considering is the Xbox 360, which was  ground breaking in terms of online connectivity when released in 2005. That said Apple have yet to enter the console gaming market!

More information and figures can be found in the following articles: Engadget, Financial Times, TGDaily

Posted by James in Desktop Hardware, Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware, Operating Systems, Software | No Comments »

If you have one of the new macBook Pros from Apple. The ones with the dual nvidia GT 330M cards in then you really should pop this great bit of software onto your mac. Without this software on there you don’t know which card is currently running your mac. The fancy nvidia one isn’t needed for most tasks as it warms the macbook up and sucks the battery. But interestingly it appears that Parallels and VLC both switch it on ! Parallels does even with 3D turned off on it’s VMs.

Not any more they don’t !

Posted by Chris in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 4 Comments »