• 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’!

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.

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!

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

Not any more they don’t !

In this case one of our staff dropped a PC (an IBM ThinkCentre) directly onto a Macbook Pro (3,1). Fearing the worst the PC was brushed aside[1] and we hurriedly opened the Macbook Pro. Surprisingly everything was still working. The screen isn’t broken. The keyboard is fine. Infact, it woke up from sleep seconds after the incident with no issues at all.

Similar things have happened in the office in the past, and invariably the laptop/phone/hand/foot has been completely destroyed, with a nerdy missle sticking comically out of it.

So there you go, another reason to buy Apple laptops. Other than looking cool in coffee shops and meetings.

Naturally the member of staff involved was immediately put to death for such carelessness.

[1] IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre’s are built like tanks, which is why we still love IBM and Lenovo PCs.

Made by Ten1Design.

RAM in your computer runs a lot quicker than your HD and has a very different job. Over the last few years people have been in effect making HDs out of RAM. Think of HD technology as the steam age and SSDs are the oil age of cars.

We’ve recently put a 64Gb Corsair Extreme SSD in a PC and popped the OS on it (about £150 delivered). Loading programs and booting the OS are so much quicker. What caught us by surprise though was that when you load something you’re used to the whiring and clicking of the HD in the machine sitting next to you. This is completely done and actualy quite disconcerting to start with. We can see this obviously being of a huge benefit to laptop users and as such are keeping our eyes open for when the 300Gb SSDs are the right price.

Here are a few basic speed tests for storage in a PC -
1Tb Samsung 5400rpm HD
64Gb Corsair Extreme SSD
8Gb Sony USB Memory Stick
2 x 500Gb Samsung 7200rpm HD (RAID 0)
3 x 500Gb Samsung 7200rpm HD (RAID 5)

HDs will always have their place for mass storage but running your OS and programs on an SSD (or an array of SSDs) really does make a differnce. It’s as clear as walking 400 miles or flying 400 miles !

So from our point of view here are the main bits of news that may be of interest to our customers -

• iPhone 3.0 Software out June 17th
• Full TomTom GPS Navigation on the iPhone available via the App Store shortly after the software release above.
• iPhone Tethering, that’s connecting your mobile to your desktop or laptop and using it to get onto the internet. It’s down to the carriers, so that is O2 in the UK and not sure if they are going to support / allow it.
• New iPhone 3G S phone hardware out with a better battery, faster processor and better camera.
• The next release of OS X is 10.6 (‘code named’ Snow Leopard) is out in September and going to cost $29.
• OS X 10.6 is going to contain Microsoft Exchange support via Mail. However it needs an Exchange 2007 server, not a problem we can do the upgrades if you need it.
• New Laptop hardware and price drops. Not much to say as the changes are just nice but no big change like the unibody change in 2008.

There is of course a lot more to this, but this is the nuts and bolts that we are interested in.

If you have two screen’s on your desktop you will know how much quicker and easier you can get things done.

Lenovo have cought on to this made the first laptop to have a pull out second display.

Other features -

• 2.53GHz Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300
• 4GB Ram upgradable to 8GB
• 320GB SATA 7200rpm Harddrive
• Wireless 802.11 a/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Windows Vista

The W700ds isnt small but does have a high spec, the main screen is 17″ running at 1920x1200 and the second dsiplay is 10.6″ running at 1024×768 run by an Nvidia Quadro FX 3700M with 1GB of memory.

Althougth it hasnt yet been released it is expect to cost more than