Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

Accidents in the workplace happen all the time. In our world it’s usually limbs getting caught in racks, cases and clips. Unfortunately every now and then something really bad will happen and a bit of kit gets dropped.

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.

Posted by Karl in Desktop Hardware, Desktops and Laptops, General, Laptop Hardware | No Comments »

Spotted this on Engadget the other day. Using your macBook’s large mouse pad (trackpad) as a tablet ! Looks like a great idea though is it really big enough and more than just a gimic ?

Made by Ten1Design.

Posted by Chris in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware, Software | No Comments »

So firstly what’s an SSD. In your computer you have a HD (hard disk drive) that is effectively some mini CDs spinning very quickly. These mini CDs store all your data and run your OS (Windows or OS X for the majority of us). They’ve been around for over 10 years and today you can pick up a 1Tb drive for under £60 delivered. Those spinning HDs run noisy, hot, slow and really don’t like to be bumped. SSDs however solve all those problems.

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 !

Posted by Chris in Desktop Hardware, Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | No Comments »

So yesterday was the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference or what they like to call the WWDC. It’s basically a look at what we’ve been doing behind our closed doors.

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.

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

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

Posted by Dave in Laptop Hardware | No Comments »