Understanding the accumulation of data
Apple has aggressively moved to eliminate “superfluous” peripherals and connections, wiping out the floppy and now selling a number of machines without optical drives. AirDrop continues this progression, attacking the prime use case for USB flash drives.
Although subjected to Apple’s usual silent treatment before the big unveil, Apple has released waves of detail since. Yet, even as pre-orders are shipping, there are still many things we don’t know about the iPad. What surprises are in store?
With my Cardo Scala abandoned in a New York taxi and my Motorola H800 falling apart, I decided it was time to pick up a new BlueTooth headset. As luck would have it, I decided to buy on the very day that Aliph released their next-generation Jawbone headset, the ICON.
It was an interesting week, with a cloud computing summit in Washington DC, the release of Windows Storage Server 2008, and discussions of best practices and non-compete agreements. Apple MacBook Users: Turn off This Bluetooth Default Setting Now – Now I know what turned on my MacBook Pro in the bag: My BlueTooth mouse! Enterprise [...]
As I transition to the Mac, I often find myself needing to transfer a file back and forth quickly. I could create SMB shares on both systems, but this requires both to be connected to a wired or wireless Ethernet LAN. Luckily, both Vista and OS X offer functional Bluetooth sharing technology for quick, easy [...]
It turns out that Apple made at least a few errors in designing the hardware of the MacBook Pro. After living with it for a solid week, I can report that, along with the useless ambient light sensor and wimpy power cord, both of the ‘Pro’s USB ports are compromised! The left side doesn’t have the power [...]
I was thrilled to see the announcement by Blackmagic Design of two Thunderbolt versions of their respected Intensity video input/output box. But which is the better choice, the Intensity Shuttle or Intensity Extreme?
As a parent, especially a techie one, you never know when a teachable moment is going to appear. Last night, I mentioned that I was testing a new Ruckus access point and enthused about how fast it was. My 12-year-old asked, “why is it so fast?” This led to a wonderful discussion about radio waves, congestion and propagation, and spectrum licensing. Yeah, I’m that kind of dad.
Twitter is here to stay, and has become a potent communication tool in many industries. I recently received a request for advice on how better to use Twitter, and thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years as an avid IT industry tweeter.
Make no mistake, the Das Keyboard Model S for Mac is a whole class better than the plastic junk most people use, and the snappy Cherry MX blue key switches are more rewarding than any scissor or membrane keyboard out there, but this is no IBM Model M, so buckling spring fans should look elsewhere.
EMC VFCache (née Project Lightning) is a fairly simple offering: A server-based PCIe flash card that acts as a read cache with no integration with storage arrays or hypervisors. But EMC’s entrance into the host-based flash storage market is a powerful demonstration of the wave of disruption caused by flash-based storage and high-performance computing.
The new Nimbus Data E-Class comes just at the right moment, with 500 TB of capacity, a fully redundant “dual active” controller architecture, massive performance (even InfiniBand), and complete feature set (once VAAI is released).
This week, two blog readers let me know what Google Chrome was warning them of malware on my blog. I dived in and discovered that, indeed, a nasty, obfuscated JavaScript attack had made its way into my site. Although I was disappointed by the lack of clarity about how to fix it, I believe I was able to remove it last night.
Although Clear clearly wants buyers to sign up for monthly service, they also have “secret” on-demand 2-hour, daily, and weekly plans. Here’s how to get online cheap!
HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.
For a massive IT company, Dell sure doesn’t get the kind of respect given their competitors. Time and again, I’ll hear the sneers about Dell being little more than a “box shifter” who doesn’t “get” real enterprise IT needs. After a series of acquisitions in storage and networking, Dell is trying to stake a claim as a serious competitor to HP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. But why should anyone take Dell seriously, especially in enterprise storage?