Understanding the accumulation of data
Do you really know what is taking up all of your disk space? Unless you have a good tool, the answer is probably not. You might think that your “Documents” folder takes up most of the room, since you use it all the time and it has so many files in it. But even the bloated files produced by Microsoft Office pale in comparison to multimedia photo, music, and video files. And it is usually the folders that you don’t actively manage that are the worst space-wasters!
Apple may think that the iPhone and iPod Touch are the “funnest” ever, but I’d like to give the “touch” iPod implementation in these devices a new name: When it comes to controls, it is the frustratingest iPod ever! (Ok, maybe the Shuffle is slightly worse…) Seriously, the simplicity of control was one of the prime factors [...]
Consumers demand friendly, flexible solutions. They don’t want to fuss with their media, and they don’t want simple shared storage. They want integration with multiple devices and flexibility to access their content on any device.
Here’s a surprise benefit from the iPhone 2.0 Exchange ActiveSync ability: I was able to finally move my iPhone’s “home” sync from the PC to the Mac! For the most up-to-date information, see my iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide! This post is part of my series focused on integrating the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync: [...]
If you’ve been getting frustrated with your iPhone’s pokey performance and frequent hangs and crashes after upgrading to 2.0, you’re not alone. In fact, everyone I know who upgraded their original iPhone to 2.0 has been complaining about these issues! But I found a fix that brings back the stability and most of the performance [...]
It’s finally here! The iPhone now has most of the functions of the BlackBerry – over-the-air push and sync of Exchange email, contacts, and calendars! Apple let the 2.0 OS out of the bag earlier today, and intrepid souls (and me) have taken the plunge and installed it.
I know this will sound like an ad, but please don’t take it that way. I love Amazon’s selection of MP3 downloads – they’re DRM-free and uniformly cheaper than iTunes. And the company has a download app that integrates nicely with iTunes (unlike the eternally-borken Emusic manager). I was surprised this morning with an email [...]
It seems that there is another iPhone gremlin, this time in the interaction between the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (as seen on the iPhone and iPod Touch) that can cause your purchases to vaporize. This only seems to apply to folks who have unchecked “automatically sync” and have not previously clicked “Transfer Purchases From…” in [...]
We’re taking my Building Virtual Infrastructure presentation to Columbus Ohio at the end of the month. Cool! I live in Ohio, and don’t get much opportunity to speak at events here. There’s also Backup Central Live! with W. Curtis Preston the next day, if you want to go to both!
I’ve always loved my Wi-Fi iPad, but the Verizon LTE iPad (third-generation) is too awesome to overlook. Apart from the “retina” display and voice dictation, the killer app is unlocked roaming on just about any carrier network. Yes, you can use your Verizon iPad Verizon iPad on AT&T, Vodafone, or even Verizon!
The mobile phone network landscape is incredible confusing. I pulled together the following overview to help myself make sense of it, and I thought it might benefit my readers, too.
I don’t get much chance to read for pleasure, but two things I’ve been reading recently spurred my imagination. After reliving the advent of modern transportation in the solid non-fiction Jet Age by Sam Howe Verhovek, I stumbled upon two pieces of speculative fiction from an unlikely source that predated everything presented there.
Even though I grew up on the other side of the great baseball divide, I have always loved going to New York City. Next week, I return again, but this time I’m bringing a whole new event to the city: This is the first time the New York audience gets to see my Building Virtual Infrastructure presentation!
I’m really thrilled about the improvements Microsoft is making to the core SMB protocol in Windows Server 2012. But it won’t really matter if nobody but Microsoft supports the new protocol. So I like to call out to all the enterprise storage vendors: Let me hear your support for SMB3.0!
Microsoft is about to release the third major revision to their ubiquitous network storage protocol, SMB. Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V 3 will really highlight this technology, and I predict it will transform the way people think about networked storage for Windows systems. But SMB 3 is big in another way, too: there are tons of new features, and not all will be implemented by everyone.
If you’ve traveled much, you’ve probably run across “unlocked” mobile phones and devices. If you own an Android or iPhone smart phone, you probably also heard about “jailbreaking”. It seems like lots of people are confused about these two things, so I decided to write down a quick post explaining them.
IBM has really stepped up their game this year, and they will highlight all this at their upcoming storage technology conference, Edge2012. I’m really looking forward to seeing what IBM Edge is all about, and I’ll be attending and speaking at the event in June.
I am thrilled to return to speak at Interop next week, though not so much about returning to Las Vegas for the third time already this year. This time around, I’ll be on two Interop panel discussions in Mike Fratto’s storage track. If you will be at Interop and would like to meet up, let [...]