Eye-Fi 3

July 2, 2011 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

The third-generation iPad Pro is a great machine but also a bellwether of change at Apple. It will be very hard for the rest of the mobile and client computing industry to keep up with this kind of progress!

Why I Am Biased Against FCoE

October 21, 2011

I am biased against FCoE because it’s too new to be blithely and broadly recommended for production enterprise use. That’s all. Yes, the standards are standardized and there are products extant. But that’s not enough for me.

Rocking Out With the Topping VX1 Desktop/Bookshelf Amplifier

October 6, 2015

A few months back, I asked folks on Twitter and LinkedIn for recommendations for a desktop amplifier for a pair of bookshelf speakers. I ended up with a Topping VX1, one of the many “Class-T” digital amps lauded by audiophiles for their excellent sound reproduction. Boy am I impressed! It’s rare that such an inexpensive gadget (around $100!) delivers so much performance!

Sony QX100 Lens Camera: Ruined by a Flaky iOS App

October 7, 2013

I was thrilled by the possibilities of adding a professional-quality camera sensor and lens to my iPhone, so I immediately pre-ordered Sony’s DSC-QX100 “lens camera”. It held so much promise, not just as a real innovation but also as a major productivity tool. That’s why I’m angry to write this, a scathing review of the horrid software that ruins the QX10 and QX100 experience. Do not buy this device.

What’s the Deal with Containers?

October 21, 2016

Lately, it seems like everyone just can’t stop talking about containers. But I’m sensing a distinct lack of real understanding of the technology from many people, not to mention lots of confusion about what containers really mean for today’s datacenter folks. So I set about learning more and figuring out for myself what the deal is with containers. Here’s where I’m at.

ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

July 10, 2017

ZFS should have been great, but I kind of hate it: ZFS seems to be trapped in the past, before it was sidelined it as the cool storage project of choice; it’s inflexible; it lacks modern flash integration; and it’s not directly supported by most operating systems. But I put all my valuable data on ZFS because it simply offers the best level of data protection in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment. Here’s why.

Scaling Storage Is Hard To Do

June 4, 2013

Data storage isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially at enterprise or cloud scale. It’s simple enough to read and write a bit of data, but much harder to build a system that scales to store petabytes. That’s why I’m keenly focused on a new wave of storage systems built from the ground up for scaling!

Nimble Storage Rolls Out an All-Flash Array

February 24, 2016

It took longer than I expected for Nimble Storage to introduce an all-flash array, but their AF7000 looks to be a very credible offering. They’re targeting XtremIO and Pure with their marketing, but I expect HP, Dell, and especially NetApp to be cross-shopped more frequently. In that fight, I expect the Nimble AF7000 to be very attractive indeed!

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”

February 16, 2012

CIFS is not the network storage protocol used by Microsoft Windows, and many other clients. The protocol used to share files over a LAN by the majority of personal computers is called SMB. I wish everyone in the industry would get that through their heads.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply