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Free MP3 Downloads From Amazon!

December 3, 2008 by Stephen 4 Comments

Amazon.com Widgets Amazon just surprised me with a $5 credit for their mp3 download store, and you can get one too! It turns out that they’re running a promotion through Christmas – spend $25 on music CDs or electronics (in a single order) and you get a $5 credit for mp3 downloads. Sadly, it’s only […]

How I Get 7 Hours of MacBook Pro Battery Life

October 28, 2008 by Stephen 12 Comments

Shortly before landing in San Francisco the other day, the MacBook Pro-using guy in the seat next to me leaned over and asked, “how did you manage to use your Mac all the way across the country? Is that some special battery you have?” For a minute, I was tempted to make something up, as […]

Friday Fun With Hard Drives

October 17, 2008 by Stephen 4 Comments

Let’s end this terrifying week on a positive note by exploring the many fun things you can do with old dead hard drives. LED Display Clock First up is this LED display/clock. It consists of a series of colored LED lights which flash on and off below a slot cut in the hard drive platter. The […]

The Future of Home Storage

October 12, 2008 by Stephen 10 Comments

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.

SanDisk ExpressCard Flash Media Adapter: Nifty MacBook Pro Accessory!

October 6, 2008 by Stephen Leave a Comment

The SanDisk ExpressCard flash media adapter converts a notebook’s ExpressCard slot into a versatile flash media adapter, takes most versions of SD and Memory Stick, and works in both OS X and Windows without a hiccup or even a driver install

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GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

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.

Top VMware Blogs 2014: How I Voted

February 25, 2014

Once again, it’s time for vSphere-Land.com’s “Top vBlog” voting. And once again Feedbin and Twitter are full of hundreds of bloggers lamely begging for me to vote for them. And once again, I didn’t base my votes on their begs or my own hunches. Follow along as I explain how I actually voted and why I think you should use the same mechanism. And no, I’m not going to say who I voted for!

SMB 3 is Going to be Huge, in both Scope and Impact

May 6, 2012

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.

Are You a Hypervisor Hugger or a Storage Stalwart?

November 14, 2011

The time has come to take sides on the core question of storage for virtual servers: Do you want storage intelligence to live in the hypervisor or the array? Most administrators are already lining up on one side or the other, unintentionally casting their vote while the rest flounder. But the storage industry must wake up and embrace the divide.

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.

On the Death of Innovation, or “These Kids These Days!”

May 21, 2012

An obnoxious meme has returned to the fore lately, claiming that innovation is dead. The hippies did it, or maybe it was the Internet, or even a decline of America. But nothing could be further from the truth, and statements like this make me question the perspective of the speaker.

Begun, the Patent Wars Have

July 9, 2012

Every day, it seems there is a new lawsuit in the mobile phone industry. HTC, Motorola, Google, Microsoft, and especially Apple and Samsung are actively litigating their way through a thicket of patents. The same is increasingly happening in the rest of the IT industry. But is all this bloodshed really about innovation? Or is it, as one federal judge noted, simply a new form of intense business competition?

A Watch Guy’s Review of the Apple Watch

April 27, 2015

Is the Apple Watch a personal communication revolution like the iPhone, a well-executed gadget like the Apple TV, or a total miss? Does it mark the end of the the world as we know it for watches? And what’s it like to use one? I’m a watch guy and a gadget guy, so perhaps my perspective will be of some value.

The Rack Endgame: A New Storage Architecture For the Data Center

September 3, 2014

Top-of-rack flash and bottom-of-rack disk makes a ton of sense in a world of virtualized, distributed storage. It fits with enterprise paradigms yet delivers real architectural change that could “move the needle” in a way that no centralized shared storage system ever will. SAN and NAS aren’t going away immediately, but this new storage architecture will be an attractive next-generation direction!