Posted by Chris Vidal on Tue, Aug 23, 2011 @ 10:45 AM
HP has decided to move into a different direction, causing quite a stir in the technology community. HP announced last week that they are ending their development of WebOS, a phone/tablet OS developed by Palm, who HP had acquired last year. This was a shock as HP had put a lot of emphasis that this was the software they were going to use going forward; even going as far as saying it would be on all their PCs, laptops, and printers. But with extremely lackluster sales and having lost the market share that Palm had built before the acquisition due to long development times, HP had decided to axe the entire operation. It was rumored that Best Buy had sold only about 20,000 of the 270,000 tablets they had originally bought, and wanted to return the rest, after these reports had surfaced it seems HP decided to stop supporting the platform and said little about its future, besides saying they were open to the idea of licensing the OS to other companies if interested.
This shock was compounded by the fact that HP had stated they had found a possible buyer for their PC division, which they have wanted to sell off due to low margins. This move was done previously by IBM who sold off their consumer laptop/pc division to Lenovo in order to focus on higher margin things in the server market. The final shocker HP gave the community was after all this they announced they are buying a software company for 10 billion dollars, saying that software would be HP’s new corporate focus going forth. These 3 actions left investors uncertain on HP’s future and left their stock to drop 20% in one day.
Even with HP selling off their PC division, and basically taking the loss for their 2 billion dollar Palm investment, they still have their Server division, and their very successful printer division. While it’s tough to see HP as a software focused company, many peoples doubts seem to come from how poorly they were able to utilize WebOS which at the moment seems like a 2 billion dollar mistake.
Posted by Chris Vidal on Fri, Jul 29, 2011 @ 11:09 AM
After a 6 month study that consisted of over 630,000 samples has found that when it comes rootkits, Windows XP has 74% off all the infections, followed by Vista with 17% and Windows 7 with 12%. Microsoft even admits that Windows 7 is over 5 times more secure than XP in there last quarterly security rate. Although AVAST, an anti-virus software company, has pointed out that Windows XP infection rates might not be all Microsoft’s fault, as many of the machines running Windows XP are running pirated versions which aren’t allowed to be updated through Microsoft leaving the OS vulnerable to various types of virus’s and rootkits.
Rootkits are a type of malware that hide on your using different methods to give itself higher privileges in order to subvert removal attempts and allow it to record your personal information. Rootkits tend to one of the harder viruses to remove as they try to mask themselves from detection. To prevent infection it’s recommended to be running Windows 7 or Vista, keep the Microsoft OS updated with the latest patches and to have Anti-Virus software installed to detect it in case of infection.
Posted by Chris Vidal on Thu, Jun 30, 2011 @ 11:50 AM
Microsoft has blended MS Office with the cloud and has come out of it with Office365, a completely web based office suite for business use. My biggest fear is that Microsoft was going to take Office and just put it online as a web suite no different than Google Docs. But Microsoft has actually taken a surprising stance and thought this one through. While Office365 isn’t there to replace office, it’s there to take the best part of Office and mix it with a cloud collaboration tool.
What makes Office365 great
- Access to all the essential office programs
- All the most needed applications are there; Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, even Access if you pay for a higher level.
- Low monthly subscription
- At $6 it’s not overly expensive, costing $72 a year, compared to Google’s services which costs $50 a year, but Office365 does have some compelling value add-on’s to compensate for its extra cost.
- No expensive upgrade cycle ever 3-4 years
- Office can be expensive and upgrading has been a pain for many people, having to shell out $200 every couple of years for the latest version, by the time they have it the next one is coming out in a year. Having a subscription model allows all their users to be on the same version as its all controlled from Microsoft’s servers.
- Collaboration
- Best feature is Office365 Collaboration features. Many projects depend on working together which involved emailing the same document to each person whenever a revision is made, leaving to a lot copies and easy miscommunication. There are 3rd party options like dropbox, but even that is only a partial fix. Having the tools to create documents plus the tools to change everyone’s documents along with leaving notes allows a much more fluid experience when working together. It reminds me of taking what was good with Google Wave and mixing it with MS Office.
- Online meetings
- Built in is a way to dial in and have an online meeting including ways to display your desktop, all of this included with no need for 3rd party services.
- Video Conferencing
- With Collaboration being a huge part of this service, having a Video conference built into the package allows for much easier .
What needs work
- Word/PowerPoint/Excel all need more options
- The Office suite is still a crippled version of actual office. So this won’t fully replace your native Office application. The different ribbons look pretty barren after opening native Office, it’s great for the basic stuff, but anything advanced needs Office 2010.
- Crippled Chrome support
- Not a huge deal, but you are given the option to open the file your working on in Office365 with your native Office application, unfortunately Chrome seems absent from the list of working browsers; IE, Safari, FireFox.
Conclusion
Overall Office365 is a pretty good offering especially if you need to work offsite but still need to collaborate. I don’t see this as an Office replacement, but rather a way to collaborate with other remote users easily while using the tools from office. Office365 also has the benefit of being able to use Office from any computer, but in complete honesty, there are far fewer computers nowadays without office than there are with. If you ever have to work with other people on a project that aren’t sitting next to you than Office365 is fantastic, if you’re looking to replace Office2010 with it, you might want to refrain for the time being.
Posted by Chris Vidal on Mon, Jun 27, 2011 @ 11:06 AM
A new yearlong study conducted by WDS, has found that Android devices are more likely to develop hardware problems than other brands of smartphones. This hasn’t been a huge surprise as Android has made a name for itself by bringing affordable smartphones to the masses on each network. Being Android is an open platform and is free to use by anyone, it is the ideal OS for lesser known cell phone manufactures who are want to release their first entry level phone. The unfortunate part of this is that these no name phones are bringing down the overall quality rating for android, which is something RIM and Apple can control as they develop their own hardware. The study does note that name brand Android phones, like HTC, Samsung, or Motorola, have much less returns due to hardware failure.
- 3.7% RIM BlackBerry
- 8.0% Apple iPhones
- 9.0% Windows Phone 7
- 14% Android Phones
While the old saying applies here, you get what you pay for, it is good for both the customers and the carriers to reevaluate which low end brands to keep, as phones with a high percentage of failures can cost both the customer and the Network more money in the long run do to constantly needing to replace broken phones.
Posted by Tom McDonald on Mon, Jun 27, 2011 @ 04:47 AM
Summer is here, thunderstorms are coming, here are a couple simple tips to protect your business from a serious problem:
- Make sure your server is plugged into a UPS (Uninteruptable Power Source), if you don't have one get one - today.
- Check your batteries - The UPS runs on batteries and most newer units have a self test feature, check it and replace if needed.
- Backups - make sure you are doing them and now is the time to test them, before disaster strikes.
- Power Users - get them there own protection, each office has them, they store information locally as well as the server, get them a small dedicated ups, a small investment that will pay big dividends.
- Have a plan - power often goes out at night and over a weekend. How will you know before you role in Monday morning, and then what will you do - a simple list of who does what, and where everything is can make the difference between a short interruption and a long delay.
- Vacations, what happens when Mary in IT is off for two weeks and the power goes off and then the server shuts down - who can turn it back on and get the users back on line - see #5
Posted by Chris Vidal on Tue, Jun 21, 2011 @ 10:20 AM
A rogue hacking organization, LulzSec, has been terrorizing different internet sites as a way of protesting certain corporations and governments that they find to be corrupt, and then adding in their own random hijinks into the mix taking down legitimate sites also which they state that they do it for the Lulz. LulzSec has “hacked” the various sites to different degrees, sometimes with the intent to hurt the company by stealing customer data and forcing them to update and fix their security flaws, other sites they do it to prove that there are security holes with no malicious intentions, and finally some sites are hit with DDoS attacks, (Distributed Denial of Service) which is overloading the server with requests so it becomes unavailable for its intended users.
Some of the high profile attacks the group LulzSec has attacked have been:
- PBS (Stole user data and posted a fake news story)
- Sony (Stole user data of up to 1 million users causing Sony to take down the Playstation network for over a month
- Nintendo (Stole a Config file and apologized to Nintendo, stating they love the N64 too much to hurt them)
- Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting (Who had posted a hacking challenge that was completed by LulzSec)
- Pron.com (A pornographic website in which 26,000 of its user’s emails and passwords were posted online with encouragement from LulzSec to try them on Facebook and other sites)
- Bethesda Game Studios (Posted information taken from their site, but did not post the 200,000 account information that they had stolen from the site also)
- Minecraft (DDoS attack from their “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”)
- League of Legends (DDoS attack from their “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”)
- The Escapist (DDoS attack from their “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”)
- FinFisher (An IT security company that was also hit with a DDoS attack from their “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”)
- EVE Online (DDoS attack from their “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”)
- Writerspace.com (62,000 User emails and passwords were posted, later it was revealed it was from Writerspace.com)
- InfraGard (a Company that works the FBI for botnet detection, they hacked and leaked some user accounts from their data base)
- British National Health Service (They emailed the administratiors letting them know they found a security hole, and did not intend on exploiting it)
- Senate.gov (Released emails and passwords of users of senate.gov)
- Cia.gov ( Used a DDoS attack to take down the site after the Pentagon said that cyberattacks could be considered an act of war)
LulzSec has made a name for themselves with their various hacking sprees which have all happened over the course of the last couple months, but what should be noted to users is the fact that these sites aren’t keeping your data safe, and that any hacking organization can steal your info if they want. With every user list and password they release those users run the risk of having their other sites hacked into, as LulzSec encourages everyone to try these emails and passwords on as many sites as possible to try to cause mayhem on the internet.
What you should do
As a user there are a couple of things that you should do to protect yourself.
- Re-evaluate your password, and look into creating stronger passwords
- Not all sites are secure with your information, including small sites (I.E. Writerspace.com). If you use one username and password for everything, they have all your passwords now
- Services like LastPass can help you store and change all your passwords easily
- A site has been set up to check to see if your email has been stolen
Posted by Chris Vidal on Wed, Jun 15, 2011 @ 09:05 AM
RescueCom has released their quarterly report outlining the top 5 Laptop brands based on quality. Lenovo laptops ranked highest with a score of 254, followed by Asus with 242. Toshiba took third with 164, followed by Apple with 149 and HP with 122.
RescueCom is a computer repair center and has been recording their data since 2006. They determine each brand’s reliability rating by looking at 3 different factors:
- Looking at each brands market share in that given time period compare to the percentage of repair calls for that specific brand
- Component Quality used within the laptops; the better the quality of the components the less likely they are going to fail
- Likelihood the customer will need a third party support on their PC; a lack of manufacturer support sends more customers to third party vendors for support
It’s no surprise that Lenovo ranked as well as they did, Lenovo has positioned themselves as a business laptop and their build quality reflects that. What really is surprising is Apple’s ranking, being they were number 1 only 2 years ago and pride themselves on their superior build quality. While their quality has gone down over the last 2 years it is noted that this hasn’t stopped their market share from going down at all with a 26% increase in laptop sales, mainly at the expense of Dell who didn’t make it into RescueCom’s top 5.
To read their full report click here
Posted by Chris Vidal on Tue, Jun 14, 2011 @ 09:12 AM
Amazon removes itself from states like Connecticut and Arkansas due to new legislation in both of those states that would require amazon to pay sales taxes within the state. Online companies like Amazon have been able to avoid paying state sales taxes, by being physically located in another state. A 1992 Supreme Court case, Quill Corp v. North Dakota, set the precedent that sales taxes can only be levied if the store was physically in the state and online stores like Amazon have used this ruling to avoid having to pay taxes.
Connecticut stated that the state could collect roughly $9.4 million in what they are calling the Amazon Tax” that would apply the normal 6% sales tax to the online retailer. Connecticut is saying that Amazon should pay the normal sales tax, because while it doesn’t have any physical stores in the state, it advertises its services and uses servers that are physically located in Connecticut. After this bill past Amazon removed its servers from these states.
This is not the first time legislation like this has passed in other states. States such as Colorado, Rhode Island, Illinois and New York have all passed similar laws and Amazon has since moved out of all of these states, except New York, in order to pay any money in state taxes. Texas’s Governor, Rick Perry, vetoed a similar bill after Amazon withdrew a large distribution center located in Texas.
Amazon’s removal from these states isn’t affecting consumers as they are still able to purchase from Amazon’s site, but it is worrying the great lengths Amazon is going through in order to avoid paying taxes that ultimately gives them an unfair advantage over local stores that have to charge their customers state taxes.
Posted by Chris Vidal on Fri, Jun 10, 2011 @ 09:28 AM
A power user is someone who uses the advanced features of the OS that a "normal" user wouldn't need access to. For many power users, getting to the right menu's and utilities as quickly as possible is a must have. Below is a list of 15 Run Commands that every power user should be acquainted with.
| Add/Remove Porgrams |
appwiz.cpl |
| Administrative Tools |
control admintools |
| Check Disk Utility |
chkdsk |
| Component Services |
dcomcnfg |
| Computer Management |
compmgmt.msc |
| Control Panel |
control |
| Device Manager |
devmgmt.msc |
| Disk Cleanup Utility |
cleanmgr |
| Disk Management |
diskmgmt.msc |
| Driver Verifier Utility |
verifier |
| Registry Editor |
regedit |
| Remote Desktop |
mstsc |
| System Configuration Utility |
msconfig |
| System Information |
msinfo32 |
| Task Manager |
taskmgr |
Posted by Chris Vidal on Tue, Jun 07, 2011 @ 09:00 AM
The UN has recently come out against Britain, France, and New Zealand’s three strike laws that have been put in place to stop file sharing of copyrighted files. In these countries if you are caught illegally sharing files on three occasions, you are barred from internet access. The UN deemed this a human right abuse stating that cutting someone off from having internet access for a copyright infringement is “disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right.”
The UN has a lot to deal with when it comes to different counties and their internet policies, with countries like Iran and China actively trying to filter the internet from its users. But they have a specific interest in Britain, France and New Zealand because they are all major countries that have a democracy, but enforce a much harsher punishment for copyright infringements than most modern countries. If the UN gets their way, it would set the precedent that internet access is now considered a human right, a grey area that has been long debated.
Via
Fudzilla