Rasquitek Digital City

AMD fans may have to book the next flight to Tokyo if they want to get their hands on the firm’s new Istanbul six-core Opterons as quickly as possible.

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DELL has released new offerings in its EqualLogic PS4000 storage array line aimed specifically at SMBs and remote offices, boasting “all inclusive” software packages filled with goodies like storage virtualization, thin provisioning, server virtualization integration and more.

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Rumours are growing louder that Intel will be launching new SSDs based on the firm’s 34nm NAND chips within just a couple of weeks. Previous reports had said Chipzilla planned to come out with its new 34nm flash memory drives in Q4, but that timetable has been nudged up.

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WESTERN DIGITAL has launched a 2TB enterprise HD. If you think that’s big, it has a 64M cache to back it all up too.

The drive, RE4-GP, has what WD claims is “next generation” green technology, saving up to 40 per cent more power than normal drives. The cache is claimed to be good for a 25 per cent increase in performance as well, so this appears to be a win/win before you even consider the massive size.

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Boring it may be, but cleaning is an essential part of any regular system maintenance schedule. You can stretch equipment life, reduce repairs and service calls, and keep users happier by periodically running through the steps on this list.

Even if you support PCs in a spanking clean environment, your equipment will accumulate dust — the arch-enemy of electronics. Of course, most environments fall well short of spanking clean. So while it doesn’t have the glamour of, say, protecting your company from a crippling security breach, regularly cleaning PC equipment plays a big part in preserving your systems. The following list covers 10 best practices for keeping dust at bay and equipment functioning optimally.

1: Clean the exterior

Keeping the environment clean via regular dusting and vacuuming will help reduce the amount of crud that finds its way into your equipment. It’s not enough — but it’s a start. Many experts also advise that you keep equipment off the floor, where the dust is most likely to settle.

Along with patrolling the environment, regularly clean the exterior of the PC case, cooling vents, and IO ports. You can use a dry cloth to dust the case, and a water-dampened cloth to wipe it clean. If the surface has gotten sticky, go over it with a lint-free cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. For removing dust and debris from the cooling vents and ports, a batter-powered vacuum cleaner will come in handy.

The monitor case will benefit from the same treatment: Dust and wipe it down as needed. And don’t forget to remove dust buildup from the monitor vents. A battery-powered vac does the trick here, too.

2: Clean the display device

Use a cleaner on the surface of the display unit to remove fingerprints, dust, and/or other imperfections on the screen. Always spray the cleaner on a cloth to clean a monitor rather then spraying cleaner directly on the screen. If you’re cleaning an LCD, use a product designed for that purpose and don’t press too hard on the screen.

3: Degunk the keyboard and mouse

Paperclips, staples, hair, and food can collect beneath the keys, preventing them from working properly. The keyboard can become unsightly and even send erroneous keystrokes if foreign particles become lodged between keys. Use a dust vacuum and the alcohol/water solution to clean these dust- and dirt-collecting components.

Mice can also get grungy in a hurry. Clean the exterior and cord with cleaning wipes. For a rollerball mouse, remove the ball and wipe it clean. You can use an alcohol-dipped cotton swab to clean the rollers inside the mouse. To prevent a laser or optical mouse from becoming sluggish and unresponsive, drag it down and then across a sheet of white paper to rub the accumulated dust and wax from the contact points on the bottom.

4: Perform a periodic full system cleaning

Take the system apart and have a canister of canned air available. Remove all dust and clean the external and internal surfaces of the computer to get rid of dust and any other particles. Don’t neglect the power supply and CPU fans, which are especially prone to accumulating dust. If you do not have an electronics cleaning product, you can make a simple solution of 1:1 rubbing alcohol and water for external surfaces. Be sure to unplug the electronic components when introducing a solution and allow it to dry fully. As always, when working inside the case, make sure you dissipate static electricity.

5: Run a CD-ROM/DVD cleaner

As with audio systems, CD-ROM/DVD drives can be cleaned with special kits and/or discs. This is especially useful if you are in a dusty environment.

6: Clean the floppy drive with canned air

Okay, you may not run across too many floppy drives. But when you do, a good blast of air can remove dust collections inside them. Use covers/panels if available to help keep dust out of the drives.

7: Run a cleaning tape

If your systems have tape drives, run the cleaning tape through to keep the tape heads clean.

8: Keep it covered

Use a keyboard, CPU, and monitor cover to keep dust out of systems when not in use. If a system is used only partly during the day and turned off most other times, plastic covers can keep dust and airborne particulate out. Just be careful not to cover up a powered-on system in a way that will block airflow, as this may cause thermal damage.

9: Don’t overlook the surge protector

Most surge protectors lay forgotten on the floor. Dust bunnies, popcorn, even paper clips congregate around them. The dust that accumulates there could cause a fire. Disconnect the surge protector from the wall outlet and blow it off before reconnecting the PC.

10: Clean the printer

Printers are often overlooked during PC cleaning time, but they need a little bit of care as well. Obviously, different kinds of printers will need different kinds of attention. You should refer to the manufacturer’s instructions before diving into the guts of the equipment. Laser printers should be blown out each time the toner is replaced. Many printers come with the ability to clean themselves. If yours do, clean the print heads according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

A little spit and polish

Cleaning PCs may not be the most interesting or challenging part of your job, but it can improve performance and stretch the life of your equipment. It’s best to set up a schedule to clean all the systems on your network on a regular basis. This can translate into happier, more productive users, fewer repairs and replacements, and less downtime.

Author: Jody Gilbert

Your IT department can’t succeed or contribute value to the organization unless you have the respect and trust of the executive team and your customers. Here are some strategies that will help you build a solid reputation for your IT group.

A mid-Atlantic organization recently went through a major leadership change. Previously, the CIO reported directly to the president. With the change, however, that CIO now reports to the vice president of finance, who formerly was a peer. Politically speaking, this change represents a major loss for the IT organization. While we may never know the full reasons, we can agree on the importance of maintaining credibility of the IT department. Here are some tips to consider.

1: Tie projects to business objectives

The “If you build it, they will come” attitude is great for the movies, but has no place with respect to IT systems development. Make sure that your projects have traceability. Do they address a specific business objective? Within a system, do individual modules have similar traceability? If you are unable to articulate a clear connection between your project and the objectives of the business, take another look at the former.

2: Speak in business/customer terms

Your customers care about their own objectives — for example, revenue increase, expense reduction, and timely filings of regulatory forms. Therefore, when discussing your work, relate it to their own objectives. Instead of talking about disk utilization or lines of code, talk about how the number of Web purchases can increase, or how purchase order processing times can decrease. The more you show how IT makes their job easier, the more they will appreciate you.

3: Use analogies when explaining technical terms

At times you may need to explain a technical concept to a customer. When you do, try to do so from their perspective. One of the best ways is to use an analogy, whereby you explain an unfamiliar technical concept in terms of a known concept. For example, if you’re trying to explain a firewall, you might use an analogy of a bank teller. If you want to withdraw money, a teller must verify your identity and your bank balance and then give you the money. You, as the customer, don’t just go into the vault and help yourself.

4: Tie your projects to revenue enhancement

Try to relate your system projects to revenue enhancement. Are you redesigning a Web site? Maybe aesthetics and usability do play a role. Keep in mind, though, that a well-designed site might allow quicker purchases, and that satisfied Web site users often return to purchase again. If you focus on how your projects increase revenue, you will have that much more credibility.

5: Act without being asked

I am not saying that you should go out and start developing systems all on your own. I am suggesting, though, that you need not wait for your customers to come to you with requests. Take a look at your company and think about how new projects might help. Then go to your customers with your ideas. In this way, you are taking leadership and demonstrating your forward thinking.

6: Acknowledge mistakes

If it can happen to HSBC, the state of Texas, and the Los Angeles Unified School District, it can happen to you: a major outage or delay that causes work stoppages and loss of productivity. If it happens, do the right thing. Let the affected people know as soon possible and try to develop interim workarounds. Afterward, apologize, take responsibility, and discuss how future problems can be minimized. The worst thing you can do is sweep things under the rug.

7: Set and manage expectations

Your group may have done the best job it could. It may have even exceeded the efforts of any other IT organization. But all of that means nothing if your customer had even higher expectations. Therefore, beware the expectations gap. Customers don’t care how well you perform compared to other IT groups; they care how you compare to their expectations. When working on an issue or project, be sure you know what those expectations are — and if necessary, manage them accordingly.

8: Keep customers informed

A major aspect of managing expectations is keeping your customers informed. In other words, don’t treat them like mushrooms. They need to know what’s going on with regard to systems projects and issues so they can plan their own work around them. If you’re working on an issue, let customers know periodically what’s going on, even if nothing is going on. That way, they won’t feel as though they’ve been abandoned.

9: Keep a unified front

The last survivor of the Titanic, Millvina Dean, passed away recently. If she’d been old enough to remember that experience, do you think she would have told people, “Thank God the iceberg hit the OTHER side of the ship”? Of course not. Regardless of which side she was on, the entire ship eventually sank.

If your IT organization has the habit of pointing fingers at others within the group, put a stop to it. Such behavior does nothing for customers; it only diminishes their respect for you. Certainly, disagreements will occur. When they do, though, settle them internally rather than airing your dirty laundry.

10: Position your organization as partner, not roadblock

An IT organization can be seen in two ways by its customers. It can be seen as a roadblock — a group that always tries to find reasons why some request can’t be handled. Or it can be seen as a partner — a group that finds ways to help the customer, thus helping itself as well as the company. One indicator of such an attitude is the language your staff uses. Do they tell customers what the IT group can’t do or what the group CAN do? Do they answer a requested action with all the reasons that action can’t be done — e.g., “It won’t work because…” or do they answer that, “For it to work, we have to resolve….”? The differences in wording are slight, but they make a huge difference in how your group — and you — are perceived.

Author: Calvin Sun

IT is often a popular target for corporate cost-cutting. So the more you can identify and control unnecessary spending, the better you’ll be able to fend off the budget axe. Here are a few areas where IT dollars often go to waste.

Back in the golden days of IT, when companies had plenty of money to throw around, it didn’t matter so much if there was a little wastage here and there. Today, however, budgets are tight and there aren’t many dollars to spare. That means IT departments need to take a good, hard look at where the money is going and where cuts can be made — before someone higher up does it for you. In this article, we look at 10 ways you might be letting precious dollars slip right through your fingers. Some of these may seem to be just common sense, but there are organizations out there right now that are wasting money in all these ways.

1: Wasting energy

Despite some reduction in power costs over the last year, rates appear to be headed back up. The electric bill is still a large expense for most companies — and the IT department is a big user of energy. You can save more money than you might suspect by adopting some energy-saving policies. Sure, most of the servers need to be accessible all the time. But IT personnel are often careless about leaving workstations running when they aren’t doing anything and won’t be accessed remotely or substituting the use of a screensaver for turning off the monitor (you should do both). With the power settings available in modern operating systems, there’s really no excuse for it, but some IT pros turn off power-saving features in favor of higher performance.

How about the practice of leaving lights on in offices and server rooms when no one is there? Most people don’t think about the cost, but it can add up. Using more energy-efficient lighting and buying Energy Star rated equipment can also save big bucks over the long run.

2: Spending too much on mobile technology

Mobile phones and devices are “fun toys” for IT pros, but company-provided equipment and plans may be costing more than necessary. A recent survey showed that only one out of four employees uses 75% or more of the voice minutes that their companies are paying for and almost half (48%) have services on the plan that they never use at all. As this article explains, many companies don’t have viable policies regarding mobile device use.

3: Not allowing employees to work from home

Company managers sometimes fail to recognize the significant cost benefits — to both employer and employee — of allowing employees to telecommute all or part of the time. One reason they oppose such an arrangement is that they won’t have as much control over workers who aren’t on site. IT departments sometimes support this position for fear that remote workers will present a security threat. However, with modern technologies such as NAP/NAC and DirectAccess, you can ensure that remote systems connecting to the company LAN are properly configured and protected and that the connections are secure.

Allowing more employees to work from home enables the company to save money on office/parking space and heating/air conditioning. Employees save money on clothes, lunches, and transportation. They also often enjoy work more, so they end up putting in extra hours that raise productivity and benefit the company. Many IT-related jobs, such as those of in-house developers and Web designers, can be done from home.

4: Using consultants when the job could be done by staff

It’s a common scenario: Employees have been telling management for months or years that changes need to be made, but they’ve been ignored. Then the company hires a consultant, who charges tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a “study” and arrives at the same conclusion, providing the same advice staff members were trying to give away free.

If you have people on staff who have expertise in a particular area and have the time to do a job, it’s generally more cost effective to allow them to do it than to bring in an outsider who has to spend many (billable) hours getting up to speed on how your company operates and what its specific needs are.

If you do find that you need to bring in a consultant, check credentials and references carefully. There are many good, hard-working IT consultants. The field is also a great target for rip-off artists who talk over your head about specialized technologies and try to push the latest and greatest on you — whether you need it or not — or attempt to sell you on specific products that you may not really need.

5: Hiring full-time employees when contractors would be more cost effective

The flip side of the previous item involves being afraid to use consultants or contractors when it’s appropriate. Hiring full-time employees to handle a workload that’s likely to be temporary leaves you with idle workers who end up costing you money because there’s not enough for them to do to warrant their salaries — or forcing you to go through the pains (to those employees as well as to the company) of layoffs. In these situations, when you don’t have the current manpower or expertise on staff to get the job done, it’s often more cost effective to hire independent contractors. Not only can you limit the duration of the commitment, but you don’t generally have to pay for fringe benefits, such as insurance and vacation/sick time. You also don’t have the administrative overhead of withholding taxes and filing the paperwork that’s associated with regular employees.

6: Making unnecessary upgrades

There are good reasons to upgrade your software and/or hardware. When new operating systems or applications provide functionality that your users need or that can help them get their jobs done more easily or more rapidly, it makes sense to upgrade. When existing hardware won’t run those programs you need, it may be necessary to buy new computers.

However, some companies follow a set upgrade schedule whereby they replace old systems every X number of years. Or they migrate to the new operating system or major application version X number of months after it’s released, or as soon as service pack 1 comes out, or in response to some other arbitrary trigger — much like the old timer who “takes a bath every Saturday night, whether he needs one or not.”

It makes more sense to carefully evaluate how the systems and software are being used and whether there’s a real need to upgrade. You can save the cost of new licenses and administrative overhead costs — and often, make users happier and avoid deployment headaches — by sticking with what you have now if it’s still working fine for your company’s purposes.

This applies to servers, too. It’s nice to have the latest and greatest running on the most powerful machines, but will it make a real difference in terms of productivity, security, and other important factors or do you just want it so you’ll have a new toy to play with?

7: Failing to upgrade old, inefficient equipment

On the other hand, some companies are going overboard when it comes to squeezing every last drop of use out of their current systems. If the computers are getting so old that they regularly break down and require repairs, if your servers go down so often that users of the network can’t get their work done or customers can’t access your site, if you’re putting sensitive data at risk because you’re depending on old software that’s full of vulnerabilities, if the hardware costs considerably more to operate than more modern machines because it’s so energy inefficient, it may be time to think about investing some capital to lower operating costs and save money over the long run.

Remember that neither software nor hardware upgrades have to be an “all or nothing” proposition. Some departments or individuals may need to be upgraded while others can get along for a while longer with what they have. And when you’re considering a major upgrade, such as a new OS, it’s often smart to roll it out with a pilot group first so you can work out any unanticipated problems before deploying across the entire organization.

8: Overspending on hardware

While buying new hardware can save you money, too much of a good thing can waste it. Some companies are still not utilizing virtualization to the extent that they could to reduce both capital and operating expenditures. Instead of buying multiple mid-priced servers to run Web services, mail services, collaboration and communications services, etc., you may be able to save substantially by purchasing one or two more powerful machines and consolidating servers with virtualization technologies. Not only is the total capital outlay often less, but you reduce the cost of extended warranties and maintenance contracts since they apply to fewer machines, and operating costs are often lower because the total power usage is less.

Another way some companies waste money is by purchasing equipment for a project that requires very intensive computing resources — but only for a limited time. When the project is over, you’re stuck with the expensive equipment. An alternative is to use services such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and similar cloud-based services that allow you to purchase capacity that can quickly scale up or down to fit your needs. Then, at any given time, you’re paying only for the resources you actually use.

9: Not using the training budget effectively

Technology is always changing and it’s important for IT personnel to stay current, but some departments waste money on training that could be done as effectively for much less. Do employees really need to travel to a distant site for training or can it be done on-site less expensively?  Perhaps instead of sending several employees, one can attend and then come back and share what he/she learned with the others. Or the same training may be available on DVD or through live online instruction at a fraction of the cost.

Is the department paying for certifications that may not be necessary? Certification provides assurance of a certain level of knowledge and in some cases, having certified employees on staff enhances the company’s reputation or allows it to participate in vendor partner programs. But some IT professionals collect multiple certifications — at company expense — that may not benefit the company at all (although they may benefit the employee in looking for a new job).

Ongoing training is important, and having well-trained personnel can save a company money in the long run. But when budgets are tight, it’s also important to get the most for every training dollar and cut out the waste.

10: Wasting money on travel expenses

Training isn’t the only reason employees travel on the company dime. Members of the IT department may be called upon to attend meetings at company headquarters or give presentations at another branch office or go to a different location to help set up equipment or troubleshoot software problems. In a tight economy, it’s smart to examine whether this things can be done via online meetings or through remote control software.

Sometimes, though, travel can’t be avoided. In those cases, you can still save money by staying in more reasonably priced hotels, putting a cap on meals reimbursements or instituting a per diem, and even taking shuttles instead of cabs for small savings that add up.

When traveling only a few hundred miles, consider driving instead of flying. Given the hassle factor at airports today, it may not take much longer and can be a more pleasant experience, and the savings really accrue when two or more people travel together by car instead of plane.

Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

Apple today announced the details of its Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Program, which allows U.S. customers who purchased or will purchase a qualifying Mac after June 8th, 2009 with OS X Leopard installed to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard upon its September release for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 plus tax. Similar programs are available in a number of other countries. While Apple announced general information related to the program in its initial press releasecovering Snow Leopard’s launch, today’s update provides full details for customers looking to upgrade.
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The mirroring tower from VinPower Digital, known as SharkCopier, is designed to perform massive duplicates of  Blu-ray disk  from a reader unit  or its hard disk to 15 of  its recorders, reaching  up to 60 Blu-ray discs per hour using 4x recording speed in all its units. Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, I know, it is in Spanish and nobody can change this, but the site is ULTRA GOOD!!! and after English, Spanish is the most used language in the world, being used over Spain, 90% of South America and Center America, big population in USA also, and few past Spanish colonies all around the world!

Check the link: www.electronic-divagance.com

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Electronic Divagance es un lugar de encuentro para los auténticos amantes de la música electrónica. Niveles insospechables para el resto de humanos convencionales en un mundo convencional, una especie de desierto en el limbo, los confines de la consciencia y la evocación de sensaciones extrasensoriales a través de la estructura subatómica del sonido. En Electronic Divagance se comentan albumes y EPs para darte a conocer la cara oculta del sonido electrónico… lo que no suena en la radio… lo que no oirás en una discoteca… es un viaje sin retorno a las profundidades intrinsecas de nuestras propias mentes, una busqueda extásica del ser interior valiendose de la física del sonido… Bienvenid@ al espacio interior!

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Check the link: www.electronic-divagance.com