Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
Pioneer announced a new Blu-ray drive this week. The BDR-2208 will be the fastest drive available on the market—an internal 15x Blu-ray burner—and offers small businesses a cost-effective means of backing up and archiving important data.
The press release from Pioneer describes a number of features that consumers will appreciate. It has QuickPlay to decrease the time it takes between inserting a disc into the drive, and having that disc available and ready to use. It has PowerRead to enable smoother data reads by quickly bypassing areas marred with minor scratches or smudged with fingerprints. It has Auto Quiet Mode to adjust the disc rotation speed to reduce rotation speed—and noise—when watching Blu-ray movies or listening to music.
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
Amazon unveiled a new service this week—Whispercast. Whispercast is a tool for schools and businesses that allows them to centrally manage and deploy content for Kindle devices and Kindle apps. Whispercast could make the Kindle much more attractive as a legitimate business tool.
How much paper do you think is wasted in your office by people printing out white papers, marketing collateral, or other materials to review? A team of people working on a new proposal together might each print out a hard copy to read while on the train, or sitting at home in their living room. A couple people will lose their copy, and one will get coffee spilled on it, and the same document will be printed off a few more times.
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
When Microsoft unveiled its Surface tablet earlier this year, it looked impressive, but left us with few details. This week, Microsoft invited a select group of tech writers for a closer look behind the curtain, and began taking pre-orders for the device that will be available as of October 26. As anxious as some are to get a hold of the new Windows RT tablet, though, there are a few good reasons businesses might think twice.
At face value, a Windows-based device engineered by Microsoft would seem to be a slam dunk for businesses considering tablets. However, Windows RT is a different animal than Windows 8. It relies strictly on the Modern (formerly known as “Metro”) UI with its colorful tiles, and it can only use apps acquired from the Windows Store.
The Surface RT has some serious caveats when it comes to business use.Read more »
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
It’s not the pricing I had hoped for. But, at the same time the price options for the Surface RT tablet are not ridiculous. The pricing of the Surface RT tablet is competitive—not high enough to be dead on arrival, and not low enough to be a slam dunk.
According to details available on the Microsoft Store site earlier today, the Surface RT will start out at $499 for a 32GB model without the accompanying keyboard case. Without diving deeper into the features and capabilities, that makes the Surface RT $100 cheaper than the similar 32GB iPad, which costs $599.
It's not $199, but at $499 the Surface RT is still competitively priced.Read more »
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
So, rumor has it that Apple will host an event on the imminent horizon—give or take two weeks—to announce a smaller iPad model. The “Apple iPad Mini” as it’s been dubbed by the rumor mill, is expected to be a 7 or 8-inch sibling of the iPad, designed to compete with smaller tablet rivals like the Google Nexus 7, or the Amazon Kindle Fire HD.
There’s never a shortage of gossip and rumors when it comes to mysterious new Apple products, but there does seem to come a point where the speculation reaches critical mass and it seems more likely than not that there’s truth behind it. Assuming an iPad Mini is, in fact, impending, it will probably be a game changer.
Rumor has it that iOS might soon have three sizes to choose from.Read more »
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
It’s crunch time. In just over two weeks Microsoft is hosting a massive media event in New York to officially launch Windows 8. With the clock winding down, Microsoft is working diligently to improve some of its Windows 8 apps, but there are still some big question marks remaining for Windows 8 apps.
The most prominent and obvious change from Windows 7 is the Modern UI. The colorful, tiled interface is reminiscent of the Windows Phone interface, and Microsoft has designed it with touch-enabled devices like tablets in mind. It takes some getting used to, but once you master tapping and swiping to get what you need the Modern UI is actually pretty slick. Still, for traditional desktops and laptops that lack touchscreen capabilities, the Modern UI just seems like a cumbersome extra layer.
Microsoft needs quality apps for the Windows 8 "Modern" UIRead more »
Putting technology expertise to work for your business. More by Tony Bradley
One of the challenges facing businesses of all sizes today is how to corral the terabytes upon terabytes of data that is generated and archived every day. Iomega—a respected name in data storage—has a new tool that just might help meet that challenge, though. The new StorCenter px12-450r Network Storage Array.
The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the hardware specs and capabilities of the device seem impressive. The StorCenter px12-450r houses 12 drive bays in a 2U network appliance. The drive bays can be filled with SSD or traditional hard drives—including new 4TB drives. With 12 4TB drives in place, the StorCenter px12-450r can store a massive 48TB of data.
The Iomega StorCenter px12-450r can store up to 48TB of data.Read more »
