Lab Notes

Speedy mobile workstations: Dell, HP, and Lenovo

Randall C. Kennedy — 2009-03-03T03:00:00-05:00

How Lenovo's beasty ThinkPad W700ds stacks up to the Dell Precision M6400 and HP EliteBook 8730w READ MORE

First look: Avaak's Vue taps wireless mesh for Webcams

Brian Chee — 2009-03-02T13:30:48-05:00

The Vue video monitoring system for consumers and small business offers a number of advantages over traditional and Wi-Fi setups READ MORE

Apress Publishing at SCALE 7x

Brian Chee — 2009-02-27T13:57:39-05:00

You're worried about finding or keeping a job right now. One way to improve your chances of getting or keeping an IT job is to improve your technical skills. You could spend thousands of dollars on training for certifications in Cisco or Microsoft or others, but if you're not employed (or worried about losing your job), then you don't want to spend a lot of cash. My favorite alternative is to spend a fraction of the money to buy some good technical books and teach yourself new skills. I had the pleasure of speaking with Julie Miller from Apress... READ MORE

Marshall Electronics USB Microphones

Brian Chee — 2009-02-26T22:14:11-05:00

http://www.mxlmics.com Marshall Electronics 1910 E. Maple Avenue El Segundo, CA 90245 Phone: (310)333-0606 or 1-800-800-6608 Fax: (310)333-0688E-mail: sales@marshall-usa.com The hiss and crackle of the low quality analog audio connectors has been the bane of my existence as I've been trying to do screencasts, podcasts and voice overs. The natural answer is go all digital, but the run of the mill USB mikes are either really cheap, setup for only a single program, or headsets. None of which do me any good when I have to mike a small conference room, a symposium or any number of events where I'd like... READ MORE

Racing JavaScript: Safari vs. Firefox

Tom Yager — 2009-02-26T13:00:00-05:00

Apple's Safari 4 beta trumps Firefox 3 in JavaScript performance, according to WebKit's own SunSpider benchmarks READ MORE

SCALE 7x an Excellent Event and an Impressive Value

Brian Chee — 2009-02-25T04:50:48-05:00

Southern California Linux Expo 7x (SCALE)

Brian Chee — 2009-02-18T07:10:37-05:00

This weekend (Feb 20-22) is the 7th Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). This is a terrific community-centric event held at the LAX Westin in Los Angeles every year. Get registered now and reserve your hotel room before it's too late! If you work with Open Source, you'll be glad you attended this conference. SCALE has become a larger show with more corporate sponsors, but still retains the community organization touches that make it special. There are some great classes and presenters, including AEleen Frisch of O'Reilly's Essential Systems Administration fame. There will be over 60 speakers and presenters talking... READ MORE

HP MediaSmart Server & IoSafe better together

Brian Chee — 2009-02-07T06:58:23-05:00

I've just been talking to one of my classmates that has a small 5 person architectural firm that was previously looking at hiring an IT contractor to setup a file server for them. Over coffee it very quickly became clear that while a full file server would certainly make his office more efficient, the solution was overkill. My suggestion was to consider some sort of simple network attached storage (NAS) until he finally mentioned that they wanted to be able to get to their files remotely and they also wanted a way to get to their desktop computers once in... READ MORE

Web browser security features

Roger A. Grimes — 2009-02-03T03:00:00-05:00

Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Apple Safari compared READ MORE

How to cook a hard drive

Brian Chee — 2009-02-02T18:51:23-05:00

In this day and age business continuity for your data is just as important to the small business as it is to the huge enterprise. I had a chance at CES209 to watch some execs from IOSafe dunk a hard drive in a pool (Chlorine and all) and then bake it to 1300 degrees F. Here's how the recipe: Rent a foreclosure house down the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center and bus the media there in Limos. Snap a bunch of pictures of the press while they scarf down the free food Copy those pictures onto the external... READ MORE

Windows on multicore test results

Randall C. Kennedy — 2009-01-22T03:05:00-05:00

Windows Vista and Windows 7 take better advantage of multiple cores than Windows XP, but not enough to overcome XP's greater efficiency READ MORE

Windows on multicore: How I tested

Randall C. Kennedy — 2009-01-22T03:00:00-05:00

Simulating multiprocess workloads using DMS Clarity Studio's ADO Stress, MAPI Stress, and WMP Stress workload objects READ MORE

Benchmarking mobile workstations

Randall C. Kennedy — 2008-12-17T03:00:00-05:00

For today's review of the Dell Precision M6400 and HP EliteBook 8730w mobile workstations (see "Road warrior power trip"), I tested performance using three diverse sets of workloads. In each case, testing was conducted under Windows Vista Business (x64 Edition) with Service Pack 1, using the latest driver and utility stacks from Dell and HP. First, to see how quad cores affect complex, multi-process workloads, I used the DMS Clarity Studio tool to configure a combination database/workflow scenario. Second, because virtualization has become such a big part of the modern application development cycle, I timed how fast each system to... READ MORE

O'Reilly's Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook

Brian Chee — 2008-12-05T16:35:09-05:00

This latest addition to O'Reilly's "Cookbook" series might just make you want to learn yet another programming environment READ MORE

First look at Memjet enterprise inkjet technology

Brian Chee — 2008-12-05T14:34:02-05:00

Having grown up in the mainframe days, I have memories of nearly going deaf in data centers while the chain/band printers went to town getting out checks/statements/etc in the front room of the "glass house". What made them deafening also made them fast since they were of the category of "line printers" where an entire line of text was slammed onto the paper at a time. Well a company called Memjet has come up with the guts for a whole new generation of inkjet printers that in effect is the next generation of line printer. Key to this new technology... READ MORE