SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » February 2007

February 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld LIVE! #5: Streaming Live at 4pm

TAGS: Internet Radio

And here's another episode of InfoWorld LIVE! radio. We're talking about ways to physically protect your business. ADT isn't the only option anymore. Now you've got ways to control data access to your PCs, security cameras you can check from your cell phone and then Brian Chee talks about all the James Bond stuff he learned in spy school.

You can download this week's episode by clicking on this link:   Listen!

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 20, 2007 12:39 PM

February 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld LIVE! #4: Data Centers Here & Now

TAGS: Internet Radio

Just finished the 4th episode of InfoWorld LIVE! our pilot Internet Radio program (and, yes, sponsor slots are still open). This week, we're talking data centers. Big, bad, but still beautiful. Building them is changing, and not just the 'how' but also the 'why'.

So we're talking to John Niemann from APC, Phillip Pokorny of Penguin Computers/Scyld and our own senior contributing geek, Logan Harbaugh, who's busy with a data center-type review right now: SANS. We're hitting data center developments and ways SMBs can take advantage of them.

You can download this week's episode by clicking on this link:   Listen!

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 13, 2007 12:31 PM

February 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Favorite Long Terms of 2006: Gateway M255-E SB

TAGS: SMB Hardware

OUR FAVORITE VALUE NOTEBOOK: GATEWAY M255-E

If it's one thing SMBs need to watch, it's the bottom line. Getting the most for your buck is synonymous with success in that arena, so we take anything with a 'value' prefix seriously. Unfortunately, most manufacturers seem to equate value with anemic features or even outdated hardware. What we loved about Gateway's M255-E SB is that 'anemic' simply doesn't apply. Just a sub-$1,500 price tag.

We reviewed the M255-E in an earlier configuration back in June of 2006 after reviewing it for a couple of months. That one ran a basic Intel embedded video subsystem and a fairly quick Pentium 4 CPU. Later in 2006, Gateway was kind enough to send us the newer M255-E SB, this one configured with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB SATA hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD drive and a 14-inch ultrabrite screen as well as Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office Small Business Edition--and it still came in under $2,000.

You can opt for a Core 2 Duo CPU anywhere between 1.6GHz and 2.16GHz, a RAM count between 512MB and 4GB, a hard disk as small as 60GB or as big as 120GB, and an optical drive that goes from a straight CD-ROM, a CD-ROM writeable-DVD playing combo or a DVD writer. All this can drop your final price as low as $1,300 to over $2,000--though that actually takes effort.

No, the M255-E doesn't look as sexy as an ultra-portable or a brightly-colored fashion notebook. But it has it where it counts--under the hood. It's also a great size and weight for traveling, fitting easily into any notebook briefcase or backpack and weighing about five and a half pounds.

ON THE ROAD
With that much muscle and a nice form factor I immediately adopted the M255-E as my own--figured the programmers could bite me. When they sniffed around, I misdirected with an offhand comment about 'value' and slunk away shnozzing for richer hardware. Meanwhile, the thing took everything I tossed at it without blinking.

Microsoft Office ran without a problem, and our annual budgeting and sales spreadsheets (which are both rather large) zipped along with nary a blink. Video conferencing, Skype, podcasting, all the geekazoid stuff ran without a hitch, too. A nastier test came during an emergency sales demo where the M255-E had to be setup as an Apache/Tomcat server with a MySQL back-end. Software installed, duty done. I even had it running Debian via VMware clicking back and forth between that and XP with no trouble.

Then came Vista. We tried RC1 on the first Gateway M255-E we received earlier in the year (the one we reviewed in June) and it couldn't run Aero. This meatier version, however, handled Aero without trouble. Intel attributes this to an upgraded Intel video subsystem on the newer Core 2 Duo motherboards. I wouldn't try to run the really high-end Vista Ultimate graphics toys or the newer high-end games if you're looking for smooth performance, but for mainstream Vista visions, the M255-E does the trick while still maintaining a value-class price tag. Tres impressive.

Traveling with the machine was done often and with little trouble. She got dropped only twice in the four months we had the machine, but it suffered no ill effects. It's light enough that running through an airport is still possible provided you're not an invalid. Battery life average around three to three and a half hours with the mainstream battery that Gateway provided. There is however a long-life version available that should bump you up to about 5 hours with little trouble.

Connectivity was also solid. The machine has 10/100/1000 on the wired side and 802.11 a/b/g on the wireless side. External ports were enough, though a little of the M255-E’s valueness peeked through here. The only video ports are external VGA and S-Video. Enough for external projectors, but for a good display, a DVI port would have been better-then again that would have also required a higher-end video card.

You'll also find four USB 2.0 ports (good) and one FireWire port (nice) as well as a SmartCard reader and a 6-in-1 media card reader (all good). PC Cards, however, are restricted to a single Type II slot that doesn't support the new Express Card standard. That would have been a real-nice-to-have, especially considering that the M255-E is really built for traveling and all the new broadband wireless cards (like a Verizon EV-DO card or a T-Mobile EDGE card) will be coming out in this format.

OVERALL
Overall, we liked the M255-E because you're getting exactly what you need for the biz traveler on the go. It's fast, it's tough, it runs exactly what you need it to run and it's got a price tag low enough that you can buy two of them for the price of one of the high-end jobs. I was ticked when Gateway finally insisted I send it back.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 13, 2007 09:21 AM

February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

EARLY PEEK: Windows Mobile 6 with Screens and Bacon

TAGS: Mobile SMB

Microsoft's PR usually drops me in a barbed-wire protected conference room for demos. So when the Mobile guys offered to do the meeting over breakfast, I stupidly jumped at the change of venue. 'Stupid' because I'm a self-employed freelance writer. To make an 8am breakfast meeting in NYC, I need to roll out of bed in north Jersey around 5:30am. I haven't been up that early since my last hangover emergency.

Fortunately, the W Hotel serves excellent coffee which eradicated my bleary fog such that I could actually understand what the Microsoft guys were talking about. Before that they sounded like one of those Charlie Brown saxophone-as-teacher numbers.

And that's Windows Mobile 6, once called Crossbow, and recently outed in a French newspaper even though the official embargo wasn't supposed to be till next week. Shards and feathers.

Embargoed or not, Windows Mobile 6 looks like it has enough sweets going for it to make Windows Mobile 5 users want to upgrade. The short list:

1. Support for Mobile Office. Previously only supported in Windows PocketPC.

2. Noticeable attention paid to the new user interface. Clear, colorful, with a few Vistaisms thrown in there, though the two OSes really don't have much of the same code.

3. Improved email support. All the push email that Exchange 2007 brings (including the manageability), but also the ability to one-step your Windows Live, Office Live and Hotmail email. Also has a neat service that goes and finds your proper email settings as long as that service knows about your ISP. All you need to know is your email address and password. Tres cool for folks with loads of pop mail accounts.

4. Better security. Not for viruses, that's still third party. But now not only can your IT guy wipe your phone's data if you lose it, you can, too. Just log into OWA and the tools will be there.

5. Improved ActiveSync. Now this does better with syncing not just files, but specifically photos and music, too. Though I need to have a discussion with the Vista guys on the differences between Vista's Sync Manager and ActiveSync. According to the Windows Mobile dudes, they're not the same thing.

6. Much improved searching. This covers a lot of ground. Searching for contacts starts with your local address book on the phone, for instance. There it narrows down the search the more letters you supply, covering the keys from a numeric angle as well. But local searching is only the start. You can now extend that contact search to your OWA address book, your Exchange Server address book, your Windows Live Mail contact database or even your other pop account address books.

Content searching is improved as well, similar to what you'll find on Outlook 2007. For one, it's noticeably faster. For two, it starts with your local email stores, searching addresses and subject lines. If you don't get a hit, you can opt to search any of your server-bound inboxes provided you've got connectivity. If you do, Windows Mobile 6 will extend the search and cover content in message bodies as well.

7. Lots of work done to the calendar. The Windows Mobile calendar can now take input from more than one source. It can also connect back to an Exchange Serve and serve up all those goodies about meeting availability and scheduling conflicts.

8. SharePoint touchpoints. They didn't have a demo ready, but the Windows Mobile 6 clients are supposed to be good SharePoint clients, as well. Guess we'll test that when we get a phone.

9. Oh yeah, contact search also covers Windows Live Messenger, which is fully integrated into Windows Mobile 6. So if your contact has a Windows Live Mobile ID, your contact search will not only tell you what that ID is, it'll also tell you whether the little freak is online right that moment. If he is, you can send him a text message right off the phone. That API is open, according to Microsoft, so you should see similar functionality from AIM, Yahoo!, et. al. pretty soon after Mobile 6 ships.

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10. And last continues the GUI features: Simply reading email messages is easier and clearer, with support not just for a better overall view, but also for HTML email specifically. Not to worry, you can still turn that off if it sets off your security hackles.

Problems? A few. For one, there's a limited number of phones that will support it out of the gate and only T-Mobile phones for the first 90 days, apparently.

Next is that upgrading your existing phone is a big question mark. Microsoft says it's not up to them. That cell phone operators and manufacturers (meaning for me and my Q, for example, that's Motorola and Verizon) need to build a fully working upgrade package and test it, then release it to customers. So we could be waiting until this summer the way those two companies move. Also means that our upgrade most likely won't be free with Microsoft, the cell phone maker and the cell plan operator probably all looking for a slice of the upgrade revenue pie. BITETH ME HARD!!

We'll know more once we actually get one of these into our grubby little hands.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2007 02:54 PM

February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Trend Micro Adds More for SMBs...But No Vista

TAGS: SMB Applications

So Trend Micro's been sending out press releases announcing its big jump from Trend Micro Client Server Security for SMB 3.0 to Trend Micro Client Server Security for SMB 3.5. There's also a Trend Micro Client Server Messaging Security for SMB 3.0 to 3.5 jump (I'm not typing that again, dammit).

More of everything security oriented: more support for malware protection, more support for rootkit protection, more support for desktop coverage, more support for server-side protection, especially email servers if you're opting for the more expensive Messaging version of the product. (Client Server is $25/seat for 101 seats while the Messaging product is $46/seat for 101 servers.)

The sweet stuff next to the added security muscle is a networked administration interface that lets you install everything in one step (including the clients on the desktops and servers) and then monitor everything from a central management screen. Pretty cool for an SMB product.

Then I hit 'system requirements'. Desktops top out at Windows XP Pro and the server side is the same, Windows Server 2003 or Exchange 2003 or earlier. Only. Period.

Now I'm wrestling with how I feel about that. Part of me wants to say 'bite me'. But the rational part agrees with Trend Micro that most SMBs won't be on Vista or Exchange 2003 this early anyway--hell Longhorn and it Small Business Server version won't be out till the end of the year at the earliest.

So my official word is that non-Vista support really isn't that big a deal--as long as you don't have any Vista clients. But if you do, then you're stuck with non-centrally managed, individual desktop security clients. Trend's got one of those. Me? I wish they'd buckled down and just delivered support for the darn OS now. And the sure better make it a freebie upgrade at the end of this year when more folks will be deploying Vista. If they try and make us pay for it again, there's going to be some unhappy words here.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2007 02:36 PM

February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Favorite Long Terms of 2006: Dell Precision M90

TAGS: SMB Hardware

I had my doubts about this behemoth when it first arrived. See, notebooks are meant to be portable and this thing tops out around 8.5 pounds with all the sundries and has a 17-inch diagonal screen if you'd care to calculate dimensions. Had to use a special backpack to lug it around and finally just gave up and used the extra large APC notebook briefcase with the make-my-arm-numb shoulder strap.

Funny thing is, when you're unpacking the M90 you're thinking how you'll never move it around and what's all this power doing in a notebook anyway? Then you do an extended review and all of a sudden it's the most popular notebook in the office.

We used the M90 in our software office in Lake Success, New York, where it immediately got sucked into programming hands. I barely got my fingerprints on it before the Java eggheads were installing their toys. In its tenure as a programming box, the M90 ran four operating systems (Windows XP, Windows XP 64, Windows Vista and Red Hat's Fedora Core 5) and was running a server and three test workstations internally via VMware. This made it the perfect box for use at off-site development summits.

I only saw it a month or so later when we had our first trade show in Dallas. The app we’re developing is a Web 2.0 application, so at first we thought any old machine with a Web browser and an outside broadband connection would do. Until we talked to show floor management and found out that broadband connections to the show floor run almost $2000 for three days. Right around there, I decided to run the whole thing in client/server mode and just serve everything up locally.

Enter the M90. We had a full server and workstation setup at the booth, but only the M90 was strong enough to run both the server stuff (Apache, Tomcat, the whole 9 yards) and a local as well as virtual client. That came in handy when we had to attend out-of-booth workshops and such.

THE SPECS
Dell categorizes the M90 as a portable workstation, truly a member of its Precision line of high-end business desktops--and they're right. We got our M90 last summer and the box came with a 2.16GHz Core Duo, 2GB of RAM, a 100GB SATA hard disk, and an nVidia Quadro FX 1500M mobile video card with 512MB of dedicated RAM.

Today, you've still got the FX 1500 as an option, but you can also opt for a slightly less muscled version with only 256MB of RAM. Important thing to remember about these nVidia cards is that they're built for OpenGL work, which means that while roving programmers love the box, roving CAD developers are going to love it, too. Especially considering the M90's 17-inch high-end display, which is capable of 1920x1200 or 1440x900 resolution depending on which video screen option you select (WUXGA is the high end, WXGA is the default).

You've got all the networking options you want, including 10/100/1000 gigabit on the wired side and 802.11a-g on the wireless. The M90s also have the option of internal CDMA connectivity, meaning you can simply sign up for a Verizon Ev-Do wireless broadband account and the M90 (as well as its brethren) can take that account information and connect directly--no need for a dedicated PC Card. Highly sweet.

But those are only two ports on the M90's bulky chassis--Dell didn’t waste any space, however. You'll also find VGA, S-Video and DVI ports for all you external video needs; six USB 2.0 and one FireWire port for all your peripheral needs; a PC Card slot that also supports the new Express Card standard, a Smart Card reader and a 4-in-1 Media Card reader. Basically, if it talks to a PC, it talks to the M90--which can really save your bacon on the road when you're bumping into strange external projectors, new digi-cams or storage devices. Though, I would have liked one of the 8-in-1 media readers, but that's a minor quibble.

Our 100GB SATA disk was the high-end option back then, but now you can jump a step higher to 120GB. See that could be 200GB to make me really happy, but I suppose that has to wait until the SATA folks get an interface working for mobile disks of that size. Dell has a 160GB option, but then you lose SATA’s speed bonus and drop down to a regular 5400rpm ATA disk. Feed the speed.

CPUs have seen the biggest change since the unit we reviewed. RAM still maxes out at 4GB of DDR2 RAM, but CPU choices immediately dumped the Core Duo and moved to Core 2 Duo when that chip became available. Now you can opt for Core 2 Duo silicon starting at 1.83GHz up to 2.33GHz.

Performance, obviously, rocked. Where it will disappoint is battery life--but then again if you were looking for stellar battery life after opening this box, then you were smoking funny cigarettes. This is a lot of hardware and it's going to take a lot of juice. Then again, it's not hugely terrible either. We got about two and a half hours with an average workload. No, that won't manage a five-hour cross-country flight, but then again this box is so big that you can't get it open in an economy seat anyway. If you've got first class, you'll have the space for a backup notebook battery, like those from APC, or an airline power jack. And outside of an airplane, most users are going to be using an M90 at some kind of work site so battery life really isn't required that often.

THE UPSHOT
It's big, bad and beautiful. It's also tough even with all its high-end hardware, surviving six airline experiences and countless take-home trips with no hiccup whatever. It also managed four operating systems during its tenure with us and never had a driver issue, other than having to find the right nVidia driver for Fedora and some less-than-advanced video drivers for the same card under Vista RC1. But everything ran with a minimum of hassle considering that tasks we set the machine.

For power-user needs in a business setting, we didn't encounter any notebook that came close to the M90 across the eight other notebook reviews we did in 2006. Highly recommended

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2007 12:50 PM

February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Our Favorites of 2006: The Long Term Reviews

TAGS: SMB Hardware

It's February of 07, so it's about time we finish this. During 2006, we hardy reviewers at InfoWorld, especially those dedicated elite who deal with the SMB market, managed a number of long-term reviews.

That just means that we got our grubbies on several bits of hardware, talked the vendors into letting us keep them for a while (or simply ignored their pleading emails asking for a return) and put those products into real-world work scenarios for a few months instead of just the usual two-day to two-week lab review period. We had a few favorites and a few not-so-favorites in that bunch. This first series will be on the faves.

I'll be posting these one a day for the next week, so enjoy and feel free to comment with your own experiences if you've used one or more of these devices.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2007 10:43 AM

February 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

InfoWorld LIVE! #3: Storage for 2007

TAGS: Podcast

Episode 3 of InfoWorld LIVE! is up for download. This week, we're doing a storage-oriented show, beginning with Iomega, moving to Zetera and finishing up with a short talk by our own Brian Chee on storage virtualization for SMBs.

And in case you missed the first two episodes, this is a pilot of a one-hour weekly radio show hosted by myself and Scott Draughon, who heads up the My Technology Lawyer resource site and radio show. We're hitting technology and business issues, talking about the inner workings of InfoWorld and making fun Brian and Paul.

And looking for sponsors.

You can download this week's episode by clicking on this link:   Listen!

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 6, 2007 12:34 PM