One vendor is offering SD cards as a way to add removable storage to netbooks.
There is a little mesh box on my desktop now that contains a collection of flash drives, and it's a reminder of one more area of my life that needs organizing. Much the way Andy Rooney of CBS' 60 Minutes takes stock of his growing pile of aging memorabilia, I see the 13 drives I possess as a colorful set of treasures, all with different shapes, specifications, and case materials. They are a poignant reminder, however, of how easy it is to allow your technology to become antediluvian.
Perhaps my oldest flash drive, and perhaps my favorite, is a 128MB Kingston drive that I carefully guard to ensure I don't lose the cap. Needless to say, buying a flash drive today that has a cap you can lose may not be your wisest purchase. If you do have a drive with a missing cap, you probably just leave it parked in a USB drive on the computer. Did you know that most companies will replace your lost cap if you contact customer service?
One of my favorite drives is an ativa 4 GB that I like because it pulls out on a slider and flips around to expose the plug. You can't lose the cap, and it's not collecting lint and dust in your pocket. One of the ativa drives is labeled U3 smart, which I didn't understand when I bought it, but I figured anything that said "smart" must be better than the alternative. Turns out U3 is a proprietary designation that allows you to run a portable application right from the flash drive. Not all applications can do this, but there is a growing number being designed for portability. Firefox for U3 will allow you to surf the Web without leaving any trace of your browsing history on the PC you are using. The U3 drive has the Launchpad that makes it "smart." You can use it as a conventional drive to carry and access files, but it also comes with pre-loaded software, and you can get more U3 smart software--much of it free--at Software Central. Foxit Reader for U3 allows you to read and manage PDF files. Avast! Antivirus U3 Edition is designed to keep your U3 drive safe from viruses and malware you might pick up from a host machine. This is a necessity if you are, say, a consultant plugging your flash drive into a number of computers at different companies. For updates on the latest titles that run on U3, visit Software Central.
One of the more useful U3 applications is OpenOffice for U3, a full-featured office suite for U3 that includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing tools, and now OpenOffice.org BASE, which allows you to manipulate database data. You can create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports using your own database or BASE's built-in HSQL database engine. Note that the design functionality of this U3 release, however, is currently disabled due to "technical" reasons. Want to take your Skype account on the road? Load Skype for U3 onto your flash drive and you can be talking to Europe from any Internet-connected computer that has a USB port. Just remember to bring your headphones and mic.
Flash drives have come a long way in the past year or two. Patriot now is offering a 64GB USB flash drive called the Patriot XPorter Magnum that sells at newegg.com for $122.99 after rebate. These larger drives were around $400 only a short time ago. Reviews on this particular drive are mixed, with speed apparently being an issue. One use that people have found for these drives is to add extra memory to their PCs using Windows Vista Ready Boost technology. You plug in a USB Ready Boost-enabled flash drive to increase the speed of your computer, with the thumb drive serving as a read buffer (rather than using the hard drive or system memory). Computers likely to see a noticeable impact from this, however, are generally older computers upgraded with Vista, not newer machines with fast hard drives and newer hardware.
While thumb drives continue to grow larger and faster and take on more important roles in the enterprise, securing them is becoming an increasingly large problem. SanDisk announced recently that all its Cruzer Enterprise model flash drives are now Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-certified (140-2 Level 2) for encryption. The encrypted flash drive imposes mandatory access control on all files, which are stored in a secure partition that implements 256-bit hardware-based AES USB encryption. The company just released Central Management and Control (CMC) software V3.0, which gives IT professionals more tools for distributing, protecting, and recovering data. The CMC device agent resides on a company-issued USB drive that gives IT a tool to control lifecycle management on the device. This includes deployment, password recovery and renewal through the network, central backup and restore, central usage tracking, and remote termination of lost devices.
What's the latest thing in flash memory? You know that little netbook computer you want to buy because it's under $400? You like the model that has the solid-state drive, right, but it's skimpy on capacity. Now you can add up to 16GB of storage with a simple SDHC card, the kind that goes in your camera. That's another SanDisk product just announced called the SanDisk Netbook SDHC removable flash memory card. If you thought your USB drives were hard to keep track of, just wait until you start searching around for a misplaced SD card. Let's hope it wouldn't have all your employees' social security numbers on it.
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
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Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
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