At work, we're looking to replace a lab with new computers. These days, that leaves us plenty of options. Normal PC or thin client? Each of those choices has a lot of variants as well. One of the thin client options we're looking into is the HP MultiSeat T100 Thin Client solution. HP's MultiSeat is a pretty interesting setup and falls somewhere between the traditional desktop … [Read more...]
How to Hold a Confidential Print Job at a Shared Printer
One of the low hanging fruits of Green IT recommendations is to replace the 'printer at each desk' model with the 'fewer, higher-capacity printers shared amongst an office' model. In my office, we've been trying to follow this recommendation in order to save electricity, reduce maintenance, and provide printers with increased capabilities to my users. Unfortunately, it's not … [Read more...]
Exploring the AT&T U-Verse
At my current apartment I was able to get AT&T's U-Verse service with a fiber-to-the-premise connection. Before I signed up for the service, I did a quick search on the web and couldn't find much information out there about user's experiences, reviews, or anything beyond AT&T's domain. Here to amend that, I wrote this article to shed some details about the AT&T … [Read more...]
Sounds of a Dying Hard Drive
I have a co-worker who is very... skilled at duplicating the sounds that a dying hard drive makes. He might leave the office to respond to a request and return with an "errrnnnt-Kssh! errrnnnt-Kssh!" sound to explain the source of the problem: a failing hard drive. This skill was honed a couple years back when we had about 300 hard drives in Dell's that all failed within 2 … [Read more...]
Microsoft’s Courier – The Next Gadget I Want
The Amazon Kindle is an interesting e-Reader, but it's too locked into Amazon's system and file formats. I prefer Sony's Reader as far as e-Readers go because they embraced open formats in response to Kindle's competition, but still it's a fairly limited function device. Apple's iPad does not interest me at all. HP's Slate is closer to what I would want, but it seems built for … [Read more...]