OK, your desktop isnt contributing to global warming, but how environmentally friendly is it? Greenpeace takes time to score the major manufacturers on their electronic waste policies.
Nokia and Dell come out on top with Lenovo pulling up the rear.
The latest rumor is that Verizon will be offering the Blackberry 8703, a CDMA version of the 8700 Blackberry that we’ve all come to know and love.
The 8700 is a big jump up in performance and audio quality from the 7200 series that you currently need to use if on Verizon’s network. Definitely worth the upgrade.
To answer that, and many other timeless questions, visit www.speedtest.net. It’s the latest bandwidth-testing site. You can check your Internet speed with any number of hosts across the globe.
For data a little more useful, you’ll want to measure from the closest server. To NYC, we scored close to 22 mbit/s. To Auckland, a more anemic .5 mbit/s.
Reports of exploding Dell laptops may have not been highly exaggerated.
Dell is recalling 4.1 million laptop batteries - from laptops shipped between April 2004 and July 2006. Call 866-342-0011 or visit www.dellbatteryprogram.com to find out more.
With all due respect to the Boomtown Rats, Tuesdays are far more painful for the tech crowd. Microsoft computers everywhere receive their latest security patches, and this week saw a record number. There were 9 critical security patches including one which protects against an exploit giving a remote attacker full control of your computer.
Lessons learned from the Great Stamford Power Outage of 2006
Last week, many of my Stamford clients were left in the dark, not to mention the searing heat. Happily, all their data and equipment survived the outage.
Hopefully you were as fortunate. Even if you were, I urge you to check the battery backup system on your server. Even though you’re up and running, you could be risking data loss with every outage. Here are some tips on keeping your UPS healthy.
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Joining HP on my list of unnecessarily large software installations is Adobe Reader. Install the latest version, and you may inadvently drag along Adobe Photoshop Album and a Yahoo toolbar for the ride.
If you want to keep your system lean, forget about Adobe and check out Foxit Reader. Their site ain’t pretty, but loading PDFs in a flash is.
Also check out their pro version. It’s a reasonable $39, and provides a much-requested typewriter tool for entering text right on top of and PDF document. It’s great for government forms.
I was all set to blog about this nice tool from Microsoft providing a password-encrypted folder for confidential information, but it was yanked before I had a chance.
Never mind, there are better alternatives. Check out TrueCrypt; it will create a file that acts as an encrypted drive. Enter your password, and you have access to all the files within. Your encrypted file is portable - put it on a usb stick and you’ll have secure access to all your confidential files wherever you are.
Assuming you use a strong enough password, Truecrypt will protect your data against prying eyes, even if your computer is stolen.