Desktop Computing

By November 27, 2013 Read More →

The Benefits of Year-Round Cyber Security Coverage

DEU Brauchtum Liebe BrueckeIn recent years, online security has become a huge issue for casual computer users and businesses alike. While cybercrime can have a devastating effect on individuals, the effects on businesses can be crippling and even bring an organisation grinding to a halt, depending on the severity of the activity.

While most businesses are aware of the huge problems that cybercrime can cause and have various types of security software and cyber security measures in place to combat such potential attacks, many do not have proper year-round cyber security coverage and monitoring in place, which could cause problems. Nobody knows if and when cyber security threats will arise, and without constant security and monitoring, the security of your business could remain at risk even if you do have measures in place.

Why you should opt for year-round security

Many businesses carry out security testing on a periodic basis in the hope that this will enable them to avoid the risk of cyber threats. However, this actually leaves your business open to lengthy periods where threats could become an issue and new vulnerabilities could be introduced.

This is why it is important to ensure that assessments are carried out on a more regular basis and security monitoring becomes a constant rather than periodic process. So what are the benefits of year-round cyber security coverage? Well, some of the key benefits include the following.

  • Increased peace of mind: there is no doubt that cyber threats have become a huge issue and problem for organisations. However, by ensuring you have access to year-round cyber security coverage, you can benefit from greater peace of mind rather than being continually concerned about the possibility of new vulnerabilities slipping through the net.
  • Increased protection: the effects of cybercrime on businesses can be devastating, affecting everything from the running and finances of the business to the security of sensitive or even classified information. With year-round security, you can ensure your organisation benefits from increased protection, minimising the risk of falling victim to cybercriminal activities.
  • Minimising on the risk of both external and internal breaches: with the right year-round security system, you can ensure your organisation is protected against both external and internal breaches, which means a heightened level of protection for your business.

By opting for managed security services from professionals with expertise and experience in this field, you can ensure that your organisation’s cyber security systems are running at optimum levels at all times. The right provider can ensure you are protected against the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime.

Choosing the right company to provide your managed security services means that you can benefit from rapid response to make sure that your network is always secure and protected. You can also benefit from the expertise, knowledge and skills of professionals to ensure that all of your company’s cyber security needs are met and maintained. https://www.sapphire.net/ are specialists in just one area, uniting subject-matter experts in the field of cybersecurity management and policy with the latest and most advanced technology to give organizations a higher level of protection. You can find out more about managed cyber security services, here.

By November 23, 2013 Read More →

SSD Face-off

SSD Face-offHaving a go at doing an SSD face-off with three lower priced SSDs in a typical PC setup. All three SSDs are tested on the same platform in an IDE set up. From the expensive Kingston SSDnow 100 V, to the considerably cheaper Toshiba Q Series Pro and including the OCZ Vertex Plus R2 for good measure we see that money isn’t everything when it comes to picking up an SSD.

By November 7, 2013 Read More →

HIS launch the R9 280X iPower IceQ X² Turbo Boost Clock 3GB

H280XQMT3G2M_ALL_400HIS – Hightech Information System Limited are in the process of launch a super new graphics card based on the R9 280X from AMD.

This card is a little different to the rest as it features the  IceQ X2 cooling system, this is designed especially to keep the noise to a minimum. The top heatsink is fairly insane, insuring the most complete coverage for cooling and for you over clockers out there the Voltage regulator module area has been enhanced in order to provide more overclocking potential.

Early word is that this card is terrific value for money, costing around £230 on some retail sites. We hope to have a test model at some point in the future.

Introducing HIS R9 280X iPower IceQ X² Turbo Boost Clock 3GB

iPower for More Voltage, IceQ X – Cooler & Quieter, Faster Turbo Clock, iTurbo and Long Lasting Design

Hightech Information System (HIS) today proudly announces the HIS R9 280X iPower IceQX2 Turbo Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5. The new card features iPower for more voltage, Boost Clock & Turbo for appealing performance, IceQX2 for cooler and quieter performance.
Armed with iPower design, the extra PWM phases provide the card with higher and more stable power output which leads to a better-than-expected overclocking. In comparison with 850MHz of the reference board, the core clock of the card has been by default set at 1000MHz.
With the latest technologies and features of R9 280X chipset, the card provides an all-round graphic experience to all users. The state-of-the-art IceQX2 coolers empower the card with the best cooling solution. The card is cooler than the reference design and is below 28dB during watching movies, surfing on internet and ordinary working. Even when graphic intensive gaming is being played, the card still remains at very quiet level.
The card comes with the innovative overclocking software iTurbo. With the user-friendly design, the user can control the temperature, speed and voltage of the card by very simple steps. The card is further strengthened by HIS Long Lasting Design which effectively prolongs the life span of the card. The special metal RIB provides extra strength to the PCBs to avoid warpage. Loaded with AMD’s latest technology, such as GCN, Apps Faster & Smoother, the card has revolutionary improvements on computing performance, gaming experience as well as power consumption!
The card currently retails for £239.99 and it is available in OCUK.

By October 31, 2013 Read More →

Lantronix xPrintServer review

Lantronix xPrintServer review - iOS printingIf you want to print from your iOS device you’ll typically need a printer that supports AirPrint. AirPrint was introduced some time ago as part of iOS 4.2. Despite it being around for a while, AirPrint has not found its way in to many printers.

So if you have an existing printer that doesn’t support AirPrint but you don’t want to replace it, your options are somewhat limited. That’s Lantronix xPrintServer comes in. This small box simply plugs in to your existing network and provides AirPrint capability to virtually any existing printer.

It really is plug and play but before we get in to any of the detail, have a look at the unboxing video below to see what you get.

By October 22, 2013 Read More →

Apple Mac Pro announced

Apple Mac ProToday Apple have been treating us to another look at the Apple Mac Pro and updated us with new specification details and have announced the starting price of ‘just’ $2999 and it will be available from December of this year.

Some of the headline info:

Capable of real-time 4K video editing, extremely low power consumption on idle and as quiet as the Mac Mini.

Engineered around workstation graphics with dual GPUs, PCI Express–based flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2, new-generation Xeon processors, ultra-fast memory and support for 4K video, the new Mac Pro delivers state-of-the-art performance across the board.

Apple Mac Pro Processors:

The new Mac Pro is muscle through and through, starting with the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset. With configurations offering up to 12 cores of processing power, up to 40GB/s of PCI Express gen 3 bandwidth and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions, you’ll never be at a loss for speed.

Every component in the new Mac Pro is optimised for performance. That includes a four-channel DDR3 memory controller running at 1866MHz. It delivers up to 60GB/s of memory bandwidth, which means you can fly through even the most compute-intensive tasks in no time. And since it’s ECC memory, your render job, video export or simulation won’t be stopped by transient memory errors.

Traditionally, pro computers have relied primarily on the CPU for their computing power. But as GPU performance has dramatically increased, software developers have begun to leverage that power in their apps. With the new Mac Pro, we looked ahead and engineered an even more powerful GPU architecture. Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them. With all that power, you’ll be able to do things like seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video while simultaneously rendering effects in the background — and still have enough power to connect up to three high-resolution 4K displays.

Mac Pro specification:

  • Intel Xeon E5
  • 4, 6, 8, or 12 core
  • 1866MHz DD3 RAM, up to 64GB
  • AMD FirePro graphics, up to 12GB of GDDR5
  • PCIe based next gen flash based storage
  • Thunderbolt 2
  • Up to 3 x 4K displays
Posted in: Desktop Computing, News
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By October 22, 2013 Read More →

Apple releases OS X Mavericks for FREE

os x mavericks freeAt their press conference just now in California, Apple have announced that OS X Mavericks will be available to download from the App store from today, and the big news is that it will be free!

Obviously we saw Mavericks first demonstrated a few months ago and since then there have been several beta versions made available to developers and just a few weeks ago the gold master version was also released.

There are over 200 new features and enhancements in Mavericks including some optimisation methods built in to maximise battery life and and memory compression to make best use of the available RAM.

As mentioned before, OS X Mavericks will be FREE and available on almost every Mac!

In OS X Mavericks, Timer Coalescing groups low-level operations together, creating tiny periods of idle time that allow your CPU to enter a low-power state more often. With its activity reduced up to 72 percent, the CPU uses less energy, giving your battery a break, too. This happens so fast you won’t notice a thing. And your Mac still gets just as much done just as quickly.

App Nap helps you save power when you’re working with multiple apps at the same time. OS X can tell when an app is completely hidden behind other windows. And if that app isn’t currently doing something for you — playing music, downloading a file, or checking email, for example — App Nap conserves valuable battery life by slowing the app down. But as soon as you start to use it again, the app instantly shifts back to full speed. It’s so seamless you’ll think it had been running that way all along. App Nap works the same way with Safari tabs, so only the visible tab is running at full speed. With App Nap, CPU energy use can be reduced by up to 23 percent.

The more memory your Mac has at its disposal, the faster it works. But when you have multiple apps running, your Mac uses more memory. With OS X Mavericks, Compressed Memory allows your Mac to free up memory space when you need it most. As your Mac approaches maximum memory capacity, OS X automatically compresses data from inactive apps, making more memory available.

By October 4, 2013 Read More →

OS X Mavericks release imminent

OS X Mavericks releaseApple announced the latest version of their desktop operating system, OS X Mavericks, back in June of this year and since then developers have been able to get their hands on regular beta updates to the new OS at regular intervals.

There’s no clear release date but Apple have just released the gold master version of which means that OS X Mavericks release is imminent. We suspect that it’ll go on general release around the 15th of this month, probably to coincide with the anticipated iPad event.

OS X Mavericks brings more than 200 new features along with it. Most notably iBooks for Mac, Maps for Mac, tabbed Finder, iCloud Keychain, Tags and a whole lot more. Typically a gold master release from Apple precedes the final public release by around 2 weeks and the GM means that OS X Mavericks has reached the final build and is ready to go to customers.

By September 13, 2012 Read More →

The 22-inch Viewsonic Android Tablet

ViewSonic-VSD220We have mentioned on the podcast before the oddity of a 22-inch Viewsonic Android Tablet. Obviously, the idea of a giant Android tablet was both ridiculously cool and ridiculously impractical. As it turns out, the concept device didn’t actually end up as a tablet. ViewSonic wizened up and ditched the internal battery of the device. Now it is simply the ViewSonic 22-inch Android VSD220 Smart Display, and will be hitting US retail stores in October at a price of $399.99.

This thing is basically just an Android powered monitor, which really takes on a whole different dimension if you think about it. Some future evolution of this beast could basically replace the desktop computer completely. In fact, for some users, this specific device itself could do that already. Here’s a spec/feature breakdown followed by a press release:

  • 1,920 x 1080 full HD screen that is touch-enabled
  • Dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4428 processor
  • Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
  • 1GB RAM
  • 8GB internal storage
  • A micro HDMI port
  • Three USB ports
  • A microSD card slot
  • Ethernet
  • A 1.2MP webcam with integrated microphone
Posted in: Desktop Computing
By May 1, 2012 Read More →

ViewSonic’s New VX2460h-LED Monitor

VX2460h-LED_left ViewSonic today announced their new VX2460h LED Monitor. This bad-boy is just 6.8mm thick thin. Surely this has to be the thinnest display on the market?

ViewSonic a leading global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, today announced its latest LED backlit monitor solution – the  VX2460h-LED – offering the thinnest profile available for its size and class category.

Ideal for consumers, gamers, enthusiasts and discerning buyers alike, the VX2460h-LED is a sleek and stylish 24″ (61cm)/23.6″ (60cm) viewable ultra-slim widescreen display that pairs a 1/4″ (6.8mm) ultra-slim thickness with advanced imaging technologies to reduce eye fatigue after extended viewing.

With a Full HD 1080p resolution, 2ms video response time provided by ClearMotiv® II imaging technology and ultra-high 40,000,000 : 1 dynamic contrast ratio, the VX2460h-LED delivers superior pixel performance. Paired with dual HDMI inputs for multiple media device connections, Windows® 7 certification and touch sensitive controls for convenient on-screen display setting adjustments, the VX2460h-LED delivers stunning visual performance. Additionally, this mercury-free, Energy Star® 5.1 certified display is equipped with ViewSonic’s ECO-mode feature which extends the lifetime of the display, while delivering energy savings of up to 40% when compared to a regular 23.6″ (60cm) monitor.

The VX2460h-LED comes standard with a 3-year warranty, and the industry’s best pixel performance policy. The VX2460h-LED will be available in Europe mid May for an RRP £159 / ?199 (inclusive of VAT). For further information on ViewSonic and its products, visit www.viewsoniceurope.com

 

Posted by: Matt

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Posted in: Desktop Computing
By March 10, 2012 Read More →

How to Choose your Ideal Laser Printer

rtaImage Laser printers were once so costly that only businesses could afford to use them. With office supply stores like Ryman now selling home laser printers, even colour versions, from around the £100 mark, their popularity as a home printing option is on the increase. Quieter, faster, and cheaper to run than standard inkjets, laser printers have some serious advantages for the home user too, particularly when it comes to printing high quality text and large volumes.

If you’ve decided to make the switch to laser printing, here are some of the aspects to consider before you make that purchase.

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