USB 3.0 and Bay Area computer consultants X2 Technologis make your network run faster.

In chatting with Steve Mays, The Smartest IT Guy Ever, he was fired up about USB 3.0!

USB 3.0 is coming with 50% more power to provide for more devices and 10x the performance.  What does this mean to you dear reader?  It means that even existing devices like hard drives, not to mention newer devices like SSDs, will go faster and devices that charge with USB will charge faster and possibly not need external power bricks.

Real world usage of USB 2.0 nets something less than 20MB/sec on external hard drives, if you factor in the theoretical 10x performance gain that would be something like 200MB/sec which is right up there with RAID arrays and fast SSDs. (There are claims that the USB 3.0 protocol could go all the way up to an unbelievable 25 Gbps!!)

It’s a nice and frankly overdue by 3-4 years step.

The whole ecosystem of devices are coming out now: motherboards with USB 3.0 ports, laptops, PCIe cards, Express Card slots, adapters, hard drives, everything!  Linux will have USB 3.0 support FAST and Microsoft/Apple will be bringing it on with their newer OS versions (Windows 7 and OSX 10.6) via patches.

Oh and did I mention that 3.0 ports are backwards compatible with 2.0 devices?

X2 Technologies receives IMDB credit for IT support on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

The premier Bay Area IT Systems Integrators are proud of our new IMDB credits for IT Support on Tim Burton’s rendition of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

The cast include, Mia Wasikowaska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Matt Lucas, Timothy Spall and Barbara Windsor.

It is currently in post-production and set to be released March 5, 2010.

X2 Technologies is Qube! certified and has extensive experience with Maya, Mays Extensible Language Plugins (MEL), render farms and essentially any and all hardware and software components required to produce stunning animation, CG, FX results under budget and ahead of schedule.

Please give us a call if you have an FX IT issue you’d like to discuss.

Happy New Year.

They looked at me that way because times were good, profits were flowing and the funds – and staffing – was readily available to test new projects with or without clearly defined objectives and metrics to verify both the validity and ROI of the “pet project of the month.”

Then along comes a financial meltdown and 10.2% unemployment and suddenly not only are pet projects being cut but so are the needed enhancements to improve the viability and survivability of a firm’s IT, telephony and storage infrastructure.

This has forced CIOs to take a step back and answer some tough questions – and provide real numbers and a firm business case – as to how their department, their staff and their projects meet the overall growth and profit goals of their company.

According to Gartner, the IT agenda of firms both small and large will be dominated by virtualization, business intelligence and social media.

Additionally, we have seen and will continue to see, a shift from CapEx to OpEx spending for the next year as companies attempt to stretch their budgets by stretching their hardware while the economy is still working through the malaise. This shift to OpEx is made more viable as “cloud computing” becomes more reliable and vibrant. When computing in the cloud the emphasis is shifted from the hardware on the client side to the connectivtiy and bandwidth, which are both less expensive and able their costs are able to be distributed across all users.

However, literally millions of servers are beyond their scheduled replacement dates, which will increase the failure rate and potential for lost data and productivity of firms nationwide. And that could be the silver bullet in your budget planning arsenal when it comes to requesting increased funding for both CapEx and OpEx for your IT department.

Meantime between failure rates can be calculated and when multiplied by the number of servers, average length of outage and proft per employee per hour you have your business impact the CFO and CEO will want to see to justify spending money on IT.

For help in calculating those numbers or in extending the life of your current equipment, please contact us for a free consultation.

Quite often I see PC users simply throw the latest operating system on their machines without confirming the minimum specifications needed to run the OS and they end up wasting their time, their money, their old machine, possibly consulting dollars and hours with my team only to end up downgrading their old machine and buying a new one with the latest OS and used piece of software they use as a coaster for their coffee!

So before you rush out the the store or Amazon.com or Newegg.com to buy the new Windows 7 upgrade let’s look at a few steps to make sure you don’t enter “frustration-ville” before lunch!

The good news is that Windows has announced some extremely low requirements from a hardware perspective so you should be good to go but let’s take a peek.

Current Hardware:
If your current PC does not have these minimum specs you (a) have a relic, not a PC, and (b) need to either upgrade the hardware or just break down and buy a new machine.

1) CPU – Must be 1 Gigahertz (1GHz) or faster. Most systems in use in a (profitable) corporate environment will meet this requirement.

To confirm go to the Windows Start menu, then “My Computer” and right click on it, select “Properties” and on the bottom of the page that pops up look towards the bottom to see your Processor Speed.

2) Memory – Must have at least 1GB (1 gigabyte) of RAM. Follow the same steps as above to see how much memory your system has.

3) Disk Space – 16GB of hard disk space. Go to the start menu, scroll to my computer, then click on my computer and then go to local disk. Right click on it and select properties. This will then tell you how much free space there is on your hard drive.

4) Graphics Card – Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface).

5) A DVD-R/W drive. The amount of code built into current Operating Systems is staggering and they usually only fit on DVD’s so make sure you have access to a DVD for your PC.

What if your current PC does not meet these requirements? While I’ll give you a few pointers below, your best bet is to go buy a new machine!)

- CPU – If your CPU is too slow it’s usually not worth the money and hassle to upgrade it. Sorry.

- Memory – Memory is pretty easy and affordable to upgrade and does not need any special tools but make sure you check for compatibility with your manufacturer.

- Disk Space – You can attempt to free up space by deleting old files, etc. but 16 Gigs is a lot of data to dump. Here are some steps to take to free up some space but if your disk is full you should really consider buying a larger hard drive for your system or even an external, portable drive to take around with you for emergencies.

To clean up your system you can:

- Do a little Spring cleaning by deleting old programs, files, games (at work?), pictures and movies (big space eaters). You’ll be amazed at how much you can delete once you really start snooping around your system.

- Run the Windows Disk Cleanup to delete all the temporary files that Windows does not need but they clog up your system.

- Registry errors – This can get tricky. This can be a biggie but there are free registry scanning programs you can run before you upgrade to Windows 7. You can then fix the detected errors and delete any junk entries.

If you can do all of the above you should have good luck with the Windows 7 upgrade.

If you run into problems you can always contact us for a free consultation.

San Rafael Business Computer Support

To upgrade or “upgrade?”

Let’s say you have an office full of rather savvy PC users with systems that are 1.5 to 2 years old. Your laptops and desktops probably came with Vista but you probably downgraded them all to XP.  These machines are probably running Intel Dual Core processors with at least 2 GB of RAM.

Now October 22 arrives and you’re faced with the thought of “upgrading” to Windows 7, Microsoft’s cover-up of Vista.

I put “upgrading” in quotes because upgrading usually means putting in a disk, keeping what you have without erasing your drive and starting over, and 45 minutes to 2 hours later you have an upgraded system.

For the majority of Windows 7 installations, though, you’re going to have to do a “Fresh Install.”  With the proliferation and experience of most corporate users in the realm of cloud computing, SANs and NASs an disaster recover, this does not pose that big of a problem, but it can be a headache if not managed properly. At the end of the day, though, most Windows users will be familiar with fresh installs.

Personally, I typically do a fresh install on my Windows machines because it is faster than uninstalling all of the “crapware” that  manufacturers have been bribed into cramming onto my shiny new PC. (We also recommended to almost all of our clients to stay with XP because Vista didn’t offer a large enough risk/reward return to tolerate the hassles.)

Now that Microsoft has licked its wounds and mostly recovered we see that Windows 7 isn’t all that bad and if you bought your machines after June 26, 2009 you are eligible for a free upgrade.

Keep in mind that with an upgrade you have to go with the bit version of Vista your system had. For example, if you had a 32-bit Vista OS you can only get a free upgrade to 32-bit Windows 7. The same holds true for the 64-bit Vista OS.

Likewise, the version of Windows 7 you may upgrade to for free also depends on the version of Vista your system has. So PCs with Vista Home Premium can upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. PCs with Vista Business get to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional and machines with Vista Ultimate go to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Downer Announcement

If you have Vista Home Basic or Windows XP on your PC it is not upgradeable to Windows 7, which means you’re not eligible for a free upgrade.

The good news is that you can install Windows 7 on Vista Home Basic or Windows XP-equipped PCs, but you must do a clean install (versus an upgrade). This requires the purchase of a shrink-wrapped copy of the Windows 7 OS. You should also verifythat your system meets the minimum requirements for loading the new OS.

As with any upgrade, we highly recommend/beg/insist/stomp our feet and slam our fists that you back up your files and settings. You can use DVDs, external hard drives or attached storage but BACK YOUR STUFF UP before you do any type of upgrade. If you don’t have the time or expertise to make this happen please call us because we do. (A little shameless plug!)

This XP Tip describes how to perform that search.

Search for Hidden or System Files By default, the Search companion does not search for hidden or system files. Because of this, you may be unable to find files, even though they exist on the drive.

To search for hidden or system files in Windows XP: Click Start, click Search, click All files and folders, and then click More advanced options.

Click to select the Search system folders and Search hidden files and folders and check the boxes.

NOTE: You don’t need to configure your computer to show hidden files in the Folder Options dialog box in Windows Explorer to find files with either the hidden or system attributes.

But you will need to configure your computer not to hide protected operating system files to find files with both the hidden and system attributes.

Search Companion shares the Hide protected operating system files option (which hides files with both the system and hidden attributes) with the Folder Options dialog box Windows Explorer.

Display the Quick Launch Bar

If you have opened more than one program, you might like to display and use the Quick Launch bar. The Quick Launch bar makes it easy to access frequently used programs like Windows Media Player and your e-mail, and to open an Internet Explorer window.

Windows XP loads several programs in the Quick Launch, including Show Desktop. One click on Show Desktop minimizes all the programs on your desktop. Another click restores them just as you’d left them.

To display Quick Launch on the taskbar

1. If the Quick Launch bar is not displayed, right-click an empty area on the taskbar and click Properties.
2. On the Taskbar tab, under Taskbar appearance, select the Show Quick Launch check box and click OK.

After Quick Launch is displayed, click Show Desktop to minimize all open programs.

The future of Flash: HTML 5 is coming

Twitter founder Biz Stone does not want to be sold. Would you sell?

Nokia loses $834 million dollar quarterly loss. They’re a low-cost, ghetto handset maker. They’ve held on too long to Symbian.

The iPhone needs to have the ability to run simultaneous applications. RIM with their SDK is exposing the capability and should be out in the next year.

If Steve owned Nokia he’d buy Palm!

We’re running out of reasons to run Mozilla. Just because it’s “not Internet Explorer” isn’t enough. IE is patching their security holes so Mozilla needs to step up their game.

Safari is still not there from a compatibility standpoint. Opera even runs on the iPhone and Chrome is pretty dang good.

Cloud computing and cloud storage: dangerous or reliable? Look for end-to-end encryption.

Oracle is gobbling up a lot of companies: Sun, etc. They are moving towards providing and end to end solution. Give them a year or so to digest.

Verizon and LTE is getting me excited! I bet T-Mobile and then Sprint will move towards LTE. Broadcom and Ericcson can get together to really bring out 4G in late 2009 and wide in 2010. The Japanese are rolling out GSM and then probably LTE to unify the whole world on a 4G platform

Check out the podcast for more details.