I have SSDs on my mind…

Over the past few months, I have started thinking about replacing the hard disk drive in my primary Tablet PC – the HP EliteBook 2740w – with a solid state drive, also known as an SSD .

In my search, Other World Computing was recommended to me. I contacted them, and got to communicate with Larry O’Connor, founder and CEO.

My questions for him centered on two things, one, what is it about SSDs that I should be interested in, and two, why OWC.

Why SSDs
John Obeto, AbsolutelyWindows: Does the Thailand flooding open the way for SSDs to enter mainstream consciousness?

Larry O’Connor: It doesn’t hurt, and with 2.5” drive pricing up, it has paved the way for buyers to consider making do with a smaller capacity SSD for what is now a smaller delta vs. a higher cap 2.5” hard drive.

120GB seems to be the sweet spot where we see customers jumping to the performance benefit of an SSD vs. 250-500GB HDD. 3 months ago the delta was about $150 between 250GB HDD and 120GB SSD... Today it’s about 1/2 that, and even less vs. 320 and 500GB. 60GB and smaller caps have been too small for these customers, but the 120GB seems to be where enough capacity is there to make that switch with all the performance benefits said SSDs bring. 120GB is our #1 selling capacity, 240GB is just barely behind that.

The Thai flood and the resulting warnings from HD suppliers to the channels and the media has made people think twice about doing the same old thing. In addition, at the manufacturing level we're seeing system suppliers who are making a conscious decision to "upgrade" from a now slightly higher priced HD to a reasonable capacity SSD because it gives them something very positive to talk to the consumer about and say "yes it's a little more expensive but it's rugged, reliable, skimpy on power usage, cooler operating, makes your system lighter and really won't crash." It's true and is being well received.

AbsolutelyWindows: Apart from speed, do SSD drives offer other benefits?

Larry O’Connor: Power Savings, no noise/silent, and effectively shock resistant – data integrity/safety/accessibility from drive not affected at all by impacts that would render a hard drive either inoperable or with access issues even if heads went to park before impact.

Long term reliability from having no moving parts is a definite plus as well – there isn’t ‘wear and tear’ on any moving mechanism that can result mechanical failure because nothing mechanical to fail.

According to the chip manufacturers data stored on SSD will last up to 100 years even without power added. We don't believe that's a big thing because few of us will really sit around and "test it" but data reliability is a big concern. People really like the fact that you can eliminate the system fan (and noise) and even when the HD is whisper quiet there is noise. SSD uses considerably less power so using it "off the grid" can be done for longer periods.

AbsolutelyWindows: SSDs are currently priced somewhat stratospherically compared to spindle-based disks. Do you see a tightening of the price delta soon?

Larry O’Connor: We’re years and years away from SSDs being on par with hard drives in terms of cost per gigabyte.

Being an integrator as you are John, you know there are enterprise apps that make it more desirable beyond raw cost. Solid state is ideal for active files/processing, databases, OS, apps, etc. - with mass hard drive storage great for archival/static (completed – now for read only typical use) type data.

At the consumer level we're hearing people who demand the instant-on, longer use time just as they get with their tablets/smartphones. Before power up, boot up was expected/tolerated but now consumers know there is an instant on solution and they want to see all of their units work that way and the benefits live a lot longer than the initial unit cost.

That said – cost per gig of SSDs should fall over the next couple years at a percentile rate that is faster than that of hard drives with starting point based on pre-flood HD capacity costs. It will get better and better but there will be a place for both. People will have the HD for the big bucket storage and medium sized SSD for the responsive activities.

AbsolutelyWindows: One of the concerns I have heard pertains to reliability and lifecycle. Can SSDs compete with hard disk drives in those metrics?

Larry O’Connor: They already do and absolutely.

As with any semiconductor device -- as you know - once it gets past the infant mortality phase,e the stuff just runs and runs like the Eveready Bunny.

Manufacturer presentations from the Flash Memory Summit and Mobile Computing Conference early this year and those which I've seen and IT management use as guidelines shows we will both probably retire before issues arise. But even with that said speed, performance improvements will get people to upgrade and...remember there's a portion of Moore's Law also at work here.

AbsolutelyWindows: With this market opportunity, will you and others in your sector be ramping up SSD storage capacities soon?

Larry O’Connor: There are various considerations when it comes to higher capacity drives. The short answer is yes – for sure... But we’re certainly taking the long road to do it the right way. While it is true that the Thai floods affected "short term" supplies (say up to a year plus) but there are some very strong potential for SSD in more and more applications.

AbsolutelyWindows: In a Twitter conversation a short while back, hybrid hard drives were mentioned. Do you see them making a play here?

Larry O’Connor: This is the second effort for Seagate with a hybrid drive and...it's better. I think they do offer a decent compromise – but still come no where close to true SSD performance, and real world experience doesn’t completely line up with the lab advertised spec.

Once said – the Seagate Hybrids are incredibly fast compared to hard drive only models and are a great compromise for high capacity with segment leading performance... Best of all worlds- Hybrid is your secondary drive and a true SSD is primary. :)

Long term better will be OS level integration of SSD and hard drive capacities on system whereby the OS fully manages what is being stored/worked on where/when/first –then moved... Single volume size of HD that the OS maintains for what used when. All ultimately stored on hard drive – but most used apps, OS, and active files best maintained with priority on SSD portion and can be duped off during low load periods. OS, IMHO, is best to manage prioritization and as good as independent algorithms are on the hybrids, still far from ideal in real-world + in fairness not enough SSD portion on drive to really do the best job.

Noted storage guru and author, Greg Shultz, introduced me to hybrid drives, which is another technology we are considering, though for larger capacities.

Why put my laptop, and my computing fate in the hands of OWC?

AbsolutelyWindows: Tell me about OWC, the company, and the products.

Larry O’Connor: Where can I start?

We build, and have done so for decades – storage, memory, accessories, and enhancement products that provide additional functionality, enhance, and/or extend the useful lifespan of laptops, desktops, towers, and servers + portable devices as well.

Focusing on market needs and areas we can do better than the current – these products have evolved, product lines expanded over these years based on the needs and requests from our customers. Listening to our customers and providing top customer service and support to these customers is the win-win for all as we are only here because of our customers.

Ultimately – all about having the best products and solutions + providing them competitively as well.

AbsolutelyWindows: I understand that prior to now, you have focused on the Apple aftermarket. Anecdotally, I have to say that the Mac market is quite demanding. Can I assume that high quality focus will be directed at PCs too?

Larry O’Connor: When we get an order/request from a customer we don't care if he/she has a Mac or Windows PC. He/she has a question, problem, issue and we solve it. We do our product design/manufacturing work in the same manner. We want that customer to buy the product install/use it and not have to think twice except when he/she is asked for a recommendation from a firm to buy from. Or when they want more product. We are serving customers...not Apple!

AbsolutelyWindows: Your products are designed, sold, and supported from the United States. This is a rarity, for which I thank you. Is this by accident, or by design?

Larry O’Connor: Absolutely by design. We build a lot of product in the USA as well – including our memory, SSDs, and many accessories. Final assembly is also done at our HQ on all of our storage solutions and plenty of other products where possible as well. Wish we could do more here. All of our engineering, product design/testing is done here at our HQ. As with almost any company we source globally but when those parts come in the back door they immediately become Other World Computing Products and that means they are tested, assembled, tested, supported by our people.

AbsolutelyWindows: Coming back to the Apple Mac thing, are your products premium products, or do you have a range that PC users might enjoy?

Larry O’Connor: Excluding products for tablets, iPods, or phones – nearly 100% of our own branded product is supported right now for Windows and Linux as well as Macs. With the same exclusion, the same can be said of about 95% of the products we offer via our flagship macsales.com/pcsales.com sites. Pcsales.com will soon have a better personality/personality split that focuses on the PC compatibility of items. True the Mac market is growing very nicely both nationally and internationally but we still see major potential and opportunities in the Win/Linux worlds. We're growing this family as rapidly as possible.

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Muvee Reveal X

I am downloading Muvee Reveal X.

Muvee Reveal is one of those apps that you don’t think about until you find that you have not installed it on your system.

It is a video creation – note that I didn’t say ‘editing’ – app that purports to help you create a movie in three easy steps.

Does it?

Without a doubt, it does.

A little backgrounder:

In 2010, Muvee’s CEO, Terrence Swee demoed Muvee Reveal 8 to me at Storage Visions in Las Vegas.

I was impressed with the demonstration.

What made the demo even more impressive was the fact that Terrence did the demo on an HP Mini 1000 Netbook!

Serious!

Ask yourself: which of the video editing software ISVs you know would do the same?

Seriously, would anyone from any other video editing app ISV demo their product on a netbook?

Yes, none of them!

What does it tell you? That Muvee Reveal is worth it.

However, I had strayed off the ranch until the difficulty I was having with an installed video editing app jogged my memory, and yanked me back into reality.

To my surprise, Muvee Reveal was now in Version X.

I immediately reached out to Muvee, and resultantly, I am downloading Muvee Reveal X.

I am looking forward to using and reviewing this app.

And telling you all about it.

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Kodak, legacy stasis, and Microsoft

Early yesterday, Kodak, that bellwether of American ingenuity filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

What a thud that was.!

While expected, as a result of the extraordinarily inept executive and board management led by Antonio Perez, it was still a shock.

To see such an icon of American innovation and exceptionalism fall to earth with such ignominy is painful, and at the same time annoying.

However, while the blame for the spectacular flameout can be laid at Perez’s feet, the seed for this corporate death were sown a long while ago.

It is doubly disconcerting that the same company that invented digital photography has been felled by that same innovation!

Why?

Despite the innovation of digital photography, the honchos at Kodak were so drunk on the insane profits coming from their bread-and-butter (chemical) film and processing business!

They rode that train into the ground, virtually making jacksh’t from the digital business they invented.

Now, they are kaput.

This is what I call ‘legacy stasis”.

It is a truly crippling condition, for it blinds the eyes of the management and strategists at the company to all what is happening in the real world.

Contrast this to that other company with a long tail of a legacy, IBM. IBM has seemingly weaned itself from the profitable shackles of the mainframe. The mainframe isn’t gone, for it is always the pink elephant in the room. It is just that they haven’t made it a mandatory requirement for doing business with them.

Just how did Microsoft creep into this conversation, you may ask?

Well, Microsoft has Windows, and by proxy, the personal computer, or PC, business.

One of the things Microsoft MUST do, is wean itself away from developing products and solutions that demand an umbilical to the PC.

While it is desperately trying to do so in several businesses, there are several vestigial traces of the silliness that seemed to permeate Microsoft in the past.

One of these products is the Xbox 360.

What has been pissing me off to a great extent is this music storage within the device.

There are currently three ways to play music on the Xbox 360 – in all cases, I am talking about the Xboxes with hard drives:

1. Play a music or MP3 CD in the console
2. Rip only from a music CD
3. Stream music from a PC on the same local network as the Xbox.

What is missing from this list?

YOU CANNOT COPY MUSIC FILES FROM ANY MEDIA TO THE XBOX!!!

Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me?

Why this silly restriction?

When I asked why this idiotic absurdity on Twitter, a couple of Microserfs informed me that you since one could stream music from a PC, that functionality wasn’t needed.

I immediately noted these people were fools, and have disregarded anything they have to say since.

What is apparent is that Microsoft inserted the silly atavistic restriction in order to provide make the Xbox remain connected to the PC.

What sense does that make?

In other words, someone with a repository of MP3 songs, but without an Windows or Mac PC cannot enjoy their inventory of songs on their rightfully purchased Xbox 360 console unless they either burn music CDs of the songs, or have to walk to the console to insert/de-insert MP3 CDs.

Again I ask, Why this silly restriction?

The Executive at Microsoft really needs to wake up, and realize that cutting the umbilical would help them think to news ways to innovate, and bring new value to the PC, and the company.

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The SmallBizWindows Virtualization Product of the Year: VMware ESX 5

This was a really tough decision.

On the one hand we had a product that while relatively new, was one that we have a lot of experience with, and one that I use daily, even on lappers.

On the other hand, you have a product for which we started a pilot in September of 2010, got to know better, and we are in the process of deploying to an initial firm.

What did we find?

Product #1, from our primary software provider, is capable of handling all the tasks that we threw at it. We could have deployed it at any time to any of our clients, including the largish location we are currently deploying Product #2 at.

However, managing it would not have been as easy.

For Product #2, its maturity means that there are a great number of applications, plugins, snap-ins, whatever, that make the product better. The ecosystem surrounding the product is broad, and vibrant, and ready, today. Or at the time we needed them.

Most important however, is the community surrounding the product.

The VMware community is friendly, helpful, accessible, and very engaged.

In my journey, indeed, the Logikworx journey into learning about VMware, there hasn’t been any VMware professional – “VMware types”, in John Obeto-speak – that hasn’t taken, or wanted to take the time to help me along. They have ranged from VMware staffers like John Troyer, to VMware vExperts and authors, too numerous to mention here for fear of leaving someone out. These people embraced my thirst for knowledge about their charge without the sort of haughty airs you find about the freetards in say, the Linux community. Any and all requests I have made for more information ahs been answered with great dispatch, to where I fully expect a VMware professional from anywhere on this planet to answer questions at any time of day. Yes grasshopper, they are that engaged.

Contrast that to the Hyper-V community where the only ones who seem to engage with total strangers would be Hans Vredevoort, Microsoft Hyper-V MVP from the Netherlands. No one else, not even from Microsoft, answers any public (tweeted) call for help! It is an indictment on the entire Hyper-V community that information from them is wanting, and I can NEVER get it from them. Shame on you, turds!

All, however, is not lost. Hyper-V 3.0 (or whatever the moniker is) in Windows Server 8 looks to be a product that may finally move Hyper-V from trailing VMware to one that leaps ahead. However, that product is in pre-beta, and the proof, as they say, is in the eating. So, QED.

Ladies and gentlemen, the SmallBizWindows Virtualization Product of the Year is VMware ESX 5.

It is capable, thriving, innovative, manageable, and here. Today.

So, actually, it wasn’t a tough decision after all.

I would like to give props to John Troyer and his staff at VMware, David M Davis and TrianSignal, Steve Foskett and Gestalt IT, and all other people who have helped along this journey, either deliberately or inadvertently.

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The SmallBizWindows Server of the Year: HP Proliant ML350

The workhorse of our entire operations is the HP Proliant ML350.

In test after test, this server has come through, in cost, performance, and that all-important metric of server performance, reliability.

For us, as we move to a new management platform, having a server that can give us the near-zero-touch capability we require of on-customer premises devices is selection number one.

The HP Proliant ML350 satisfies that requirement.

In fact, in a departure from our regular taciturn position regarding internal operations, we announced the HP Proliant ML350 selection in October 2011.

We stand by that decision.

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The SmallBizWindows Consumer Product of the Year: Microsoft Windows Phone 7

Without a doubt, Windows Phone 7, now in version 7.5, is the best mobile operating system on Earth. Leastways, as of today.

With #wp7 as it is known, Microsoft has created a holistic platform that encompasses a fluidic symphony of hardware, software, a marketplace, and services that is unmatched in its intuitiveness, performance, and general pleasure to use.

Coupled with the effort put into it, #wp7 is now offered by the four major US mobile telcos, and more design wins are announced and delivered daily.

If you mix in the unprecedented and excellent snagging of Nokia as an OEM partner, with Nokia choosing to go all in with Windows Phone, you now have a product that has the potential to not only get better, but raises the bar by having non other than the Number One manufacturer of mobile phones in the world firmly behind it.

For 2010, the then-new Windows Phone 7 was our Product of the Year. We are proud to see that that choice was right, and now, Windows Phone has started to move squarely into the minds of consumers. This time with the might of both Microsoft and Nokia behind it.

O, did we forget to say we LOVE it?

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Andy Marken’s Content Insider – CES 2012 Show Wrap

I was not at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, known as the 2012 International CES. However, Andy Marken, President of Marken Communications was there. This is his summary from the show. All opinions are his own

CES … It’s a Show, It’s Biz, Live with It

Open the Gates – With more than 13 football fields of show space, CES attendees have to crowd in opening day and walk themselves ragged in hopes of not just seeing all the show but seeing what will win/fail big in the coming year.

While a few folks have said CES is on its last leg, we wonder if they were at the same show we were this month.

More than 3,100 exhibitors squeezed into a mere 1.861 million net square feet (13+ football fields) of exhibit space and the show drew more than 153,000 attendees.

There was the urban sprawl of the big boys trying to out-glitz each other (even as they experienced record losses or marginal profits).

Microsoft announced that this was their last keynote, last time of exhibiting; and folks immediately said, “See the show is losing its relevance in a real-time world.”

These same folks probably said Ballmer couldn’t get out of his own way.

Suddenly he’s brilliant?

Folks pointed out that really big things in the past have gone on to bomb, die.

You know Palm/WebOS, netbooks, 3D TV, etc.

O.K.:

• Palm/WebOS – It was a year+ between announcement/delivery and nothing changed even though everyone else looked at what they did and leapfrogged them! Of course, Leo didn’t help.
• Netbooks – Cheap, weak knock-offs of the Mac Air (that’s about it). We liked the idea, but you couldn’t do squat with ‘em! Google didn’t help ‘em either.
• 3D TV – Hey we were blinded by them; but once you got past watching a few movies and maybe some football, there was nothing to watch. If content isn’t there, why sit in front of the set with glasses on?

This year, we’ll probably be caught up in the hype (again) and miss some of the winners, but whose fault is that?

Yeah!

Ballmer’s Farewell
There was a lot of noise about this being this being Microsoft’s/Ballmer’s last showing and probably more folks attended his keynote than normal.

We quickly read one headline that we thought said “Ballmer Bonzo keynote.” Read it a second time and it said “Ballmer’s Gonzo Keynote.” Guess we read too much into it.

With some stroke of genius, Microsoft changes the form of Ballmer’s farewell keynote. This year, Ryan Seacrest jumped into his waiting arms before conducting a Mutt, Jeff “interview” with Steve and it worked…well.

He did a pretty good job with his scripted interview and probably enjoyed it a whole lot more than his past appearances with teleprompter pitch and cameo guests.

But the last time at CES? Don’t count on it.

Bet he’ll be at 2013 with a big suite and entourage of 3-400 people supporting partners on the floor.

And, they’ll subsidize a whole new generation of computers, tablets, phones, cars, refrigerators, houses and more.

Remember, he has to make the Windows smartphone a rocking success and will need to hype tablet/computer cloud/Win 8 solutions.

He’ll have his hands full at CES 2013!

Folks who said CES is in its final stages noted Apple didn’t participate.

They should have walked the floor:

• Half a gazillion iPhone cases
• Quarter of a gazillion iPad cases
• Cars with iPhone/iPad support
• Boatloads of tablets, all claiming serious iPad contention
• Truckloads of Ultrabooks that even Intel’s Pat Gelsinger said were Air “enhancements”

And, they had a couple of hundred people at the show checking stuff out, making certain the company message got thru.

No CES presence?

All About Noise – The blogs, Facebook posts, Tweets were a good way to take the pulse of interest at CES this year with TVs, tablets, Ultrabooks and gaming apps gaining top ratings. Source – SimplyMeasured

Most folks poured their attention on the usual stuff – TV, tablets, computers and other things.

That other was a lot more important this year:

• Technology in every inch of concept and soon to be released cars that made your eyes and mouth water
• Home automation products, ideas, systems that could be standard in every new home of tomorrow
• Every major mobile carrier and device supplier was there hyping their networks, speed, performance, quality, ideas
• Apps of every shape, kind, purpose including excellent healthcare and fitness apps as well as a lot of great business, consumer, just fun apps

Big Pictures

Breathtaking – LG’s giant OLED screens featured finely crafted video art that wooed even the biggest television cynic. They weren’t alone, as every big set player tried to out glitz the guy next door with more color, more action, more noise, more everything. 

Again, big eye-popping TV sets grabbed lots of attention; and the biggest news was LG’s OLED (organic light-emitting diode) 55-in set.

Great looking, but at about $8K +/- it better look good!

Of course the return of Apex with their low-cost LED screens looked “good enough” and left a lot of change in the bank account.

You had to admire the brave front, show sprawl the TV folks put on at the show after coming off a couple of bad years.

It was still about clearer, sharper images, whispers of 3D, better/smarter TV – you know, watch anything from anywhere, anytime.

They slid over the fact that to make it really smart you needed to plug in something like Roku’s little $50 USB dongle. Roku has done what the OS folks promised … hammered out agreements with all the content producers/offerers to make it easy to find the entertainment, news.

Like Apple and Amazon, it’s all about the library, relationships.

Something the pay-per-click guys just don’t get with their Google TV.

Tablet Tableau

Tons of Tablets – Toshiba had a pretty good looking tablet, but they were far from alone in the new units they introduced at CES. Lots of promises, but there are always the questions: which ones will ship, which ones will last?

If you were even close to showing – or thinking about – a tablet, it was there at CES.

While IDC pointed out the iPad has the $499 and up category and Amazon has the $150 and below space, it didn’t stop folks from hoping.

The Google whatevers will have try to convince folks their ice cream device is best in the $150 - $400 price category, and the content garden will suddenly grow.

The problem is, their clouds only have more clouds…gotta’ work on that!

Google gives their OS to anyone.

The majors – Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell, HP – have to really work at differentiating themselves from the white boxers.

It’s probably why so many are pushing Ballmer to give them something to fight with.

Ultrabooks

Magic Acts – Intel’s Mooly Eden did a great job following Gelsinger with a fast-paced set of Ultrabook demos--and most of them worked. He also gave the audience a peek at what we can expect with the new light, sleek systems including touchscreens, voice recognition and even better battery life. Guess we’ll still be carrying three mobile devices for a few more years.

Intel and its partners brought out a wide array of really sleek-looking Ultrabooks.

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on one to use for real work along with our iPad for email.

The units were outstanding:

• High performance quad-core CPUs
• Cool running
• Good set of USB connectors, some with HDMI
• Fast
• Pretty rugged
• Decent battery life

The high-speed processor plus semiconductor SSD (solid state drives) are changing the face of computing. They’re a little pricey right now; but by mid-year, they should be in the $700 - $800 range.

Bump battery life to six-eight hours, add external HD (personal cloud) and viola!!! dynamite machines.

Layers Lower
Folks like to focus attention on the big players, but CES is a whole lot more.

There were probably 3,080 booths spread across the acres of thinly covered concrete. Sure, there was some hopeless garbage, but there was also some really cool stuff you wouldn’t notice until you hit the outer halls.

Everything was at CES – O.K., nearly everything.

Over in the North Hall Other World Computing (OWC) was wowing folks with their UL-Listed AC/USB outlet.

They also had families of swap-out SSDs that could give almost any Mac or PC – desktop or notebook – a new performance lease on life .

They weren’t alone.

The dark recesses, corners of the outer halls hid products, ideas that could change things for individuals and businesses.

All they need is visibility.

Celebrity Bing

Eye Candy – CES has always attracted big names that don’t just perform but also use their minds to develop/invest in products, services, companies. This year, you could bump into/ squeeze by Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, LL Cool J, Will Fox, Ludacris, Xzbit, Will.i.am, 50 Cents and lots of folks we didn’t know. 

CES is show biz; and this year was no exception.

A lot of the celebs weren’t there as window dressing, but actually had a profit interest in helping promote and sell their earphones, robots, apps, games, ideas.

Some are more than eye candy and are active investors, active board members in the companies they represented.

That’s going to continue because the companies and products at CES are going mainstream.

Higher Plane
While it wasn’t on the show floor, one of the activities we feel deserves more credit is the push Gary Shapiro’s team is doing to recognize women in the industry.

Okay, it won’t change the business climate. But the association’s efforts to encourage more females to become involved in the industry, rise in the ranks, mentor others is one of the reasons it will continue to grow and prosper.

Sure, we’re not happy CES makes us miss the December holidays.

Heck, we even get in a couple of days early to attend an associated show -- Storage Visions – which focuses on how, where we’re going to store all the stuff we produce, stream, enjoy, work with.

How else would you know one year ended, a new one began?

No Meal Here – Folks who talk about CES fading in relevance are either just jealous of/ worried about the show’s success or don’t like hitting Vegas in January. It’s not too big to fail but the constantly changing set of educational/technical/business sessions and a stream of new aspirants and now products just keep feeding the market’s thirst for more. If they could fix communications, we could actually stay in touch with the outside world.

Anyone who says that the fact that Microsoft and Apple are no longer displaying and keynoting at CES is a sure fact the show is doomed isn’t seeing the industry evolve.

CES gutted Macworld, PMA rolled in to stay relevant, phone/mobile folks are there in spades.

Business and government officials attend because it just feels too important to miss.

Vegas isn’t our favorite town (and with everyone in town phone/computer service sucks) but when CES is there what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.

People talk. People buy.

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The SmallBizWindows Workstation of the Year: HP z600 Personal Workstation

One of the painful things about working with the John Obeto Specials versions HP Z-series of industry-standard workstations, is that the performance of those puppies give you so much headroom that if I was to purchase a model as configured as this one here, I would have to stay with it for 10 years just to justify the cost. (I barely went past 7-9% utilization in my tasks!)

Multiply that single unit cost with the fact that I work out of three offices with mainly identically-configured hardware, and the entire outlay starts to rise.

Mix in the fact that the HP Personal Workstation team is always innovating, never standing still, and you realize my dilemma.

To mitigate that, comes the HP z600 Personal Workstation.

The HP z600 Personal Workstation sits at the sweet spot between excellent performance and great value. Without a doubt, that price/performance ratio is what drove attracted me to getting it.

The z600 is about the quietest workstation I have ever either used or reviewed. It comes with a plethora of CPU, GPU, and storage options. The case is slimmer and lighter than that of the mongo massive, and drool-worthy the HP z800 Personal Workstation.

You can have up to 48 GB of RAM, quad-SSDs, up to 15,000 rpm SAS drives, ATI FirePro and Nvidia Quadro GPU cards, all in a eco-friendly, purpose-built case.

I initially purchased a couple of these units for my personal use at my twin offices in Colorado. Upon the return of the last z800 John Obeto Special I reviewed, I got another one for the LA office. z600 units for my executive staff followed shortly after.

So far, we have been extremely impressed with them. They are sturdy, reliable, and powerful. The HP z600 Personal Workstations are the perfect replacement systems for high end desktops for either creative or power users. Their ability to grow makes them well suited for a start-out in an entry configuration, as I did, getting them with 8GB of RAM, and building on that foundation.

You can’t do better than the HP Z-series Personal Workstations.

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The SmallBizWindows Printer of the Year: Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540

For most of 2011, the darling deskside printers I used at my offices and at MedikLabs was the Epson WorkForce 840, a printer very powerful for its size and cost.

Not only did we like it, but it was instrumental in cementing a friendship where we placed several of them at a friend’s ranching operations.

However, all that vanished upon opening and using the new Epson Workforce Pro WP-4540 printer.

Another AIO printer, with printing, copying, scanning, and faxing capabilities, this device came in a mungo huge box reminiscent of the HP OfficeJet Pro series.

The WorkForce Pro WP-4540 is wireless, with additional Ethernet and USB ports. It auto-duplexes, has two paper bins with over 500 sheet paper capacity. Apple AirPrint functionality is also built in.

In use, this printer is a gem of a player. It is just about the fastest inkjet printer to have come through here, and about as fast or faster than the deskside laser printers in use.

To see this printer shoot out double-sided color prints is quite impressive, as the Epson DURABrite inks dry really quickly.

The street price makes the Epson WorkForce Pro WO-4540 a no-brainer to insert into your business.

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The SmallBizWindows Storage Product of the Year: HP E5000 G2 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange

Please, do not let the incredibly unwieldy moniker this fine device has been saddled with deter you from seeing the beauty that this device is: a Microsoft Exchange appliance created using the innards of the world class HP Proliant server series.

Make no mistake, this is one serious appliance.

It is one of those solutions that when it was announced, you’d look at a colleague and exclaim, “Dammit, that’s an idea I should have thought about!” For Exchange Server architecting, implementation, management, and administration is not a task for the faint of heart. This product greatly simplifies that pain.

The base E5000 starts out with a single Intel Xeon E5503 up to 12 GB RAM per server blade, and 12 TB of SAS storage. This goes up to dual quad-core Xeons, 48 GB of RAM per server blade, and 80 TB of storage, which is enough for 3,000 2.5 GB mailboxes.

All this in a pre-configured system running Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 on Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition.

Highly recommended!

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The SmallBizWindows Desktop of the Year: Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z

I am very biased towards touch-enabled, all-in-one computers for general daily use.

My preference for these systems had been crystalized over the years where I have used the HP TouchSmart series of systems to great success.

Furthermore as a user of Tablet PCs, moving from system to system while being able to fully use that godsend of a desktop productivity app, Microsoft OneNote, across all my desktops is just mungo sweet.

We now have a new winner in this category, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z.

Last year, it tied with the HP TouchSmart for the win. However this year, the M90z stands alone atop the pinnacle of desired desktops.

What really won us over to the Lenovo was expandability: there is a built-in DisplayPort for multi-monitor support, it has HDMI in, RAM is easily expandable to 8GB, and changing the hard disk drive is a snap.

Additionally, the readiness of the ThinkCentre for Windows 8. Install Windows 8 Developer Preview, and everything works.

How cool is that.

I have it hooked up to an HP ZR24w monitor (which I expect to upgrade to the new ZR2440w LED monitors soon), and it looks and works great. I’d be in Sto-Vo-Kor if I could locate a touch-enables 2nd monitor!

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The SmallBizWindows Monitor of the Year: HP ZR30w

Multitasking is a way of lengthening the business day without working longer hours. My staff and I have found that using multiple monitors help multitasking easier.

The HP LP2480ZX DreamColor is the best monitor money can buy. However, it is priced higher than most budgets, making a multi DreamColor setup quite unlikely.

That’s where the HP ZR30w comes in. For us, when cost considerations are added to the equation, there isn’t a better monitor for this task than the HP ZR30w 30” S-IPS monitor.

It displays 30-bit (1.07 billion) colors in gorgeous 2560 x 1600 resolution, comes with both DisplayPort and DVI connectivity, and a built-in USB hub. The resolution gives users the ability to easily multitask.

It is quite simply, the best monitor value around.

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Andy Marken’s Content Insider #213 – Oversharing

All Social Isn't Business, All Business Isn't Social

“I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies.” – Mary, He’s Just Not That Into You, Warner Bros (2009)

While the universe continues to expand, we live in an ever-shrinking world.

It was first identified by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy when he advanced the idea of six degrees of separation, our increasing connectedness.

Not long ago, Facebook’s Paul Adam reduced it to our being six degrees away from people who influence us.

O.K., so Facebook didn’t invent it; but you have to admit they “enhanced” the idea by cutting your search time in half. Then one of their engineers had to correct biz development by saying we’re really separated by 4.74 people.

Come on folks, the world population just streaked past seven billion…so of course we’re closer together!

But we prefer Mitch Joel’s world-shrinking approach--today we’ve only got six pixels of separation. He probably knows better but after writing his book Six Pixels of Separation and doing a blog and podcast by the same title, he takes a more creative approach to our growing connections.

Joel is trying to interpret what’s going on in the interconnected world while Adam and his engineer are just collecting, selling the connections.

Close Enough
They both know we are constantly sharing content online in more ways and are using more platforms to share more stuff with more groups of people who share it – good news, bad news, stuff – with more people.

Gigi looked at the potential and said, “I like a little time before a blind date; prepare myself mentally.”

It’s no wonder that Cisco projected that in five years, 90 percent of the stuff flying across the Net will be content.

It’s almost a beautiful thing.

Closer ‘n Closer – The growth of the social network has destroyed corporate silos and helped produce greater transparency and trust inside and outside the organization. By empowering and enabling people, relationships have become closer for employees and consumers. Social business will continue to grow for every segment of the marketplace. Image - IDC

In our constantly interconnected world, people like/want to share with those six pixels away and those people like to share with their three-pixel folks and they…

Pretty soon the whole thing has gotten outta’ hand and there’s no turning back.

People are sharing with people!

People with Whom Users Share Online Content

Open Dialogue – With each new generation the amount of information, data, and content grows rapidly. All of the devices make it fast, easy, almost fun to exchange information and put it out there for the world to see. Source – AOL, Nielsen Online

With more than three billion phones, maybe a billion computers and maybe a hundred thousand tablets; people are doing more than just making phone calls and sending emails.

Time Spent on Most Heavily Used Internet Sectors (millions of hours)

No Time Out – When you step back and examine the facts, you find you’re spending more and more time on the web exchanging information, ideas, entertainment with your growing circle of friends. Network and cloud service providers see the demand and usage growing faster than our ability to absorb and protect the information. Source - Nielsen

We already have a generation that never knew life before being online; and the next generation (kids under 11) won’t think twice about what they’re sharing, who they’re sharing with.

They’ll probably be like Ben and say to every contact, “You may be the best friend I've ever had.”

Kids Connect, Share
By 2014, eMarketer estimates there will be more than nearly 25 million kids in this category or 47.8 percent of the young population.

They won’t be sedentary either because more than 70 percent of today’s parents have kids under age six who watch their folks find stores, local information, activities, stuff using mobile internet access.

Works for mom and dad, so it should work for them just as well.

None of them – parents, kids, you – thinks twice about the fact that getting that information costs you…(wait for it)…your information.

As Beth commented, “I thought that guy was a process server.”

Despite the fact that you can’t turn around without bumping into a bunch of social media experts, very few organizations understand what all the user information means, how valuable it is, how to use it to help people get the most from their connections.

The problem is these social marketing experts are trying to use dry, abstract, mechanical types of measurement tools to pigeonhole individuals and groups.

The approach usually fails because people aren’t assembly lines and even in large groups can’t be tuned to a pre-established standard.

Try as scientists and mathematicians will, there isn’t a universal standard for human experience, action, reaction.

As a result, our experts give lip-service to 1:1 relationships then use modified old marketing measures to determine the value of social media to the company.

Social Marketing – While marketing struggles to develop methods of showing the return on investment of social media marketing, it has not slowed down organizational efforts to conduct activities that bring them closer to the customer and strengthen the relationship. Source - ForeSee

True, lawmakers don’t understand either why online organizations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, others can’t simply BAM!! get you just the right information you want when you need it, before you even ask.

But clearly understanding what they are doing has never been a requirement for the job.

Gigi simply said, “I would rather be like that, than be like you.”

Tough Protection
Protecting your privacy sounds better than sharing information to get information.

Privacy continues to be a time bomb; and there have been a ton of data breaches – really big ones – over the past year. However, most of them have been caused by users themselves.

Being careless, lazy, dumb is so hard to regulate.

While a lot of business employees believe that social media usage could damage their firm’s reputation – 50 percent according to a Deloitte Ethics & Workplace Survey – small businesses have done a better job of getting involved with the online communities.

Digital Social Media Activities of Small Businesses

Digital Business – Perhaps because of the limited financial resources, small businesses have more rapidly begun experimenting with and using social media activities to network with others and provide customer support/service. Over the holidays, social activities enabled them to compete with larger businesses on an equal basis. Source – Sage Research

While the small businesses don’t get the credit they deserve, more organizations are paying attention to the success NHL (National Hockey League) franchises had as players became more connected to their fans.

The first people to take notice were players in other sports who put all of the social media tools to work for themselves.

Despite more than a few widely covered stumbles, people have kept their image and fan base--even when they earnestly admitted their shortcomings.

Small businesses and larger companies have seen their relationships expand when all of the social media relationship tools were used.

Email Subscribers, Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers

Marketing Mix – Depending upon which social media tool/activity you are most comfortable with, it becomes the one many employees feel is the clear winner. The truth is that all of the social media activities build on each other and produce better overall results because no one uses just one social service. Source - ExactTarget

Marketers recognize the need for and potential of social media; but you have to admit, it’s still tough to develop scenarios that spread and deepen the social media user engagement to increase profitability.

Job #1
The key is to have everyone in the organization understand that goal and be involved.

Marketing needs to help every member of the team understand that part of everyone’s job is to develop better/more leads, develop/assist customers and constantly monitor the company’s brand.

.

Big Social Event – At Facebook’s developer conference, F8, Zuck told attendees how the company was expanding in almost every area to produce a robust marketplace that could be easily followed and mined. Unfortunately, he had to lower his sights when the US and EU trade organizations “adjusted” their opt in/opt out policies. Source - Facebook

Think about it, three billion folks out there have phones, about a billion have computers, and tens of millions have tablets. And yes, Zuck has about 800 million members, Twitter has a couple of hundred million, the rest of the social media locations have their share.

Companies don’t want them all – O.K. it would be nice but… -- they simply want to come up with a measure of their organization’s return on investment for their social media activities.

Despite the presence and popularity of social media, it’s still extremely difficult for management to understand the depth and breadth of its pundits, practices, principles. What they do know is that word-of-mouth marketing is a tremendous opportunity for their company, their brand.

But Alex warned them, “Well, yeah, okay, don't start doodling my name on your binder, okay.”

Fully Connected – People have become so connected to the people, activities in the virtual world that they check their social media contacts constantly. Many aren’t even out of bed in the morning and they are online. Others interrupt other activities to stay in touch with “others.” Image – Warner Bros

The great thing is people are sharing more information, content socially. All we have to do is interact with them without interrupting other social activities.

But then Alex whispered, “You are *my* exception.”

********

Andy Marken is President of Marken Communications

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The SmallBizWindows Utility of the Year: Raxco PerfectDisk

Raxco’s PerfectDisk disk defragmentation app is one of those sweet little utilities that is truly install and forget.

Now vastly improved in Version 12, PerfectDisk retains the UOTY crown by being even better than we remembered.

For UOTY 2010, we wrote:

The Raxco PerfectDisk line of disk defragmenters is impressively extensive, from defrag product for physical disks, to those for virtual disks, even in that area with products for the two leading virtualization products, VMware and Windows Hyper-V.

A little confession: until I received the review licenses for the PerfectDisk products, I hadn’t thought of obtaining a defragmentation utility for virtual machines, always thinking, erroneously, that defragging the host would take care of defrag.

In our tests, PerfectDisk brought back an old, old concept from the early days of personal computing, albeit paraphrased: the TSR, which stands for a terminate-and-stay-resident program. In this instance, PerfectDisk, when installed, stays out of your way, using very little resources as it does its thing in the background.

Just how cool is that?

Well, in these days of supposedly silent apps throwing up dialog boxes informing you of the fact that ‘a background task is being undertaken’ or sucking up resources like a mutha’, it is nice to use a utility, that by virtue of its being that: a utility, does its thing unobtrusively.

Furthermore, being silent and resource efficient is not the only thing that makes PerfectDisk UOTY 2010. It works powerfully. That, more than anything, is what places it here.

Funny enough, at the start of 2010, I was under the impression that the defrag race would be between the two main competitors in this field. That didn’t happen. After testing both, we have decided to go with Raxco PerfectDisk.

In fact, we are impressed enough to make it a component of the Logikworx Professional Desktop.

Yes, we are that impressed with Raxco PerfectDisk 12

When I look back at the growth of storage, on both servers and client computers, in this past year alone, and with the increasing sprawl and the attendant management headaches that virtualization brings, it goes without saying that a capable disk defrag utility is needed.

Raxco PerfectDisk is that product, and is our Utility of the Year.

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The SmallBizWindows Laptop of the Year: HP EliteBook 8460w

While actually from the HP mobile workstation line, the EliteBook 8460w has been a very capable workstation for daily use.

After our test of the 8440w, I replaced Wifey’s dv2 with it since she wanted more power.

She was not, and has not been disappointed.

The EliteBook is very sturdy, is extremely powerful, and relatively lightweight. The built-in connectivity options are enhanced with a 3G card to provide her with constant broadband access when her chauffeur – yours truly – is driving her around.

The bright screen is also a plus.

While priced somewhat higher than regular laptops, the productivity gains more than make up for that.

Honorable Mention

Apple MacBook Air*. This device has received the most impressive form of flattery ever: the creation of an entire line of laptops, called Ultrabooks, by Intel. Coincidentally, the Ultrabooks were all the rage at the currently ongoing 2012 Inter Consumer Electronics Show, commonly known as CES.

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Facebook to get to 1 billion users this summer?

When is too big, you know, too big?

Reading Jean-Luc’s tweet above earlier today, my happiness for Zuck and his crew was suddenly tempered by a deep sense of foreboding.

It was a nasty feeling of déjà vu!

Where had I seen this before, I asked myself?

Then it hit me: AOL

Yes, the late, unlamented AOL!

Remember when nary a day would pass by without some media outlet spouting off membership numbers for Steve Case’s boneyard?

Yes, it’s happening again.

This time, I eel bad, because I actually like the folks behind Facebook, despite how silly they sometimes behave.

*I have been informed that AOL is not late. In that case, feel free to believe that they are on DNR life support!

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I want this: HP Omni 27

The Omni 27 is the latest iteration of the HP TouchSmart series of touch-enabled all-in-one personal computers.

As the flagship, this baby is chock full of desirable components (max config items):

• Gen 2 Intel Core i7
• 8GB of RAM
• 3 TB hard drive
• 2 GB Nvidia GeForce GPU
• Blu-Ray writer
• TV tuner

By every metric, this system beats the pants off the former flagship HP TouchSmart IQ518.

The only information I am missing is it it has built-in multi-monitor support

With those specs, I just have to have one! (This time, I am not giving it to my kids!)

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The SmallBizWindows Collaboration Product of the Year: Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Reprising it’s co-win last year, SharePoint this time sits alone atop the collaboration peak.

Just how good is SharePoint?

It is very extensible, providing users with numerous customization options; is cloud-enabled, as part of the Microsoft Office 365 suite of web-delivered apps, or by selected Microsoft partners as part of the Microsoft Communications Services; and it works well with Lync.

Moreover, it boasts of probably the richest and most developed ecosystem of all available collaboration products out there.

2010 was the year of SharePoint for us, and our clients have seen the benefits this product beings to their businesses.

Microsoft SharePoint home page

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Sales, Commissions & Spiffs

This post is a reply to a Twitter thread where Brett Nordquist was kind enough to weigh in on my post here titled A Sales Epiphany Strikes at #1 Microsoft Way.

My initial replies are below.

Pressed for time, I couldn’t reply to the other questions at the time and I will do so now.

First off, any sales position that is financially incentivized always puts the interests of the salesperson or their parent company first.

Secondly, while the nomenclature may differ depending on the company or the position of the salesperson, a sales commission is a glorified spiff.

Thirdly, I am in agreement with keeping the best interest of the customer in mind always.

Fourthly, spiffs are not short cuts. They are product-specific commissions. Every product sold by a dedicated sales team is incentivized by someone or something. Whenever there is a focus on a product or brand, even if commissions are paid out through a pool or salaries, people have been incentivized to choose the more lucrative product to sell.

Five, unless there is very visible and blatant deception, everyone, yes everyone, who buys certain classes of products expect the salesperson to make a living, and agree to be sold on the best product for them that they can afford.

Finally, Apple wouldn’t be the recipient of the erosion of trust at carrier stores. The cheapo manufacturers would be. No one – especially the cognoscenti – who looks at Apple as a premium brand cares jack at what happens at carrier stores, for they would have gone into the Apple stores to get their fill form the so-called geniuses. No, the recipient of such a lack of trust would be the bottom-feeding hardware OEMs who tend to create product for the proletariat, and can never seem to gain mindshare. I’m talking about the Pantechs of the world here.

Coming back, if it wasn’t for spiffs, either personal –as spiffs or corporate – as favorable pricing, rebates, etc., why do think that some decidedly superior products don’t get traction with the salesdrones on the sales floor?

The Zune was and still is a superior product to the iPod, but it flamed out. Even if you put the mostly non-existent and subsequently incredibly inept marketing aside, why didn’t it? It had superior specs and better performance. And a lovely brown color option.

Or take Windows Phone 7. Why on God’s Earth would someone take an Android phone, any Android phone – FOR GOODNESS SAKES! – over a Windows Phone? Did we teleport into Htrae?

Commissions matter, and are good. The salesdrones just have to be trained, as you correctly point out, to always take the customers’ requirements and desires into consideration. Before the salesdroids’ greed.

I enjoy the privilege of running a service company today, one where no one is incentivized to perform any sales of any sort, be it software, hardware, or services. Our focus is on customer service, since nothing we do is rocket science, and can be easily replicated. Their incentives are based on customer service and that alone.

However, for a stretch in 1990-1991 during a rough period in the gestational period of what eventually is now Logikworx, I was a salesman for a technology company in California. I am proud to say that I can look back and say without fear of contradiction that I was motivated by one thing: the top sales position. Not individual spiffs, which I considered quite infra dig.

Then again, I had the luxury of owning a nascent consulting company here in the US and family businesses in Nigeria to fall back upon. Most salespeople don’t have that.

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A Sales Epiphany strikes at #1 Microsoft Way

One of the most annoying headlines last week was that of Microsoft’s decision to start paying a commission to salesdrones at wireless telco retail stores when they actually sell a Windows Phone 7 device.

My first thought was are you fucking freakin’ kiddin’ me?

13 or so months after the release?

It just dawned that the drones who do the actual selling may need to be incentivized to, you know, SELL THE FREAKING PHONES???

Amazing!

For the past year, several good people – myself included :-) – had constantly complained that visits to telco retail stores showed that the salesdroids were definitely steering buyers away from Windows Phones to Android devices, all of which are lesser in every aspect than Windows Phones.

Now we know why.

Basically, the good work of the Windows Phone 7 development and marketing teams were being stifled by a totally misplaced belief in trickle-down sales incentivizing: that the foot soldiers would do what they are told by the overseers and just sell Windows Phones. Despite the fact that all the Android phone pushers were incenting them to sell their rubbish!

Yeah. As if!

While kinda late to the game, I hope this sanity recovery isn’t too late, for it would really hurt to see such a fine product relegated to the trash heap of technology.

Zune, anyone?

*Windows Phone 7, as used here denotes all Windows Phone 7 and above devices.

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