Pigeon beats Telkom in data transfer
11 September, 2009 07:43:00 Fienie Grobler
Winston the pigeon is not only the most tech-savvy pigeon in the world, but he also carries himself -- and data bundles -- remarkably well.And much faster than Telkom.The 11-month-old homing pigeon took off from a call centre in Howick on Wednesday morning to deliver four gigabytes of data to The Unlimited company's office in Hillcrest, Durban, easily winning the race against an ADSL line."Winston is over the moon," The Unlimited IT head Kevin Rolfe told Sapa."He is happy to be back at the office and is now just chilling with his friends."The flight took an hour and eight minutes. Pigeon uploaded data in just over two hours "It was a little slower than what we were hoping for but it was overcast and rainy, with a lot of mist, that made travel conditions difficult for the little fellow," said Rolfe.In total, it took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds for Winston to leave Howick with the data card strapped to his legs, to fly to Hillcrest, and to upload the data from the card onto the call centre system, said Rolfe. ADSL transmission four percent done in same time By that time, the ADSL transmission of the same data size was around four percent complete."The bottom line for us right now, is that we would have had all the data here in two days' time [with ADSL]," said Rolfe.The pigeon race idea started when a staffer, frustrated at thelong transmission time of data, remarked it would be faster to send
it with a pigeon."The exercise was really around how do we think out of the box... it gets people smiling and it gets people talking." Winston the pigeon now offically employed Winston, now officially employed by Rolfe, was chosen not for his speed, but for his unique features."The owner of the pigeon lives about five minutes' drive from the head office. We picked a bird out of his collection... he recommended another birth which he said to me was fast, but I picked Winston because he was a unique-looking bird with different colours and different markings," said Rolfe.It costs The Unlimited about R1 a day to keep Winston in its care.Will the company use the famous pigeon again?"He is still going to have a lot of exploits... there is absolutely no problem in doing this again. The birds are on training runs all the time," said Rolfe.
Pigeon has over 300 followers on Twitter
Winston -- who boasted over 300 followers on Twitter -- himself tweeted several times about his trip; his comments including, "flying weather cloudy and cool, feeling good, no major problems to report... Hillcrest traffic is a worry".ITWeb reported at 11.15am: "Winston has landed", not disappointing the 1,684 fans of the "Winston the Pigeon" Facebook group, one of them who described him as the "wings beneath my wings".Some fans however lamented that their slow internet connections made it difficult to follow news of his flight online.Strict rules applied for the race, as was stipulated on his website, pigeonrace2009.co.za, including, "no cats allowed" and "birdseed must not have any performance enhancing seeds within".The Unlimited company operates call centres in KwaZulu-Natal and
must transmit data, including voice recordings of calls, to its head office every day.Rolfe said Telkom phoned him a few days ago to say that if he experienced any problems with its lines, he should log a complaint with the Telkom call centre."When there is a [major] problem we do it, but the problems are so ongoing that you will end up continuously logging faults," said Rolfe.Telkom spokesman Pynee Chetty requested Sapa to send questions via email, saying he would respond later. Telkom not to blame?
Sapa reported that later, Telkom said it could not be blamed for slow broadband services at the Durban-based company."Telkom would like to clarify that the company cannot be blamed for this particular customer's lack of throughput speeds," Troy Hector, executive of business sales and ICT business solutions, told Sapa in an email on Thursday."Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted. It must also be noted that Telkom is not the customer's core service
provider," said Hector.
Seacom undersea cable goes live, boosts connectivity
The highly-anticipated Seacom undersea fibre-optics network was completed and went live on Thursday – boosting international connectivity on the East Coast of Africa.
“Today, is a historic day for Africa, and marks the dawn of a new era for communications between the continent and the rest of the world. Our tireless efforts of the past 24 months have come to fruition, and we are proud to be the first to provide affordable, high quality broadband capacity and experience to East African economies,” enthused Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy.
“Turning the switch ‘on’ creates a huge anticipation but, ultimately, Seacom will be judged on the changes that take place on the continent over the coming years,” he added.
Terrestrial backhaul linkage networks to Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala, with the cable’s coastal landing stations have been established and Seacom said it was working with its national partners to commission the final links to Kigali and Addis Ababa.
Seacom stated that the launch of the 1,28-Tb/s, 17 000-km cable system opened up unprecedented opportunities, as government, business leaders and citizens could now use the network as the platform to compete globally, drive economic growth and enhance the quality of life across the continent.
Speaking at the launch of Seacom in South Africa, Shanduka chairperson and Seacom shareholder Cyril Ramaphosa described the 'switch on' as a "wonderful, outlandish, incredibly great and historic event" for Africa.
The event was hosted at the Neotel data centre in Midrand, which is also where the cable 'terminates'. Neotel is the landing partner and the key customer for the Seacom cable in South Africa.
Neotel CEO Ajay Pandey said that Neotel was now the only official operator that could offer redundancy in terms of international connectivity. Neotel also offered "crossconnect" to Internet service providers, which meant they could effectively plug into the Neotel facility and connect to Seacom.
Pandey added that Neotel had noted the commitment and passion of Seacom, and as the cable was privately funded, was confident that it would be delivered "bang on time" before the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Addressing delegates through live video streaming over an Internet Protocol (IP) network from Tanzania, Herlihy celebrated the commissioning of the cable and said that it paved the way for an ICT generation in South Africa which was now coming of age. He further encouraged Africans to "dream big", and said that the world's next great innovator should come from Africa.
Cisco South African MD Steve Midgley stated that South Africa could now transcend boundaries previously imposed by physical location. It was the first time that Cisco had managed a live stream across more than five countries.
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete explained that, until now, East Africa was the largest stretch of unconnected coast. "No more satellites," he enthused, referring to the expensive way in which Tanzania connected internationally, prior to the launch of Seacom.
“Seacom will provide the catalyst for African consumers, business and government to realise the benefits of connectivity and collaboration across the globe,” added Cisco vice-president for Africa Yvon le Roux.
Edited by: Mariaan Webb
Critical portions of Seacom undersea cable completed
Construction of the critical portions of the Seacom undersea fibre optics cable along the east coast of Africa, including land-based infrastructure, and laying of the cable under the ocean floor, have been completed, and the countdown to operation - 43 days from now - has begun.
Testing of the networks connections, interfaces, and synchronous digital hierarchy systems, to ensure optimum configuration and traffic flow, was now under way.
“We are on to the last stretch, and moving to the final completion date of June 27 – we are sticking to that date and hope that no problems arise with splicing of the final link,” said Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy at a presentation in Ballito on Thursday.
This final link was the stretch of cable from Mumbai, India, moving west to Djibouti on the north-east coast of Africa.
Once completed, Seacom would move from being largely a project management company, to being a wholesale provider of bandwidth.
Herlihy remained true to his initial estimation in 2007 that bandwidth pricing in South Africa could drop by 90%. He noted that operators of the existing cable delivering bandwidth to South Africa, the SAT-3 cable on the west coast, had already lowered prices by about 50% in anticipation of the increased competition from Seacom. He was confident that there was still room for bandwidth to become about 40% cheaper.
Being the first undersea fibre optics cable on the east coast of Africa, its arrival was highly anticipated, and the bandwidth it would bring to the continent, could facilitate development in education, healthcare, conservation, as well as significantly lowering the cost of doing business for companies.
“Real broadband is about dynamic media transfer, and it is instantaneous. I fundamentally believe that education in Africa will be most affected by Seacom,” emphasised Herlihy, adding that the benefits of visual learning for pupils would be great.
He was clearly proud of the developmental spin-offs that delivering a powerful telecommunications infrastructure to the continent could bring, although he noted that there was a challenge that existed in getting the physical devices (like laptop computers) to exploit these services, into rural areas.
CONSTRUCTION
“The construction has been a fascinating process,” noted Herlihy.
The actual cable was manufactured by Tyco, and with an estimated 25-year life, had to be robust enough to handle seismic activity, and also had to be buried deep enough to ensure it would not get hit by anchors.
The cable was manufactured on land, and then loaded onto a ship. A burial plough then made a 1,3 m deep incision into the sea floor, buried the cable, and that incision was then covered again.
Apart from the challenges of delivering the cable on time, working through multinational jurisdictions with competing political initiatives, Herlihy said that the threat of piracy had more recently become a major challenge to the project.
“Pirates are media savvy,” he quipped, noting that the company could no longer broadcast the progress of the burial of the cable on its website through its ship locator.
The branching units and shore ends necessary to direct the traffic to the landing stations across eastern and southern Africa were complete, and all the cable landing stations, including terminal equipment have been completed and were operational.
The landing station in South Africa, at Mtunzini, near Durban, was about 850 m from the shoreline where the cable emerged at the coast. Because there is an environmentally protected area between the beach and the landing station, where the surface could not be disturbed, a sub-contractor was required to drill a hole 850 m from the landing station to the shore. This was the first time that a hole of this distance has been drilled in Africa, and the horizontal drill rig required to undertake the task, was imported from Germany.
The entire system would be operated and controlled through Seacom’s network operations centre in Pune, India.
The company said that substantial headway has also been made to ensure that landlocked countries would also benefit from the arrival of bandwidth to the continents eastern shores, which have previously relied on expensive satellite connectivity.
Seacom added that it would continue to work closely with inland countries to ensure that the inland networks were built.
Currently, backhaul solutions included terrestrially buried fibre networks stretching from the landing stations to Johannesburg, Kampala, Kigali and Nairobi.
“We are truly excited to have the finish line in sight. With the system substantially completed, and testing underway, we are one step closer to delivering on our commitment and become the first project to provide eastern and southern African retail carriers with equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth,” added Herlihy.
Edited by: Mariaan Webb
Netgear releases open source router
Alastair Otter 01 July 2008 at 09h00
Netgear on Monday trumpeted the release of the WGR614L, hardware the company is calling the "first open source router".
The new router supports both Tomato and DD-WRT firmware which makes it possible for users to hack the router to meet their own needs. To date Tomato and DD-WRT have been unofficially used on Netgear as well as other routers.
Netgear has also announced MyOpenRouter.com, a site for users wanting to extend, manipulate or hack the new router. The site provides open source firmware downloads, forums, blogs, articles, source code, and user guides.
The WGR614L router features a 240MHz MIPS32 CPU core with 16 KB of instruction cache, 16 KB of data cache, 1KB of pre-fetch cache, and incorporates 4MB of flash memory and 16MB of RAM.
In addition to an external 2 dBi antenna, the WGR614L also integrates a second internal diversity antenna. The router supports Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmware and will soon support OpenWRT.
From the announcement: "The launch of the WGR614L is significant to the open source community as there has been a growing demand for more powerful platforms to support a rapidly growing segment of open source enthusiasts that are seeking to create more robust, commercial-grade applications for their wireless routers," stated Som Pal Choudhury, senior product line manager for advanced wireless at NETGEAR.
"In addition to adding a more powerful processor and additional memory to the proven Broadcom platform, the most popular open source firmware, Tomato and DD-WRT, are available on WGR614L making it easier for users to develop a wide variety of applications."
SA has no home for LPI
Alastair Otter 01 July 2008 at 12h00
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) no longer has an official affiliate in South Africa. The Meraka Institute, the previous LPI affiliate in the country, recently discontinued its role as LPI affiliate in the country.
The LPI's certifications are one of the few distribution-agnostic qualifications available for Linux professionals. Yet, locally LPI has had a chequered past. A number of years ago the LPI affiliate in South Africa was The Shuttleworth Foundation. The foundation, however, ended its relationship with the LPI on a sour note in January 2007.
The Meraka Institute then took over the reins as South Africa's LPI affiliate. This, however, didn't last all that long and by the early part of this year the institute had also ended ended its role as the LPI affiliate.
Scott Lamberton, director of communications for the LPI, says that the organisation has been "progressing rapidly in identifying a new affiliate in South Africa and we hope to make an announcement soon in that regard".
Linux professionals wanting to sit the exams can still do so through Prometric or VUE testing centres, says Lamberton
Mobile advertising hits South Africa
Carey Finn 30 June 2008 at 08h48
International advertising network AdMob recently entered the South African market, seeking to capitalise on what it terms ‘a very active base of mobile internet users.’ The company operates in mobile advertising and has deepened its investment in South Africa in response to advertiser demand and rapidly increasing local mobile web usage.
“South Africa is a very important market for AdMob because of South African users’ love for the mobile web,” said Niren Hiro, Vice President of Business Development for AdMob. “AdMob has seen early success helping advertisers reach South African users and is now investing to grow our South African presence,” he said.
South Africa is AdMob’s fifth largest market in terms of countries (based on the number of page impressions), after the United States, India, Indonesia and the United Kingdom. According to Hiro, South African mobile users generated 159.2 million mobile ad impressions on the AdMob network during May alone. Apparently there has also been double digit traffic growth over the past six months.
Hiro believes that the growth in local mobile internet usage has been fuelled by the increasing ease of internet access from cell phones, which is providing an alternative solution to low computer and internet penetration in the country. “Stats from World Wide Worx show that there were over 6 million PCs in South Africa at the end of 2007 and that a total of 3.96 million people – a mere eight percent of the population – accessed the internet,” said Hiro. In contrast, there were more than 30 million cell phone subscribers by the end of 2007.
AdMob is hoping to increase the number of local publishers so that they can also capitalise on the high volume of South African traffic. According to Hiro, while there are already locally hosted mobile websites, most of the traffic from South African users on the AdMob network has been generated on mobile websites hosted in other countries. “We’ll be putting a local team on the ground, who will be building relationships and offering solutions to local advertisers and publishers, because we believe the local market has such great potential,” said Hiro. He indicated that mobile advertising in South Africa has already proved popular in the mobile, travel, financial and media industries.
AdMob was founded in California in 2006 and works with a range of global clients, including the likes of Coke, Adidas and Ford. In South Africa, AdMob has begun work with local advertising agencies Mobiclicks and Brandsh.
Bill Gates steps down
San Francisco - A Harvard University dropout who ushered in the home computer age and made billions of dollars along the way will have his last official day of work at Microsoft on June 27.
Three people will essentially fill the void left behind when Bill Gates retires from the company he and friend Paul Allen co-founded in 1975. Since Gate's began his transition from leading Microsoft to heading his personally-bankrolled charity, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his job as chief software architect has been handled by Ray Ozzie.
Craig Mundie inherited Gate's chief research and strategy officer duties, while former Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer became chief executive officer at the Seattle-based software colossus.
No drastic changes
Gates left Harvard after two years to found the firm that became global powerhouse Microsoft. He later received honorary degrees from Harvard and other universities.
After retiring, Gates will remain chairperson of the Microsoft board of directors and its largest shareholder.
"I don't think anything is going to drastically change the day he leaves," said Matt Rosoff of the private analyst firm Directions On Microsoft.
"If he thinks something is important and tells Steve Ballmer, Ballmer will listen to him."
Still, Gates's bespectacled nerdish visage is an integral part of Microsoft's image and his departure is symbolic, according to analysts.
"The challenge Microsoft has when the founder departs is remembering its heart," said analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.
"At some point the firm has to take the essence of what made Bill Gates successful and make sure that is preserved. Whether it is a company or a person, once you've lost your heart there isn't much left but a shell."
Analysts say there are signs that Microsoft has been struggling since Gates stepped away from managing operations several years ago.
Missed some opportunities
Microsoft has "missed a number of opportunities" and the Windows and Office software on which its fortune is built have stumbled.
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system released in January of 2007 has flopped with customers, many of whom are clinging to its predecessor Windows XP.
"They are in trouble on the desktop (computer software)," Enderle said. "Microsoft started as a desktop vendor and suddenly it is its weakness."
Meanwhile, Apple's Macintosh computers have been gaining popularity.
While Windows is still used on 90% of the world's computers, Macintosh computers using Apple operating systems has grown to more than five percent of the market.
The software giant also sees its bottom line threatened by Google, which offers free online programs that compete with Office and other packaged software sold by Microsoft.
Microsoft failed in a recent bid to buy Yahoo for nearly $50bn in order to combine online resources to better battle Google in the Internet search and advertising market.
Enderle said he doesn't see "Gates's fingers" in the attempted Yahoo takeover, and Gates was likely among board members that backed pulling the plug on acquisition talks.
VMware Updates Application Virtualization Software
James Niccolai, IDG News Service Tue Jun 10, 12:30 AM ET
VMware has announced an upgrade to its application virtualization software, which aims to reduce the cost of deploying new desktop programs to end users.
The software allows IT departments to package a desktop application into a single executable file, which can then be deployed and run by the end user without altering the host machine's operating system, such as its file system or registry files.
The idea is to avoid the software conflicts that can "break" existing desktop applications, and to reduce the amount of testing IT departments have to do before they deploy a new application.
VMware bought the software earlier this year when it acquired a company called Thinstall. On Tuesday it announced that it has rebranded the product as ThinApp, and said a new version, ThinApp 4, will go on sale within 30 days.
IT departments can package an application with ThinApp and then deploy the package on computers running almost any version of Windows, including XP and Vista, said Jerry Chen [cq], VMware senior director for enterprise desktops. ThinApp can also run two versions of the same program, so a user could run Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on the same desktop if they needed to.
One drawback has been that virtualized applications can't communicate with each other, because they operate in a their own virtual software "bubble." If a user is running virtualized Microsoft Word, for example, and clicks on a Web link in a Word document, the application can't call on Internet Explorer to open the Web page.
In ThinApp 4, a new feature called Application Link allows administrators to create these links between virtualized applications. An administrator could create a separate package for a Java or.Net component and share it across multiple virtualized applications, Chen said.
The other main enhancement is Application Sync, for delivering bug fixes and other updates. "All I have to do is virtualize the new version, post it on a Web server, then the existing version detects that there's been a change and downloads the differences," Chen said.
Michael Rose, a research analyst with IDC, said products like ThinApp have a lot of promise, but he said they may be ahead of the market because most people are still coming to terms with the basics of desktop virtualization.
"VMware has done a good job in getting out ahead of this but I don't think many people are considering it just yet," he said. "Desktop environments are really complex and I don't think there's enough maturity in these platforms yet to see really broad-based adoption. There will be, but it's a matter of time."
Ronni Colville, a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner, was more upbeat. She said application virtualization, while it doesn't get as much attention as other virtualization technologies, could be significant in the near term. Gartner predicts that 50 percent of large businesses will use application virtualization by 2010.
ThinApp will compete with Microsoft's Application Virtualization software, formerly called SoftGrid, which it acquired when it bought Softricity. Rose and Colville both noted that the Microsoft product is available only to customers who sign up for its Software Assurance licensing program, which will limit its appeal.
In addition, the Microsoft software, along with a comparable product from Citrix, both require a greater investment in server software before customers can use them, the analysts said. ThinApp can be used independently of other VMware products, and it works with existing PC management tools from BMC Software, Avocent/LANDesk and others.
In the future, VMware could potentially combine elements of ThinApp with its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) product, Colville said. VDI is for a different form of virtualization, in which a desktop image is hosted on a server and accessed remotely by end users.
These hosted desktops tend to be "all or nothing," Colville said, with a large software configuration being streamed over the network. The ThinApp technology could allow VMware to deliver discrete parts of the desktop image wrapped in "virtual bubbles," which could make the delivery more nimble, she said.
Client licenses for ThinApp 4 are priced at $39 per desktop, Chen said. Customers will also need the ThinApp Virtualization Suite, for packaging applications, which is priced at $5,000 and includes 50 client licenses. Rose said Thinstall customers he spoke to told him that packaging applications for delivery with ThinApp is relatively easy.
Vodacom upgrades to HSUPA
[Johannesburg, 28 May 2008 ] - Vodacom has included support for a high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) service across its network.
Customers who are subscribed to Vodacom's HSDPA 3.6, at R49 per month, will automatically have access to the service.
“Vodacom continues to set the pace in wireless broadband technology in SA. With HSUPA, our customers will now have access to the fastest down- and upload speeds available, offering them a true broadband experience,” says Vodacom Group CEO Alan Knott-Craig.
HSUPA reportedly offers upload speeds of up to 1.4Mbps and download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps, although the average achievable speeds are somewhat lower.
According to the company, contract customers may contact their service provider for activation and prepaid customers can dial *111#, send an SMS with “HSDPA 3.6 on” to 123, or log onto vodacom4me, to subscribe to HSDPA 3.6.
Customers will also have to use an HSUPA capable modem, of which there are only two currently available in SA – Novatel MC950D Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Stick, as well as the Huawei E272 Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem.
Users of the standard Vodafone Mobile Connect Card, Vodafone USB Modem Huawei E220 and built-in HSDPA 3.6 laptop modules will not have access to Vodacom's HSUPA service.
The service will officially be available as of 1 June.
Run Linux applications on Windows
Alastair Otter 20 May 2008 at 09h00
Mandrake Linux founder Gael Duval is back. This time he is behind the launch of a virtual Linux desktop that runs on Windows machines. Ulteo Virtual Desktop gives Windows users access to a full selection of Linux applications on their desktop.
Unlike virtualisation software such as Virtual Box and VMWare, Ulteo Virtual Desktop is built on coLinux, which allows two systems to run side by side on the same platform. Using coLinux means Ulteo "offers performance close to a native installation on the hardware because it uses no virtualisation software", the development said.
Once installed, Ulteo Virtual Desktop offers a special menu that can be used to launch a choice of well known open source applications including multi-IM software such as Kopete and music players such as Amarok and many others.
Ulteo also includes automatic system and application updates as well as document synchronisation across all Ulteo systems.
Applications can naturally access the user's documents in the My Documents folder and sound and printing are also supported on the fly.
Wikipedia has a round-up of April Fool's Day hoaxes. Among our favourites are The Economist's announcement of plans to genetically engineer pet dragons; and the DivX Head Up Display (XHUD) for projecting DivX videos onto a car's front windscreen.
Other good 'uns include Mobile Gazette announcing UK government plans to close down the country's GSM networks for re-use with a top-secret citizen-surveillance scheme; The Register claiming that China bought a controlling stake in Google; and Geeks.com's all-in-one cellphone, PC/PDA, MP3/video player/recorder, talking GPS universal remote.
Perhaps best of all, and a bargain at just £189.99, is the 2GB USB memory stick on gadget site IWOOT - for downloading your brain's memory,
Do you have trouble remembering stuff? Would you sometimes like to share your memories with others? Well now you can with the IWOOT Memory Stick. Using razor edge technology that's so advanced it's really quite ahead of itself, the Memory Stick enables you to download and upload memory fragments via a temporal lobe sensor and store them on the USB Memory Stick. You can then load the memories onto your computer - essentially backing up your brain for when you forget stuff in your old age! The PC (not Mac compatible yet regrettably) software allows you to store up to an amazing ten years of memories, sort them alphabetically, and even e-mail them to friends and family - though they will need to have their own USB Memory Stick in order to 'run' them, as well as your security code to unlock them.
Oh, and don't forget to check out HEXUS.lifestyle's own unveiling of a cracking new product - Egcellent Ideas' ring-pull eggs. These can be opened without spilling their contents or breaking the yolks. What's in store for '08
31 December 2007 at 07h13 (IOL Technology)
What's in store for tech fans in 2008? Plenty. If the stirrings of the present are any indication of what's on the horizon, technology buffs can look forward to products that are better, faster, and less expensive than those we rely upon today.
The best news of all is that some of the most exciting products should appear earlier in 2008 rather than later on.
· iPhone successor unveiled
· The iPhone may have been the biggest tech product rollout of 2007, but that doesn't mean Apple's well-designed foray into cell phones was without flaw. Expect to see a successor to the popular iPhone some time in 2008.
What will Apple improve with iPhone 2.0? How about adding GPS, 3G, a higher-resolution camera, and some perks that make it appealing to the corporate crowd, including operability with more wireless carriers? One thing's for sure: with a few tweaks - including a more palatable price - the iPhone could see the kind of market penetration that would keep it on top for some time.
· 802.11n, finally
For several years now, the 802.11n wireless specification has promised wireless Internet speeds up to ten times faster than the current 802.11g generation of products. The trouble has been that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'s international standards committee has dragged its feet in ratifying the 802.11n specification. So we've had manufacturers lining up over the past two years to bring out "pre-N" or "draft N" wireless routers and network cards.
While these draft N products have provided a considerable boost in wireless performance, they've also had their share of compatibility issues. Expect all of those headaches to go away, finally, in 2008, as 802.11n will be ratified, and fully N-compliant wireless products will flood the market. That will be good news, as 802.11n connectivity speeds are about as fast as a typical wired network.
· Vista, again
Early adopters of Microsoft's Vista operating system were primarily average consumers. Corporations stayed away in droves, and even many of the brave souls who adopted Vista complain of the steep learning curve, annoying user account control, and overall slowness when compared to XP.
Expect Service Pack 1 (SP) of Vista to change that. SP1 will appear early in 2008 and give Microsoft another shot at making the case for migrating to the new operating system. Atop the list of improvements will be compatibility and performance, and both will tempt consumers and businesses alike to give Vista a second chance.
· Open source takes off
Expect 2008 to be the year that the world takes notice of open source alternatives to expensive software products. While for years consumers have been focused on Microsoft Office and other productivity suites that cost big money, the open source movement has matured - to the point where free, able alternatives exist for virtually every type of software that people want or need.
Up to now, open source software - which is developed by a world-wide collective of developers and distributed freely over the Internet - has been hampered by products that didn't quite match up to their Windows counterparts. That has changed, though, as OpenOffice.org's free office suite is as slick and powerful as just about anything available on the shelves of your local computer store.
Add to that the growing cache of free programs available from the likes of Mozilla and Google, and you have a catalogue of programs that will do anything your average computer user needs.
· Quad-core for the masses
Dual-core processors became mainstream in 2007, with both Intel and AMD offering dual-core chips that offered more speed for the same or less money than previous generations of processors. The few quad-core chips available were expensive and under-utilised by software.
Expect things to change quickly in 2008. Quad-core processors - which pack the brains of four discrete central processing units onto one chip -will be the chip of choice next year, as Intel perfects a new manufacturing process that decreases power consumption and heat generation while increasing processor efficiency - and hence speed. AMD is finalising work on a quad-core architecture that the company says will offer efficiency improvements over Intel's design.
While the two chip titans duke it out in the press, consumers will benefit, as more quad-core offerings will drive down prices and make today's dual-core offerings passe by comparison. Software makers, too, will get on board - offering applications that are multi-core aware and can thus benefit from quad-core chips.
· Hybrid storage arrives
The hard drive as you know it is on its way out, and 2008 will be the year that viable alternatives become affordable.
Already hard drives that combine nonvolatile memory with traditional rotating platters are on the market. But they're expensive, and the meagre capacities they offer make them largely uninteresting to consumers.
Expect to see solid state hard drives come down in price and be offered in notebook computers first. The durability of solid state has an obvious appeal to those who carry their computers, and the speed improvements these drives offer will eventually make their use in desktop computers inevitable.
· Green everywhere
With initiatives such as EnergyStar, the tech industry has been in the process of going green for some time. But the movement is just now picking up steam. With computers draining a good bit of the world's energy resources, expect 2008 to be the year that everyone from computer system manufacturers to power strip companies will roll out products that boast lower energy consumption than ever before.
With tech product manufacturers touting the energy-saving properties of their products, the challenge for consumers will lie in trying to figure out how much of the story is just marketing hype.
· Wii play games
The success of Nintendo's Wii in late 2007 caught the gaming console makers off-guard. While Sony and Microsoft were busy pumping up the graphics prowess of their consoles, Nintendo wowed the game-playing crowd by creating a virtual-reality device that gets players up off the couch and moving around. Instead of sitting down, punching a game pad with their thumbs, Wii players are moving their bodies, controlling the actions of on-screen characters with their movement. That kind of involvement trumps hi-res graphics any day.
Expect the other console makers to trot out their own form of interactive game play in 2008. The success of Wii will not go unchallenged, but Nintendo can take a bow for moving computer-based game play in a new direction from which it's unlikely to return
2007 News
At cpcplus solutions, we have undergone a few changes and upgrades to provide you, the client, with more reliable and effective services. While we still offer desktop support, we have grown and advanced into the arena in which Information Technology and Communications meet. With this advance in knowledge we can now assist with consultation from an IT point of view as opposed to only "fighting fires".
After all, not only does technology provide you with infrastructure for your network and its accounting and internal software systems, but it also provides a very important medium to communicate with your associates, clients and suppliers. As a result we have upgraded our network infrastructure and are moving our head office into the Wrigley Field building, situated in "The Campus" on Sloane Street in Bryanston. We are concurrently implementing upgrades that will offer a superior form of network redundancy, network and internet infrastructure.
We have also been appointed Rightfax installers and have developed various systems in conjunction with the Cell Phone and Internet Service Providers. Consulting ideas range from 'Effectively using the internet and your website to promote your business' to 'Using cellular communication to stay in touch with your clients' and 'software training courses' onsite and offsite, as well as 'The Effective usage of email and Microsoft Office to assign tasks and effectively communicate with your clients and associates'.
We are moving into short term contractual placement of staff together with once off recruitment, finding the correct individual for your IT needs.
We will continue to offer Service Level Agreements with our clients for effective and fast turn-around times and the maintaining a high level of service levels.
We have engaged software developers that are both application and web driven. We have developed packages that can run and monitor your backup automatically as well as packages that run and automate your Calldesk and workflow functionality. We have a network software package that does regular automated software and hardware auditing to keep your network asset register current and accurate and inform you of any changes that might make your network unreliable or vulnerable.
We have advanced into a well developed arena of Server, Operating Systems and network maintenance and already offer this to numerous clients as well as first tier and other level Internet Service Providers.
As you all are aware we still have a division for networking infrastructure Cableplus, our Webplus development and Camplus staff recruitment. We strictly adhere to the plus IT group and eTurnity group standard and quality of service at all times.
We continue to offer Server support on Microsoft, Novell and Linux/Unix platforms.
Please make note of our new numbers as from Monday next week (31st March 2003). Please feel free to contact us if there any queries or information you require on the above issues.
Our National 24 hour number and office number remains unchanged: 0861 272 000
Our National RAS and Internet POP number remains as : 0861 272 272
Our JHB RAS and POP number is 011 463-9575
Please note that all our IP ranges and internet DNS and domain settings remain unchanged.
Our new main office number is +27 (11) 575-0130
Our new main fax number is +27 (11) 576-0130
Physical Address :
First Floor
Building Two, "Wrigley Field"
The Campus
57 Sloane Street
Bryanston Sandton.
Our Telkom cutover is taking place at 14h00 on Saturday the 29th of March. There should be a down time of only 30 minutes provided all goes to plan. We apologise for any inconvenience this might cause.
Please watch our website for regular updates as to our developments in the near future http://www.cpcplus.co.za
If there are any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We hope to carry on developing with you and your business.
Regards
Craig Campbell
Managing Director
cpcplus solutions
