SmallBizWindows

I’ve got my eyes on you in 2011: Raxco Software

blackwithlogo- awRaxco Software is the developer of the SmallBizWindows Utility of the Year 2010, PerfectDisk 11.

In fact, we gave that award to the entire PerfectDisk suite of products.

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.

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.

We like it, and as a result, we have it on our radar for 2011.

We had the opportunity to interview Bob Nolan, president of Raxco Software via email.

SmallBizWindows: What makes Raxco the company to beat in this space?

Bob Nolan: Raxco Software is a privately-held company that has been providing end users, SMBs and 2010 utility - croppedlarge enterprises with storage optimization software for laptops/desktops and servers for over three decades. Our PerfectDisk product line is used worldwide to resolve system performance and productivity issues on both physical and virtual Windows platforms. In addition to the quality and reliability of our software, the company is well recognized for its excellent technical and customer support, delivered in a timely manner and with a personal touch.

SmallBizWindows: In defragmentation, you have an excellent reputation and great top-of-mind awareness among both IT professionals and end-users. As the market moves further into multi-terabyte drives, and both DAS and NAS devices, do you expect to maintain that lead?

Bob Nolan: We do. Raxco continues to innovate in order to maintain its leadership role. We were the first to recognize the importance of consolidated free space, the first to defragment multi-terabyte drives, one of the first applications to fully integrate with Active Directory and the first to offer a product for a virtualized platform. Those are just a few of our “firsts.” As technology evolves into virtualization and the cloud, we see new opportunities emerging in the areas of performance, space utilization and management of storage resources.

SmallBizWindows: How are you preparing your offerings for SSDs?

Bob Nolan: We support SSDs now. File fragmentation is not an issue with SSDs; however, due to the way data is written to SSDs free space fragmentation can degrade write performance and consolidated free space improves SSD write performance. The trick is to provide the largest possible chunk of contiguous free space while minimizing any file movement. Raxco will soon offer an improved SSD optimization method that consolidates free space but doesn’t defrag any files. The free space is organized around the largest existing piece of free space, wherever that resides on the disk. The net result is a reduction in write activity to the disk which prolongs its lifetime use.

Thanks to Bob for taking the time, and to Joe Abusamra at Raxco helping with making this happen and for being an all-round nice guy, despite being a Boston Celtics fan!

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The Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z Giveaway

Lenovo1Lenovo is allowing twenty websites to each gift a brand spankin’ new Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one computer system. (You know, the one w/ the mungo huge (23”) touch-enabled screen.)

We have been selected as one of the sites to give away one of these systems to a lucky reader.

The schedule for giving away systems is below, and Medicine & Technology is the first site to do so.

M90z_control-fingertipsEach site has carte blanche to create and administer their own individual giveaway.

I am in the process of thinking up a contest for AbsolutelyWindows. If you have any ideas, send them to me at john (dot) obeto (at) absolutevista (dot) com.

I am also thinking of adding some swag for both the winner, and the runner up. I’ll keep you informed.

Remember, you have 20 chances to win. Avail yourselves of this opportunity. Be advised though, that you can only win once.

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Infra Dig: Apple to Microsoft: Our feelings are hurt!

While I was not privy to the phone call fielded by Kevin Turner, I’m going to assume it took place as follows (the Apple side of the conversation only):

Hello Microsoft,

We would like you to pull your ‘Laptop Hunter’ ads because, well, they are hurting our feelings.

(Read more)

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This article previously appeared in the July 2009 issue of The Interlocutor.

Appeasing Linux…in order to supplant VMWare

I think Mary Jo Foley’s headline to her article on Microsoft’s submission of two projects to The Linux Clowncil – or whatever it is called, says it all: Pigs do fly!

Yeah, Linux pigs flew high this week!

While admirably pragmatic, the move was unprecedented, and for me, a whale of a shocker!

I had to sit down for this one, having see it in my Twitter timeline from Mary Jo and John Fontana as I exited a flight.

While a move like this was in the cards, what with the number of open source ‘gurus’ Microsoft has hired, the actual act was still a surprise.

Having taken some time to think about it, and looking at the products involved, I cannot help but think of VMWare as the beneficiary of Microsoft’s largesse.

While Microsoft has tried reach feature both parity with the VMWare products, and also delivering the management suite for virtualization, hooking into Linux remained somewhere where Hyper-V fell short.

With the pushers of Linux distros now able to write their own bloated interfaces into Windows Server, an off-the-shelf advantage of VMWare’s products over Hyper-V would be eliminated, leaving the products to stand on their own merits, and price. In this case, free, for Hyper-V.

So props to Microsoft for both submissions, and yeah, I’m off to my dentist for the pain caused by my jaw hitting the moving sidewalk.

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Innovation: HP Tech Forum & Expo 2009

blogger2x As befits an $118 billion plus company, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, or HP, holds a Technology Forum every year, this year in beautiful Las Vegas Nevada.

I had the privilege of being invited as a member of the Social Media to this year’s event.

While I had a seeming conflict with an event in Washington, D.C., HP is such an important part of the hardware purchases at Logikworx that I decided to make room to go to the HP Tech Forum, and see what was going on in the world of HP. I also wanted to see if I could make contacts among the ProCurve group. (I will use the Twitter hashtag #hptf going forward in referencing this event.)

Arriving in Las Vegas
For this trip, I flew United Airlines to Las Vegas. (Never again on United; my travails on United will be detailed in a blog post on AbsoluteWindows.)

Unfortunately, I missed my flight and had to take a later flight, traveling as my Los Angeles Lakers were in the process of winning their 15th Championship.

Checked into the Mandalay Bay for the first time ever in a gazillion trips to Las Vegas. Helpful check-in staff. However, my room was NOT ready! After about ten minutes, I was given a room.
LALakers - 002
Got refreshed, went to take a meal at the Red, White & Blue Café in the hotel. Was met there by Halley Bass, and later, Tom Augenthaler, both of Ivy Worldwide, and later still by Shane Pitman, Editor-in-Chief of Neowin.net.

Idiot waiter at the hotel refused my unsigned credit card with a stupid excuse about it not working. So Tom paid for dinner. (And no, it was not a ruse or a setup by me with the waiter’s help to make Tom pay for my dinner.)

Talked, socialized, went to bed.

Day 0: Pre-event, Behind the scenes
Early wake up.

Walked to, and past the Starbucks, forgoing a decaf, skinny, extra-shot latte, because of the long line, and went on to the #hptf registration.

Thanks to Becca Taylor, Social Media Manager at HP TSG, I was already registered. To pick up my expo credentials, all I had to do was log onto a system, click yes, and walk to a booth to pick up my badge. (CES could learn a lot from this.)

Shane Pitman is here, and I am introduced to Andrew McCaskey and Kara Karsten of SDRNews, Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine. Representing Ivy Worldwide were Tom Augenthaler and Halley Bass.

From there it was top shelf all the way.

In what should be a lesson to all large corporations, if HP can engage Social Media so swiftly and deeply, so should you!

First we were shown to the Expo Hall from which a purpose-built office for the bloggers covering the #hptf would stage.

SoMe Room Dubbed the SoMe (as in Social Media) Room, this room had fat pipes. Really fat pipes. While I cannot speak to it, it may even have been as cool as a T1 or better. It was that fast!

Scott Anderson also shows up, welcomes and thanks us for being there. Riight! We should thank him and Becca for the opportunity!

Since the room was safe and secure, we stowed our gear there, and went exploring.

Going to all these shows and seeing booths kitted out and manned, does not give one the amount of work required to put a show on.

Here at #hptf, I literally saw countless worker bees—of the human kind—scurrying about as they created and outfitted their respective booths and pavilions. At once, I was stuck by logistical tasks needed to put on such a show. COMDEX & CES, I forgive you. Posthumously, for COMDEX.

We had the opportunity to be shown around by Elizabeth Gillan, #hptf Events Director.

Elizabeth continued on to show us the confidential areas there, including the POD. However, the best was saved for last as she showed us the grand ballroom reserved for the event keynotes, which were to be presented later that night.

I never knew that event staging was such a big deal. Then again, I wasn't a theater or film major.

Staging Solutions Inc., of Houston, was in charge of staging the event, and Dave Lawson from SSI was there to show us around.

What was more impressive: the twin 75’x25’ anamorphic screens? The multiple huge-as-can-be digital projectors? The vast number of people backstage charged with making sure everything is alright? Or the full production stage located at the back of the room where the director was barking out orders into multi-channel walkie-talkies?

My personal policy has always been to let the professionals do what they have expertise in. Staging the keynote of an event is something you definitely need professionals for.

Elizabeth then asked us if we would like a table set up at the front of the room to better facilitate our blogging and tweeting. “Are you kidding?” we asked in unison. Dave said he’d take care of it, his only question being if we would like wired or wireless Intertubes access. We decided on wired, to be able to better push the HD content that Dave, Kara, and Jeffrey would be uploading directly to the Internet for immediate streaming.

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Day 0: Luncheon with HP TSG PR
From there, we repaired to TheHotel at Mandalay Bay for lunch with our hosts for the HP Technology Forum & Expo, the Public Relations team for HP TSG, headed by Lynn Anderson. Location: a private dining room at TheHOTEL at Mandalay Bay.

In addition to Lynn, we are joined by Emily Neumann.

The lunch was definitely a tony affair, finished off with an exquisite desert. Unfortunately, I had to eat a fruit plate, kindly brought to me by one of our thoughtful stewards.

The conversation during lunch, however, was much, much better than the meal. During lunch I was introduced to Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy, of the HP Storage team out of Boise, Idaho, and Tom Foremski, @TomForemski, the Silicon Valley Watcher.

We then took a break to relax before the keynotes.

Day 0: The Keynotes
For this event, I am shocked, shocked to see that HP has planned for Social Media to be embedded into the communications fabric of the entire event!

This is at once pleasing, and scary.

For any holder of HPQ, is shows that the powers-that-be at HP are leaving no stone unturned in reaching out to potential clients and users, using whatever medium necessary. Scary in that for a mature company, HP is making the necessary moves to remain relevant to all demographics. HP’s competitors, real or supposed, should feel scared.

Anyway, our front-row media table is equipped with a T1-class connection, and reading lights! I have to give props to Dave Lawson and Staging Solutions Inc. for that thoughtful addition.

We are welcomed to the event by Tom Iannotti, Director and SVP for HP Americas and TSG, who then passes the baton to Ann Livermore, who needs no intro.

Ann Livermore, Executive Vice-President for TSG at HP
Ann’s speech gives us an overview of the state of HP. We are reminded of the imposing numbers behind HP, the company. Here, she drops a bomb with the force of a high-yield thermonuclear device: HP ships a server every 11 seconds! Yeah, not a typo: every eleven seconds.

Then she moves to the meat of her keynote.

The three trends CIOs worry about:

  1. Data Center Transformation. The keys to achieving this are increasing data center efficiency, and driving automation and virtualization into the very fabric of any data center. Doing that, would lead to better business continuity and resource availability.
  2. Information Explosion. How do you mitigate this? Improve information infrastructures, improve information services, and improve information governance.
  3. Everything as a (Cloud) Service. Tips: utilize an adaptive architecture in your cloud, which must be technology-enabling. Develop a plan to move IT, applications, and business services to the cloud.

Next is Paul Miller.

Paul Miller, Vice-President, ESS at HP TSG
He talked about the HP BladeSystem Matrix, which is being touted as ‘a private cloud in a box’.

With the BladeSystem Matrix, a provider is able to provision services with the push of a button, and transform a process from 33 days to 108 minutes. The reverent hush that descended on the ballroom is proof that the audience, all made up of IT professionals is very impressed!

The HP Extreme ScaleOut portfolio. Being on the environmentally-friendly edge, with design and software dynamically helping to measure power footprint.

The POD. Oh, the POD. 22 full size racks of whatever goodness you want to populate it with. Customized and shipped to your choice of destinations, export restrictions permitting.

I will have an entire article devoted to the POD in the near future.

Birth Banerjee is next

Birth Banerjee, Senior Vice-President, Research at HP, Director of HP Labs
This guy easily stole the evening, no easy feat. However, in a room of gear heads, someone that know more about technology than we do, and about directions those technologies are going to take has our undivided attention.

Ever heard of the memristor? Well, HP invented the viable—commercial and stable—memristor!

Birth’s research is focused on eight high-impact research areas for the near term (I swear I had a good picture of his graphic, but it turned out I messed it up):

  1. Intelligent Infrastructure: Exascale Data Center, photonic interconnects
  2. Digital Commercial Print: imagine a customized version of the New York Times? Actually, at Logikworx, we already use one of HP’s commercial digital print services to deliver the limited edition print issues of The Interlocutor.
  3. Content transformation,
  4. Immersive Interaction: multi-modal interfaces
  5. Information Management,
  6. Analytics,
  7. Cloud: develop an integrated cloud stack to move exabytes of data at terabytes per second to all 6 billion earthlings.
  8. Sustainability: the 2%/98% problem. IT creates only 2% of the world’s carbon emissions. Yet IT must find a way to resolve the issues surrounding the rest of the world.

Day 0: After-Keynote Reception on the Expo Floor
Sounds repetitive, but the transformation of the Expo from a bare warehouse-like space buzzing with setup activity to the Expo is simply amazing reinforcing my admiration for the professional who perform those tasks.

Also impressive is the repast set before us, with several food distribution areas, and a great selection.

Once again, I gave my body to science, and tried everything, from the mini steaks to the sushi. Don’t worry, I accept your thanks for my sacrifices.

Day 0: HPTF 2009 TweetUp
My first TweetUp.

So, who is here at the official HP Tech Forum 2009 Tweetup?

@Augenthaler (Tom Augenthaler), @Beccataylor (Becca Taylor), @BuzzCorps (Ivy Worldwide), @Chasenskinner (Chase Skinner), @AKMC (Andrew McCaskey), @kkarsten (Kara Karsten), @chrispman01 (Chris Purcell), @hptechforum2009 (Scott Anderson), @ninabuik (Nina Buik), @hpstorageguy (Calvin Zito), @halleyclaire (Halley Bass), @jbgeorge (Joseph George), @erincollopy (Erin Collopy), @hp_connect (HP CONNECT Team), @Geekazine (Jeffrey Powers).

It is a good tweetup, getting to physically meet Twitterers I have been communicating with for a while, and the new folks I have had the privilege of meeting.

The chocolate fondue fountain is oh soooo inviting, but I’m steadfast in my refusal to fall off the low/no-sugar wagon.

We definitely go past the closing time, and we eventually shut down for the day.

Day 1: Walking the show floor, taking in the sessions
As with any expo I attend, the first day is spent walking the crowd, getting a feel for the crowd and trying to gauge the energy of the booth staffers.

One added knot is the state of the economy. At CntrStg/CES in January, all the positive energy was at CntrStg, whereas both attendees and presenters at CES seemed to be going through the motions with the defeatist attitudes of those who were unaware of where their next meals would come from.

The energy from the crowd and the HP staffers is very good. The Extreme ScaleOut products are getting a lot of oohs and aahs.

I cannot write anything about this event without giving mad props to the (HP) CONNECT staffer I met at Starbucks earlier today. Noticing my white (blogger) badge, she asked me what it was and if I was a member of HP CONNECT, the global HP IT user community. When I said I was not, she asked me to stop by the CONNECT booth, and sign up. How inviting is that?

Silly me was still groggy from not having any coffee yet, and I forgot to take down her name for praises to Nina @ninabuik and/or Chase @chasenskinner.

There are tons of sessions to attend, and I am trying to be very selective with my time.

I have decided on Servers, Personal Systems, and virtualization for the must-attend sessions. I will also try to see if there is an interview opportunity with Rebecca Lawson on Cloud Computing.

I am able to get in the sessions, and interview Rebecca about cloud computing, especially as it related to the SMB space.

Boy, did I ask for it!

Ms. Lawson is passionate about the cloud, and what it can deliver.

Talking to her gave me several ideas, and brought up several more questions that I am afraid that I need a follow-up from her before I present my thoughts on Cloud computing.

Simply put, the hour I spent with her is just not enough!

Emily Neumann was most helpful in securing this interview for me. For which I kindly thank her.

Day 1: HP CONNECT
HP CONNECT is the global HP IT user community, and one of the larger exhibitors at this event.

While not currently a member, a situation I will rectify shortly, the value is evident in the scope and scale of the community’s membership.

Anecdotally, I had the opportunity to dine with a couple of the members of the community.

Their obvious friendship made me ask where their company was located. “Miami”, said one man, and “San Diego county”, said the other. “Eh”, I asked. The answer? They were friends, and had been for eight years, but only always met at the HP Tech Forum. They kept in touch mainly through the CONNECT community

I then asked them if there was value in their membership. Of course, said both of them, almost simultaneously, echoing the responses I got from my decidedly unscientific polling of a cross section of the attendees as I approached them on the Expo floor.

Day 1: End of day Reception at The POD
The POD, an acronym for Portable On-demand Datacenter, is a product that just had to be invented.

What is it?

A standard size chipping container is gutted, and then engineered to accept up to 12,000 hard disk drives, or 45,000 compute nodes. It can be customized to your choice of multi-factor security, and faire detection and suppression. Active cooling is standard, utilizing variable-speed fans to achieve the desired 30-degree delta between hot and cold airflows.

Steve Cummings is the POD Product Manager for HP, and I was able to get a tour from him.

The reception is a pretty nice affair, with tours of the resident POD by #hptf attendees. The food is good, and background entertainment is provided by contortionists from the Cirque du Soliel. One of the performers was juggling two rubber objects in his mouth, prompting the money quote for the evening, “Does anyone here know the Heimlich Maneuver?”

As stated earlier, I will be delving into the POD in detail in later issues.

Day 1: HP CONNECT’s invite-only Luau at TheHOTEL at Mandalay Bay pool
Thanks to Nina Buik and Chase Skinner, I was invited to the HP CONNECT Community’s private luau .

And a real luau it was, with close to 90% of the crowd dressed in Hawai’ian gear!

Awards were given, speeches were delivered, and the sense of communion within members of the community was high, and palpable.

There were no hungry attendees at the luau, what with numerous servers walking by bearing salvers of good food. There were no parched lips either, as booths and bartenders dispensed needed restoratives to the crowd.

I even had my photograph taken with a modern-day, and younger Elvis.

Day 2: Final walkthrough the #HPTF Expo floor and good byes
Due to a previous commitment, I had to leave #HPTF on Wednesday, June 17 for Washington, D.C.

Resultantly, I could only walk the floor briefly, and say my goodbyes to the good people I had hung out with the past few days.

For such a shot visit, leaving was bittersweet.

My Conclusions on HP Tech Forum & Expo 2009
blogger3-aHP Tech Forum 2009 was my first HP Tech Forum. It definitely would not be my last.

I came away with a lot more respect for HP and the myriad number of ways they are engaging their communities, and using all media to get their message across.

I saw a company focused on not only innovating—an important point with me—on all levels, but also making sure that those innovations drew a direct line to the betterment of the computing experience in the near term.

Case in point is the viable memristor touted by Birth Banerjee. It wasn't esoteric research for some nebulous bragging rights. No, it was research to produce an revolutionary leap in computing in the near term.

From a Social Media standpoint, the preparation, execution, and access afforded us was just the sort of thing I could get used to. Embedding Social Media into corporate communications is something most companies aspire to.

Well, HP has it today.

That said, the primary reason for the Tech Forum is technology. From what I saw, HP is still innovating. Not only is it innovating, but it is innovating not only in esoteric fields, but also with a jaundiced eye on near-term results.

I expect nothing other than more greatness from HP.

I would like to thank the entire TSG Team at HP for the opportunity I had to cover the event for the Social Media community.

HP: Becca Taylor, Scott Anderson, Emily Neumann, Erin Collopy, Elizabeth Gillan, Lynn Anderson, Calvin Zito, Joseph George, Nina Buik, Chase Skinner, and Steve Cummings and the POD team.

Ivy Worldwide: Tom Augenthaler, Terri Stratton, and Halley Bass.

Props to the other bloggers here too: Shane Pitman, Tom Foremski, and the professional videography setup by Jeff Powers, Kara Karsten, and Andrew McCaskey. I was impressed by the professional way Kara, Andrew and Jeff covered the event.

hptf2009 banner

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This article previously appeared in the July 2009 issue of The Interlocutor.

Microsoft Windows 7 has RTM’d

The developers signed off on it, Steve Sinofsky likes it, Ballmer is doing cartwheels, and Bill Gates must be pleased.

Ladies and gentlemen, the best ever versions of the Microsoft Windows client, known as Microsoft Windows 7, and the best version yet of Windows Server, the eponymous Windows Server 2008 R2, have been released to manufacturing, or RTM.

This is truly good news.

I have a task ahead of me once my super-secret copies of the RTM discs arrive: personally updating the systems I use, at the Orbiting O’Odua, at MedikLabs, and at my offices at Logikworx and LogikLabs.

My staff is waiting to do the same for our internal-use systems at Logikworx, and we are  going to have five businesses, representing our most bleeding edge of guinea pigs clients, ready to go with Windows 7 on Day 1 of public release.

Congratulations to Microsoft on this development. Special thanks to Steve Sinofsky and the entire Windows dev team.

More on this story as it develops.

Innovation: Symantec’s Norton Security Team

Prior to the release of Norton Internet Security 2009 in September of last year, and the subsequent release of the Norton 360 Suite, Symantec’s Norton products had such a reputation for bloat, resource hungriness, and being a general factor in system disorder, that most IT professionals had stopped recommending them for their consumer and SMB clients.

However, subsequent to the release of Symantec NIS2009, it has been a feel-good-fest about the Norton Internet Security products and Symantec.

A few questions had to be asked:

  • How did this happen?
  • What did Symantec do to bring this incredible change of mindshare?
  • How was Symantec able to restore the NIS brand in such a short period?

At the start of June 2009, I was invited to Symantec’s Culver City, California offices, and given the opportunity to speak, totally unfettered, with senior members of the consumer Norton Internet Security products.

I have come away from that meeting with a lot more respect for Symantec the company, and what they have been able to accomplish in turning things around.

Symantec’s Culver City, California Building
Located just east of the Culver City Mall, the Symantec offices here is located in a brand-new, LEED Gold-certified building.

This is a high security building. Everywhere in it demands that you authenticate yourself before access is granted. Or denied. Everywhere!

One in, we are led to a conference room, where introductions are made.

The Meetings with Symantec’s Norton Security Brain Trust
Including Sondra Magness, Symantec Public Relations Manager, who convened the event, Symantec attendees included:

  • Susan Tatro, Symantec Consumer Public Relations
  • Dave Cole - Sr. Director Product Management, Consumer Products
  • Bill Rosenkrantz - Director Product Management, Consumer Products
  • Jens Meggers - VP Engineering, Consumer Products
  • Kevin Haley - Director, Product Management, Security Response
  • Tim Lopez - Beta Test Coordinator/User Forum Manager
  • Tony Weiss - Senior Beta Test Coordinator/User Forum Manager

In all, a very senior level meeting.

We are then informed that the sessions for the day would include us asking anything we want.

“Yeah, right!” thought yours truly.

Why? My (jaded) experience had taught me that quite a few companies talk up a good game, but are unfortunately unable to back that up when it counts.

I would later find out that I was wrong in thinking Symantec was one of those companies.

Over the next several hours, we proceeded to be informed, and allowed to ask questions about not only the shipping product, but also the future product roadmap, and strategy.

While most of the answers are under a strict Non-Disclosure Agreement, or NDA, that I had agreed to, I can say here that not one of our questions went unanswered.

This is quite true: all our questions were answered!

The scope of the forthrightness of Symantec was unprecedented for me. Over the nearly two decades I have been in this business, and nearly three decades’ experience with computers, I have asked several questions of several highly placed sources in virtually all the ‘big’ companies over the years, and those very questions have been deflected if the correct answers differed from ‘the company line’.

Suffice it to say, I am impressed.

While the resultant effect of that NDA is that I have to be sufficiently obtuse in my answers here, I can say without equivocation that the questions I had put forth at the start of this post were answered, which I will share with you as best as I can.

Make sure the Perception ≠ the reality
I repeat: make sure the perception is NOT the reality!

In Internet Time, a misstep is quite often fatal.

For a product specifically created to provide border security for users’ web browsing and connectivity, the Symantec consumer security products, had gone off in several tangents, acquiring bloat – in the name of increased functionality, becoming resource hungry, and generally suffering from the sort of malaise that inflicts products where their focus has strayed from the original mission.

That is not good.

It is, however, reassuring to see that Symantec took this perception of the Norton family of security product’s slowly turning into a piece of excrement — in some people’s minds — becoming a reality very seriously, and better than that, acted swiftly.

In January of 2008 at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES 2008 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to dine with Rhonda Shantz of Symantec, where she proceeded to tell a very skeptical me that the next version of Norton Internet Security (v2009) would restore my faith in the product. Her money quote, “We have re-architected the product from the ground up.”

I disbelieved her. My mea culpa to that disbelief is here. http://bit.ly/17Qedg 

In January of this year, Symantec Public Relations Manager, Sondra Magness, invited me to a dinner, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas, where I had the opportunity to ask Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President at Symantec, about the change in fortunes for NIS.

His simple answer: he told his staff what he wanted the NIS2009 product to be, and told them to make it so.

Pretty telling.

Here are the things he didn’t do:

    • He didn’t bury his head in the sand, ostrich-like, resting on the twin laurels of market-share dominance, and units sold;
    • He didn’t ask for ginny’d up figures to justify those numbers;
    • He didn’t ask his minions to go out into the streets of Venice (California) to pick up $20 a day ‘focus group’ members who would say anything for that same $20.

He took the telemetry coming in, added the growing crescendo of customer angst, and decided that on that course, the Norton brand was on the path to reputational suicide, a one-way trip in this Internet Age.

He made a decision, and charged his staff with producing. In the process not only saving, but also resuscitating the Norton brand.

For which I am sure Peter Norton is pleased.n360_mainui_l

Innovation is alive and well at Symantec
Regular readers of this blog know my position on innovation: without it, YOU WILL FAIL. Always.

Well, as with companies such as Samsung, Microsoft, and GE, Symantec understands this. Furthermore, unlike those companies (except Samsung, which has a self-imposed shelf date), Symantec’s security products have a marketplace-determined end-of-life date: the last day of each year.

As a result, Symantec is on the proverbial treadmill. Mix in the nefarious miscreants trying to undermine our collective computing experience, and you would start to understand the scale of the burden they shoulder.

In this morass, however, Symantec is steadfast about innovation. They are not standing still.

From product development, to future goals and strategies, I saw moves designed to keep the customer, in this case the end user, in control.

While we all know the little things that make NIS2009 a joy to use, from the swift install, to the little memory footprint, to the little CPU usage meter in NIS2009 that shows both system CPU usage and NIS2009 usage, the product tries to balance speed with usefulness and user control. And succeeds.

This though, is not some strange fluke. It is actually engineered for.

Symantec takes the (social) community seriously
By now, all of us, especially me, have had it up to our necks with those silly companies that spout nonsense about Web 2.0 without actually taking the time to borrow a clue.

Symantec, on the other hand, already harnesses the social community to great success.

Symantec’s MVPs are not company employees, but a series of dedicated users providing Symantec’s customers with support and being interlocutors in an invaluable feedback loop.

With it, the wonks at Symantec, I assume, are able to make real time analyses of incoming data, and use it to fine-tune their strategies, or products.

Furthermore, there are three principal labs worldwide, providing round-the-clock protection. Pretty impressive.

Symantec listens
When a company reaches middle age, it tends to have as managers, yum-yums who are just resting-and-vesting.

Due to that, any news that is seen as rocking the stock option/restricted stock vesting process is swiftly but silently shot down. In addition, narrowly and adroitly screened focus groups would be brought in to bolster the plans of that rester-and-vester. That is obviously not the case here.

It is a testament to the success of the company that the managers do listen.

We were walked through the incident capture, documentation, and resolution stages. It is a rigorous, detailed process where documentation is key. The end result is a product that is the beneficiary of the Community in its detection speed, and efficacy.

That is what listening to the community brings to the table.

For lesser products, especially those without an active community, the ability to identify, and intercept trending threats is greatly diminished. In fact, I would hazard a guess that most of those also-rans use the information coming out of Symantec to initialize their intercept protocols.

Pushing the envelope is part of the daily job
I cannot divulge this part of the day without incurring the wrath of Symantec’s Legal Department, and becoming the recipient of several snottograms.

However, I can tell you that the directions the Norton team at Symantec is pushing the consumer product is unprecedented, novel, and will lead to quicker identification and interdiction of threats, faster scanning and performance, and lower system utilization.

Believe that!

Conclusions
In computing, one is very easily jaded, and the resultant cynicism is hard to avoid.

However, it is the efforts of a few companies such as Symantec that, for want of a better phrase, ‘keep hope alive’.

Not only did I come away from that visit more enthused about Symantec, but I was pleased that the trust I, and by proxy, Logikworx, had placed in the Norton product.

Furthermore, I have developed such a confidence in their products, that I have asked my staff to include Symantec’s small business and enterprise products in our current tests of a replacement for CA’s business product. That test is now a bakeoff between Symantec, and Microsoft’s ForeFront products. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

That said, what will drive the next wave of antivirus/antimalware products will be innovation. Both evolutionary and revolutionary innovation. While there would still be ‘Eureka’ moments by the odd inventor, by and large, innovation must be planned for.

The companies that innovate will rule the earth.

Symantec will be one of them.

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This article previously appeared in the July 2009 issue of The Interlocutor.

The SmallBizWindows Verbatim Bluetooth Mouse Review

As notebook/laptops/netbooks get smaller, the usability of the trackpad goes down. Furthermore, some actions are just not as easily performed using a trackpad, for example playing Spider Solitaire. As a result, there has been a very good market in notebook mice, as evidenced by the sheer numbers of devices out there….(Read more)

Chrome OS? O oh, early success of Bing has Google running scared!!!

Being me is not easy!

In my blog post here, Bing: Be Afraid Google. Be very Afraid, I went against the grain and declared that the nonsensical and trite platitudes being mouthed by the Googlians was nothing more than fear.

In it, I posted one cool nugget: Google until now, has been able to distract Microsoft from coming after their cash cow, web search.

(read more)

*Battlefield Earth: you know the saying: It only took a billion monkeys thumping away at a billion typewriters a billion years to come up with that drivel. Which describes Microsoft’s web search strategy before Bing™.

OpenSauce World walks the talk

Gotta give these yobs props for this.

In one of the online fishwraps, I just read the OpenSauce World (yeah, intentional misspelling; then again that’s what I think of them,), the event formerly known as LinuxWorld, is going, well, the open source way, by giving away entry to the event for free to ‘qualified’ professionals…(read on)

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The SmallBizWindows HP ScanJet 7000 Review

smallbizwindows2 Prior to the start of MedikLabs, my only interaction with  scanners were of the personal desktop kind, since I left all the heavy lifting to the pros at FedEx Kinko’s or their peers.

However, the healthcare industry, as constituted in these United States in the year of our Lord 2009, has NEVER heard of conservation. Resultantly, that entire industry generates a ton of paper. Worst of all, the crazy amount of paper create d is only reduced by a smidgen if an electronic medical records software suite, or EMR, is used!

Due to HIPPA laws, and the rightful requirement for an audit trail in order to secure the integrity of a patient’s record while using an EMR, several non-electronic items of a specific patient’s medical record must be scanned, and inserted into the patient’s electronic chart.

For which you need a high-speed scanner.

Unboxing
The ScanJet 7000 came in a relatively small box befitting its dimensions.

The requisite software, USB cable, power cord, user manuals, and a quick-install manual completed the package.

Really though, could someone send out a memo to other OEMs about the necessity of adding a USB cable in device packaging? Especially since USB cables can be purchased in bulk for about fifty cents or thereabouts!

The HP ScanJet 7000 Scanner 
I have split this review into two parts: a review of the ScanJet 7000 using Windows Vista, and a forthcoming review of the product using Windows 7 RC, which I transitioned all the client systems at MedikLabs to during the review regimen.

I installed the scanner at MedikLabs, and connected it directly to the deskside PC of the scanner operator.

Where I got my first peeve: the install process, for all of the included software, did not have a unified install suite, making it interactive. That I do not like!

That said, the list of software included with the ScanJet 7000 is impressive: HP ScanJet drivers and tools, EMC ISIS/TWAIN drivers, Kofax Virtual ReScan v4.2, I.R.I.S. Readiris Pro 11, and ScanSoft PaperPort 11.

The Review
In this day and age, where conservation is our burden, MedikLabs was designed to be paperless, utilizing a Windows Vista-based EMR (electronic medical records) suite from Day 1.

However, it is easier said than done. Resultantly, enter the high-speed scanner.

This scanner is fast.

In my initial tests, using a combination of text, fully graphic, and mixed documents, I was able to get nearly rated speed.

What makes the ScanJet 7000 more impressive is that same software suite that I panned earlier in this review. Earlier this year, I reviewed another scanner rated at 40 ppm in both black-and-white and color. Well, while the ScanJet 70 is only rated at 35 ppm in color, it makes up for that with incredibly fast post-scan processing.

Indeed, the ScanJet 7000 processes pages so fast that it returns control to the user within seconds even on a relatively slow system. Moving the ScanJet 7000 to my personal desktop unit at MedikLabs, it smoked even further.

For the past several weeks, the ScanJet 7000 has been working extra hard, scanning a backload of documents, x-rays film, and other documents into patient charts.

The ScanJet 7000 worked extremely well, over a range of computer systems, without snags, and mis-feeds.

The clerical staff at MedikLabs are enamored with it, and will be very upset when it has to go back home. In fact, we are looking to acquire one for use at MedikLabs.

Conclusions
I am pleased with this scanner.

It is fast, compact, and priced just right. This compact, sheet-feed scanner is a workhorse.

As a result, we are awarding it the SmallBizWindows Business Ready Superstar Award.

I hope to get a series of these scanners here at MedikLabs in the near future for a scan-off.smallbizwindows2

Meanwhile, enjoy the ScanJet 7000 while we bring you the Windows 7 review of this product shortly.

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It’s a Windows netbook world after all!

“You will not be able to download any distro, freetard.
You will not be able to use plug-n-play, just turn on the system, and get it to work.
You will not be able to lose yourself in movies streamed from Netflix, and skip,
Skip out for Jolt, or any other energy drink during downloading from torrents.
Because the Linux revolution will not be televised”

With the greatest respect to Gil Scott-Heron*.

Sometimes, it is hard to be humble!

In the nascent days of this market, spurred on by the research and development by Nicky and his crew at the OLPC, this subcategory of the laptop space in PCs was seen by the savior by the freetards. (read more)

Android harlots: Android to surpass iPhone

Will this nonsense ever stop?

Now you have some dimwits proclaiming the ascent of Android….over the iPhone!

Wha???

For goodness sakes, it would NEVER happen!

Even if you look past the desirability of the iPhone*, how do you get past the Linux underpinnings...(read more)