high quality security cameras

Voltaic Systems today introduced a complete redesign of its Generator Solar Laptop Charger, featuring 16.8 Watts of rugged solar power, a 60 Watt-hour universal laptop battery and a streamlined, protective case. The new Generator is now also more affordable at $399.

Designed for mobile workers on the move, the Generator provides up to 45 minutes of laptop runtime for every hour in the sun. It will power most modern laptops, tablets, professional digital cameras, and smart-phones. Even when solar charging is not an option, the internal battery holds enough power to more than double the runtime on many laptops and can also be re-charged from the included wall charger.

“Laptops are getting more efficient, but still have relatively short battery lives compared to tablets and phones.” said Shayne McQuade, CEO of Voltaic Systems. “Having a 16 Watt solar panel and a high-capacity universal battery with you wherever you go means you don’t have to be constantly tethered to the grid.”

16 Watts of Power for Fast Charging

Integrated into the front of the Generator is a rugged 16.8 Watt solar panel. Run times will vary by laptop, but these high-efficiency monocrystalline cells will power a MacBook Air for 45 minutes after 60 minutes in the sun. The cells are encased in a clear, UV and scratch resistant coating, and backed by a rigid aluminum composite material. The panel is waterproof and built to withstand the abuse of everyday use.

Stylish Briefcase

The Generator is designed to store and manage a wide range of electronics. It has 575 cubic inches of storage space, a padded laptop sleeve, a document sleeve and plenty of mesh pockets for adapters and cables. The case is molded and padded to further protects laptops, and it comes with a removable shoulder strap. Just as importantly, a careful focus on design has produced a good looking bag that would not look out of place in the office.

High Output, Dual-Port Battery

The included V60 battery has 60 Watt hours of capacity, larger than most laptop batteries. It will also charge tablets up to 2 times and smart-phones up to 8 times. The battery dell inspiron 1520 has two output ports: one for charging laptops and other 12-18V devices, and USB port for charging phones, tablets and other 5V devices.

Accessories for MacBooks and Digital Cameras

The Generator can become a MacBook Solar Charger with the addition of Apple’s airline adapter. To solar charge digital cameras, users can select from a range of optional camera cradles to connect and charge their DSLR battery.

Tagcloud: Battery solar power , Solar Laptop Charger , laptop battery , battery usage tips , dell vostro 1520 battery , toshiba pa3399u-2bas battery

Tagcloud: Toshiba laptops , Toshiba Portege Z835  , toshiba laptop batteries , toshiba pa3399u-1brs battery , Hp proBook 4520S battery

The good: The Toshiba Portege Z835 offers more configuration options than most ultrabooks, and includes features, such as an Ethernet port, left out of other models.

The bad: The design worked fine on the least expensive ultrabook, but this more-expensive version doesn’t look and feel as nice as the competition.

The bottom line: The original Toshiba Portege Z835 was a fantastic value that helped us overlook a weak touch pad/keyboard combo. This faster version is about $200 more, but keeps the same so-so design.

Although it’s less than 6 months old, it already feels as if we’ve been living in the ultrabook era forever. When a new laptop arrives, I automatically assume it’ll be thin, lightweight, with a solid-state drive for storage; in other words, like a Windows version of a MacBook Air. It’s at the point now that the occasional thick, bulky 13- or 14-inch laptop that shows up feels oddly out of place.

In fact, we’re already seeing revisions and updates to the very first ultrabooks. The Toshiba pa3536u-1brs / Toshiba Portege Z835-P330 was an early favorite, because it cost so much less than other early models from Lenovo and Asus. For only $799 (marked down by retailers from $899), you could get a 128GB SSD, which in other ultrabooks or other slim laptops could cost hundreds. The trade-off was a slower Intel Core i3 CPU, as well as a flimsy-feeling chassis with a tricky keyboard and touch pad.

The same body can also house higher-end components. In this case, it’s an Intel Core i5-2467M processor and 6GB of RAM (over 4GB in the original). The 128GB SSD is the same, but Bluetooth is a welcome addition. This specific configuration is called the Portege Z835-P370, and it costs $1,149 from Toshiba, although other retailers offer it for as little as $949.

This is still a very nice example of a slim laptop, but since the fall of 2011, we’ve seen the HP Folio 13 for $899 and the Dell XPS 13 for $999, both of which have designs, keyboards, and touch pads that beat the Z835′s, hands down. The less expensive configurations of this laptop are still highly recommended for those who want a slim 13-inch laptop with a 128GB SSD for a very low price, but if you have more to spend, look at some of the other options instead.

This version of the Portege Z835 is, on the outside, identical to the version we tested and reviewed in late 2011. Like other ultrabooks, it’s very thin, and it’s even a few tenths of an ounce lighter than some, owing to its magnesium alloy casing. My general thoughts on the design and keyboard/touch-pad input remain the same, and some of the analysis below is taken from that earlier review.

The Z835 has a brushed-metal lid and slight taper toward the front, but the shiny silver plastic hinges look cheap, as do the similar plastic touch-pad buttons; the lid has a tremendous amount of flex when pressed. That gives the entire package a budget feel, which is fine when for something that’s positioned as the least-expensive ultrabook, but a different story when it’s more expensive than some very good ones.

The keyboard remains the laptop’s single most frustrating feature. The letter keys are squeezed down a bit on the top and bottom, ending up more rectangular than square, and with a smaller surface area. The space bar is tiny, and frequently failed to register, although that may be a function of my particular typing style; you may have better luck. All of the keys are also especially shallow, which adds to the awkward feel. On the positive side, the keyboard is backlit, so it’s not all bad news.

Taking a different approach than the other ultrabooks, which all mimic Apple’s buttonless clickpad design, the Portege Z835 has a more traditional touch pad with a smaller surface area and separate left and right mouse buttons. It’s largely a matter of taste, as the bigger clickpads on the Acer, Asus, and Lenovo ultrabooks have been average at best (especially compared with Apple’s industry-leading trackpad). The smaller pad on this system was pleasingly responsive, and the biggest problem was that the mouse buttons were made of cheap, shiny plastic. I did appreciate, however, that the touch pad has a handy on-off button right above it, in case you have a mouse plugged in and don’t want to accidentally hit the touch pad’s surface.

The display on the Z835 has the same 1,366×768-pixel native resolution as the vast majority of 11- to 15-inch laptops. That’s fine for a sub-$1,000 laptop, but some of the other thin 13-inch models offer more; the Asus Zenbook, for example, has a 1,600×900-pixel screen (and the MacBook Air is 1,440×900 pixels). Horizontal off-axis viewing was good, but the screen surface had a subtle uneven, rippled quality to it in the light; again, that’s something more easily forgiven at $799 than at $1,049.

The speakers, which fire from the front edge, got loud without distorting, but like nearly all speakers in laptops of this size, they lacked bottom end.

The Toshiba Portege Z835 has a decent selection of ports and connections, including USB 3.0 and an Ethernet jack, the latter of which is missing from some of the other ultrabooks. This more-expensive version adds Bluetooth, which we’d expect in a $1,000 laptop.

The previous model we reviewed, the Z835-P330, was a retail model sold at Best Buy. It used a slower Intel Core i3 processor to hit a very attractive $799 price. This version, the Z835-P370, has a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M CPU, which is the same chip found in many of the other ultrabooks we’ve tested.

Not surprisingly, its performance was nearly equal to systems such as the HP Folio 13. A similarly priced full-voltage midsize laptop, for example the Dell XPS 14z, was much quicker on the same tests, but the older Core i3 Z835-P330 was significantly slower. You’re definitely getting a major performance boost from this upgraded version of the Z835.

Tagcloud: 2012 Laptop Guide , 10 Lightest Laptops , laptop power , discount laptop batteries , toshiba pa3534u-1bas battery , dell xps m1330 battery

Portability has always been an essential part of personal computing, with ultrabooks and tablets making personal computing ever more mobile. For anyone computing on the go, weight is a big part of the portability equation. Whether you’re a student carrying your laptop around campus or a business user carrying it on your daily commute, a lighter laptop will make it easier for you to take your PC on the go.

Over the weeks and months that a laptop can be carried to and from work or school, even a half-pound difference can be a heavy load. The long-term effects of carrying a heavy laptop in a backpack or shoulder bag can include improper alignment of the shoulders and spine, pinched nerves in neck and shoulder, not to mention wearing you out every day of the week.

With every laptop we review in the PCMag Labs, there is a series of testing and measuring, gathering information on everything from processor performance to battery capacity. And it’s not all benchmark tests and specs, either. We also measure and weigh every unit we review, allowing us to compare on size, shape and weight. To help you lighten you load with a new laptop, we’ve combed back through our recent reviews to find the 10 lightest laptops to come across our test bench.

While these laptops and tablets may not represent the best in performance or battery life, they are undeniably the lightest in their category. If your chiropractic needs outweigh your desire for the fastest processor and longest stamina, these PCs will do more than meet you half way, offering decent (and sometimes excellent) performance in featherweight packages. Some of these dainty systems cut weight by minimizing the size of the battery, while others utilize lightweight metals and plastics to shed ounces and pounds.

FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP:

ULTRABOOKS

Keywords: Acer Aspire , series laptops ,  laptop feature updated styling , laptop hardware , acer laptop batteries , batteryshops , acer as07a41 battery , acer aspire one zg5 battery

In a few months you should start to see the first wave of new Acer Aspire V series laptop computers at your local computer shop.

The Aspire family will be gaining V series models that hit the 11.6-, 14-, 15.6-, and 17.3-inch categories. The new laptops will either fall under the Aspire V3 or Aspire V5 families. Between the V3 and V5 families the only difference that is really discernible sits with either systems design. The V3 laptops are designed less extravagantly than the V5 notebooks which resemble Ultrabooks.

Here is what the Aspire V3 laptops will look like:

And here is what you’ll get with the Aspire V5 laptops:

Without mentioning any prices I can guess that the more premiumly designed Aspire V5 will be more expensive than the V3 laptops. The Aspire V5 will be sold in 11.6-, 14-, and 15.6-inch form-factors and the V3 will be sold in 14-, 15.6-, and 17.3-inch form-factors.

Acer mentions they wanted to target the emerging thin and light laptop market with the Aspire V5′s, and they say the 11.6-inch model is only 15mm thick and the 14- and 15-inch models are 21 and sub-23mm thick each. As for the V3 laptops Acer aspire 5630 claims those are designed to be general purpose laptops, no width measurements have been given.

However features wise the Aspire V3 and V5 laptops don’t really differ that much from the few details that Acer has provided thus far. All the new V series laptops will come with Intel’s latest Core i processors, NVIDIA GeForce GT discrete graphics, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet LAN, stereo speakers, integrated webcams, chiclet keyboards and the latest Windows 7 software.

Acer has only revealed pricing plans for Europe at this time and according to the company customers over in Europe should expect prices to start at €499 for the Aspire V3 models and prices will start at €399 for the Aspire V5 models. Acer will launch the Aspire V3 and V5 laptops in the second quarter of this year (a few months from now). You should also know that the Aspire V3 laptops will launch with Black, Gold and Gray color options, and the V5 is going to be sold with Blue and Pink color options.

After trotting out some mobile fare at MWC, Acer hasn’t pulled in the reigns on its new product horse, announcing its new V5 notebook this morning at CeBIT. Yes, notebook. At 30 percent slimmer than the class it replaces, these are still trim machines. The 11.6-inch model is only 15mm thick, which is way into Ultrabook territory, while the 14- and 15-inch models land at 21 and sub-23mm respectively. It’s Intel on the inside, including Core i3 and Core i5 processors, with NVIDIA GeForce GT series on-board to handle graphics. Release is penciled in for Q2, and pricing is expected to range from €499 to €699 (about $650 to $920). If you’re in the market for something a bit less expensive but you’re into the V5′s design, you might take notice of the Aspire One netbook, which is set to use the same chassis but will ship with Intel Pentium and Celeron processors instead, with pricing estimated between €399 and €449 (about $525 to $590).

We went hands-on with a dummy model of the V5 at CeBIT, though the prototype we saw today may not be the exact design you’ll find in stores later this month. The 15.6-inch sample was very thin and relatively light, with a full-size chiclet keyboard and numberpad on the side. There’s a USB 3.0 port on the left-hand side, along with two standard USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI connector and proprietary Ethernet port. There’s also a pop-out optical drive on the right, though there’s no SD slot in sight. Overall, it’s a very nice design, but we’ll need to wait for the company to demo functional versions before we can pass judgement on performance. As always, you’ll find our video overview just past the break.

Put aside, for a moment, all the sturm und drang being generated (and to be generated) this week and month about the Apple iPad 3, including plenty of digital inches here on the ZDNet commentary site. March will also be an important month for the emerging ultrabook category, with the release of the Dell XP 13 notebook, which the company calls its most mobile Ultrabook laptop yet.

I am still extremely skeptical about the state of the ultrabook category, mainly because right now it is very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons about the various products being hawked under this name. Most consider the Apple MacBook Air to be the prototypical example of what the ultrabooks want to beat, but the notebook’s pricetag and that Apple logo on the outside of its case have made it a tough sell among some small and midsize businesses.

The Dell XPS 13 notebook is a well-built introduction to the ultrabook category, although some reviews have criticized its battery life. The computer boasts a 13.3-inch screen, and it weighs 2.99 pounds. The computer is designed to be less than one-quarter-inch thick at its thinnest point, and the price for the system starts at $999 depending on the innards you decide to specify, according to the Dell product specifications and information.

Dell’s entry into this category is by no means a surprise, since pretty much any vendor with a notebook or netbook offering has been falling all over itself to define its ultrabook offering.

Intel has staked a lot on the category, by creating what it believes to be guidelines around which the next generation of non-Apple ultrabooks should be based. But the problem with the category, for me, has been that there are many interpretations of what should be in a base package as well as many, many choices that aren’t quite ultrabooks but might be a really good choice of light notebook. Don’t get me wrong, innovation and variety are exactly what are needed in a nascent category like this one. But it means SMBs are pretty much on their own when it comes to figuring out whether or not ultrabooks are a worthwhile addition to their computer hardware mix.

Personally, I think that confusion should convince small businesses to proceed with caution when making an ultrabook investment, because the form factor is bound to change a great deal throughout the course of the next 12 months to 18 months.

Some recent data from a Zoomerang survey for Microsoft of 261 SMBs with less than 500 employees found that only 7 percent were using an ultrabook while 87 percent didn’t know how to to define the category. So, you are in good company if you feel confused.

Still, some analysts are pretty optimistic about the ultrabook category. A report released in late January by Juniper Research suggests that shipments of ultrabook laptops will grow at three times the rate of tablet computers between now and 2017. During that timeframe, approximately 178 million ultrabooks will be shipped, according to the Juniper Research projections.

If you are in the market for a new notebook this year and really can’t afford to wait around for the ultrabook category to become better defined, then here are are 6 factors you should examine really closely to decide if you should opt for what is officially designated as an ultrabook or whether a really thin notebook would do for your business needs. Intel points to these systems as current examples of the category, if you want a starting point of systems to consider. But here is what you should think about long and hard.

Power efficiency: One big hallmarks of Intel’s official ultrabook designation is the promise of “all day” battery life (about 10 hours). The reviews I’ve been reading about the Dell entry into the category peg its life at closer to five hours. The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s apparently gets about seven hours. I’d be thrilled with the latter, but the all day thing just isn’t there yet. To be fair, Intel offers a pretty big range “officially” of between five and eight hours.

Performance: The specification for the ultrabook form factor is the Intel Core i5 or i7 processor line, which is the same architecture that the Apple MacBook Air uses. You should actually be pretty well served in this regard.

The thinness factor: According to Intel, ultrabooks should be no more than 0.8 inches thick, so get out your ruler or you’ll just be buying a really thin and efficient notebook. Maybe this really doesn’t matter.

Weight: Ultrabooks are supposed to come in at less than 3.1 pounds, partly because they do away with optical drives and use solid state drives for all data storage needs. This weight might mean you have to sacrifice screen size, though.

Price: The magic number for Intel’s definition is $1,000, but the sort of high-end features you need for a small-business notebook computer won’t necessarily be available in that price range. Be prepared to spend closer to $1,300 (which is about the price of an Apple MacBook Air, ironically).

Integrated broadband wireless: You know and I know that this is a big deal. Wi-Fi support is pretty much a given and the extent to which your next notebook is a good potential wireless broadband citizen — with 3G or 4G capabilities — could be the make-or-break thing in the small-business decision making process. That is especially true not just because many small businesses are distributed and on-the-go but because they might not always have the wherewithal to invest in wireless network infrastructure. Definitely study the wireless connectivity options for your next notebook carefully.

Watching the life drain from your laptop when you’re on the move is stressful. Sure, there are extended and slice batteries for a variety of machines, and portable laptop battery packs are available from companies such as Duracell and Lind Electronics. But those options can mean carrying more bulk in a bag already bogged down with cords, files and accessories. One surefire way to preserve the battery you do have is to follow these 11 tips.

1. Prevent scheduled tasks from running on battery power.

Your virus scanner and disk defragmenter, along with auto updates from the likes of Apple and Google, are scheduled to run themselves on a regular basis—often without your knowledge or consent. Set these tasks to run only on AC power so they don’t eat up precious juice running your hard drive, CPU and wireless while you’re unplugged.

• Select Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler in the Control Panel.
• Select Task Scheduler (Local) in the left window pane.

High quality Toshiba satellite a100 Battery , 4400mAh , 10.8V , only: AU $ 54.68

Brand new HP pavilion dv7 laptop batteries , 4400mAh , 14.8V , only: AU $ 64.89

2. Turn off backlit keyboards.

If your notebook has a backlit keyboard, it will certainly help you see keys in a dark room, but it’s also sucking juice out of your battery. You’ll save some power by turning off that light. Every notebook has its own way of enabling or disabling its keyboard backlight, but the method usually involves hitting a Function key on the top row of the keyboard.

3. Turn on High-Contrast mode.

The LED-backlit screens used on most modern notebooks expend less energy displaying black pixels than those showing colors. Setting your computer to show white and yellow text on a black background can improve battery life and even make text more readable when sunlight is hitting your screen.

To enable High-Contrast mode in Windows 7, simply hit the key combination Left Shift + Left Alt + Print Screen and click Yes when asked to confirm. You can turn off High-Contrast mode by hitting the same combo.

High-Contrast mode will affect your desktop and most Windows programs, including the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox. However, if you use the Chrome browser, you will need to install the Change Colors extension, which is available for free from the Chrome Web Store. Once the extension is installed, it will show an icon in the right side of your address bar. Click that icon and select “Apply override on all pages” to enable high-contrast mode.

4. Close messaging software and apps that ping the Internet in the background.

While you’re surfing the Web, checking email or watching a movie, messaging apps such as Google Talk and Skype are hitting the Internet constantly, just to see which of your contacts are online and whether you’ve received any messages. Automatic updating apps from the likes of Adobe, Apple and Google may also be pinging the Internet to see if there are updates to your copies of Adobe Reader, Chrome browser or iTunes. To stop these silent power vampires before they start, prevent them from loading at boot time.

To see and disable programs from starting when your computer starts:

• Type msconfig into the Start Menu text field, and click msconfig.
• Select the Startup tab.
• Uncheck messaging programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, Gtalk and Skype. You can always launch them manually if you want to use them.
• Uncheck autoupdaters such as Adobe Update, Apple Update, Google Update and Java Autoupdater.
• Click OK.

5. Hibernate instead of sleep.

When you close the lid on your notebook and put it to sleep, the computer is still sending some power to the RAM and motherboard in order to keep the current session in memory so your system can wake quickly. Some newer lightweight notebooks such as the ASUS ZenBook UX31 have been designed to use little power during sleep, but most notebooks suck down quite a bit of juice unless they’re completely powered off.

In Hibernate mode, your notebook will save its memory to disk and completely power off, rather than just going to sleep. It will take nearly as long to wake from hibernation as it does to boot, but once it wakes, your session will be right where you left it.

To make your computer hibernate on demand, simply click the arrow next to the Shutdown button and select Hibernate. If you do not see Hibernate available as an option, your computer does not support this mode.

If your computer supports hibernation, you may want to set it to hibernate every time you close the lid.

To set your notebook to hibernate upon lid close:

• Type Lid into the Start menu text field.
• Click “Change what closing the lid does.”
• Select Hibernate from the “When I close the lid” menu under On Battery.
• Click Save Changes.

6. Turn off Wi-Fi when not in use.

If you’re connected to the Internet via Ethernet, or if you’re working some place that has no wireless signal, you can save a lot of power by turning off your notebook’s Wi-Fi radio. Most notebooks have a Function key on the top of the keyboard that toggles Wi-Fi on or off, though some have a dedicated button or switch.

7. Minimize hard drive usage.

If your notebook has a 5,400- or 7,200-rpm hard drive, it’s sucking up a lot of juice just spinning that magnetic platter around. There are several ways to save power by minimizing disk activity.

• Defragment your hard drive on a regular basis. If you run Windows 7’s Disk Defragmenter program every couple of weeks, your drive will spend less time spinning around looking for data.
• Replace your hard drive with an SSD. Because they have no moving parts, SSDs use less power than hard drives. They also don’t need to be defragmented.
• Add more RAM. Going from 2 to 4GB or 4 to 8GB of RAM should allow your computer to use less virtual memory and more physical memory, which means fewer hard drive accesses.

If tablets are going to live up to their hype and truly conquer the laptop, then they have a few hurdles to overcome first. As anyone who has tried to write anything substantial on a tablet will know, it’s a pain to say the least. Having to continuously look up to make sure what you have just pressed has been registered by the touchscreen, ruins any chance of building up typing momentum; and results in you losing your trail of thought immediately. Not ideal.

This is where the ZAGGfolio comes into play. To put it simply it’s a small keyboard. Yes, it does other things too, but, it’s primary function is to make the painful task of typing on a tablet…well…not painful. And credit given where credit’s due, the ZAGGfolio makes typing on tablets a hell of a lot less painful. I can feel the stress subsiding with every key pressed, ahhhhhh.

The keyboard works with the tablet via Bluetooth and it’s pretty receptive too; very close to the real thing in fact. The only time you’ll notice a delay is when you hold down the delete button too long when editing text. This has happened a couple of times already while writing this review – lucky there is a handy undo button on the tablet, which has saved my bacon a couple of times! The battery life for the Bluetooth keyboard is seriously impressive, If you use it semi regularly, then you’ll only need to charge it once every several months!!! All-in-all it’s a million times better than having to type on a tablet’s touchscreen.

Design-wise the keyboard does remarkably well too. It boasts a Qwerty keyboard – specifically designed to match the Galaxy Tab’s  keys – and somehow, it doesn’t feel too squashed. This is an achievement-and-a-half as it is all squashed into space the same size as the tablet itself. It’s so good in fact that you have to keep reminding yourself that your not working on a laptop and not all of your keyboard shortcuts don’t work on your tablet. That’s really all we can say about the keyboard, “it works pretty well”.

The rest of the ZAGGfolio’s design however isn’t quite as good. Yes, it has a clever folding stand, all the holes in the right places, and everything is as it should be, but as a whole it doesn’t feel cool and that’s a problem as that’s one of a tablet’s major selling points. For example, the great thing about the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1  is how thin and lightweight it is – it’s probably the one thing it has over the iPad! All of that is immediately lost when you slot it into that ZAGGfolio; it changes from a cool and plucky tablet into a pretty lame laptop!

Charging your tablet while it’s in the the Zagg case is a no-go too and trying to pry your tablet out of the Zagg shell takes a slightly more effort than one has become use to with 21st century gadgets. That said the screen stand is nifty and I’d rather go into battle with the ZAGGfolio for Smashing Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my Arsenal than without it.

Tagcloud: Tablets , Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 , samsung tablets , batteries , Lenovo 3000 v100 , Hp probook 4310s , Dell xps m1330 batteries

Keywords: Tablets , Consumerization ,  Mobile Document Management , Dell vostro 1520 battery , Sony NP-FF50 battery , Bell btp-cibp battery

A company may introduce a new product with intentions for its use but it can easily morph into something else, on its own and unintended. Such is the case with tablets, which were meant for the consumer but are becoming increasingly popular in business, particularly for field sales force staff.

Tablets are supposed to be content consumption devices, and by and large have remained so, but there is also increasing use as document management devices in business, both for creation and consumption.

Tech Populism

Tablets have entered the workforce the same way MacBooks and iPhones have displaced PC notebooks and BlackBerrys: people brought their favorite hardware to work, says Craig Le Clare, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research.

“One of the biggest concerns is tech populism, trying to keep control of the technology being brought into the workforce,” he said. “Field people, sales people, have been the first to use intelligent devices, so I’m not surprised at this movement at all. It’s been a grass roots push, so there’s no surprise at all it’s being adopted.”

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011 held in Australia in late November, Gartner Vice President David Willis talked about how business applications in commercial app stores were originally focused on inexpensive personal productivity tools, but now major software vendors are “taking the tablet seriously and embracing the market, following where users want to take the platform.”

Willis posited a Top 10 list of commercial business application categories for tablets, such as sales automation systems for customer collateral, sales presentations and ordering systems, Business Intelligence, and collaboration applications for meetings.

Mobile Document Management

“People mostly consume data but they also create content. There are different ways and scenarios that you create content. We’re not trying to bring full-fledged, full-featured Photoshop to the tablet, but Adobe has released editing software for tablets to edit and share, but it’s a slightly different scenario,” said Eran Aloni, director of product management at Adobe Systems.

One of Adobe’s enterprise solutions is EchoSign, a secure document exchange product for iOS that can be used to transmit a legal document to an iPad, obtain a person’s signature (using their finger in lieu of a pen) and all the while protecting the document. Documents can be legally signed with an eSignature immediately rather than sending the paper documents back and forth.

Another vendor in the business is WatchDox, which specializes in secure documents on the iPad. It creates a secure connection between the iPad and server, and the document can’t be dumped to a printer or screen grab, you can’t even take a picture of the iPad screen. The lighting of the app will obfuscate any attempts to photograph the image, according to Ryan Kalember, vice president of strategy and CMO for the company.

“Our mission is to make documents available on anywhere, and also make them secure and controlled on any device, anywhere. We do a lot of work to secure it on the back end to secure it. Users can’t copy files or forward them, but they can make adaptations for their own use or collaborate only with authorized parties,” he said.

Among the uses for WatchDox: Hollywood studios use it for sending out in production that are not finalized yet, while airlines use them to transfer flight plans safely and securely to the plane.

The challenge these companies look to address is that the iPad is still pretty new and has a lot of maturation to do before it’s a secure and viable product for protecting data at the end point.

“I think the bigger issue is not the security at the front end but integration with the back end systems,” said Le Clare. “To me that’s the bigger issue, that you’ve got to build an architecture to support mobility to support the context of whatever it s you are doing.” Replacement  Hp presario cq70 Battery , Li-ion , 4400mAh , 10.8V , only: £ 30.66

Old CRM too Slow

He said the ERP and CRM vendors have been too slow to respond to this brave new world of tablets, given the slower movement in their traditional businesses. “The development process in the old world in ERP was typical waterfall, yearly releases. In the mobile world, it’s agile development, it’s weekly or quarterly updates. So [the old guard] is not keeping ahead with this racing consumer tech.”

Kalember agrees. “There was nothing there to work with. We had to build everything. Information security has gotten away from protecting the data itself. DRM and public key infrastructure were never good from a user experience perspective, so they said we’ll protect everything around the content.”

Aloni agrees the tablet is still in the early stages. “There are decades of infrastructure that was built for desktop or standard computing we are used to using. Tablets are still new. The landscape is not set. That’s what makes it a huge opportunity, because if you have the right concept and can innovate you can have a solution that is unique and get traction and set the pace for the market,” he said.

But he adds that tablets are not the same as PCs and the experience should be viewed differently. “You could take your desktop user experience and put it on a mobile device, but I think the experience people expect is different. So you have to rethink the way you interact with users. In some ways it’s kind of interesting because you are going back to basics,” he said.

Even back in the days when netbooks where the next hot piece of technology, there was a lot of debate whether bigger than 10 inch mini laptops are actually called netbooks or not. Back them I decided to call 11.6+ inch devices budget ultra-portables, and with that in mind, today we’re going to talk about such a computer: the Asus EEE PC 1225C.

This is a close relative to the Asus EEE PC 1225B we tested a couple of weeks ago, but while that one came with AMD hardware, this one is built on Intel’s CedarTrail Atom. It’s in fact the same platform you’ll find on smaller 10 inch netbooks these days, that’s why we could say the 1025C is a “bigger netbook”.

In this post we’re going to take just a quick look at the laptop, as I unbox it (there’s a video bellow) and share some of my first impressions on it. Of course, since this laptop is not yet available in stores, we’re dealing with a pre-production sample, thus some of the final features might be slightly different. And, knowing Asus, they will offer different configurations based on your country, so the 1225C you might find at your local Best Buy (or whatever) might not be 100% identical to the one here.

Anyway, let’s see what we’re dealing with here. The 1225C is an 11.6 inch budget ultra-portable, part of the new Asus EEE PC Flare line. It looks identical to the 1225B I tested before, with some exceptions: the test unit I got comes in Black and offers a glossy finish for the lid cover. A plastic glossy finish, the kind that catches fingerprints and smudges like crazy. On a first look though, the plastic feels like it’s somewhat treated against scratches, it feels more metallic than the plastic on the old Asus EEE PCs used to feel (like on the 1215N, if you remember that one), but this might be just a mirage.

The bottom is covered in that textured plastic we knew from the Asus 12xx series before and the sides come with chromed edges, a trademark of the EEE PC Flare line.

Opening the lid, you get the black metal interior, a full-size keyboard and a glossy screen. My unit get’s the US keyboard layout, with the bigger left SHIFT, but you still get that extra column of keys in the right, which I for one resent. The trackpad is not the one I saw on the 1225B, but an over sized version of the trackpad present on the 1025C/1025CE Flare lines: that means that it has a physical click button, but we’ll have to wait and see how good the touchpad and the button are during everyday use. I’ll let you know in my review.

Inside, this test unit of mine comes with an Intel Atom N2600 processor, 2 GB of RAM, 320 GB HDD and Windows 7 Home Premium, but to be frank, I’m surprised Asus din not squeeze at least a faster N2800 processor in there. I mean, they put the N2600 on their cheapest laptops , the X101CH, they could have put something better here as I’m pretty sure this one is not going to cut it, performance wise. We’ll see.

All in all, I knew the 1025C was going to be an underpowered mini laptop and I don’t dig the glossy hood and display. However, I was actually expecting it to be cheap, but based on what I know right now, I was wrong. The 1225C is expected to land in my country by late March and it’s only going to be about $30 cheaper than the 1225B (the equivalent of $30 here). That would lead to a price tag of $400 -$420 when it reaches the States, and while having that Atom platform inside will ensure long battery life (once again, we’ll see if this proves true or not), I doubt many will turn towards this unit, when for only a bit of extra cash you can get the faster, matte and overall better unit, the Asus 1225B.

But look for the review, it should come by late next week, and by then I’ll be able to tell you more about this Asus EEE PC 1225C.

Tagcloud: Netbooks Review , Asus EEE PC 1225C , Asus laptop , laptop batteries , Dell inspiron 1720 batteries , Acer as07b71 batteries , Hp hstnn-db42 batteries

Oh RIM, where art thou? A new Forrester Research report notes that Apple, Google and Microsoft will command the lion’s share of smartphones and tablets. The evolving mobile market will also require CIOs to appoint a chief mobility officer.

Among the many pearls of wisdom from Forrester Research’s new report on the impact of mobile technologies in the business world, is the notion that Apple , Google and Microsoft will provide the software platforms for more than 90 percent of smartphones and tablets worldwide.

That leaves little room for enterprise mobility stalwart Research In Motion , whose declining market share and decaying brand have made it both the target of sour jokes and the recipient of hushed condolences.

If there is a light in RIM’s dark sky, it’s that some 1 billion consumers will have smartphones by 2016, including 350 million corporate workers, 200 million of which will bring their own personal smartphones into the workplace for professional communications.

That goes for tablets, too, according to Forrester analysts Ted Schadler and John McCarthy, who co-authored the report “Mobile Is the New Face of Engagement.” The analysts culled their data from talking to 3,534 CIOs, IT managers and other corporate managers around the world.

“Smartphones and tablets are valuable enough at work that employees will buy their own,” Schadler and McCarthy wrote. “Today, employees pay for more than half of the devices and data plans used for work across every region. The same is true for tablets: Employees pay for 70 percent of the tablets used for work.”

Yet, surely, not all of Forrester’s massive addressable mobile market will be filled by iPhones, iPads, Android machines, or Windows Phone handsets and slates. This means the BlackBerry, still entrenched in many large businesses worldwide, has a legitimate shot to bounce back from its dead period.

Still, this poses quite the quandary for the chief information officers in large enterprises worldwide. Should businesses stick with RIM, whose new CEO Thorsten Heins had vowed to stay the course and compete with the iPhones and Droids with phones based on the BlackBerry 10 operating system?

Or should CIOs throw open the doors to the so-called bring-your-own-device policies that are increasingly prevalent among companies? This has already happened in certain, limited instances.

For example, Fender, which fancies itself a progressive enabler of new technologies, encourages employees to bring their iPhones and Android handsets into the workplace.

These are things technology purchasers must consider. Of course, the hardware is still the shell in which greater things are conceived.

Forrester anticipates business workers will use context-aware apps and smart products. Corporate road warriors will check status, find knowledge experts, make purchases and conduct other communications from smartphones leveraging location-based services.

In one practical example from Forrester, a system of engagement presented on a smartphone will know that a guest has entered the lobby for the first time and if he or she is likely to check in.

By using GPS or location context from the device, the hotel guest system will know that “when you enter your room, the app should default to the concierge and room service tabs, thus providing immediate access to these hospitality services.”

To that end, Forrester said CIOs must go so far as to create a new position called CMO, with the “M” standing for “mobility” instead of “marketing.”

The CMO will design applications and policies around mobile technologies first, fueling “profitable growth with stickier offerings and mobile self-service.”

Tagcloud: Apple, Google, Microsoft , Smartphones, Tablets , Dell d620 battery , Canon LP-E6 battery , Bell btp-cibp battery