End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Video Conferencing & Volcanic Ash

The volcanic eruption in Iceland, and its associated ash cloud, has certainly been a major topic of discussion this past week. My brother and his wife were caught in France on vacation. Their two week skiing vacation has become three weeks, quite unexpectedly.

Further, while we were focused on the NAB convention in Las Vegas three of my UK-based associates ended up extending their stay in the US by over a week, unable to get flights home. I suspect that I’m not the only one wishing that we had pushed forward with our plans to install room type video conference systems in Cambridge and Burbank. Those systems would certainly have been very handy this week.

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Gigaset’s New DX600A Small Business Phone

Earlier this month Gigaset launched the DX600A, a new model of desk phone targeting the small business and home office. In North America this went largely unnoticed as the DX600A is currently only available in Europe, and specifically in an ISDN capable model.

Since ISDN lines are extremely uncommon in North America the DX600A in its present form doesn’t apply to that market. However, I’m told that there’s a chance that a SIP capable version of the device could be introduced in the US if there are signs of demand. On that basis I think that the DX600A is worth a closer look.

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The HP Mini Twins

I've been toying with my new HP Mini 5102 for a couple of days. It'll take a little longer before I can get into the details of it, but it's a nice little machine. Here's a pic of the Mini…

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One Week Using Clear 4G In Las Vegas

I spent last week in Las Vegas working through the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention. This was my 18th NAB convention. It’s my one annual trek to the desert.

This time I took advantage of the time in Las Vegas to try Clear‘s newly launched 4G network. Fellow VoIP blogger Andy Abramson connected me with people at Cheetah Wireless, a Clear reseller, who offered a special price on the short term rental of a 3G/4G USB dongle. Since recently launched 4G service in Houston I was especially interested to see how it differed from the 3G service that I’ve had via the Sprint Mifi these past months.

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Simple, Economical Ways to Refresh An Old Laptop

My primary laptop is an HP 8510w. It’s about thirty months old..and I don’t yet hate it…which is a sure sign that it was truly a nice machine when I first got it. This was my second HP laptop after a long history of using Dell models. Given any choice at all I won’t ever go back to Dell.

Under normal circumstances my employer would agree to replace the machine after three years (36 months) use. Some companies, like Exxon-Mobile where my brother-in-law works, would push that out to 48 months. When a laptop gets to be four years old it’s usually very slow & compared to current technology. It becomes a source of frustration. At least for my activities, which are graphics heavy, there’s a very real argument for a 36 month upgrade cycle.

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Amazon: You Got Some ‘Splaining To Do

Over the past week friend and VUC regular contributor Fred Posner has been suffering a SIP attack from someone using the Amazon EC2 cloud. Fred’s more than just a  friend, he’s a well established small businessman and an upstanding member of the Asterisk user community.

On his VoIP Tech Chat blog Fred has documented with outstanding clarity his attempts to report the attack that he has suffered this past week, and Amazon’s rather limited response. My opinion is that Fred has done exactly as he should in his efforts to report the attack. It’s Amazon’s response that has fallen short.

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