Graves On SOHO Technology

CompuLab Strikes Again; Intense PC Looks Sweet!

CompuLab, the company that brought us the Fit-PC series have a special place in my heart. Their little super-small-form-factor PCs hold an attractive quality that’s hard to describe.

I rather impulsively bought a Fit-PC2 even though I really didn’t have any need for it. The little 4″ square box is actually mounted on a VESA bracket on the back of an LCD monitor. It essentially turns that monitor into a net-top.

As cute and appealing as they were, a Fit-PC was never going to be my primary desktop. Sporting an Intel Atom running at 1.1 GHz they just didn’t have the CPU power to fill that role. However, that may be changing. The introduction of their latest offering, Intense PC, might make a viable replacement for my ailing desktop.

Review: Zelher P20 Bluetooth Headset

May 9, 2012
Michael Graves
mobile

Zelher P20 BT Headset 200 Some time ago I made it clear that I actually prefer a headset with a boom mounted microphone. The Etymotic ETY.COM is an example of such a device, as is the now defunct Plantronics .Audio 615m. It’s also true that the current trend in Bluetooth wireless headsets leans towards designs that are much less conspicuous.

Some months back I became aware of Zelher, a small company that offer a pair of what appeared to be very interesting Bluetooth headsets. I emailed the company inquiring about the products, specifically whether they supported HDVoice. Their response indicated that the company was going to offer a stereo headset for music use later in the year, but said nothing about support for wideband voice in the existing products.

I looked on Amazon to see that the Zelher P20 listed at $99, but was typically offered for around $60. At that price I wasn’t about to buy one just to satisfy my curiosity. A few weeks later I found the P20 offered by a daily deals web site for just $40. That was a bit more tempting.

Guessing Game: What’s the single most useful widget in my shoulder bag?

Ever the road warrior I carry a lot of stuff in my laptop bag. There’s usually my company issued laptop, it’s power supply, a portable hard drive, some USB memory sticks. All the usual stuff.

What do you think would be the single most useful item that lives there all the time?

Goes ahead give it a guess.

Another Hard Drive Bytes The Dust, But Is It A Momentus Moment?

April 26, 2012
Michael Graves
Computing

HP dc5750 desktop If I may take a moment to anthropomorphize…hard drives are not immortal. I was reminded of this very fact when overnight on April 11th a drive in my primary desktop failed.

Given that I was just one day away from my making annual forced trek to Las Vegas for the NAB Convention, and the fact that our income tax return was on that media, it certainly could have been a a problem. However, it wasn’t a catastrophe. Not at all.

The two computers that Stella and I use as our primary desktops sport internal RAID 1 disk arrays. Both desktops came that way. In fact, that was part of their appeal. I was concerned that Stella would have a drive fail one day when I was travelling. Such a failure at an inopportune moment would surely heap calamity upon my very existence.

These desktops are now getting older. Last fall Stella’s system did lose a disk. She told me about the event, advising that she received a desktop prompt noting that “Logical Drive 1 had become critical.” I said not to worry, if it was still running it wasn’t being critical of anything she had done. All would be well until I resolved the trouble.

Dave Michels Asks: The Desk Phone – Friend or Foe?

March 31, 2012
Michael Graves
Uncategorized

panasonics_ucm Now that Enterprise Connect 2012 has concluded Dave Michels poses a recurring question; The DeskPhone – Friend or Foe? Dave adds his observations of who makes the argument for the demise of the desk phone, noting quite correctly that each has their own horse in that race.

I find that the future of the desk phone should be considered in an application context. Soft phones are more appropriate in some roles than others. For example, in a call center soft phones are a compelling solution, saving money and adding flexibility in integration with call handling systems. Not that such integration is beyond the scope of hard phones, but it costs more in where hard phones are involved.

Every company will bring different sensibilities to such considerations. In the case of what I consider to be my beat, the home office, it may come down to personal preference. Myself I still generally prefer to use a desk phone, and being that I only need one or two, I don’t see any merit in buying cheap hardware.

Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport Delivers Power to The People

Back in January I made a trip to Fresno where I found that the newly renovated airport took a decidedly 1980’s approach to publicly available AC power. That is, they basically didn’t provide any beyond the occasional outlet to allow someone to polish the floors.

A recent trip to Knoxville TN presents a splendid contrast. Arriving at Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson airport I found a new-ish facility that had taken a more enlightened approach to providing travelers with power for their gadgetry…they had built it into otherwise normal seating.