HP

Important c-Class Blade Enclosure Updates inc. iLO Updates

A PC-free Printer

HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web can connect to the Internet and print movies tickets, pictures, and pretty much anything else you can pull up on its web based OS. You will also be able to print from any blue-tooth enabled device and iPhone. The printer is expected to ship in September and be about 399 USD. Check out the full story here.

CloudPrint from HP, for the BlackBerry

Well here is what I was talking about, CloudPrint is an HP designed solution that allows any blackberry user the ability to print to any printer without a driver, it will be available to BIS and BES customers, as long as they have WIFI or a data plan.

Read the full story at Eweek.com

I was pretty sure i was going to get a Palm Pre, but, since I was able to try out a Curve 8900, its speed, and useability… well lets just say I may pick one up…

EPIC Technology Day!

EPIC Tech day is coming up. Its an all day conference showcasing many companies from many different technical areas, like HP, Cisco, Watchguard, and of course VMware! Best of all its free, so if you find yourself in the area drop by and ask for me, just mention my blog and I’ll take care of you.

Please check the posted schedule regularly for updates, additions and other changes.

Victoria Inn
1808 Wellington Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba
 

Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Time: 7:30:00 AM - 6:00:00 PM

Register for EPIC Technology Day - Winnipeg April 2009

Click here to view the current schedule.

Boston-Power Sonata Green Super-Battery

I wanted to post a follow up on Boston Power from a previous post I made, you can check that out here.

I stated that HP would be the first to utilize this new technology, and guess what, they have been named one of the Top 50 companies on “Going Green East” Boston-Power fell under the category of “Energy Storage Systems” Full story here.

The “Going Green East” Top 50 will be honored on March 10th, 2009 in Boston, MA.

I would also like to mention the fact that HP will charging a premium of 20-30 USD on the new batteries, well worth the cost considering these new batteries will be able to handle 1000 cycles before starting to loose life(current Li-on batteries are about 300 cycles).

I know im a bit late with this last bit of info, but Boston-Power has since tripled production of its laptop battery, and on February 24th Boston-Power expanded mass production of its Sonata rechargeable batteries through a 5 year partnership with GP Batteries from China. GP Batteries is the top consumer battery manufacturer in Greater China. Full Story here.

It would be interesting once Net-books start to ship with these new green batteries. Ill keep my eyes on it and report back here.

NS

Excel Printing out Duplicates

 Well here’s a good one for you, and I hope that this helps someone if they run into the same issue. Two PC’s both have the same printer, and both have the exact same drivers. The printer was an HP LaserJet 1320. The issues was that Excel would print out duplicate copies of everything. Running Excel in safe mode, resulted in the same issue, duplicates. One would think that renaming book.xlt may fix the issue as it may be an underlying setting in the workbook, but that wasn’t the issue either as one did not exist on either PC.

The next step was to go after the printers. Now here is the kicker… the old printer was a USB Printer shared to other PC’s, thus the printer would show up as “HP LJ 1320 on pcname” but the port was a TCP/IP Port pointing to 192.168.1.25. What I ended up doing was wiping the printer out completely, and installing from scratch, using the existing port. After doing that excel printing was fine.

I guess the moral of this story is if you having printing issues with Excel, check to see if it is Excel causing the issues, running Excel in safe mode* will give you a temporary clean slate  to work with. If Printing issues persist, check the workbook file(book.xlt), just search for it under program files. Lastly for duplicate print-outs in Excel… wipe out and re-add the printer. More troubleshooting tips can be found here on the official Microsoft “How to troubleshoot startup problems in Excel” KB article 280504

NS

* click on start – run – then type “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe” /s (change this based on the location of your installation)

NetBooks What are they good for?

I’ve been following Netbooks closely, not too close, but close enough

Jenny, yes our Jenny, asked me a couple notable questions. Answering that question will inform people that there are options out there to make the Netbook experience a joyful one.

“I enjoyed your coverage on Netbooks earlier in the month; did you end up getting one? I’ve been considering one myself, but I’m concerned about the memory and whether it will run smoothly enough. Where do you think netbooks perform the best (under what types of work situations)?”

First off, Netbooks i think are a great idea for a travel bug. They are small enough and just as powerful as some notebooks people are using out in the world. I like to travel quite a bit, and the Netbook bug has bit me, although I am very stubborn when it comes to purchasing “toys” Now your average Netbook will come with a 1.6 or 1.66Ghz Processor, remember the N280 chips are coming out full force, make sure you get a Netbook with at least the 1.66Ghz N280 chipset. Its not really the clock speed that makes a difference its the 134Mhz jump in the FSB. 1GB DDR2 SDRAM and 8GB are the norm for the baseline models. These will work well if you just check your hotmail, webmail, or gmail. But are also powerful enough to play streaming movies, music, iTunes, winamp, internet, and even have a webcam built in. If your the kind of person who does those kind of things then the base model is a great starter Netbook. Only caveat is the SSD HDD is only 8GB once the OS is in there, you loose 30-40% depending if you got Windows XP or Vista.

If you’re like me, well then we cant go with the base model… we need to amp it up a bit…

The HP Mini 1000 XP Edition Netbooks comes with the Intel Atom N70 Processor, but has a 60GB HDD… lots of storage for the avid traveller, but its limited to 1GB Memory, not so good…. The HP Mini Mi Edition lets you install up to 2GB memory, although it runs “HP Mobile Internet” built in Linux(not exactly mainstream)

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is about the same specs although you can only go up to a 16GB SSD Drive, and the camera isn’t standard. There is an option to add bluetooth, I personally have no need for bluetooth. The Dell Mini 12 comes with either the Z520 or Z530 Processor. The hyperlink will take you to Intel’s page, which shows you all the Atom Processors and their differences. The Mini 12 also has the option for either a 40GB or 60GB HDD (4200rpm) for 30$ more then the 60GB HDD you can get an extra 20GB to bump you up to 80GB of space.

Acer has a model that comes with 160GB HDD and up to 1.5GB of memory.

And last but not least, my pic of the crop, ASUS, their N10J model, comes with the N270 Processor, 1GB DDR2 memory, up to 2GB max, a 160GB 5200RPM SATA Drive(up to 320GB), a built-in 1.3Mega Pixel Camera, integrated 802.11a/b/g/n(the only one in this blog to come with draft-n wireless technology), 6-in-1 card reader, VGA/DHDMI, HD Audio and microphone, all this jammed into a 10.2” screen Netbook. And yes you are correct, i know what your thinking, “Wow this isn’t going to be cheap…” its not, its about 1,000CDN

My honest opinion is that if you haven’t bought a Netbook wait for the N280 Atom chip, with its accompanying GN40 chipset, that’s when you’ll see a real multimedia boost. ASUS, Acer and Gigabyte are all expected to announce new Netbooks using the Atom N280 in the first half of 2009, HP and Dell to follow closely behind.

Remember that you could always go out and buy yourself a 2.5” SSD Drive. Just make sure you get a high performance one. The fact that SSD has 0 seek time, would greatly improve the usability of Netbooks. As always they come with a  price… and I would LOVE to get my hands on one of these for my future Netbook… a 256GB SSD Drive with an amazing 200MB/s data read rate, click here

Well i think I have blogged just about enough for tonight… Let me know how your Netbook experience goes!

NS

HP Dat 72 USB Internal Tape Drive

I had a tape drive at a client slowly die, I was running Symantec Backup Exec 12d. I spent an hour or so troubleshooting and ended up calling HP tech support and they decided to replace the tape drive, soon after, the replacement tape drive died…. it was in there for about one week. I tried everything. I was using HP Tape Tools for Windows. I updated the firmware for the tape drive and this didn’t help. I updated the drivers and it didn’t help. Diagnostics was pointing to the tape drive needing a cleaning(this was after many diagnostic runs), although the drive is a week old. I didn’t believe HP when they said we needed a cleaning tape. Why would a tape drive work, but slowly? it was much faster with compression, but always would come back with a CRC error. In the end, I ordered two cleaning tapes, a few days later, I went onsite and ran the cleaning tape… to my surprise this seemed to fix the issue…. my question to HP is, “Why wasn’t this drive quality tested?” Another question is, “Why doesn’t a drive that requires cleaning monthly, ship with a cleaning tape?!!?”

Half ranting, half informative… If I save just one person hours of troubleshooting, then my job is done…

NS

Netbooks are getting bigger!

Intel wanted to keep Netbooks at 10″ or less, Dell and Samsung are now each releasing 12″ netbooks. What does this mean? Well its one less reason to not buy a more expensive dual core laptop(which Intel sells at higher prices and higher margins.) Intel is not happy about this, they say that netbooks are to be used as personal devices for short periods of time, not for full out day to day use. I tend to agree with Intel, I wouldn’t use a netbook for work, I would definitely use it on a plane, or while on vacation, mainly for music, maybe a movie or two! But you still cannot beat a Dual-Core Laptop for mainstream use. Netbooks are here to stay and I am really thinking of picking one up!

Here is a link to the Dell Mini 12, and then the HP Mini 1000XP (Mind you the HP isn’t a 12″ Netbook, I haven’t heard anything about a 12″ version as of yet.) Another interesting release by HP is the Netbook 2140 pricing starts at $499 and goes up to $629 for a premium model that hosts a 160GB, 7200-rpm hard-disk drive and a beefed up display panel(1366×768). The Mini 2140 is built to last with its aluminum lid and hardened case.

Samsung has yet to announce their 12″ Netbook (NC20) based on Via’s Nano Processor at CES 2009

HP to use “Green Super Batteries”

Boston Power Inc created these lithium ion batteries, apparently what they do is act like new for up to 3 years. That and they will charge to full capacity in 30 minutes while delivering longer, on average, run-times. The batteries will provide 4.4 amps per hour as apposed to 2.6 amps from the standard lithium ion batteries. These batteries will be manufactured to be backwards compatible with all pre-existing notebooks and laptops. HP has also stated that using an optional ultra-capacity battery in its EliteBook will net you a run-time of up to 24 hours without needing a charge!

If people pickup these batteries it will help out the green movement just because people wont be replacing batteries as often.

You will start to see these batteries on the market in the next little while.

NS