Dell’s website has them available for sale now, and at least under the premier site, the prices are outstanding. Now if I had a few dollars to rub together I’d go buy one. My XPS M1210 is over a year and a half old, and my D610 is over 3 years old, so I’m pining for an upgrade. I should have my hands on one within a couple months thanks to the company I work for.

The biggest problem for me with MultiTouch on the desktop is that if we’re going to use a touchscreen monitor then we’re going to smear it all up with fingerprints. I clean my LCD screens constantly, and having to touch it or having other people touch it or their own screens is going to drive me crazy. Now, maybe the touchpad on a laptop with MultiTouch will be useful, but right now who is to say. Certainly I enjoy the scrolling features of my Synaptics add-on software. I also use the middle button click up in the upper left hand corner. It allows me to open browser windows in new tabs, for example. I’m not sure exactly how much multitouch is going to buy me though - and the transition period is going to be annoying. I already get frustrated when I sit down with someone else’s laptop and they don’t have scrolling areas defined. If I’m used to other features then I’m going to get frustrated more when they are not there.

Some people think that this sort of technology will have to take off or the next Windows will fail and end Microsoft’s dominance. I don’t see that we’re anywhere near seeing the end of Microsoft’s dominance. Sure, Microsoft may lose home owners or college students, and has been doing so for some time, but Apple still doesn’t seem ready to pick up the slack, and even if they did there is a huge amount of business software written for the PC that would need to be modified to work on an Intel Mac.

This is a call to action for businesses though - start planning now to produce your next applications for the web. If you need to create a timesheet application, ERP, trouble ticket system, help desk management software, you name it - it can probably be done on the web rather than as a client application. You’re extending your ability to adapt to the times.

I think that one of Microsoft’s biggest mistakes on the Windows 7 front is releasing it in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants. It is hard to find a desktop or laptop that doesn’t come with 64-bit capability anymore, so why are we so stuck on providing 32-bit operating systems. If Microsoft could take the break away from 32-bit then we could also get past the 3GB RAM barrier that is plaguing hardware manufacturers. If Windows 7 only came in 64-bit then we might actually encourage software developers to take advantage of 64 bit rather than do things in compatibility mode. I think it is inevitable anyway - the 32 bit only processor is already a thing of the past, and every other operating system seems to be taking advantage of that.

Again, the strength of these platforms in the business environment is a somewhat unknown factor. If we can get a VPN and remote desktop working though, and I see no reason why we’d have a problem, they would make excellent road warrior companions. At much less than half the price of the laptops we normally send out, this is more cost effective and will hopefully require less maintenance.

It is still too early to tell how much these will influence the business environment, however I suspect that they will be more popular than most people think - especially among people who need a high powered workstation at work rather than a laptop.

It seems that the biggest issue people have about encryption is either the potential of losing the key or the increased time it takes to create or restore backups. As far as losing the key goes - you really don’t need to protect the key as if its exposure would compromise all your data. After all, your data is not exposed when it is unencrypted on tapes. Store the key in multiple places and rotate the key as well. Rotation is important so that if you lose a box of tapes you can retire the key used to encrypt them, or if you lose a key you can mark which tapes have a compromised key, but don’t have to re-encrypt an entire library.

As far as the time it takes to create or restore backups - this is a problem that can be mitigated with some extra hardware. Buy some extra servers or tape drives, or used a tiered backup solution so that you backup to disk or unencrypted tape and then archive to your encrypted tape. This replication can happen during the day or for extended periods of time because it won’t impact your primary backup.

Look for legislation to begin making it a criminal act to not make an attempt to protect data. Spend the money up front on protecting yourself. As much as a fine would hurt your business, customer trust can hurt it even more.

The best package out there is TrueCrypt except that it doesn’t have an Enterprise ready distribution or management interface.

If you are willing to pony up the cash for Vista Enterprise you get BitLocker.

CNet just posted an article about Novell’s recent earnings statement. The article criticizes Novell’s partnership with Microsoft. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment as one of the differentiations between Novell’s SUSE product and RedHat or pretty much any other Linux vendor is that collaboration. It is simple to set up SUSE so that it integrates with an Active Directory environment.

If you are a Windows shop thinking about a Linux product, consider SUSE as this relationship will directly benefit you. Your Linux zealots among your IT staff may protest some because they will not want to consider a Linux product that has been “tainted” by the Microsoft stink, however from a business perspective not only is your upfront cost lower, but your integration efforts will be easier.

Now, the question I have is whether the UMPC from Dell will be low end or high end. I know they are building it to save costs, but I’m hoping that the build it for quality as well. Somehow someone posted the specs which should be taken with a grain of salt.

Here are the specs for the Dell Mini Inspiron: Atom 1.6 GHz, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, Card reader, Kensington lock, Adapter socket, Mic/line-out, VGA port, screen resolution at 1280×800. Scheduled to be released before the end of June 2008. It costs less than $500.

Of course there are no details on RAM, hard drive, OS, etc. At that cost I doubt it will be SSD unless it is very small. Here’s hoping they make a quality product.

Service Pack 3 doesn’t appear to be critical enough that this becomes a big problem, but it is still something that we need to move to. Anyone hear of an easy way to fix this problem?

Unlimited Teathering
Exchange Email Synchronization
VPN access to corporate networks

Why do I bring it up? Because I want one, but there is no way I’m getting one until it has at least those first two things on my list.

Gmail still lacks a quality that most businesses will find impossible to overlook - privacy.