Talk to the Monitor
Samsung‘s new SyncMaster 225UW widescreen LCD monitor is designed to take advantage of Microsoft’s unified communications solutions, such as Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. That capability, according to Samsung, makes the 225UW suitable for audio, video and Web conferencing without having to use a phone or headset.
The 22-inch wide monitor comes with an integrated 2.0-megapixel high-resolution Web cam, dual-array microphone and speakers. It’s designed to support wideband audio codecs, which Samsung said covers the “full natural voice spectrum, resulting in exceptionally clear voice conversations.”
The black-bezeled LCD with its square-based stand offers a high resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels and a wide 16:10 aspect ratio designed for crisp images. It also doubles as a two-port USB hub with DVI-D and analog inputs. Samsung would not provide information on pricing and availability.
How Much Can a Buffalo Hold?
Storage capacity is growing almost as quickly as the need for it – and now Buffalo Technology has announced a 3TB version of its small business NAS box, the TeraStation Pro II. It’s also available in 1TB and 2TB versions.
The Pro II, which was designed for the small-and-home office or small business environment, includes a high-speed processor capable of — according to Buffalo – data transfer rates of 38MB per second. The company claims this speed is similar to a USB 2.0 hard drive.
The NAS box is compatible with both Mac and Windows, includes four SATA hard drives and supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and RAID 10. It comes with a 10/100/1000 Base-T Gigabit Ethernet port and Gigabit Jumbo Frame for transfer speeds that exceed standard Gigabit networks.
It also includes Memeo Autobackup software for Windows, Active Directory Support, and it features UPS compatibility that’s designed to let the unit power down safely and protect data against power failure. You can buy the TeraStation Pro II through VARs or from the Buffalo Web site. It sells for $2,449.
A Sparc of Protection
When you work on a laptop, it’s not always easy to backup your data to the mother ship on a regular basis – a fact that leaves small businesses with mobile workers at risk for data loss. Rover Technology Fusions thinks it has an answer to the problem with its RoverSparc, a credit card-sized flash drive designed to continuously back up the files that resides on a laptop. In case you were wondering, Sparc stands for secure personal automatic replication card).
The USB flash card comes with IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for Files software on board. According to Rover, once you insert the card into your laptop, the IBM Tivoli software automatically installs on the notebook and runs transparently in the background. The software backs up copies of your data continuously to a second location on the notebook’s internal hard drive and to the external flash card. The idea is that if you lose a file, you have two extra locations from which you can recover it.
The RoverSparc is also designed to back up e-mail from a variety of common applications such as Outlook. A 2GB version sells for $99.95. An annual maintenance fee applies after the first year (for the software license, upgrades, support and a lifetime warranty). Rover plans to make larger capacity cards available.
Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com
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