Living a Tech-Filled Lifestyle
Living your Life in a Technology Equipped World
The Associated Press reported the other day that Toshiba is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries made by the Sony Corporation. Toshiba insists that no injuries or accidents have been reported. All this bad publicity for Sony batteries may not bode well for the company’s public image.
Certainly puts into people’s minds doubts about the quality of Sony electronics. But we will see what will happen.
Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom have posted a quick post on using your laptop at the airport. We thought it was a good opportunity to discuss the wireless hotspots in general.
Now, there are hotspots operated by individuals, community hotspots, and hotspots operated by companies(Sometimes for Pay). Paid Hotspots are popular at coffeehouses, airports, some hotels, and other places. Community hotspots are operated by nonprofit organizations, although occasionally by municipalities. NYCWireless, a New York City group responsible for free wireless in places like Bryant Park, is a good example of this. And individual hotspots are those unaffiliated ones.
Sometimes, individuals do not realize they are running a hotspot. They have simply not enabled any security on their wireless router and thus are giving their internet away to the neighborhood.
In a future post, we will be discussing ways to secure your wireless network. Stay Tuned.
As Wikipedia says, electronic paper is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of regular ink on paper. Electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding its display without power, requiring it only to change the display.
The technology has been used limitedly for various things and is now coming into the mainstream. The E-Ink Corporation is responsible for many applications of this technology thus far, including the Lexar 2 GB JumpDrive Mercury JDMC2GB-431
While E-books as well as low-power informational displays are the most popular of the expected usage of this technology, it is definitely worth monitoring. For now, its use on the Jumpdrive makes us endorse the Mercury should you wish this feature. We will be reviewing USB drives and purchase considerations in a future article.
CNET UK has an intriguing opinion piece on consumer electronics is causing the death of childhood and imagination and an open letter to the British government in the Daily Telegraph from 110 teachers, psychologists, children’s authors, and experts calls on the government to prevent this.
We wonder about the next generation and if they will be capable of taking on the future. We have no doubt that a technology based world is changing things. When a five year old has more mastery of a computer than their parents, we cannot say the world is not changing. However, if it is all for the worst, we doubt. We do however, believe we have some problems we must overcome.
The problems of society though, are somewhat beyond the scope of this blog. We bring it up so that you keep in mind, while we are very much in favor of a tech-filled world…it can occasionally be damaging to us.
Jim Rossman of the Dallas Morning News advised of his experience leaving his laptop at an airport security checkpoint. Mr. Rossman is right, a simple business card attached to your laptop will allow its owner to be idenitified.
Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom suggested that you consider STOP. Security Tracking of Office Property, despite the name, works well for personal use as well. If you want your thief to know your name and address, putting it on the laptop will certainly help them find you, although that may be a bit paranoid. A third-party is certainly helpful in these cases. Also, the security plate, cemented to your laptop, is a theft deterrent in itself.
The next step after a security tag, or equivalent label is a laptop security cable. These cables are enough theft deterrent. Given time and a hacksaw, someone can remove these cables, but the goal is such things will delay them. Most theft is dependant on stealth and speed, not hanging around with such tools. Of course, finding a place to lash it in your hotel room on vacation is usually hard.
The final step is of course, in software. Set your computer BIOS to require a password, and then prevent booting from the USB port, a floppy disk, or a CD-ROM. If you need to do any of these things, go in and override it for the time you need it. Then, set a password for logging onto the system, be it a variant of Windows, UNIX, or the Mac OS.
Of course, protecting your files can be a matter of encyption. Check out a future post, when we intend to report on Encryption Tools as well as other software security for your laptop or even your desktop.
Legacy hardware consists of hardware or ports no longer necessary to the availability of better alternatives.
Our colleagues at Flight Wisdom wrote a few weeks ago here about the danger of laptop battery issues. Dell was followed by Apple in its battery recall. As this article from Business Week reports, the online community kept pressure on the manufacturers to do something about this. And now Dell and Apple are recalling over 5 million batteries.
But the danger of computer components isn’t limited to batteries, as one writer reports here. His hard drive burnt out in what appears to be a rather dramatic manner.
So, we thought we would take this time to give our tips to reduce the risk of preventable accidents. Obviously, if your component is faulty or improperly designed, there is no amount of preparation you can make to prevent problems…although even outside of warranty, some companies will replace an item that spontaneously combusted as opposed to other types of mechanical failure.