April 18, 2011
Optimising IT isn’t all about the cloud
The Register
Dale Vile shares one company’s cloud definition and vision.
“We at Freeform Dynamics are pretty fed up with having the same sorts of discussions over and over again. It’s getting a bit wearing having to keep on challenging the rhetoric of both the evangelists and the skeptics. Our view is that different forms of cloud computing may have their place and deliver value when sensibly adopted, but there are no magic bullets here.And anyway, regardless of how much new ways of doing things take off, it doesn’t invalidate all other existing options. Cloud in its hosted services guise is just another form of outsourcing, and private cloud is simply the next iteration of the data centre evolutionary process.”
Apple slips faster SSD drive from Samsung into its MacBook Airs
ZD Net
Sean Portnoy writes about Apple’s MacBook Air and Samsung’s Series 9 notebooks.
“It’s a bit ironic that after Samsung releases its competitor to the MacBook Air in the form of the Series 9 notebook, the same company is responsible for giving Apple’s ultraportable laptop a bit of speed boost. That’s because new MacBook Airs are shipping with a new, faster solid state drive apparently from Samsung after initially coming with a Toshiba SSD. How much faster is the Samsung ‘blade’ SSD (a.k.a. the mSATA form factor that Apple introduced with the Air) than Toshiba’s? According to Anandtech, the Samsung SM128C offers 260MB/s read speeds and 210MB/s write speeds, compared to the Toshiba TS128C’s 210MB/s read speeds and 185MB/s write speeds.”
Four pleasant surprises in the BlackBerry PlayBook
ZD Net
Jason Hiner outlines four pleasantries of RIM’s new PlayBook tablet.
“One of the best things that the BlackBerry PlayBook has going for it is low expectations. While the Apple iPad 2 selling faster than stores can stock it, the first big Android Honeycomb tablet, the Motorola Xoom has done a belly-flop, which has opened the door for BlackBerry and HP’s forthcoming WebOS tablet as iPad challengers. However, most of the technology world has already written off the PlayBook before it’s even available to the public. The PlayBook still has some work to do … (but) I’ll give you four things have made the PlayBook a pleasant surprise and given it a chance to compete in the tablet race: 1) the Word processor is superior, 2) performance and responsiveness are excellent, 3) the UI is remarkably simple and self-evident and 4) the Web browsing experience rocks.”
