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Red Hat Versus Windows

Red Hat is an open-source Linux distribution and Windows is the commercial offering from Redmond-based Microsoft. Before considering whether Red Hat is better than Windows, let’s look at the Linux versus Windows debate in general (from a home user perspective).

Points for Windows include: it’s easy to use, it’s widely supported and … well, that’s probably about it.

Points for Linux include: it’s cheap (or free), it’s stable and it’s more secure than Windows.

For home users, the choice is fairly easy. If you’re a non-technical type, Windows is probably your best bet. It’s as easy to use as an operating system can be, it’s probably the operating system that you use at work and, because it has such a large user-base, you’ll be able to get support when you need it - in fact, your next door neighbour’s kids will probably be able to act as your unofficial help desk! That said, it’s worth noting that Linux is becoming easier and easier to use and certain distributions, such as Ubuntu, are now bringing it within reach of even the most technically-challenged people. For technically-minded people, Linux represents a great choice which enables people to keep their hard earned cash in their pockets.

Ok, so let’s move on to Red Hat versus Windows in a business environment, starting out with the costs. I mentioned above that Linux is cheap or free, but that’s not exactly the case when it comes to Red Hat. While Microsoft charges a one-time licensing fee, Red Hat uses an annual support subscription model – in other words, you pay for it every year. Microsoft infers that this makes Red Hat more expensive than Windows (How can “free” be this expensive?). Hmmm. Ok, when it comes to the straightforward, up-front costs for the shrink-wrapped operating system, Red Hat is indeed probably is more expensive that Windows. That said, when you start to factor in CAL licensing and upgrade costs (due to the fact that Windows has obsolescence built-in), then the gaps starts to close. So, which is really the cheapest option? The answer is probably that it is probably environment-dependant. What’s cheaper for me might not be cheaper for you.

On to security. Microsoft claim that Windows has less vulnerabilities than Red Hat (Quote: Over the first 650 days of product life for Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Windows Server 2003 had 75 percent fewer published vulnerabilities). I’m not going to dispute Microsoft’s statistics (which I’m sure are right), but they are possibly somewhat misleading. Unlike Windows, Red Hat ships with a complete range of server applications, some of which will not be installed. Were you to look at actual installations and compare the number of vulnerabilities that affected each over a certain period, the numbers would probably be fairly similar. Furthermore, it’s also worth remembering that vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems tend to be more heavily targeted than vulnerabilities in other operating systems.

When it comes to manageability, Microsoft scores some points over Red Hat. Windows does a much superior job of hand-holding that Linux. In a small business where Bob the bookkeeper is also Bob the IT guy (simply because he happens to know a bit more about IT than anybody else in the building), then he would certainly find life to be easier in a Windows environment. That said, in larger environments or environments with experienced administrators, this will be a non-issue. You can do things just as easily in Red Hat as easily as you can in Windows (in fact, some things can be done more easily), so long as you know how to do them.

So, which is really the best option? There is no clear-cut answer. For small businesses with limited in-house resources which do not want to outsource support, Windows would probably be the right choice. For everybody else, it’s an extremely close call. I prefer Red Hat’s server and desktop solutions to either Windows Server or Windows XP or Vista, but that’s simply a matter of personal opinion. Your mileage may vary.

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The history of IT

The history of information technology (IT) is a long and storied one.

It starts with the Big Bang and the beginning of the cosmos as we know it about 15 or 20 billion years ago. It continues with the formation of the solar system and the planet earth about four billion years ago. It picks up speed with the evolution of humanity some millions and hundreds of thousands of years ago, the development of human civilization some thousands of years ago, and the Industrial Revolution’s taming of machinery and power over the last few centuries. It culminates in the invention of the vacuum tube, microchip, and sundry sequels over the last several decades.

The invention of the multi-tasking computer is the turning point.

All previous stages of cosmic and human history also involved the clash and interplay of various forms of information—whether fossils in the earth; the biological storage and dissemination of information via mechanisms like DNA; the purposeful storage and dissemination of information in clay tablets, papyri, and printed books; or the computations of the abacus or slide rule. With the invention of computers, however, human-guided manipulation of data became ever more purposeful, ever more compact, ever speedier, and ever more powerful. Ever more capable of serving goals that depend on the gathering, organizing, processing, storage, and distributing of information.

The first general-purpose and electronic computer was the behemothic ENIAC, created in the mid-40s, which made its binary calculations using vacuum tubes and could not store the instructions that ran it. By the early 60s, we had the transistor based on semiconductors to replace the vacuum tube, and punched cards to replace magnetic tape. Over the next decade and a half, individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits, whose storage capacities have expanded rapidly and incessantly.

By the 1980s, we were getting microprocessors on a single chip, personal computers in every office, and sophisticated operating systems to run a proliferation of sophisticated software. Today, everybody can tap into a complex link-up of far-flung computers called the Internet (which in the late 60s was composed of just four university computers). The IT lifelines have become so critical to our workaday flourishing that specialists from Boston IT consulting may be called in to ensure that one’s own indispensible corner of cyberspace is operating smoothly and at full potential.

Of course, human-fashioned infotech cannot (yet) do many of the things that biological systems of information that have evolved over eons can do. On the other hand, give a pro from Boston IT consulting a tough technical puzzle, and he will accomplish tasks far beyond the capacity of any non-sentient biological process. And in another million or billion years…who knows what IT systems will have accomplished?

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What an IT company can do for you is as diverse as information technology itself.

PC power is often easy to tap. We complain about software bloat or glitches, and of course there are endless pitched battles between Apple guys, Microsoft guys, Linux guys, and other techno-partisans. But often enough you can just switch on your computer and immediately churn out a basic word-processing document, slide show, or database.

Boston IT consulting comes in handy when things get more complicated and the fate of your company hinges on making sure your IT system is as robust and smooth-running as possible.

Construction and maintenance. When a network, web site, or other IT system central to your enterprise needs to be set up or fine-tuned, Boston IT consulting pros can make sure that the build is sound and that you’re getting the most bang for your buck. They can also help you with special projects, like translating and archiving a forest of data that now exists only on paper.

Marauder eradication. We all know about viruses and the havoc they can wreak on our computers (and, without our knowledge, the computers of friends and colleagues). But too often we only really worry about it when a scare makes the network news, like the Conflicker virus, which was supposed to snarl all our computers on April 1 (and which may or may not be a dud, the web cops tell us). Whatever Conflicker ends up doing, the supply of viruses out there is endless and ever growing. An IT specialist can make sure your system is clean of malefactors and that it is properly protected against future intrusions.

Computer de-clogging. Clearing the gunk out of your computer and startup process so your PC keeps running fast.

Data recovery. You’ve been either careless or careful, but whichever the case, something has gone terribly wrong and there’s critical data on a PC that has not been adequately backed up. A good Boston IT consultant won’t take your confession. He’ll just save the day. And maybe tweak that backup system a bit.

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With all this talk nowadays about going Green and protecting the environment it is not uncommon for people to find themselves asking the question: How exactly do I go green with my business?

The answer varies and can be difficult to accomplish but it is certainly not impossible.

In the subject of computers the green issue is significantly complex. Computers have toxic materials in them and also draw a lot of energy to operate. You can approach the issue with a grain of salt by first considering what your technology infrastructure consists of.

If you have desktops then the first thing to do is work withing the operating system. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS have power management utilities that tell the system how it should handle the power. Try some of the following:

Turn on screen saver for monitor.

Turn on auto-off feature for monitor if it sits idle for longer than 5 minutes.

Turn on Hibernate for the system after 20 minutes of idle time.

Enable the power down of your computer devices after being idle for a certain period of time. The ethernet port can do this, so can many other devices that draw consistent power. All of these settings can be found under the Device Manager in both XP and Vista.

Shut down your machine when you leave the office whether its a home office or at work. This can reduce the total amount of power drawn for a month and over the period of a year the cost savings and green points can be staggering.

Buy Green Products! Many manufacturers have begun to take notice that the green solution to IT isn’t only a good business choice to sell more products but also a great way to promote savings for their customers. Companies like AMD emphasize the important of going green and they continually develop new processors that perform at incredible speeds but use very low electrical voltage. This achievement is truly astonishing for chip makers and I’d recommend AMDs processors over Intel any day.

Green hard drives, green power supplies, green fans are becoming more and more common and they aren’t just gimmick names… they can really save you a lot of money in the end.

Laptops are also a great way to save money… if used properly a laptop can significantly reduce the energy footprint of your company because they feature batteries. The correct way to use a laptop is to charge it till the battery is full, use it with battery only until the battery is depleted, charge it again from an outlet and repeat. If you follow this cycle you are doing many good things at once. The most obvious fact is that you’re drawing less power by not being plugged in all the time. The other thing to consider is that batteries tend to last longer and hold their charge longer if they’re allowed to drain their charge before being recharged. This means that it is much better for a better to be fully charged and allowed to reach its depleted level than to charge it midway because this can reduce the life of the cells inside the battery. Another good thing about following the laptop charging cycle is that you allow the internal power management programs in your laptop to properly handle the electrical voltage of the system. If you’re only listening to a song and are relaxing the system can automatically turn the voltage down a notch or two and can adjust accordingly so you don’t waste extra energy for no reason.

These are some of the ways you can save money while staying green. For more info you can also refer to our cinchGREEN service for disposal and consultation on just how to become a green business.

Laptop, Report

If your laptop appears to be dead here’s some steps to troubleshoot the problem…

First Method: If your laptop shows no signs of life…
When you press the power button nothing happens, the laptop doesn’t respond with the usual fan spin, lights, and screen flicker.

Here’s what you should try:
1. The usual culprit is your DC Adapter or laptop charger. Check the lead point on the charger to ensure it isn’t damaged in anyway. If you have a voltmeter test the voltage while it’s plugged in to make sure it is sending an electric current.

2. Try another wall outlet. Though not often, wall outlets may go bad and simply plugging into another one can do the trick.

3. If you managed to test the voltage and it checked fine and switching to another wall outlet did not solve your problem try doing the above after removing the laptop battery and keeping the DC adapter plugged in.

If none of the above corrected the issue then you may have bad hardware internally. Things that could “fry” are the power supply unit inside the laptop (which includes the charge port that may go bad from wear and tear), the motherboard, or the processor.

The power supply is the most common failure of hardware for any manufacturer but sometimes the motherboard can short out too. The motherboard has many chips on its silicon board that can go bad from a voltage spike so this is a common culprit as well. The processor hardly ever goes bad so in most cases this piece can be forgiven as the cause.

Second Method: If your laptop turns on when you press the power button and seems to go through the usual boot routine but no picture is displayed on screen.

There are many causes of this so let us start with the most common. Your LCD display could have failed somehow and short of you dropping and/or accidentally cracking the screen consider the following:

If you look at the screen closely it will be either black with no visible display of anything or it might have a faint display of your operating system. If you can see a faint picture your backlight for the LCD is probably dead but the LCD screen itself is fine. The backlight provides all the lighting effect that the crystal on your screen need to display picture.

Most laptops will have a VGA port or monitor port on the side that you can connect an external monitor to. Most laptop keyboards feature a key usually found on the Function keys of F keys that can enable VGA output. Try to locate the key by looking for a monitor or something that looks like a display symbol (This will not damage your laptop)

If you manage to get a picture on the external screen this is good and bad… it is good because it means you only need to replace the screen but it is bad because LCD screens can get very pricey.

If you still don’t get a picture through the external monitor then you might start considering more serious issues.

The memory is one of the most common laptop issues so it is a good idea to try this troubleshooting routine. You can begin by simply reseating memory and leaving only one module in the board (if you have two) to check whether one or both the memory DIMMs are bad.

The other option is trying a new memory DIMM that will work on your system. Many of us don’t have memory DIMMs lying around so it might be worth researching online on websites like www.crucial.com what kind of memory you have and see if you can locate that type somewhere to try out.

Once you have a memory DIMM handy open the memory compartment on the back of the laptop and remove the memory DIMMs in there and replace with the new one and see if your laptop will turn on normally and go through a boot cycle.

If the memory method doesn’t solve the issue then we can conclude that the most likely cause of your issue is some kind of motherboard problem. Unfortunately motherboards are also very pricey.
Third Method: Call CinchIT and one of our experts will diagnose the problem for you and present you with a professional solution. Contact: 1-508-425-4714

Laptop

Recently we were required to encrypt all laptops of a health care client. The original choice was PGP but one of our engineers brought TrueCrypt to my attention. I couldn’t believe it. It was perfect, fast, and free!

We were able to offer full disk encryption for all their laptops in a blink of an eye. The only thing I didn’t like about it was when we tried to encrypt the USB flash drives. It uses a “container” to encrypt a file on the flash drive that stores all the encrypted data. It has a bit of a learning curve for end users.

The product that we chose for encrypting flash drives is Iron Key. This thing is great. Plus it into to any computer, enter the password, and open your data. It is even waterproof! I have a washed a few in my lifetime. An added security feature is a 007 type self destruct option that engages if you enter the wrong password more than 10 times.

Downfall? Price! This thing is not cheap. I wish they could drop the price a bit. Pay 150 bucks for a 4 GB flash drive! A little high if you ask me.

I guess it depends on how sensitive the data is and how technical the end users are.

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Having worked in the I.T. field for quite some time I have seen my fair share of hardware and software products that have enabled my clients to perform their daily business more easily and with greater efficiency. I have installed SonicWall appliances, Windows servers ranging from NT, 2000, 2003 and even the latest 2008, setup WANs and LANs ,and I have had good ideas for all kinds of different business solutions. It wasn’t until recently that I realized just how much more one could do with open source.

Lets compare two major products in the networking category: the SonicWall and the Untangle application. They both act as routers for a network to provide internet but they also perform complex functions to protect the network.

Read more…

Report

I’ll admit, there was a time when I would laugh at the thought of open source programs doing things better than an established software program. It just seemed too good to be true that, a freely-available program with no license fees, could perform equal or better functions than it’s paid counterpart. For the longest time we have been subjected to the Microsoft phenomenon and it’s taking us a while to snap out of it. Microsoft began their business by arm wrestling investors and future clients alike to allow Windows to become the dominant OS (operating system) for personal and business computing. For too long consumers have been dealing with outrageously high prices on Microsoft products ranging from Windows to Office products and other “high-end” business tools. Maybe the developers that began some of the most notorious open source projects shared my view of “free is better” because it wasn’t long until a silent r Read more…

News, Report

By: Mirand Lamani

The new wireless technology unveiled a few years ago called WiMax appeared to have reached a stalling point but it apparently still has some tricks up its sleeve.

According to Clearwire, the main company leading the WiMax revolution, the city of Baltimore has already been equipped to offer coverage for the service and more cities are soon to follow the new system.

So what exactly is WiMax? It’s the fourth generation of wireless coverage for mobile devices, mainly cell phones, that supports even higher data bandwith than its predecessor, the 3G service. The 4G WiMax promises to offer an improved connection and voice call quality as well as faster internet access as long as you’re within a 4G-covered area.

For people that use the cell phones simply to make phone calls the only real benefit of WiMax will be fewer dropped calls and clearer voice quality.

For those of us that use the e-mail, chat, and other internet capabilities, however, the WiMax is a welcoming change and one that hopefully reaches our major cities sooner rather than later. If WiMax gets the funding it requires to have a national infrastructure we should expect the service to be commercially available by 2011 across the US, but in this economic recession it’s tough to say what the future of the service looks like.

For more reading and information you can visit the sources of this article:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/18/technology/yang_wimax.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008121815

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

News, Report

Laptops can become quite pricey. Although prices have dropped in recent years, it’s still a considerable investment and buying a new one every couple of years just isn’t feasible for most people. So, bring your laptop back to life with a little time and even less money.

Is it Getting Hot in Here?

A hot notebook may keep you warm while you’re waiting for the bus in the winter but a toasty notebook can cause failure sooner than later. Also, if you work with it on your lap or from bed, you run a high risk of blocking the fan and over heating. Try to cool your laptop and lap with USB powered fans. Tiger Direct carries them starting at $10. Do your research and find which one is best for you.

These exterior fans will give your interior fans a break and extend their lifespan at the same time. A quick spray from a compressed air can once a month won’t hurt either. Think about what your ceiling fan looks like after a month of endlessly spinning! Your laptops interior fan is no different.

Movement + Friction + Heat = Trouble

Your computer’s hard drive is full of moving parts and with those moving parts come friction and heat. Again, generating a good amount of heat is no good. Try a Solid State Drive or SSD. They’re built with non-volatile flash memory, which means no moving parts and less heat, both a plus when it comes to extending the life of your laptop. At about $15 per gigabyte, (and a lower storage capacity) SSD’s can handle extreme temperatures and average bumps and bruises better than conventional hard drives. But don’t leave your laptop out in the snow or use it as a doorstop. This brings me to my next tip…

Carry it Like a New Born.

We’ve all been guilty of tossing our laptop bag in the back seat of our vehicle in a rush to get home. Big mistake. Laptop cases and screens are fragile and more susceptible to damage than you may think. Try a padded laptop bag to protect your baby. . The Oakley SI Vertical Computer Bag is a stylish approach to protection, and for the James Bond in all of us take a look at the Zero Halliburton Deluxe 4″ Computer Case.

I hope the above suggestions buy you some more time with your laptop before you have to buy a new laptop.

Laptop