As outline in this announcement from Skype yesterday, Skype making its way into businesses, Skype is gaining a lot of momentum for communicating between businesses and offices as a cheap and viable alternative to using the standard phone system. For those companies that spend a lot of time talking between different branches the potential savings could be huge just on the inter-branch calls.
Certainly the new business focus will be a step in the right direction for those companies not only using Skype for basic calls, but also for those companies that want to extend their Skype usage elsewhere.
I actually can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk, but I can count it in years, not months. I haven't had a floppy drive on any of my machines for 5 years, possibly longer.
While they were great at the time - and I used to buy my floppies in the hundreds - they were horrendously unreliable, particularly if you used them regularly, and although for their age they held a reasonable amount of information, today I can get a memory stick the size of a fingernail that holds 1000 times that.
I don't know whether I've just been unlucky, but I've not had much success trying to get into conference services or indeed other services that require me to use the keypad after I've dialed in, using Skype, either through a computer interface or the new DUALphone.
Sometimes I just simply can't get in, other times I can enter my pin number, but then additional settings (muting for listen only, for example) just fails to be acknowledged.
Of course, the ideal would be to run the entire conference on Skype, but while were in the transition mode from landline to Skype, it's these issues that can become annoying.
Curious about the costs of virtualization ? Microsoft have put up a Windows Server virtualization calculator where you can enter the number of servers, virtual machines and work out which version of Microsoft Windows Server will work with your server/VMs combination.
Sadly, it doesn't actually calculate what would be really helpful - determining how much you could save by consolidating your existing servers and using VMs to provide your requirements. But you can do that quite easily: work out the cost of each of your servers, work out how many you could combine into one server, and then take the new configuration away from the old to find out the savings. Oh, and make sure you count electricity savings into those calculations.
You know, I am consistently (and pleasantly) surprised at the compatibility of old XBOX games on the on the XBOX360. When you consider that the games are running and emulation (the platforms are completely different), the speed difference between the two is difficult to discern.
It is also interesting to see which games look as good when viewed at the higher res. Black, for example, looks just as good on my 20″ LCD panel and the XBOX360 at more than twice the resolution than it did on the XBOX. Far Cry, however, looks particularly pixellated at times.
The only time I use the original XBOX now is when playing Dancing Stage Unleashed where the screen and mat are easier to use together.
After my post this morning, Landline, Skype, or both with the DUALphone 3088, I've been contacted directly by Skype about dual mode phones coming on stream that will support multiple handsets.
There were two products announced at CES. The Netgear SPH200D looks promising, supporting up to four handsets (the SPH150D) and providing the same landline and Skype support using DECT internally (rather than WiFi).
I've been in the market for a new home phone for a while, but the majority of DECT phones don't quite come up to scratch. Many have limited connectivity beyond the phone themselves, often you don't even have a good solution for transferring phone numbers between handsets on the same base station, let alone decent methods of getting all those numbers on there in the first place.
I did find one phone (which I can't find now) that provided Bluetooth connectivity for transferring phone numbers and (I think) using a wireless headset.
It would also be nice to find a solution that works with Skype so that I could use my SkypeOut minutes more and make use of my SkypeIn number. Yes, I know, I can do it with my machines and a headset, but I really don't like wearing a headset for long periods of time, and when I go to make a phone call, I grab the landline, not my headset, to make it.
Having been in the computer industry for some time, in spite of my tender age, I've lived through a number of fads, from the days of managing a mainframe style system with a terminal on every desktop, through the client/server trend, and on to the more recent trend for a powerful machine on the desktop and comparatively low power machinery in the server room.
In the last 12-18 months though we've started going back to the roots of the big server (or more specifically multiple rack mount servers or blades) to provide concentrated power, with relatively lower end machines on the desktop. Often, there are very small computers, tiny cases to take up less room, and in some places they are even returning to the terminals of old. Not, sadly, with the same amber displays of old (sorry, I have a fondness for the amber screen - I even use those colours on my Xterms), but the principle is the same.
It is somewhat odd to hear that Sun and Intel to Announce Server CPU Deal Today at a time when I'm mid-way through a thorough review of the of Sun's current flagship AMD based workstation.
The announcement relates to Intel's Xeon server-grade CPU and Sun's server line, of course, so it's not going to affect the workstation. At least for the moment.
When Sun first starting making workstations and servers with the x86 chip they were one of the few OEMs that used AMD chips. Intel have, by comparison, always been the primary choice for OEMs, with most system builders and home builders opting for the often cheaper and just as quick, or quicker, AMD chips. This is obviously a blow to AMD, and a boost to Intel who have had various accusations of lack lustre speed in their chip range.
I have to admit, I have been worried. I've been an enthusiastic Retrospect user for over 13 years now, as it's one of the few networked backup solutions for Macs, and a few years ago was cross platform. There are plenty of solutions that back up Macs, but very few that allow the backup server to be a Mac. If you're a Mac only shop, Retrospect will probably be the application you choose.