Hard Drives Cluttered?

In times like these, computing resources need to be maximized and original functionality restored WITHOUT having to spend the big bucks for new systems. WipeDrive 5 by White Canyon Software promises to deliver just that. Here’s an excerpt from their description page: 

Erase Hard Drive Data with WipeDrive

WipeDrive has been used to erase hard drive data on over 20 million hard drives! It is approved by the Department of Defense, and it is trusted by government agencies and major corporations.

Erase Hard Drive Data to Start Over with a “Good as New” PC

If your computer is running slower than it used to, it is not because it is old! It is because your computer is cluttered with junk programs and files, or infected with a virus or spyware. Computer clutter can destroy performance, and it only takes one virus to infect and take control of your computer.

Signs that your hard drive needs to be wiped

1. Your computer is much slower than it used to be
2. It takes forever for your computer to boot up
3. You or your kids have downloaded junk files
4. You have lost control over what your computer does

Ready to Start over with a Fresh, Clean Hard Drive?

Regaining control of your computer doesn’t have to cost $200 at your local fix-it store! With WipeDrive 5, you can completely remove 100% of the information on your hard drive. Then, after reinstalling Windows, your computer will be as good as new and computer performance will be restored…
 

Let It Rain

The BettiZen takes a different tangent on MLK Day, we’re seeking some rain, Tracy Chapman-style:

Back to sniffing out Open Source tomorrow!

From ZDNet: Open source lessons in the Nortel bankruptcy

Paradigms shift all the time. Landscapes perceived as static are actually in a state of flux, driven by more fluid albeit acknowledged realities. Case in point, Open Source is an elephant under the carpet in the living room that folks are trying hard not to notice:

There are important lessons for open source in the Nortel bankruptcy, some good and some bad.

First, phone companies are liars. That’s a good fact to know.

After winning tens of billions in subsidies during the decade, supposedly to extend broadband, AT&T and Verizon have instead played Monopoly on the field and destroyed their suppliers.

Nortel is not alone in being in the dumps. Alcatel, which bought the Bells’ old Lucent arm in 2006 for $11 billion, is now trading under the financial Mendoza line ($2/share) and may yet become the French word for GM — or Chrysler.

But there is another possible culprit, and in this lesson open source may be tarred as the villain.

That culprit is Huawei.

Huawei has used open standards and Chinese wages to become the dominant telecom player of our time.

While it has to fend off accusations of espionage and ties to the Chinese government, and while the big American networks remain leery of it, its gear has become first choice in the rest of the world.

Huawei is continuing to move ahead wherever open source lets it, developing an Android phone for instance. It is even sneaking up on Cisco.

Patents and corporate relationships are no longer enough in the telecom equipment space. For American companies to stage a comeback they will need high quality, low prices, and new customers here in the U.S.

It is not inevitable that open source will benefit the Chinese over the rest of us, but we need to change how we play and adapt.

Open Source Abroad…

The Open Source hound is on the hunt!  Here, we live within hegemony, marching to the Pied Piper’s tune and choosing to pay for what others elsewhere get free:

Nonprofit chooses Ubuntu for servers, OpenOffice for desktops

Clarity of thought prevails for this CIO:

Open source: Cheaper and easier
The net result of the conversion to open source software has been a 15% to 20% decrease in IT spending over the past two years, despite the doubling of the company’s workforce, he said. 

In addition to saving money, open source products have made the work easier to manage. There are no licenses to worry about; ditto for virus updates. The staff just installs software on the servers, tweaks them, then leaves them alone and never thinks about them again, he said.

“My choice is to pay for software and have problems or not pay for software and have problems,” Puttick said. “This is very pragmatic. It’s not that I never have a problem. But at least I’m not paying for the software and still having problems. 

Open source for the long haul… 

 ”But with Open Document Format adoption, we have a good guarantee that our data will be readable in 50 years. And we won’t have to pay for an upgrade ever again.”

From Wikipedia: What is Open Source?

2009 is still young; let’s run the Open Source theme for the full year. We begin today with the condensed definition garnered from Wikipedia:

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product’s source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development.[1] The principles and practices are commonly applied to the peer production development of source code for software that is made available for public collaboration. The result of this peer-based collaboration is usually released as open-source software, however open source methods are increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as Biotechnology.

A Marriage Made in Heaven?

This CNET article tosses out a great merger proposal between a hardware giant and open source magnate.

+++

Two big reasons Dell should buy Red Hat
Matt Asay

Dell’s biggest problem is that its one-time differentiation–low-cost hardware assembly and distribution–is now common industry practice. Indeed, it now routinely gets beaten at its own game, as called out in a recent article by Ashlee Vance in The New York Times.

Dell’s growth, to revenue of $56 billion in 2006 from $5.3 billion in 1996, has come from within. But company executives now concede that they need to make a large acquisition, or a series of them, to tap the repeating, higher-margin revenue streams that come from the software and services businesses….

“It’s not a question of size (of acquisition),” said Brian T. Gladden, chief financial officer at Dell. “I think the question is more around diversifying our revenue base and becoming bigger in some things that are attractive for the long term…(Servers, storage systems, software, or services) is where we have to do an acquisition to become relevant. There is no question.”

Assuming that this is correct, and that Dell needs to look beyond hardware for growth, it could hardly do better than to buy Red Hat, or possibly Sun or Novell, for two reasons. The first is that buying Red Hat might be the least painful option for Dell getting into software in earnest, as it would offer Dell a close analog to what it has done to hardware: a commoditized software business that depends heavily on low-cost assembly and distribution. Dell and Red Hat were made for each other, in many ways.

The second reason is that buying Red Hat would also position Dell to do what no other software company has done, but which offers tremendous financial promise: consolidate the open-source ecosystem to provide huge value to chief information officers. I argued earlier that Red Hat should do this and become the ASCAP of the software industry, allowing CIOs to subscribe to its ever broadening portfolio of open-source solutions. Dell could expedite this, bringing cash and heft to the relationship.

Of course, Dell doesn’t have much of a history of acquisitions, and might struggle to incorporate Red Hat, or any other software vendor for that matter. Red Hat, for its part, has a checkered history with acquisitions, though it is now making its JBoss acquisition pay healthy dividends.

Red Hat is brilliant at consolidating and delivering open-source software. Dell is brilliant at consolidating and delivering commodity hardware. Dell needs software to grow, and Red Hat could use some financial cushion as it seeks to expand its business beyond application servers and operating systems. Imagine if Dell/Red Hat could start offering open-source customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, IT management, and more.

If you were a sales guy calling on CIOs, wouldn’t you want to be selling the Dell/Red Hat suite of hardware, software, and services? The two companies routinely top CIO Insight’s annual CIO surveys–combining them would give CIOs an amazing alternative to Microsoft and other solutions.

Update: The VAR Guy smacks me around a bit for thinking Dell would imbibe Red Hat. His thinking is strong, but I still think it depends far too much on Red Hat boxing itself into a corner as “the Linux company.” If Red Hat gets ambitious with open source, all bets are off.

PCmover Has Arrived!

Laplink’s PCmover is the desktop migration utility of choice, offering the best of both worlds: the familiarity of your old PC or Mac with the power and speed of  a new one.

+++
 

Buy Now

 The Easiest Way to Move into a Windows XP or Vista PC

PCmover is the only migration utility that moves programs, files, and settings from your old PC to your new PC.  Simply install PCmover on both your old and new computers and go! PCmover will determine which programs, files, and settings need to be moved, and when the transfer is complete, your new computer will have the personality and functionality of your old PC plus all of its own pre-installed software.  Works with almost any Windows operating system, from Windows 95 to Vista.

NEW! Now with PCmover’s selectivity features, you can choose which applications, folders and files to take with you when you migrate to your new PC.

PCmover can migrate your PC across a network, Laplink USB cable, Laplink parallel cable, Windows Easy Transfer Cable, or any type of removable media that can be read by both PCs. If your computer has multiple users, PCmover gives you the option to migrate some or all of the users at once. The security information about file ownership and access control is preserved for each user. You can even use PCmover tomigrate your PC to an Intel-based Mac.