Thursday, September 30, 2010

Verbatim Mouse

Who even knew that they made mice?

I quoted this for a customer today and thought, "What a cool looking mouse."


Verbatim Wireless Rechargeable Desktop Laser Mouse 96677


Verbatim Wireless Rechargeable Desktop Laser Mouse

Don't waste your money on batteries. Verbatim's Wireless Rechargeable Mousehas a receiver that doubles as a charger. Wireless means no tangled cord clutter.
PC Mall Part#: 7660038
Mfr Part#: 96677



Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Meraki Wireless Fall Newsletter

From the Meraki Fall Newsletter

New Free WiFi Tools

We've had over 100,000 users download the WiFi Stumbler, and now we're excited to announce two new tools to help you optimize and troubleshoot wireless networks: Android Stumbler and WiFi Mapper. These tools are free and are compatible with all wireless networks from any vendor.
Want to do a site survey without carrying your laptop around? Android Stumbler, a mobile version of the WiFi Stumbler, lets you conduct site surveys and track down rogue APs using your Android 2.0 mobile device. CIO Update named Android Stumbler one of the top ten Android business applications! Check it out here.
Wondering about your wireless "black holes"? WiFi Mapper, the first browser-based wireless site survey and planning tool, allows you to generate a heat map display of 802.11 network throughput and signal strength. It's easy to use – try it here.


New Enterprise Feature: Meraki Traffic Shaper 
Where did my bandwidth go?
As mission-critical applications increasingly compete with bandwidth-intensive recreational applications like video streaming and peer-to-peer file sharing, the ability to intelligently control wireless traffic means better business application performance. Meraki Traffic Shaper is the first intelligent bandwidth control integrated directly into a wireless solution. We're excited to share it with you!
Meraki Traffic Shaper lets you:
  • Analyze network traffic by application or application class
  • Enforce traffic shaping policies (e.g., limit each user's P2P traffic)
  • Stay up to date with constantly updated application signatures
  • Prioritize critical applications using QoS policies
Traffic Shaper recognizes hundreds of recreational and business applications—and Meraki's cloud-based architecture enables Traffic Shaper to continually learn from the usage patterns of Meraki's millions of users, thereby increasing accuracy.
Traffic Shaper will be available for use by all Meraki Enterprise customers, with no additional hardware or software, and at no additional cost. Learn more about Traffic Shaper here.


Back to School with Meraki 

We were excited that Alvin Independent School District in Brazoria County, Texas, selected Meraki to serve its 17,000 students and 2,000 staff members. The district's ongoing 1:1 project for junior high means that every sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student has a handheld computing device in the classroom. Replacing the paper and pencil model, students at Alvin ISD read, write, solve problems, and get feedback from teachers through these devices.
This summer the district upgraded its technology to offer every junior high student an HP Netbook—an exciting initiative that also required an upgrade to a more robust, reliable wireless network. With a few student helpers, the Alvin ISD network team successfully deployed nearly 600 Meraki MR14 APs across 20 campuses before school started.
Remington College also chose Meraki to support its 10,000 students and 1,400 faculty and staff across 20 campuses in the Southeast United States and Hawaii. Now approximately 700 Gigabytes are transferred across the multi-site network every week. 
This year we've had numerous K-12 schools, major universities, law schools, and multi-site colleges deploy Meraki to support their students and staff. We wish everyone a happy and productive school year!



Preparing Your Network for the Onslaught of iPads, Droids, and iPhones: Analyst Webinar on Oct. 20, 11:00 a.m. PT 

If mobile devices are not yet on your network, chances are they will be soon, or you will face angry users (likely including a few executives). These devices are invading networks of all shapes and sizes, introducing new management constraints and security considerations, and forcing administrators everywhere to decide just how open their networks should be.
In this webinar, analyst Andre Kindness from Forrester Research and Kiren Sekar from Meraki will share best practices for preparing your network for these devices and the applications that run on them. Andre, who specializes in network infrastructure, will share trends and lessons learned from enterprises and campuses on the bleeding edge of mobile adoption. Kiren will use Meraki's unique cloud-based wireless controller to show live usage data from best-in-class organizations, and will explain technologies – including cloud computing and 802.11n – that can transform mobile device support from a liability to a positive experience for both end-users and overstretched IT staffs.
Register here

FaceVision USA

These guys were in the office the other day demonstrating their wares and I like what they do.  It's a clever high tech low cost solution for video conferencing.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

HP P3015DN Awesome Deal!!!


HP LaserJet Enterprise P3015dn Printer CE528A#ABA

HP LaserJet Enterprise P3015dn Printer

Get fast, high-performance printing with advanced security features.Expand as your business needs change, using an open EIO slot, open memory slot, two internal accessory ports for connecting HP and partner solutions. USB cable not included.
PC Mall Part#:7870948
Mfr Part#:CE528A#ABA

This deal is awesome!  The printer is usually $900.
You can buy it until the end of the September for $498.00.
If you have an old inkjet, laser, or scanner, you can trade it in and
HP will give you another $200 rebate!
The deal is so good that there is a limit of 3 per customer.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Data Center Hosting Co/Lo

OK, so it was an exciting week at PC Mall for me.  I love these new services we offer, they almost round out our product offerings perfectly.  All week long I have been having conversations about our remote and onsite network management capabilities, our data center hosting, penetration testing, and disaster recovery solutions.

I still fit the usual chatter about desktops, laptops, printers, rackmount servers, blade servers, NAS and SAN storage solutions into the week, but the new titles definitely caught my attention.

The one piece still not 100% there is a co/lo facility.  A lot of my customers are now looking towards a colocation facility to meet their DR needs.  They need a secure trusted site, run by people of the highest integrity to locate their second set of servers and storage for disaster recovery purposes.    Until we offer a true co-location option, I am going to recommend Liquid Web with secure facilities as an ideal company to host their equipment.

PEN Testing

It always surprises me when very smart people, who can configure complicated networks, refuse to test that network against threats from attacks within and outside of the organization. 

They will throw up the Cisco, Sonicwall, Watchguard or Barracuda firewall to protect their general networks- servers, storage, switches.  Then they will add more granular protection, end point protection such as Symantec Total Protection, CA, Trend Micro, McAfee, Kaspersky, AVG, Eset...there is a plethora of chocies when it somes to end point protection. 

Each one, of course, will tell you that they are: the best in class, best of breed, the smartest, the fastest, real time, heuristic, reputation based, zero day protection,  total protection, extreme defence, 98%, 99%, 100% effective against any and all attacks- anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-malware, anti-trojan, anti-webbot, browser hijacker, anti-DOS attacks...just the safest thing since chastity was under attack. 

What boggles my mind is that so many IT Professionals believe what they are told by these security companies and never actually hire someone to actually check their network security.  When they get a virus, or are attacked, they are shocked!  Shocked that someone could actually outsmart their maginot line of tech products to guard against this very thing. 

Case in point, Facebook, and Twitter.  These are smart people with deep pockets and yet the only time they seem to realize their networks are vulnerable is when they go down after an attack.

As an IT solutions and services specialist, I suggest yearly penetration tests (PEN Tests) at a bare minimum, though monthly or bi-monthly would be my recommendation.  And not a test where your internal resources who would hesitate to embarass you by pointing out a whole in your defence for fear of being fired, but use an outside IT company such as Sarcom to do the testing both inside and outside of your walls. 

Start with the outside, tell them only what they need to know to identify that it will be your network they are testing and let them see where, if any, vulnerabilities exist.  This "Black" PEN testing will give you a real world hacker eyeview of where you may have areas in your networks that can be exploited.

Have a second firm test inside of your walls, maybe Ligatt Security or some other testing firm.  Let them know how many ports and see if an internal disgruntled employee can wreak havoc from within.

Be smart and protect yourself.  A lot of money is spent to make you think your network is safe, why not put it to the test to prove that it is safe?

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Datacenter Hosting and Remote Network Management

We now do Datacenter Hosting and Remote Network Management

http://www.nspi.com/

Also Penetration Testing, Disaster recovery, and Hosted Microsoft Solutions like Exchange and SharePoint

InFocus 3916

This new InFocus projector is awesome!


InFocus IN3916 2700 Lumens Widescreen Interactive Projector - FREE LAMP WITH PURCHASE IN3916 

InFocus

IN3916 2700 Lumens Widescreen Interactive Projector - FREE LAMP WITH PURCHASE
Engage your audience with an IN3916 WXGA interactive projector instead of a cumbersome and expensive interactive whiteboard or smartboard. Turn any surface into an engaging, collaborative interactive workspace.
PC Mall Part #: 8187658       Mfr. Part #: IN3916