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Drive the goblins out of your converged network bySmall businesses converging voice, video and data traffic sometimes end up with haunted networks, but you can exorcise the...
What one buyer's experience with Dell tells us about customer service.
Loyal customers can be tough to find. So why do some companies run them off with crappy customer service? Often because the employees who care have no authority to fix problems, and those with the authority don't care. Today, let's hear the story of reader Boyd, his Dell XPS420, and the data corruption problems he had when running a disk array. Then let's hear how two other small service companies do much better support.
Boyd wanted a high powered desktop with RAID 0 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). RAID 0 isn't really redundant, but it combines two drives into a single volume, spreading data across both physical drives which the user sees as one big drive.
Since two disks acting as one drive isn't typical on a desktop, Boyd carefully checked the Dell Web site to be sure the PC he wanted supported the feature. It did and he bought one. The Dell XPS420, with an Intel Quad Core Processor, starts at $799 and goes up depending on amount and type of memory, hard disk size and other details.
Continued
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Canon has announces a new addition to its HDV camcorder range: the Legria HV40. Recording HDV1080i images to tape, the Legria HV40 is the successor to the HV30.
Vuzix on Monday announced the Wrap 920AV, a new pair of sunglass-style video glasses that work with iPods and the iPhone. Pricing was not announced; Vuzix expects to ship the new video glasses in Spring, 2009.
Cowon is known for its high-quality portable video players; and the company's newest model, the O2, doesn't disappoint. With its gorgeous touch screen and crystal-clear sound, the flash-based Cowon O2 ($220 for 8GB; $250 for 16GB; $300 for 32GB) is sure to please customers looking for a fairly...
The tech-world's epicenter shifts to Las Vegas this week as the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show kicks off. Over the next week expect a parade of shiny, tiny, and wireless gadgets from CES exhibitors--including a 3G watch-phone from LG Electronics, a wafer-thin TV from Samsung that's...
Elgato on Monday introduced a new generation of its EyeTV Hybrid TV tuner for the Mac. It makes its debut at Macworld Expo in San Francisco; attendees can find Elgato in Booth 2126. The new EyeTV Hybrid costs $149.95.
David Yarborough, President of Computer-Plus, talks about the printer support business while standing over the smoking printer he uses to catch attention during the ITEC conferences. Guess what's the most disgusting thing he ever dug out of a printer?
PPT2DVD Burns Presentations to DVD
Jan. 06, 2009
If you're interested in sharing your PowerPoint presentations as DVDs to be played on a DVD player, this program gives you a simple, no-fuss way to do it. Wondershare PPT2DVD burns a completed presentation to a DVD, and ...
Hackman Suite: A Hex Editor and More
Jan. 06, 2009
Hackman Suite is a programmer's toolkit--make no doubt about it. This set of useful utilities is of little to no use to the average business or home user, but if you're a programmer--especially one who has to work on ...
HP Mini 2140 Netbook
Jan. 06, 2009
The HP Mini 2140, the latest entry in Hewlett-Packard's 2100 series of netbooks, is what the company's Mini 1000 aspires to be when it grows up. But it carries a grown-up price as well: $529 for our test unit's midlevel ...
DriveClone Pro: Easy Backup, not Trouble-Free
Jan. 06, 2009
In sales, DriveClone Pro has been playing second fiddle to Acronis True Image. As of this latest version, though DriveClone Pro is largely on par with its rival feature-wise. It offers both imaging and file backup, ...
Latest HP Netbook Grows Up, Stays Mini
Jan. 06, 2009
Though HP officially announced its newest netbook--the Mini 2140--only moments ago, we had the chance earlier to kick the tires on this business-minded box. Essentially, this 2100 series model is what the Mini 1000 ...
Enter Ancient Worlds And Ditch Glitzy Graphics
Jan. 05, 2009
ADOM ("Ancient Domains Of Mystery") is a typical RPG, in which you play an adventurer of a variety of classes (including Elementalist, Farmer, and Necromancer), from a variety of races (human, assorted types of elf, ...
Have a Healthy 2009 with DietPower Software
Jan. 05, 2009
Eating healthier food and losing weight are great goals for most of us--and also very difficult for most of us. DietPower helps you balance your diet by giving regular feedback on your dietary and exercise habits. First ...
Recover data from optical media with CDRoller
Dec. 31, 2008
CDRoller purports to recover data from any type of UDF/ISO9660/FAT32 disc that can be written: CD, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray. It's always tricky testing recovery programs, especially those that work with optical discs. All I ...
Scan and send docs with digital postman pro
Dec. 31, 2008
Digital Postman Pro is a straightforward program that has one simple job and does it. It allows you to put a document on your scanner (or load one from your hard disk), and then e-mail it. While the hard disk use is of ...
Turn your PC into a piano With Pianissimo
Dec. 31, 2008
Let's get the eval out of the way up front: Pianissimo sounds great. But there are a lot of great-sounding software piano VSTi's (short for Virtual Studio Technology instrument, a software synthesizer plug-in standard ...
I am sorry to say this is the last column of the Branch Office Best Practices newsletter. I want to first thank all of the readers for the past three years who have communicated with me, challenged me, and most importantly, who have used this forum as a way to improve their branch strategies.... 2
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