Tech Smart Review

As an IT systems engineer with decades of experience, I've seen nearly every scheme imaginable to increase the performance of computer storage and reduce the chance of data loss to an acceptable level for an individual or company.  Nearly everyone will have a unique requirement and situation, whether that is constrained by budget, industry regulations, technical support requirements, or specific business needs.  With such a complex set of requirements, there is a rich field of technology dedicated solely to the science of mitigating against the inevitable failure of storage components.  Today, there are many more solutions than I will mention, so instead of typing a research paper, I will share with you some of my experiences and the preferences I have come to adopt when recommending solutions for these challenging and very important issues. Introduction to RAID First, a little background.  RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and has been the ...

Chromebook by Dell On June 26, 2018, Dave Gershgorn wrote an excellent post for Quartz entitled "You Don't Need a Mac Laptop" which inspired me to add some comments of my own. Dave related his story of transitioning out of the Apple software ecosystem to the world of web-powered applications and I have to admit, I have often felt the same.  I'm not an Apple user, far from it, but I have been using Microsoft products for decades and have noticed the same trend.  As more platforms move to cloud-powered web applications, the need to individually license and maintain software locally on your computer starts to evaporate.  Google has been very instrumental in this movement, but they aren't the only ones.  Everyone uses a computer a little differently, but I can absolutely see the case for a Chromebook if you don't need the complexity of a traditional Windows or Mac operating system or the expense of a high-powered laptop. The options are plentiful if you a...