Do You Have A Netbook Yet?
A recent Information Week survey of 1414 businesses tabulated that more than one-third of the businesses already had netbooks in their organizations, and it was anticipated the number would grow to three-fourths within 24 months. CNET News reports netbook sales up 100% in 2009. While that pace of growth is not expected to continue, most observers now agree the netbook is here to stay … it is not a fad. Quite often, a netbook is purchased as an additional unit for a laptop user, not a replacement for a laptop. In other instances, it serves as a unit that is afforded by persons who could otherwise afford no computer.
Solid State Drives
Solid state drives (instead of spinning disk drives) are quickly gaining ground in popularity. (Premier Software offices have tried two.) They are generally reported as being faster than disk drives, though Premier Software experience has not proven that. But, because disk hard drives are so inexpensive relatively speaking, and they come in sizes much larger than solid state drives, the hard disk drive seems still preferable for most users.
Removing USB Drives
Despite the widespread use of USB flash drives, many users do not practice proper removal. Improper removal leads to data loss and software operation problems. First, shut down any software using/accessing the USB drive. Then click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon (green arrow in it for XP, white checkmark on green background for Vista) in the system tray (very bottom of your computer display, at the right). Next click on the safely remove pop-up message. When the message displays that says it is OK to remove the device, then you can pull it.
Mobile Phone Security
On December 28, New York Times reporter Kevin J. O'Brien wrote that Mr. Karsten Nohl, a 28-year-old German computer engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia broke the mobile phone privacy code. This encryption code, the G.S.M. code as you may know it (Global System for Mobile communication), has been used for over 20 years for mobile phone security, and it's still the code used for most cell phone calls. This "success" was announced at the Chaos Communications Congress, a hackers conference sponsored by a Berlin based group of the same name, Chaos. The code-breaking formulas are available to anyone as a 2 TB (yes, terabytes) download from BitTorrent. Expect the "bad guys" to be using this in the months ahead. Mr. Nohl had the help of two dozen other hackers he recruited at a prior hackers conference in Amsterdam. The cracked code is based on 64-bit technology. The new G3 technology uses the more safe 128-bit encryption. However, two weeks after Mr. Nohl's code break, Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science announced they had broken the newer G3 encryption. While there is no need for the athletic trainer or sport physiotherapist to have to get very involved with this level of tech talk, it is becoming important for sports medicine professionals to be at least aware of some of the issues and the goings on in the background as they handle their patients' private data, personal and medical, that require secure-conscious practices by the health care provider.