Do the scheduled printer maintenance, and extend the life of your printer…

Yet another message from our friends at Lexmark…

Most people routinely change their car's oil, spark plugs, and wiper blades. And yet few people think to clean internal printer parts, replace their print heads, and perform regular printer maintenance. But just like newer cars these days, today's printers are more sophisticated machines that require a bit of service occasionally in order to operate at their highest standards. And when it comes to maintenance, a little attention goes a long, long way. By following these simple tips, you'll ensure that your printer runs great for many years to come.

• Don't ignore warnings: Just like ignoring a "check engine" light on your car, ignoring printer maintenance notifications can lead to everything from print quality issues to costly repairs—or worse, the need for an all-new printer. To prevent this from happening, just keep in mind that printers are affected by normal wear and tear, just like cars.

• Keep your machine clean: If your wiper blades started streaking, you'd try to clean them off, right? It's the same with your printer. When you see print quality declining on your inkjet printer, start by running a Deep Clean on your printhead. Simply go to your printer's control panel and follow the steps for performing a Deep Clean. If quality problems persist, it may be time to replace your printhead, just like you'd replace your wiper blades. If you own a laser printer and use it to print glue-based labels, make sure you order a special label cartridge and clean or replace the fuser wiper as directed. These fast, easy steps will ensure print quality and extend the lifespan of your printer.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z & M70z All-In-One Desktop PC Recall

I still feel Lenovo makes really quality product and we applaud them for being so upfront and proactive to protect their customers. Take a look at the link at the bottom of the page to determine if your system is affected.

In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Lenovo is voluntarily recalling 160,000 ThinkCentre M70z and ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs worldwide sold between May 2010 and January 2012. Lenovo has determined that due to a failure of the power supply in the affected all-in-one PCs, the system can overheat posing a fire hazard. Lenovo has received two customer reports worldwide of fire that resulted in damage to the PC.

Lenovo recommends that you should immediately stop using the affected desktop PC, and unplug the power cord. Only certain of the ThinkCentre M90z and M70z PCs sold in this timeframe are affected, and all of the affected systems can be identified by machine type and serial number.

Effective immediately, Lenovo is offering free power-supply replacements for all affected ThinkCentre M90z and ThinkCentre M70z all-in-one desktop PCs. You can use this page to determine whether your ThinkCentre M70z or ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one desktop PC is affected by the recall. Lenovo greatly appreciates your business and apologizes for the inconvenience caused by these issues.

For additional information on this recall, including frequently asked questions (FAQs), click below.

Go to Lenovo’s web site to determine if your system is affected.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?DocID=HT071924

News: Researcher finds vulnerability in WPS protocol

Stefan  Viehbock has just discovered a major security vulnerability which allows someone to use a brute force attack to access a WPS PIN-Protected network in about two hours. According to Viehbock, a design flaw allows the WPS protocol’s 8-digit PIN security to fall dramatically as more and more attempts are made. This flaw after each failed attempt will cause the router to send a message stating whether the first four digits are correct while the last digit of the key is used as a checksum and then given out by the router in negotiation. This results in what was a 100,000,000 possible choices that was initially considered for WPS security level to drop drastically down to around 11,000.

The reasoning behind the original design was to make it easier to bring new device onto your home network more easily especially for unskilled home users. This method now allows it to be much easier for hackers to break into a secure Wi-Fi network as well.

"A few weeks ago I decided to take a look at the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) technology,"Viehbock said in a blog post. "I noticed a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide."

US-CERT said in its warning that there is no known fix to the security problem. Instead, the group recommends that users disable the WPS function on their routers. The warning lists several wireless router vendors as selling devices that are affected by the security hole: Buffalo, D-Link, Cisco Linksys, Netgear, Technicolor, TP-Link, and ZyXEL.

US-CERT indicated in its warning that it notified router vendors that are affected by the security issue in early December, but so far the vendors have not offered a response nor have any of them issued statements.

For more information:

• Wikipedia Entry about WPS Protocol Specification
• Stefan Viehbock’s Original Blog Post
• CNet’s take on this Vulnerability

Wyse - P20 Zero Client running View 4.6

Wyse - P20 Zero Client - 128 MB RAM - 0 GB HDD

Ken has been playing with VMWare View and we have been tossing around what kinds of hardware we would want to use if purchasing new vs. using older equipment the Wyse P20 could be a good selection. See details below:

For virtual desktop or blade PC environments, the Wyse P class delivers workstation class performance for advanced applications including CAD, 3D solids modeling, video editing and advanced worker level office productivity. Based on a hardware PCoIP engine, this stateless zero client requires no local operating system. Unlike more flexible software-based implementations, this dedicated hardware PCoIP engine delivers the highest level of display performance available. Whilst it's just the size a notebook, the Wyse P class is a fully functional and compact virtual system that eliminates the need for a desktop, yet gives a feeling of a true PC experience. The Wyse P class includes elements for the high end user such as: multiple display support, multimedia playback, HD audio and four USB peripheral ports. The Wyse P class platform resolves the challenges of provisioning, managing, maintaining and securing enterprise desktops. It is offering a truly uncompromised computing high end user experience with the full benefits of an efficient and secure centralized computing environment.

At a glance:

Rich user experience

• Utilizes PCoIP protocol technology enabling the practical consolidation of all IT resources into the data center.
• Delivers an uncompromised user experience to each desk, anywhere, without incurring the security risks associated with transmitting data across a network.
• Supports high performance dual displays for running high resolution 3D graphics and CAD applications running on the server.

Future proof

• Decodes video transmitted over the network from a PCoIP host card or server and is agnostic to video/media format.
• Resolves the challenges of provisioning, managing, maintaining and securing enterprise desktops.
• No local operating system to maintain.

Connectivity

• Four USB peripheral ports.
• Two single-link DVI-I connectors for dual display supports up to 1920 x 1200.
• Completely driverless and stateless.
• HD audio, headphone and microphone.

Download Wyse P20 Datasheet

Quick-Start Guide: Wyse® P Class Zero Clients, Model Px0, Product ...

HP giving up on WebOS…

I never saw much hope in the WebOS devices succeeding for HP anyway but they sure dropped this product quicker than I expected. I am now seeing this tablet available from BestBuy on Fire Sales for $99.99 and $149.99 respectively for the 16 and 32GB versions. I was half tempted to pick up the 16GB version but thankfully thought better of throwing money down the drain like that. I really don’t need another museum piece.

Adding to HP’s woes is their discussion of spinning off their consumer PC business as well because of the low profitability. I have read that their margin is a low 5.7%.

Take a look at these links to learn more:

• Hewlett-Packard gives up on webOS - GigaOM — Tech News, Analysis and Trends
• HP will 'discontinue operations for webOS devices', may spin off Personal Systems Group – Engadget
• HP washing its hands of webOS: discontinues tablets, Pre phones - Ars Technica

Garmin Nuvi Recall Affects 1.25 Million Devices

From Mashable, we have the following news report where Garmin is recalling 1.25 Million of its Nuvi personal navigation devices because of battery issues, go figure! THe models affected are 200W, 250W, 260W and 7XX. Read on to get more information.

Click to read more ...

Hard Drive Recovery is hit and miss at best

Here is an interview from Tekzilla that will give you a quick overview of drive recovery methods and what to do to try to attempt data recovery. Very interesting interview with Scott Moulton from Tekzilla’s - Which Hard Drives Fail The Least? Sleek Cell Phone Booster, Hard Drive Recovery Tools, Adobe Reader Alternatives, Space Pictures! – Tekzilla Episode.

Click to read more ...

Spring is here and if you are like us you are excited about soaking up the Sun and enjoying the out of doors…

So, I did my outside chores today, (believe it or not one of them was splitting wood) and then I spent the last part of the afternoon enjoying the little bit of sun that was left over and playing with my gadgets. I took my netbook, Kindle and iPhone out doors with me to enjoy the late afternoon sun, and started to work with them. The first thing that I noticed was the readability of the screens. The Kindle I have to give a thumbs up because it looked better out in the sun then when I am sitting on the couch.The netbook, well, I could see it when I squinted, but who wants to squint.

Click to read more ...

Intel Says It Has a Fix for Faulty NAND Flash Firmware

We’ll see… It will be good if this comes out this quickly and works. 

Intel Says It Has a Fix for Faulty NAND Flash Firmware

Intel confirms data corruption bug in new SSDs, halts shipments | Storage - InfoWorld

Since I reported the price drop on these drive a week or two ago I only thought it would be appropriate to add this little bump in the road for Intel’s new consumer-class X25-M and X18-M SSDs (solid state-disk drives). Seems that if you initiate a  Bios password  on the drive you will lose your access to anything on the drive. Intel will be coming with a firmware upgrade to this issue shortly and you will be able to fix this problem. So far that is the only glitch in an otherwise great product. Shipments of these drives have been stopped until the fix is in and been applied to all channel held devices.

Intel confirms data corruption bug in new SSDs, halts shipments | Storage - InfoWorld

Apple iPhone 3G and 3GS Security Flaw Patch

A security vulnerability has been fixed by Apple to close the a Security Flaw on your iPhone.

Security experts explained Thursday at the Black Hat security conference that a series of hundreds of invisible SMS (short message service) text messages could be used to embed code into the system's memory and run a malicious executable file.

Users would only notice a single message with a small square in it.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/01/BUME192BCE.DTL#ixzz0MvYKhrVX

To run the update on your iPhone, open iTunes, click on Help and Run Updates…