Technical Posts for 2H July

Technical Posts for 2H July

• Apple unveils 'World's First Thunderbolt Display'
  
  The 27-inch Thunderbolt Display has an LED-backlit, 2560-by-1440 pixel. A single two-ended cable attaches to a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro or Air, one lead going to the notebook's MagSafe power port, and the other to its Thunderbolt port. The display has three powered USB 2.0 ports, plus one FireWire 800 and one Gigabit Ethernet port, all connected to its Thunderbolt host. The display also has its own Thunderbolt port so you can daisy-chain up to five more Thunderbolt devices.
  
  
• Sandy Bridge's GPU makes room for Thunderbolt in new MacBook Air
  
  Apple's latest MacBook Air has already made its way to iFixit's labs, and it's currently in 12 pieces. Though its insides and outsides are barely different from the last-generation Air released last October, a couple internal changes were necessary to add support for the backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 4.0, and Thunderbolt.
  
  
• Apple posts record quarter on sales of 20 million iPhones, 9 million iPads
  
  A large chunk of that revenue is due to massive increases in iPhone and iPad sales. Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones, a 142 percent increase over last year's third quarter, and up sequentially from last quarter's 18.65 million units. The iPhone accounted for $13.3 billion of quarterly revenue, or 46.6 percent.
  
  
• T-Mobile's new data plans: limited 3G/4G, unlimited 2G
  
  T-Mobile will begin offering unlimited data plans starting July 24, the company announced today. T-Mobile says that "high-speed" (read: 3G and HPSA+) data will be capped at 2GB, 5GB, or 10GB a month depending on the plan, so only data as slow as 2G will flow freely.
  
  

• Acer to deliver ARM notebook within nine days
  
  The battle of the 'books will really kick off next year, when, it has been forecast, some 7.6m ARM-based machines will ship, rising to a whopping 74m - 22.9 per cent of the laptop market - by 2015.
  

• Shale gas frees Europe from addiction to Putin's Pipe
  
  The Baker Institute estimates that with shale as little as 13 per cent of Europe's gas imports will come from Russia by 2040, compared to 27 per cent today. The European Union gets 80 per cent of its gas imports from Russia via the Ukraine. Russian's state energy company, Gazprom, has used its gas exports as a political weapon: most recently turning off the tap to the Ukraine, which affected some European countries as collateral damage.
  

• Shale Gas and U.S. National Security
  
  This study assesses the impact of U.S domestic shale gas development on energy security and U.S. national security. Prepared in conjunction with an energy study sponsored by the Baker Institute and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. (Publication date: July 19, 2011 )
  

Network Management Connection

Newer trends in higher-end user workstations continue to show promise, where new network management centers will be able to provide their workforce portability for better 24x7 escalation performance, without the need for traditional docking stations, using Thunderbolt technology, which integrates data and video. This author remembers combined data/video being used was with SPARC Printers, where basically a video port was used to print to a printer.

The global use of energy efficient laptops and the creation of global energy are two topics which go hand-in-hand. New highly efficient form factors are being produced and consumed. Ultra-light laptops, smart phones, and tablets are becoming the most common form factors. The reduction in energy consumption as well as the combining of battery technology into common computing allows computing to work without "reliable power" at the same time where new energy sources are being tapped world-wide to provide stable priced reliable "base power" to highly available networking infrastructure, to allow modern society to function.

Information consumers require greater access to highly available networks in formerly unreliable places is a cornerstone to modern society. Reliable electrical power for servers & network infrastructure is as key to modern Western information based society as water and sanitation was in the former Western industrial society.