Sleek. Thin. Powerful. Light.

What is an Ultrabook?

If you are looking to buy a new laptop, you may have come across the term Ultrabook. Ultrabooks are a new category of laptops that are lightweight, sleek and powerful.  The term ultrabook was coined by Intel to describe a laptop that has the following characteristics:

• Thin and Lightweight. Less than 0.8 inches or 20mm. Most weight between 3 and 4.5 pounds.
• Powerful. Run via a low voltage and high-powered Intel processor.
• Near instant on and instant resume capabilities. They need to be able to resume from hibernation in less than eight seconds.
• Longer Battery Life. They must boast a battery life of at least 5 hours.

Are Ultrabooks a good option for you?

Without a doubt, Ultrabooks are an excellent choice if portability and design are highly important to your lifestyle. For example, if you travel often, or if you use your laptop to write, conduct Web research, and perform similar activities, an Ultrabook is definitely the way to go. However, if you require the use of heavy graphics and portability is not a priority for you, it might be in your best interest to consider other options.

Buying Tips:

• Rigidity – Is it as thin as a piece of cardboard and just slightly stronger? The exterior should be able to handle some pressure. An all-metal chassis is preferable for durability, as opposed to a design that sports a metal lid and plastic area around the keyboard.
• Heat and Noise - Their small size can make cooling components difficult, and since Ultrabooks are the smallest laptops of all, they have the greatest challenge to overcome. Some may be a bit noisy or hotter than others.
• Get the right ports – Some Ultrabook makers sacrifice certain ports to achieve a thinner design, but what should you be willing to live without? You may want to opt for an Ultrabook that includes both an Ethernet port (for wired Internet connections) and VGA (for connecting to projectors).
• Warranty – An inexpensive mainstream laptop almost always has a one-year hardware warranty – and that’s about it. Higher end models will have longer warranties.

Lenovo Twist - $849



Toshiba Progete - $1199

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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Torture Tests of the Lenovo All-in-One PC

200 test units, 10 torture tests, 20,000 hours of testing-Lenovo ThinkCentre All-In-One desktops are built tough.

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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Lenovo ThinkPad Twist Demo Modes

 

Learn about the many modes of ThinkPad Twist in this functional overview.

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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Power Anxiety

You’ve got calls to make, emails to send and you just received the low battery warning on your device. Your heart begins to beat a little faster – you’re almost out of power! You forgot the adapter or don’t have a power outlet. Arrgghh!

Many of us develop a great deal of anxiety over the battery life of our devices. If you experience power anxiety, you might consider buying a backup battery for charging on the go.

Backup batteries will vary in size and weight depending on capacity. Battery capacity is measured in milliampere hours (mAh). The more milliampere hours a battery has, the longer it will run, somewhat like gallons of gas in a car. Most smartphone batteries have a capacity of 1,500 to 2,100 mAh while tablet batteries are in the 6,000 to 11,000 mAh range. To fully recharge these devices, you need an auxiliary source that meets or exceeds that capacity.

Which one is best depends on how much power you want on hand and how much weight you are willing to carry. A larger footprint and more heft will provide even more charging capacity. Below are a few peripherals to help to keep your devices backed up.

Targus Backup Battery for
Smartphones
$39.99
 

Featuring 2000 mAh of battery capacity, users can triple the talk time of their Smartphone. Just connect the backup battery to any Smartphone to recharge and continue calling, gaming, or surfing the web.






Targus Backup Battery for iPad
$69.99

Featuring 4800 mAh of battery capacity, the battery provides users with an additional 5 to 10 hours of use on iPad and can fully charge a Smartphone 3 to 5 times on a single charge.

Plug-N-Power Charging
Station with USB Charger
$29.99

This portable charging station features a USB fast charger (2.1A) for rapid charging of iPad and tablets. This charging station features 15 watts of total USB power and includes 3 AC outlets with 540 joules of surge protection and 2 USB charging ports for simultaneous charging.




So with your power anxiety remedied, you can move on to other neuroses, like the bacterial density on your mobile device’s touch screen.



Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner #1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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5 Reasons to Consider an All-in-One PC

If you aren’t already feeling overwhelmed by the consumer devices available on the market today, AIO (All-in-One) PCs are striving for a piece of the competitive market alongside traditional desktops and laptops. With an AIO, the computer components are integrated behind the LCD panel or in the base of the display. Below are a few advantages of an AIO PC:

1. Space - They require less desktop space than a traditional PC and monitor. The single-unit design also requires only one cable to power everything, which eliminates the mounds of wiring that can create chaos when installing multiple components.
2. Mounting flexibility – they can be mounted to walls, used on pedestal stands or used for digital signage.
3. Touchscreen technology – An option available on some models. You can have a giant touchscreen tablet in your office that doubles as a desktop computer.
4. All your video and audio components are right there – integrated HD cameras and speakers – no need for the extra clutter of having to connect everything through USB ports and you’ll have a cleaner desktop area.
5. Cost Savings - AIOs consume about 18 percent less power than equivalent desktop systems and less hardware to purchase with built in components - monitor, speakers and camera.

Unlike with traditional desktop PCs, with an all-in-one computer, what you see is what you get—for the life of the PC. With few exceptions, such as a memory or hard drive upgrade, upgrades to AIO systems are limited due to their small nature.

For those that have limited space for a computer and don't need to move it around, an AIO may be the answer. Faster processors, larger screens and more sophisticated multi-touch capabilities are all pointing to a bright future for this desktop form factor.

Lenovo M72z AIO 20"
4GB RAM - 500GB HDD - Core i3 3220 (3.3 GHz)
3 Year warranty
$799

Lenovo M92z AIO 23" (Touch)
4GB RAM - 500 GB HDD - Core i5-3470 (2.9 GHz)
3 Year Warranty
$1149

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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5 Quick Brower Tips

1.       Take advantage of tabbed browsing - While reading any web page if you come across a link you may be interested in open that link in a new tab so it can be viewed later. A new tab can be opened by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the link or if you have a mouse with a wheel click the link with the middle mouse button. 

2.       Enter a quick URL - You don't need the http:// portion of a web page - When typing an Internet address you do not need to type http:// or even www. in the address. For example, if you wanted to visit Lenovo’s website,  you can just type Lenovo and then press Ctrl + Enter to type out the full http://www.lenovo.com address. 

3.       Quickly move between the fields of a web page - If you're filling out an online form, e-mail, or other text field you can quickly move between each of the fields by pressing the Tab key or Shift + Tab to move back a field. For example, if you're filling out your name and the next field is your e-mail address you can press the Tab key to switch to the e-mail field. 

4.       Use Internet search engines to their full potential - If you're not finding what you want try surrounding the text in quotes. For example, if you were searching for Kelowna ‘computer repair' this actually searches for pages that contain both computer and repair and not necessarily pages that have computer and repair next to each other.  

5.       Know your Internet browser shortcuts - There are dozens of different shortcut keys that can be used with Internet browsers. Below are a few:  

·        Pressing Alt + D in any major Internet browser will move the cursor into the address bar. This is a great way to quickly enter an Internet address without having to click the mouse cursor in the address bar.

·        Press F5 to refresh or reload a web page.

·        Press F11 to make the Internet browser screen full screen. Press F11 again to return back to the normal view.

·        Press Ctrl + B to open your Internet bookmarks.

·        Press Ctrl + F to open the find box in the browser to search for text within the web page you're looking at.

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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Backing up to the 'cloud'

Online Backup systems have become increasingly popular in recent years and appear to be the answer to many common problems with traditional backup systems. Until recently, companies would utilize some sort of hardware solution, generally a tape drive for larger companies, and smaller companies often use portable drives. In both cases, backups needed to be transported offsite to provide effective protection. Online backup systems seem to have solved the biggest problem of traditional backup systems by storing backups in the cloud. Online backups also solve another major problem associated with traditional backup systems – hardware faults. Tape backup systems were notorious for having problems and many of my peers simply avoided tape backup systems altogether. The clouds have split apart (no pun intended), and a shaft of light is shining down - Our data backup concerns are over – or are they?

The largest cause of problems with data recovery has never been the systems used. There, I have said it. The cat is out of the bag. In the many years that I have been consulting and working with Information technology, I can honestly say that the largest cause of data loss has been ignorance. Data is not recovered because it was never there to recover. In some cases, users don’t communicate to management processes that are in place and what needs to be secured offsite. Management remains blissfully unaware of what users are doing beyond critical systems like email and accounting. Sometimes management decisions are made such as adding new software but backups are never adjusted to allow for this. Many businesses outsource their IT needs since it is much more cost effective than employing internal staff, but are reluctant to pay the time required to test and confirm that backup systems are running properly.

There is a new problem created by online backup solutions that many users are not fully aware of. Doing a ‘full backup’ of the system can take hours or even days for some companies. During the backup, your system is vulnerable. Daily processes that could be critical to a recovery are not being backed up. Because of this, and also to limit the use of available bandwidth, backup providers and IT professionals will only occasionally do a full backup, and rely on backing up changes to the system (often referred to as incremental backups). The theory behind this is that you have a full backup, and incremental changes and it makes it possible to recover data to a certain point in time. How much backup to store offsite has a cost, and a place where businesses feel they can cut back.

A lot of techs recommend 45 days. So, a full backup, 45 days of retention has become the standard. There are problems with this system. If your full backups are not every 45 days, then a gap between your last full backup and the retention period exists. Most programs like accounting systems store data in a number of files, and if you are unable to recover a file, recovery of the whole program can be compromised. A modified file, if it remains unmodified beyond the retention period, will not be recoverable, except from a much older full backup. Retention periods should mesh between full backups. Test your backups – create files and store them for a week or two, then delete them and ask for them to be recovered from backup.

- Mark Smed is a consultant and network Technician for Northern Computer Inc. in Kelowna, and also sits on the board of directors for the Network Professional Association (www.npa.org).

Northern Computer - Your Trusted Partner
#1 - 495 Banks Road Kelowna, BC V1X 6A2
Phone: 250.762.7753 Fax: 250.861.1861 Toll-Free: 1.877.257.2896
Email: sales@northerncomputer.ca or service@northerncomputer.ca
Web: http://www.northerncomputer.ca

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