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Tech News & Commentary
Chris in Columbia Missouri listens and is calling in via the App asked: “We have a daughter that’s graduating in may and going to medical school and we want to get her a laptop as a graduation gift. She currently has a very large Dell that’s 4 or 5 years old and would like something a little lighter weight. She thought about a tablet that was writable, but in looking at that I don’t know that that will make it 4 years with her through medical school, so we’re just looking to you for a little guidance. Thank you and have a great day.”
Well, thanks for using our FREE App to join us! You have a couple of options here … you could get an “Ultrabook” which is a light, fast, durable and reliable category of portable computer. Ultrabooks don’t come from a specific manufacturer, it’s a standard, where certain requirements must be met from Intel, they are the ones that manufacture the CPU of a computer.
The Lenovo Yoga 13 is a very good ultrabook for word processing, web browsing, and daily tasks like email, Instant Messaging etc. It has a 13” high-quality fully flippable touch-display, a 128GB ssd, an Intel core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 720p HD integrated camera for video conferencing.
The Lenovo comes with windows 8 so with the touch display, you can get the mixture of a tablet, with the power of an ultrabook all in a package that’s about 3.3 Pounds.
It does come at an Ultrabook price though of $1099. If your daughter would maybe prefer the Mac Operating system, the Apple Macbook Air 13” is a great alternative, if has a more powerfully intel core i5 processor, the same 128GB ssd, 4GB of Ram, and the Mac OS X operating system that would be the biggest selling point over windows 8. There are some very rich and powerful productivity apps such as the iWork suite, which includes Pages for word processing, Keynote for presentations and Numbers for Spreadsheets and charts. All available on the Mac App Store.
The MacBook Air will set you back $1199 for the baseline model.
If the MacBook Air appeals to you but the price does not, we recommend that you take a look at the Apple Store on eBay. Yes, eBay. Some eagle eyed shoppers have noticed that Apple sells their reconditioned machines for less money there than on their regular Apple Store website. Reconditioned Apples carry the full one year warranty and 90 day phone support, just like new ones do, but at a fairly dramatic savings.
Finally, you started off by mentioning a writable tablet. The Microsoft Surface Pro is basically an ultrabook in tablet form. It’s priced like any other ultrabook would be, but it’s more portable AND it supports a nifty pressure sensitive pen for handwriting applications.
The Surface Pro (PRO, not RT) runs the full Windows 8 operating system and as such can run anything your standard ultrabook laptop could.
Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Alex in Miami Lakes listens Online and is calling via the App to comment about the changes to the Facebook layout.
Jim in Trinity, Florida listens Online sends the following email: “Is there any truth to the rumor that I’ve heard that there exists a second Internet – one hidden from most people and used mainly by the government especially the military?”
There are many internets, there’s the big one you used to email us, but any group of networks that is somehow connected to interact with each other qualifies as another internet.
There are private companies that link their offices via phone lines, satellite, or microwave connections and give their employees access to shared resources over their own small shared network, that’s a network of networks, which is all the internet is.
Whether the government is doing the same or not is probably not public knowledge, but it’s very likely that they are, they have the infrastructure to interconnect their own computers without running it via the private internet, so if it’s more cost effective or secure for them than to run VPN servers and rely on encryption, then probably do it to an extent.
Just keep in mind that using a network like that wouldn’t necessarily give them a ton more security from a determined attacker unless they spent a lot of time and money.
It’s not new technology, it’s just the same technology ran through a different channel, so unless they’re willing to run parallel and inaccessible fiber optic networks between locations, or to somehow restrict access to information coming down from a satellite or an antenna it can still be intercepted.
Typically, since it’s hard to keep track of thousands if not millions of miles of information highways, the way you restrict access to outsiders is by encrypting the information itself… you can do that on the internet, so it’s likely that unless something absolutely needs a separate network for a technical reason, they mostly just severely encrypt information and run it through the usual channels.
Now it’s entirely possible that what you heard about was “Internet2.” This project was started to create a private Internet for research and education use. Internet2 “peers” the general Internet, so they can access things like Google and Yahoo. But within its own cloud, it runs faster on dedicated connections that enable massive data transfers or near real-time communications.
Internet2 is hardly a secret, though. Just google the term “Internet2” and you’ll find all the information you might want, including the schools that are developing it, and using it.
I think what the caller could be referring to is something called the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network or SIPRNET, which is a closed network used by the State Department and the DoD to transmit classified information. This is the network in which Bradley Manning allegedly downloaded classified information from and sent to Wikileaks which became worldwide news. SIPRNET isn’t really a secret either though per se, only the information that is transmitted through it is secret.
Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.
Guests in this hour:
Mr. Jim Barry, Digital Answer Man – Consumer Electronics Association
Jim showed us the following products:
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yo — A clever solution to tangled earbuds.
Iolo: System Mechanic – Fix and speed up your PC… Automatically.
Magellan: eXplorist 610 – Premium, rugged, handheld GPS with camera, microphone and speaker to record all your actions in the outdoors.
Yamaha: PDX-11 Portable Speaker — Free your iPod and iPhone music for your active Lifestyle.