I plan on getting back to the T400s, Windows 7, and ThinkVantage Technologies under Windows 7 soon. Today is a little less involved.
You may or may not know that we have a trial program in place to remotely disable your notebook if it gets lost or stolen. Based on customer feedback and uptake, we’ll evaluate expanding the program to additional systems and countries.
Since this is a trial, there are a few limitations:
You need a Montevina generation ThinkPad (T400, T400s, X200, X200s, X301, R400, etc.)
It must have an AT&T wireless card inside and you must have established data service with AT&T.
Unfortunately this means that this is currently only a US offering. (He says as he ducks to avoid flying bricks aimed at his head.)
If you meet those two conditions, you have our SMS disable feature available at no additional charge. You can read the instructions for Constant Secure, but to sum up its capabilities, you pair your phone with your ThinkPad. If it gets stolen, you send your ThinkPad an SMS message which locks it down at the hardware level, turning it into a brick. (Of course, if you find it again, you can unlock it.)
If your machine is in the off or in a suspended state, no problem. Just like your text messages are queued for you for when you turn on your phone when you get off of an airplane, if your ThinkPad is off, the disable messages are delivered when your system powers up again. Being booted into Windows is not required either as the message receipt and processing happens at the hardware level.
Our team put together the following video which is what I really wish would happen.
I am somewhat surprised that the T400s stayed a secret as long as it did. Based on past launches, I expected to see information flooding the Internet about six months ago. As a commenter presciently declared, yes, I was alluding to the T400s several months ago when I mentioned that I was switching from my T61 to the X301.
I hated my time with the X301. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine box — for someone else. I’m a T series user through and through. The X301’s screen was too small, the processor too slow, and the battery was too anemic.
About a week ago, I switched over to this machine as my full-time, production system. To make things more interesting, I switched over to the 64 bit version of Windows 7 too. Luckily, a beta version of our customer preload for Win 7 was ready, and I was able to use that as a base. Most, but not all of the hardware drivers were there as well as a few of our ThinkVantage Technologies (Rescue & Recovery, Client Security Software, Access Connections, and Power Manager).
Win 7 RC 1+ Lenovo Beta Preload = double beta or beta beta. Not everything works perfectly.
I suspect that while Power Manager loads, it’s not really doing anything other than take up CPU cycles and act erratically. My battery life is poor right now — nowhere close to the 5.5 hours we’re advertising. For fun, I might uninstall it and see what Windows 7 can do on its own.
I’ve given up on Access Connections. Corporate users will want to continue to use it, but as an individual, it no longer makes sense for me. Windows 7’s Wi-Fi/Connectivity manager is really that much better and faster.
I have not yet tried Rescue & Recovery. I’m sure it works fine. I’ll continue to use it as it has many features over and above what 7 offers.
Most importantly, our Client Security Software Password Manager works. I have become so dependent on that piece of code that I would continue to use XP if it hadn’t been ready yet.
My biggest hassle has been Lotus Sametime, our instant messaging client. We’ve been using that bloated piece of garbage for years (I’m being kind), and though it will launch and chat under Win 7, half of its options are not available and it crashes unexpectedly 4 or 5 times per day. I tried the usual tricks like installing as an administrator or running it in XP emulation mode, but today I just gave up. I am now an ecstatic Pidgin user. I’m sure our corporate IT team won’t like it, but hey, our Beijing colleagues have been using MSN messenger for years. Companies need to provide the IT that their employees need to do their jobs, and most have their heads stuck in the sand. (But that’s probably another blog post for another day.)
In addition, I downloaded and installed the XP virtual machine. It works as advertised. Our expense tool didn’t play well under Windows 7 but runs perfectly in the XP virtual machine. I think Microsoft will find that this will be quite a popular feature with corporations. It does what it says.
I didn’t mean for it to do so, but this T400s post actually turned into a Win 7 post. That said, after you’ve read the extensive press coverage today, I’m sure you may have some additional questions that weren’t answered on the T400s. Feel free to ask them, and I will try to answer them. (I may later regret offering this, but it’s worth a try.)
I will ignore any questions that ask about future product offerings or strategy. If you want to know what the fourth BIOS interrupt on the second register does, I don’t know.
Finally, for those who have a lot invested in this issue, I don’t know if the DisplayPort passes audio, but I’m trying to find out.
Yes, the ThinkPad T400s exists. I use it. I love it.
A lot.
For now, to complete the Tornado Chasing series of blog posts, I’d like to offer you two videos of the machine in action. We’ll talk specifics on the machine once our embargo lifts.
We’re very proud of how our ThinkPads meet 8 US Military Grade standards for toughness (MIL 810-F), and what better way to show off what the system is capable of than to use it with the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) team.
This first video is a combination of clips from my trip two weeks ago. You’ll see pictures of the machine in action interspersed with scenes from the CSWR team in action.
On this next clip, we wanted to have a bit of fun, but also make a point. Make sure your volume is turned up for the first part as the auditory experience from the system and the truck is not something you’ll hear every day. The first minute and the last 15 seconds are the most interesting parts, though I thought including the middle was important for those who are really into nuances of seeing the whole story. If nothing else, you’ll get a peek at the inside of the system.
I’ve been more than a bit verbose over the last few posts. I personally think the long-form is sadly lacking in journalism today, especially on the web, but that does not mean that all readers agree. I’ll be brief, but there are definitely a few more points I wanted to make about the CSWR team and my time there.
Connectivity
There is no question that connectivity makes this project work, and indeed makes it even possible. The whole Vortex 2 team was constantly pulling and pushing data across the Internet. The DOW vehicles had Wi-Fi networks. Whether it was downloading the latest National Weather Service radar data keeping up with all of the other vehicles, or even posting their updates to Facebook, they certainly drove the local cellular carriers nuts. More than once, the traffic was so heavy that they brought down entire cellular towers from the load. What was most interesting to me is that the signal would drop and reconnect automatically. As someone who lives in a PC world, when my WWAN signal goes away, the carriers don’t automatically reconnect me. I guess the CSWR’s network is closer to a mobile handheld device vs. a standard 3G enabled PC.
To compensate for the inadequate bandwidth provisioning, the team has developed special tools that are fault tolerant and loss-of-connectivity- tolerant. One especially cool one is called SASSI. SASSI is a sophisticated low-bandwidth GPS tracking system, instant messaging client, and dispatch program, all in one.
Other Notes about Equipment
If I recall correctly, Lenovo provided over fifty machines plus a variety of accessories like USB memory sticks, encrypting hard disk drives, ThinkStation workstations, ThinkVision displays, and the like to the team. Not all of it was used in the field. Now that this year’s season has ended, the hard part begins. The CSWR team will many of these same machines plus some ThinkStation workstations to start crunching through the mountains of data.
I’ll show two more pictures of the inside of the DOW vehicles. It’s quite interesting that you can call up anyone else’s display from any other display inside the vehicle. I’d like to say that they’re using the latest IP switched video technology, but good ol’ fashioned KVM switches do the trick.
Display Screens Inside the DOW
More Display Screens Inside the DOW
One More Thing
And on a final note, no one seems to want to believe me when I say that the only thing I noticed was her IdeaPad S10e netbook. I wanted to compliment her on how well it matched her jacket. Sometimes it’s hard to be a computer geek…
As faithful readers may recall, I had the good fortune several weeks ago to meet with the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) team as they embarked on the Vortex 2 project, a.k.a, the tornado chasers. If you’d like to go back and refresh your memory, I wrote here and here. At the time I wrote that I hoped that I would return to do a ride along with the team in order to see how all of this worked in the real world. Last weekend, I had the good fortune to be able to do just that. Today’s post will encapsulate some of my experiences, observations, and interviews with the team as I sought to find out what all of this expensive equipment does anyway.
Friday, June 5, 2009 – Dr. Wurman gave me the simple, yet vague instruction, “Fly to Denver and wait for our call.” I could not blame him. Since the storm team has a wide range in which they operate in, they do not know until the afternoon where they will be staying that night. I found out about 2 p.m. that I was to join them in Kearney, Nebraska that evening. Fortunately there is a small airport that only exists because of a US Government “essential air service” directive and so I was able to book a flight, albeit with considerable difficulty. Corporate travel agents are great for the big cities and airlines, but they know beans about booking to airports that only see two 15-seat airplanes per day. Later that evening, after two missed attempts to land, we finally diverted to McCook, Nebraska where I ended up spending the night. If Kearney is small, McCook is even more so. At 1 a.m., trying to make it to Kearney by automobile was an impossibility.
Saturday June 6, 2009, 6:30 a.m. – I was up early to head back to the airport to make my 15 minute flight to Kearney. Since the Vortex team works late into the night, they do not start chasing until around noon when weather activity starts. Thus, I was still able to meet up with the team before they left for the day.
11:07 a.m. – Every morning begins with a daily briefing. The whole Vortex team (about 100 people) gathers in the hotel conference room where they get a rundown of expected weather conditions and learn where they are targeting to travel to that day. This morning was particularly exciting because yesterday was a big day. While I was in an airplane executing missed approaches with a joke telling co-pilot (What do you call a deer with no eyes? What do you call a dog with no legs?…), the Vortex team was in Wyoming where they finally were in the right place at the right time. They intercepted their first storm of the season. Weather patterns have been atypical for June, and so they have not been able to see as much storm activity as they were hoping for.
11:11 a.m. – Even though the heavy analysis on the data will be conducted over the winter off-season, it is impossible not to peek. The CSWR team has a mobile office containing three ThinkPad W700 notebooks. On most mornings they set them up and review the previous night’s Doppler scans. Since the pictures are very high resolution, the W700 makes a great choice as its quad core processor makes light work of rapidly scanning through them to find out what they need.
The W700’s 17″ widescreen display makes it possible to review two opposing radar views at once.
11:37 a.m. – Since there are multiple possible storms to track today and weather patterns have yet to fully develop, the coordination team makes the decision to delay leaving until 1 p.m. Thus, I have an hour to kill.
12:04 p.m. – I wander out to the parking lot to take another look at the vehicles. It is impossible not to see the TIV, the Tornado Intercept Vehicle which is designed to drive straight into the heart of a storm. Though the TIV team is not officially part of the Vortex project, they often are chasing the same storms.
12:05 p.m. – I was quite pleased to find a ThinkPad T400 mounted inside. I asked why some of the keys were missing. Answer: One of the video cameras mounted to the windshield came unstuck and fell on the system. The team just ignores the missing keys and types by pushing on the plungers. I also asked how the system had been performing for them all season. They didn’t know who I was or who I represented, so I was quite pleased to hear “flawlessly.” I then identified myself, gave them my business card, and said that the least we could do for them is to send them a new keyboard.
Notice also that the system is covered in dust. It comes in from every crack as the wind whips by. They did not know this when they bought it, but the T Series is one of multiple ThinkPads with MIL spec certification to stand up against dust.
1:34 p.m. – Finally, it is time to leave. I have to good fortune of riding in the jump seat of DOW #6 headed due west.
1:39 p.m. – This DOW (Doppler on Wheels) has a three person team consisting of a driver, navigator and radar operator. All of them perform different, vital roles essential to the continuing operations of the vehicle.
1:58 p.m. – The DOW vehicles are quite sophisticated and well thought out mobile weather trackers. They are completely custom built and designed to be bullet-proof reliable. There is a lot of redundancy and isolation of the various subsystems so that even if one goes down, it will not interrupt operations. For example in DOW #7, the team has installed quite a large stack of our ThinkCentre ultra small form factor desktops.
Machines #1 - #3 run the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) mapping software.
Machine #4 handles the satellite radar feed from the National Weather Service
Machine #5 runs SASSI, the Vortex team’s real time GPS tracking software for the entire fleet (more on that later)
Machine #6 runs a backup CSWR-only low bandwidth tracking system
Machine #7 has UHF tracking as a low-level failover system
Machine #8 runs Linux and takes the Doppler radar feed and translates it into Windows readable code in real time.
These machines run constantly. When actually tracking a storm, everything kicks into high gear. There are even more PCs to control the radar and to handle the gigabytes of data collected per day.
The trucks all have large diesel generators, but power is not unlimited. The ultra small form factors not only save space, but are using Lenovo’s latest power saving technology to conserve electricity and keep heat down. As it is, there is a second full-size air conditioning system that keeps everything inside the cab cool.
Then there are the displays. Some vehicles have up to fourteen separate display panels! Here’s a two minute video describing what they all do.
3:32 p.m. – There is no question that seeing any one of these vehicles causes quite a stir to the casual bystander. A fleet riding down the road stops traffic. Many people have seen the Weather Channel segments and are quite interested, but occasionally seeing the equipment has quite the opposite effect. I was told how during the height of one storm the team pulled into the parking lot of a local gas station. A girl inside who was already quite nervous became hysterical because she thought that the trucks outside meant that a tornado was going to arrive any minute. To their credit, the Vortex team is always patient and courteously answers questions, even though some people are jerks.
3:42 p.m. – Like any bunch of people with similar interests who get together, naturally they talk shop. The weather version of “peering over the hood” involves terms like “automatic leveling capability,” “azimuth correction,” and “Doppler rotation speeds.”
4:45 p.m. – Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for. There is a storm worth tracking. The team quickly swings into high gear. All control over the mission is handed over to the coordinating team. Nothing will happen without their knowledge and blessing. The driver picks up speed and races against the fast moving weather to get into place as quickly as possible.
Next time…the CSWR team deploys for a storm. More about the remarkable systems that make it all possible. And the trucks in action.
I normally try to shy away from the “press release” type of blog posts here, but this is too important. We are trying to get this message out quickly and clearly in a coordinated manner. Hence if you follow our forums and our other official channels of communication, you will see very similar text.
The net of the story is simple — we listened to you. You said quite clearly that TVSU was a tool that you found valuable.
We do have a long history of listening to customer feedback. Your feedback brought back the stripes to the ThinkPad keyboard, added the Windows keys in 2006, supplemented our on-screen wireless on/off tool with a hardware disable switch, and yes, had a touchpad lay down alongside a TrackPoint in harmony on a ThinkPad. (Sadly, however, it won’t make 4:3 displays come back, no matter how loudly you scream.)
Keep it coming. We do listen.
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Recently, Lenovo announced that we were changing the way we handled system updates going forward. Basically, we were discontinuing ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) for individual use and directing those customers to our public support site for driver and BIOS updates. Never removed was the ability for business customers in managed environments to access, download to their network, and then apply these updates as required.
There were several business reasons for this change. Regular scheduled update requests were being sent to the Lenovo servers with the subsequent downloading causing very high traffic - yielding performance issues and, in cases, causing a decline in the customer’s TVSU experience and confidence. Balancing the high cost of that already existing solution and the additional investment required to improve performance and reliability for our customers has been a difficult process and led to a more difficult decision which resulted in disabling of TVSU on April 1.
Following our announcement, however, we heard from many customers on our blogs and forums. We’ve heard clearly that our individual and business customers alike value TVSU highly. Therefore, we are adjusting course based on your feedback, and have released a new version of TVSU on May 31st. In addition, we have made some backend investments which should indeed improve system performance.
This version can be launched by the customer and it will find and install applicable updates for their system, as before. We also have a new tool, Message Center Plus, which we encourage you to download, as it provides a fast conduit to important advisory messages and helpful information about our products and services.
We value our customers’ feedback, and we hope the deployment of this new version of TVSU proves that. Thanks for your partnership with us, and the loyalty you have shown to TVSU and the other services we provide to our customers.
Today, more about the Vortex 2 project and how Lenovo is helping.
DOW stands for Doppler on Wheels, an invention by Dr. Wurman. There are many powerful fixed Doppler radar installations located around the country. Your local TV station likely has one and likes to tell you at every opportunity how powerful theirs is. (I’m sure you know this, but usually the name “Doppler 5000″ is just the TV station number multiplied by 1000. It’s marketing at its best.)
So why bother with mobile radar when fixed radar is so much more powerful? As Dr. Wurman describes it, imagine looking at a hand. If you are across the parking lot from that hand, you can see that it is a hand, but that’s about it. When that hand is in your face, you can see that it has fingernails and prints. In a word, detail. Mobile DOWs are designed to be deployed at the front line of a storm to gather better data than is possible when the Doppler is miles away.
These DOWs are very specialized vehicles, designed by Dr. Wurman and team. They start with a basic truck bed and then custom build everything themselves. For example, the rotating radar is a reclaimed World War II gunnery turret. As you can see in the picture below, the vehicles have jacks to get a bit of height, but more importantly, to make the radar level. I had no idea that azimuth and tilt would affect the quality of data, but according to the team, they greatly affect the results. To compensate, the truck has a sophisticated system that detects and distributes a correction signal that is later concatenated with the data in post processing. One of the Lenovo PCs is dedicated to collecting and managing this process. After the season is over, our workstations will integrate the data streams as the CSWR team models the weather patterns in the off-season.
I asked a few obvious questions, like “how dangerous is it to stand in front of the radar while it is in operation?” Dr. Wurman replied that while it is not recommended, it really isn’t too dangerous. The Doppler inside is only about 250 watts. They don’t allow pregnant women and children to stand in front of them, but his children have all of their toes. There is story among meteorologists that weather people have more girls than boys. He told me that he’s certainly adding to that legend based on his family composition.
I also asked, “Do you have to stop at weigh stations?” Dr. Wurman said “We are not exactly sure. The times we have stopped at them, we’ve been questioned as to why we stopped. When we blow by them, we’ve been pulled over for not stopping. Most of the local police are used to seeing these by now, and we only generally get stopped when someone is curious to see what we’re doing.” The trucks themselves are just under the magic 26,000 pound limit. For those of you not familiar with truck laws, once a vehicle tops 26,000 pounds, special rules apply. You need to pay more taxes. Your drivers need special permits. You are also limited to only so many hours of operation per day. Those rules make sense for a commercial operator, but imagine having to pack up in the middle of a storm because the driver was about to go over time.
Two of the DOWs in the field this year have rapid scanning capability. They transmit 12 simultaneous beams to collect data every 5 – 10 seconds. These will be able to sample rapid tornado changes and genesis so that the team gets a better picture of what is happening. Of course, that multiplies the amount of data, requiring more computer power. So much computing power in fact, that there are eight Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p desktops inside crunching away. Each PC performs a different function focused on helping running the weather observatory and radar operations, providing Internet to the team, aiding navigation, translating data, and tracking the CSWR fleet.
Some of these PCs are connected to our 22″ and 24″ high resolution widescreen displays, also mounted inside the DOW trucks.
Here’s another view inside DOW #7. There’s space for three people to sit and work in the back.
Besides the DOWs, Dr. Wurman’s team has 14 Tornado Pods, which are designed to be dropped right in the path of the storm.
Once the team has made their best estimate of how they expect the storm to track, they roll into action. Getting out ahead of the storm, they lay these down several hundred feet apart. The team practices so that they can deploy each pod in 45 seconds or less. These pods are intentionally simple in design so that they can be made cheaply and in volume. The base itself is weighted down (120 lbs. / 54kg or so) so that it (hopefully) doesn’t blow away. Most important among the instruments is the anemometer, which measures wind velocity and direction at ground level. The white bellows looking object houses the thermometer, shielding it from direct rain and sun, which can influence the results. Looking more closely at the picture, you can see two Pelican cases which protect some of the instruments. One of them houses a high definition video camera.
All of the data gets routed to the yellow box at the base of the system. This is designed to protect the data so that even if the pod itself is destroyed, the data should remain intact. They even go so far as to mount things upside down so that, in theory, there is a protective air bubble inside to keep out water and reduce shock to the equipment. The team would be overjoyed if one of these pods was run over by a tornado.
The Tornado Pods are deployed by several modified pickup trucks, and if I remember correctly, each truck can deploy four Pods.
The pods sit on the truck bed, and the canopy has been pre-wired with data cables. When the pods are later picked up after the storm, the team collects the telemetry data. Dr. Wurman’s team is primarily focused on wind speed, humidity, temperature, and pressure, but the beauty of the Vortex 2 project is that since there are so many teams in the field, each team is able to focus on different things. There are teams using lasers to measure raindrop size. Others are looking at particle distribution and size. The teams will later be able to share data and include it in their analysis. Putting it all together will result in massive data sets requiring lots of processing power to churn through.
Inside the trucks are two Lenovo ThinkPads. The front mounted machine is a ThinkPad W500 workstation. Its job is to run navigation, mapping, and tornado tracking software. The driver and navigator will use this in real time.
The team sitting in the back seat will use a ThinkPad T400 machine. This is the machine that actually collects the data from the tornado pods. It also runs diagnostic and programming software to keep them up and running. The team has to be able to solve problems in the field, so reliability is critical. So is data integrity, so they use solid state drive technology so they don’t have to worry about hard disk drive head crashes as they jostle down roads. Technically a spinning drive could work, but the Active Protection System would be constantly kicking in, causing unacceptable wait states as the drive would pause until it sensed things were safe again.
In the end, Dr. Wurman’s team’s goal is to image the winds inside a tornado. Since the first Vortex project over 10 years ago, the team has learned how to ask better questions. Lenovo is proud to be a part of allowing this team to do its job.
Many among us have seen and have been fascinated by the movie Twister. (Probably the most memorable scene was the cow flying by.) Scientists know the basic science behind tornados, but there is much they still do not know. For example, they know tornados form from super cells, but they don’t know why some super cells form tornados and others don’t. They also do not have a good way to predict which tornados will become strong F5 monsters while others will comparatively limp along at F1 scale.
Vortex 2 is the largest attempt in history to study the origin, structure, and evolution of tornados. They want to know the how, when and whys of storms. For the next five weeks, over 100 scientists, university students, and support personnel from around the United States will converge in the Midwest “chasing” storms. Their aim is to provide a concentrated and coordinated effort to study storms from all angles.
Many of us are familiar with the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers. These people are scientists, but the series unabashedly focuses on the drama of stalking and getting as close as possible to a tornado’s path. The Vortex 2 project (the first Vortex project was in the mid 1990s), is different than just chasing storms. It is not out for glory, but pure science. The various research teams have all agreed in advance that they will converge on the same storms and collect data in a coordinated manner. Even if they make the wrong call and something more interesting develops nearby, once they are committed to a storm, they will see it through to its conclusion. As one of the chief scientists, Dr. Josh Wurman said to me, “Those people looking to drive straight into storms are crazy. I’ll certainly take their data, but I’m not going in there.”
I had a chance to meet Dr. Wurman on Friday in Norman, Oklahoma where the Vortex 2 project formally kicked off with a media day. If you haven’t heard yet, Lenovo is sponsoring this project by providing over 50 computers to the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR). I LOVE this project. I mean no disrespect to our Formula One team, nor to the other sponsorships that Lenovo has been a part of, but they have been rather ho-hum to many but the most die-hard enthusiasts. This project is different. Everyone I’ve mentioned it to has had the same immediate reaction, “Oh how COOL!” I think the difference is that everyone has experience with storms of some kind. We’ve seen their dramatic images on television and watched the brave men and women who run to rather than from them. Even if we think “I could never do that,” what they do is interesting and even heroic. Sports are entertainment, and nothing more. You watch, get excited, and then promptly forget as in the end, sport contests really have no lasting value. A project like this is different. The data these teams collect will be used and analyzed for the betterment of mankind for years to come. It’s cool at a visceral level.
As I mentioned, Lenovo is providing over 50 desktops, laptops, and workstations to the CSWR team. These will be used for data analysis in the labs, but also outfitted in mobile Dopplers on Wheels (DOW) vehicles. These mobile RADAR vehicles will image the storms with more accuracy and detail than is possible with fixed RADAR installations. Lenovo machines inside these vehicles will crunch, tabulate, and organize the gigabytes of data collected from each storm.
I’ve got a lot more to say on this topic and how we at Lenovo are helping. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll give you some more detail, pictures, and a tour inside a DOW. I also hope to do a ride along with the storm team in a couple of week’s time to be able to give you a picture of how this is actually working in the field. It promises to be a wild ride, and I hope you’ll find this as interesting as I do.
You may ask why we are doing this. I’m going to steal shamelessly and quote Ray Gorman:
We are looking to demonstrate that the computers behind the best brains are Lenovo computers. Whether it is on a space station, at the top of Everest, putting together that one-shot presentation to potential investors, completing a research paper that’s due tomorrow morning, or driving into the middle of a Midwest tornado…when performance really counts, you’re going to want a Lenovo.
More tomorrow…
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Here are some resources for you to learn more and get regular status updates.
One evening about four years ago, I was with some coworkers at a sales kickoff in Florida. We were having dinner at a local restaurant, and periodically some ladies at the next table looked over. Finally, one approached and asked, “Aren’t you Matt Kohut? …”
Four male coworkers. One beautiful woman. For five minutes, I was a rock star. I had groupies!
I was amused because someone recognized me from one of my presentations. Yeah, I get animated in front of our sales teams. I bang a few notebooks. I use dramatic language. Men cry. Women swoon (well, not really…) But in the end, it is a show meant to convince them of something I already know personally – that we make the best engineered PCs on the market.
Today I’d like to introduce you to a REAL rock star, a guy that really deserves the accolades. Lenovo has just announced a new blog by our very own Mike Schmedlen. Mike is our Director of Education for Lenovo. If you’ve ever met Mike, you’ll know this guy is the real deal and not another greased hair, white belt, white shoes, chain-smoking used car salesman.
In this industry there are a few market segments that are acknowledged to be “owned” by a particular vendor.
Motion Computing owns hospitals.
HP (desktop) owns Wall Street.
Lenovo owns higher education.
This is in no small part due to Mike. He’ll be bashful and tell you that it was a “team effort,” but this man is responsible for building Lenovo into the educational powerhouse that it is today. When you say “ThinkPad U,” our competitors quake. Mike realized how important it was to not just offer good hardware, but to incorporate the best ideas from educators on the front line into our hardware, software, research, and development offerings. In addition, he truly walks the walk by serving on multiple boards of education based organizations.
I have had the good fortune to be on the same agenda multiple times with Mike. Most recently at a large Northeastern University that starts with Har and ends with vard, he quoted poetry. AND IT FIT. It was genuine. It showed the crowd assembled that he and Lenovo understood what education was about. (Hint: Not just delivering cool machines.)
One of the things I love about Lenovo is that we allow some truly excellent people the freedom to do their jobs in the way that makes sense. They get to follow their dreams without a lot of bureaucratic nonsense. And they shine. Mike is one of these people.
One of my friends, Kevin, stated the other day that corporate social media needs to take the next step beyond just posting another viral video. It will thrive by allowing true experts to dive deeply into topics that they are passionate about – even if they do not fit with the mainstream definition of what most people want on the web – quick digest versions of the latest gadget. I am glad our management team recognizes this.
I realize that many readers of Inside the Box are here to read about hardware. I’m not changing my mission. However, stop by Mike’s blog every now and again. You’ll see excellence in action. And you just may learn something.
If you are a company who does not want to end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for bad reasons (who does?), then you need to encrypt the data on your company’s hard disk drives. Many IT shops recognize this as something they should do, but seldom get around to it. One reason is that it is YASP (yet another software program) to test, deploy, and support. Plus, due to the nature of the beast, it is a type of program that really needs to be thought through carefully. Any wrong step, and users are locked out of their machines. Lose the password and data is gone. Permanently.
The encryption segment of the industry, and indeed most of the software encryption vendors, acknowledge that the end game is hardware encryption — self encrypting hard disk drives. Instead of installing and running a layer of software that encrypts the data on your drive, these FDE (full encryption drives) encrypt every bit of data that is written to them from day one. They have bulk encryption chips inside them that work at full drive speed so that there is theoretically no performance penalty. Contrast this with sometimes finicky software that has parameters like boot sector dependencies and compression overhead.
Despite its drawbacks, from an IT standpoint, software encryption has been the only acceptable solution. The main reason: manageability. IT shops need to know that if their end user forgets his/her password, that they can restore access to the system. They also need to make sure that they can access all data for auditing purposes. The enterprise software encryption vendors (like Utimaco), offer this key functionality. FDE drives didn’t really have a good management solution — until now. By using Lenovo’s Hardware password manager, IT shops can now have the ability to centrally control the hardware password for all types of self encrypting hard drives.
Lenovo’s tool is not the first tool on the market to do this. Wave software has had a product, and indeed, one of our competitors sells it as a solution. But it has a major drawback. If you are evaluating the Wave solution, ask your solution provider if it can manage drives from any other vendor than Seagate.
Go ahead I’ll wait.
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From our standpoint, a software management tool that locks you into a specific product FDE SKU from a specific vendor is not the best way. I’m not in the slightest suggesting that there are any problems, but certainly any customer evaluating this solution should ask for assurances that:
Since the software solution only manages one type of hard drive from a specific vendor, that there will never be any supply problems
That the price of the single vendor hard disk solution will remain competitive with other brands of self encrypting HDDs on the market
That the technology will be based on industry standards and will be supported long-term
That the technology has a roadmap to continue to improve performance and capacities
Our solution is designed to work with all types of FDE drives on the market, regardless of vendor. As new technologies become available, customers are free to choose what works best for them and not be locked in.
There is lots more to learn about this solution. Our security team recently prepared a video that explains exactly how this technology works in great detail. The following video is 10 minutes in length, but is well worth your time if you are evaluating this technology or are even just curious. Stacy and Jeff answer many common questions, including connected to the network and disconnected from the network scenarios.
I stated in my last post that the industry is going to go through yet another display ratio change over the next year or so.
For years we've had 4:3 “square” displays. These have all but disappeared from the market as the current standard is 16:10 “wide.”
The industry is about to move yet again to true 16:9 wide. This means that the ratio of your PC display will match that of your HDTV. This change won't happen overnight, but will phase in gradually. In fact, it's already started. Many of the newest consumer notebooks, especially in the 15″ class now sport the more rectangular 16:9 display.
If you pay attention to this sort of thing, then you'll notice that your display gets shorter yet again vertically. For manufacturers, this makes it easier to put full size keyboards inside their notebooks (though most won't).
Again, we can thank the LCD manufacturers for this change. By cutting everything in the same aspect ratio, they have less waste per large sheet of glass. Since these manufacturers make more selling TV displays than laptop displays, the PC vendors have almost zero say in this change. We simply have to adapt. As much as I would like it to be so, 4:3 is not coming back.
I've seen and remember some readers' comments when I've talked about displays before. Yes, it would sound nice to be vertically integrated and run our own LCD factory, but this is impractical and not cost efficient. If you run one of these factories, it is not just about making LCDs. You also have to spend LOTS of money on ongoing research, development, and very costly capital equipment. And for all of your efforts, you often run with negative margins. It's great for the consumer, but a PC manufacturer making a large investment in LCD manufacturing is highly unlikely.
For readers of this blog, yes, I had our team run the math. In order to provide a high end IPS display option, we'd need well over 15,000 confirmed orders to make it even worth considering. This is due to minimum order quantities, creating models, stocking replacement parts for years to come, etc. If someone enterprising wants to create a database of (legitimate) credit card numbers of confirmed, non-cancellable orders, I'm sure that it would get some attention around here. (For you legal types, this does not constitute an offer to sell.)
I'm tired of losing vertical space, and I am about to make a drastic change to the way I run Windows. Starting later this year when I run Windows 7, I'm going to start positioning my Task Bar on the left hand side of my screen. This will give me back some VERY needed space. (If only I could reverse the order so that the START button remained in the lower left hand side instead of the top left… Are you listening, Microsoft?)
