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What is 2012 likely to bring to the tech industry and its users?

Consumers are willing to leave their current ISPs if providers sign onto the voluntary “child abuse” filter, according to a Compare Broadband survey.

SonicWall is revamping the hardware for its storage appliances, giving them much more capacity from the top of the line to the bottom.

Enterasys President and CEO Mike Fabiaschi passed away suddenly this week at his home in the US. He was 53.

There's only one thing cooler than flying around on a helicopter ...and that's flying around in a fleet of helicopters.

Running a corporate network used to be all about coaxial cable, routers, data traffic, with some peripheral power protection added on for good measure. However, as an increasing number of mid-level businesses jump on the converged networks bandwagon, IT managers are finding themselves increasingly under pressure to ensure corporate networks are running smoother and more reliably.

While plasma has ruled the roost in widescreen technology, LCD prices have come down, refresh rates are getting higher and viewing angles are getting wider. Jeanne-Vida Douglas discovers why 2006 is being widely predicted as the year LCD unit sales overtake their plasma counterparts.

What digital home equipment is attracting most consumer attention? From a home-theatre-in-a-box to high-powered systems, Jeanne-Vida Douglas discovers this Christmas shopping period is all about what looks and sounds good.

There are plenty of new opportunities opening up in the rugged computing space for those resellers seeking better margins.

As wireless connectivity gains a foothold in the enterprise, wireless printing is becoming a must-have in a growing number of scenarios.

My favourite book or movie ...With a young family I rarely find the time to read at home and find the best time to do this is on the plane. I don’t really have a favourite book. At the moment I’m reading two books: Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton and 1700 Scenes from London Life by Maureen Waller.

My favourite book or movie ...My favourite movie is Endless Summer - it does have some cheesy American narrating but the amount of fun those guys had travelling around the world looking for great waves would be an amazing way to live your life.

My favourite book or movie... All I ever seem to read is work-related and predominantly technical. However, I do watch the odd movie and my favourite is Predator - it's a classic from the days before Arnie thought he could actually act. I'm not sure I want to analyse why I enjoy it so much

My favourite book or movie ...My favourite book is Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I have three favourite films - Highlander, Forest Gump and Scarface. All three storylines follow underdogs, but encapsulate spiritual strength and ultimate reward for each - albeit one through the pain of growth and uncertainty, one through spiritual reverence and one through raw, brute force.

My favourite book or movie ...I have not had the chance to do much reading lately so movies tend to win out. I'm a sucker for science fiction movies, as well as ones with unique plots. Some of my favourites are Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, The Game with Michael Douglas, and Entrapment with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

My favourite book or movie ...is Shawn of the Dead. Any film that manages to set a love story within a Zombie movie can only be funny. Parts of it still make me cry with laughter.

Can Cellnet's founders turn the ailing distributor around?

I was once renowned and reviled for my lack of regard for Visual Basic. I have since reformed, realising that we all benefit from languages that target developers at different skill levels and shorten the distance between concept and delivery. Modern server compute power and capacity more than offset the performance limitations of Visual Basic and its follow-ons .Net and Java.

Although it was just Turkey Day [Thanksgiving] here in the US, I've been feasting on the baloney coming out of Sony BMG. After stonewalling for two weeks, the music giant finally recalled its XCP copy-protected CDs and set up a disc exchange program. (Contrary to what I said in a recent column, however, Sony's "fix" doesn't remove the rootkit, only the cloaking.) Meanwhile, it seems XCP may itself break copyright law by violating an open source code licence. Sounds like Sony is suffering from irony poisoning.

This year was the year of the unremarkable - nothing earth shattering happened that would change the face of computing as we know it. It was evolution, not revolution. But that is not a bad thing for the channel - less obsolete inventory, longer lifecycles and falling prices as economies of scale were realised gave resellers a chance to breathe easy.

Manaccom has hosted its first gala awards dinner at the Brisbane Polo Club to celebrate staff achievements over the past year. Attendees enjoyed an evening filled with fine wine and dining as Manaccom CEO, James Mackay, presented recipients with their awards.

Glamorous women in corsets and jewels, a mix of old and new tunes and dancing were order of the day as Express Data and 300 of its partners celebrated the end of the financial year last month.

When the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard first appeared in the office, we thought it might end up being a one trick pony. The big selling point of the G15 is its LCD monitor, which can receive and correlate information from games and display it on the backlit screen for easy viewing.

We challenged local system builders, Plus Corporation and TI Computers to create a complete system for under $1000. There are many different ways you can approach building a sub-$US1000 PC system, so it's no surprise that both companies submitted two very different configurations to our Test Centre.