Features

Americans like living large. We have all-you-can-eat buffets and all-you-can-stream entertainment. And, until recently, we had a virtually unlimited trough of mobile data to digest on our always-available smartphones.

It's a fact of modern life that archiving data is essential to prevent a data disaster. Still, something like one-third of computers are never backed up, according to 2257 respondents in a recent Backblaze poll carried out by Harris Interactive. The survey came to the dismal conclusion that a scant 7 per cent of users practice safe computing by archiving their systems on a daily (or nightly) basis.

A help desk can be a real lifesaver for employees, not to mention a productivity boost. A keyboard stops working, or Outlook crashes repeatedly, and a technician is just a phone call away. Even complex issues can usually be resolved internally, and relatively quickly, without needing an outside vendor.

Apple has never been considered an enterprise technology company, but it owns a significant share of the mobile enterprise market, largely due to the success of the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air.

Are you fed up with Microsoft Windows and ready to give Linux a try? Here's how to get started. This guide for Linux discusses who the Linux OS is right for, what you need to get started, and how to turn your Windows PC into a dual-boot computer so you can have the best of both worlds - Linux and Windows.

Among the many options for storing information digitally, the biggest players in the note-taking software market are OneNote and Evernote. These applications come in handy for taking notes, making lists, managing projects, storing and organizing information, and sharing it with others.

While data storage has always been a necessary building block for technology, it's rarely garnered as much attention as it has in the past two years. The reason: Corporate and retail consumers are being forced to store greater amounts of data and they need to make that data more useful - and accessible.

Apple billed this summer's release of Mac OS X Lion as having more than 200 new features, but most coverage of Lion in the intervening months has focused on only a handful of them. While iOS-like navigation and app-launching interfaces, autosave/restore capabilities, AirDrop file sharing and an emergency restore partition are by all means important, there are a lot of helpful tweaks and enhancements that can easily be missed.

Two years ago Friday, Apple's late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the original IPad, one of the most anticipated Apple products in history.

The HTC Velocity 4G promises data speeds of up to five times faster than its competitors, but is it really that fast? We put it to the test.

An insurance company decided to roll out an application for its sales reps. The new app would give them a wider selection of products to offer customers when out in the field. Information on those products was stored in a legacy mainframe system, so the company created a Web interface that let reps query the database to get details on offerings.

Apple has made it clear that one of the next industries it hopes to disrupt and reinvent is education. It's an arena the company has a long history of working with: schools have been one of Apple's biggest market since the days of the Apple II.

Never before has an announcement about textbooks been the subject of so much conversation. But that’s what happens when Apple holds a media event: People talk, even if the subject might otherwise seem obscure or uninteresting.

Nokia's Lumia 800 represents somewhat of a new dawn for the struggling giant. It's the first phone to use the Windows Phone platform, following Nokia's decision early last year to partner with Microsoft for many of its future smartphones.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are getting more negative attention, as major websites such as Wikipedia plan to protest the bills with blackouts on Wednesday. Even Google will join the action, with a link on its homepage explaining why the company opposes the legislation.

A dozen of the world's largest Internet companies - including Facebook, Google and Comcast - have committed to June 6, as the start date for their production deployments of IPv6, an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

Despite the Mac's recent gains in market share, Windows is still the dominant operating system, especially in businesses. That means there may be times when you need to run the Microsoft OS: perhaps there’s an application your company uses that’s only available for Windows, or you’re a Web developer and you need to test your sites in a true native Windows web browser. Or maybe you want to play computer games that aren’t available for OS X. Whatever your reason for running Windows, there are a number of ways your Mac can do it for you.

Communication is the lifeblood of productivity. Businesses need to communicate with customers, managers need to communicate with employees, and workers need to communicate with peers. Effective communication is a crucial element of getting things done.

The International Consumer Electronics Show is a veritable electronics smorgasbord, full-to-brimming with televisions, tablets, telephones, and cameras. The iOS accessories market is no different, getting its very own dedicated pavilion at CES. Here are some of the standout products we’ve seen in both the iLounge Pavilion and the rest of the show floor throughout our CES travels.

While there are sure to be a lot of new networking and IT companies that emerge in 2012, these nine stood out for their potential to deliver game-changing innovations in a wide array of fields, including Cloud computing, enterprise search, and mobile application development. (These are in addition to seven hot Cloud companies and seven storage companies to watch that we highlighted last year.)