Digital Samurai

Storage Capacity Keeps On Growing

Most attorneys have a hard time understanding exactly what the size of a hard drive or USB flash drive really means. To most, it’s just a number. The larger the number, the more data the device can store. Well that number just got larger.

Seagate, a manufacturer of hard drives and removable storage media, has just announced the release of their first 3 TB removable storage device, the FreeAgent GoFlex Desk external drive. The largest available single hard drive size previously available was 2 TB. The USB/FireWire removable storage device is priced at $250 and can be purchased directly from Seagate (www.seagate.com). The drive comes with the necessary hardware to be USB 3.0 compatible when the standard is finally implemented in future computer systems, and may be a great storage option for solo and small firm backup solutions.

- John and Mike
(703)359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

Mark Your Calendars

Adobe has announced that it will release updates to its flagship Reader and Acrobat products on Tuesday, June 29th. The updates are coming earlier than originally scheduled and contains fixes for several critical “holes” and zero-day vulnerabilities that are currently being exploited. So mark your calendars and make sure you get the updates on Tuesday.

-John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

Office 2010 is Here

By now, you probably know that Microsoft Office 2010 is available for purchase.  For those who are just catching on, here’s some basic pricing (boxed retail version) information to get you started:

Office Home and Student:  $149.95

Office Home and Business: $279.95

Office Professional:  $499.99

In an attempt to simplify licensing available to users, Microsoft has dropped the upgrade option and pricing. This will anger and upset many users, including us. It appears that they want you to pay full price, regardless of whether or not you have a previous version of Office.

For those users that don't want to upgrade at this time, at least Microsoft Office 2007 is supported for another seven years.

- John and Mike

(703)359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

Pick Your Poison

It’s not even the fourth of July and we’re still seeing fireworks over supporting Flash on any iProduct [sic]. Apple refuses to support Flash on their devices, supposedly because of security concerns. At least that’s what Steve Jobs has said publicly. The implication is that we’re to believe that iProducts are actually secure. Really? Don’t get us going about how relatively easy it is to get data off a PIN protected iPhone. The latest “finger in the eye” for Apple has been the exposing of over 100,000 e-mail addresses belonging to iPad buyers. Sure you can blame AT&T, but the iPad is not without issues either.

Adobe isn’t without security issues either. It recently patched 32 security holes in the Flash Player. We’re sure that Jobs is running around Cupertino screaming “I told you so.”

So which poison should you choose? Security holes in Flash or data compromises with an iProduct? Tough choice.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

Google Chrome OS Coming Soon

Google Chrome is no longer just a browser. It has turned into a full blown operating system. Starting later this year, the web-based, open source operating system will be available preinstalled on Netbooks, providing consumers with an alternative to Windows 7 Starter, Windows XP or even the latest version of Ubuntu.

Is this another piece of the puzzle in Google’s plan to take a bigger chunk of Microsoft’s pie?

Whether the operating system will succeed remains to be seen. Apple has been fighting Microsoft on the desktop battlefield for more than 20 years and has roughly a modest ten percent of the market share.

Law firms are just starting to become receptive to the idea of having Macs in the workplace. Why not Google? Privacy and security advocates are no doubt greatly alarmed at the thought.

- John and Mike

(703)359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com