Review: Gone in 6.0 Seconds By Michael J. DeMaria
Laptops can go from assets to liabilities in no time flat when your valuable hardware, software and data do a disappearing act. We examine three facets of laptop security and test devices in each group.
Business Intelligence: It's the Information, Stupid By Lori MacVittie
Using business-intelligence tools to discover the nonintuitive purchasing habits of your customers makes it possible to adapt product development, marketing, staff training and even IT resources accordingly.
Review: Business Intelligence, With Smarts By Lori MacVittie
We unleashed five business-intelligence packages on our own customer data to find out which product does the best job pointing out trends we'd never detected. Cognos Series 7 took our Editor's Choice award.
Review: Disk Imaging Gets a Makeover By Cornell W. Robinson III
We tested four disk-imaging products that will save your helpdesk staff from hoofing it to client desktops when software needs updating or a user's system is on the blink.
Workshops
Workshop: Taking the Measure of Tape Technologies By Steven J. Schuchart Jr.
Armed with an understanding of the current tape-drive technologies, the related standards and the market, you can map out a strategy to meet your organization's data-storage needs.
Buyer's Guide: Desktop Firewalls By Michael J. DeMaria
Today's hottest firewalls offer policy protection, definable event filters, automatic policy and software updates as well as integration with VPNs and antivirus software.
Ci Maximizes Microsoft Excel By Lori MacVittie
Nobilis Ci lets users manage business processes. This business-process management tool integrates workflow rules into Excel and embeds business logic into spreadsheets.
TippingPoint's UnityOne 2000 Tips the Scales By Mike Fratto
Intrusion detection, active in-line filtering and vulnerability assessment come together in TippingPoint UnityOne 2000. But our tests also show that the network defense system missed some key servers.
NEW! Career Coach
Our Career Coach offers advice on seeking an advnaced EE degree and properly formatting your resume in under two pages.
Letters
"I could never justify to management more than 40 hours to manually provision and support one employee." --Robert W. Frei
NEW! The Last Mile
Introducing The Last Mile, a page chock full of the weird, wacky and not quite front-page material. This issue's highlights include:
• The Top 11 Rejected Slogans for Microsoft's Palladium, contributed by Network Computing readers
• Are you imagining it or is it true that your boss doesn't "get" technology? Here's how to tell...
• Other News Not Fit to Print
Quick Takes
We sneak a quick look at these hot products:
• MKS Source Integrity Enterprise Edition/MKS Integrity Manager
• Mir3 Inlogic
• Adtran NetVanta 3200
Columns
NEW! Lab Tested: Of Servers, Switches & Ping Pong By Ron Anderson
"It's an incredible opportunity to build a lab from the ground up, and ultimately you'll reap the benefits--you'll get to use our test results and evaluations to narrow down your own product choices."
BuzzCut: Opening a Pandora's Box By Lori MacVittie
The forced release of hundreds of APIs by Microsoft makes it easier for hackers to find previously undocumented function calls in the Win32 platform. New, more dangerous virus attacks can be expected.
NEW! Behind the Scenes: Show and Tell By Amy Lipton
"Based on [reader] feedback, we agreed to keep pounding away at products in our labs but to weave even more business content--vendor data and business justification analysis, for instance--into our existing sections and specials."
BuzzCut: Intel Sells LANDesk By Bruce Boardman
With its new owner, LANDesk no longer has to suffer from Intel's ineffective marketing efforts. And its useful new features deserve big-time promotion, especially with the impending release of Microsoft's SMS 3.
Down to Business: Hard Line on Software By Rob Preston
"Why should customers have to sift through 40 pages of vendor data to figure out which application or database license is best for their needs? Software vendors should simplify pricing instead."
BuzzCut: Are You Locked Into Red Hat? By Don MacVittie
If leaving Microsoft meant locking in with another vendor, why would customers have left in the first place? Users that move to Linux won't allow another vendor to lock them in with no viable competition.
BuzzCut: Blogs -- Only Half-Baked By Michael J. DeMaria
Unless developers can deliver on the issue of blog archiving and sorting, the potential of blogs will not be reached.
REPORTS
Analyize In-Line NAC strategies and products.
ANALYTICS Plan and design your enterprise blade server deployments
2009 IT Salary Survey: Meager Raises, Solid Prospects
Though raises are notably smaller than a year ago, and job security’s shrinking, IT careers are looking safer than many others in this economic downturn. Get all the findings in InformationWeek's 2009 IT Salary Survey. Available FREE for a limited time.
REPORTS
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