1.       Win + Home  This shortcut clears all windows on your screen except for the one that’s active. It cleans up your workspace and makes it easier to focus on one task.

2.       Win + Up, Win + Down Respectively, these two different commands maximize or minimize your active window. It can provide room for other applications or give you a chance to look at something else you’re working on.

3.       Win + (+/-) This will allow you to zoom in or out on what you’re working with. If something on a webpage is hard to read, you simply hit Win + (+) and the text magnifies. Need to restore the screen view? Just hit Win + (-) and the screen will restore to the previous size.

4.       Win + L Using this command will lock your desktop and display a windows logon screen, securing your machine from snooping eyes.

5.       Alt + Esc This command allows you to cycle through open windows. It is helpful when trying to view multiple reports or browse articles or websites, but you’re unsure of what to click in the taskbar.

6.       Win + Space  This combination makes all open windows transparent, allowing the user to view the desktop. This could be important when needing to locate a file or drive only located on the desktop.

7.       Ctrl + Shift + N  Last but not least, this shortcut allows the user to create a new folder.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, so if you know of some we have not included, please contact us! Enjoy the process of becoming a Windows 7 keyboard shortcut/productivity ninja.

Claris Networks uses a Knoxville data center called Digital Crossing Networks. Recently, we were privileged to have Digital Crossing’s CEO, Dennis Corley, contribute his thoughts on stabilizing enterprise information technology through data centers like his own on the Claris Networks’ blog. Digital Crossing Networks has been operating East Tennessee’s premiere collocation data center for nearly ten years, and services organizations in Knoxville, Chattanooga, East Tennessee and throughout the Southeast. Digital Crossing achieves an “uptime” percentage of the coveted “five nines” or 99.999%. Data centers shoulder corporate customers’ mission-critical applications, cloud computing platforms, disaster recovery platforms and business continuity plans. With all that at stake, “uptime” is the gold standard. So, what does it take to keep a data center operating with such reliability?

The following areas comprise the “three-legged stool” supporting data center operations: Infrastructure, Maintenance, and People. Infrastructure is the group of industrial systems required to provide continuous power and cooling to the IT systems housed in the facility. It involves the design and implementation of electrical, mechanical, and security systems. Both the system design and the specific equipment installed must support the hardened, industrial requirements of 24x7x365 operations, and a good infrastructure will always have solid redundancy. Redundancy provides emergency backup if a primary system fails and allows a business to remain in operation during maintenance.

Maintenance is another essential leg of data center stability, and can be often overlooked for multiple reasons. For one, proper maintenance is expensive, and some IT companies may be tempted to skimp on maintenance to cut operational costs. Inexperience in contracting and managing maintenance vendors also contributes to poor data center maintenance. However, quality maintenance boils down to two things: the willingness to invest in proper maintenance and the experience and knowledge of what constitutes quality maintenance.

This leads to the third leg of the stool: People. The best infrastructure design and implementation can be taken down in the blink of an eye by human error. In fact, over 70% of data center outages involve human error. The operation and maintenance of a data center is a both a science and an art. When the line between them blurs, the data center’s stabilizing factor is the experience and knowledge of its people. There is no short-cut to attaining and retaining experienced people. The best data centers must invest in quality people and continue to invest in their skill-sets and tools to provide quality and excellence. These three legs—infrastructure, maintenance and people—form a bedrock foundation for building and operating a quality, highly reliable data center facility.

Sooo… what is a netbook?

So what makes a netbook different from a notebook? Well, not much these days. When the netbooks started showing up in stores in late 2007 / early 2008, they admittedly got a bit of a bum rap because the manufacturers built them severely underpowered; in many cases with just enough power to run a browser and maybe an email client, proving frustrating to even the most novice of users. Since the form factor has caught on though, the power battle has taken hold and most models will hold their own quite nicely next to a standard notebook. The major delineation at this point is size and subsequent lack of peripherals (optical drive, tons of ports, etc., etc.). With a netbook, you will see screen sizes of anywhere from 10.1 inches (like the one I tested) all the way down to smallest of the small with 5 inches; any smaller and you’d call it a phone. There comes a point where they are just too small, in my opinion… not because of screen size, but because of the size of keyboard that goes along with that ultra small screen. As I mentioned earlier, you will also notice that in the name of conserving size and cutting weight, some things you are accustomed to have been shaved off; like a CD / DVD-rom drive. Another common trait you will find as of late is the addition of a built-in mobile broadband card letting you connect to the internet virtually anywhere, and truly putting the “net” in netbook.

The particular netbook I got my hands on is a HP mini 1151NR. This unit comes equipped with an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz (single core) processor, 1 GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. It also features a 10.1 inch screen, 802.11 b/g WLAN, LAN, Bluetooth, 2 USB ports, stereo speakers with built-in mic, built-in web cam (640×480), and of course, built-in mobile broadband… all wrapped up into a 2.4 pound bundle of computing joy. This particular device ships with Windows XP SP3 Home Edition, but other models are available with Windows 7 (and I actually loaded this one with Windows 7 Professional just as a goof). Now here is the really awesome part; as tested, this device is priced at $199 with a $50 mail-in rebate and a 2 year service contract from Verizon. $200 for a laptop. That ain’t too shabby in my opinion!

Well? Did it work?

Not wanting skimp out and do a half-way test scenario where I just use the system as a toy when I had time to play with it; I actually decided to push my other systems to the side and use this as my only computer for a whole month. That meant loading all the applications I commonly use like Microsoft Office 2007 (as well as 2010 beta for part of the test), VMware vSphere client, TweetDeck, our corporate VoIP call manager, Office Communicator, Microsoft Live Writer, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Fireworks (yeah, I like it better than Photoshop), and our corporate antivirus client to name the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Additionally, for half the test (two weeks) I ran the system with Windows 7 Professional installed, complete with desktop gadgets and Aero, AS WEL AS the applications I listed above. My job and my hobbies have me on my computer at the very least 10 hours per day, so it is fair to say that this little guy didn’t get much of a break.

So how did it work? Pretty darn good actually. The keyboard, while not too much smaller than a standard sized laptop keyboard, did take a little getting used to. The buttons of the built-in touchpad are placed on either side instead of below, and I quickly found myself using it with two hands (one hand moving the pointer and the other doing the left clicks) which also took some getting used to, but ultimately wasn’t a deal killer… I actually got pretty quick with it and in fact using it that way made dragging and dropping easier than one handed (I never use a mouse, much to the dismay of my co-workers). I found the speed of the machine, believe it or not, to be actually better with Windows 7 than with Windows XP, and I think I know why. HP builds these laptops with a 42k RPM hard drive, which is SLOW by anyone’s standards. Windows 7 is optimized to work more from RAM than Windows XP is, thus in the heat of battle at the office that hard drive was getting thrashed in XP and caused noticeable lags, whereas it was much more tolerable in Windows 7. Windows 7 did run out of RAM on me a few times while I was doing some photo editing, but that is to be expected with 1GB of RAM. The nice thing about this is that all the performance bottle necks of the system are easily fixable. For less than $200 more you could add a smoke’n fast solid state hard drive and another 1GB of RAM (for a total of 2GB, which is the maximum supported) and I’m confident you wouldn’t be feeling any slow downs. That would make this a REALLY nice laptop for right at $400, a good value for sure.

One of the things I really appreciated about the HP was the built-in mobile broadband. I used it multiple times, but it really saved my butt twice. Both times I was driving down the road and got that oh-so-dreaded afterhours phone call from someone needing technical help. In both cases I was able to quickly pull over and let the wife take over the driver’s seat while I logged on to the internet and started working on the problem servers. The convenience of being able to ride down the road and work online is unspeakably valuable. Sure you can accomplish this by tethering a cell phone to a standard laptop, but then you have to deal with remembering to bring the cable with you and trying to manage a cell phone sliding around while you work. You could also just get an air-card, but again, you have to remember to bring it with you and then hope you don’t accidentally knock the antenna or device itself off. Having the air-card built right in to the laptop is the way to go in my opinion. Nothing else to keep track of; it just works… which in my mind is what a netbook is all about. Computing convenience.

Who should buy one?

So is a netbook right for everyone? Well, probably not. Lets be honest here; these machines are not going to be great video editing machines, hard core photo editing machines, or gaming machines. They would, however, be a perfect fit for those “average computer users” (i.e. email, IM, internet, word processing, etc) or people who are on the go a lot. I personally enjoyed using it and was a little sad to see the little guy go. I’ll be giving some serious thought into purchasing one in the future.

Netbooks vs. Notebooks

So the question becomes, “How do we effectively prepare for these disasters?”  Backups are good to have, but just having data to restore isn’t really a sufficient plan.  Technology only makes up about 15% of a solid business continuity and disaster recovery plan.  Having the right steps in place is what really makes the difference between success and failure after an interruption.

Sadly, most businesses aren’t properly prepared.  Around 93% of companies that lose their data center for 10 days or more file for bankruptcy within a year.  30% of businesses that experience a major fire fail within a year, and 70% fail within five years.  The statistics show that businesses are generally ill-prepared for interruptions. 

Poor preparation puts employees in danger, too.  We all remember those fire drills and hard-to-take-seriously chemistry videos from high school.  At their essence, those exercises are business continuity planning.  What will your employees do when your server room does catch on fire?  An emergency evacuation plan is a good idea for every office.  BC/DR plans not only protect your job but protect the safety of the people you work with (and the mannequin next to your office’s Bunsen burner).  

We can’t prevent disasters, but we can be ready for them.  It’s well said that “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”  On top of preparedness, BC/DR planning gives you peace of mind that your business can handle what gets thrown at it (not to mention insurance discounts). 

Need more information about backups?  Companies like Claris Networks can help you be prepared.  Click here to learn more.