Oct/090
Rechargeable zinc-air batteries promise a lot
Is there any other field of technology that promises as many revolutionary innovations as battery makers do yet delivers so few? We’ve heard of battery life being made four times, eight times, even twelve times better… and seen pretty much none of it pan out in any sort of meaningful way. Zinc-air batteries are also nothing new, but now some whizkids up in Norway have figured out how to make them rechargeable and set up an entire company, ReVolt, for their commercialization. With more than double the energy density of regular Lithium-Ion batteries, safer operation, lower cost of production, and environmentally friendlier ingredients, ReVolt’s tech sounds as sweet as anything, but we’d advise waiting for the pudding-based proof before getting excited. Plans are for small hearing aid and cellphone batteries to show up in 2010, and if all goes well there, larger cells for electric vehicles could also follow. Sure.
Oct/090
NETGEAR Presents the ProSecure STM
In this current day and age everything from marriages (there have been cases) to handling the affairs of a country is done on the Internet. You pay via Internet banking, receive electronic impulses instead of cash and so on. And because electronic devices basically control our lives, it is imperative that we have the best in terms of security. Something like NETGEAR’s ProSecure STM, tested with Miercom’s Offensive Security Testing Suite.
“This Spam Filtering Industry Assessment allows each vendor to submit best-of-breed products to compete in this independent test review. The test results provide customers with honest, objective and meaningful data by way of a competitive comparison matrix. We are impressed with the NETGEAR ProSecure product and its ability to thwart over 50 percent more threats than products tested to date. This superior security effectiveness score is a testament to the relative security the appliance provides compared to products from well established security vendors,” claimed Robert Smithers, CEO of Miercom.
The STM300 and STM600 devices will work with networks that host 300 and/or (of course) 600 users respectively and allow for the administrators to not only control what websites are visited but also filter potential threats and use a lot of security functions, from the anti-malware engine to the anti-spam engine and URL filter. The ProSecure starts at a price of 2,599 USD.
I’ll leave you now with Jason Leung, NETGEAR’s senior product line manager for SMB Security: “Mid-sized businesses are an enormous opportunity for our channel partners and the STM solves a pressing need for their customers’ networks […] The test results speak for themselves. ProSecure is serious about security. The fact that we can beat the established players at their own game shows that we bring performance, effectiveness, and value to the medium business space.”
Oct/090
Rugged EMS-Oriented Duros Computer, Now Much Better
You know, when it comes to the public’s safety, we need to make sure that the persons on the front line have the best gadgets, not only the best training possible! While I cannot say anything regarding training, I can tell you that Duros has made quite the upgrade to the 1205-PS fixed-mount rugged computer, designed especially for public safety and first-responder vehicles. So keep on reading to see what the good guys will be using from now on.
The new 1205-PS sports an Intel Core Duo 1.6 GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and can integrate video (quite a feat); plus, it is able to run the Computer Aided Dispatch software, which is known to be pretty demanding. As far as ruggedness goes, the device has a solid aluminum housing, making sure that it does not break at the first touch, be it the soft touch of a woman’s finger or the hard blow of a hammer.
There are multiple choices for RAM, HDDs, processors, keyboards or radio connectivity, meaning it can be configured to fit all requirements no matter if you’re a police officer, work in the security field or need it for EMS or fire applications. The device also sports quite a thin and compact design making sure to take up as less space as possible so you can allocate the extra space to other, more important things.
I will leave you now with a little something from Eric Miller, Duros general manager, “When lives and safety are at stake, first responders must have equipment that works. The Duros 1205-PS already was rugged enough to perform under the most challenging conditions. Now it is faster and has more memory, giving first responders ready access to additional tools and resources to better perform their jobs”