iPhone-Don’t Buy Yet

ITaP (short for Information Technology at Purdue) is offering advice for potential buyers of the iPhone: Wait. According to Frank Wolf, Mac specialist and systems administrator for ITaP:

“The iPhone is still being considered by many to be a revision-one product when thinking about it in an enterprise. I recommend to the people we support that they hold off on getting an iPhone until the next revision is released.”

Here’s more of his reasoning as to why you should wait:

“Early adopters run a risk of getting left out of more enterprise-friendly features of future releases. The next version of the iPhone is rumored to be 3G-capable, which would bring faster cellular network speeds.”

And he’s not the only one from Purdue’s IT department saying to wait. Julie Kercher-Updike, associate vice president for ITaP, says, “If your primary use for a device is for a phone, Internet access on the go, and reading e-mail, then the iPhone is a pretty slick device. If you want to have up-to-the- minute calendar access, then the iPhone might not replace your Blackberry just yet.”

Apparently, synchronizing the iPhone with enterprise Outlook or Entourage calendars is a hassle and includes some manual processes: “Campus computer users who want to use a handheld device primarily to check and schedule meetings probably will want to continue using a device that synchronizes wirelessly like a Blackberry or other Windows-compatible mobile device.”

Another problem is that Apple has not yet implemented Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which makes it so the iPhone doesn’t work with the latest client for accessing Purdue’s wireless network.

This shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone used to new technology. It’s difficult enough to create a breakthrough product, let alone have it interface properly with existing infrastructures. But that isn’t to say that the trade off of having the latest gadget isn’t worth it to some people. It is. But for the rest of us, here’s to the second generation of tech products.

*Update* Coincidentally released the same day, check out this article called Apple: All signs point to a more business friendly iPhone.

*Update 2* Wow. Not sure what’s causing the next gen iPhone news today, but here’s another take that says the next gen iPhone could be here “mid-year.”

More about this here……..

Courtesy: Purdue

Beautiful GFX Cards

Beautiful Nvidia Box Art

Don’t you sometimes wish that the graphics generated by your video card was on the same level of sophistication as the graphics shown on the box? There are many incredibly gorgeous works of art found on Video card boxes, especially those with the Nvidia brand. Asus and Gigabyte Technology in particular have some very good ones that deserves to be framed and mounted on a wall. Here are some of the best looking Nvidia box art in recent memory.

For more……

Mac OS X on Windows NTFS

Its a regular practise to run Mac OS X on a Bootcamp Windows. But, the real cloghead arrives when the users running Mac OS X wishes to update or modify files and documents in the windows partition. The problem lies in NTFS File System on which you can natively read the drive but not write on to it.

An implementation of MacFUSE by Amit Singh, a Google employee, makes it possible to use any FUSE(File System in USErspace) file systems in Mac. The most advantageous FUSE tool to be named here is the NTFS-3G Read/Write Driver, which enables the system to load NTFS with readand write capability. Isnt it an amazing news for dual booting with Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista.

A little digging on the internet led me to trace out how users with binary version of MacFUSE and ntfs-3g are ready and up to install. Following the below said instructions would help in using MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. It requires a little bit of administration skills because you will need torun commands in the Terminal.

As it goes with every installation, the standard instruction would be:  Backup your data and Try it at your own risk.

• Download and Install MacFuse 0.1.7 DMG

• Download and Install NTFS-3G 20070116 DMG

• Open the Disk Utility (In Finder -> Application -> Utility folder) and press Umount button on the NTFS volume

• Now, right click on the volume and select “Information”, search for “Disk Identifier” (i.e. disk0s2). Jot it Down.

• Start Terminal and run the the following commands in italic:
• Create symlink for mount_fusefs: sudo ln -s /System/Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/mount_fusefs /usr/bin/mount_fusefs
• Create a new directory: mkdir /Volumes/Windows
• Mount the NTFS volume: sudo /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g /dev/disk0s2 /Volumes/”Windows” -o ping_diskarb,volname=”Windows”

Windows volume should be visible by now as it is mounted and should be displayed on your desktop.Now try to read and write files in the NTFS volume. Have fun and hope you find it useful.

Do comment if you have any useful tip!!!

Want to Download a Google Video

Wow, all those amazing videos on Google would have made you wonder and would have made you think about sharing them with your friends and foes(?). But, how to share them with people who do not have an internet account or wanna watch it offline.

Simple Solution-Download it. How?

Solution is: Use this website to get the direct URL to the video file.

LG’S 10000:1-A Monster Contrast Ratio

Most of us might find a 10000:1 contrast ratio monitor from LG with Digital Fine Contrast technology overkill for writing Facebook entries or watching YouTube, but college students—who watch full-length pirated movies on their computer every day—will find this extremely useful. And since contrast ratio makes it so that you can easily tell the difference between dark gray, gray, coal, charcoal and dust, it’s perfect for picking out the right shade of carpet as well. Not that we would have charcoal carpet. What are we, animals? No price or release date yet. [T3 via Crunchgear]