Welcome to another instalment of Boffin!

Can you believe it’s already 12 months since Windows XP went End of Life! And with the deadline looming ever larger for Windows Server 2003 on July 14^th 2015, it’ll be upon us before we know it, so make sure you’ve upgraded as soon as you can!

April Fools day 2015 was yet another day of ‘release’ for the IT industry, with some of the more notable entries being Google (as normal) with their Pac-Maps. Pac-man mode for Google Maps, where in the bottom left corner there is a Pacman icon and you can play Pacman through the streets in certain areas. Pretty cool, and its kept the guys here at the office entertained for a while today too.

Samsung announced their new Galaxy Blade Phone with a sharp edge for cutting food.

Sydney Aquarium announced a new Kitty Snorkel Experience for cats to be immersed in their Barrier Reef tank, and the NSW Govt announced they would privatise Kids playgrounds (which still maybe true we’re not really sure!).

In more serious IT news though, HP Enterprise Group (who supply all the File Server, storage and networking range of HP Products), have announced an increase in selling price of 10% across the entire range of products due the rapid fall of the Australian dollar. Mirroring what Cisco (14% rise) and Apple (25%) did over the last two months, HP announced their prices will go up on the 14^th of April, so if you need more hard discs or have been putting off replacing that File Server, now is the time to do it otherwise you’ll be paying even more than you budgeted on.

An all new ‘aluminium-ion’ battery has been developed in the US. Touting a rapid charge time of about 1 minute! Will never overheat or potentially catch fire like the lithium-ion can, and has a claimed lifespan of 7500 recharges compared to 1000 for the Lithium-ion variety. Battery technology is advancing rapidly these days, and the potential for large storage arrays of these types of batteries for home power/renewable energy storage is getting closer and closer. Bring it on!

Finally this month, we’re giving you a timely reminder on the importance of backups and backing up your data.

There doesn’t seem to be a month that goes by when we don’t have either a crashed Notebook drive, a PC that has been so badly infected by viruses that all the files are not recoverable and even mobile phones and tablets with thousands of photos that haven’t been backed up.

There are so many options these days for backing up your data, it should be seamless and something that ‘just happens’ without you even thinking about it.

With a lot of free storage sites like Dropbox, Google Drive & OneDrive offering instant mobile phone backups for free, it really is something that these days is classed as a critical thing to ensure is done. The same goes for PC’s and especially for Servers. We have a complete line of online backup solutions for PCs and Servers that will seamlessly backup and restore your important data when you need it starting from $33.00 a month. Call us for more information.