Another month down, and we’re on the rapid downhill slope to Christmas!

Just a quick note that EtherTech will be open on all days except the main public holidays (Dec 25^th and 26^th & Jan 1^st), so if you need us over this period, please call our office hotline (1300-ETHERTECH), to speak with one of the guys.

With the Festive season upon us, our thoughts turn to gifts and what to buy is always a daunting task. This year we have compiled a quick list of the most popular gadgets in the IT world that might help you with your decision making, PLUS we’re giving away a free HP Slate tablet which could even save you some money too!

So, here is our Top10 Gadget list

• Smartphones
• Tablets (iPad air/mini –Kindle – Samsung galaxy note/nexus)
• Smartwatches (Samsung Gear2Neo – Asus ZenWatch)
• Wearable Fitness Devices (Fitbit / smart scale)
• Pebble Portable Smartstick Phone Charger
• Helicopter Drone
• GPS Vehicle Trackers
• The Selfie Stick for smartphones
• Smart TVs
• Portable GPS Navigation (TomTom – Garmin)

 

As well as all these cool things you can buy, there’s also plans for an Australian release of Netflix due in March 2015, bringing on-demand streaming movies and content to the home much like it is in the USA. This means a LOT of specials coming out from Foxtel and Optus in the months to come to try to retain their subscriber base.

 

Other ‘new-tech’ to be released in the New Year includes “Facebook at work” designed to compete directly against LinkedIn and Yammer, it seems Facebook will do anything to get more information to harvest and sell.

 

Microsoft of course purchased Skype quite some time ago now, and plans to utilise and extend its technology and user base to replace its own Lync messaging system. This is a great marketing idea from Microsoft as everyone knows and uses Skype now for messaging, so it will be a much easier sell to use a trusted brand name rather than something called ‘Google Hangouts” (which is the competing product).

 

Another Malware / Virus Update: PLEASE BE VIGILANT when opening ANY zip file attachments in your email. In fact, JUST DON’T DO IT.

 

With more and more virus payloads being distributed via zip, and antivirus software only being as good as your “up-to-date database and continuous threat monitoring settings”, we are seeing people opening these emails and wiping out valuable company data as well as their own data, ultimately costing their companies a lot of money to recover valuable information. If in doubt call us! We’re only too happy to advise whether something you’re not sure about is good or bad.

 

With the holidays approaching, please make sure you all have a very safe break from work (if you’re having one), a very merry and safe festive season, and we’ll be back again in 2015!
Ohh if you want to win a Free HP Slate 7 tablet, please go to and like our Facebook page and check the most recent post! J Good luck!

 

facebook.com/ethertech.au