Welcome to the latest Boffin edition; warming up with the latest tech news and springing into life in September.

To kick us off, Smartphones are playing a huge part of our daily worklife with the ability to stream content directly from/to the phone and other devices using a 3G/4G/WiFi connection.

For the devote fans of the BlackBerry smartphone, the new BlackBerry 9720 hits the shelf with a underwhelming specification. The new model is using the aged OS 7.1 instead of OS 10, it boasts a 2.8 touchscreen, 5 MP camera and you can choose from Black, White, Purple, Blue, or Pure Pink!

The new iPhone 5S is due for release in September and reported to showcase its new A7 quad core processor with 3 GB RAM. It is also rumoured to have a fingerprint sensor, 128 GB internal storage and a much longer battery life. We are looking forward to seeing how this will hold up against the latest Samsung Galaxy.

Competition for the number one smartphone hotspot between Apple and Samsung has been interesting to watch, since Samsung released the Galaxy S4 and their overwhelming sales hit all time highs boasting the smartphones performance and specification. Dependant on how the new iPhone sales go, Samsung is reported to release the new Galaxy smartphone late 2013 / early 2014.

This month UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) has saved the day for a number of us. Interestingly we have seen a number of companies encounter problems without having a UPS hooked up to their servers, backup devices, switches, telephone systems etc.

The UPS is a core component of a company’s infrastructure and shouldn’t be overlooked especially when expensive hardware and services are to be protected. With the appropriate setup and configuration a sequence of hardware failures can be avoided.

As a reminder, your UPS battery should be replaced at least every 3 years and it is certainly worth considering an environment without having the added protection of a UPS; how would your business operate in the event of a power failure and the UPS didn’t respond to the demands of your attached devices. Look especially at the time and money it would cost for this to be overlooked.

Is your UPS right for your business? Will it allow enough time for the administrator to power down the attached devices safely.

In other news the Compact Cassette had its 50^th birthday. How times have changed using the cassettes to run programs on the old Sinclair Spectrum; not to mention recording your mix tapes from the radio! Have you still got your mix tapes?

If you would like more information on anything IT related, please contact us on 1300-ETHERTECH. See you next month!