Month: September 2014

A question: How do you make a racing car faster?

The answer: Use 3D technology, duh.

Further proof that we are taking huge leaps into the future of race car design, 3D printing is now being used in race cars to make them lighter and more enduring. 3D printing is a way of trying new things and seeing how they work in the cars, whether they are effective or not. It’s a much cheaper way of testing new designs. Racing cars used to take a minimum of four weeks to be developed; using the new technology they can be ready for the road the following day.

Strakka Racing’s new baby, the Strakka Dome S103 is a tough little thing, built for the World Endurance Championship. The car will travel further than an F1 vehicle manages in a whole season in just one race, the Le Mans 24 hour. Not bad for something made up of bits of 3D technology.

The new materials are strong and essentially very light, meaning they can really hold their own against more traditional materials. Dan Walmsley, the Team Principal at Strakka Racing explains that their new car is merely a taste of what’s to come.

“We’ve probably under-utilised it on this car, in the future you’re going to see cars with a much high proportion of it.”

The 3D printing industry is growing at a huge rate of nearly 46% a year, proof that in the future it won’t be just race cars benefiting from this technology. 3D printing has already been used in the fashion industry for several years, in jewellery design, the film industry, dentistry, prosthetics and art. This is a very exciting time for all spheres, not just exclusive to racing.

It appears to us that Microsoft is in a bit of a pickle right now. Faced with the failure of its Windows 8 software, they got all excited about replacing it with Windows 9. So excited in fact, that they accidentally posted a mock up of their new Windows logo on a Chinese social media site.

The rumour mill is frantically churning out tales that the new operating system will be with us by the end of the month. If this is true, it’s exciting but it still places Microsoft in a pretty uncomfortable position, faced with the daunting task of coaxing their loyal XP customers into finally upgrading.

It goes like this: Windows 8 was expected to attract more people than ever, with Microsoft confident that users would kiss goodbye to XP and jauntily skip over to the new system. Not so, even when Microsoft stopped support for XP in April, it seems that 24% of computers connected to the internet are still using XP, which makes it the second most popular operating system.

To put this all in perspective, 51.21% use Windows 7, 13% use Windows 8 or 8.1, and around 4.29% use Mac OS X 10.9. Even with companies who are moving towards Windows 7 or 8.1, research tells us that it takes around 7 months for them to complete the move. Awkward, when so much business is now completely reliant on the internet.

The challenge for Microsoft is clear; short of bribing people, how are they ever going to convince people to leave behind the trusty 15 year old XP? (In technology years that’s practically Jurassic.) Windows 9 is going to have to be a very impressive operating system to manage that. We’re looking forward to seeing what the software giant is going to unveil at the end of the month, but we wonder whether anything will ever be strong enough to shake the mighty Windows 7 and XP from their thrones.

Oh September. A time of new beginnings, autumn leaves and that back to school feeling. The air is crisper, full of the sounds of birdsong and the mangled cries of outrage as half a billion iTunes users wake up to realise U2 have mysteriously managed to hack their way into their music libraries in the night. Sneaky Apple, why couldn’t you have given us something we actually wanted?

So, whether it was a publicity stunt, U2 have been hobnobbing with the CEOs of Apple, or a glitch hastily covered up with the declarations of ‘it’s a big moment in music history!’ and also ‘you’re part of it!’ we will begrudgingly forgive them because this is the month we finally get to play with the iPhone 6. And its big sister, the fun loving iPhone 6 Plus, though good luck fitting them in your pocket.

They’ve already been well received and eagerly anticipated and now they’re dropping into stores everywhere. Just as exciting, a new Apple Watch is being released early next year.  It genuinely looks like something from the future. It’s basically a very small phone for your wrist; with roughly a thousand features, you can even record your heartbeats and send them to a loved one. Practical and romantic! (Or gross, you decide.)

October has become the traditional (if anything about Apple can be referred to as that) month of the iPad launch, so what will this October bring us? Whispers along the grapevine tell us that there’s an event planned for October 21^st, potentially to announce shiny new iPad shaped things, but nothing has been confirmed as yet. It would make sense however, so that Apple can target that lucrative Christmas market. Hold tight.

Whispers continue that this year’s event might just introduce updated iPad models that include the faster A8 processor, anti-reflective displays and Touch ID fingerprint sensors. We still can’t tell for certain whether this will be across both the Mini and the Air. All very science fiction, we’ll just have to wait and see.

One thing we are pretty sure about is that the OS X Yosemite will be with us in October. We were told about it in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference – and it doesn’t take a genius to assume that if Apple does have an event in October that Yosemite will be probably released on the same day. 

And not to forget the Mac contingency, the Mac Mini, MacBook Air, iMac and Apple TV are all due a spruce up but the delays in Intel’s next generation of processors will probably mean just that: delays.

We’re guessing that the Mac Pro might receive a speed bump upgrade and there are exciting new rumours about an ultra-high definition 27” monitor. We’re sure they’ll have something up their sleeve in any case.

Is Apple returning to the glory days? Or are they trying too hard to keep up with Steve Job’s legacy? He’s left some big boots to fill in California, and just how well are they being filled? If you fancy leasing any of our Apple products you can call us on 0121 285 0098, or check out our Apple products here.

The internet, a place of wonder and magic, somewhere to while away hours for your own amusement or pursuit of knowledge and where you can manage and buy services in a huge digital marketplace. However, it’s also a place where you can be very easily hacked and your credit card details stolen, which we can all agree isn’t very wonderful or magical.

With the vast amount of transactions taking place online these days everywhere we store card details they must be backed up with usernames and passwords. Very commonly these usernames are simply our email addresses and the passwords vary very little between different websites – how would we remember them all? It’s all very well trying to make every single one unique, but according to the CSID Consumer Survey the average user could have as many as 17 private passwords, and 8.5 for work.

The recent security scares at eBay, Sony, Adobe and Apple have sparked speculation on how safe our details really are. If Apple can download a U2 album into half a billion accounts, what can they take out? A breach in Apple’s security meant that quite a few famous young actresses have just had their very private photos stolen and thrown to the blood-thirsty wolf pack that is social media. If someone has stolen my Adobe details, it’s not because they’re planning on ransacking my Photoshop liberties. It’s because they want free access to my card details, and bank account. It’s very easy to ignore these scandals, shrugging them off and assuming that it won’t happen to you. With the eBay scare, it was only because eBay contacted me so promptly requesting an immediate password change that I took positive action. Security scares from other companies are filtered to us through the lens of the media, and we are more likely to react and actually change passwords if the company gets in touch. However, there is a clever little website that tells you if you’ve been hacked into or affected by any security breaches: haveibeenpwned.com.

Type in your username or login details of whatever site you suspect has been compromised. The website then checks all its lists of cached copies of the stolen lists to check if you are at risk. If your name comes up you can quickly change the passwords to limit damage – or call your bank manager. Nifty eh? We discovered this through an excellent article by Stephen Cassidy on PC Pro – the perfect and simple way to find out if you are at risk. Be clever about your online presence, there’s no need to be targeted if you’re wise to what can happen, it’s a big wide web out there. Take a few minutes to change your passwords or adjust them, so that if your details are stolen you can ensure they are not easily transferable between your various online profile. Be safe!

Adobe deciding to stop releasing its Creative Suite products every two years in favour of a Cloud solution was never going to be without consequences. This basically means that its faithful customers now have to pay for a monthly deal instead, and they wonder why their sales haven’t quite been up to scratch.

The thinking behind it was sound, more or less – why sell a product once, every two years, and watch sales drop after the first initial spike when you can make people pay for a product monthly, meaning continuous cash flow? Except it isn’t continuous cash flow, as Adobe have just reported a 46% year on year drop in net profits. Have people lost interest in Adobe’s Creative Cloud? Or do they not want to pay for something monthly that’s sort of like a library book; you never actually get a physical product to keep. 

Understandably this has made small businesses reluctant to convert to the new system. Graphic designers and other people reliant on these services have taken angrily to online forums to air their disapproval and fear of losing their work, with varying levels of success and eloquence. It’s not that Adobe haven’t been successful in shifting Enterprise clients across, it’s just that in doing so, they’ve had to massively slash their rates in a bid to lure in new users – students, teachers, photographers, and other individuals with a burning desire for Photoshop or other online apps.

For those who aren’t familiar with Adobe’s Creative Cloud, it’s basically a series of packages you can buy tailored for specific purposes, such as businesses or private use, containing creative apps and services such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Cloud storage, mobile apps, web fonts and ProSite portfolio websites. The intention is that you can work anywhere, laptops, desktops, tablets or mobile phones, with the materials that you most need. But before you could buy similar packages and have them, as yours. Now you cannot, though on the plus side they are updated more regularly than once in two years.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Adobe has signed up 2.8 million users, up from 2.3 million last quarter. Promising? The revenue is still down by 2%, which is another clear indication that they’ve had to lower their prices to get those users in the first place. They’ve tailor made new packages, the cheapest of which is a handy Photoshop and Lightroom combination for £8.78. ‘Great!’ you cry, then realise it’s that much a month. Fair enough if you need those products but wouldn’t you rather pay for it in a bulk and then actually own Photoshop? 

The business model is moving away from the sharp peaks and troughs in profits of the Creative Suite days, but is this a sustainable future for Adobe? Should we all just stop whining, get on with it and embrace the updates?

What do you reckon? Let us know @mygeex

Isn’t it annoying when you’re at work and you’ve got numerous documents to print, the office printer is over 3 steps away from your desk, and you have to resort to physically standing up and taking numerous strides towards it, whilst attempting to bypass the awkward chit chat, “hello how are you”s and “good weekend?”s from those colleagues that you haven’t even bothered remembering the names of.

Wouldn’t it be great if all of that hassle was taken away and the printer actually came to you? Well that’s exactly what Fuji Xerox have come up with. They have been testing the first ever robotic printer, one that does all the work for you, including the walking.

The incentive behind this is to keep sensitive documents secure and avoid them from falling into the wrong hands. The printer is so new that it’s currently nameless. It incorporates numerous technology in order to travel to your desk and print your documents, including URL addresses on desks, smartcards for identification and the same Lidar sensors that Google use on their self-driving cars in order to avoid collisions with nearby objects and people.

So what do you think office life will really be like with this new technology? It appears to contradict the health advice constantly on repeat for office workers of taking regular breaks away from your desk and going for small walks around the office. But encouraging laziness certainly isn’t the idea behind the robotic printer. It’s designed to keep private documents exactly that… Private.

Is this the answer to the potentially big, but also unlikely, problem of colleagues stealing other people’s printing or will it just be a huge distraction in the office workplace by becoming a challenge for people to trip up? We may like to think we’re mature and responsible grown ups but when it comes down to it, we think there’s a child in all of us that will attempt to chase / be chased by the Doctor Who style office furniture and it’s sensor technology.

More and more of us are increasingly turning towards the internet to buy IT components. However, as people are attracted by incredibly low prices they are moving away from established businesses and buying from people on auction sites.

Now we like a bargain as much as the next person but sometimes things can be too good to be true. Recently, we have read a lot about fake capacity USB Flash Drives or SD Cards. Sold incredibly cheaply, on line, these are usually high capacity drives such as 16GB, 32GB, 64GB or 128GB.

The drives appear to work perfectly and Windows will even show them to have the correct level of storage capacity. However, a 64GB drive may only contain 2GB of actual memory. So it will work fine whilst you transfer the first 2GB of data but after that it will corrupt all of the data on it.

So how do you test a USB Flash Drive or SD card? Programs such as ChipGenuis will allow you to reveal the true size of the memory. We also sell a lot of Kingston drives and a good way to test whether it is a genuine part is to check that Kingston have printed text onto the metal USB connector which has the model number and capacity plus other numbers. If your Kingston drive has no printing on the connector, it may well be a fake.

It seems that when faced with the failure of its Windows 8 software, even Microsoft can’t help but get excited about replacing it with Windows 9. So much so that last week it mistakenly posted a mockup of its Windows logo on a Chinese social media site.

Rumours are gathering strength that the new Operating System will be with us by the end of this month. However, Microsoft is still facing a huge task of getting people to upgrade.

Windows 8 was meant to attract more people than ever. Microsoft expected users to leave behind Windows XP but this never happened. Even with Microsoft stopping support for XP in April, 24% of computers that are connected to the internet still use Windows XP. That makes it the second most popular operating system!

To put it into perspective 51.21% use Windows 7, 13% use Windows 8 or 8.1 and around 4.29% use Mac OS X 10.9. Even with those companies who are moving towards Windows 7 or 8.1, research has shown that it takes around 7 months for them to complete the move.

Therefore, the challenge for Microsoft is quite clear. Windows 9 needs to be an Operating System that compels people to leave behind the 15 year old XP. We look forward to seeing what the software giant release at the end of the month.