Microsoft Office 365 is an online based service that Microsoft claims will transform your small business allowing you to compete with the big boys. We are putting the key points down so you can see straight away what you get.

 

If you are still thinking about upgrading to Microsoft Office 365 Business or Premium, think no more. We recommend you do it ASAP and here’s why.

 

For one, you can have access to your software (be it Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Etc) anywhere that you have a web connection as Microsoft has based all these tools in the cloud. Don’t worry about security, everything is encrypted and Antivirus signatures are kept up to date.

You can work on your documents and save them on the SkyDrive and access them from any computer connected to the web. You can collaborate and share all your documents with this streamlined service.

Microsoft offers 1TB of online storage and sharing space. That’s a great deal.

With The Premium service you have Business-Class email with 50GB of mailbox storage.

Also with the Premium version you will be able to video conference in HD using Skype.

If you are going to be working on web based system, you want to know there will be minimum downtime. Rest assured, Microsoft Office 365 Business has a 99.9% all systems go record.

A huge selling factor is the maintenance side of things. Microsoft takes care of all that for you. Updates, patches and upgrades happen in the background and you don’t have to give it a second thought. You will always have the most up to date version of Office direct from Microsoft’s servers.

You can use all the excellent applications on your Apple devices and your Android ones too.

If you use the Contacts and the Calendar service, you will be please to know it will sync with your iPhone and Android devices.

One feature we like is that each user can have up to 5 copies of the Office desktop application installed on any device, such as Mac’s Tablets, Phones etc. If you have several machines you want to use, then yippy, you’re on easy street.

You will get 24/7 full phone & Web support from Microsoft, It can be hit and miss on how good the quality will be, but you will have GEEX support to rely on if you think Microsoft is letting you down.

Don’t worry about what system you are using, Microsoft Office 365 will work with pretty much anything you are using at your office and home, even XP.

If your business relies on Office 365 to do government work or have auditing concerns, no problem, all services are compliant with ISO 27001 standards, completed SAS70 Type I and II audits and achieve the EU Safe Harbour seal.

 

All in all, the service is excellent value for money and the affordable price will more than pay for itself with the time you save and the value it adds to your business. We at Geex highly recommend office 365 business to all who are wondering to take the plunge

Call Geex today to talk to us about how to move all you systems across to Microsoft 365 business and Premium.

 

 

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

News from Computex 2015 suggests that Thunderbolt 3 is upon us.

 

The first big change is the cable will not use the Mini DisplayPort as found on T1 and T2 but will now be using the USB type-C plug s it’s new connector.

 

Now supporting USB 3.1 (i.e Gen 2, up to 10GB/s) .

 

The Thunderbolt transport layer sees its max bandwidth doubled from 20GB/s to 40GB/s (bi-directional, full duplex).

 

Thunderbolt 3 also offers an optional 100W of power, in accordance with the USB Power Delivery spec. Without USB PD, Thunderbolt will provide up to 15w.

Thunderbolt 3 is backed by Intel’s new Alpine Ridge controller.

 

There will be 2 versions. 1) that uses four PCIe 3.0 lanes to drive two Thunderbolt ports 2) that uses two PCIe lanes to connect a single Thunderbolt port.

 

With the increase in bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 now supports up to TWO 4K @ 60Hz displays or a single 5K @ 60Hz display running off a single cable.

 

DisplayPort 1.2 will be the native standard for the Thunderbolt 3 .

 

At launch there will be 1 passive cable to support Thunderbolt, USB 3.1 and DisplayPort 1.2 but that will only allow a bandwidth of 20GB/s. This will be a standard cheap USB Type-C cable. There will also be an active cable that allows 40GB/s transfer speeds, but drops DP 1.2 connectivity.

 

We are very excited with the adoption of Type-C connector leading the way to tablet connectivity.

 

With such a fast transfer speed it is only a matter of time before you will only need 1 cable to connect all your devices.

 

Bring on The Future

 

This article is dedicated to normal hard disks, Not solid state drive.

We will upload similar blogs on RAM, Processor’s, Megapixels on phone cameras’, Screen resolution, SSD Hard Drives and SD/Micro SD cards, Wifi and 4g speeds, Battery Life, Connectivity and Old Apple vs New Apple.

When it comes to hard drives, things have moved pretty quick In the last 30 years.

In 1985 the average cost for 1GB of storage was £50,000. If you wanted to burn a blue-ray on to a hard drive in 1985, you’re looking at a million pounds per film. Shocking really.

 

15 years later it was down to £300 for a blue-ray. Today just 30p. If things keep moving at the same pace, in 15 years you could theoretically have 20 blue-rays worth of data for a penny. That’s 2p a TB.

 

The first hard disk drive 60 odd years ago made by IBM at the San Jose California laboratory.

The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive.

RAMAC stood for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control”

It was a vacuum tube computer and weighed over a ton.

In today’s money it leased for around $30,000 a month. Around $1.5million to buy. It holds 3.75MB.

 

 

Some old time adverts on what people would pay for storage space. When you factor in inflation, its crazy how quickly technology has developed. These are from the 70’s and 80’s

  

 

Here are some graphs on how much a GB cost over the years.

 

1980– £300,000

1985– £60,000

1990– £6,000

1995– £600

2000– £6

2005– 75p

2010– 6p

2013– 3p

2015– 1p

 

Old School Hard Drives

 

 

Once worth hundreds, now worth pennies.

 

 

Timeline of events

 

1956: IBM ships the first hard drive the RAMAC 305 system. It holds 3.75MB

1963: IBM comes up with the 1311. The first removable HD with a wopping 2.6MB.

1970: Western Digital is founded.

1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern “Winchester” HD.

1978: The first Raid technology patent is filled.

1979: Seagate is founded.

1980: IBM reveals the first gigabyte HD. The size of a fridge, weighs 550 pounds and costs $40,000

1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.

1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive, the RO352. 10MB.

1984: WD makes the first Winchester HD controller card for IBM and sets an industry standard.

1985: Control Data, Compaq and Western Digital collaborate to develop 40-pin IDE interface.

1986: The official SCSI spec is released and Apple’s Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.

1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220. The first 2.5-inch HD for the growing notebook market. 20MB

1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch high 3.5-inch hard drive, still a common form factor.

1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.

1991: IBM reveals the 0663 Corsair. The first disk drive with think magnetoresistive heads. 1GB

1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.

1992: Seagate markets the Barracuda. The first 7200-revolutions per min HD. 2.1GB.

1994: WD develops Enhanced IDE

1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.

1996: Seagate introduces the Cheetah family, the first 10,000-RPM hard disks.

1997: IBM introduces giant magneto resistive heads, the Deskstar. 16.8GB

1998: IBM announces the Microdrive, the smallest HD to date. 340MB on a single 1” platter.

2000: Maxtor buys Quantum’s HD business. Maxtor now world’s biggest hard drive manufacturer.

2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-RPM hard drive. The Cheetah X15.

2002: Seagate releases the Barracuda ATA v Serial ATA hard drive

2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending it’s involvement in the HD industry.

2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-RPM SATA hard drive. The raptor 37GB#

2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive. Toshiba’s MK2001MTN. On a single platter 2GB

2005: Toshiba reveals the MK4007 GAL. The first HD using perpendicular magnetic recording. 40GB

2006: Seagate completes the accusation of Maxtor.

2006: Seagate Momentus 5400.3 notebook HD is the first 2.5” model to use perpendicular magnetic recording which boosts capacity up to 160GB.

2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10. The largest HD to date. 750GB

2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1” hard disks. 12GB

2007: First 1TB hard drive

2008: First 1.5TB hard drive

2009: First 2TB hard drive

2010: First 3TB hard drive

2010: First HD manufactured using the Advanced Format of 4,096 bytes a block instead of 512.

2011: First 4.0 TB hard drive.

2011: Floods hit many HD factories. Predictions of a worldwide shortage cause prices to double.

2012: Western Digital announce the first 2.5”, 5mm thick and the first 2.5” 7mm with 2 platters.

2012: TDK demonstrates 2TB on a single 3.5” platter.

2013: Seagate announces it will ship 5TB HD’s using shingled magnetic recording.

2014: Seagate introduces 6TB hard drives that don’t use helium, bring down costs.

2014: Seagate ships the first 8TB hard drive.

2015: in June HGST ships Ultrastar Archive HA SMR HDD. The world’s first 10TB HDD

 

We will let you imagine how much space and cost/TB will be available in the next 30 years.

 

Here at Geex we love computers, so lets not get started about how much we love Super Computers.

In the last few years (and which we mean 5/6) the power of these SC has grown well beyond what was expected.

They are used for everything from Global Warming, Weather, Nuclear warfare, and Fuel Efficiency simulations to name a few.

The first Super Computer was named Colossus and housed in Britain. It was used to read and crack German messages in World War 2, it could read 5,000 characters a second.  Now the Worlds No1. Can read 33,000,000,000,000,000 a second. (that’s a lot of emails)

In 2009 the first Super Computer to top 1 Petaflops/s was called Roadrunner and built by IMB. Now there are  68 systems that can perform over 1 pf/s/

The No.1 spot accounts for 10% of the computing power on the Top 500 list.

In the Top 500 list, HP 179, IBM 110, Cray Inc 71

In fifteen years time it is theorized that the fastest Super Computer will be more powerful than every laptop on the planet today which is a jaw dropping statement.

 

 

 

No. 10 – Stampede – Texas, United States

 

Pflops/s – 5.168, MAX 8.520

Built By –  Dell

Operating System – Linux (CentOS)

Processor Type – Xeon E5-2680 (8Core) + Xeon Phi

Cores – 522,080

Nodes – 6400

Total Memory – 270TB RAM

Disk Storage – 14 PB

Power Usage – 4.5 MW

Number of racks – 182

Approx Weight – 500,000 lbs

 

 

No. 9 – Shaheen II – Saudi Arabia Cost $80,000,000

Pflops/s – 5.537, MAX 7.235

Built by – Cray Inc.

Operating System – Linux (CLE)

Processor Type – Xeon E5-2698v3

Cores – 197,568

Nodes – 6174

Total Memory – 790 TB RAM

Disk Storage – 17 PB

Power Usage – 2.8 MW

 

 

No. 8 – Hazel Hen – Germany

Pflops/s – 5.640, MAX 7.404

Built by – Cray Inc.

Operating system – Linux (CLE)

Processor Type – Xeon E5-2680v3

Cores – 185,088

Nodes – 7,712

Total Memory – 965 TB RAM

Disk Storage – 11 PB

Disk Drives – 8,300

Power Usage – 7.4 MW

 

 

No. 7 – Piz Daint – Switzerland

 

Pflops/s – 6.271, MAX 7.779

Built By – Cray Inc.

Operating System – Linux (CLE)

Processor Type – Cray Xc30

Can computer in 1 day what a laptop would take 900 years

Nodes – 5,272

cores – 115,000

System Memory – 169 TB RAM

Disk Storage – 2.5 PB

Power usage – 7.7MW

 

 

No. 6 – Trinity – United States Cost $174,000,000 (due late 15/2016)

 

Pflops/s – 8.101, MAX 11.079

Built by – Cray Inc.

Operating System – Linux (CLE)

Processor Type – Xeon E5-2698v3

Cores – 300,000

Disk Space – 82 PB

Used to simulate the safety, security and effectiveness of U.S nuclear deterrent

 

 

No. 5 – Mira – United States $50,000,000

 

Pflops/s – 8,586, MAX 10.066

Built by – IBM

Operating System – Linux (RHEL and CNK)

Processor Type – PowerPC A2

Cores – 786,000

Weight – 100 Tons

 

 

No. 4 –  K Computer – Japan

   

Pflops/s – 10.510, MAX 11.280

Built by – Fujitsu

Operating System – Linux

Processor Type – SPARC64 vIIIfx

Cores – 705,024

Cabinets – 864

Nodes – 82,944

Power – 12.6 MW

Annual running cost of $10,000,000

 

 

No 3. – Sequoia – United States – Cost $655,000,000

 

Pflops/s – 17.173 Max 20.133

Built by – IBM

Operating system – Linux (RHEL and CNK)

Processor Type – PowerPC A2

Cores –  1,572,864

Racks – 96

Nodes – 98,304

Memory – 1.6 PB RAM

Power Usage – 7.8 MW

Used for Nuclear weapons simulation.

If everyone on earth used hand held calculators to work on a calculation every second of every day for 320 years, it would take Squoia 1 hour.

 

 

No. 2 – Titan – United States – Cost $97,000,000

 

PFlops/s – 17.59 MAX 27.11

Built By – Cray Inc.

Processor – Opteron 6274 + Tesla K20X

Cores – 560,000

Memory – 710 TB RAM

Disk Space – 40 PB

Nodes – 18,688

Power Usage – 8.2 MW

 

 

No. 1 – Tianhe -2 – China Cost $390,000,000 (Available to lease for about $3m a week)

   

Pflops/s – 33.86, MAX 54.90

Built by – China National University of Defence Technology

Operating System – Linux (Kylin)

Processor – Xeon E5-2692 + Xeon Phi 31s1P

Cores – 3,120,00

Disk Storage – 12.4 PB

Memory – 1 .4 PB RAM

Cabinets – 170

Power Usage – 17.6 MW, With cooling 24 MW

 

 

Its worth noting that although this is the no.1 in terms of calculation speed, the ease of use is not good for researchers. It could take a decade to write some of the code needed. The super computers in the US and Japan are far in front of Tianhe-2 in terms of practicality.