A year ago, Dell introduced Concept Luna, a proof-of-concept developed in collaboration with Intel that aims to rethink how personal computers, peripherals and accessories are designed and manufactured so component parts can be easily removed, reclaimed and reused. Last week, Glen Robson, CTO of Dell’s Client Solutions Group, published a blog discussing Concept Luna’s progress on its first anniversary. Let’s consider Robson’s points in more detail.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Challenging the High-Tech Status Quo

Why are projects and programs like Concept Luna potentially important? According to the Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Forum, in 2021 some 57.4 million tons of E-Waste was discarded—more than the total weight of The Great Wall of China, the world’s largest man-made object.

As an example, the Forum estimates that, annually, 151M mobile phones—approximately 416,000 per day— are trashed, incinerated or landfilled. Along with being wasteful, the process carries profound environmental and health costs. It is estimated that 40% of heavy metals in U.S. landfills come from discarded electronics. Plus, according to the EPA, an undetermined volume of E-Waste is shipped from developed countries to undeveloped countries that lack the facilities and expertise to dispose of it, leading to further health and environmental problems.

As anyone who has tried to replace a phone battery or faulty laptop component can attest, electronics are often difficult or even impossible to repair and reuse. That, in turn, significantly impacts recycling costs and efficiency. As Robson noted in his blog, “It can take recycling partners more than an hour to disassemble a PC with today’s technology, held together with screws, glues and various soldered components.”

Those complications can hinder or cripple recycling, especially efforts to scale reclamation processes to keep up with the tens of millions of outdated PCs and laptops that are discarded every year. Are there ways vendors can develop and design products to address these problems? Dell believes there are.

Also see: Digital Transformation Guide: Definition, Types & Strategy

Concept Luna’s Strategic Simplification

Dell’s Concept Luna starts with a simple premise: Imagine a future where nothing goes to waste. Robson describes a process where “we harvest individual electronics components for a second, third or even fourth life.” When a device “is truly at the end of life, we refurbish and recycle it to incorporate these same materials into next-generation laptops, monitors or phones.”

How is Dell’s Experience Innovation Group leveraging Concept Luna to achieve that vision of the future? Three things:

1. Sustainable design – Dell’s engineers have developed highly modular laptop and PC designs with component parts, including processors and boards, memory, storage and other components that can be quickly and easily removed. Glue, solder and mechanical connectors, like screws, are kept to a minimum. As a result, Concept Luna-based PCs can be disassembled in minutes.
2. Intelligent telemetry – An often-neglected point in electronics design is that product components, like computer displays and peripherals, do not age or reach end-of-life at the same time. Concept Luna includes developing telemetry that monitors the performance and condition of individual devices and components, and alerts staff when parts need to be repaired or replaced. Robson describes it as, “Akin to how we maintain our vehicles: we don’t throw away the entire car when we need new tires or brakes.”
3. Robotic automation – Finally, Dell commissioned a micro-factory to work with its Concept Luna design team, resulting in a device that can be disassembled robotically. This should vastly improve the time and human effort required for product recycling and refurbishment. As a result, those processes should be considerably easier to scale, improving their value to enterprises and service partners that manage hundreds of thousands of devices, and are also likely to enhance future Dell services and solutions.

Final Analysis

As Glen Robson noted in his anniversary blog, while Concept Luna “is ‘just a concept’ right now, it is a long-term vision for how we achieve an even greater business and societal impact through circular design practices.”

As such, Concept Luna qualifies as an important part of Dell’s Advancing Sustainability goals and also stands as an innovative example of what electronics and electrical equipment makers can achieve.

Also see: Best Data Analytics Tools 

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Securing technology products is one of the industry’s most pressing and challenging goals. In this two-part article, I would like to first examine five key factors that make product security assurance – particularly with hardware – a challenge.  In part two, I will discuss how these challenges can be addressed with the help of strong, strategic collaborations between the industry and academia. After all, product security assurance is a team sport.

Why is it so challenging to secure hardware technologies?

Disruptive nature of new research

Continuous research and innovation help bring new products and technologies to consumers every day. Just look at smartphone battery life or fuel efficiency in cars. But when it comes to product security, the market follows a different paradigm.

Security research brings knowledge about new attack vectors and exploitation mechanisms that were previously unknown. They could render best-in-class protections completely inadequate. Products that have employed state-of-the-art defenses designed to address today’s known security concerns can still be vulnerable to tomorrow’s new attacks.

Ever-expanding risk exposure

It is no secret that the threat landscape is changing rapidly. The market saw a record number of reported vulnerabilities in 2020. Rather than being slowed down by the pandemic, threat actors are actually speeding up. From conception to retirement, technologies are exposed to many software and hardware vulnerabilities throughout their lifetime.

Specifically, technologies that have longer intrinsic product lives – such as the microprocessors found in vehicles and critical infrastructures – have a longer window of risk exposure. Increased product refresh cycles and backward compatibility support extend those lifecycles, further adding to this challenge. As technology products continue to get more complex in support of additional use cases, the attack surface is expanding. All of these factors present more exposure avenues that today’s hardware technology providers must overcome.

Disproportionate expectations between product security and functionality

Consumers and end-users tend to maintain a much higher expectation on product security than they do on functionality. Here is an example to illustrate what I mean.

Even though cellular network providers have upgraded their networks to the latest 5G standard, many users today are still using their older 4G smartphones. With 4G phones on 5G networks, users typically would not expect their phones to magically support any 5G features, such as a generous increase in data download speed. They understand their phones are purposely built to support up to the 4G standard and the associated protocols.

Yet, it is rather common to find users expecting the same phones to offer robust security over both 4G and 5G networks. Moreover, for as long as they keep their phones, users expect these devices would continue to work flawlessly against any of the yet-to-be-found security exploits that researchers may find in the future.

While users do not expect a technology product to be future-proof with its features, they do expect the same product to be future-proof in its security. These incongruent expectations put added pressure on vendors around security.

Dynamic nature of product security requirements

The security requirements for technology products are anything but static. They often continue to evolve after a product launches and create new security challenges. For instance, new government regulations and policies may emerge following significant security or privacy incidents.

While this may be more pronounced in the information security domain – where regulators establish privacy acts and data protection laws – the same could also happen for general technology products. As hardware solutions become more integrated into our day-to-day lives, our safety is increasingly dependent on the security robustness of these technologies. Just look at medical devices or autonomous vehicles. New policies and standards often come when emerging solutions run the risk to do more harm than good.

Solutions that support robust in-field update capability are better positioned to scale with product security requirement changes. But technology providers must stay up to date on the latest regulatory developments and be prepared to implement necessary updates that ensure compliance.

Such rapid changes to product security requirements become particularly challenging when it comes to hardware. In stark contrast to software, hardware technologies take years to develop, and the process for resolving new security issues involves much more than a quick patch. It often requires tight collaboration among researchers, software vendors, operating system vendors, hardware manufacturers, customers and other ecosystem partners.

Robust in-field update infrastructure still uncommon

Unfortunately, many hardware technologies available in the market today do not offer a robust, in-field update solution. This is especially true for chips used in a resource-constrained environment such as IoT devices and sensors. This can present some significant hardware security challenges.

Take home automation technologies as an example. More and more users have installed a variety of connected devices in their homes, including smart devices like thermostats, doorbells, cameras, wall plugs, and more. Users often need to install various smartphone apps to help manage devices from different IoT vendors.

Many of these smart devices cannot perform remote update on their own without the associated smartphone app or smart hub serving as the middleman. In addition, firmware updates are often not automatically initiated unless the users first open each vendor app. These high-touch user interactions present a practical roadblock to facilitate timely deployment of critical security patches.

For devices that have direct internet connections to perform updates on their own, if not designed or implemented correctly, the update mechanism could present a convenient attack surface for adversaries to introduce malicious code to the devices. Adversaries can then use the compromised devices as launching pads to attack other systems sharing the same network.

Hardware security is easily one of the most challenging technology disciplines today. Researchers and adversaries are constantly looking for new weaknesses, while product usage models and security regulations are a moving target.

Beyond that, user expectations for security have never been higher.  The process for deploying hardware security patches remotely is often far more intricate than that of software. What can be done? In Part 2 of this article, I will explore some areas of innovation and collaboration that have the potential to deliver outsized impacts to hardware security.

About the Author: 

Jason M. Fung is Director of Academic Research Engagement & Offensive Security Research at Intel

The post The Challenges of Securing Today’s Hardware Technologies (and How to Overcome Them) appeared first on eWEEK.

Early on, PCs were playthings for the technically inclined before businesses adopted them for productivity and workplace tasks. Continuing evolution and countless innovative developments helped bring modern PCs to where they are today: reliable, affordable, easy to use devices that are more akin to home appliances than they are to early personal computers.

Can the example of modern PCs be applied to other technologies? Certainly. In fact, that very point is central to the new Lenovo Turnkey Solutions that the company’s Solutions and Services Group (SSG) introduced recently at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. Let’s consider the new offerings more closely.

The problem with business solutions

Finding and choosing IT solutions to best support business processes and industry-specific workloads is a continuing challenge for many organizations.

Why so? First, because of the sheer complexity of the process which requires sorting out numerous vendors’ technical, product and pricing details, as well as those of their chosen partners.

Next is determining configuration and deployment requirements, including what can be handled in-house and what requires expert assistance. Finally, comes management and maintenance plans, and hoping that the choices you make coincide with future events and unforeseen emergencies.

How would this process change if, instead, a vendor offered customers a simple checklist covering hardware, software and service requirements, then quickly delivered solutions based on those specifications? What would be different if, instead of countless performance and technical options, the vendor and its partners tested and validated solutions so they performed as promised out of the box? How would customers benefit if, instead of being presented a long list of contacts required for various hardware, software and peripheral issues, they were given a single contact for answers to all technical support questions?

In other words, how would business customers and the acquisition process benefit if purchasing solutions were as simple as buying a PC?

Lenovo’s new Turnkey Solutions

That is the question that Lenovo SSG intends to answer with the company’s Turnkey Solutions. The six initial offerings fall into three groups:

1. Immersive

• Immersive Education: All-in-one virtual reality (VR) solutions for education
• Immersive Design and Engineering: Solutions supporting photorealistic image quality for advanced design processes with network participation

2. Purpose-Built Infrastructure

• Backup and Recovery: Enterprise-class backup and recovery and software-defined secondary data storage solutions
• Seismic Modeling and Geotechnical Computing: High-performance virtual workstation solutions that enable accelerated geotechnical workflows

3. Workplace Productivity

• SMB Office in a Box: Right-sized solutions supporting office infrastructures for small- to medium-sized businesses
• Mobile Workforce: Solutions enabling employees to access corporate applications and data from anywhere, on any device

In addition, the company is providing tools to ease and streamline decision-making for solution acquisition and support:

• Turnkey Solution Builder: A simplified web-based questionnaire that helps customers rapidly determine recommended hardware, software and service configurations for specific solutions and use cases
• Turnkey Solution Support: A “single point of contact” for technical support to address customers’ questions about hardware, software and services related to Lenovo Turnkey Solutions

Consistent with Lenovo’s recent Everything-as-a-Service announcement, businesses will have the option to purchase Turnkey Solutions as-a-service, paying on a monthly contract or to buy them outright with a single one-time payment.

In essence, Lenovo’s new Turnkey Solutions are designed to make the acquisition, ownership and support of complex business IT solutions as simple, predictable, reliable and cost-effective as buying PCs.

Final analysis

So how do Lenovo’s new offerings stack-up against its aims? Very well, for several reasons. First, as the longtime leader in worldwide PC sales, the company knows a lot about how simplifying complex configuration, purchasing and support processes can increase client engagements and customer satisfaction. Employing “simple as buying a PC” concepts to complex business solutions would be quite a stretch for many or even most vendors but not for Lenovo.

Second, the company has one of the broadest portfolios of any end-to-end solutions vendor. Its business hardware products range from smart phones to tablets to point of sales (POS) devices to laptops and desktops to portable and fixed workstations to servers, storage arrays, networking gear, HCI appliances and supercomputers.

In other words, when Lenovo claims to be able to offer solutions supporting high performance, highly technical or “accessible from anywhere” requirements, it has the goods to back-up those claims. Clearly, not all of its formidable hardware arsenal is being applied to the half dozen initial Turnkey Solutions, but it is worth considering how other Lenovo innovations might be employed in the future.

Finally, it is worth considering how Lenovo’s strategic partnerships will impact its Turnkey Solutions. The company’s history of effective strategic partnering is something I’ve discussed numerous times in the past. Working with and gaining the experience and expertise of innovative partners has helped Lenovo rapidly access new business opportunities while minimizing risk and maximizing value to its customers and channel. Overall, it seems highly likely that strategic partners will play major, continuing roles as Lenovo’s Turnkey Solutions portfolio matures and grows.

While it is impossible to forecast the potential impact or possible success of new solutions and strategies, the physical pieces, practical design and partnerships required for Lenovo Turnkey Solutions all appear to be in place and aligned. That portends well for Lenovo itself and for its thousands of business customers.

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These operational changes bring a need for IT flexibility, the latest in proactive cybersecurity and the ability to support employees, wherever they are, as they adapt to these evolving work models and technologies.   Supporting employees remotely is incredibly challenging as there’s no “IT-person” around the corner to meet with face to face.

Dell Technologies’ ProSupport Suite for PCs seeks to address these changing needs with a new array of customizable tech support tools for managing Dell PCs. Initially launched in 2015, the offering initially intrigued me with its unique, enterprise-class approach to client device tech support.

Since then, the offering has only become more compelling as Dell continues to blur the lines between traditional manual tech support (24/7 in-region support, onsite service, accidental damage coverage, etc.) and the managed services model it is driving in the enterprise.

Last week Dell announced a handful of new ProSupport Suite enhancements, promising to elevate the offering even further. Along with new intelligent support and remediation capabilities, Dell also revealed several new endpoint security features (which I will touch on briefly after digging into the ProSupport news). Does it live up to the promise? Let’s dive in.

Tech support, without the frustration

I believe the ultimate goal for any next generation support should be to provide a genuinely self-healing PC experience in which devices are remotely and intelligently managed, monitored and supported. Ideally, technical problems would be detected and resolved before the end-user even becomes aware of them—a far cry from the common, frustrating tech support experiences we’ve all encountered. Dell says this is their vision, too.

Employees and IT professionals alike are chafing at the new IT friction presented by remote work. Workers need to be able to access the right applications, entitlements and data, whether they’re in the office building or at home. Resolving IT issues was often an exercise in frustration when you worked in the same building as your IT department, let alone now when you’re sitting on hold from your home trying to regain access to the company network.

Meanwhile, your friendly IT person is pulling their hair out trying to protect the organization from new attack vectors and to figure out a manageable, reliable hybrid business transformation. All of this to say that employees and the IT departments whose job it is to support them are under immense amounts of pressure. This new round of updates pushes the ProSupport Suite further towards a self-healing IT experience—more intelligent, self-sufficient and proactive—that should do much to relieve headaches all around.

Crucial to this evolution is the platform’s new custom rules engine and the granular levels of control and automation it enables. IT admins can create and implement custom remediation rules to take fast and early action on support matters. Additionally, the engine allows customers to define parameters around the cloud creation and deployment of update catalogs. Custom rules establish when and how an organization’s fleet of Dell PCs (and its BIOS, drivers, firmware and apps) should be optimized and updated.

Furthermore, leveraging SupportAssist in TechDirect, IT admins can group and manage who gets these updates. Whether you’re seeking to deploy an update across your entire Dell PC fleet or to one specific device, I believe ProSupport Plus makes the process look easy and intuitive.  I haven’t actually used the service but the claims are spot-on.

ProSupport Suite will also now provide customers a single screen dashboard view of their Dell fleet’s health, application experience, and security scores (according to Dell, the only support service to include all three scores in one place).

This quick view gives customers insight into any developing issues or performance trends that require action or remediation. Additionally, ProSupport Suite leverages AI software and utilization metrics to provide admins with tailored recommendations for action. Dell also announced full channel partner access to the Suite’s full array of AI-powered tools, support and portal described above.

Securing endpoints everywhere

 Dell also unveiled updates to its Dell Trusted Devices security portfolio. Any comprehensive security strategy must take the supply chain into account. Advanced Secure Component Verification for PCs helps customers verify that their Dell commercial PCs and components arrive precisely as ordered. This feature is now available to Dell’s US federal customers and on other select systems.

Also introduced was Intel Management Engine (ME) Verification, a capability that validates system firmware and looks for evidence of tampering. The feature promises to provide layers of added protection below the operating system. Its initial release, available today in North America, Europe and the APJ region, focuses on critical, security-oriented boot processes.

The last new security feature, also available in North America, Europe and APJ, is Dell Trusted Device Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM. SIEM promises to give customers complete visibility into security incidents below the OS via their Splunk dashboards. This increased visibility, according to Dell, will allow for a more comprehensive analysis of an organization’s security status and help customers optimize the value of their existing investments in cybersecurity.

Wrapping up

 The future of PC support is autonomous and self-healing and this is on a ten year trajectory. I think we’re halfway there. Dell’s latest ProSupport Suite for PCs is getting us there as a support offering that goes above and beyond the basics.

The new levels of intelligence, automation and security gained from the recent updates push the ProSupport Suite even closer to my and Dell’s vision of a truly self-healing PC experience. The platform’s custom rules engine could be a game-changer that I believe will ultimately make autonomous a reality. I’ll be watching with interest.

The post Dell’s ProSupport Suite for PCs Evolves With Today’s Modern Enterprise appeared first on eWEEK.

One of the things I discovered when Microsoft announced Windows 11 is that my three-year-old Lenovo T-Series laptop will not be able to run the new operating system. According to Microsoft’s minimum system requirements, you’ll need to have enough memory and storage as well as a Trusted Platform Module version 2.0 and a compatible processor. Microsoft has a list of compatible Intel and AMD processors.

If your computer doesn’t meet some of the requirements such as storage or memory, you can fix that. But chances are, you’re not going to be able to add a TPM or a new compatible processor. If your computer doesn’t meet those requirements, the only real way to upgrade to Windows 11 is to get a new computer. Of course, you can stay with Windows 10, which Microsoft ways will be supported until late 2025.

Fortunately, Microsoft has provided links to stores with compatible computers along with the minimum system requirements. To simplify your choices, I took a look at a Windows 11 compatible laptop from each of the top three laptop makers. These are premium laptops of the kind used in business, but there are many less expensive computers that also run Windows 11. If you buy one of these now, it’ll come with Windows 10, but will receive a free upgrade when the new version is available for that machine.

Windows 11 Laptop Testing

When the laptops arrived at our Northern Virginia testing location, each was unboxed and turned on so that I could run the initial Windows 10 setup. They were connected to the 5 GHz signal of an Asus WiFi 6 router, after which I ran Windows Update. All of them required updating, and doing so would mean that they were all running the same version of Windows 10.

Once the updates were done, I installed Ookla Speed Test from the Microsoft Store, and Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5 from Primate Labs. Geekbench 5 is the latest benchmarking software from the company, but I also ran Geekbench 4 because that’s the version that I’ve used for all previous eWEEK tests, so I could compare the results.

The Ookla Speed Test does not provide useful benchmarking because the results depend on factors outside of the test environment and can vary widely regardless of the machine they’re running on. But the test does confirm that each of these machines can communicate at nearly gigabit speeds using WiFi 6. Access to the Internet used a symmetrical gigabit fiber connection from Verizon FiOS. Maximum WiFi speeds for all three laptops reached 850 megabits per second for both uploads and downloads.

The Windows 11 Laptops: HP, Dell, Lenovo

I looked at three laptops, an HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8, a Dell Latitude 9420 and a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9.

At first glance, there were, as we might say here in the South, as alike as peas in a pod. They were thin, they were intuitive to use, and their benchmark results using Geekbench 4 and 5 were close enough that you’d never see a difference in real-world use.

However, there are important differences that might impact some users. For those who like mysterious black monoliths, the X1 Carbon is a sure choice, especially considering its unique (and a little creepy) human presence detection feature. Yes, this laptop knows whether you’re looking at it, and it responds accordingly.

All three laptops are Intel Evo certified, which includes fast charging, long battery life, instant wake and WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 4. They all use USB 3.1 Type C charging, and have additional Type C ports. Choosing any one of these will give you a fast, well-built business laptop that will slide into your briefcase easily, last through even long flights on battery and survive the insults of travel.

Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1

The new Latitude features a 14-inch screen with the new 16:10 aspect ratio. This gives you more screen real estate than the previous 16:9 widescreen aspect ratios that were a little cramped when doing actual work. The Dell’s 2560 x 1600 touchscreen display is clear and bright, and the screen uses Corning’s Gorilla Glass, meaning luggage handlers will have to try extra hard to break it.

While Dell doesn’t claim the human presence detection that Lenovo has, its front camera can detect when you sit down in front of it, and automatically log you in. Along the top of the screen the webcam is protected with Dell’s SafeShutter, which is an automatic privacy shutter. According to Dell, the shutter knows when to open for conference calls. When I tried it with a Zoom call, it worked.

Dell clearly realized that office life had devolved into a never-ending series of Zoom calls, and installed four noise-cancelling microphones in a directional array to provide clear audio. The speakers are top-firing to make audio clearer.

In addition to the four USB Type C ports, there’s an HDMI and two Thunderbolt ports, a memory card reader, a USB Type A port and an audio jack. You can order a SIM slot and a fingerprint reader. This 2-in-1 laptop weighs 3.2 pounds. There’s also a laptop (non 2-in-1) version that’s slightly lighter.

The Dell Latitude 9420

HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8

The first thing I noticed about the HP EliteBook: it doesn’t have a touch screen. I found this annoying on a laptop where your fingers are usually close enough to the screen where using a touch sensitive screen can be very convenient.

There is a touch screen available with a different display, however. Both available 14-inch screens are full high-definition in the older 16:9 format. The graphics card will support UHD on an external monitor, which is accessible through one of the USB Type C ports or the HDMI port. There’s also a headphone port and a space for an optional SIM card. This laptop weighs in at 2.496 pounds.

The keyboard includes a pointing device in the center along with the touch pad on the front of the keyboard surface. The keys are the flat “Chicklet” type, and I found the center pointing device slow to respond. The spacebar on the keyboard is recessed below the surrounding surface, making this laptop the least useful for typing, at least for fast touch-typers.

HP stresses the security of this laptop, and with the HP Sure Start feature, along with tamper detection, embedded re-imaging, and a long list of other security features, it certainly has the full range. However, the privacy shutter is optional, and was not present on the unit I looked at. Like the other laptops, the HP EliteBook supports WiFi 6 and has Thunderbolt ports, and you can get an optional 4G/5G wireless network card.

HP has included two front facing microphones and one that it calls “world facing” that’s used to detect ambient noise so that it can cancel out background noise including voices during conference calls. The company notes that its audio system is designed by Bang & Olufsen with upward firing speakers for clarity. But despite the prestigious designer, one quick listen to some random Mozart will make it clear that there’s more to good audio quality than a name.

The HP Elite 840

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9

You walk past the X1 Carbon and glance in its direction, and it briefly flashes the Windows Hello eyeball and turns on, ready to use. You don’t have to sit down in front of it to make this happen. What’s happening is that Lenovo has developed a radar-based means of detecting your presence.

The screen features the new 16:10 aspect ratio, which delivers additional screen real estate over the 16:9 ratio on prior laptops. That may not sound like much, but in use that extra height adds a lot. At the top of the screen, the webcam includes a standard manually operated privacy shutter.

Lenovo joins in the war of high-end sound designers with a Dolby Atmos speaker system. I tried the Mozart test with this computer, and while it sounds slightly better than the HP, you’ll never confuse the sound that emanates from a laptop speaker with high fidelity. The Dolby Atmos speaker system is part of what Lenovo calls Dolby Access, which includes Dolby Vision and Dolby Voice. The sounds system includes two downward firing woofers, with the rest of the speakers firing upwards.

Like the other laptops in this review, Lenovo has included features designed to make video calls sound better. In this case, it’s four 360 degree far-field microphones. These microphones can help in noise suppression and in focusing on the sounds of the people speaking in a group setting.

Lenovo does not make security as much of a selling point as does HP, but it does include some advanced security features such as its self-healing BIOS, which can restore the computer after a malware attack or events such as a failed update. The X1 Carbon includes a feature called Privacy Guard, which can narrow the viewing angle of the screen when needed.

Lenovo ThinkPads are legendary for their toughness. They meet 12 military-grade certification methods and over 20 procedures of MIL-STD 810G. My personal experience includes having a ThinkPad survive an “emergency landing” while on assignment for eWEEK. A ThinkPad was the only electronic device in my briefcase to survive undamaged. Note that we did not apply this test to these laptops because of a shortage of airliners we could crash-land.

One important usability difference featured by the X1 Carbon is the keyboard. Lenovo employs a lifting mechanism beneath the keyboard that lifts the keys when the lid is opened. This added height, plus the sculpted shape of the keys, makes the X1 Carbon much more useful for typing.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1

Choosing a Laptop for Windows 11

Each of these laptops has its strengths. The right choice will depend on secondary factors that matter to you. For example, Dell’s high resolution touchscreen and its use of Gorilla Glass aren’t available with the other laptops. HP’s security is a level above the others, while Lenovo’s toughness and human presence sensing are important points.

It’s worth noting that none of these laptops is cheap. In fact, if you go through the custom configuration process and make the right choices, you could spend nearly $4,000.00 on any of these laptops. But these are meant to be critical business tools that will keep running when lesser machines might give up. They are all excellent machines, and sometime later this year or early in 2022, they will all run Windows 11.

The post Three Top Laptops Compatible with Windows 11 appeared first on eWEEK.

While internal reporting indicated things were going surprisingly well – few to no problems – the reality was far different. Rather than taking over a project that was in good shape, Gelsinger was handed a disaster. One of the best managers in the company, having been mentored by Andy Grove and incredibly well regarded, he should have become CEO in the early 2000s, but, instead, he was forced out – though of course he had a successful career at EMC and Dell.

Well, Pat is back running Intel. And now Arc is Intel’s coming GPU line. At Intel’s architecture event this week, they showcased that Arc is no Larrabee; it is a potential game-changer.

Let’s explore Intel Arc (as in Story Arc) this week.

Arc Blending NVIDIA And AMD Constructs

In the GPU market, there are currently two technology providers that dominate the segment. They are AMD and NVIDIA.

NVIDIA tends to be more proprietary in its approach and tends to have higher performance; AMD is more Open Source and cross-platform but often trades off performance to get there. Intel, the last to the table, appears to be cherry-picking from both strategies. Technically advanced like NVIDIA, but also embracing Open Source and cross-platform elements like AMD does.

On paper (and that is all we have now), Intel’s Strategy could eclipse both vendors’ offerings, providing the equivalent of the best of each in the Intel Arc platform. Until there are parts to test, and both AMD and NVIDIA release their next-generation offerings that will compete against Arc, anyone’s ability to point Arc truly being better is minimal.

Strategic Approach: Big Push on Arc

Typically companies, and I’ll include old Intel, like to talk Strategy but operate tactically.  And, up until Arc, Intel’s Strategy seemed to be good enough for the integrated graphics market, effectively locking out their more robust competitors.

Still, with AMD moving to their APU strategy, this relatively safe approach couldn’t be continued, mainly if NVIDIA acquired ARM and did their own APU (a blend of CPU and GPU).

In addition, eventually, on this path, the gap would become too large, and with the market increasingly using GPUs as accelerators for AI loads, Intel could find itself increasingly locked out of the markets it once dominated. To eliminate this long-term strategic risk, Intel, with Arc, has moved to try and take technology leadership.

It’s risky, and neither AMD nor NVIDIA will take this risk sitting down, but the dire outcome if Intel didn’t do this was unacceptable to the company.  Arc is one of the most strategic efforts ever to come out of Intel.

Clear Risk

With Larrabee being a near-perfect example, you can have an over-promise under-execute problem like any new architecture and product. That risk exists with Arc as well.

However, Pat’s experience with Larrabee and its impact on his career should make him doubt that Arc won’t be another Larrabee. You don’t forget an experience like that, and Pat is far from stupid, so he is undoubtedly making sure the same kind of behavior that surrounded Larrabee won’t exist around Arc. Pat will undoubtedly make sure that Intel doesn’t overpromise and not deliver this time.

Wrapping Up

Arc, Intel’s new high-end graphics platform, enters a market currently dominated by AMD and NVIDIA. It is so promising to outperform the products provided by these competitors and offer a better integrated CPU/GPU bundle than NVIDIA can do before merging with ARM. That merger likely represents one of the greatest threats to Intel because of ARM’s dominance with Smartphones and Tablets, which may soon evolve to make PCs redundant.

Intel is working to make sure that doesn’t happen, and their efforts this week at Architecture Day indicate they are on track to surprise the market – and not in a bad way.

The post Intel Arc: Pat Gelsinger’s Revenge appeared first on eWEEK.

The success of ultra-portable 2-in-1s has been somewhat mixed, often tied to vendors’ engineering priorities and the evolution of needed components. In addition, arguments in favor of those products were sometimes undermined by increasingly powerful, highly mobile business laptops.

That said, with its new Latitude 7320 Detachable, Dell Technologies has hit the sweet spot in terms of a solution that delivers features, value and full functionality that should appeal to business customers.

Latitude 7320 Detachable – Features and specs

Dell provided me a Latitude 7320 Detachable evaluation unit for this review with the following specs:

• 11^th gen Intel Core i7-1180G7 processor 2.20Ghz (Intel vPro capable)
• 16GB RAM
• 512GB SSD storage
• Windows 10 Pro
• 13-inch 1920 X 1280 FHD+ touch display with Gorilla Glass 6DX
• Two Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort (USB Type-C)
• One Universal audio jack
• 1080p at 30 fps RGB IR camera with Proximity Sensor + support for WindowsHello
• 40WHR, 2 cell, BYD battery

Also provided were the optional Latitude 7320 Detachable Travel Keyboard ($200) and the Latitude 7320 Detachable Active Pen ($70.) Like Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Apple’s iPad Pro solutions, the Dell keyboard and pen aren’t included in the base configuration and price.

Other configuration options for the Latitude 7320 Detachable include Core i3-1110G5 or Core i5-1140G7 processors, 4GB, 8GB and 12GB of RAM, and 128GB, 256GB and 1TB SSDs, as well as a Micro SIM Card slot, a contacted or contactless SmartCard Reader and LTE support from AT&T, Verizon or Sprint.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that the Latitude 7320 Detachable is certified for Microsoft’s Windows 11 and that a free upgrade will be provided when the new OS becomes available. I’ll discuss this more in a bit.

Experience and performance

Given its 11th gen Intel Core i7-1180G7 processor and 16GB of RAM, the Latitude 7320 Detachable easily handled all of the tasks and applications I used on it, including keeping a dozen or more browser tabs open, including running video and audio services in the background.

That doesn’t mean that the Latitude 7320 Detachable is ideal for every use case. Intel’s homegrown Iris Xe graphics tech is fine for conventional business and multimedia workloads, but it’s not well-suited for complex, compute-intensive processes, like video or photo editing. Then again, it’s unlikely that engineers or designers would abandon their portable workstations for a detachable ultralight 2-in-1.

The Detachable Travel Keyboard and Detachable Travel Pen performed well. I’m not overly fond of detachable keyboards, which I find mostly flimsy and uncomfortable. In contrast, Dell’s Detachable Keyboard is firm, with a suede-like material that is pleasant to the touch.

It can be positioned flat on a work surface or snapped into a raised angle that’s easier for typing. The keyboard also includes a magnetized depression that holds and charges the Dell Travel pen. The pen worked fine. Its ovoid shape is comfortable to hold, and its brief 30 second charging time is notable.

Other observations: Battery life was solid—I never had problems getting through a full 8-hour workday with the Latitude 7320 Detachable on a single charge. The display delivers the kind of quality of experience I have come to expect from Dell. Colors are bright and vivid, and the 3:2 aspect ratio makes it simple to open windows side-by-side (a valuable point for business users).

I’ve also developed a real fondness for Dell’s ExpressSign-in, a Windows Hello-enabled technology that uses proximity sensors to automatically detect and login users when they approach.

The evolving workplace and Dell’s Latitude 7320 Detachable

It’s worth considering how the value proposition for detachable PCs has changed over the past year or so. Originally, these devices were promoted for their portability and flexibility, features especially important for business travelers and workers whose duties required easy mobility. Since the Covid-19 pandemic has turned businesses and workplaces upside down, where do solutions like Dell’s Latitude 7320 Detachable fit in?

The answer: most anywhere.

Portability and flexibility both have a place in working from home (WFH) and other remote business environments. While well-organized home offices have become increasingly important, many workers (especially managers and executives) have also set up dedicated spaces for video calls and conferences.

The excellent camera, microphone, speakers and stock audio port (both the Surface Pro and iPad Pro require an audio-to-USB-C dongle), along with its compact footprint make the Latitude 7320 Detachable a superb tool for video conferencing and other remote worker tasks.

A final point worth considering is how Windows 11 will impact and potentially enhance workplace solutions. One of the most notable features of the new OS will be its support for Android apps accessed via the Microsoft Store. I expect Microsoft to initially focus primarily on business-oriented apps (since commercial organizations will be among Windows 11’s earliest adopters). That means pre-certified touch-enabled devices, like the Latitude 7320 Detachable should be ideal platforms for organizations hoping to capture the full value of Windows 11.

Final analysis

In essence, the Latitude 7320 Detachable is the best and most advanced ultra-portable 2-in-1 device that Dell has produced. The new solution sports exceptional design points and features that should be attractive to a wide range of commercial organizations. In addition, while the Latitude 7320 Detachable squarely hits all the targets that ultraportable 2-in-1s typically strive for, it also qualifies as an excellent solution for new and emerging challenges, including WFH and other remote location use cases.

Overall, organizations that are considering or searching for highly flexible, portable and powerful business-class client solutions would do well to consider Dell’s new Latitude 7320 Detachable.

The post Dell’s Latitude 7320 Detachable and the Value of Business-Class Ultra-Portable Laptops appeared first on eWEEK.

This school system, which operates 150 schools with more than 100,000 students, needed a reliable solution that would enable staff members to manage outbound and inbound calls, while maintaining their privacy. The district was running a legacy, on-premises system and had been resistant to running a cloud service due to concerns around reliability and availability if the network were to go down.

Cloud communications is now as reliable as on-premises

The fact is, with the right network design, cloud communication systems can achieve near the reliability of on-prem solutions. The pandemic acted as a forcing function for the school district, and it reached out to Converged Technology Partners (CTP) for advice on which service to use.

CTP represents several UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service) companies but felt RingCentral’s products best met the needs of the school system. Based on CTP’s advice, the school system contracted with RingCentral to enable teachers to make calls from a cloud-based platform. This gave them the capability to communicate with parents on personal devices via RingCentral’s mobile application. The benefit of this is the parents can call the teacher using the school’s number and the cell phone number remains private.

The cloud solution also keeps each school’s phones operational during office hours. When COVID-19 first emerged last spring, those calling the main office got no answer when the buildings shut down. RingCentral calling uses VoIP (voice over internet protocol), so it’s not tied to a specific location. This lets the district manage communications via the internet on a computer or a mobile device from any location.  Many businesses consider it risky to move communications to the cloud, but this feature shows how the cloud delivers capabilities that on-premises systems do not have.

K-12 school district uses RingCentral in a hybrid architecture  

The school system took a hybrid approach with RingCentral. The district wanted to have more administrative control and keep its on-premise, wired network as a backup in case the wide area network (WAN) suddenly went dark, according to Joe Rittenhouse, President of Business Development at Converged Technology Professionals, an integrator that helped implement the solution for the school system.

It’s highly unlikely but, as a school system, it must plan for worst case scenario and this hybrid architecture essentially gave the school system a “belt and suspenders” in case of an emergency.

The implementation involved putting in a session border controller (SBC)—which acts as a router or firewall between the school network and the service provider’s network—then connecting SIP trunks to a gateway. SIP trunks are the IP world’s equivalent of a traditional PSTN trunk line but uses the session initial protocol for connectivity. SIP trunks are considerably more agile than PSTN trunks as they connect the same way Internet connections do. The SIP trunks tie back to the RingCentral data center and provide seven-digit dialing for users on the RingCentral platform. This architecture creates a hybrid approach where traditional phones can be used as well as cloud ones.

“Private branch exchange (PBX) systems were not designed at mass scale to have you working from home. That was a major challenge,” said Rittenhouse. “When you have thousands of remote users, PBXs cannot provide reliable communications like a cloud platform can.”

RingCentral delivered a complete communications solution, including contact center

The large school system opted in for full-feature licensing of other RingCentral tools, including video and messaging. Schools can run virtual classes using RingCentral’s one-click HD video meetings and share instant updates via SMS using the messaging tool. Communication is protected by seven layers of security and encryption between all endpoints—a big selling point for the district, which had concerns about security when moving to the cloud, per Rittenhouse.

With UCaaS adoption taking off across the school system, implementing an omni-channel contact center is next on the list. This might seem strange as schools rarely adopt contact centers, but times are changing, and it was thinking about the post pandemic realities of having rapid outbound communications or high volumes of inbound calls over multiple channels. Contact centers are ideally suited for cases like this.

From a deployment model perspective, a single centralized contact center can serve every school in the district and give parents the flexibility to contact schools via communication channels of their choice. Juxtapose this with the complexity of parents having to call individual schools and the district having to ensure each school has the right information and it’s easy to see how a contact center could benefit a school system.

Although modernized contact centers have numerous channels, including voice, the school system is aiming to have chat as the primary form of communication to limit the number inbound calls schools get. This is a trend we are likely to see, and I fully expect to see other districts jumping on the contact center bandwagon to reduce overhead costs and improve the overall customer experience in schools.

The post Top School District Leverages The Cloud To Revamp Communications appeared first on eWEEK.

The original announcement has already run into some headwinds. On June 28, 2021, Microsoft’s Windows team issued an update regarding the minimum system requirements for Windows and explaining in more detail what those requirements mean. In addition, the team announced that it has withdrawn the PC Health Check app that was supposed to tell you whether your systems could run Windows 11.

In addition, Microsoft has released a preview version of Windows 11 so that you can start getting ready for the new OS. The preview edition does NOT include the mandatory security features including requirements for Secure Boot or the requirement for Trusted Platform Module v.2.0. According to Microsoft, you can run the preview version of Windows 11 on any seventh generation Intel processor.

However, when Windows 11 is released, it will require both the TPM and Secure Boot, so the first thing you should do is conduct an inventory of your Windows machines and see which meet the Windows minimum requirements and which don’t. An easy way to check for the TPM is to right-click on the Windows start button, then click on Device Manager. Find Security Devices, and if the computer has a TPM that meets requirements, you’ll see an entry that says “Trusted Platform Manager 2.0” listed.

Confirming UEFI Secure Boot is implemented may take some time, as it may be different for different computers. Normally, the existence of this security feature will be disclosed on the specifications from your original purchase, but you may need to enter the setup menu for your specific PC to find out. There’s no one way to do this as different makers used different methods, so you’ll need to confirm with the manufacturer.

Normally, Microsoft’s now-removed PC Health Check app would have been an easy and quick method of checking your organization’s computers, but there were some issues with it, which is why Microsoft says the app was removed until later this year. One thing I did find in testing the app is that it provided what appear to be false negatives, meaning that it would say a computer doesn’t meet the minimum requirements when it in fact does. I tested in on two fairly new machines that meet all of the requirements, and the app said that both failed the test.

Once you’re separated the machines that can’t run Windows 11, you’ll know that those machines need to be put on the list for early replacement. In the meantime, Microsoft plans to continue updating Windows 10 until 2025, so you’ve got plenty of time. Remember those machines are probably already old, and adding another four years to their life is probably not financially responsible.

In addition, that four years gives you time to confirm that the applications you currently use will run on the new version of Windows, and get them updated if they don’t. Meanwhile, if your current computers do meet the Windows 11 minimum requirements, you can set Windows 10 to take advantage of them.

While the upgrade process to Windows 11 is going to be expensive for some, and annoying for others, the fact is that Microsoft is taking a big step towards making Windows significantly more secure than it has been. Right now, Windows is a favorite target for hackers, malware purveyors and other band guys, and without the hardware security support offered by modern PC platform, there’s only so much Microsoft can do.

For your company, this is one required step for protecting your data and your users, and while it’ll certainly be expensive, it’s a lot less expensive than a ransomware attack. It’s also a lot less annoying that explaining to your board and your stockholders why you didn’t take the steps necessary to protect yourself when they were made available well in advance.

The post Why You Need to Start Getting Ready for Windows 11 Now appeared first on eWEEK.

Initially, it came with things like a digital background utility that wasn’t bad for its time, but since its launch, Logitech decided, for some reason, not to adequately fund support. For those of us running AMD systems in particular, the experience got worse and worse, and any support for that digital background app just vanished after it started breaking for a lot of us.

So, I’ve been looking for an excellent alternative to the Brio for several years, and Dell recently sent me their latest Dell Ultrasharp 4K Webcam. It costs about the same, and the Brio comes with Dell’s support commitment which has proven stronger than Logitech’s.

Let’s talk about the Dell 4K Webcam this week.

The Importance of a Good Webcam

When we were going into the office in person, we spent a lot on clothing and appearance remotely; some still do, but those efforts are lost if you don’t have a good webcam. Once we are on a Zoom, WebEx or Microsoft Teams call, we are often put up inside to side videos, and you can see who has a good camera that can center and adjust for ambient light and who doesn’t.

Centering is critical because we seldom like to sit still, and automatic centering does showcase you better. You might question the need for 4K, but what 4K gives you is a lot more video real estate to play with, allowing the self-centered and zoom capabilities to work even if the camera isn’t mechanized. Mechanized cameras are expensive, generally costing more than $1K, resulting in a product that isn’t easy to transport.

So the most straightforward and most cost-effective approach to providing an excellent affordable webcam is to give it 4K support and then control the features in software rather than hardware, dramatically reducing the potential cost of the camera that is ensuring you look good online.

Speakers and Microphones

Many webcams, like the Poly Studio 15, come with speakers and microphones. Still, they add to the camera’s size, often redundant to what the user already has, and they make the device heavy and make it inappropriate for laptop use on the road. A separate microphone is generally preferred for sound quality, and most people already have speakers set up for gaming. On the road, laptops typically come with microphones and cameras. Due to the public areas these operate in; many prefer a headset so that everyone around them doesn’t hear both sides of their conversations.

Keeping these components separate can not only improve the quality of what you are doing but, in the case of the laptop, keep your carry weight and peripheral complexity manageable. In addition, a small, focused camera is easier to pick up and use to capture something around you.

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The Dell Ultrasharp Webcam comes with two base mounts, one for on top of your monitor or laptop and one for a small tripod if you want to move the camera someplace that is more convenient. It is a black tube that is simple and reasonably attractive, it has a magnetic lens cover which you can put behind the camera when not in use (I’m constantly losing lens covers), and it does do a decent job of automatically centering the video.

The camera uses a USB-C cable which should work fine with most current generation laptops and desktop computers. You can also use a USB-C smartphone charging cable if you don’t have a USB-C port on your PC or an adaption. I found the cable I’d been using for the Logitech Brio to work fine with my AMD-based desktop rig.

Because this camera has automatic centering, you don’t need to put it in the center of your monitor. If your monitor is mounted high, you can get a short camera stand and mount it under the monitor on that for a more direct shot. I found that mounting it on top of my monitor did make me more self-conscious about hair loss, so you may want to mess around with camera placement.

As an excellent, simple, affordable (around $200), the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is a decent value and an excellent updated alternative to the Logitech Bio and more portable than the Poly Studio 15. It also supports Microsoft Hello for facial recognition. An increasing number of apps are starting to use this feature, suggesting this capability is becoming more and more critical overtime for those who like not having to type in a password or PIN.

Wrapping Up

Your Webcam is what presents you to the world and can impact how people see you.  Thus getting a good one is very important. While it is just a camera without a microphone or speakers, the Dell UltraSharp Webcam is a reasonably priced alternative to the Logitech Brio with better support. I’ve been using the camera for several weeks, and it has performed flawlessly over that time.

If you need a small camera, supports 4K video and has decent automatic centering and IR support, the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is worth checking out.

The post Dell’s Ultrasharp 4K Webcam: Finally An Alternative To The Logitech Brio appeared first on eWEEK.