June  2007
In this issue...

√  Battery Tips
√   Information Overload
√  Race Results
√  Tech Tip
√  Employee Spotlight
 

Mention the words "battery life." The first gadget that comes to mind is probably the energy-consuming laptop computer — particularly if you're on the go a lot.

If not, it should be. There never seems to be enough juice to run your portable PC, as I griped about in a previous article. Ah, but if laptop PCs were the extent of your battery blues, you might not feel so, well, powerless.

But power problems plague other mobile devices. For example, a 2003 In-Stat/MDR survey found that long battery life ranked as the most important feature to business users when selecting a wireless handset. Users of personal digital assistants (PDAs) are just as concerned about a possible energy crisis. I know because I am one and I never seem to stop worrying about running dry.

So, what about mobile gadgets? How do you make sure your batteries last as long as possible?

Here are four tips.

Experts estimate that as of 1999, there was a total of 9 exabytes of electronically created data in the world. To put that in perspective, 1 exabyte is 1000 petabytes; a petabyte is 1000 terabytes; a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes – you get the idea. In practical terms, if you were to digitize the 17 million books in the Library of Congress, with full formatting, it would be approximately 136 terabytes. 9 exabytes would be roughly equivalent in size to the information contained in approximately 70,000 libraries the size of the Library of Congress!

That’s sounds like an incredible amount of data, but frankly that’s nothing. Since 1999, it is estimated that 12 NEW exabytes of digital data has been created. More than double all that existed prior to 2000. Even more amazing? More than 15 exabytes of new electronic data are now created annually!

Numbers like this are mind-boggling, and have little trickle-down impact on the average business. Even a large enterprise measures the data they store in terabytes at best, and never approaches petabytes or exabytes. So it’s important not to think in this large scale, but to think on a level that has more meaning to you and your business. Every thing we do in every aspect of our business today has an electronic data element. The world may be producing 15 exabytes of new data, and that may be overwhelming to think about, but what about the 500 gigabytes of data you are producing every year?

Clearly this is becoming a case of information overload. Dreams of the paperless office, or streamlined electronic communications come with a price. We need to store, index, archive and retrieve all that data. Not only that, we need the infrastructure to move that data around our networks, which includes local and wide area networks. And perhaps the worst of all is the regulatory and compliance restraints being put on businesses of all types and sizes. Not only do you need access to the data, you often have to prove the security and validity of the data, and provide an audit-trail of access and changes. Something has got to give.

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