Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 17, 2020
by sjvn01
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Best Chromebooks for work in 2020: Which high-end laptop is right for your business?

If you’re a white-collar worker, chances are — thanks to the coronavirus pandemic — you’ve been working from home. And many of you may have turned to Chromebooks for work. They’re cheap and require almost no maintenance.

But the weeks of working from home have turned to months. for many of us, we may never return to the office for work. In that case, you upgrade from the old Chromebook you already have at home or the first one that came to hand at Best Buy when the shutdown started to a true business-class Chromebook.

With that goal in mind, I looked for the best Chromebooks available for work. These are not one-size-fits-all machines. Each has its strong points for different users.

Best Chromebooks for work in 2020: Which high-end laptop is right for your business? More>

June 17, 2020
by sjvn01
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Parallels and Google to bring full-featured Windows applications to Chrome Enterprise

You’ve long been able to run some Windows apps on Chromebooks with CodeWeaver’s Crossover Chrome OS, a beta program. And if you absolutely have to run Microsoft Office — not Google Docs — Microsoft supports Office and Microsoft 365 on Chromebooks. But that still leaves out many Windows programs that don’t run fully on Chromebooks or in the Chrome web browser. Parallels, a virtualization and remote access company, wants to change that with its forthcoming Windows apps on Chrome and Chrome OS program.

Parallels and Google to bring full-featured Windows applications to Chrome Enterprise More>

June 16, 2020
by sjvn01
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Odds are we’ll all soon move to Desktop-as-a-Service

I know how to secure my PCs. I’ve never fallen victim to a phishing attack; gotten infected by a worm; been maligned by malware. But then I have 30-plus years of experience. You? Probably not. That’s why when I read Morphisec‘s recent report on all these people working from home (2020 WFH Employee Cybersecurity Thread Index), I was horrified.

It turns out more than half, 56%, of employees are using their own personal computers to work from home. No! Deep breath. No!

And that tidbit is one of the reasons Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) makes more sense now than ever before. Because a DaaS set-up is a more secure set-up, and apparently that’s something sorely needed.

Odds are we’ll all soon move to Desktop-as-a-Service More>

June 15, 2020
by sjvn01
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Technologies that have been jump-started by COVID-19

It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. True, the coronavirus pandemic is destroying large swathes of the economy. In particular, small businesses are being clobbered. Some kinds of businesses, such as hotels and restaurants, are in even more hot water. But some smaller technology models have gotten a huge boost from the pandemic, while others, although already big, have jumped in popularity.

So, while acknowledging there’s been a lot of losers, there have been winners as well. Let’s take a close look at them.

Technologies that have been jump-started by COVID-19 More> 

June 11, 2020
by sjvn01
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Faster than ever, Apache Cassandra 4.0 beta is on its way

If you want a fast database management system (DBMS), which can handle petabytes of data for web and mobile applications, chances are you’re using the NoSQL Apache Cassandra database. After all, such companies as Hulu, Netflix, and Reddit, already do. Oh, it has competitors, such as MongoDB, DynamoDB, and Cosmos DB, but Cassandra’s arguably the most popular DBMS of its breed.

Faster than ever, Apache Cassandra 4.0 beta is on its way More>