Despite the near ubiquity of wireless devices, third-party products that help mobile users communicate with System i applications remain limited in number.

Written by John Ghrist

Your experience may vary, but it seems that the proliferation of mobile telephones is becoming so commonplace that a growing number of people are dropping residential landlines for personal use.

On the business side of life, while enterprises obviously can't be relinquishing their telephone directory listings with similar abandon, mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, and other wireless devices are becoming indispensable for employees who work outside the office.

Server, storage, and network virtualization increase flexibility, mask complexity, and reduce costs for IT departments.

Written by Joel Klebanoff

Virtualization is getting to be long in the tooth, at least in terms of the accelerated universe in which IT now operates. Nonetheless, the term is still somewhat confusing. That's not surprising because there isn't just one variety. Thus, when someone tries to talk to you about or sell you virtualization, your first question should be, "Which type?"

PPTP, L2TP, IPSec, or SSL…what's a company to do?

Written by Laura Ubelhor

Today, we often connect remotely to perform the same tasks we used to do onsite. The rapid acceptance and growth of the Internet has played a major role in organizations extending private networks. Now, organizations are creating and using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to provide access to network users whenever and wherever needed.

For the non-gamers in the crowd, however, USB 2.0 may be good enough.

Written by Chris Smith

There is a distinct downside to being a cheapskate: one is always buying technology that is behind the power curve. Just once in my life, I'm going to go and buy a computer with the fastest processor available just for the sheer thrill of knowing what it feels like to have the best.

Users who jumped in and upgraded to Vista may now have a leg up on those who held off and relied so long on XP.

Written by Chris Smith 

Oh my gosh—people are starting to get the itch. They're starting to get the Windows 7 itch as the October 22 date approaches for the release of Windows 7 on new computers and in shrink-wrapped boxes. The anxiety is starting to ripple through the IBM i world. What everyone is starting to ask is—will Client Access work with Windows 7 or are users going to be locked out of their System i data? The answer, of course, is another question: Did you really think IBM i Access for Windows wouldn't work with Windows 7?

For the past month, a team of software engineers in Rochester, MN, have been doing regression testing to see what happens when Client Access runs on Windows 7.

One of big winners of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was RFID technology, which is also increasingly winning commercial applications around the world.

By Sheldon R. Reich

Last month, the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, captured an Olympic medal for Jamaica when he ran the 100-meter dash in less than 10 seconds. That's stunningly fast. But did you know that before Bolt reached the finish line you could have scanned over 100 garments with a handheld RFID reader? That is one of the key findings in a study conducted by the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas.