Happy Early Thanksgiving!

Howdy everyone!  Since I'm going to be out of the office most of today, and on holiday through the end of the week, I wanted to post this up now.  We here at the PC Mall DragonTech blog would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and a wonderful time with family and friends, at the start of this Holiday Season.

Two things...one tech, and the other not...

1) PC Mall has worked out a exclusive EARLY Black Friday deals on the new Macbook Air units that you might be interested in.  One at $799, one at $899, and one at $1149.  Take advantage!  (There are more, give your rep here a call!)

2) If you haven't considered it yet for this holiday season, please donate food to your local food bank.  There are so many here in the US who aren't able to have a family meal like most of us can at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays...but every can/dollar counts.  You can contact the Los Angeles Food Bank if you're down in SoCal, or go here to find a food bank through Feeding America.


There you have it...have a great rest of your week...and possibly look for a post or two when I or my compatriots are not in Food Coma. :)

(for those of you who liked the Halloween jibjab, here's one for Thanksgiving that's a little racy.  you've been warned.)

How about a Free Power Assessment?

People throw the word "free" around a lot, when it usually is not.  In this case, it is really free...and the folks at TrippLite have teamed up with us here at PC Mall to help you get a better idea of your power situation.  Take a look:

PC Mall Power Audit NEW - Customer 11 2 10

From my experience, I've had clients who have been spending FAR too much on their power (and cooling)...in many different ways.  Either too many UPS units, too few, the wrong units ...and other reasons.  Let us help you with this free power assessment.  If you have a rep here, great, Call/Email them today.  If not, use this form and we'll be able to help you out!

Upgrading Adobe software just became a major PAIN...

I don't believe in beating around the bush on this...because as a former IT person it bugs the heck out of me.

If you haven't heard by now, as of the release of CS6, Adobe is changing how you can upgrade to it.  If you do not have CS5.0 or CS5.5, you cannot upgrade to 6.  Yup...that means it's only for 1 version back!  For many of you, I know you're not on 5 or 5.5...and that's going to present a cost saving issue for when you have to upgrade.
So, if you've been considering an upgrade...now is the time to do so before the end of 2011.  If you upgrade to 5.5 and do Adobe's maintenance contract, you'll be covered for the release of CS6, and CS7.  (Since they're now releasing new versions yearly.)  Don't believe me?  Check out Adobe's blog page that talks about it.  They're serious.

I would suggest giving your rep here at PC Mall a call right now and talking about this upgrade.  With the special 20% off discount on Adobe upgrades right now through the end of 2011, it's a good time to get square and upgraded before you're going to have to pay TWICE that amount to get current.

Food for thought...mmm I'm thinking pie. :)

 

 

Meraki making a bid to be a bigger network player

I think many of you know how much I've been invested with Meraki. It's true that they make great products, but it has been wonderful to watch them grow and form over the past couple of years (like I have here). They went from a tiny organization, and once they embraced the channel (or a select few from the channel), they exploded in size. Now there's quite a few more reps than there used to be, and even I'm losing track.

At our Vision event back on November 3, I had a chance to talk with my favorite Meraki rep, and as always he was full of information...and a little innuendo that made me very interested in what Meraki is up to.  First off, they're known for their Wireless Enterprise units like the MR 58 and MR24 that work with their cloud-based architecture.  For you to be able to control all of your wireless units from one central location...using simple web-based tools...is fan-freakin-tastic.   Earlier this year, they got into the routing game, utilizing the same cloud-based architecture working with their MX70 units.

Now, based on comments that I was given...it seems like Meraki is now aiming at the "pieces inbetween" what they already handle.  What could that mean?  Only time will tell, boys and girls...but I tell you...these guys have more potential energy than you think...and when their IPO comes along, I'm first in line!

Want a free unit?  Take a look at our webinars section on this site, and sign up for Meraki's next webinar.  If you attend the full event, they'll send you a free MR12 unit (their basic unit) for you to keep and use.  As many of my clients will attest, once you use it, you want 4 more! :)

-Mike

(Note: Many of you have asked about my picture/signature these days.  I know it's actually much more attractive than my picture...but how about you scan it with your phone? ;) )

Thailand update

Two things this morning.  We're moving into our new offices here in El Segundo, CA this week...so things are a bit nutty, and that's why the lack of posts over the past week.  Should have some stuff for you today and tomorrow.

Secondly, things still are not looking good in Thailand.  The flooding hasn't abated, and those poor people are still suffering.  On the technology front with that, drive availability is still sporadic at best with WD, Seagate and Hitachi.  If you're going to need any drives over the next 2 months, I suggest getting them now before things dry up in December/January.
You can take a look at this link here from Youtube...and you can see the WD factory in it at 00:31.  Yeesh.

Just so you all know...

Wordpress thinks it's a great idea to run content ads based on what this team writes...and could care less if they're advertising our competition right smack in the middle of our posts.  It's a great way to extort...err I mean force...no...coerce a blogger into paying Wordpress $99 a year to remove ads from their blog.

That being said, I suggest that any of you reading this make sure that you're blocking ads, popups, running a flash/java blocker in Firefox, and ignore those ads the best you can.  Oh wait...i mean that you need to click those ads so wordpress gets paid.  *eyeroll*

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Back to the real world.  I've got several conference calls most of this week (as you all know) and it's hammered my time to get some posts up.  I"ll be working on them this afternoon and tomorrow before PC Mall moves to our new offices in El Segundo.

Hasta La Vista! :D

Symantec Smackdown

Tonight on Symantec Smackdown...in the red corner, weighing in at 150 lbs of dusty old server equipment...YOUR BACKUP SYSTEM!  And...in the Gold corner...weighing in at a sleek 29 lbs....the Symantec BE6300!

All kidding aside, I had a chance to learn a bit more about this new appliance from Symantec the other day.  What?  You didn't know that Symantec actually has a hardware solution for backup?  The BE 6300 is designed to take all that is good about your Symantec Backup System (easy to use software, quick backup process, etc) and sell it to you all in a box with the hardware to store it and manage it.  We all want something simple, and this is most assuredly that.

We all know the issues with backup really relate to the hardware that's available.  You have to add drives for more storage, you have to make sure your system is up to date and able to run it, and of course you have to buy agents to replicate & deduplicate.  Not so here.  Take a look at this list of what comes on the box, and what's optional...and all of those licenses are unlimited in scope.  AND...the box has a total of 5.5TB of storage for your backups.  That'll keep you not worrying for awhile right?

Want more information?  Let's get on the phone with my Symantec BDM expert, Walaa Al-Saadi, today! :)

Out for Vision 2012 today

Howdy again folks!  This is just to let you know that most of us here at the PC Mall offices will be out at our annual Trade Show, Vision, for most of today.

You are welcome to contact us through email, and we will respond as we can from the event.  Please understand however that there will be a delay in response while we are helping clients at that show too.

Are you in Los Angeles today and want to come down?  We're here at the Long Beach Hilton!

 

Take care!