At a time when technology is supposed to be getting simpler, less complex and easier to manage, more people are calling help desks for assistance than ever before, according to a new report. That’s one of the findings that HDI, formerly known as the Help Desk Institute, revealed in its recently released 2010 study of help desk trends.
What HDI found is that the number of incidents reported to help desks via chat, e-mail, telephone, self-help systems, social media, the Web and walk-ins is rising, with 67% of all help desk operations experiencing increases in 2010. That’s roughly the same percentage who reported an increase in 2009.
In recent years, many organizations have moved to centralize their help desk operations and establish a single point of contact for workers, said Roy Atkinson, an analyst at HDI, whose members represent a help desk community of about 50,000 people.
Those centralization efforts have improved incident data collection, which helps to explain the spike in reports. Moreover, creating a single point of contact, and offering multiple ways for people to reach the help desk, encourages users to seek assistance, Atkinson said.
While centralization and better record-keeping may explain much of the increase in reported calls, it doesn’t completely explain it. Atkinson said another part of the explanation could be the fact that IT complexity is actually increasing, especially as users seek to connect multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets and laptops to corporate networks. Read More…….
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In what appears to be the year of the tablet, Chinese PC maker Lenovo announced plans to sell its LePad tablet worldwide in June, but will first launch the device in China at the end of March, a company spokesman said on today.
The LePad, Lenovo’s first tablet computer, was unveiled in January during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The device is built with 10.1-inch screen that runs the Android 2.2 OS on a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. (See a video report on LePad’s CES unveiling on YouTube.)
Lenovo said the device would be priced between $399 and $449. But at the time, the company was still unsure whether it would sell the product outside of China.
While Lenovo now plans on selling the tablet overseas, company spokesman Jay Chen couldn’t say which markets will be targeted. Read More…
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About eight out of every ten internet browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said today.
The poor state of browser patching stunned Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security risk and compliance management provider Qualys, which presented data from the company’s free BrowserCheck service Wednesday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
“I really thought it would be lower,” said Kandek of the nearly 80% of browsers that lacked one or more patches.
BrowserCheck scans Windows, Mac and Linux machines for vulnerable browsers, as well as up to 18 browser plug-ins, including Adobe’s Flash and Reader, Oracle’s Java and Microsoft’s Silverlight and Windows Media Player.
When browsers and their plug-ins are tabulated together, between 90% and 65% of all consumer systems scanned with BrowserCheck since June 2010 reported at least one out-of-date component, depending on the month. In January 2011, about 80% of the machines were vulnerable. Read more….
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Nvidia finally debuted its first quad-core Tegra processor, codenamed Kal-El, and the new chip will probably lead to much more powerful tablets and high-end smartphones.
Nvidia’s Senior VP Phil Carmak of Mobile Business announced that the new processor will deliver a five-fold graphics performance increase over the current Tegra 2 dual-core. The chip is supposedly capable of driving 2560×1600 displays. It is thought that the new chip could power much more serious products than current tablets.
“You’ll have full photo editing, video editing, writing of documents, browsing the Web, all sorts of stuff,” Phil Carmak announced. Read more….
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We have learned that Intel has finally launched its six-core Core i7-990X Extreme Edition Gulftown-based processor. Therfore, Intel went ahead and cut the price of its Core i7-970 and Core i7-960 models.
It is said that the six-core Core i7-990X runs at 3.46GHz and up to 3.73GHz on TurboBoost. It has six cores and twelve processing threads with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology. It packs 6×256kB of L2 cache, 12MB of L3 cache, features support for triple-channel DDR3-1066 memory, comes with an unlocked multiplier and has a 130W TDP. Read more….
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Intel has stated that they intend to start shipping their B3 stepping 6-Series chipset chips by February 14th (today). If you missed the headlines on this fiasco, I am speaking in reference to Intel’s chipset that is plagued by the now quite famous SATA 3Gbps bug.
Intel is still sticking to its original announcement that it will ship these products by the end of February. The new stepping has several updates including the change of revision ID from 04h to 05h, BIOS update to 1.1.4 and minor metal layer change improving lifetime wear and tear with no changes to functionality or design specifications (the one that fixes SATA 3.0Gbps issue). Read more…
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Intel released some benchmarks results of its Core i5 2400, one of the new Sandy Bridge processors with 6MB of cache 3.1GHz core clock and four cores and four threads. The Core i5 2400 also comes with a Turbo feature and can run at much higher clock-speed than the 3.1GHz that is advertised. Keep in mind this depends on Turbo 2 conditions and current thermal environment.
In the benchmark observation Intel decided to compare current Core i5 650 3.2GHz core with 4MB of cache and two cores and four threads including Turbo to a new Sandy Bridge part. Read more….
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A particularly nasty type of attack named”ransomware” is on the rise, with antivirus vendor Symantec seeing at least three new variants appearing in recent months. Such attacks often use viruses to not only steal a person’s sensitive or financial information, but also to disable hard drives and demand money to restore them.
“Threats that use extortion can be some of the most aggressive and, in some cases, offensive viruses encountered,” said Symantec security researcher Gavin O Gorman in a blog post.
Unfortunately for computer owners, attackers continue increase the sophistication levels of their ransomware. For example, GPCoder.G, which first appeared in November 2010, is a small (only 11 kilobytes ) piece of malware which, if executed, searches a hard drive for files with specific extensions, relating to everything from videos and Microsoft Office files to images and music. It then encrypts the first half of all files found, using a symmetric RSA encryption algorithm and a random key. The random, private key is then encrypted using a public key. “Without the private key from this key pair, it is not possible to obtain the symmetric key in order to decrypt the files,” said O Gorman.
To get the private key, the ransomware victim must forward the encrypted symmetric key to attackers, who decrypt and return it. Unfortunately, aside from restoring the encrypted files from a backup, “there is no way to bypass this technique,” he said. Read More….
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Security firm fighting the dreadful Conflicker worm claim that they have it on the ropes. The team of computer-security researchers said they managed to neutralize the worm’s impact by blocking its ability to communicate with its developer, who is still anonymous.
Unfortunately after years of trying fighting the Conflicker, security experts estimate the worm infects between five million to fifteen million computers. The Conficker worm, showed up in 2008. The worms intent is to disable a computer’s security measures, including Windows software updates and antivirus protection, leaving machines vulnerable to more malicious software. Read more….
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In what could be construed as attempt to curb potential subscriber loss due to Verizon’s impending iPhone, AT&T rolled out a mobile calling plan Wednesday that allows unlimited free voice calls to any wireless network in the U.S.
However, to be eligible for the new plan, Unlimited Mobile to Any Mobile, customers must still enroll in one of five qualifying mobile voice plans that charge for mobile calls to or from a landline phone.
Calling plans range from $39.99 a month to $109.99 a month, in addition to an unlimited messaging plan for $20 a month per individual or $30 a month per family…. Read More…..
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