Here’s a quick video I put together on a Targus HeatDefense Cooling Mat that I purchased today.  I have an issue with my MacBook Pro i7 generating too much heat especially when video editing, running multiple VMs in Fusion or in fact even doing basic tasks such as email and web browsing.  This makes for much discomfort when I have my MacBook Pro on my lap and also makes any surface I have it on become very hot.

As such I was hoping that the Targus HeatDefense Cooling Mat would help reduce the amount of heat on the base of the MacBook Pro.  Check out the video below to find out how I got on with the Cooling Mat.

Inflight Wi-Fi is something I’ve always wanted to try out, to my knowledge the only place where this service is commonly available is on internal US based flights and from what I gather from colleagues and others on Twitter it works well.  So needless to say I was looking forward to trying it out on my flight between Orlando, Florida (after helping support the EMC labs at VMware PEX 2011) and Boston, Massachusetts (home of the EMC Mother Ship).

I thought I’d put this blog post together (at 25K+ feet) for other Europeans/Antipodeans such as myself who have also been curious about inflight Wi-Fi and haven’t had the opportunity to try it out on a US flight as yet.

I am flying with Delta airlines who offer the ‘gogo’ inflight internet service which appears to be provided via an AT&T internet connection.    Upon boarding you can connect to the inflight Wi-Fi though as a message informs the Wi-Fi only becomes available when over 10,000 feet.

The Wi-Fi service costs US$9.99 for the flight which is pretty good value in my opinion even for a short three hour flight like the one I am on.

I ran a speed test and saw 190-260ms ping times to a range of different ground based servers in the US with 0.29-0.57Mb/s download and 0.27-29Mb/s upload speeds, which isn’t bad at all considering I’m over 25,000 feet in the air.  Here are a few speed test metrics for those of you who may be interested:

Local Server (150miles approx)

Destination: Server at my flight’s destination (950miles approx)

West Coast: A server on the opposite coast of the US (>2100 miles)

So in summary I have been impressed with the cost and speed to in-flight Wi-Fi internet service and would really like to see it introduced to flights across Europe.  That said, it is something of a double edged sword as although highly convenient to remain online it does mean that remain  highly available via email, messenger, etc meaning you potentially won’t have the luxury of any quiet time to relax or catch up on your already large backlog of emails.  As for me, I’m happy to remain online as I the self-control to turn the Wi-Fi off.(I think) if needed.

<Transmission Ended>

To all my valued regular readers and visitors to TechHead, Happy New Year to you and your family!  I just really wanted to write a quick something up on the blog to say ‘Thanks’ to everyone that has visited the site over the past year.  I have really enjoyed the conversations I have had with many of you via the comments of the various posts, forums and emails, and hope that you have found TechHead enjoyable and of value to you.

2010 was something of a crazy year for me, but in a positive way, contributing a couple of chapters to Eric Siebert’s ‘Maximum vSphere’ book, attending some tech day’s from HP and Stephen Foskett’s Gestalt IT, the vChat webcasts and of course starting my new role as a vSpecialist working for EMC.  The latter has been a crazy ride indeed and something of a steep learning curve in places.  I feel very fortunate to be involved in the EMC vSpecialist initiative as it is something quite unique and it’s nice to be gaining the view from ‘the inside’ as it were.  It has been great to work alongside such vast pool of quality virtualization, server and storage talent both from the technical and sales areas.  Now that I have my feet under the table a little more, or at least as far as you can due to the IT product landscape always changing, I am hoping to have more time in my evenings and weekends to once again dedicate to the blog.  You may have noticed that over the past year the number of blog posts I have been producing has been in decline, well please be rest assured that this will change in 2011 as I have a whiteboard full of ideas for cool and (hopefully) exciting posts which will start finding their way up onto the blog shortly.  I’d also like to say a big thanks to my site sponsors (PHD Virtual, Quest, Trainsignal and Veeam) who really assist in covering the costs of hosting, allows me to pay for the postage on the competitions that I run and allows me to update my blogging software. Much appreciated!

One thing I have found a little difficult to adjust to in 2010 was how I am now bundled as being a ‘vendor’ or a ‘vendor blogger’, now I’m not saying that this is a negative thing since I am perfectly happy with my new ‘vendor’ employer of choice(EMC) and their product range though for some reason, and this may be completely in my head, I get the feeling that people think that by working for a vendor you instantly have drunk the cool-aid and have sold out as a blogger.  I think most people who have made the transition across from being an ‘independent’ blogger to working for a large IT vendor will agree that it can be something of a tightrope you have to walk when blogging though I believe that if you have a true love and passion towards IT technology (whilst keeping an open mind and a close eye on the big picture) you can still successfully continue to blog with a level of integrity.  Of course what you do end up with is an increased appreciation and understanding of your vendor employers product stack so naturally if there are cool or interesting products you do tend to end up writing about it.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t..  I’m just going to continue to blog about what interests me (and hopefully you too) and the kit I am able to get my hands on. 

There has been some great IT products released this past year in both the hardware and software space, it’s good to see such healthy competition between the various IT manufacturers which continues to drive innovation.

It’s at this stage I feel compelled to jump on the 2011 IT predictions bandwagon that seem to be popular this year by everyone with access to WordPress and a blogging account.  So here are some of the TechHead Prediction Monkey’s predictions (aka stating the obvious) for the coming year: (Small print: please note these are my monkey’s thoughts and opinions and not those of my employer).

• Lingo Bingo:  The concept of a ‘Hybrid Cloud’ will gain traction in both understanding and uptake by many larger medium sized and enterprise companies. In fact it will continue to grow in buzz-word popularity in the Cloud/Virtualization space being one of the more popular virtualization terms banded around in 2011.  These larger companies will continue to kick the tyres on public Cloud provider offerings and will take cautious steps towards partial adoption in 2011. 
• Private Cloud: Private cloud (ie: VMware vSphere, MS Hyper-V, Xen, etc) utilisation will by far remain the most popular type of Cloud offering in almost all industries.  Perhaps excluding the likes of media and entertainment and similar who have already found some good uses for public cloud offerings for performing tasks such as video transcoding, etc.
• Plenty of Fish in the Sea (perhaps not): The large IT vendor scramble to buy up smaller IT companies to help them A) have an ‘end-to-end’ stack offering and/or B) a ‘Cloud’ offering will ease up a little with fewer suitable or attractive companies for the picking.  There will be some acquisitions but not as many as we saw in 2010.
• Big Fish Eats Big Fish:  There will be a couple of highly publicized large IT company takeovers by another large IT player(s).  This is to assist the purchasing company obtain both A and/or B categories mentioned above, ie: Big fish who plays in one pond will gobble up another significantly sized fish in another pond.  Thereby having access to a couple of ponds – or knocking through to create one big pond.  By consuming a larger company with a broader product set another large company can reach the end-to-end stack and/or Cloud mecca that many of them are aiming for much quicker and without many smaller acquisitions.
• Episode VI – Return of the Bloggers: Many of the popular virtualization bloggers who have fallen off the face of the earth since joining some of the larger IT tech companies will once again return to their blogs and podcasts and produce more regular content.

• Desktop Client Diet Struggle:  Thin Client computing, despite the best efforts of vendors, will continue to struggle in its adoption by companies.  There will be increased uptake though nowhere near the figures analysts and vendors have been predicting in the last few years. Towards the end of 2011 and the start of 2012 we will see Thin Client computing finally taking hold and see significant uptake.  This will coincide with more businesses finally taking the plunge into virtualizing a large portion of their infrastructure, their increased familiarisation with virtualization technology and their investment in new hardware,which they have been holding off in investing in during the recession, from which they will run both their vivrtualized server and desktop environment.
• VMware (still) Top of the Pops:  VMware vSphere will easily remain the defacto industry standard for virtualization hypervisors.  Microsoft will continue to trail though there will be couple of highly publicised mentions of large companies/institutions moving from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Hyper-V towards the end of 2011. 
• I See You: Video conferencing from PCs and hand held devices will continue in popularity greatly this year and will start making small in-roads to replacing audio only calls.  This technology will continue to gain significant traction over the next couple of years.  The  home consumer market will lead the charge though smaller businesses will also start using this form of video conferencing in a limited capacity.  Medium and larger companies will trail by about  12-18 months.
• Increase in Phone IQ:  Smart phone sales will increase significantly this year.
• Inevitable: I won’t win the lottery (though would very much like to, in case you know anyone that could ‘make’ this happen). 

It’s at this point I will finish things up for this blog post as it has grown into something much longer than originally anticipated.  I’m really amped about 2011 as it is no doubt going to be a full-on though fun year.   A massive thanks for all my readers and as always please drop me a line with any recommendations on how to improve the site.

Happy New Year and All the Best for 2011!

Simon 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

TO YOU ALL!

Hope you have a great Christmas and

All the Best for 2011 !