Why I ordered a MacBook Pro - More RAM, SSD, and Pixels

I love my MacBook Air that I bought as part of a switch from Windows.

The MacBook Pro is announced and I wasn't interested at first, but after thinking for a bit, I could use three things.  More RAM, More SSD space, and More pixels.

There is plenty of news like how the MacBook Pro is aimed at the heart. Really? You think this is the issue?

The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is not a particularly practical unit. It appeals to your heart, not your head. I will grant the argument that it is practical for a very small set of media professionals. The $2,199 low-end model, though, only comes with a non-upgradable 256 GB SSD drive. A media pro can blast through that piddling amount of storage space in no time at all.

With a heavy heart, I have decided not to the buy the gorgeous new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I lust after the idea of 2,880 by 1,800 pixels gloriously showing off my awesome photos of the Grand Tetons, Half Dome and small children running from the cold droplets of a sprinkler system under a hot summer sun.

The MacBook Pro is getting bad reviews as hard to service.

Apple's new Retina display MacBook Pro has been taken apart and examined from the inside, revealing that the RAM is soldered onto the logic board and cannot be upgraded, and that the proprietary solid-state drive memory was supplied by Samsung.

The details come from iFixit's extensive teardown of the next-generation MacBook Pro, which the site published on Wednesday, just two days after the new notebook was announced. The solutions provider took particular issue with the design of the new MacBook Pro with respect to repairability, giving it a lowest possible score of 1 out of 10.

Why did I order a MacBook Pro after all this news?  

Versus my MacBook Air.  More than 4GB of RAM would be really nice.  The 4GB is getting painful.  256GB of SSD is just too constraining.  Everybody talks about the display with more pixels, but that is less of an urgent need.   My eyes aren't screaming for more pixels.  Seeing the world a bit fuzzy is OK for abstract thinking.

So, I took the leap and placed an order for 16GB of RAM with 512 SSD.  This is a significant upgrade from the MacBook Air I have.  The Air is fine, but I need more RAM and SSD space.  I don't live all in the cloud.  Do you?  

Microsoft partners with Quanta for an integrated server, storage, network cloud solution

Microsoft has a press release for ODM Quanta delivering a cloud solution.

As customers seek more immersive experiences across a range of devices, cloud computing becomes increasingly important. To address this need along with the changing economics of IT, Microsoft has worked with hardware partners to develop the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track program. Together with Microsoft, Quanta unveiled their next generation Fast Track hardware that includes integrated server, storage and networking equipment. This solution dramatically accelerates a business’ time to value, while decreasing cost, complexity and risk. With Quanta and so many other device manufacturers in Taiwan, it’s a center of gravity for hardware and device innovation. Microsoft discussed some of the latest design innovations including touch, sensors, glass, hinges and memory that have a huge impact on PC computing experiences.

QuantaQCT presents its role in Open Compute Project, launching its presence in the ser

I got a chance to meet the folks at Quanta and discuss their growth in the USA.

Here is a presentation that Nelson Wang, Sr Director gave at the Open Compute Summit.

If you want more information the web site is here http://www.quantaqct.com/index.php.

Oops, data over load from drone images and video, leads to cutting back on the # of drones

MSNBC has an article on the information overload from drones.

Drones inflicting information overload on Air Force

Lt. Col.. Leslie Pratt / AP

A photo provided by the U.S. Air Force shows a MQ-9 Reaper during a combat mission over southern Afghanistan.

By Jeff Black, msnbc.com

The Air Force has such a glut of data – photos and videos and such – captured by its fleet of drone aircraft that it can’t keep up with analyzing the information, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said Thursday.

Note the problem is not just the storage, but the people who can analyze the information.

Because of the lack people and machinery to make sense of the information, the Air Force will cut back on how many of the drone aircraft it buys, Donley told a group of defense writers in Washington. National Defense magazine was among the publications attending the interview.

"We’ve clearly playing catch-up," Donley said, according to Wired magazine's account of the interview. "It’s not just the pilots and manning the aircraft. It’s also the [data] processing exploitation behind that …. We’re collecting data at rates well above what we had in the past."

This could be a future trend for others who don't think through the issues of what to do with the data they collect.

Identify the Power Hog in your data center, AOL uses the brass pig award

Mike Manos has a post on eliminating the cruft in data center.

Attacking the Cruft

March 28, 2012 by mmanos

Today the Uptime Institute announced that AOL won the Server Roundup Award.  The achievement has gotten some press already (At Computerworld, PCWorld, and related sites) and I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of my teams.   One of the more personal transitions and journeys I have made since my experience scaling the Microsoft environments from tens of thousands of servers to hundreds of thousands of servers has been truly understanding the complexity facing a problem most larger established IT departments have been dealing with for years.  In some respects, scaling infrastructure, while incredibly challenging and hard, is in large part a uni-directional problem space.   You are faced with growth and more growth followed by even more growth.  All sorts of interesting things break when you get to big scale. Processes, methodologies, technologies, all quickly fall to the wayside as you climb ever up the ladder of scale.

What I like is the the Power Hog part.

Power Hog – An effort to audit our data center facilities, equipment, and the like looking for inefficient servers, installations, and /or technology and migrating them to new more efficient platforms or our AOL Cloud infrastructure.  You knew you were in trouble when you had a trophy of a bronze pig appear on your desk or office and that you were marked.