Blazing New Trails with Both Macs and PCs

October 30th, 2009

We are truly living in a virtual world now. Many of the best new ideas in computing and communications are technologies that transport your voice, your face, and your mouse, keyboard and touch-tone commands through cyberspace into someone else’s computer or other device. It’s all about “connectivity with control,” at least for this news cycle.

PC remote control

If you need help on your computer, it is now possible for someone at a remote location to log right onto your computer with you and even take control of your system. This is not some advanced, expensive add-on technology. It’s built right into Mac OS X’s iChat application, and is easily done in Windows Vista and the new Windows 7, as well.

This could completely change how your company maintains its PCs. Remote operators can log on to corporate workstations to perform a remote computer repair and/or ongoing maintenance—for PCs across the hall or across the country. You can also train remote employees by taking control of their screens and showing them what to do. If you want to test all of these capabilities without interrupting any ongoing work flow, consider renting iMacs from CRE. The iMac runs both Mac OS X and Windows, so you can test all the different setups and combinations.

Telephonic control

Let’s say you’ve decided to host your own Web site and/or a company intranet. During the development and debugging period, you can rent an Xserve workgroup server and then, pair it with another high-tech Apple device—an iPhone. That’s right, an iPhone – there are  some powerful and innovative apps being developed for remote network operations.

Imagine being on the road and remotely monitoring CPU, memory, disks, uptime, load averages and more, using only your iPhone. If you have the Xserve set up the right way, you will never be out of touch with it. This incredible power can be in the palm of your hand, today.

More Apple talk

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller may have inadvertently disclosed Apple’s long-rumored tablet computer device as he was speaking to his paper’s digital media group last week. Keller was discussing his hopes of delivering the news via an assortment of online media when he said, “I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple Slate…”

Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab posted a video and transcript of Keller’s talk. Online pundits and rumormongers pounced on the errant statement as a case of “Nerdian slip” (with apologies to Freud). The Times has allegedly met with Apple executives about the future of digital media and many have guessed that such discussions touched on the possibility of delivering content to an e-reader-like device from Apple. With sales of its desktops and laptops making records every quarter, some still question whether Apple would cannibalize its own business with a netbook or tablet, even one that “thinks different.” Interested in renting a PC or Mac? Request Rental Quote today.

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