Swiffer Duster, Lenovo ThinkCentre, USB 3.0 standard

RINKSIDER
28
Independent Voice of the Industry
March-April 2011
Swiffer Duster, Lenovo ThinkCentre, USB
3.0 standard, online storage in the news
By Art Snyder
G
oing digital at your rink can bring
a few surprises — and a smile —
your way. It’s true, thanks to the
Swiffer Duster. Then a look at the newest
PC from Lenovo will get you back on
track with outstanding design, features and
value. Also, the new USB 3.0 standard is
making its grand entrance this year, and
online media storage has its plusses and
minuses to weigh. Details on everything
are below.
Swiffer Duster
There are few things seemingly farther away from today’s costly digital life
than a dusting device like the Swiffer
Duster, but it’s time to revise that notion. As
a rink operator, you know how vital your
computer is to your everyday success. And
part of that success is being able to sit for
long stretches as you do your keyboarding
and look at your flat-panel LCD screen.
That type of screen is a necessity these
days, with its big, easy-on-the-eyes format
helping you do a better job with office
tasks. The problem you no doubt encounter
Swiffer Duster
is dust build-up on the screen — a common rink problem — which hinders office
efficiency. But before you wipe that LCD
screen clean, check your monitor advisory
on care and see that no harsh cleansers,
sloppy soap and water, or other such fluids or abrasives are recommended. Only
expensive spray-on cleansers formulated
for sensitive LCD screens get the green
light. The secret remedy? A Swiffer Duster
(or similar dusting tool) that’s designed for
gentle cleaning duty. It works perfectly,
its low cost saves you a few dollars, and
you can get this type of duster anywhere
household supplies are sold, such as your
local CVS, Walgreen’s, Ralph’s, Kroger’s
or other such venue. Better yet, a Swiffer
Duster does its job fast — just a few
quick swishes across the screen is all you
need. (The duster is an excellent choice for
cleaning your printer, scanner, desk, filing
cabinets and other office equipment, as
well.) Now when the hockey competition
Rinksider_MAR_APR_11.indd 28
heats up and generates dust throughout
your rink, you’re literally in the clear with
a Swiffer Duster.
Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z
The Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z Allin-One PC was designed and configured
for the small-business community, and it
has proven itself an outstanding choice for
utility and value, especially in confined
spaces that are the norm with so many
rinks. In format, the ThinkCentre A70z
is a sleek-and-tidy desktop PC that has a
19-inch (diagonal) LCD monitor and integrated CPU. The unit is wireless, except for
one main CPU cord that plugs into an ordinary wall outlet, surge protector or other
such location. The keyboard and mouse are
free of any jumble of connecting wires. The
PC is Energy Star 5.0 compliant, as well,
for lower-power usage. Overall, the ThinkCentre A70z is an elegant, sophisticated,
small-footprint unit — you can set it up
on the smallest of desks or work space —
with all the expected speed, power, harddrive capacity and other bells and whistles.
Broadly available for about $575 total, the
ThinkCentre A70z price is right for today’s
value-conscious rink operators. Highly recommended. (Note: Originally from IBM,
the high-end Lenovo brand was sold a few
years ago to a Chinese manufacturer, and
they have continued the substantial design
and feature attributes that have defined
IBM over the years.)
New USB 3.0 standard
The latest Windows PCs from Hewlett Packard, Dell, Sony and other manufacturers this spring feature superfast USB 3.0
connectivity. That means you can connect
all your digital devices that utilize USB
connections — external hard drives, printers, scanners, keyboards, digital cameras
and more — even if they are only USB
2.0-compliant. That’s a fast standard, better than old-style serial and parallel ports,
but the new USB 3.0 standard allows a
10-times-faster flow of data and information. You’ll download huge files to your
storage drive and printer, for example, with
a transfer far speedier than before. This
saves time, improves office efficiency and
helps with myriad digital tasks, like offloading digital camera image files to a printer,
as a featured keepsake during birthday parties and other private sessions. In practice,
I hooked a new USB 3.0-compliant inkjet
to a USB 2.0 PC, and then to a USB 3.0
laptop, and the speed of the devices helped
by the USB 3.0 standard was impressive.
Another fine benefit: USB connections
are designed for plug-and-play use, which
really saves time when connecting tech
devices to each other. The days of incessant
rebooting are over. See about upgrading
your computer this spring with a USB 3.0
kit if the PC is less than three years old, or
replace your computer with a model that
meets the new USB 3.0 standard. Office
life is sure to improve.
Online storage
Online storage or backup of your
many rink files, documents, personnel
records, tax data, photos and other such
Windows output is intriguing, with strong
pros and cons. You never want to use an
online storage service — the “cloud,” in
tech parlance — as anything but a backup
or temporary location for files. Always use
your hard drive as your primary storage
location, and back the hard drive with any
number of portable or external hard drives;
they’re cheap, typically in the $40-100
range, and available almost everywhere.
USB connectivity between the CPU and
your portable or external drive is a fast, hassle-free, plug-any-play must. You also can
use handy, space-saving external thumb
or flash drives, which are sized much like
a thumb. They’re solid-state, lightweight
and have no moving parts to wear out or
need additional electrical power. You can
put huge amounts of data on flash drives,
as well as familiar external hard drives
that utilize a moving platter and work
exactly like your usual C: hard drive. I
use a standard 500-GB external hard drive
for backup, with further “insurance” of
a compact, portable, 350-GB hard drive.
Both connect via USB ports. Then I use
several USB-connecting, 8- to 16-GB flash
drives for easy weekly archiving of all
files, and I store the drives off-premises.
In all, my strategy for protecting files is
recommended by all the experts, and the
total cost of all the external drives is about
$200. That’s a fair price for digital peace
of mind.
For online storage, that option has
a couple of draws. One, companies like
Microsoft, Carbonite, Dropbox and many
others offer online storage service for free,
at least up to a capacity point of X GBs
(they vary). Then you can pay a monthly or
yearly fee for greater storage. To illustrate,
Carbonite charges $55 per year for unlimited storage on one Windows computer.
The drawback: You never know when
one of these companies will go bust or
significantly modify their terms for storage,
where you and all of their other clients are
locked out of access to your online storage. This has happened, so beware. And
you really have to take these providers at
their word that your files stored with them
will be secure, free from any unauthorized
access, monkey business or sheer loss.
However, online storage does have some
compelling appeal, even if it’s viewed
only as a temporary feature. You can be
working on rink business at the rink or at
home — perhaps not finishing your work,
so in almost no time you save it and store
it online with Carbonite or Dropbox, for
example, to get at later. Then when you
get to your home or office to continue
working on your files, you can go online
to your storage provider, access and open
the document, and finish it wherever you
are. This strategy allows you the freedom
of not having to save any work to, say, a
Lenovo ThinkCentre
portable flash drive that you carry with you
from one location to another. Another plus
with some cloud storage providers: They
provide software for you to install on your
computer(s), and backup can be seamlessly
automatic. This would be hugely beneficial
if disaster (lightning, perhaps) struck your
office or home environs and fried your various tech products (I know of one person in
Florida who lost everything on his PC after
a summer storm, and online storage of his
files was a major plus.) Now that you’re
forewarned of the good and bad of online
storage, do a Google check on “online storage” to evaluate the several companies that
offer cloud storage.
Products mentioned in this column are
widely available. Check local office suppliers, computer and technology vendors,
mass-merchandise and discount retailers,
and mail-order and online sources. With
broadband Internet access, software programs are a fast, easy and often cheaper
download, saving you staff time and
improving efficiency in many ways.
Art Snyder is a longtime Rinksidercontributor. He lives in Centerville, Ohio,
and has used computers and technology
since 1986.
2/21/11 9:05:28 PM