Joseph Moran

Before it was purchased by eBay last year, relatively few people (at least in this country) had heard of Skype, the Luxembourg-based Internet telephony provider. But after about a year of heavy marketing on this side of the Atlantic, more and more people are using Skype to make low- or no-cost voice calls around the […]

You’ve undoubtedly heard about the importance of backing up your data thousands of times already, so we know we don’t need to tell you again. But once you finally do decide to start backing up, it can sometimes be intimidating choosing from among the myriad methods and applications available for the task. One increasingly popular […]

When is a NAS device not really a NAS device? Answer: When it’s Seagate’s Mirra Sync and Share Personal Server. On paper it looks a lot like a conventional NAS product, but the Mirra can’t be used as stand-alone storage — it’s a specialized device that’s designed to provide brain-dead simple backup of data stored […]

You probably don’t need to be told how important — make that critical — it is to regularly back up your company’s data. But it’s almost as important to have complete system backups as well, because desktop systems have become complicated beasts — containing updates and patches, user profiles, application preferences and myriad other customized […]

Earlier this year, a company called Parallels, Inc. got a lot of attention when it showcased its Parallels Desktop software for the Mac. The application — which uses a technology called virtualization — lets you run Windows XP alongside OS X on Mac systems with Intel processors. The ability to run both of those operating […]

In the beginning there was HomePlug 1.0 — a technology for transmitting data across household electrical wiring — and it was good. Then again, with a maximum speed of only 14 MB per second with only about half of that delivered in real-world performance, it was good mainly for basic chores such as Web browsing […]

Copernic Desktop Search 2.0’s New InterfaceOf the many desktop search utilities that have hit the market over the past couple of years, Copernic Desktop Search is generally regarded as the most powerful — and arguably the best — among them. After almost two years and several incremental updates, there’s now a major update of CDS […]

Since its purchase by eBay about a year ago, IP telephony provider Skype has been rapidly gaining in both visibility and customers. In fact, a growing list of vendors has released (or are planning to release) Skype-compatible products, including several Wi-Fi phones. Although increasingly popular, Skype isn’t the only Internet telephony game in town — […]

For some people, an application named Spiceworks might sound like an adult-oriented business productivity suite. But behind its slightly lascivious name lies a product designed to handle something decidedly dull: IT network management. Network management software has earned a reputation as being both costly to buy and complicated to set up and use. As a […]

As the saying goes, “You can never be too rich or too thin”, but for small businesses, it’s more like “you can never have too much storage”. Like water, data has a knack for spreading out to consume all available space, so it’s always a good idea to have more than you’ll need for the […]

Total Commander ScreenshotWhen we first heard the name “Total Commander” we thought it might be a character on the Sci-Fi channel’s new reality show Who Wants to be a Superhero? It turns out that Total Commander isn’t some middle-aged guy in tights, but rather a file manager utility designed to take the place of Windows […]

For as long as I can remember, the keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switch has been a must-have weapon in almost any IT professional’s arsenal. Indeed, the capability of the KVM switch to view and control two or more computers with a single keyboard and mouse has saved not only a great deal of space, but also the […]