SKUS That Can't Lose

www.necdisplay.com

 

THERE'S A LOT OF UNTAPPED POTENTIAL IN  commercial signage. SMBs increasingly want to drive their messages, whether they’re internal to employees or external to their customers. NEC sells a number of large format displays designed to do just that. Many of these business-grade LCDs enable full high-def resolutions, support the creation of video walls, and include ambient light sensors to adjust brightness dynamically. Additionally, a vast majority sport expansion slots that broaden the scope of what you can do with signage.

 

NEC’s new MPD-DTi analog, digital, and Internet protocol tuner module inexpensively increases the functionality of NEC S-, P-, and X-series displays. The module is able to receive high-definition broadcasts and network programming, including IPTV, standard VHF/UHF antenna, and cable TV over coax. Support for multiple video and analog codecs (like H.264, Windows Media Video 9, and VC1), along with MPEG transport streams, makes it possible to broadcast true high-definition content to those screens via unicast (point-to-point) or multicast communications. Because the MPD-DTi module is IP-enabled, setting it up in a small or medium business is as simple as connecting a source to a router and attaching displays.

www.oczenterprise.com

 

BY NOW, YOU'VE LIKELY HEARD ALL ABOUT solid state drives and the potential performance benefits they offer to customers with I/O-heavy workloads like Web servers, for example. Most SSDs connect to the systems you build via SATA, delivering throughput close to the interface’s 3 Gb/s ceiling. But there are enterprise and commercial clients who simply cannot get enough speed from their storage subsystems.

Enter OCZ’s next-generation PCI Express-based SSD, the Z-Drive R2. Equipped with a x8 slot connector, SATA bottlenecks cease to be an issue, as the Z-Drive is rated at up to 1.4 GB/s read and write performance with sustained write speeds of up to 950 MB/s. Compared to the fastest SSDs available, which boast peak transfer rates under 300 MB/s, that’s a massive increase. Screaming data rates aren’t the only trick up this drive’s sleeve. Unlike most slot-based SSDs, the Z-Drive is bootable. Additionally, its density is upgradable over time, thanks to proprietary modules that can be swapped out. If you sell your customer the 512GB version today, he can upgrade to 1TB or 2TB down the road. And because the drive is field-serviceable, any NAND flash failure can be addressed quickly.

www.adobe.com

 

IF YOU HAVE CUSTOMERS WHO ARE CREATIVE professionals—whether they work in print, on the Web, or in video—then Adobe’s Master Collection CS5 is a software package they’ve likely been waiting on for a very long time. The list of applications contained within the Master Collection is as long as it is distinguished. Photoshop CS5 Extended, Illustrator CS5, Acrobat 9 Pro, Dreamweaver CS5, Premiere Pro CS5, and After Effects CS5 are but a few of the most prominent. 

 

Naturally, there’s an exhaustive list of new software features that goes along with each fresh application version. But there are also a number of performance enhancements that professionals with cutting-edge hardware can use to get their work done even faster. Native 64-bit support is at the top of Adobe’s list, giving resellers a compelling reason to install 64-bit operating systems and sell systems with more than 4GB of memory, at long last. Adobe claims this results in a speed-up of up to 10x at high resolutions, where 32-bit machines would have choked. The new Mercury Playback Engine is also a significant development, accelerating effects processing and rendering in Premiere Pro. The engine can also take advantage of GPU acceleration, offloading much of the CPU’s workload.

www.ati.com

 

DRIVEN BY THE SAME GRAPHICS PROCESSOR architecture currently dominating the desktop market, ATI’s FirePro V7800 enjoys a handful of features exclusive to the company’s workstation-class cards. 

Highly-optimized drivers, for example, are thoroughly tested and certified with the most prolific CAD and DCC applications, ensuring baseline performance and reliability not available from consumer cards. Moreover, the card comes with drivers that not only support Windows 7, Vista, and XP, but also Linux. Hardware acceleration of DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.2 covers the widest possible range of professional software titles and the most popular graphics APIs. But best of all, the drivers automatically detect when a user swaps between applications, dynamically changing settings for an optimal experience in each piece of software.

 

The FirePro V7800 uniquely leverages technology first seen on the desktop, like Eyefinity. A trio of display outputs—two DisplayPort and one dual-link DVI—can all be used concurrently to drive up to three 30” LCDs at 2560x1600. Nowhere is this capability as valuable as in a professional environment; a massive desktop workspace is great for productivity.