Nearly all of the updates for 2015 are in place. New bumper music. New look for the programs, the newsletter, and search screen. New theme for the podcast. I'm looking forward to being able to show you all of the neat new stuff. Soon!

How Long Will That Solid-State Drive Last?

Solid-state drives (SSD) are showing up in more computers. If you have a notebook computer that was built in the past year or two, it either has an SSD or you had the option of installing an SSD instead of a standard drive. Desktop computers increasingly have SSDs, too, either as the only drive or as the boot drive in conjunction with a large standard drive that's used for data storage. SSDs cost more per gigabyte than standard drives, but they're much faster. SSDs aren't bothered by physical shock the way standard drives are. They're also physically smaller than standard drives, use less power (important for mobile devices), and create less heat. There are rumors that they won't last as long as standard drives because SSDs can be read from indefinitely, but written to a limited number of times. I've been watching an experiment that The Tech Report has been conducting and it's very encouraging for those who want to move to SSDs sooner rather than later.

In August 2013, Geoff Gasior wrote "Despite the perks, SSDs have a dirty little secret. Their flash memory may be inherently robust, but it's also fundamentally weak. Writing data erodes the nano-scale structure of the individual memory cells, imposing a ceiling on drive life that can be measured in terabytes. Solid-state drives are living on borrowed time. The question is: how much?"

The experiment involves 6 SSDs, a Corsair Neutron Series GTX, Intel 335 Series, Kingston HyperX 3K, and Samsung 840 and 840 Pro Series. Gasior's mission: Kill the drives. To do this, the experiment relentlessly hammers each of the test SSDs with data writes. Several years worth of standard usage can be crammed into a few days using this technique. This is a process not entirely unlike the procedure that manufacturers use to estimate mean time between failure (MTBF) values for standard drives.

TechReport notes that its small sample size (6 devices) isn't sufficient to establish reliability ratings for any of the specific brands of drives. The experiment is intended only to provide some general guidelines about SSDs.

Now, more than a year after the experiment started, only 2 of the original 6 devices are still running. "Representatives from the Corsair Neutron Series GTX, Intel 335 Series, Kingston HyperX 3K, and Samsung 840 Series all perished to satisfy our curiosity. Each one absorbed far more damage than its official endurance specification promised—and far more than the vast majority of users are likely to inflict."

Gasior explains the latest drive failure: "The last victim fell at 1.2PB, which is barely a speck in the rear-view mirror for our remaining subjects. The 840 Pro and a second HyperX 3K have now reached two freaking petabytes of writes. To put that figure into perspective, the SSDs in my main desktop have logged less than two terabytes of writes over the past couple years. At this rate, it'll take me a thousand years to reach that total."

In other words, it looks like these devices will have good, long lives in most standard installations. A friend of mine is the chief technology officer for a company that collects a lot of data. He has installed SSDs on servers where information is written infrequently but read continuously. That's because the standard environment for this organization would subject the drives to conditions similar to those TechReport is using for its torture test. Some of the standard drives that are still running at this location are approaching 10 years in service! For mechanical drives that typically have 3- or 5-year warranties, that's impressive.

A report in December provided additional details about the most recent failure: "Corsair's Neutron GTX was our most recent casualty. Despite being the picture of health up to 1.1PB, it suffered a rash of flash failures over the next 100TB. SMART errors also began to appear, foretelling the drive's imminent doom. The Neutron ultimately reached 1.2PB, and it completed the usual round of tests at that milestone. However, it failed to power up properly after a subsequent reboot."

HOW BIG IS A PETABYTE?

Definition: The petabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix peta indicates the fifth power of 1000 and means 1015 in the International System of Units (SI), and therefore 1 petabyte is one quadrillion (short scale) bytes, or 1 billiard (long scale) bytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB.

Shorter definition: 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Still shorter definition: 1000 terabytes.

So even though the test doesn't allow for conclusions to be made for specific manufacturers or models, TechReport has collected sufficient data that can be used to assess the anticipated longevity of SSDs as a class. "[A]ll [6 drives] wrote hundreds of terabytes without issue, vastly exceeding their official endurance specifications. More importantly, the drives all survived far more writes than most users are likely to generate. Typical consumers shouldn't worry about exceeding the endurance of modern SSDs."

Read the full series of reports on the TechReport website.

UBreakIFix Offers a New Way to Think About Electronic Devices

When a portable device breaks, we generally replace it because we think it can't be fixed. A repair chain called UBreakIFix (they style it as "uBreakiFix") might change your mind. Nearly 100 stores are now operating throughout the US (and one is in Canada).

My first visit to the organization's website was disappointing. Individual pages took a minute or more to load and the store locator was unresponsive for nearly 10 minutes. This is not a way to build business or to encourage confidence. Later, though, the site's performance had improved a bit and I found the site well worth visiting, even for those who currently have no broken gadgets.

UBreakIFix specializes in repairing smart phones, tablets, game consoles, and computers -- sometimes while the owner waits. If not, the site claims, most repairs are completed the same day and fixed devices have a 90-day warranty on the repairs.

In addition to hardware fixes, the stores claim to offer software repairs, too. What they need more than anything is a website that works, though. Several repeated visits from various locations all resulted in slow-loading pages, which by today's standards is simply inexcusable. A company that holds itself out as having the ability to repair computers should not have a website that requires several minutes just to load a page that allows visitors to find store locations. Few visitors will relish watching "Waiting for www.ubreakifix.com" for 5 to 10 minutes.

But let's assume that the chain's services are better than its website. If you're in central Ohio, you have 2 choices. Those who live near Cincinnati have 2 choices. If you're in Seattle, southern California, Florida, Colorado, and most states in the East, you'll find a store nearby. If you're in the Dakotas, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, or Maine, you'll have to wait. Or you can send the device you want to have repaired to the company's main office in Orlando.

The company offers an impressive array of repair options, from smart phones to computers and everything in between.

The site, if you can get it to respond, also provides useful information about problems that you might encounter with electronic devices, what causes the problems, and how to avoid them. For example, cracked screens are one of the more common problems that smart phone users deal with. Under the Support tab in the menu, you'll find the Learning Hub, which contains lots of helpful videos.

For example, here's a 3-minute program on Gorilla Glass, which is used by a lot of manufacturers. Gorilla Glass resists fractures, even after it has been scratched. But even Gorilla Glass is weakened by scratches as the video explains.

UBreakIFix explains: "Corning set out to make the electronics industry’s strongest cover glass, and the process starts with something called “ion exchange,” a method of chemically tempering the glass. When the glass on your smart phone shatters, it is the result of tension forces, not compression. So in the tempering process, the glass is essentially “pre-stressed” in compression. This is done by exchanging sodium ions with larger potassium ions. This means any tensile stress on the glass must first overcome preexisting compression forces. The result is glass that can take much higher forces before failing." Other articles and videos explain how a touch screen works, how lithium batteries work, and whether a broken smart phone is worth repairing.

For more information, see the UBreakIFix website.

Short Circuits

Chromebooks Take Off in the Education Market

In an earlier report about Chromebooks, I noted that the small and inexpensive devices seemed to be poised to significantly erode Apple's Ipad market share in public schools, kindergarten through high school. There's evidence now that this is occurring.

For the second consecutive quarter, Chromebooks were the best-selling devices in US K-12 education. That's the main point of a report by Futuresource Consulting on the global adoption of personal computers in education.

More than 1,000,000 units were shipped in the third quarter and this amounts to more than 35% of all personal computing devices. For the year from January through September, more than 2 million Chromebooks were sold. Part of the surge is doubtless a result of the lower cost of Chromebooks when compared to Ipads, but another appealing factor is certainly the presence of a keyboard on Chromebooks. Educators generally also credit Google's cloud-based management system that makes the process of keeping track of a large number of devices easier.

Acer is the top seller of Chromebooks, Dell is in second place, and Samsung, which is third, is preparing to replace its current line of Chromebooks with a new model. The new models will use Intel processors.

Apple retains the lead, in part because it offers a wider choice of devices, from Ipads to MacBooks.

Futuresource Consulting says that tablets have been hit hardest by the increase in Chromebook sales, dropping to 33% of devices sold this year compared to 43% a year ago. The market research company predicts further gains for Chromebooks and convertible notebooks. Convertible notebooks usually have a keyboard that can be folded out of the way to allow the device to be used as a tablet.

Other predictions include the appearance of some Chromebook models that will sell for less than $200 and lower cost Windows notebooks and tablets.

Antivirus Maker ESET Offers Free Scanning via Facebook

Facebook is offering ESET's Online Scanner to all users without charge. Social media sites such as Facebook are frequently used by crooks to distribute links to their malware. The ESET application will scan the accounts of Facebook users, identify malware, and then help users to remove it. Facebook refers to the program as an anti-malware initiative. Good idea? Maybe not.

Facebook monitors its network and can alert users that a problem exists. When that happens, Facebook offers the ESET Online Scanner to fix the issue. Users can run the software, see scan results, and disable the malware without logging out of Facebook.

This seems like a well-intentioned idea, but it could be misinterpreted and it could also be exploited by malware distributors. Some malware-infected websites display a pop-up message that says the user's computer is infected. The "solution" offered by these fake sites actually installs malware when the user gives the malware installer permission to continue.

So some wary users might not believe the warning message while others could be fooled into thinking that a fake warning is real.

Facebook software engineer Chetan Gowda says that the ESET Online Scanner is expected to decrease the number of malicious links.

This service for Facebook users is essentially a rebranded version of the existing ESET Online Scanner, which the company says has been used for 40 million scans by users around the world.

ESET was founded in 1987 in Bratislava, which was then Czechoslovakia. Today Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia. The company has offices in San Diego, Singapore, and Buenos Aires.

STOP!T Aims to Reduce Cyber-Bullying

How do we pronounce "STOP!T"? Clearly, the embedded exclamation point is intended to be seen as a lower case "i" and so the pronunciation would be "StopIt!" but the graphic presentation makes me want to read it as "Stop! T", which makes no sense at all. I'll just call the service StopIt from now on and we'll consider what the application does.

The application is being used in some New York schools. StopIt released a beta version of the application in February 2014 and 50 schools are currently using it. Now StopIt is available nationally.

Perhaps New York schools have been more interested in using the application because the New York State Court of Appeals found Albany County's cyber-bullying law to be in violation of the First Amendment, and thus invalid. StopIt developers say that their application deters and controls cyber-abuse in schools, universities, and offices.

Users are able to report cyber-abuse anonymously to trusted adults and school administrators via StopIt, which also includes a cloud-based incident management system for administrators. Developers say that StopIt also provides students access to a 24/7 talk and text crisis center.

Todd Schobel, the president & CEO of StopIt, says that social media make it easy for children to be bullied online. "Schools are taking notice," he says, "and seeking tools that empower their students to stay safe online and on social media."

For more information, see the StopIt website.

Dangers Increase as More People Bring Personal Devices to Work

BYOD is an initialism that stands for "bring your own device" and it's making corporate IT managers crazy. In the dark ages of personal computers, employees brought in Apple II computers so that they could run VisiCalc. The users couldn't connect those computers to corporate networks and IT managers, although possibly frustrated by those "newfangled toys", didn't have to worry much about them causing trouble. Things are different today.

Today's tablets, notebook computers, and smart phones can connect to corporate networks and they can be vectors for malware. The North American Bring Your Own Device Report estimates that the BYOD market in North America will grow from $29.5 billion in 2014 to $89.6 billion by 2019

VisiCalc on an Apple II >>>

The report by Micro Market Monitor defines and segments the BYOD market in North America. The increasing adoption of BYOD and enterprise mobility is driven by the advantages that these devices offer -- real-time communication, for example, along with greater accessibility and improved productivity. Large companies sometimes have procedures and policies that define how employee-owned devices may be used and, more importantly, how they can be connected to the corporate network. Smaller companies often have no policies.

The report provides information about leading players in the industry, such as Airwatch, Mobileiron, Good Technology, IBM/Fiberlink, and Citrix Systems and describes the various product offerings and key strategies.

According to Micro Market Monitor, the North American market is primarily driven by the emphasis given to customer relationship management. But when people bring their mobile devices to their work places, the result is a significant security concern for business owners and managers. The report notes that the shift to provide access for employees, regardless of where they are, to critical information has accelerated BYOD solutions.

Information about the report is available on the Micro Market Monitor website.

A Most Amazing 5 Minutes 22 Seconds

Spare less than one tenth of an hour to watch Steve Wozniak talk about the early days of Apple -- before Apple even existed as a company. Steve Jobs was the marketing genius behind apple, but Woz was the technologist who started it all.