Teac
P55 Thermal Disc Printer: $5,500 (Street)
www.teac.com

Professionalism means a lot, especially to SMB customers
competing against businesses many times their size. And while blank CDs and Sharpie pens might do the job for labeling internal driver libraries, just think of the photographers and video professionals who distribute much of their work digitally. In cases like that, putting a best face forward is absolutely imperative.

TEAC's P55 thermal re-transfer printer gets photo-quality imagery onto a blank disc surface at 400 dpi resolution. According to TEAC, each 12 cm disc takes between 80 and 120 seconds to finish. And once the discs are printed, they repel water, resist scratches, and are protected from UV radiation.

Software support is limited to Windows and Linux, the P55 still uses older parallel port technology, and the 48 pound box uses lots of power. However, when it comes to generating the most professional looking discs possible, TEAC's P55 does its job well.

CyberPower
PR1500 Battery Backup: $479
www.cyberpowersystems.com

THAT A SERVER REQUIRES battery backup to safeguard against
power failure is no secret. Picking the right UPS for the job can be much more difficult, though. The issue compounds when you start dealing with rackmount equipment densely packed in an enclosure.

Rather than offer a mind-boggling array of different options, CyberPower sells three rackmount backup units for the SMB. Two of them, the PR220 and PR3000, require beefier power circuits. However, the PR1500 does not. Instead the PR1500 is rated at 1,000W, well within the bounds of a standard 15A breaker.

The PR1500, covered by a three-year warranty, is robust enough to protect one or two servers with plenty of time for a graceful shutdown. In fact, CyberPower builds two communications interfaces into the chassis, relaying power status to bundled PowerPanel Plus software on one or two machines. Your customer even gets mounting rails included with the UPS.

Ricoh
Aficio CL3500N: $999
www.ricoh-usa.com

Small office color printing looks like a real sweet spot,
especially below the $1,000 mark. Whether your customer intends to spit out professional-looking invoices or line cards in-house, there's real value in not devouring gobs of inkjet consumables or running repeatedly to the print center, thereby wasting valuable money and time.

Ricoh's Aficio CL3500N hits the right balance between quality, performance, and cost of acquisition. It's a full-color/monochrome laser design capable of 22 pages per minute. The first color page emerges in 14.5 seconds and a monochrome print takes a second less. Operating system compatibility runs the gamut from Windows to Mac to Linux and beyond. Further, USB and 10/100 Ethernet connectivity come standard.

Depending on your customer's configuration requirements, you can add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or FireWire controller boards. Augment storage by upgrading the printer's RAM or adding a 20GB hard drive. You can even buy an image scanner add-on to teach the CL3500N a new trick.

Videoalarm
RHW75C2NL
IP-Ready Dome: $899
www.videoalarm.com

When most customers express an interest in security, They're thinking about protecting offices and homes. But there's plenty of expensive equipment that sits outside all day and night, such as construction machinery, oil wells, and cars lots. The problem surfaces: How do you monitor an outdoor location with a delicate camera? And the answer: Use Videoalarm's RHW7 vandal-resistant outdoor housing. The dome-shaped housing is built using cast aluminum, whereas many competing products design with plastic. The polycarbonate lower-dome should be plenty durable over time, and an integrated wall-mount simplifies installation.

Videoalarm has already tested the mount with cameras from Axis, Canon, Elmo, JVC, Panasonic, and Sony, so you know it's highly interoperable. Moreover, a thermostatically-controlled heater protects whichever camera you install from damage in extreme weather conditions. Granted, your customer will have to pay a premium for those ruggedized features. But when you're talking about safeguarding thousands of dollars worth of equipment, the decision is a no-brainer.

Exabyte
VXA-320 PacketLoader
1x10 1U Autoloader: $3,175
www.exabyte.com

Small businesses are often very well off with hard Drive-based
backup because it's easy to manage and heavy on capacity. But as you start working your way up the food chain, backup is a forgone conclusion and archivingl becomes a priority, especially in businesses subject to compliance laws.

Exabyte's VXA-320 PacketLoader 1x10 1U Autoloader helps take the headache out of tape by packing up to 3.2TB of compressed data onto 10 tapes. As its name suggests, the PacketLoader fits in a compact 1U rack space, which isn't bad considering available capacity. Connecting the device to a server is simple. Just run a cable from the SCSI-3 Ultra 320 interface to an external port on your customer's server. Transfer rates are great. Exabyte claims up to 86.4GB per hour with compressed data.

Though the loader commands a premium, Exabyte enables plenty of value in its deluxe tape offering. You get remote management capabilities, for example, along with random library operation.