Iomega
REV Loader 560: $1,799
www.iomega.com

BACKING UP TO A SERVER IS A GOOD IDEA FOR ANY BUSINESS. YOU WANT to protect data over a fast connection and centralize in one place. But once information is stashed away, it also helps to protect it from the physical disasters that could easily wipe out your customer's server and on-site backup. Iomega's REV Loader 560 enables up to 560GB of storage spread across eight 70GB disks. The autoloader moves from one to the next as each fills up, completely automating large backup jobs.

Configuring and managing the REV enclosure is a piece of cake, which is why the Loader is sensible for SMB deployments. It connects through a USB 2.0 port and comes with CA's ARCServe Backup v11.5 with a single server license. Best of all, when the REV disks fill up, you simply take them off-site for physical protection.

Supermicro
SuperWorkstation 7045A-T: $1,200
www.supermicro.com

BECAUSE SERVERS AND WORKSTATIONS ARE SO SENSITIVE TO STABILIY issues, buying barebones configurations already tested and validated for interoperability is sometimes the safest way to build. Supermicro's SuperWorkstation 7045A-T incorporates all of the right features to not only guarantee your customer trouble-free operation but also great performance.

The platform starts with the Super X7DAE motherboard, built on Intel's 5000X chipset. The latest board revision supports quad-core 5300-series and dual-core 5100/5000-series processors. Eight FB-DIMM memory slots accommodate a maximum of 32GB running at speeds of 667 or 533 MHz. And a combination of the 5000X controller, Intel's PXH-V bridge and ESB2 facilitate truly impressive scalability, spanning PCI Express, PCI-X, PCI, SATA, and dual Gigabit LAN.

Supermicro wedges the board into a tower chassis with six hot-swap hard drive bays and a built-in 645W power supply. Add a few components to the 7045A-T and Supermicro takes care of the rest.

Wacom
Cintiq 21UX Pen Display: $2,499
www.wacom.com

FROM PHOTOGRAPHY TO industrial design, I/O devices facilitate
the interface between your customers and their work. Some prefer mice. Others use trackballs. Wacom's Cintiq appeals to those demanding the utmost in control with an interactive pen display that puts the customer's hand right on the screen.

Wacom achieves an elevated level of control in several different ways. First of all, the pen/screen system is sensitive to 1,024 levels of pressure for dynamically defining brush size, opacity, and exposure. The 21" high-res display is also completely adjustable. Rotate it, incline it, or remove it completely for lap use. There are no bezel edges, enabling the use of guides and drawing tools on the 21UX's surface. Wacom even optimizes the display's surface texture to feel more like paper. Wacom's Cintiq offers a premium interface to the customer needing more control than what a mouse or trackball can offer.

NVIDIA
Quadro FX 4600: $1,995
www.nvidia.com

MICROSOFT'S VISTA LAUNCH SIGNALED SOME FAIRLY SUBSTANTIAL
changes to the graphics market, beginning with the introduction of Shader Model 4 and NVIDIA's first from-scratch architecture designed to exploit the strengths of DirectX 10. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the same GPU emerged as a professional solution. The new Quadro FX 4600 is one of two ultra high-end boards centering on NVIDIA's unified shader technology, and it improves on the performance of previous generation boards many times over.

The card's specifications are staggering. A GPU with nearly 700 million transistors is fed by 768MB of GDDR3 memory, supporting Genlock, SDI, and Shader Model 4.0. You'll only need one auxiliary power connector to drive the 4600. And at 9" long, it's a fair bit shorter than the flagship Quadro FX 5600. Use it to accelerate the most demanding OpenGL apps today and tomorrow's DirectX 10 tools.