AMD
FireGL V7600 Workstation Graphics Card: $999
www.ati.amd.com

WHEN IT COMES TO WORKSTATION GRAPHICS, ULTRA-HIGH-END CARDS attract the most attention despite $2,000 prices. Those aren’t the cards most of your customers can afford, though. Dip in under that $1,000 sweet spot and you have a much better shot at upselling a professional card to a professional user rather than having a business customer try to make do with a desktop board. Look to AMD’s FireGL V7600, which falls under high-end billing but still manages to slide in at less than a grand. The card is based on AMD’s powerful R600 graphics processor, complete with 320 shader processing units and driven by 512MB of memory.

AMD uniquely includes AutoDetect support in its professional drivers, which detects the application your customer is running and tweaks the V7600 for optimal performance and compatibility. Add to that twin dual-link DVI outputs, component out, and full DirectX 10/OpenGL 2.1 support, and you’re looking at quite the professional powerhouse.

WASP
WWS500 Freedom Cordless Barcode Scanner: $349
www.waspbarcode.com

HAVING SEEN THE PAIN OF manually inventorying a stock room, I know that using barcodes in retail is a real time saver. According to Wasp, your customers in industrial manufacturing, distribution, and mobile service also stand to gain from a well-deployed barcode system. Wasp’s new WWS500 cordless scanner makes a great addition to any solution you build.

The scanner includes a USB Bluetooth adapter. So in the offi ce, you’d plug that into a PC for wireless connectivity up to 160 feet away. On the road, leverage the Bluetooth support of a smartphone or PDA to help handle scanning. A rechargeable battery built into the scanner delivers more than 25,000 scans per charge, according to Wasp. Software support for the WWS500 includes Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, and the 32-bit version of Vista. Wasp also sweetens the deal by offering free, unlimited tech support for the life of the product.

MICROSOFT
Windows Server 2008: $999
www.microsoft.com

DESPITE THE SOUR RECEPTION Microsoft’s Windows Vista received, the server operating system based on much of the same code seems poised for a signifi cantly warmer welcome. Considering that its capabilities extend way beyond what Windows Server 2003 could do, that makes sense. Microsoft’s Server Core is seen as the highest-profile feature of Server 2008.

A machine with just the server core can be confi gured to perform more than 10 different types of server roles, all without Windows Explorer or any of the other extra features considered absolutely necessary. The result is a much smaller “surface area” for malicious users to attack. Hyper-V virtualization—which is built in to the 64-bit version of Server 2008—is another massive value-add. The Standard edition is licensed to run a single VM. Big upgrades to Terminal Services (single application sharing), Active Directory, and the NTFS fi le system also combine to make this Microsoft’s most signifi cant Windows Server release yet.

QUANTUM
DXi3500 Data De-Duplication Appliance: $24,000
www.quantum.com

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE A 2U STORAGE SERVER AND Quantum’s data de-duplication technology? A backup appliance with as much as 4.2TB of usable capacity onboard as well as the ability to retain the equivalent of 84TB through the company’s own special software package. Data de-duplication is driven by proprietary code loaded onto Quantum’s DXi3500 appliance. That software analyzes data sent to the DXi3500, chops it into small blocks, and creates a signature identifying each one.

The blocks are stored to disk and the signatures to an index fi le. As data pours in, the software compares the signatures to check if that information has already been stored. If it has, Quantum’s app references the signature instead of saving the data. Going with a specialized backup solution like the DXi3500 is a play on effi ciency. The 2U box, though pricey, can hold the equivalent of 210TB if you’re able to achieve 50:1 retention ratios.

NETGEAR
FVS336G Dual WAN Gigabit SSL VPN Firewall: $425
www.netgear.com

RATHER THAN MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER CHOOSE (OR YOU CHOOSE FOR
your customer) between IPsec and SSL VPN technologies, sell a fi rewall equipped with both. Netgear’s FVS336G supports up to 25 IPsec tunnels and 10 SSL VPN tunnels simultaneously. The fi rewall also supports concurrent broadband connections that can operate in a load-balancing confi guration or as fail-over. Both WAN ports run at gigabit speeds, as do the fi rewall’s four LAN ports. In addition to delivering secure VPN connections, the fi rewall includes stateful packet inspection, denial of service protection, and email reporting for network monitoring. Whenever a VPN session terminates, its cached information is automatically cleaned to help guard sensitive data.

Although Netgear’s FVS336G is truly high-end network hardware, the company keeps confi guration straightforward with its Web-based ProSafe Control Center. Accessing the corporate network remotely is similarly simplifi ed for any off-site employee thanks to the IPsecVPN wizard.