David Morgenstern

For some of you, the floppy has passed into history now that Dell Computer has removed it from its standard configuration. Accordingly, a good number of readers suggested a variety of successors, including optical technology, teeny-weeny hard drives, memory cards and more, each offering its own goodness. But are any of these suggestions on the […]

The word that Dell Computer will pull the plug on built-in floppy drives drew a howl from some in the support community. The response had nothing to do with good data-storage practices, like backing up or transferring files without benefit of a network. Instead, its a more fundamental reason: the boot sequence and reviving a […]

Dell Computer last week announced that it will phase out the built-in floppy drive on its high-end models by the end of the month. And while only the most retro customers will actually miss the venerable format, the alternatives cost may take some getting used to. The whole deal highlights the missing link in the […]

Frequent flyers are well aware of the principal of force majeure: the so-called “acts of God” that relieve airlines from their obligation to schlep us to the destinations on our tickets. Should the same expectation hold for our data as it passes over the Internet? In the aftermath of the SQL Slammer, I wondered how […]

In my previous column, I voiced concern that fallout from last weekends SQL Slammer worm assault—only the latest in an increasingly severe string of attacks—might shake the already wavering confidence of consumers in the reliability of the Internet. This dip, I argued, could hurt the market for Web services and especially for remote storage of […]

Stories of the SQL Slammer worm have disappeared from the front pages of news sites, just a couple of days after its attack. “Out of sight, out of mind,” some may conclude with a sigh of relief. Still, folks in the remote-storage business should be concerned about market fallout from the Slammer worm. As ably […]

The flurry of quarterly statements over the past several weeks put smiles on the faces of many in the storage industry. Even where results were mixed, the mood may well have been upbeat, since a new driver is making its mark on enterprise storage. And I bet its not what you think. Many observers looked […]

According to recent research from the American Medical Association, the average portion of food served to U.S. consumers, at home or in restaurants, has climbed by about 50 percent over the past 25 years. Except for pizza—go figure. During the time that weve become accustomed to bigger portions of food, weve also grown accustomed to […]

To my mild dismay, the concept of user-centric design seems as elusive as ever. Based on feedback to a recent column on the subject, this notion appears to be as difficult for users to digest as it is for technology vendors to engineer. In the column in question, I offered Apples iPod as an example […]

According to the now-famous memo, it was a year ago that Bill Gates got security religion and started the company on the path of the Trustworthy Computing Initiative. By most accounts, we will be waiting a long, long while for Microsoft to make our data a bit more secure; however, a storage vendor seems to […]