Globally, the US came in as the top country for thefts of the kit, with Australia at number two and the UK at number three.Schools were the single biggest scenes of laptop theft crime in the US but ranked at only number four in EMEA.The study, based on data from the 6 million devices protected by Absolute’s Computrace software, also reports that enterprises are making increasing use of remote data deletion and sensitive data retrievals from stolen devices.The number of remote data deletes has risen by 34 per cent, and the amount of devices from which data is being remotely retrieved has increased by 135 per cent, the study said.Just under 5GB of data was retrieved from stolen devices in 401 file retrievals carried out by Absolute Software during 2012, a figure which compares to 171 data retrieval jobs last year, the report said.The device theft data in Absolute's report is compiled from 12,705 theft reports it received during 2012, a figure that compares to 13,818 in its previous annual report, which covered 2011. Data deletion jobs rose from 4,812 in 2011 to 6,442 last year.
The endpoint security and computer management firm notes that organisations are under pressure to adhere to stricter data breach compliance, such as the European data protection laws. As a result, organisations are focusing less on hardware recovery and more on the security of the data itself.“With reputations on the line, it is no longer simply the cost of the device but the wealth of sensitive data sitting within tablets, laptops and smartphones that is causing IT and business headaches, explained Derek Skinner, regional director, recovery and investigative services EMEA, Absolute Software.It is no surprise therefore that our report reveals a rise in remote data wipes. The sooner an organisation can secure a stolen device and render the data on it unusable to thieves, the easier it is for it to prove there hasn’t been a data breach.” More details have begun to trickle out regarding Microsoft's second-generation Surface fondleslabs, which are expected to ship in the fall.
On Wednesday, Neowin reported that new versions of both the Intel-based Surface Pro and the ARM-based Surface running Windows RT were in the works.Windows-watcher Paul Thurrot later confirmed the report and added a few details from his own sources, such as that the new ARM version would simply be called Surface, dropping the previous generation's RT moniker.Few other details have emerged about Microsoft's follow-up to 2012's $900m albatross, except that it will once again be built around a Tegra chip from Nvidia. Based on what has emerged about the new Surface Pro, however, the new Surface will likely be more of an incremental update than a radical redesign.According to both Neowin and Thurrot, the second-generation Surface Pro will run on a Haswell-based Core i5 processor from Intel, which should help with one the first generation Pro's major shortcomings: battery life. Thurrot claims the new tablet will be rated for up to seven hours of run time, rather than the first Surface Pro's five.
Both reports suggest that the system's RAM will be boosted from 4GB to 8GB, although Thurrot believes the beefier configuration will be an option, rather than the default.Neowin believes the new slates will look similar to the current Surface Pro. Thurrot says they'll look identical. With any luck, that will mean the magnetic cover connector will also be unchanged, allowing existing Surface keyboard covers to work with the new models.Redmond has cooked up at least one external modification to its tablets, however. The first-generation Surface slabs included a simple kickstand for propping up the screen when you want to use the device as a laptop. For the new models, Microsoft has reportedly refined the kickstand; Neowin isn't sure what that means, but Thurrot says the new version can lock into two distinct positions.Neither report included any information on pricing, as you might expect at this stage. Thurrot reckoned – reasonably – that any price he quoted today could very easily change by the time the devices shipped. But price could prove to be the make-or-break factor for the second-generation Surfaces, given the deep discounts Microsoft has been forced to offer on the earlier models.
Nothing concrete has been said about the launch date of the new fondleslabs, either. But if history repeats itself, the new Surface running Windows RT could be formally unveiled on October 18, 2013, the official launch date of Windows 8.1.The original Surface RT went on sale at midnight on October 26, 2012, the same date as the Windows 8 launch – which, like this year's October 18, was a Friday. The original Surface Pro shipped around three months after that, but whether Microsoft will play it that way this time is anybody's guess. WD has taken the wraps off its first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for network storage roles, NAS nuts in need of a more compact connected storage box – and, crucially, teensy drives to put in it – will be pleased to hear.Part of WD’s NAS-centric Red series, the notebook form-factor drives come in 750GB and 1TB capacities. Both of these are pre-loaded with the company’s NASware 2.0 firmware - code which it claims makes the drive better able to dance to the tune of any RAID controller it is connected to.
For instance, availability requests from RAID controllers won’t be ignored during start-up self-test routines, as they often are on desktop- and laptop-centric drives. The NASware 2.0 Red drive will pause the test to tell the controller when it will be ready for use, so the controller doesn’t assume it's broken, as it does when its requests are ignored or answered too late, said WD UK Country Manager, Jermaine Campbell.WD reckons its Red hard drives – which now also include a 4TB 3.5-incher with 64MB of cache – are sufficiently resilient that the vendor can afford to bundle a three-year warranty against component failures and manufacturing faults, though you’ll note that data loss caused by these events is not covered.The company claimed NASware 2.0's tweaks in this area give the drives “a 35 per cent mean time between failures improvement over standard desktop drives”.You also get gratis 24 x 7 phone support, which also covers any hardware into which you slot your Red drives, WD said today.
If you opt for 2.5in drives, many big-name two-bay-plus NAS boxes can take them using 3.5-inch adaptors. They will be more quiet than 3.5-inch drives, but less capacious and of lower performance. Boxes designed to take 2.5-inch drives specifically are much more rare, but they do exist, particularly from lesser-known names. A case in point: Addonics’ Mini NAS.Analysis With Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s mobile business for $7.1bn, the Redmond software giant has finally become a phone and device maker.The deal gives Microsoft Nokia’s global handset engineering, manufacturing, sales and distribution business; the family of Windows-Phone-powered Lumia smartphones; a war chest of 8,500 Lumia and Asha phone patents while licensing 30,000 utility patents; and a standing army of 32,000 Nokia employees. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014.Interestingly, it's not Microsoft’s biggest purchase: it’s second to the $8.2bn purchase of loss-making internet chat biz Skype in 2011.
The Nokia acquisition also potentially gives Microsoft its next chief executive officer: Nokia boss Stephen Elop who was once a senior suit in Redmond.Announcing the deal on Monday night, outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it a “bold step into the future”. Nokia has talent in hardware design and engineering, supply chain and manufacturing management, sales, marketing and distribution, Ballmer told his employees.Selling the deal, the shy and retiring boss reckoned it was time to accelerate Microsoft’s share and profits in the world of mobiles. (Windows Phone has 3.3 per cent of the global smartphone market, according to IDC.)Increasing phones sales and market share, pumping out better handsets - this is the promise we’re being sold. But chances are Microsoft won’t get what it expects.Microsoft could certainly use Nokia’s engineering and design smarts. It was Nokia that complained Microsoft is moving too slowly on issuing Windows Phone 8 updates - that it was still working on release cycles more appropriate to a maker of PCs than one producing consumer electronics.
The only question is why Microsoft waited so long. The Nokia-Microsoft platform partnership, in which Nokia dumped Linux and Symbian for Windows Phone, was formed two years ago. Now, it’s been decided having separate companies wasn’t working.To maintain continuity, the old Nokia heads remain: Jo Harlow will continue to lead Nokia’s Smart Devices; Timo Toikkanen will remain in place leading the Mobile Phones division; and Stefan Pannenbecker will run the design teams. All will report to Elop.Post acquisition, field sales will come under the remit of Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner. Touting Nokia and Microsoft will be the job of Redmond's marketing executive veep Tami Reller and ads chief Mark Penn - the latter was once Hillary Clinton's campaign manager and the individual responsible for Microsoft’s Scroogled ads.So, Ballmer's empire gets a massive phone design, manufacturing and sales operation, but it also gets a loss-making handset maker with plummeting market share - 15 per cent today versus 37 per cent in 2007 on the eve of the launch of Apple’s iPhone. Nokia lost $150m despite growing sales of smartphones in its latest financial quarter.