IBM has no stomach for low-margin businesses, which is why Big Blue may be ready to dump its commodity server business — i.e., servers that run on Intel-compatible "x86" processors. If the reported talks with Lenovo lead to a sale, the move would mark IBM's final break with the low-end computer business.

A Win-Win

The deal would be a win-win for both companies. Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business in 2005 for $1.75 billion, would immediately become the third largest maker  of x86 servers, behind market leader Hewlett-Packard and runner-up Dell. Thanks to its market clout in its homeland, the Chinese company has risen to become the second largest PC maker worldwide, according to the latest numbers from IDC. 

Adding x86 servers to its portfolio makes perfect sense for Lenovo, which has shown in PCs that it can do well in a low-margin, commodity market. For IBM, the opposite is true. The company's strength in hardware is in selling expensive — and profitable — mainframes.

IBM's mainframe business is the reason the company leads the global server market, at least in revenue terms. To give you some sense of how expensive these systems are, IBM's "System z" mainframe represented more than 12% of all server revenue worldwide in the fourth quarter. Because of a refresh in the product line, along with the introduction of new products, such as the zEnterprise, revenue from IBM's mainframe business rose almost 56% year over year in the quarter, according to IDC.

"Although revenue results for System z are traditionally heavier in the fourth quarter, this accelerated acquisition shows the breadth and depth of the IBM mainframe installed base," Jean Bozman, analyst for IDC said in a statement.

Lenovo would be a good buyer for IBM, because it doesn't compete in any of the markets IBM cares about, namely software and IT services. That wouldn't be the case if HP or Oracle were the buyer.

Disruption In Server Market

IBM may also have decided it wants no part of the disruption heading for the server market like a freight train. The increasing number of companies adopting cloud computing will mean fewer server sales, Larry Dignan points out at ZDNet. In addition, Internet companies with large server farms, such as Facebook and Google, buy customized white-box servers, which can't be good in the long term for traditional sellers, like HP, Dell and IBM.

While no one outside of IBM or Lenovo know how much the business would fetch, someone familiar with the talks told Bloomberg that the price would range from $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion, depending on the assets and liabilities included.

Lenovo Is Fired Up And Ready To Go

Not everyone agrees that IBM would be doing itself a favor by selling its x86 business. Gartner analyst Sergis Mushell says that without x86, IBM only non-mainframe servers would be its lineup of machines that run its Power processors — and that demand for those products is shrinking.

In other words, IBM would miss out on the opportunities to build systems based on x86 "while [its Power] architecture's ecosystem is shrinking," Mushell said. "Do you see how it would not make a lot of sense?"

Lenovo, meanwhile, is hungry to move beyond the PC market. The company announced last year a partnership with EMC in which Lenovo planned to introduce x86 servers that would include EMC storage systems. As part of the deal, Lenovo agreed to sell EMC networked storage products in China.

Given the jumpstart it would get from owning IBM's x86 business, Lenovo may be willing to make an offer that's hard for IBM to refuse.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

You've installed antivirus software on your computers, configured your operating system to update its security automatically and password-protected your Wi-Fi. So your home network is safe against hackers, right?

Guess again. And then take a long look at your wireless router.

What Can Happen (Hint: It's Bad)

For years, manufacturers of home routers have all but ignored security issues, at least when it comes to making sure that consumers update their firmware to close exploitable vulnerabilities. Let's put it this way: Have you ever updated the firmware on your router? If not, odds are good that it's got one or more security holes through which a properly motivated hacker could slip.

Attacks on routers aren't common, partly for logistical reasons that make them uneconomical for hackers. But that could change as technology evolves, criminal incentives shift and security tightens up in other areas. One big potential trouble spot: the embedded Web servers that many routers use for managing their settings — including, of course, security.

Router manufacturers have done a lousy job informing users about firmware updates that would patch security flaws, and are even worse making it easy for users to obtain and install those updates. Such patches are seldom available through automatic services, forcing users to look up the fixes on manufacturer websites.

"These are low-priced, low-power devices," Tod Beardsley, a researcher with application security vendor Rapid7, said. Manufacturers "may not have the margins on these devices to provide ongoing software support."

To see what can happen when a flaw remains unpatched, look no further than a major intrusion in Brazil in 2011, when hackers broke into 4.5 million home DSL modems over the Internet. The modems were reconfigured to send users to malware-carrying imposter websites, primarily so thieves could steal their online banking credentials.

From Brazil With Love

That exploit in Brazil was similar to one that application security tester Phil Purviance recently employed against a wireless Linksys EA2700, which was released about a year ago. Called a cross-site request forgery, the technique allowed Purviance to break into the router's embedded management Web site. Once in, Purviance found he could change the login information and remotely manage the hardware.

"What I found was so terrible, awful, and completely inexcusable!" Purviance wrote in his blog. "It only took 30 minutes to come to the conclusion that any network with an EA2700 router on it is an insecure network!"

Purviance found a total of five vulnerabilities in two Linksys routers, the EA2700 and WRT54GL. Separately, flaws recently found in Linux-based routers from D-Link and Netgear could enable a hacker on the network to gain access to the command prompt on the operating system, Rapid7 reported.

D-Link and Netgear didn't respond to requests for comment. Belkin, which bought Linksys from Cisco last month, said in an email sent to ReadWrite that the EA2700 was fixed in a firmware update released last June. Called Smart Wi-Fi, the firmware is available through an opt-in update service. 

What Hackers Want

Manufacturers have gotten away with sloppy security practices because breaking into wireless routers usually requires physical proximity. That made it far harder for hackers to bust into multiple computers, because they'd have to move from network to network in order to target them. Thus hackers have tended to favor blasting out malware-carrying spam from a single location over attacking individual wireless routers.

But that could change. Industrial control systems that run manufacturing operations, power grids and other critical infrastructure are increasingly under pressure from cyberespionage campaigns. Vulnerabilities in these systems are as bad as in home routers. You can see just how bad is is via the search engine Shodan,  which collects information on 500 million connected devices, such as routers, printers, webcams and servers, each month.

In time, hackers will develop better tools and malware for breaking into hardware, and this technology will eventually find its way into the criminal underground.

How To Safeguard Your Router

In other words, it makes sense to safeguard your router now. Here are a few steps you can take to make your home network a less inviting target:

• In your router security settings, make sure you've changed any default usernames and passwords. These will be the first things any hacker tries, much the way a burglar jiggles a doorknob to see if it's unlocked.
• Disable wireless access to your router's management console, which allows you to manage its settings by pointing a Web browser to an address such as 192.168.1.1. Disabling wireless access means you'll have to be physically plugged into the router in order to manage it, making it far more difficult to hack.
• If you're sufficiently technically minded, consider replacing your router's doubtless buggy internal software with an open-source alternative such as DD-WRT, Tomato or OpenWRT. While these options aren't particularly consumer friendly, their firmware is less likely to contain obvious vulnerabilities — and will probably offer you some cool new features, too.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Updated at 12:35pm PT to make clear that embedded Web servers, not embedded browsers, pose a security threat in many routers.

[Editor’s note: Joachim Kempin is a former top Microsoft executive and author of a new memoir, Resolve and Fortitude: Microsoft’s `Secret Power Broker’ Breaks His Silence. It’s a fantastic book, and I’ve asked Kempin to write a few columns for us sharing his perspective on Microsoft. In this, his second column for us, Kempin argues Microsoft should take over the social networking space, and get out of the hardware business. –Dan Lyons]

Last week I gave you a historical perspective about Microsoft and pinpointed several areas for improvements. Today I will continue that discussion with more food for thought:

Reinvent Social Media Software

Microsoft could create lots of magic by developing advanced social media software, which would be so user-friendly that even a dog could use it with ease. The leading product, Facebook, lacks a good user interface; while it connects you, it basically sucks. Its value lies in its huge user base, the vast computer network it needs to function, and the ease with which it attracts immense amounts of advertising dollars.

As with any social media network, the vast user information it contains is its most valuable asset. This is the main reason why Google is making a serious effort in that product category. By properly analyzing and evaluating this info with modern data-mining techniques, Facebook can create unprecedented consumer market knowledge and deliver well-targeted advertising. Microsoft has only a very small share in this business.

Therefore, Microsoft needs to reinvent this space and make it easier, more fun and more intuitive for users to create a lively community. Convincing current social media users to migrate into a Microsoft-conceived realm will take time and incentives, and will require an easy transition path in form of a few clever mouse clicks to reestablish links and move existing user information into a more captivating universe.

A Facebook-like product with superior functionality and vastly improved privacy features, including characteristics from Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, would be extremely compelling. Microsoft has the technical capacity and the design wit to do this. In particular, when combined with free Skype usage, it could take a lot of advertising revenue away from Facebook and Google.

There’s also an opportunity to bend over backwards and open up the Chinese market. This could be done through a local partnership or a technology deal. Since Facebook is blocked in that country, Microsoft could have a nice growth opportunity.

In the ‘90s, Microsoft undertook something comparable with the Java programming language invented by Sun Microsystems. The principle applied was christened “embrace, extend, and innovate.” It succeeded because Microsoft improved a mediocre product by providing the necessary plumbing through foresight and architectural underpinning.

Applying the same method a second time, when reinventing social media software, would very likely succeed and curtail the success of Microsoft’s competitors.

But let’s not stop there. Let’s be audacious, and provide Internet Explorer (IE) with a long-needed boost by making social networking capabilities an integrated part of IE, available for everybody’s web-browser-fingertips, anywhere on any mobile and desktop device! This would be way more effective than spending advertising money to encourage people to use IE.

I can see the competitors already running for cover and complaining once again to the feds, but since it’s a “genuine technological integration” - as a court once ruled in regard to IE — such a move would represent a totally legal operating system/browser extension.

Research With A Product Angle

The other change I would introduce is to locate product development and relevant research personnel under one roof. The goal would be to accelerate the turning of research projects into marketable products.

This means abandoning the currently centralized research unit. Under this new scenario, the person running the Office group (for example) would pay for and guide his or her own research department. Therefore that executive would have the ultimate motivation to turn innovative ideas into money-making ventures. This was already talked about when I was still around, but has never been accomplished.

Best products win — mostly! The company needs to remember that and execute accordingly. Over the last decade it has not adhered well to that principle. Moving research into the product groups might just do the trick and re-infuse that old but so very successful principle and enable the company to lead in several categories, as it did in its glory days.

Complaining, as Bill Gates recently did, that the company is no longer innovative enough proves my point. Act, Mr. Chairman! Act!

Products To Divest Of

Very simply put: All hardware devices. The foundation for Microsoft’s prosperous ecosystem was built with software DNA and partnerships with hardware producers and software vendors. The company’s leadership needs to remember these old roots and make it a priority to keep suppliers who support Microsoft’s platforms close, and enlarge that club with the ones who once left.

Its CEO and chairman know very well that re-earning formerly prevailing trust is the key to success here. It takes years to gain it, and only one wrong announcement or power grab to destroy it.

The reason why people prefer a certain computing device over another ultimately comes down to a combination of usefulness and affordability. Usefulness means how easily one can operate the device and how many software applications are made available for it. Charge too high a price, and users will most likely compromise and pick the cheaper and a less useful platform. Low price is the main reason why Windows PCs beat Macintosh computers by eight to one, and why Android-based smartphones outnumber iPhones. Apple’s products, while superior, are as overpriced as the wonderful Porsches I love so much.

Recently, Microsoft announced it is changing direction and wants to be known as a device and services company, so that it can show off its software products more favorably. I am not surprised about emphasizing a more intensive focus on cloud services, where competitors are way ahead. But I vehemently disagree with the idea of producing hardware devices to the detriment of loyal ecosystem partners. It simply undermines their trust, and is a distraction for the company.

Microsoft’s experience with building hardware is very limited. From computer mice and keyboards to the Xbox game console, the company has struggled for years to compete and be profitable in that field. Why will the newly introduced Surface tablets change that?

In the ‘80s, Microsoft ventured into producing hardware in form of memory cards, an add-on board for the Apple II so it could run CP/M software, as well as printer hardware and computer mice. I sold all of them as General Manger of Microsoft’s German subsidiary. With the exception of the computer mice and the Apple II add-on board, all of them flopped. When the Apple II fell out of favor, only the Microsoft mouse survived until the turn of the century when ergonomic keyboards and the Xbox game console showed up.

The mice are still getting produced, but just for the replacement market. My team sold 150 million of them to PC manufacturers, but the business was abandoned in 2000 because we were no longer price competitive in that cutthroat market segment. The same happened to keyboard sales. Dropping mice and keyboards altogether would make some friends — Logitech comes to mind — and would hardly be noticed on the balance sheet.

Xbox, Microsoft’s game console, came into existence to keep Sony from conquering the living room, as Bill Gates once pointed out. It came with a steep price. The company lost $6 billion to $8 billion in this venture. Even today, every Xbox remains subsidized. Its losses are made up with software royalties from game manufacturers, profits from Microsoft’s prospering “Halo” game and service fees paid by cloud services users. Leaving Xbox behind would therefore only cause a small revenue shortfall, and would hardly be noticeable at the bottom line.

The best solution: Spin the total hardware division off and continue to do game software. Game consoles, in particular, are a dying breed. The future of gaming for hard-core gamers will be on powerful PC systems equipped with high-end graphics and on tablets for the causal crowd. Sony’s recent PlayStation 4 announcement confirms this to some degree. Sony wants to revive game console sales by making them as powerful as PCs, or maybe even more powerful, by including social media connectivity, improved cloud services and key PC attributes. Why not just subsidize PCs instead of spending money on a proprietary platform design which will increase Sony’s losses for years to come?

The real money is in gaming software, period. Spinning Microsoft’s console business off would avoid future losses. And last but not least, Valve might be interested in buying that division. Who knows?

What else to get rid of: All retail stores. Sell online instead and clean up the messy Windows 8 application store or Windows 8 might join the lists of Redmond management casualties.

Next Step

Next week, I will focus on organizational issues and explain why a major organizational change is needed to revive Microsoft’s mojo.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

In 2010, Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers told reporters at the company's reseller conference in San Francisco, "We don't focus on other companies. We focus on market transitions."

The statement was a half-truth. Chambers should have said companies other than Microsoft.

On Monday, the eve of Microsoft's first Lync User Conference, Rowan Trollope, general manager of Cisco's Collaboration Technology Group, posted a blog that that explained why Lync was inferior to Cisco's platform for unified communications and collaboration.

"I'm quite sure some of it will generate controversy but that's OK - it's a conversation worth having in our opinion," Trollope writes.

But as sometimes happens when brands or political campaigns "go negative," the whole thing is blowing up in Cisco's face, as analysts point out the weaknesses in Cisco's arguments.

The real takeaway, in fact, is that Cisco seems to be scared of what Microsoft is selling.

Cisco's Claims

Trollope's post isn't super nasty, at least not by Apple-v-Android standards. But he takes some shots at Microsoft Lync, calling it "a solution that's primarily been developed for a desktop PC user experience" and thus "less able to meet these wider post-PC requirements than one that has been designed and optimized for them from the outset."

An example of the latter, Trollope says, would be Cisco's UC&C, which is a set of integrated products, such as messaging, Internet telephony, video conferencing and data sharing. All the products are accessed through a single user interface.

Another of Trollope's criticism is that with Microsoft, customers need to go out and buy all sorts of different devices instead of getting everything from a single vendor. "And, in our opinion, that could lead to increased complexity, cost and risk, not to mention the hours spent trying to figure out `who's on first' when troubleshooting an issue."

And finally this:

"There are other important topics that we think should also be discussed. Does your collaboration vendor have any conflict of interest with other BYOD device vendors? Can you move from an in-house deployment to a cloud-based service and get the same functionality? We would encourage you to explore these points with us and any other vendors you are considering."

This is all pretty garden-variety competitive marketing, and certainly far less aggressive than what Microsoft does with its anti-Google "Scroogled" campaigns.

Nevertheless, analysts were quick to cry foul and to point out flaws in Cisco's arguments.

Cisco's Hypocrisy

A large part of what Trollope called a "frank and direct conversation" was a "little far fetched and hypocritical," Gartner analyst Steve Blood says.

Cisco claims Microsoft's Surface tablet represented a conflict of interest, since Lync would also support competing tablets from Apple and Google. Cisco seems to have forgotten its own entry into the tablet market with Cius, which failed miserably and was pulled last year. "It wasn't worried about a conflict of interest then," Blood says.

Cisco also has other conflicts when it comes to hardware. While its UC&C products work on other vendor's systems, they run best on Cisco's Unified Computing System. And when it comes to partners offering Cisco UC&C in the cloud, its UCS server is the only hardware option, Blood says.

Trollope claims Lync is more complex and expensive because customers need to get phones, video equipment, voice and video gateways and networking gear through hardware partners since Microsoft doesn't make those products, while Cisco sells its own integrated hardware and software.

Art Schoeller, analyst for Forrester Research, isn't buying Trollope's argument. "Each account is different in what they have, what they want, and what capabilities are important to them and what model appeals to them more," he says.

While Cisco arguably has a stronger hosted platform than Microsoft, Cisco's biggest resellers are also selling hosted Lync and Office 365, which is "a recognition by Cisco's partners that in some instances, the Microsoft solution is something they would want to propose in place of Cisco," Blood says.

The biggest problem Microsoft has in offering Lync in the cloud is with voice communications. In many countries, as soon as voice hits the cloud, it becomes a regulated service, much like that of a carrier. Microsoft and Cisco are solving the problem by partnering with carriers. "Currently, Microsoft promotes Lync on premise, if a customer wants deeper voice capabilities like conferencing," Schoeller says.

Cisco Feels The Competition

Cisco is going on the offensive because Microsoft is becoming a serious competitor, which is good for companies in the market for unified communications products. However, Cisco would do better to focus on customers, rather than spend time attacking the competition with "ill-prepared, and weak arguments such as this," Blood says.

In a recent interview with AllThingsD, Chambers said, "We love to compete, and we try to always compete with class."

If Chambers believes Trollope's blog is class, then he needs to look up the definition.

Pity the poor computer mouse. What with touchscreens and trackpads, mice are no longer the input devices of choice. And things are about to get a lot worse for the once-dominant computer controllers.

If I had to name my personal Best of Show for the Consumer Electronics Show last week, it would be Tobii, an eye-tracking startup that does one single, amazing thing: it lets you use your eyes to move the cursor around the screen.

As I thought about it a bit more, I realized that many of the companies that have impressed me the most of late have been those that offer new ways to physically interact with the PC and other computing devices: companies like Tobii, Leonard3Do, Leap Motion and Oculus VR.

Maybe it's the influence of smartphones, Windows 8 and the Kinect peripheral for the Xbox 360 console. Suddenly, touch, voice, gestures and motion have become the ost talked-about ways of interacting with computers. Like many people, I'm perfectly content with using the mouse and keyboard as my preferred means of entering content. But that doesn't mean that these other methods aren't just as viable - especially when consuming content.

Tobii Rex

I was most impressed with Tobii, if only for its simplicity: it simply replaces the mouse with your eyes. A year ago, Tobii teamed up with Lenovo to design a custom notebook that integrated its eye-tracking or "gaze-tracking" software. Last week, the company showed off the Tobii Rex, a USB peripheral that can attach to the bottom of your LCD monitor. At this point, the Rex is a developer platform that costs about $1,000; however, the company will soon begin preorders for a limited run of 5,000 devices that will ship this fall. Pricing for that device, which may be known as the IS20, has not been announced.

Some have said relying too much on touch on a desktop PC could result in tired, "gorilla arms" after a few hours of use. With Tobii, that's not an issue. 

Tobii's eye-tracking peripheral uses low-power infrared lights to illuminate your retina and cornea, tracking the reflections. Chief executive Heinrik Eskillsson assured me that the infrared posed no danger to people's eyes, and wouldn't cause additional fatigue. After a few seconds of training, including looking at colored balls to calibrate the device, I was able to interact with Windows 8 using just my eyes.

And in my experience, Tobii was amazing - not just for its potential, but because it worked extremely accurately, right now. In the demonstration, Tobii mapped the mouse keys to little-used keys on the keyboard, so that if I wanted to click on a widget, I simply looked at it, clicked, and moved ahead. It takes a second or two to remove one's hands from the keyboard, find the mouse or trackpad, then realign them for typing. Tobii eliminates all that. Scrolling is accomplished simply by looking at the bottom or side of a window. Highlighting text is as easy as holding down the "mouse button" and moving the cursor (which appears only when you click.) Another reporter also recorded video of using Tobii during a version of "Asteroids".

Scrolling in and out of a map was a bit trickier; instead of highlighting a point and then spinning a mouse wheel (or pinching), you looked at a spot and clicked in and out. Still, it worked just fine. The only drawback is that your gaze is essentially a single point of contact, so it can't technically replace multitouch gestures. Still, for 99% of the interactions you'll have with your computer, Tobii should be terrific.

Other eye tracking technology is apparently being used for research, with names like Applied Science Laboratories, Sensomotoric Instruments, Optitrack, or SR Research. But Tobii appears prepared to take eye-tracking tech mainstream.

Leonard3Do

Budapest-based Leonar3Do also wants to replace the mouse - with a bird. The winged "bird," which users wave through space, incorporates horned antennas that helps Leonar3Do's software manipulate 3D models.

What's interesting, however, is that the models don't "live" inside your monitor. Because Leonar3Do's software is synced to a 3D monitor and goggles, the model appears to float outside the 2D display. (Leonar3Do has a non-embeddable video on its website with more information.)

In some ways, the bird didn't appear to offer the sort of fine resolution that CAD designers would want, although Roland Manyai, the company's director of marketing, sales and business development, denied that. However, it seemed nicely intuitive to be able to rotate, "push" and "pull" 3D models, deforming surfaces easily.

Leonar3Do was on hand at CES to launch HelloVR, a program that eliminates the "bird" and replaces it with the gyroscope found within a user's smartphone. Interesting stuff, although serious modellers will still want the bird or something similar.

Oculus Rift

I wasn't able to actually use Oculus VR Oculus Rift gaming headset directly. But old-school gamers will remember Virtuality, a 1990s-era arcade game where users wore a virtual reality headset to look about a primitive gamefield, shooting others with blocky pixels.

The Oculus Rift replaces those headsets with a similar pair of goggles employing a shared 1280 x 800 display that, most importantly, minimizes the latency that accompanied the previous versions. So far, Oculus appears to be marketing the Rift as a gaming peripheral, but it will be interesting to see what other applications it . 

Leap Motion

ReadWrite's Dan Lyons characterized Leap Motion as the hottest tech company of 2013, and in fact it might be. Leap's technology lets users incorporate Kinect-style gestures into PCs and other devices, manipulating what's on the screen without having to touch them. Leap's technology sounds fascinating, but I'd still rather be able to manipulate objects with my eyes then be forced to physically gesture with them. Oh, who am I kidding - I'd like to have both.

But no matter whether it's working with eyes or hands or heads, the most interesting products of the last few months involve translating physical movements into the virtual space. Companies like Tobii and others still face plenty of questions about pricing and availability, but it's clear that these kinds of devices can anticipate a bright future.

For the venerable mouse, not so much.

Image sources: Oculus Rift/OculusVR.com; Leap Motion/LeapMotion.com

Having slogged through so much bad news of late, last week Hewlett-Packard marketers were quick to run to their laptops to make hay out of a closely watched market report showing that HP remained the word's top-selling PC maker. But in their rush to shine a positive light on their struggling employer, the PR folks left out the most important point: HP is fighting to stay king of an eroding hill.

For HP, Flat Is The New Up

International Data Corp. (IDC) found that HP's fourth quarter PC shipments last year remained roughly flat from the year before. But that was enough to keep it at the top with almost 17% of the market. Soon after the scrap of good news hit the Web, HP public relations went to work. "We believe HP's position as the market share leader demonstrates out ongoing commitment to deliver superior PC products and experiences across customer segments," the press release said.

Woo-hoo!

Ironically, in tooting its own horn, HP highlighted its biggest problem, which is its need to cling to dwindling markets. The IDC report found that global PC shipments fell more than 6% in the quarter and more than 3% for the year. It was the first time in more than five years the PC industry had recorded a year-on-year drop during the holiday season, according to IDC.

The reasons behind the decline are well known. People increasingly favor smartphones and tablets, both fast-growing markets where HP remains a non-player. Heck, even Microsoft, which helped to usher in the PC era, sees its demise and is pushing tablets and smartphones as the future of computing.

But for HP, staying flat in PCs was so exciting it had to churn out a press release. That's not a good sign. But given what else is going on at the company, the temptation is understandable.

Due to management bungling over the last few years, HP has fallen ever farther behind its rivals in taking advantage of game-changing trends in the consumer and enterprise markets. The company paid a total of $24 billion for Autonomy and EDS to become a player in big data software and IT services, respectively, only to see both deals go down in flames through huge write offs.

HP Battles Workers

Meanwhile, HP is chasing distractions when its focus should be on innovation. In Texas, HP is in a tussle with customer General Motors, which is in the process of giving HP services the boot. Eighteen employees quit HP at the same time and without notice to join GM's efforts to take its IT work in-house.

HP is asking the state court for permission to depose two of the workers; a move GM has called "retaliatory" and a "fishing expedition," according to Bloomberg. It seems HP can't understand why anyone would want to flee a company that has promised Wall Street that it will fire 29,000 employees this year and next.

Bright Spots

HP's current state is not all dark. Last week the company launched a services center for in-memory computing, an emerging technology that significantly boosts application performance by keeping all data in system memory rather than on disks. The announcement came the same day SAP said it was making all its business applications available on its in-memory database called HANA. HP plans to throw its support behind HANA and is also working on its own in-memory platform, codenamed Project Kraken," according to InfoWorld.

Kraken-like initiatives are what HP's PR team should be crowing about, rather than the company's managing not to shrink in the cratering PC market. Chasing hot new markets - not scrambling to be the last PC vendor to avoid extinction - is the only way to change HP's image as a dinosaur.

Dinosaur image courtesy of Shutterstock.

For all our brand loyalty, consumer electronics are commodities. A very small number of suppliers produce the guts of most electronic devices, and competing brands are often assembled in the same factories (we're looking at you, Foxconn). Assuming the same components, the only major differences among many products are fit-and-finish standards and customer support.

What Would You Pay For Giant Monitor?

Sometimes support is reason enough to pay more. When my Macbook Pro's hard drive died 10 months after purchase, I had a replacement hard drive installed within two hours. That beats boxing the computer and waiting weeks for a replacement. When it comes to laptops, a few dollars more can be a worthwhile investment. But what about components that don't usually break? Like monitors, for example?

Source: Shutterstock For the past several years, budget-savvy buyers have saved cash by buying grey-market Asian (usually Korean) merchandise - including large-screen monitors - directly from importers. The sellers typically work through eBay, Amazon, or an auction site, and the products the buyer receives are pretty bare-bones. Seller warranties usually cover products that are Dead On Arriva and (in the case of monitors), a negotiable number of dead pixels, but that's it. The manufacturer warranties are typically written in Korean, and it's up in the air whether they even apply in the States. It's a lot like the gray market trade on which many camera vendors have built a business, but in this case the manufacturers themselves are relative nobodies, too. When you buy a Yamasaki Catleap or a Crossover 27Q monitor, you're pretty much on your own.

The flip side, of course, is that you get a whole lot of 27-inch monitor for your money. Less than $400 to your door (add an extra $10 to $100 for a "pixel-perfect" guarantee) buys components found in domestic monitors at more than twice the price. Inputs are limited, controls are basic, and case design can be a bit wonky, but you'll get the same LG IPS panel Apple uses in its Cinema Display, which is a truly beautiful thing to behold.

What About The Warranty?

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Monoprice (the ultra low-cost retailer that's been the king of cables and accessories for some time) was showing off its entry to the sub-$400 27-inch monitor market: the CrystalPro WQHD. Like the other Korean imports, the CrystalPro sports a high-resolution, 2560 x 1440, LG IPS panel, a VESA wall mount, and dual-link DVI inputs. The difference is the warranty. Monoprice offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, a full one-year warranty on the monitor, and a lifetime warranty on cables and accessories. Plus, it's located in Rancho Cucamonga, California, with live chat support seven days a week.

There's no denying that Apple's Cinema Display is a better, more polished product, but when properly calibrated, the display quality of the Korean imports can hold their own at a fraction of the cost. For system builders, those contemplating a multiple-monitor setup, or anyone looking to step up from a smaller screen, the $400 deal is tempting. With the addition of a real warranty from an American importer, we may have reached a tipping point.

My old 24-inch monitor is suddenly looking kind of small and tired. For $390, I'm willing to give an off-brand alternative a shot. How about you?

Why do I like the hardware industry?

It's the melodrama. One day, you're an unheralded company with clunky, me-too products. (We're the first company to deliver a smartphone specifically designed for bass fishermen!) Three years later, a few analysts and reporters note that your company has moved from number 27 to number 8 in market share. A year later, BusinessWeek prints a breathless account of the danger sports—windsurfing, bull baiting, extreme whittling—the CEO enjoys to keep himself tuned. You're number one in your chosen markets and your company is expanding!

And then comes the final act: excess inventory, bloated product lines,  tight margins and feature stories bemoaning your big bet on those touch screens.

Look at Packard-Bell, Compaq, Palm, AST, Digital, Acer, and all those people that made Internet Appliances back in the late 90s. These companies weren't stupid or mismanaged. In most cases, they touched the Golden Fleece... right before sliding off a cliff.

And now comes Vizio. It's one of the great success stories in digital television. At the Consumer Electronics Show this week Vizio unfurled smart phones, tablets and Windows 8 PCs.  (Vizio started trickling out the PC strategy in 2012 but this year's CES has been the launch pad.) The desktops will have large 24- and 27-inch screens while the laptops will emphasize thinness. Still, even with the accent on design it can be seen as a strange move. PC sales are flattening out and most phone companies are struggling in the shadow of Samsung and Apple. Given a choice between trying to interest consumers in Windows 8 or trying to earn a living giving massages at street fairs, you might be temped take Option B.

But, ahh... the history. Vizio has defied the odds before. Founded in 2002 by LCD veterans William Wang, Ken Lowe and Laynie Newsom, the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company started as a consulting firm serving PC makers trying to break into the TV market. It helped Gateway release a 42-inch plasma TV system. It cost $2,999, but comparable systems at the time sold for upwards of $6,000. Although Gateway's momentum in TVs petered out, it enjoyed a surge of sales. Gateway sold 4,000 in the first month.

Soon after, it joined a new crop of new-name TV manufacturers like Westinghouse, Polaroid, and Syntax-Brillian - HP and Dell even thought they could make it big in TVs. Vizio's strategy was to produce the lowest price TVs in the mid- to high-price bands, a plan which allowed it to compete on price while avoiding the most challenging segment of the markets. It also specifically targeted what then were new channels for TV makers: Costco, Sam's Club and home shopping channels. Electronics retailers, at the time, insisted on gross margins of 25 percent or more. Big Box retailers only demanded ten percent. Vizio used the strategy to undercut prices without undercutting margins too much.

It also kept headcount low. Vizio outsources nearly everything. When it overtook Samsung and Sony for the first time to become the number one LCD TV brand in America, it had only 85 employees.

"We don't have highly paid executives or fly around on corporate jets. The efficiency of the company is not hiding any kind of latency," Wang told me back then.

The momentum hasn't ended: Vizio is still regularly in the top spot with Samsung in the U.S. Now reviewers like Dave Katzmaier often give their TVs high marks. Compare that to Sony or Sharp: Sharp, one of the most innovative companies in LCD technology, is this week seeking an infusion of cash from Intel and Dell.

With that in mind, let's look at the new products. Vizio's tablet runs on AMD's Z60 processors. That means it is compatible with virtually every computer program on the market, unlike Microsoft's own Surface, which runs on an ARM chip. AMD is also a company on a mission to rebuild itself and so will likely go out of its way to help Vizio make sure it succeeds. The products are attractive, different and Vizio doesn't carry baggage like HP or Dell. 

In phones, Vizio will target the Chinese market, still a new frontier for smartphones.

Then again, it won't be easy. Vizio did try to sell phones in the U.S. a few years ago. In the summer of 2011, Lowe told me during a panel discussion that Vizio was going to come out with a line of LED light bulbs. Taiwan would produce them and Vizio would sell them. LED prices dropped and I haven't seen the light bulbs. The company's breakthrough channel strategy is no surprise anymore.

If these new products don't sell well, expect Vizio to back of its commitments quietly. But if TV sales begin to flatten, Vizio may decided that its future does indeed belong in portable entertainment and computing. An effort will be made to bring a new definition to form factors. And then someone will suggest...

Image courtesy of Vizio.

Since there weren't already enough strangely shaped, wireless computers to plug into your television, Asus on Monday announced a new one at CES called the Qube. It's a Google TV-powered device, but instead of bringing clarity to the Google TV product line, it adds even more confusion - if such a thing is possible.

The Qube has a custom Asus interface, and it uses Asus' own cloud storage service instead of Google's. Just what the brutally low-margin TV business needs: more infighting with itself.

From Q to Qube

First, Google made something called a Nexus Q. It was the most inscrutable computer-like object of 2012 - a heavy, glowing orb that does the same things as every other decent smart TV box. Except for the TV part, which is what Google TV is for.

The Q was supposed to cost three hundred freaking dollars until Google un-launched it because no one understood what it was, and there's still no word on if or when it will re-launch. (I have been trying to give mine away since Google I/O, and no one will take it.)

What About Google TV?

The obvious question about the Nexus Q was, what about Google TV? Google TV has been a failure so far. Would there be an official Nexus-branded Google TV box to set things right by standardizing and streamlining the interface?

Well, not yet. There's just this mythical CES beast called a Qube by Asus. No Nexus brand, no price, no release date. It has a "rotating on-screen cube" interface for a motion-sensitive remote or smartphone, which sounds insane to use, and it's backed by 50GB of Asus's own WebStorage service. So this thing actually competes with Google, even though Google approved it.

Sure. Sounds like a slam dunk.

I'm sure this contraption is very exciting to everyone at the Consumer Electronics Show, which is known for being attended by zero consumers. As for real "consumers," it's probably fine that they would have no idea what a Qube is or what to do with it. After all, plenty of CES gadgets never get released - what difference will one more make?

This week's super-duper Consumer Electronics Show (CES) announcements that companies like Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and others are rolling out a bunch of new laptops, desktops and monitors seems to have caused some surprise in the technology world. After all, the world is all about tablets now, so why would any company devote precious resources to developing such archaic technology?

Well, what the heck else were they going going to do? Billions of dollars of infrastructure is invested in manufacturing PCs, so it's not like the company was going to turn around overnight and say "Oh, well, that was a mistake, let's make tablets and nothing but tablets from now on."

And it's not like Lenovo is ignoring the whole concept of alternative computing platforms. The China-based hardware maker also pushed out a line of Android phones and a big-ass "Table PCs" that just barely avoids the raging failure of the original Microsoft Surface by (a) not costing a gazillion dollars and (b) not requiring the help of a furniture mover to be repositioned. HP is busy with its convertible tablets. And that's the story with pretty much ever hardware vendor you can name.

Still, it may seem weird that hardware vendors are putting in a lot of marketing and sales into "traditional" PC form factors when all the hype is about mobile and tablets.

Workers & Creators Unite!

But it's not so weird when you take two very important facts into consideration:

1. People still need to get work done
2. Right now the best software for productivity is geared towards the PC form factor. And that's true even of Web-based applications.

It's not that you can't get work done on a tablet. I write on my iPad all of the time and I've gotten to the point that I will haul it around instead of a full laptop when attending various events. But I always use a TouchFire keyboard overlay or an external Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad - anything to avoid typing directly on a glass screen.

And I always still bring my laptop along when I travel. Because even though I can (and will) write a complete article on the tablet, using most Web-based content management tools requires a keyboard and mouse/touchpad interface.

PCs Still Rule For Productivity

More generally, that's still the preferred interface for most business applications, not just website back ends. Using Google Docs (especially the spreadsheet) is painful on a tablet's browser, and unless it were heavily modified, I could not imagine using an application like GIMP long-term on a tablet (although I have done it done so in a pinch using remote desktop software).

Sure, there are tablet-specific alternatives for increasing numbers of common business applications, and many custom business apps are now going mobile as well. But many other apps still don't have mobile equivalents, and even when mobile versions do exist, they're not always as full-featured and easy to use as the original PC versions.

All the hardware vendors are well-aware that there are two kinds of computer users out there: those who consume and those who produce. Most "consuming" users can get by with tablets, smartphones and touchscreens. Many producers, on the other hand, still find such form factors limiting at best.

They may not be the meat of the computing market going forward, but they're never going away completely. Heck, someone has to get some work done, right? Hence, the continued investment in PC devices.

For my part, I hope new and better PCs keep on coming. if Lenovo and HP and everyone else (including Apple) ever abandon those who create in favor of those who consume, productivity would decline and make us all poorer.

As a teacher, I worry that my students are increasingly ill-prepared for business computing work because their parents are buying them the latest tablet or smartphone instead of something they can actually work on. As a father, I may lend my kids a tablet for fast research or messaging, but to write reports or build presentations, the PC is still the best way to go.

Image courtesy of Lenovo.

It looks like 2013 will mark the end of the odd little platform known as the netbook. And if anyone cares - or even notices - it'll be something of a miracle.

The Taiwanese hardware-sector rumor mill has new grist in its headlines this week: announcements from Asustek and Acer detailing the end of production for these companies' respective netbook product lines. There are big qualifiers on this news, because of the source - DigiTimes has gotten these things wrong before.

Still, this is one of those pieces of news that sounds plausible because netbooks never turned out to be the market behemoth they were initially hyped to be. We saw signs that netbooks were dying as far back as 2010 - the same year the first iPad came out. Dell pulled the plug on its netbook line back in 201,  with HP and Samsung following suit.

Running The Autopsy

A lot of people will point to the rise of the iPad and other tablets as the reason netbooks died, and this is one case where conventional wisdom is probably right.

The idea of a lightweight, portable computing platform was very compelling towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, and hardware manufacturers approached this goal by trimming down laptops or beefing up smartphones.

PC/laptop makers got there first, with the Intel Atom-based small laptops that were incredibly lightweight. Unfortunately, we're not just talking the mass-times-gravity kind of weight, either. Light on memory, storage and computing power, early netbooks could barely run the operating system usually thrust on them by their makers (usually Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7), let alone useful applications.

That was my own experience when I picked up a netbook in late 2009. Ideally, this device was to serve as an on-the-floor writing tool when I was attending trade shows and conferences. Laptops are all well and good for this, but after half a day of lugging the things around, they can start to seem mighty heavy. A much-lighter netbook seemed like the perfect solution.

The problem was, the netbook I bought had little on-board storage after Vista hogged much of the solid-state drive, and the thing was slow as molasses. I was able to alleviate the performance issues by installing Linux on it, but the local storage issue was never really solved. The cramped keyboard and minuscule screen didn't help much, either.

Netbooks Stuck In The Middle

Then along came the iPad, and all bets were off. That, and the Macbook Air my daughter saved up to buy on her own, convinced me that the netbook platform was simply not going to work for me or my family.

Given every manufacturers' departure from the platform, I'm not alone. The aforementioned Air and the Intel-based Ultrabooks seem to be filling in the niche for those users unconvinced that a tablet can be a decent productivity platform, and there seems to be little rending of garments about the loss of the netbook.

It's not quite over for netbooks yet. There still seems to be some activity around Google's Chromebooks, which sorta-kinda fall into the netbook category. Chromebooks are heavily tied to Google services, and are targeting a different user than traditional netbooks. But if Google's own Nexus tablet products (and any other Android-based tablets) keep doing well, I have a feeling even this relative of the short-lived netbook platform will be destined for the recycle bin, too.

Image courtesy of Intel.

With the emergence of Windows 8, hardware makers have redoubled their search for the right combination of full-featured laptop and super-portable tablet.

Hewlett-Packard -- like several other manufacturers -- is betting on business laptops that swivel, twist and gyrate to become a reasonable facsimile of a tablet. HP's candidate, the Elitebook Revolve, was announced Wednesday.

In contrast, Microsoft's answer, the upcoming Surface Pro tablet, uses an add-on keyboard cover to help it keep up with laptops. 

It's not clear which approach buyers want, or if they want hybrid devices in the first place. Apple, which created the successful tablet market with the iPad, seems to think that tablets are more like giant smartphones, not slimmed down laptops. And unlike Microsoft, which built Windows 8 to work on both tablets and laptops, Apple uses one operating system for laptops and desktops and another for tablets and smartphones.

It's All About The Hardware

In many ways, it's up to the hardware to determine which approach will work best, so I was happy to spend a few minutes with the Elitebook Revolve.

According to Ajay Gupta, HP's director of commercial notebook products (right), the Revolve is a notebook first, designed to be a knowledge worker's primary computer. It includes just about all the features required in standard notebooks, and works with HP notebook docking stations.

Here are the specs, per HP:

• 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 Gorilla Glass touchscreen
• Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processors
• Up to 256GB SSD storage
• All-magnesium chassis, 8.35 inches x 11.22 inches x .8 inch
• About 3 pounds
• Full-sized, backlit, spill-resistant keyboard with bottom-case drain
• Trackpad
• 720P camera
• Optional 4G LTE broadband connectivity
• MicroSD slot, Micro-SIM
• Two USB 3 and DisplayPort, Wi-Fi and near-field-communication connections
• Eight- to 10-hour battery, 210 hours of standby
• Optional pen, with clip
• Fully serviceable drive bays 
• HP enterprise management software

Pivot And Fold

But the specs don't tell the story of the Revolve. The device's entire reason for being is the way the touchscreen pivots and folds, from a normal laptop position, to lay flat over the keyboard, creating a tablet (though one twice as heavy as an iPad). Even cooler, you can stop the transformation half-way, leaving the screen pointed away from the keyboard to get a small presentation device.

It's a pretty slick system, and in the few minutes I got to play with it, the hinges and magnetic clasps worked well and had a reassuring solidity.

Encouraging And Exciting

Personally, I find these new forms arriving in the wake of Windows 8 encouraging and exciting. They'y represent continued innovation, and will hopefully lead to even more-useful designs. The new devices are exciting, because they're new and untested. We don't know how well they will work or whether they will solve problems.

Heck, we're still trying to figure out what those problems might be much less whether they're best addressed with the Revolve or Surface Pro (or, for that matter, hybrids like the Dell XPS 12, Sony Vaio Duo 11 or Lenovo IdeapPad Yoga). Or maybe the need for true Windows compatibility is overblown, and the lighter iPad or Android tablet will do just fine.

In the meantime, I'm thrilled just to see innovative new designs like the Revolve.

I'd be even more thrilled if HP would give some hint about how much its devices will cost when they appear in March.

Top and bottom images courtesy of HP. Other images by Fredric Paul.

A new industry consortium launched Thursday is putting Intel on notice: Your hold on processors for servers is about to be challenged by ARM, the processor family that has exploded on tablets and smartphones in the past few years. The Linaro Enterprise Group bands together some big newer players in ARM space, including AMD, Facebook and HP, working together to try to unify the fragmented ARM processors enough to prep them for a new breed of servers that should drastically reduce the size and energy consumption of current servers and datacenters. 

To understand the significance of this news, here's the nickel tour of processors and semiconductors, the hardware in a computing device that actually does the computing.

Intel vs. ARM

For "traditional" computing devices like laptops, desktop computers, and servers, there's Intel, AMD, and well, that's pretty much it. Intel has not only developed the x86 architecture that has been powering PCs and other devices for 30-odd years, it also builds the chips itself, licensing the specs to only one other company: its competitor AMD.

Intel and AMD processors, since they share many of the same features and architecture, have a lot of things in common. For one thing, they are very powerful and, since they have been around for such a long time, plenty of operating systems can run on machines with these chips, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Contrast that with ARM processors, which are not made by just one company like Intel. Instead, ARM develops only the core architecture and licenses it to any hardware maker that wants to use the design to make its own processors. Because of the way it is designed, ARM processors use very little power, which makes them perfect for personal electronic devices where battery resources must be frugally maintained.

But all of these vendors licensing ARM and building their own version of the processor has led to a serious fragmentation problem. An ARM processor or system-on-a-chip (SoC), a piece of hardware that essentially miniaturizes all the components to make an SoC a stand-alone computing device, will carry the fingerprints and design used by each ARM vendor. That means software that runs on one ARM SoC may not run on another ARM SoC.

Why was this done? Apparently, it was the old scratch-the-itch problem, according to George Grey, CEO of Linaro, a non-profit group working to build standards into the ARM ecosystem - and the parent organization of the Linaro Enterprise Group.

"Engineers will differentiate if they can," Grey told me in a recent conversation. And so, true to their natures, every ARM vendor has a different spin on how its ARM chip was built.

In the past, as messy as this was, the model worked. Manufacturers that used ARM hardware would work with that particular SoC and ensure that an operating system like Linux, Android or iOS could be installed on it, Grey explained. Once the common operating system is in place, the problem of software compatibility was reduced: applications like Angry Birds and FaceTime talk to the operating system, not directly to the processor.

The Appeal Of ARM In The Cloud

Now that the cloud is becoming perhaps the biggest force in enterprise IT, a lot of people are noticing that maintaining racks and racks of servers can get expensive. Intel processors, for one thing, get hot. If they get too hot, things start melting, so you need to use even more energy to keep all those servers cool. And that means you can't make these servers too compact, or you can't fli ub air or water to pull the heat away.

The average Intel server processor pulls in something like 80 watts of power just to run, Grey explained. But a multi-core ARM SoC draws only about 4 watts of power. That's a whole system on a chip, too, not just the processor. Less power means less resistance and less heat. Less heat means less money wasted on cooling and more capability to compress ARM-based systems together.

That's why ARM is getting a lot more attention from hardware vendors, software vendors and really big cloud computing users. Today's announcement of the Linaro Enterprise Group features exactly that kind of line up: AMD, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Calxeda, Canonical, Cavium, Facebook, HP, Marvell and Red Hat.

For AMD, this is the second half of a double-punch. On Monday the semiconductor company announced it would release ARM-based 64-bit chips for servers in 2014. Today's inclusion within the Linaro working group solidifies its intent to do this right.

More Than Just Paper Shuffling

Because doing this right is what AMD and the rest of the members of the new group plan to do: Instead of building servers in a system where every different ARM chip or SoC maker has its own unique architecture and muddling through it like the phone and personal device makers, the intent is to start the game right and create common architectural features that will let server vendors using ARM chips more readily install software.

This is not an attempt to unify ARM processors into one single standard like Intel, Grey emphasized. There will still be diversity between ARM systems. But common features like boot architectures, which enable software to work on processors, will be standardized across various chip designs, so software can be more universally installed.

The establishment of a working group like this may just seem like a lot of paper shuffling, but the impact is potentially huge. Grey outlined a new kind of server environment where entire boxes of ARM-based SoCs sit in server rack shelves, instead of one Intel server per rack shelf, delivering the same or more computing power as an Intel-based system in less space, and for far less power and operational expense. The actual servers could be quite small, the size of a smartphone, or even smaller.

Intel will no doubt rise to meet the challenge, but ARM's success in the mobile sector has made the low-power processor a very appealing alternative in the enterprise space.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

With billions of dollars of property damage already incurred from Sandy this week, it's a sure bet that there's going to be a lot of electronics included in that tally. If you're one of the unlucky owners of some gear that's been hit by water damage from the storm, don't despair yet. You may be able to get your stuff back online… but it takes serious effort and a lot of patience.

Power Down

This may seem a gimme, but it's very important that you turn off the power to your devices. If there's been water damage, it's not only dangerous to your device to send energy flowing across possibly compromised circuit boards and drives, but also potentially dangerous to yourself. Unplug everything that's plugged, even if you think there's no water damage to that specific device. If your home has a just a couple of inches of water on the floor, there could still be moisture gathering and condensing inside the case.

If your home is flooded, be very careful getting to the main circuit breaker panel. If there's any water near the box, wait for the power company to come out and kill the power from the outside. Saving your devices isn't worth electrocuting yourself.

For smaller devices, remove the battery if you can.

Regardless of the device, follow this one big rule: no matter how tempting it is to turn the device on to see if it's still working, do not do it. Just one power activation is enough to completely short out the device (if it's not already). Do not do turn on the device until you have tried all of the possible steps to get it dried out.

Wring It Out

First, move the device to somewhere dry. You'll need to do that, no matter what path you take to recover the device.

After making sure the more important aspects of your life are in order, there are two main ways to get your device fixed. If you're not insured and don't want to replace it or even if you are insured, you may need to recover files that are stored locally on the device.

First, you can contact a professional restoration service. Check your local listings and be sure they are qualified to handle electronics. Depending on the level of damage, you might also want to find a drive-restoration service that can specifically go in and dig out the files from a damaged hard drive.

If you think you can handle it, you can try to dry out the device yourself. I would not recommend this for sealed Apple laptops and desktops… your best bet is letting them get mostly dry and bringing them into an AppleCare specialist for final opening and cleaning.

If you have a damaged PC desktop computer, open the case and let it air out. The same for a laptop, though that may be trickier depending on the model. Drying alone won't be enough, because as water evaporates, it's going to leave behind residue from salts or whatever else was in the water. That residue is enough to damage your machine when you try to power it on again.

Obtain a commercial cleaning solvent designed for circuit work and gently brush out the innards of your machine using the solvent with a soft toothbrush (one you never plan to use again). Get a can of compressed air and use that to blow out water, debris and residue, too. This will take a lot of time, so be patient.

After you are as sure as you can be that everything is dried and cleaned, put the device back together, plug it in and power it on. If things work, great. Immediately back up the data on the device and either use it or replace it as you originally intended to do.

If the drying process was not successful, chances are something else went wrong - perhaps corrosion set in faster than you could recover the device. At this point, data recovery may be your best option. This is something that should be left to the pros, recommends John Christopher, a recovery engineer from DriveSavers.

"Do not attempt recovery of your data personally by using any type of diagnostic or repair tools. Doing so may cause further damage or permanent data loss," Christopher urged. "Remember, the first recovery attempt is the most successful. Play it safe and send hardware to a professional."

[Update]

One thing to be careful about in any disaster recovery situation is the skill set of the vendor you're using. Like roofers descending on a town after a big storm, already a number of recovery companies are starting to advertise their post-Sandy services. A discount is one thing, but watch out for the companies that are out to just make a fast buck. It's your data we're talking about.

Saving A Bricked Phone

If your phone has been dunked in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean that suddenly entered your front yard, or some similar mishap, a simpler solution may be at hand. First, don't turn the phone on. Not even once.

Open the case (if you can) and remove the battery. Then get a big plastic container full of raw rice, and completely bury your phone in it, sealing the lid of the container. Leave it there for a couple of days at least. The rice acts as a natural desiccant and pulls moisture naturally from the phone's innards. You may also want to blow compressed air into the phone's ports a bit during the process to help the process along.

Once you remove the phone from the rice, charge it and and see if it works. This method worked for me after a recent camping trip accident where Android met creek.

Preparing For The Next Time

Whether you escaped the fury of Sandy or not, it's critical to keep computing devices and their data backed up. Cloud services are a goodway to accomplish this, since on-site backups can become damaged in the same disaster that affects the device itself.

Ultimately you will have to decide the best recovery method for your particular situation, but if this week reminds us of anything, its the importance of being prepared. Disaster is never that far away.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.