New chip helps managers turn on crashed PC, remotely

New chip helps managers turn on crashed PC, remotely San Jose, (California): Your work computer just suffered a major meltdown. Maybe the operating system failed, or a virus crashed the hard drive. Either way, your employer can now tunnel into your crippled machine remotely by communicating directly with the chips inside it, allowing authorised managers to power up and repair turnedoff PCs within the corporate network at virtually any time. The technology — which Intel Corp. introduced last year to rave reviews from computer professionals — represents a fundamental change in the way work PCs are repaired, updated and administered. Now the world’s largest chip maker is studying how to bring the same technology to the consumer market. Santa Clara-based Intel envisions consumers one day signing up for a service that allows their Internet providers to automatically install security upgrades and patches, whether the PC is turned on or not. Once they return to their computers, users would then get an alert with a detailed record of the fixes. In some ways it’s the computer-industry equivalent of General Motors Corp.’s OnStar service, which allows an operator in a call center to open your car doors if you’ve locked the keys inside. Intel is hoping consumers will decide that the convenience of having a round-the-clock watchdog outweighs the obvious privacy and security concerns raised by opening a new remote access channel into the PC. Digital-privacy experts aren’t worried about the use of such technology in the workplace, where employers may peek into any worker’s machine at any time. But advocates said the same technology might raise questions about the level of control consumers are willing to cede to keep their machines running smoothly. “It’s a lot of power to give over to someone — people are storing a large portion of their lives in their computers,” said Seth Schoen, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “My main concern would be to make sure consumers knew who they were giving access to, and what kind of access they’re giving.” Intel’s Active Management Technology only allows technicians to see a small amount of mundane but critical information, mostly configuration and inventory data. AP Is it end of road for hard disk drive? Frankfurt: This might well be the beginning of the end for the hard disk drive. In mid-May, Dell became the first manufacturer to market a laptop using flash memory instead of a hard drive. Other manufacturers will be joining the company before the year’s end with Solid State Disk (SSD) technology of their own. For users, this is all good news. Hard drives (HDD) use “ferromagnetic” storage media: to record data. The surface of special metal plates is magnetised. SSD, by contrast, works purely digitally. The fundamental difference between SSD and its other flash storage brethren and HDD lies in the fact that flash technology has no moving parts, explained Dell’s Christoph Kaub. SSD is already in use in MP3 players and cell phones, and like other flash storage media is not sensitive to jolts, notes Joerg Wirtgen from the Hanover-based magazine C’T. AGENCIES