Knowledge Point

Some of the most frequent complaints I get from readers are about  mobile hotspots . Either their carriers don't have a good one (T-Mobile), or they won't make them affordable to use (AT&T). In any case, people want to take broadband on the road, and they want to know why they can't. And yes, there are reasons to use a dedicated hotspot rather than the hotspot mode on your phone. Hotspots support more devices, they typically have dedicated data plans, they have much longer battery life, and they have security features like on-device  VPNs  that can be harder to configure on smartphones. Add caption Ashish Sharma, CMO of Inseego—formerly Novatel Wireless, the maker of MiFis—understands the frustration. Ultimately, the MiFi business ran into trouble when carriers didn't offer the service plans consumers wanted. "The economics of 4G data just wasn't there. The market tried really hard. We all tried really hard, [but consumers] don't ...

What is the cloud? Where is the cloud? Are we in the cloud now? These are all questions you've probably heard or even asked yourself. The term "cloud computing" is everywhere. In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a  puffy, white cumulus cloud , accepting connections and doling out information as it floats. What cloud computing is not about is your hard drive. When you store data on or run programs from the hard drive, that's called local storage and computing. Everything you need is physically close to you, which means accessing your data is fast and easy, for that one computer, or others on the local network. Working off your hard drive is how the computer ind...

THE DOWNSIDE TO VIRTUAL MACHINES Expense:  When used for the right solutions, VMs can help individuals and companies save a lot of money. However,  implementing  a VM is a different case. If you’re just downloading a single VM app for your schoolwork, it probably won’t be that expensive. But building and customizing an in-house VM solution for a large company can be very pricey. Ongoing data management costs may also be higher than before (although hardware costs may be lower). In other words, it can take significant investment to adopt a widespread VM solution, and it often takes a lot of analysis of the costs and savings to make a decision. Complexity:  Choosing, managing, and maintaining VMs can also be pretty complex. Employees or students who must use a VM may have a lot of new things to learn, which can make fast-paced adoption difficult. Additionally, VMs may take more technical expertise, including experience that current IT specialists may not have....

Flexible work:  Today, a growing application of VMs helps companies arrange flexible and remote work environments. When the software itself is the workspace, then where the computer or device is physically located doesn’t matter nearly as much. This allows everyone to collaborate in similar spaces no matter where they are or what machine they are using — or to switch to a different mode without the need to change computers. Storage space also isn’t very important, because most of the VM activity is managed behind the scenes by central servers. Security:  Virtual machines are used in two interesting security tactics. First, they are used to study ransomware, viruses, and other types of nasty attacks in a relatively safe environment. In this case, the malware usually thinks that VM is a real computer and starts to attack it, while white hat security experts can study how it operates and find weaknesses  without endangering their “real” computers . Second, organizations...