Hewlett-Packard Procurve Network Switches

There are dozens of network switches from various companies at both the consumer and enterprise level. One reason to consider paying a little more upfront for HP Procurve switches is that they have a no-questions, no-BS lifetime guarantee. I’ve replaced two or three of these (out of thirty or so that I’ve bought over the years). The latest is a little eight-port unmanaged switch that I have at home that developed an irritating high-pitched whine which I first thought was a fan problem. I opened it up and saw that there was no fan; so it must be some component on the circuit board that has developed an audible oscillation. Anyway, 15 minutes on the phone, with a very short wait, a native English speaker, over a land-line quality connection, and I’ve got a free replacement unit via UPS on the way. Now if HP would just make their printers as robust (as they used to…).

OmniGraffle

I’ve been looking for years for a replacement for Visio for the Mac, and Omnigraffle may fill the bill. Almost any drawing or illustration that I do for presentations is done in Visio, which is a.) a wonderful program, and b.) only available on Windows, and c.) unlikely to be ported to the Mac as it is part of the Microsoft Office suite. I’m continually amazed at how even mildly complex ideas can be conveyed by a simple drawing. You can almost hear the sigh of relief around the conference table as people look at a graphical representation of your data table, budget, design or idea instead of a three page narrative.