It is going to be a crazy couple of days as myself and 10 other bloggers converge on San Jose for the 4th Tech Field Day presented by Gestalt IT.  Over the two days We will be hearing from 7 sponsors, from storage providers to chipset giants and enterprise monitoring leaders.

This will be the first event that will be streamed live from Gestalt IT, the events organizer.  I am expecting two action packed days full of tweeting, blogging and good discussion.  If you have any questions you want asked to the sponsors post your questions in the comments or message me on Twitter.

Disclaimer:  Tech Field Day is organized by the great folks at Gestalt IT and paid for by the presenters of the event.  Even though my travel, meals and hotel accommodations were paid for my opinions are my own and it will not affect my posts.

Apple has been using EFI on their Intel based Macs ever since they moved off Power PC based processors, but for some reason the PC world has been slow to keep up the pace. EFI has many advantages over the decades old BIOS including support for booting off drives larger than 2TB, faster boot times and a more modern interface.

SWEClockers has one of the first looks at an UEFI based Intel motherboard, providing a look at our glorious future.

via Engadget

Given the fact that Apple is still putting 3+ year old processor technology in their newest notebooks it should come as no surprise to anyone that they have no plans to incorporate USB 3 support into their products at this time.

In one of his famous email replies, Steve Jobs had this to say about it:

We don’t see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example.

Catch 22, they don’t see it taking off, yet they’re not doing anything to help it along.

While it leaves the door open for future implementation, it does seem to put some blame on Intel. It’s true, that Intel doesn’t support USB 3 in their native chipsets. However, it should be pointed out that their friends over at AMD… do.

via 9to5mac

In a few years, the solid state drive in your computer may no longer look as it does today. At least, if a coalition of technology vendors have their way. Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel and a variety of others are trying to push out SATA connectivity for drives in favor of PCIe based connections.

While there are already PCIe drives for sale today, they’re typically 2 or 3 times as expensive as a traditional SATA based SSD drive. However, despite the price, they’re attractive because they are typically 5 or 6 times as fast in raw read/write speeds. PCIe is a lower latency connection because it doesn’t require any bridging chips to access the storage.

But while the interface will change to PCIe, the form factor of the current 2.5″ drive will stay the same. The coalition also wants to ensure hot plug capability to allow for faster online servicing and higher availability in server applications.

The group expects drives based on the new interface to be available as early as 2011.

via CRN

The traditional news media has been dominated by large corporations for a while, and most of the major tech blogs are now owned by some dark lord. So it seems like it was only a matter of time before the tech companies themselves started their own news sites.

Leave it to Intel to be first out of the gate with their site Free Press. Intel is now going to educate us on everything important (Intel) and game changing (Intel) in the tech industry (Intel). From time to time they may provide us with valuable opinions of important (Intel) people.

That’s it, let’s shutdown TechVirtuoso, and all the other independently run sites. We’re done, no need for us to hang around and waste our time, energy and money.

If you can’t see the sarcasm dripping from each and every link, let me make it even clearer. We’re doomed!

I’m not sure I would have paid $29 for a copy of McAfee, but Intel decided it was wise to go all in and spend almost $8 billion to acquire them.

Of all the security companies out there Intel had their choice of, they picked one of the most bloated and ineffective scanning engines, and the one that has one the worst track record when it comes to false positives that eat your computer alive.

I can say that having spent almost 4 years managing their corporate suite, and having their software updates crash my systems (I eventually dumped their software for Microsoft Forefront) and rebuild my configuration multiple times, I’m not looking forward to them integrating their technologies on Intel chips.

(McAfee Press Release)

Today I saw a tweet from @DellServerGeek about a new technology that Intel has developed in partnership with RealVNC for the new Intel vPro 2010 series chips.  This amazing technology will allow IT Support to be able to connect to a machine, even when the machine can’t boot and resolve the users issue without the need for a technician to be sent out on site.  This KVM over IP technology has been around for some time in the server realm with DRAC cards from Dell or Lights-out boards from HP but I believe this is the first time it has been tried on Desktop/Laptop machines.

This new technology will not only allow the remote technician to take control of the machine but also will give the technician the option to turn the machine on or off remotely as well as rebooting the machine when it does not respond to keyboard or mouse gestures.  You can also use the IDE Redirection option to remotely boot to a cd or image.

Check out the RealVNC site for videos and more detailed information!

In V1 SP1, MED-V continues to employ Virtual PC 2007 as the virtualization engine but unlike the consumer “Windows XP Mode” it does not require hardware-assisted virtualization like Intel VT or an AMD-V to be present in the processor. This allows even those with lower end or older processors to take advantage of enterprise desktop virtualization.

Microsoft has put together a screencast demonstrating running a MED-V workspace using a V1 SP1 client in the Windows 7 environment.

“Staying connected on an increasingly broad array of mobile devices has become the most exciting and quickly evolving part of technology,” said Perlmutter. “Intel is delivering the total mobile experience on each device, offering different levels of performance and power in sleek form factors coupled with compatibility, a superior mobile Internet experience and embedded WiMAX wireless broadband. We’re truly taking mobility to the next level of cool.”

Moving on to the next generation of Intel mobile processors, codenamed “Arrandale,” Perlmutter discussed the integration of a dual-core CPU with graphics into the 32 nanometer manufacturing process, and incorporating advanced transistor components that would provide increased performance and power efficiency for mainstream mobile PC’s. Perlmutter said that production on the 32 nanometer process would continue building on these technologies, evolving in to the next processor, codenamed “Sandy Bridge.”

The upcoming option will enable them to simply enter a keystroke sequence on a failed computer – even if its operating system is down – to directly connect the system with technicians over the Internet via an encrypted connection. The Tech Support 360 technicians will then address the PC remotely, even when it has become inoperable due to problems such as hardware or operating system failure, or corruption by a virus or malware. This is made possible by the use of the Intel Remote PC Assist Technology (Intel RPAT), a feature of Intel’s vPro.

“As a result of the current economic conditions, small businesses are even more focused on controlling costs,” said David Tuhy, a general manager in the Intel Business Client Group. “AT&T’s Tech Support 360 in conjunction with Intel vPro technology opens the door for new managed services to address these concerns. By adding support for Intel Remote PC Assist Technology, AT&T will be able to deliver a higher level of service to customers by improving PC troubleshooting and reducing support costs using an encrypted connection over the Internet.”

Those interested can get more info about AT&T’s Tech Support 360 service via tech360.att.com.