Usually most of the IT problems visible to society are the same ones that system and service providers perceive to be the most problematic. Compensation alone will not satisfy users when the incident creates unpredictability and uncertainty for them. After service degradation, users are eager to use the service again if they receive relevant information. Information and knowledge thus play a significant role in incidents. Users will continue to IT after the failure, using a service, most likely, when they get the problem situation in a sufficient factual information.

This is stated in a recent Finnish study, doctoral thesis Information technology incidents in the present information society : Viewpoints of service providers, users, and the mass media, which examined the users’ thinking and intentions of the services provided at the time of their IT-related problems after the failures.

Clear information can bring significant competitive advantages over other service providers.

The rivalry between ARM and Intel in this arena is predictably intense because try as it will, Intel has not been able to bring the power consumption of its Atom CPUs down to the level of ARM-based designs (Atom typically in 1-4 watt range and a single ARM Cortex-A9 core in the 250 mW range). ARM’s East unimpressed with Medfield, design wins article tells that Warren East, CEO of processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England), is unimpressed by the announcements made by chip giant Intel about the low-power Medfield system-chip and its design wins. On the other hand Android will run better on our chips, says Intel. Look out what happens in this competition.

Windows-on-ARM Spells End of Wintel article tells that Brokerage house Nomura Equity Research forecasts that the emerging partnership between Microsoft and ARM will likely end the Windows-Intel duopoly. The long-term consequences for the world’s largest chip maker will likely be an exit from the tablet market as ARM makes inroads in notebook computers. As ARM is surely going to keep pointing out to everyone, they don’t have to beat Intel’s raw performance to make a big splash in this market, because for these kinds of devices, speed isn’t everything, and their promised power consumption advantage will surely be a major selling point.

Windows 8 Release Expected in 2012 article says that Windows 8 will be with us in 2012, according to Microsoft roadmaps. Microsoft still hinting at October Windows 8 release date. It will be seen what are the ramifications of Windows 8, which is supposed to run on either the x86 or ARM architectures. Windows on ARM will not be terribly successful says analyst but it is left to be seen is he right. ARM-based chip vendors that Microsoft is working with (TI, Nvidia, Qualcomm) are now focused on mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) because this is where the biggest perceived advantages of ARM-based chips lie, and do not seem to be actively working on PC designs.

Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks is going on. Windows 8 Mobile Broadband Enhancements Detailed article tells that using mobile broadband in Windows 8 will no longer require specific drivers and third-party software. This is thanks to the new Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) standard, which hardware makers are reportedly already beginning to adopt, and a generic driver in Windows 8 that can interface with any chip supporting that standard. Windows will automatically detect which carrier it’s associated with and download any available mobile broadband app from the Windows store. MBIM 1.0 is a USB-based protocol for host and device connectivity for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. The specification supports multiple generations of GSM and CDMA-based 3G and 4G packet data services including the recent LTE technology.

Consumerization of IT is a hot trend that continues at year 2012. Uh-oh, PC: Half of computing device sales are mobile. Mobile App Usage Further Dominates Web, Spurred by Facebook article tells that the era of mobile computing, catalyzed by Apple and Google, is driving among the largest shifts in consumer behavior over the last forty years. Impressively, its rate of adoption is outpacing both the PC revolution of the 1980s and the Internet Boom of the 1990s. By the end of 2012, Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion, making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers (over 800 million PCs were sold between 1981 and 2000). Smartphones and tablets come with broadband connectivity out-of-the-box. Bring-your-own-device becoming accepted business practice.

Mobile UIs: It’s developers vs. users article tells that increased emphasis on distinctive smartphone UIs means even more headaches for cross-platform mobile developers. Whose UI will be a winner? Native apps trump the mobile Web.The increased emphasis on specialized mobile user interface guidelines casts new light on the debate over Web apps versus native development, too.

The Cloud is Not Just for Techies Anymore tells that cloud computing achieves mainstream status. So we demand more from it. That’s because our needs and expectations for a mainstream technology and an experimental technology differ. Once we depend on a technology to run our businesses, we demand minute-by-minute reliability and performance.

Cloud security is no oxymoron article is estimated that in 2013 over $148 billion will be spent on cloud computing. Companies large and small are using the cloud to conduct business and store critical information. The cloud is now mainstream. The paradigm of cloud computing requires cloud consumers to extend their trust boundaries outside their current network and infrastructure to encompass a cloud provider. There are three primary areas of cloud security that relate to almost any cloud implementation: authentication, encryption, and network access control. If you are dealing with those issues and software design, read Rugged Software Manifesto and Rugged Software Development presentation.

Enterprise IT’s power shift threatens server-huggers article tells that as more developers take on the task of building, deploying, and running applications on infrastructure outsourced to Amazon and others, traditional roles of system administration and IT operations will morph considerably or evaporate.

Explosion in “Big Data” Causing Data Center Crunch article tells that global business has been caught off-guard by the recent explosion in data volumes and is trying to cope with short-term fixes such as buying in data centre capacity. Oracle also found that the number of businesses looking to build new data centres within the next two years has risen. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Most players active on “Big Data” field seems to plan to use Apache Hadoop framework for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. At least EMC, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Informatica, HP, Dell and Cloudera are using Hadoop.

Cloud storage has been very popular topic lately to handle large amount of data storage. The benefits have been told very much, but now we can also see risks of that to realize. Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article claims that Megaupload Type Shutdowns and Patriot Act are killing interest to Cloud Storage. Many innocent Megaupload users have had their data taken away from them. The MegaUpload seizure shows how personal files hosted on remote servers operated by a third party can easily be caught up in a government raid targeted at digital pirates. In the wake of Megaupload crackdown, fear forces similar sites to shutter sharing services?. If you use any of these cloud storage sites to store or distribute your own non-infringing files, you are wise to have backups elsewhere, because they may be next on the DOJ’s copyright hit list.

Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article tells that worries have been steadily growing among European IT leaders that the USA Patriot Act would give the U.S. government unfettered access to their data if stored on the cloud servers of American providers. Escaping the grasp of the Patriot Act may be more difficult than the marketing suggests. “You have to fence yourself off and make sure that neither you or your cloud service provider has any operations in the United States”, “otherwise you’re vulnerable to U.S. jurisdiction.” And the cloud computing model is built on the argument data can and should reside anywhere around the world, freely passing between borders.

Data centers to cut LAN cord? article mentions that 60GHz wireless links are tested in data centers to ease east-west traffic jams. According to a recent article in The New York Times, data center and networking techies are playing around with 60GHz wireless networking for short-haul links to give rack-to-rack communications some extra bandwidth for when the east-west traffic goes a bit wild. The University of Washington and Microsoft Research published a paper at the Association of Computing Machinery’s SIGCOMM 2011 conference late last year about their tests of 60GHz wireless links in the data center. Their research used prototype links that bear some resemblance to the point-to-point, high bandwidth technology known as WiGig (Wireless Gigabit), which among other things is being proposed as a means to support wireless links between Blu-ray DVD players and TVs, replacing HDMI cables (Wilocity Demonstrates 60 GHz WiGig (Draft 802.11ad) Chipset at CES). 60 GHz band is suitable for indoor, high-bandwidth use in information technology.. There are still many places for physical wires. The wired connections used in a data center are highly reliable, so “why introduce variability in a mission-critical situation?”

If you think that tcpdump has been made obsolete by GUI tools like Wireshark, think again. Wireshark is a great application; it’s just not the right tool for the job in every situation.

tcpdump uses a “one-off-command” approach that lends itself to quick, on-the-spot answers. You can run it through an SSH session, doesn’t need X and is more likely to be there when you need it. And, because tcpdump uses standard command-line conventions (such as writing to STDOUT, which can be redirected), tcpdump can be used in all sorts of creative, interesting and extremely useful ways.

You can even use tcpdump and Wireshark together by capturing the network data with tcpdump for viewing with Wireshark. To ensure that you capture complete packets, use the following command:

tcpdump -i <interface> -s 65535 -w <some-file>

tcpdump fu article introduces some of the basics of packet capture and provide a breakdown of tcpdump syntax and usage. Manual page of tcpdump lists you all the command line options you can use.

If you are embedded Linux system developer, remember that you can easily fit the tcpdump program inside a small embedded Linux system without too much problem (which is not the case with Wireshark, because it is a huge program that needs GUI and has many dependencies).

Inside, Commodore had packed a 6510 processor, an updated version of MOS Technology’s popular 6502, the chip used in the Vic-20, the BBC Micro and many others. In the UK, the 6510 was clocked at 985KHz, though the US version apparently ran at slightly over 1MHz. As the computer’s name suggested, it had 64KB of memory (though only 38KB of that was available to Basic). Basic was stored on a 20KB Rom chip and copied into the main memory when the 64 was booted.

WANem is a Wide Area Network Emulator that is designed to provide a real experience of a WAN/Internet during application development and testing. WANem works over an Ethernet LAN environment. WANem is available in bootable CD and VMware virtual appliance versions at an affordable cost (for FREE!). Award winning (FOSS INDIA AWARDS 2008) WANem is built on top of Linux and many open source component. From a functionality perspective WANem hooks into the Linux kernel towards provisioning the network emulation characteristics and extends the functionality with additional modules.

Setup is pretty straight forward. WANem is normally launched through a LiveCD, which is based on a re-mastered Knoppix. Another option is to use VMware virtual appliance. I have used both versions. Both versions allow a quick and easy setup in any development environment with an intuitive web interface for purposes of configuration. You don’t need to be a network and Linux guru to use WANem because the provided easy and very quick. There are many example configurations you can easily select and you can modify them as needed.

In advanced mode you have option to set all necessary network performance parameters you can think of. If you are a networking expert and know what are the right setting for different parameters, this is the way to go. You can see the supported settings (in advanced mode) on the picture below.

WANem has even tool (WANalyzer is distributed along with WANem) that allow you to measure the performance of an existing real network, and then it can simulate how that network performed.

WANem has to be located between two hosts, between each we want to simulate a network link. The routing parameters which need to be configured on the clients and/or on the WANem machine. The preferred and most straightforward configuration uses a PC with two Ethernet cards and connect that between the two hosts.

It is possible to work also with only one Ethernet card (with some limitations), but for this to work you need special configuration on the end hosts to make sure all traffic they send gets sent to the WANem machine that forwards the traffic to other host. I have personally used this approach only when I have wanted to use the virtual machine version of WANem.

Installing and Configuring WANem Virtual Appliance and Using the WANem WAN Emulator Virtual Appliance articles tells that setup is pretty straight forward. After the WANem Virtual Appliance has been started and setup in your network environment, all you have to do is to route your traffic through it.

WANem is an excellent tool.

Windows XP will be the biggest security threat in 2012 according to Sean Sullivan, security advisor at F-Secure: “People seem to be adding new systems without necessarily abandoning their old XP machines, which is great news for online criminals, as XP continues to be their favourite target.”

F-Secure also says also that it might not be long before the cyber criminals turn their attentions to tablet devices. Attacks against mobile devices have become more common and I expect this to continue this year as well.

Americans more susceptible to online scams than believed, study finds. A recent survey from The Ponemon Institute and PC Tools dives into this question and reveals a real gap between how aware Americans think they are of scams and how likely they actually are to fall for them.

Fake antivirus scams that have plagued Windows and Mac OSX during the last couple of years and now it seems that such fake antivirus scams have spread to Android. Nearly all new mobile malware in Q3 2011 was targeted at Android.. When antivirus software becomes a universally accepted requirement (the way it is on Windows is the day), has the platform has failed and missed the whole point of being mobile operating system?

Cyber ​​criminals are developing more sophisticated attacks and the police will counterattack.

Mobile phone surveillance will increase and more details of it will surface. Last year’s findings have included Location data collecting smart-phones, Carrier IQ phone spying busted and Police Surveillance system to monitor mobile phones. In USA the Patriot Act lets them investigate anything, anywhere, without a warrant. Now they are on your devices and can monitor everything. Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor To Governments: “in exchange for the Indian market presence” mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as “RINOA”) have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.

Geo-location tagging in smartphones to potentially cause major security risks article says that geo-location tagging security issues are likely to be a major issue in 2012—and that many users of smartphones are unaware of the potentially serious security consequences of their use of the technology. When smartphones images to the Internet (to portals such Facebook or Flickr) there’s a strong chance they will also upload the GPS lcoation data as well. This information could be subsequently misused by third parties.

You need to find your balance between freedom and security (
Vapauden ja turvallisuuden tasapaino). Usernames poured out for all to see, passwords and personal identification numbers are published. A knowledge of access management is even more important: who has the right to know when and where the role of functioning? Access, identity and role management are essential for the protection of the whole system. Implementation of such systems is still far from complete.

When designing networked services, the development of safety should taken into account in the planning stage, rather than at the end of execution. Even a secure network and information system can not act as operating a vacuum.

Reliability of the server certificates will face more and more problems. We can see more certificate authority bankruptcies due cyber attacks to them. Certificate attacks that have focused on the PC Web browsers, are now proven to be effective against mobile browsers.

Stonesoft says that advanced evasion techniques (AET) will be a major threat. Stonesoft discovered that with certain evasion techniques (particularly when combined in particular combinations) they could sneak common exploits past many IDS/IPS systems (including their own, at the time last summer). Using the right tool set (including a custom TCP/IP stack) attackers could sneak past our best defenses. This is real and they foresee a not too distant future where things like botnet kits will have this as a checkbox feature.

Rise of Printer Malware is real. Printer malware: print a malicious document, expose your whole LAN says that sending a document to a printer that contained a malicious version of the OS can send your sensitive document anywhere in Internet. Researchers at Columbia University have discovered a new class of security flaws that could allow hackers to remotely control printers over the Internet. Potential scenario: send a resume to HR, wait for them to print it, take over the network and pwn the company. HP does have firmware update software for their printers and HP Refutes Inaccurate Claims; Clarifies on Printer Security. I wonder how many more years until that old chain letter, where some new insidious virus infects everything from your graphics card to your monitor cable, becomes true.

Unauthorized changes in the BIOS could allow or be part of a sophisticated, targeted attack on an organization, allowing an attacker to infiltrate an organization’s systems or disrupt their operations. How Do You Protect PCs from BIOS Attacks? The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has drafted a new computer-security publication that provides guidance for computer manufacturers, suppliers, and security professionals who must protect personal computers as they start up “out of the box”: “BIOS Integrity Measurement Guidelines,” NIST Special Publication 800-155.

According to Stonesoft security problems threaten the lives and the year 2012 may be the first time when we lose lives because of security offenses. According to the company does this happen remains to be seen, but the risk is due to industrial SCADA systems attacks against targets such as hospitals or automated drug delivery systems. I already posted around month ago about SCADA systems security issues.

Jim Williams, who was considered one of the best analog circuit designers in the world, suffered a stroke and passed away on June 12, 2011. An Analog Life: Remembering Jim Williams article gives you information who he was. In Analog guru Jim Williams dies after stroke EDN’s Paul Rako and industry EEs reflect back on the life and work of Jim Williams, an engineer’s engineer and analog expert. Jim Williams, Circuits as art is a great article about Jim William’s artistry from the February 1987 edition of EDN. Cassidy: Jim Williams’ workbench captures his life and Silicon Valley article shows the Williams’ museum-worthy mess working table. His bench is now on exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Newnes has announced the publication of a 960-page book of Jim Williams’ application notes that span decades of Jim’s work.

Bob Pease was icon in the analog design world. Bob Pease was remembered for Pease Porridge and a whole lot more. Pease was the author of eight books, including Troubleshooting Analog Circuits, and held 21 patents. Analog engineering legend Bob Pease killed in car crash article tells that Bob Pease died in a car accident, which occurred as he was leaving a memorial service for his friend and fellow analog expert Jim Williams. Bob has a legacy as one of the greatest analog engineers in history due to his unique experiences.

Computer History Museum honors Jim Williams and Bob Pease.

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead on October. With Bell’s Ken Thompson, Ritchie helped develop Unix, running on a DEC PDP-11, and released the first edition of the operating system in 1971. Unix paved the way for many, many operating systems, including Linux. Two years later Ritchie came up with the C language. C is now the world’s second most popular programming language, according to TIOBE. The Unix and Linux (and Mac OS X and I think even Windows) kernels are all C programs. C has paved the way for C++ and Java, and many other programming languages. On 10/30/11 let’s remember the contributions of computing pioneer Dennis Ritchie.
printf(”Rest in peace, Dennis\n”); exit(0);

Father of Lisp and AI John McCarthy has also died. Among developers, McCarthy may be best known as the inventor of Lisp, which he devised in 1958. Lisp was originally developed for AI applications, but was quickly adopted by the industry, gained enormous popularity among developers, and is still in use today as part of Common Lisp and Scheme. McCarthy was also the first person to coin the term AI (Artificial Intelligence), describing it in 1955 as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” He was one of the most active academics in the field.

RFID ’s inventor Charles Walton died in early November. The History of RFID Technology article tells that Walton was one of the first RFID patent applicants in 1973. RFID’s history, and Walton’s life’s work, you can read more about other things, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from MIT’s website Inventor of the Week Archive

Jacob Goldman, Founder of Xerox Lab, Dies at 90 on December. He was the one that made sure that Xerox understood there was a revolution coming behind them that might change their business. Established in 1970 in an industrial park next to Stanford, PARC researchers designed a remarkable array of computer technologies, including the Alto personal computer, the Ethernet office network, laser printing and the graphical user interface.

Steve Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. He has lots to do with the success of Apple. On October 5, 2011, he died in his Palo Alto home, aged 56. Then, in 1984 Steve Jobs surprised the world with the introduction of the Macintosh. Latest big Apple inventions have been iPod, iPhone and iPad. Jobs was an entrepreneur, product manager, visionary and pitchman more than engineer. Steve Jobs: History, Steve Jobs life lessons and Everything we needed to know about Steve Jobs Without reading the biography articles give you a good picture on Steve Jobs. Taiwanese Animators Distill Steve Jobs’ Bio Into 93 Seconds of Video

Steve Jobs has got lots of recognition during lifetime and after it. Sunday, October 16 was declared Steve Jobs Day. Steve Jobs gets bronze after-life. Steve Jobs awarded a posthumously Grammy Special Merit Awards for nonperformance contributions of major significance to the field of recorded music.

Spend some time to remember those great inventors and go on. If we had days and events to recognize each and everyone who helped to make the world work, the world would not work.

Attacks against SCADA systems can have potentially very serious consequences. I think that we have been quite lucky that we have not seen any big disasters yet. Even though the attacks are rare at the moment, security researchers are confident that their number will increase, especially since the Stuxnet industrial sabotage worm set a successful precedent. And now there are many news on Dugu worm.

News around one month ago told that SCADA hack shut down a US water plant at 8 November 2011. This hacking attack at a US water plant has been credited to an unknown attacker (handle “pr0f” took credit) who according to hacker sources managed to access a SCADA controller and take over systems. Once again caused security experts to question the security of SCADA systems. Hacker Says Texas Town Used Three Character Password To Secure Internet Facing SCADA System. “This was barely a hack. A child who knows how the HMI that comes with Simatic works could have accomplished this,” he wrote. “You know. Insanely stupid. I dislike, immensely, how the DHS tend to downplay how absolutely (expletive) the state of national infrastructure is. I’ve also seen various people doubt the possibility an attack like this could be done,” he wrote in a note on the file sharing Web site pastebin.com. On the other hand Federal officials said there’s no evidence to support a report that hackers destroyed a pump used by an Illinois-based water utility after gaining unauthorized access to the computer system it used to operate its machinery. What is the truth in this case it is hard to say.

What is known that many industrial systems are vulnerable. Siemens Simatic is a common SCADA product and has been the subject of other warnings from security researchers according to Siemens industrial control systems are vulnerable to attack that can cause serious problems. The US Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) warned earlier that Siemens’ SIMATIC S7-1200 programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are vulnerable to so-called replay attacks that can interfere with the normal operations. An attacker with access to the PLC or the automation network could intercept the PLC password and make unauthorized changes to the PLC operation. ISO-TSAP protocol is functioning to specifications; however, authentication is not performed nor are payloads encrypted or obfuscated.

White Paper On Industrial Automation Security In Fieldbus And Field Device Level is an interesting white paper (from Vacon, Nixu and F-secure) that focuses on presenting a generic overview about security in industrial automation. Security aspects of traditional fieldbuses, Ethernet-based networks and wireless communication technologies are presented. Challenges regarding data security in the field of industrial automation are discussed. The properties of industrial automation devices are described with a focus on security, tampering possibilities, and risk mitigation methods.

Many protocols used in industrial control systems were intentionally designed to be open and without security features. As long the the networks that run those protocols are kept physically separate from public network you are quite safe. For the most part SCADA systems are not necessarily designed to be connected to the internet, but engineers can put in workarounds for remote access. Anytime you do this you put in a pathway where someone can get in. And there are often case where remote devices are accessed using those non-secure protocols though unsafe networks (public telephone network, cellular network, radio waves, even Internet).

There has been long time the belief that SCADA systems have the benefit of security through the use of specialized protocols and proprietary interfaces (security through obscurity), networks are physically secured and disconnected from the Internet. Today those beliefs all do not hold anymore. There are nowadays you can find many tools on Internet to work with standard SCADA protocols (for example Wireshark can be used to decode several commonly used SCADA protocols).

The move from proprietary technologies to more standardized and open solutions together with the increased number of connections between SCADA systems and office networks and the Internet has made them more vulnerable to attacks. Modern SCADA systems should be designed so that they can be withstand the situation they are accidentally connected to Internet (it will happen sooner or later). In addition to making SCADA system itself secure, you should separate it from Internet (no connection at all or very strictly configured series of firewalls). FACT CHECK: SCADA Systems Are Online Now article tells at nearly everything is connected now. Nearly all SCADA systems are online. The addition of a simple NAT device is far from bulletproof security access control.

Most of SCADA systems in use are are old computer systems. They are usually horribly patched (”if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”) and often run very old operating system version. Windows is very commonly used operating systems on SCADA applications, because only few SCADA-packages support other than Windows operational systems. It seems that there are many people who are not happy with the security stance being taken within their organizations around SCADA hosts. Even if you have patches up to date and current anti-malware on a host, all you have done is eliminated some of the risk (and maybe created new risks caused by fact that anti-malware software can sometimes disturb normal system operation). Add a firewall and you have reduced some of the risk. Pile on as much security as you want and people are going to find ways to disable it and make themselves vulnerable.

I wish no one had to worry about hackers in any application, but we do. Unfortunately, data security is never a non-issue.

FACT CHECK: SCADA Systems Are Online Now article mentions an interesting story on Boeing 747 (For those who do not know, modern 747’s are big flying Unix hosts with lots of Ethernet). They had added a new video system that ran over IP. They segregated this from the control systems using layer 2 – VLANs. The security researchers managed to break the VLANs and access other systems (including Engine management systems). The issue here is that all that separated the engine control systems and the open network was VLAN and NAT based filters.

Earlier when you wanted to run Linux applications on Windows you needed to consider using a virtual machine (like vmWare player), Cygwin or coLinux. They all use different approaches to allow you to run Linux applications on your Windows PC.

andLinux actually uses coLinux (a port of the Linux kernel to Windows) as its core. Although this technology is a bit like running Linux in a virtual machine, coLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient.

andLinux uses Xming X server + virtual network interface driver to get Linux applications to show on your Windows desktop. The audio goes through PulseAudio sound server. I must admit that this andLinux worked as promised and was pretty easy to set up.

The biggest downside of it seems to be that it seemed to take noticeable amount of computer resources when it runs (memory was short on the system I tested it). Other things that make me worry what is the security of this whole system. The lacks of 64 bit Windows system support is also a minus at times when 64 bit OSes are coming more and more common.