Tech Watch

Low-End Laserjet Picks Up Speed

There's not a lot vendors can do these days to make a low-end monochrome laser printer exciting, but Hewlett-Packard has taken a stab at it with the LaserJet P2015. The unit prints documents at 27 pages per minute (ppm), a marked increase over its predecessor, the LaserJet 1320, which maxed out at 22 ppm.

With a monthly duty cycle of 15,000 pages, the P2015 can also handle 5,000 more pages per month than the 1320. To accommodate larger, more complex files, the new printer has a 400-MHz processor and up to 32 MB of standard memory, expandable to 228 MB. Additional models in the new line include the P2015d, which offers double-sided printing functionality, and the P2015dn, which adds networking capabilities. While the P2015 certainly isn't the least expensive in its class, the slight price premium it carries shouldn't be a deal-breaker for customers that prefer the HP brand.

HP LazerJet P2015, Price: $349 (base) to $499 (with networking)

CA Adds High Availability To Backup Suite

When CA acquired continuous data-protection vendor XOsoft last July, the company indicated it would integrate its data-backup software with XOsoft's disaster-recovery and application-availability tools. CA has done just that, creating an integrated system-recovery-management solution called the BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA Bundle. By combining XOsoft's WANSync high-availability and Assured Recovery disaster-recovery testing software with CA's BrightStor ARCserve Backup product, the new bundle offers a full range of continuous data protection, replication and automatic failover. It also offers disaster-recovery capabilities in a single, easy-to-manage package. The software enables rapid backup to all forms of storage media, replication of data to remote servers, and testing of the recoverability of business applications and data. The product is Microsoft-certified and runs in any storage environment, including direct-attached, storage-area network, and network-attached storage configurations and devices. This space is heating up with new entries from Symantec, EMC and many others that are hitting the street.

BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA Bundle, Price: Starts at $4,573

Iomega Offers More Options To StorCenter

Iomega has added some substantial improvements to its StorCenter networked-attached storage appliances--most notably, the inclusion of Microsoft's Storage Server 2003 R2, which is designed to be more compatible with Windows-based applications. The new StorCenter Pro NAS 250d servers are available in configurations ranging from 500 GB to 1.5 TB. An iteration of the product also has a slot that supports Iomega's removable REV 70-GB drives. Similar to the prior 200d version, the 750-GB and 1.5-TB models of the device come with dual Gigabit Ethernet connections for autoload balancing and failover, and an external Ultra 320 SCSI connection. The new-and-improved device, which is based on a Celeron D 352 3.2-GHz processor, comes with Iomega's Discovery Tool for automatic configuration and can also be administered via the Microsoft Management console.

Iomega StorCenter Pro Nas 250d, Price: $1,399 to $3,999, depending on configuration