Takin' art to the streets

Have you ever walked down a city street and been captivated by the rich color and emotional intensity of a Caravaggio painting? Not many people have — until recently, that is. To create "The Grand Tour™," HP and the National Gallery brought 44 full-size reproductions of the museum's most iconic paintings to the streets of London.

Running from June 12 to September 4, this open-air art exhibition aims to bring art to the people and, in turn, draw more people into the museum. Reproductions in The Grand Tour™ are displayed on the walls of buildings, down alleyways and in other unusual settings in the heart of the city, where everyone can enjoy them.

"We wanted to take the artwork out of the museum and place it in unexpected places around London where it would interrupt people's lives and ultimately draw them into the Gallery," said Danielle Chidlow, head of communications for the National Gallery. "We turned to HP to help with the project because of our long-standing relationship. We knew we could count on HP's printing technology to deliver the high quality, color accuracy and detail we were after."

HP Designjet 10000s: A new dimension in digital printing

HP and the National Gallery called upon Electronic Printing Services (EPS), a print service provider located in Leeds, England, to help with the project. EPS started with high-resolution scans of the masterpieces, which revealed each painting's unique texture, natural darkening, cracks and other signs of aging, then created prints using the HP Designjet 10000s low-solvent printer.

"Initially, there were doubts as to whether this project could actually be done," said Steve Farley, managing director of EPS. "But I believed it could and, in fact, using the Designjet10000s produced reproductions far superior to anything the National Gallery had seen before."

The super-wide HP Designjet 10000s enabled EPS to deliver the level of quality needed and to print the reproductions at actual size — some of which are as much as 104 inches (2.6 meters) wide. In addition, the HP Designjet 10000s produced colorfast, weatherproof, photo-quality reproductions with excellent color accuracy and clarity.

"Many people are stopped in their tracks because the print quality is so good," said Dan Gates, director of brand marketing, HP EMEA. "People don't realize they are reproductions."

EPS printed most of The Grand Tour™ reproductions on HP Premium Self-adhesive Vinyl with lamination to bring out the texture of the original artwork. These prints should remain fade-resistant for a minimum of three years, but EPS's accelerated-light simulation tests suggest they could hold up for as long as 10 years.

The Designjet 10000s can print up to 322 square feet per hour and delivers vivid colors in resolutions up to 720 x 720 dpi. The printer offers an ideal solution for graphic arts applications, including signs, banners, billboards, murals, window and vehicle graphics, and of course, fine art reproductions.

"The Designjet 10000s — as well as the Z6100 — have brought another dimension to large format printing," Farley said. "It has really upset the standard. People are now going to aim for that standard, and that will push higher-quality printing worldwide."

Avocent KVM Switches

As the number of PCs expand in the small office or at home, you are often faced with issues including limited desk space and expensive and duplicated keyboards, monitors and mice. The desk space is untidy and cable clutter is everywhere. You may also experience a lack of efficiency in trying to access multiple PCs and attached devices. Often there is also a need to share printers, scanners, MP3 players, cameras, speakers, etc. between PCs.
Avocent SwitchView® KVM switches provide immediate solutions to all these problems by enabling you to use a single keyboard, monitor and mouse to access multiple PCs. SwitchView KVM switches can support combinations of PS/2 and USB PCs. SwitchView multimedia switches allow you to share USB devices, and speakers and a microphone between PCs. With the SwitchView DVI switch, you access multiple DVI computers and can connect a USB keyboard, mouse and DVI monitor.

Zero-Day Attack

The zero-day attack, viruses, worms, and spyware are constantly evolving as malware writers attempt to circumvent security software. Traditional signature-based antivirus is reactive. Instead of trying to keep up with them, ThreatSense® stays a few steps ahead. The ThreatSense® engine is a sophisticated, well-balanced system of advanced heuristics and malware signatures, providing the best detection without compromising speed.

For many existing viruses, ThreatSense® includes a traditional form of malware signatures. ThreatSense® also utilizes next generation generic signatures to quickly detect known malware families and their future variants. This more adaptive form of signature specification enhances the ability of ThreatSense® to detect future variants.

Certain methods of heuristics can detect some basic macro and script viruses. ThreatSense’s® Advanced Heuristics engine enables detection of malware not specified in the signature database. It proactively decodes and analyzes executable code in a protected virtual environment in order to identify increasingly sophisticated malicious behavior, characteristic of today’s evolving threats. For example, WIN32 worms, backdoor programs, and trojans. This finely tuned engine catches more than 90% of so-called zero-day attack worms and viruses, which most other vendors miss without a signature update.

Archiving & Packing are techniques used by malware writers to circumvent signature-based detection. ThreatSense® includes a generic unpacking and emulation technology to decode virtually any hidden malware, in wrappers or modified by runtime packers. This sophisticated algorithm thwarts virus writers' efforts to go undetected.

This blended approach to detection leverages the benefits of each technology and makes NOD32 the fastest, most accurate, and lowest impact solution in the industry.
An Early Warning System

To Page or not to Page, that is the Question?

Are you finding that your computer is getting slower and slower and you constantly hear your hard drive spinning whiring? What you hear is the processor using the page file on the hard drive. What is a page file? To understand a page file, I’ll start and try and make it as simple as possible. There are three places where memory can be found on every computer, first the processor (Cache), second the memory chips (RAM), and third a large file (Page file) on the hard drive. When a program is started, for example Microsoft Word, the processor creates a memory space for the program. The memory is distributed between the processor cache, the memory chips, and further out to the hard drive page file. The page file or otherwise known as a swap file is where the processor can access information that is not needed at the exact time since it maybe using other memory for another program or the operating system. When your computer runs low on physical memory (Ram) then the processor has to swap out parts of memory that it still needs back and forth between all the areas but mainly back and forth to the hard drive page file. When this happens, running your programs takes a longer period to respond. Imagine having to go out to the store to buy water because the water cooler was empty. This would take a longer period of time than having a larger fridge. To solve the page file issue, firstly add more ram and secondly ensure that the page file is on an NTFS partition. If you have a spare drive, create a separate NTFS partition just for the page file remembering that you still need a small page file on the boot partition in case of an emergency.

If you have a technical question you would like answered please email newsletter@vodagroup.com and our VODA Experts will do their best to respond! You might just see it answered in an upcoming newsletter!

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