What's so important about fanless computers?

Firstly let's have a quick look at what the fans in a computer do; fans work to move air around a computer and keep everything cool. They work in conjunction with "heat sinks", which are lumps of shaped metal designed to expedite heat away from key parts such as the CPU (central processing unit), RAM (random access memory), parts of the motherboard such as the north bridge and the GPU (graphics processing unit). All of these parts can generate huge amount of heat. A high end CPU for example can use in excess of 200W of electricity, all of which is converted into heat. That's a huge amount of power to put into a flat component around 1 ½" across!

The heat sink is a highly conductive metal; normally composed of copper or the cheaper alternative; aluminium, what this effectively does it increase the surface area of the component to speed up transition to the air. The air movement from the fan then helps to force convection and move the air even faster! So having a fanless pc means losing a lot of the computer's ability to transfer heat from vital areas into the atmosphere.

So why would you want to build a computer without any fans you ask? Well there are several reasons. One is noise; fans tend to make a fair amount of noise, the faster they go the more noise they produce, though there are silent fans, which produce very little noise, as well as things which can be done to reduce the noise of other fans, such as rubber mounting brackets which reduce vibrations to the case. Other options for reducing noise include putting the computer in an enclosure.

Noise isn't the only reason however; one of the big drawbacks of having a computer system which relies on airflow is dust. Dust builds up in just about any computer system over time and will vastly reduce the effectiveness of heat sinks as it clogs them up effectively insulating their surface. It can also clog up fans, inhibiting air flow and reducing the effect of fans though how fast dust builds up is largely based on the environment on which it resides. Typically dust isn't too much of an issue, since you can just clean it out every so often in the case of home PCs.

On the other hand in some industrial environments there can be huge amounts of dust to clog a system up and it may not be viable to keep cleaning out the computers or to even risk damage to components. This can become especially important for environments which may have fine metal powder which could short circuit a computer and even potentially cause a fire. In these cases the only real option is to have the computer dust proof and sealed off which makes fanless computers essential.


Such computer work in such a way that the whole case becomes one big heat sink, often sporting extruded aluminium designs to increase the surface area. Obviously however, such systems will not be as effective as fanned computers at ditching heat into the atmosphere, so on top of their designs, most computers which rely on passive cooling also have to minimise the amount of power they use; your 200W CPU's simply won't last in this kind of case. That can be another benefit however, lower powered computers, obviously, use less power, which means running costs associated with them are lower as well, making them ideal for use in business and industry.

So next time you're in the market for a computer, consider going fanless! It's quieter, lower maintenance and cheaper to run!

New vs old; ushering in a new era

The development of technology is something we all expect to see these days, even looking back to 40-50 years ago when we saw illustrations of what people of that time thought our time might look like, and while you may be disillusioned by the strange haircuts and the odd “futuristic” designs, we’re not that far off; we have touchscreen computers, talking computers, hoovers and lawnmowers that push themselves around and almost every single one of us carries our own personal minicomputer in our pockets in the form of a smartphone.

This article however looks at the rise of VoIP technology and how we are moving into a new stage in communications technology; for quite a few years now this technology has been developing, through rocky beginnings when it was flaky, unreliable and complicated to modern times where it’s now the solution of choice for many companies when it comes to business communications.

Several key things have happened to VoIP to bring it up from its troubled start; the one that should probably be got out the way early on; there were a lot of VoIP “cowboys” who’d set VoIP solutions up on internet connections which really weren’t able to handle the load and without some of the clever little tweaks to the line it produced a service which was virtually unusable for some people, not exactly ideal for a budding business. Thankfully, most of these companies are out of business now.

The second big development was the internet; the internet continues to develop at a rate of knots and it is the very foundation of VoIP technology, the extra speed and stability here has really helped level out a lot of the problems VoIP phone systems suffered in its early days.

The third development, slightly mentioned in the first, are the small little tweaks to the way VoIP data is handled to try and clear up the quality of the call. These are things like packet priority for VoIP packets so they are less likely to get caught in a backlog of less ping sensitive data. Also reconstructing the data correctly on the other end instead of just regurgitating it as and when it comes really helps to clear the call quality up and eliminate or reduce the effects of latency on the line.

While it seems simple when said like that, these developments are really far from it, these changes have helped a technology which offered a cheaper service with a load of baggage into the brilliant technology which looks set to take over the telecommunications industry and it probably wouldn’t be here if not for those people who took the dive early on and made it happen, so hats off to those bold few!

VoIP Technology; A Powerful Tool for Business

Telecoms are a technology that has been advanced with the times. From the really expensive PBX systems seen in larger corporations in the later half of the 20th century, to the present day where many small corporations have PBX systems. These systems still have the majority of the capabilities of the pricey solutions at a fraction of the cost.

This progress on it’s own has spread advanced telecoms into the business sector greatly since the more affordable rates have allowed much smaller firms and businesses to make use of it. Another big development came along in the form of VoIP phone systems; by making use of the internet and the cheapness of sending speech by way of digital in place of analogue the expense of telephony once again took a sizeable drop.

This gave rise to hosted phone systems, this is essentially where the bulk of the PBX machines are managed, up-graded and brought up to date by a service provider supplying the PBX functions as a service plan to a company. Companies shelling out for this service can then access the VoIP connection, normally via a softphone on a computer, though it’s possible to have a complete phone network and simply use the VoIP as the means to connect calls. In the second scenario, there is very little difference from a normal telephone system from a user perspective.

This has unlocked the doorway for mobile VoIP, where rather than using a computer to connect to the PBX server, you connect with a program on a smartphone. Since mobile charges are usually pricey, by using a mobile VoIP connection while connected to a wifi, you are able to just connect through VoIP and it will cost the same as if you were sitting in the office. This is even more impressive when coupled with the fact, that due to the geo-dispersed nature of the internet, the costs would be the same wherever on the globe you are as long as you have a pretty good net connection. Suddenly VoIP becomes a fantastic tool for any business who has people on the move, especially internationally.

Such things are by no means limited to organizations however, mobile phone networks already have started contemplating deals with hosted VoIP companies since free programs for example Skype is already obtainable on phones to reduce the prices of your calls. This rise in technology could result in a complete renovation of how we look at mobile phone contracts. It’s predicted that by 2015, the mobile VoIP market will be a 20 billion dollar industry, so it’ll be intriguing to see how matters turn out.

VoIP technology; evolution vs. innovation

There’s a big debate going on about VoIP phone systems, not whether the technology can save you lots of money, provide lots of extra features and increase the productivity of your company, because we know it can do all of those thing, but whether VoIP technology was innovative thinking which revolutionised the communications industry, or just the logical next step in the evolution of communications.

The quick answer of course is a bit of both, but lets have a look at some of the parts which have been evolution and which have been innovation.

VoIP started out its existence in 1994 when it was invented by Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty and through their company VocalTec released the first commercial VoIP software in 1995. At this point however VoIP tended to be unreliable since the internet lacked the speed required to maintain clear vocals. In my opinion, this move, which went on to create its own market and redefine another one was a major innovation, the technology was already in existence however, so VoIP was just another way of using what was already in place. In this sense, it’s more evolutionary of the internet and telephone systems. In my opinion, I would say this was more evolution than innovation because it wouldn’t have been long before another company took advantage of the technology around them. (Though that’s easier to say in hindsight).

The problems of VoIP and the lack of the internet speed and reliability to maintain high call quality still followed VoIP into the early 21st century and to an extent, up to the modern day. Two innovations which helped this have been the packet priority for VoIP traffic and delay sensitive marking of packets. Packet priority is a great way of helping a VoIP connection, specifically when VoIP is used on a internet connection with other data traffic (such as web browsing and file transfers) by giving all of the VoIP data packets a higher priority so they get transferred first. Combining this with packet marking helps to reconstruct the voice data on the other end instead of transmitting it as and when it comes. This greatly helps to reduce the effects of latency on a phone call and can make the audio much clearer. These again I think are evolutionary developments to the technology since they’re fairly simple (though effective) solutions to evident problems.

Then there are the features offered by VoIP services, while it is true that hosted VoIP tends to offer features such as conference calling cheaper, these are all features which were previously available with larger PBX systems, so again simply an evolution of past telephone technology.

So overall, while the development of VoIP has been paved with innovation at every step in its way. I believe the technology as a whole was simply an evolution of pre-existing technology, though to give it its due, growing up in the shadow of two innovations as massive as the telephone and the internet is a daunting task and VoIP to date has certainly shown it is the worthy descendant of these technologies.

Tips for getting voice over internet protocol

Obviously VoIP requires an internet connection, and if you want to be sure of good quality of service, you will probably need a fast one. When talking to service providers it can be incredibly beneficial to have particulars about your current connection, peak traffic values and such, as well as if it could be viable to run a single network for both data and voice at the same time.

On top of that, perhaps most notably, have a distinct understanding of what solutions you desire for your corporation. How many features you will need and how many additional features would be nice to have if the price is right. This can include things such as CRM integration, perhaps employing a single address book, or mobile twinning for desk phones to make sure you can be contacted wherever you go; a excellent tool for people who are out of office a lot.

It’s also worth asking suppliers if they’ll assess your existing equipment setup and see where exactly any troubles could happen in your network to stop issues well before they happen.

Once you have a good idea of what you need, you need to start evaluating the market place, which can be a discouraging task, there are many organizations supplying many diverse services at many prices, with many different levels of service quality. To cut the large volume of possible providers down for smaller organizations at least, until you start getting a large number of users, hosted VoIP providers are usually the best way to go. This fundamentally means all of the call handling and redirection is handled by the VoIP provider, and generally you will log in via a softphone on your computer or mobile.

There are several key merits of this for a smaller organization. The primary one is of course costs; smaller organizations often can’t manage the capital to invest in a big PBX system and setup, so having a solution which is paid for on a month-to-month schedule can be much more feasible. Also, the costs of sustaining your own VoIP service might simply not be worthwhile for a small business; where a large company can easily afford to hire their own technicians to apply the various updates, perform regular maintenance and also have a less expensive system than a hosted phone system, the same can not be said of most small organizations. In such cases, having a different business deal with all of the technological stuff, keep the system safe from hacking and such, it can be greatly beneficial.

Good things to ask the other suppliers you are reviewing include things such as how they deal with power blackouts, security measures, scalability, their uptime and following that of course do your own investigation on them, consumer reviews and such.

Where will VoIP Technology Go in the Future?

VoIP technology is a fairly new technology in the public and business domain. It has been around for around 10 years, however in the time around the end of 2000 is was predominantly used by fairly computer savvy people using private communications servers such as Teamspeak and not as a means of replacing existing telecommunications.

From humble beginnings however, now most business phone systems installed today are VoIP systems or hosted VoIP systems. On top of this increasingly VoIP is reaching into the public sectors. Popular programs such as Skype have brought the ability to use VoIP to every household with an internet connection and it is used by thousands of people every day to reduce calling costs, increase convenience and increase productivity.

But where is VoIP headed in the coming future? In the short term it is likely we will see VoIP continue to grow into the telephony world and replace old POTS (plain old telephone service) systems for businesses. As the infrastructure for communications moved away from old connections and towards fibre optics, there’s a good chance that home users will see VoIP solutions start to move into the home and replace normal telephone services.

The issues faced by this however are largely with the emergency services; due to the non location specific nature of VoIP calls, it can be hard to locate the call in certain circumstances. In America now, it has been made law to implement VoIP enhanced 911 for any VoIP systems being used to replace a POTS. VoIP enhanced 911 associates a physical address with the calling number making it possible to trace calls and provide a quick response time.

VoIP is already even being used in the mobile world, with many smartphones using or having VoIP applications available for use. These typically need to use a wifi connection to operate with a good quality of service since 3G can be too slow but already there are a huge number of public wifi networks available for mobile users. With increases to mobile technology happening all the time however, we may see a move from the current mobile contracts to a data.

Of course with these increases in the number of people with internet access in more places across the world on their mobile devices, there really aren’t many places that VoIP can’t go, so really when asked the question; “where is VoIP headed?” well, the answer has to be; everywhere!