Whether it’s shifting to a remote work setup or starting a small business, many people have gotten used to home-based working due to lockdowns brought on by the pandemic. Although companies are already slowly implementing hybrid working that allows employees to go back to the office, some still prefer to stay home and attend virtual meetings in front of their laptops.

Lightweight and powerful, the HP ProBook 455 G8 laptop PC promises optimal performance as it’s powered by the latest AMD Ryzen™ PRO 5000 series processor without the bulk

That said, people are looking to upgrade their laptops that can handle both their personal and work files, and also lets them do other basic functions like typing and browsing the internet without a hitch. A model worth checking out is the AMD Ryzen™ PRO-powered HP ProBook 455 G8, a laptop PC with reliable hardware and software. Here’s why it has the features that professionals are looking for:

Compact and lightweight

The laptop has a 15.6” display, but its light and slim design will allow users to carry it around anywhere—from the house to any remote location.

Peak performance and memory

Built with the recently launched AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series mobile processor with PRO technologies, users can expect high-speed performance and outstanding graphics performance suited for multitasking during long work hours and other leisure activities in between. It also comes with 32 GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM and up to 1 TB internal storage, providing users with enough space for all their files and apps.

Guaranteed fast internet connection

Regardless if the user is at home, in the office, or at a café, the laptop delivers reliable connection in wireless environments with its gigabit-speed Wi-Fi 6 feature. This ensures that they will stay online and have fast connection while attending to virtual matters. This is also useful for when users want to stream Netflix after work.

Beefed-up privacy features

It’s highly important to keep personal and confidential work files protected from any cyberattacks. This laptop has HP Sure Start Gen6, a software that automatically recovers the device’s BIOS and files from corruption. It also has HP Sure Sense that studies algorithms to recognize malware immediately and protect the laptop against future, never-before-seen attacks.

Professionals can make the most out of their work with HP ProBook 455 G8’s long battery life, clear audio, and spacious 1 TB internal storage.

Apart from these cybersecurity software, users will feel more protected with the HP Sure View, which makes the screen appear dark from the side, a built-in HP Privacy Camera that blocks the lens of the webcam, and multiple authentication options when turning the device on. All these features ensure that no prying eyes will be able to breach their files easily.

With work-from-home and hybrid working being the norm in the foreseeable future, professionals can greatly utilize a versatile, commercial-grade laptop like the HP ProBook 455 G8.

Visit https://www.hp.com/ph-en/laptops/business/probook-400.html for more details. 

             

With schools and universities still implementing blended modules and online classes, having access to the right tools has become essential to maximize learning from home. A powerful, affordable and battery efficient smart phone can make it the best study buddy for cash-strapped students. 

Enter the POCO M3 PRO 5G, the latest smart phone in the POCO series packed with the latest technology to make online learning stress-free. Here are some reasons why the POCO M3 Pro 5G is the perfect online learning tool. 

Seamless multitasking and app switching with the powerful MediaTek 700 Processor

Watching virtual discussions while taking notes and browsing the internet at the same time but worried that your phone might crash? Worry no more as for the first time, POCO is making use of MediaTek Dimensity technology, which offers enhanced overall performance and speed. MediaTek Dimensity 700 and its leading 7nm process provides a flagship-level experience with power efficiency. Switching to other apps from Microsoft Teams to Viber or Zoom to Facebook Messenger is hassle-free with no hiccups.

The phone also comes with an octa-core CPU that operates at up to 2.2GHz, and fast UFS 2.2 storage, supporting ts power users with high performance when streaming videos, watching video conferences or snapping pictures. Split-screen for these apps has never been this easy!

In terms of RAM and storage, it comes with 2 variants, the 4GB ram and 64GB internal storage and 6GB ram and 128GB internal storage with up to 512GB expandable storage. This means more apps, files, photos, and heavy documents to store. No need to uninstall apps to make room for new ones. In terms of software, POCO M3 Pro 5G runs the latest MIUI 12 based on Android 11. This OS is known for its clean look, friendly interface, and packs lots of awesome wallpapers.

Dual 5G connectivity for faster connection and quality video viewing for online learning

Another helpful feature is its dual 5G connectivity, which offers faster download and upload speeds without hurting your wallet for areas with 5G connectivity. This is the most affordable 5G smartphone released by POCO up to date.

With more areas becoming 5G-enabled, using the POCO M3 Pro 5G ensures you to get most out of your mobile internet. You get to enjoy a more stable internet connection thus no more dropping signal during your classes on Zoom or MS Teams, plus experience less buffering and load HD-quality videos while you research on YouTube and other streaming platforms. This also ensure you don’t miss deadlines especially when uploading big files or downloading digital modules and reading materials.

Massive battery perfect for long hours of online classes and meetings

You won’t have to worry about longer online classes or meetings as this packs a 5,000 mAh battery that can even last up to 2 days depending on usage. Added by the power of the MediaTek 700 Processor, you get less battery consumption with more power. It also comes with a 22.5W in-box charger and supports 18W fast charging so you can power up your POCO in a snap. 

Smoother display with 90Hz refresh rate and a 360° Light Sensor for eye care for a better visual experience

POCO M3 PRO 5G offers faster visuals and a smoother experience for users with its 90Hz 6.5" FHD+ display. With its 90Hz refresh rate, scrolling up and down through the app drawer, images and webpages become so much smoother, while higher refresh rates can make your eyes feel a lot less tired. More details and vibrant colors provided by this high-definition display is perfect for your phone editing projects, creating visual presentations or watching online lectures. 

It also comes with a 360° Light Sensor on the front and back that adjusts the brightness naturally, smartly, and precisely to help reduce eye strain. This newest technology helps take care of your eyes especially for those that have long periods of online classes, projects, or watching long educational videos. Whatever the light condition in your environment, the 360° Light Sensor is there to adjust smartly and give you the best viewing experience without causing eye strain. 

The updated Reading Mode 3.0 also adds warmer colors and paper texture to the background, perfect for users who are into reading e-books or reviewing through their files. POCO also retained the all-time user’s choice features such as the 3.5mm headphone jack with Hi-Res Audio certification for greater audio quality, IR blaster for controlling smart devices, and NFC for seamless content sharing.

This phone is perfect for students looking for a budget-friendly phone that provides the latest features to help them study and play – and it’s a great looking phone too, with its unique 3D curved back design and glossy finish and comes in three eye-catching colors: Power Black, Cool Blue, and its signature POCO Yellow. 

POCO M3 Pro 5G is available for only ₱8,990 for the 4GB RAM variant with 64GB internal storage and ₱11,990 for the 6GB RAM variant with 128GB internal storage.  Its available in any POCO Authorized Stores or the POCO official store in Shopee and Lazada. You can also follow POCO’s official Facebook page to stay up to date on their latest news.

Converge ICT Solutions Inc. has provided a dedicated fiber connection to facilitate the vaccination program of the city government at the City College of Angeles and the Angeles National High School. 

Converge provides a dedicated fiber connection to facilitate the Angeles City vaccination program at the City College of Angeles and the Angeles National High School. 

“We requested for a dedicated line from Converge, and (Converge CEO) Dennis Anthony Uy provided it immediately. Since then, there has been no interruption in our vaccination efforts, and the process has been much quicker,” said Angeles City Mayor Carmelo G. Lazatin Jr. 

“As the city that nurtured our company from the very beginning, Angeles City will always hold a special place for Converge. Even as we’ve grown nationwide, our ‘birth city’ is always top of mind. We’re ready to help the local government in their efforts to serve the public better, especially if it involves healthcare,’’ said Dennis Anthony Uy, CEO and Founder of Converge. 

The connectivity is used by the government’s health workers for pre-registration, registration, and tagging of vaccinees, said Irish “IC” C. Calaguas, chief adviser to Mayor Lazatin.

Moreover, to fast-track the vaccination drive of the A1-A4 priority groups, the connectivity is used to access information such as vacancy of slots in the vaccination sites. 

“It’s very important to know if there are available slots, which we can access through the main database in city hall. With this connection, we are able to do that, and implement the prioritization quicker. We’re able to maximise the capacity of the sites,” said Calaguas. 

The city government is planning to put up a third vaccination site in Barangay Sapalibutad in Angeles which has a capacity of 1,000 individuals, while the existing vaccination sites have a capacity of 6,000 each. 

“This long-standing partnership with Converge has truly helped us with improving our healthcare delivery. In 2019, Converge donated P 5 million to rehabilitation of the Ospital ng Angeles, and we were able to purchase an x-ray machine,” added Mayor Lazatin. 

As of July 8, Angeles City has inoculated 55,000 individuals, 10,000 of which are already completely vaccinated. This represents 13% of the city’s overall population. Angeles City is seen to inoculate 100% of its population by November, assuming no delays in supply.

TCI or Telecommunications Connectivity Inc. (TCI), is the joint venture company formed by DITO, Globe and Smart to enable number porting services in compliance with the Mobile Number Portability law. The TCI is the implementing arm for all activities between mobile service providers on one hand and the mobile number portability service provider (or the clearinghouse) on the other.

“The entire telco industry and the Philippine government are pushing forward with the same goal of providing Filipinos with better telco services. Aside from encouraging healthier competition amongst the players, MNP also grants Filipinos the freedom to switch to their preferred mobile service provider seamlessly and conveniently. Na walang alinlangan,” said Atty. Adel Tamano, treasurer, Telecommunications Connectivity Inc. chief administrative officer, DITO Telecommunity 

A separate entity is required to facilitate decision making and approvals in the various contracts that will be entered into during the course of the implementation of mobile number portability. It will be too unwieldy to secure approvals from the 3 operators of any decision or contract that will have to be entered into with third parties. 

Melanie A. Manuel has been named as TCI’s Interim General Manager. Manuel is an Industrial Engineering graduate whose telco work experience includes Domestic Carrier Relations, International and Domestic Settlements, Settlement Systems, IS Business Analysis, and Human Resource Management. 

TCI will be coterminous with the implementation of mobile number portability. For as long as the law requires mobile number portability, TCI will continue to exist for the same reasons it was organized. Note though that TCI will just be on limited manpower complement.

Mobile Number Portability or MNP, as a global practice enables a mobile phone customer to keep their number even when they switch networks or change their subscription from postpaid to prepaid and vice versa. The process itself is free of charge.

Republic Act No. 11202, also known as the Mobile Number Portability Act, ensures that mobile phone users can keep their numbers even when they transfer to another service provider, or when they switch their subscription from postpaid to prepaid, or vice-versa. 

MNP helps promote consumer welfare by fostering the freedom to choose and to respond to quality, price and other relevant considerations without consumers having to change their mobile numbers whenever they change mobile service providers or subscription plans. Porting is FREE. 

To port within networks, one needs to meet the following requirements: ● An active SIM and the requestor is the assignee of the mobile number to be ported 

● No remaining balance from your previous bill (for postpaid) 

● No existing court prohibitions 

● No pending transfer of ownership 

MNP will be commercially available in the Philippines on September 30, 2021. 

Unlike earlier implementations of MNP, the mobile business has grown in complexity because of the vast array of service offerings and customization that are attached to a mobile number, which may not easily be unbundled when moving to another service provider. The three operators also have different channels for topping up prepaid loads and differ in systems which greatly affect interoperability.

The operators invested a total of P120 Million, so far. It is expected, however, that they will spend more because under the Mobile Number Portability law, the service is free of charge for the customer.

Syniverse was chosen by the Philippine mobile operators through a technical and commercial evaluation system to be the mobile number portability service provider (MNPSP). The company will bring in the technical infrastructure to fulfill its primary function as clearing house for the three telcos and ensuring smooth implementation of number porting services.

 More than 50 million citizens — over half the population — do not use any form of online banking.

The average person in the Philippines spends more time on the Internet than any other country in the world. Filipinos are online over 11 hours each day, compared to a global average of just six hours. Indeed, with a total population of more than 100 million, 71% of Filipinos are active Internet users, creating the perfect environment to develop the country’s digital economy through Financial Technology (also known as FinTech).

Despite being the most active online, more than 50 million Filipinos — over half the population — do not use any form of online banking. According to an official government report published in 2019, only 8% of Filipino adults have an active online account. This, combined with the 97% of Filipinos who still trade in cash, has created increased risks during the global pandemic when in-person interactions are limited.

In recent years, Huawei has been collaborating closely with the largest bank in the Philippines, Banco De Oro Unibank (BDO), to realize the bank's strategic ambition: to continue improving business efficiency and customer services through digital transformation, in order to bring inclusive finance to more Filipinos.

In April 2021, BDO rolled out BDO Pay, a mobile wallet and contactless payment solution that provides users with convenient and instant access to digital banking services. On the path toward inclusive digital banking, BDO is actively embracing technological innovation to upgrade its legacy infrastructure, improve its competitive edge, and develop more innovative services across the entire business.

BDO's digital banking expansion is powered by Huawei's OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage Solution, which implements a reliable, secure, and future-proofed data-sharing platform that is virtual and in the cloud. The Huawei Data Management Engine (DME) and OceanStor Dorado Storage make up the foundation of the solution, intelligently safeguarding the data of the bank’s growing customer assets and transaction history.

Overcoming the limitations of a legacy system

BDO’s refresh of its IT infrastructure was largely driven by the increasing capacity requirements that arose as the business grew. The legacy system was limited in its capacity to fully process and make use of the data resources that could create new value; therefore an upgrade was required. In addition, the bank was experiencing the effects of siloed IT suites, resulting in storage utilization of less than 40% and much lower throughout.

To remove this obstacle, Huawei OceanStor Dorado provides a high Solid-State Drive (SSD) configuration ratio with SmartTier, enabling a 1.3 GB/s bandwidth and significantly improving the performance of the data-sharing platform. Moreover, OceanStor Dorado features HyperReplication and a Storage Area Network (SAN) + Network-Attached Storage (NAS) unified storage system to meet BDO’s file-sharing and backup requirements. This helps achieve an active-passive system to protect all business data, from images and voice notes to scanned documents and more. Huawei OceanStor Dorado also supports flexible service expansion, slashes service rollout times, and accelerates data monetization in storage resource pools. In fact, during a Proof of Concept (PoC) performance test for BDO, the entire backup service time was slashed from two days to just six hours.

In addition to performance requirements, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) was also in need of an upgrade, as the legacy infrastructure lacked an automation orchestration platform. Over-reliance on manual O&M also made system fault diagnosis complex — not to mention inaccurate — resulting in the maintenance department being flooded with complaints. Digitizing O&M improved diagnosis, accuracy, and problem-solving efficiency, as well as bringing down related management costs.

Now, using Huawei’s DME, BDO’s storage utilization has been boosted from 40% to 70%. And the intelligent fault diagnosis capability of the system has seen efficiency soar to 90%. The DME also manages data resource pools, which are created and configured based on service levels to manage hot, warm, and cold data by layer, using algorithms to automatically convert hot data into warm or even cold data. Such nonessential data is then stored on lower-cost media to reduce resource waste and improve service efficiency. Put simply, Huawei DME effectively ensures the full lifecycle management of the storage system, with backup and recovery solutions available to unleash the full value of data.

“During the Proof of Concept test, I was impressed with the high performance and reliability of Huawei's product. We trust Huawei for its service-centric value, fast response to our demands, and its commitment to continuing to innovate future technologies for the Financial Services Industry. This is why we hope to build long-term cooperation with Huawei,” said Dennis Tangonan, Infrastructure Operation Head, BDO.

BDO's recent IT infrastructure upgrade and refresh of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is another step in the bank’s digital transformation journey. Meeting the constantly changing demands for capacity and services is at the heart of BDO’s business operations as industries enter the intelligent era. BDO will continue to innovate its storage system in order to provide the best products and services for its customers. Alongside BDO, Huawei will continue to support the bank on its digital transformation journey by providing leading-edge services and technology so BDO can maintain its position as the largest bank in the Philippines.

To keep up with the latest innovations that technology can offer to today’s education, Jose Maria College (JMC) partners with telecommunications giant, Huawei, last July 6, 2021 in an agreement to pursue the fifth industrial revolution of educational technology.

Through this partnership, students will soon be able to access the most modern educational tools such as state-of-the-art Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Laboratories, Virtual Reality, Smart Campus, etc.

According to Ken Sentorias, the JMC Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) Director, the opportunities are limitless because both JMC and Huawei are on the same page of commitment and that is to deliver the latest educational technology.

It can be noted that the Philippines is among the countries that is still in the third industrial revolution of educational technology. Students from developed countries such as Japan, China, and the United States are currently the only ones experiencing the fifth industrial revolution.

However, JMC believes that this partnership will bring the institution a step closer to realizing its goal of delivery quality education through the use of technology. “We are planning the best for the students. And next year, we are going to announce something really great,” Sentorias quoted.