Hamilton Rentals AV and IT Rental for Event Production

Hamilton Rentals is the UK’s leading provider of AV display, computer, tablet, and server rental.

This segment is dedicated to a particular sector of our customer base—those in corporate event production.  A proud member of the Event Supplier and Services Association, Hamilton Rentals has over 40 years of experience and a rental fleet worth over 24 million pounds.

That being said, we’ve got the hardware to support events of all sizes whether it’s a massive sport gathering, a trade show, or a corporate meeting.

At Hamilton Rentals, we work directly with our customers to meet their exact requirements, but we also work with other IT and AV rental companies as well as production companies who need some help meeting the needs of a client.  We even work with training companies to ensure the required IT equipment is available.

Whether it’s a fantastic high definition plasma or LCD rental you need to display multimedia, or a high quality projector or touch screen monitor, we’ve got plenty of those. We also provide tablets like the iPad and iPad 2 for audience interaction and sign in—or perhaps you’d prefer laptops. We’ve got those too.

But we are forgetting something– let’s not leave out the interactive white board and floor displays we also have for hire.

So remember, when you need technology for an upcoming event, contact us at Hamilton Rentals. Thanks for watching, and thanks for renting.

Don’t Blame the Laptop Rental, Blame the Broadband

It seems millions of Britons are being a bit cheated when it comes to their broadband connection according to one study by communications regulator, Ofcom.

According to the research of some 1,700 home connections, UK consumers are being sold “super fast” connections that are only half as fast as they claim.

The Guardian reported from the data a 10 percent increase in average broadband speeds across the UK was realised in the six months to May raising from 6.2 megabits per second (Mbps) in November to 6.8 Mbps. The problem—the speeds were advertised to be 15 Mbps.

The news organisation said the greatest disparity exists with connections of DSL phones lines—a popular option of UK’s domestic consumers as the choice of over 75 percent of homes.  Paying for a 20Mbps and 24 Mbps connection, many of these customers are actually provided with an average speed of 6.5Mbps with as many as a third of this group receiving an average speed as low as 4Mbps.

So when you’re trying to open a new page in your browser and you get that annoying hourglass, or for Mac users, the rainbowed-spinning-wheel-of-death—you might want to reconsider taking out frustrations on your laptop because it’s likely your connection that is giving you woes.

The research has been released after previous attempts by Ofcom to regulate the “up to” methods of advertising by providers of BT and Sky—unhappy with potential false advertising of claims they cannot always deliver.

While acknowledging that UK consumers are receiving higher-rated services and faster speeds in general, Ofcom’s Chief Executive Ed Richards said they are still not receiving sufficient information on broadband information to make informed decisions.

“However, the research is still telling us that some consumers are not receiving anywhere near the speeds that are being advertised by some ISPs. Ofcom continues to urge the CAP and BCAP committees to make changes to their advertising guidance so that consumers are able to make more informed decisions based on the adverts they see,” Richards told the Guardian.

The Advertising Standards Authority’s committee of advertising practice (CAP) and broadcast committee of advertising practice (BCAP) are to report changes to broadband advertising in early autumn.  In the mean time, four of the UK’s top providers – BT, Sky, Virgin Media and O2 – have signed up to Ofcom’s new code of practice, set to go into affect on Wednesday.  The Guardian says the new code “dictates that customers must be given an expected speed at the point of sale.”

Cheers to getting what you pay for, and at Hamilton Rentals—your business can utilize the computer hire services of our desktop PC and laptop rental selection from the world’s top brands, allowing you to make the most of your broadband connection.

Don’t Lose your Data, Use a Back-Up Server Rental for Disaster Recovery

It’s a dangerous situation that many enterprises and large organisations face, and must prepare for.  The most recent headline of this nature: thousands of town hall records of Lambeth taxpayers’ private information are at risk of being lost because of data centre shortcomings.

The South London Press reported earlier today that if “disaster” should strike Lambeth council’s computer server—all electronic records could be lost.

The risks presented by the town hall’s computer headquarters stem from a lack of a back-up method holding copies of the records to ensure the safety of the data. Large organisations often contact us at Hamilton Rentals seeking a server rental to place in a second location as a form of insurance for disaster recovery or cloud outages.  It is a common practice by IT departments that was unfortunately overlooked in this situation.

Councillor Ashley Lumsden, Lib Dem opposition group leader, told the news source: “This report implies that things have gone backwards while technology has being moving forwards.”

According to reporter Sam Masters, the report indicated that “Ivor House was a ‘single point of failure,’ meaning if a disaster struck, there would be no back-up copies of the records.”  The report also suggested that the current state of repair of the old building presents an additional risk.

“Vital data about everything from benefits to vulnerable children to care packages for housebound people is all at risk, with potentially serious consequences,” added Councillor Lumsden.

The town hall is now looking at spending up to £4.7million in improvements to its current data centre at Ivor House in Acre Lane, Brixton.

Organisations facing similar situations to Lambeth can contact the experts at Hamilton Rentals for help. With the largest server rental inventory in the world, the organisation is suited to meet the needs of various sizes—from the enterprise to government entities.

Hamilton Asset Management further offers data centre relocation services to those looking toward a move.

Contact us to learn more.

Smart Presentations use SMART technology: Interactive Whiteboard Rental

Looking to add bit of touch interaction to your next presentation at the company’s annual conference, trade show or other exhibition? Whether you’re in the corporate world or the education sector, you’ll find good use for a 77” SMART Board 680 Interactive Whiteboard.

The attached boom-mounted, short-throw UF55 projector is located directly above the SMART Board, reducing shadows behind the user and enhancing visibility of the text, images and videos you use to add resonance and full-integration of the business or educational concepts of your presentation.

Using SMART technology will allow your company to exhibit a forward-moving approach in technology utilization—impressing current and prospective clients and also allowing for further information retention among students.

Here are the specs for the SMART Board 680 Interactive Whiteboard available for hire at Hamilton Rentals:

• 77 inch display
• 61 5/8” W x 26 1/8” H (156.5 cm x 117.2 cm)
• UF55 Projector: 4.3 aspect ration; native XGA (1024 x 768) resolution
• Mobile floor stand

To learn more about the touch screen rental options available for corporate event planners and educational institutions, visit Hamilton Rentals website.  The company has the largest IT and AV rental fleet in the world, carrying the world’s leading brands.  No matter what your hardware needs, from Interactive Whiteboard Rental to tablets and laptops, Hamilton can meet your organisation’s specific requirements.

Interested in pricing?  Request a quote and one of our sales representatives will contact you shortly.

Don’t Want to Say Goodbye to MacBook? Rent one from Hamilton Rentals

 

Sad, but true.  Apple revealed its latest laptop lineup and one staple was left out—the MacBook.

Engadget confirmed with the tech giant that the classic, affordable MacBook has indeed been discontinued.

The plastic MacBook was Apple’s cheapest laptop option, under the slim MacBook Air and the triple-set of MacBook Pros in three different sizes.

Although educational institutions will still be able to purchase the budget-friendly MacBook, individual consumers will have to fork out the extra cash for one of the company’s higher end laptops.

However, if your business is not an “educational institution,” or even if you are and don’t want to commit to the final purchase of a fleet of MacBooks, Hamilton Rentals can help you.  With the largest laptop rental fleet in the world, our extensive line of Apple products for hire include the classic MacBook wiped from Apple’s shelves.

Whether it’s a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iPad 2 that your business needs for an event, training, conference or other exhibition, we’ve got the inventory to support your endeavors.

Upgrade to POWER7 with Server Hire from Hamilton Rentals

Hamilton Rentals is the UK’s leading supplier of AV display, computer, tablet and server rentals.

If your company is currently operating on POWER6 and wants to take the leap to POWER7, you can test before you invest with Hamilton Rentals.

If you decide to test out an IBM POWER7 server, Hamilton will provide you with simple deployment with a choice of rack, tower and blade servers to meet the specific requirements of your server room.For the like-minded environmentally and fiscally conscientious small to mid size business or enterprise, these servers are energy efficient, saving costs on your electricity bills and reducing your carbon footprint for the long-term.

To learn more about try-before-you-buy evaluation in server technology, contact us Hamilton Rentals. We specialize in helping organizations achieve IT upgrades with minimum risk.
Thanks for watching, and thanks for renting.

Oracle’s Highest Performance Enterprise Server: Sun Sparc M9000 from Hamilton Rentals

When your business is operating in the enterprise, you need the best of the best, and that’s what you’ll get with Oracle’s Sun Sparc M9000 Server—the company’s highest performance enterprise server.   With up to 64 processors and 256 cores, this beast is designed for mission-critical events and demanding deployments in virtualisation, consolidation and multi-hosting.

Rest assured that the largest multiprocessor enterprise server is optimised for mission critical computing 24 hours a day, seven days a week with large share memory applications.  Oracle guarantees the M9000 will deliver mainframe reliability and extreme scalability for the largest workloads.

Here’s just a few other specifications: 

• 32 x 2.88GHz SPARC64 CPUs
• 512GB System Memory
• 2 x PCI-E IO Units
• 2 x BASE IO Cards
• 4 x 146GB Hard Drives
• 2 x Sun StorageTek PCI-E Enterprise 4GB FC HBA
• 2 X Sun x8 PCI Express Quad Gigabit Ethernet Card
• Solaris 10 OS

At Hamilton Rentals, where we provide the largest server rental fleet in the world, your enterprise business can get its hands on the Sun Sparc M9000 through several directions.

If you’d only like to try out the enterprise server for the short term, or are dealing with budgetary constraints, consider renting the M9000.  You can also rent the server as an alternative to costly support costs in the event of an outage—providing you with back-up insurance with extra capacity on demand.

Want to keep the server, but can’t pay for it all at once?  Our rent-to-own option lets you spread out your payments over a six or 12 month span.

Can’t wait, need it now?  Save money and avoid long delivery lead times by purchasing the server from us today.  You can shave off some of the cost with your redundant IT equipment and trade for an upgrade to the M9000.

To learn more about the Sun Sparc M9000 and our other latest offerings, contact us at Hamilton Rentals.

IBM Rental News: Big Blue Remains Formidable Force with Positive Profits

Our business partner and 100-year-old established IT manufacturer IBM has reported an increase of 8 percent in net income for this year’s second quarter from last’s year’s same period.

While providing an array of products and services, like the extensive storage and server rental offerings we offer to businesses who want to trial the company’s technology, IBM remains today’s biggest maker of mainframe computers.  The company reported a $3.66 billion (£2.27 billion) this year, according to the BBC, up from $3.39 billion a year earlier.

The news organization further reported IBM has increased its predictions for full-year earnings for the second quarter running.  The report further indicated a 12 percent increase of revenue at $25.7 billion.

The company accredits its growth to new signings for its services division—up by 16 percent in the quarter—a sign it says shows that companies are still spending money on technology.  We can attest to this with the increased interest in trying some of IBM’s energy efficient products like its POWER7 server line—especially by those currently looking to upgrade from POWER6.

The BBC reported a surprising drop in IBM’s shares on the results, despite the fact that the company performed better than expected.  The dip was slight and short-lived as they rose 2 percent in the hours after.

Senior Analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, Kim Caughey Forrest told reporters, “The margins were very strong and the revenue, especially in the second quarter when you expect softer revenue, makes it look like they did well in the quarter.”

Kudos to our friends at Big Blue.  To learn more about renting IBM products from Hamilton Rentals, contact us today.

Will Amazon Provide Tablet PC Rental Competition for iPad 2?

Amazon’s tablet was just one of many contenders that speculators deemed a potential threat to Apple.  Like all of the others, it wasn’t a force quite strong enough to take on the reigning tablet ruler—the iPad and now iPad 2.  However, developments by Amazon are said by some news sources to be a potential threat to Apple and Google—as the Wall Street Journal revealed the company’s plans to release an Android-based tablet by this October.

The WSJ actually sees this tablet as one to take on the iPad, with the headline reading “Amazon to Battle Apple iPad with Tablet.”  But other industry writers and bloggers like those at TechCrunch believe the tablet primarily poses a challenge to Google, but still won’t reach the likes of the iPad.

When comparing the prospective tablet to that of the latest iPad 2, you’ll see the Amazon tablet will have a 9 inch multi-touch screen, while the iPad 2 has a 9.7 inch screen; the Amazon tablet will not have a camera as the iPad 2 does; and further more, the tablet’s development is going to be outsourced by the manufacturer.

TechCrunch speculates that this could be in an effort to get the tablet out fast, and to be able to offer it at a discounted price to lure away potential iPad customers.  The companies have gone head-to-head in the past over digital books, music and mobile applications—tablets are just the next front.

Where the threat to Google comes to play is in how much control the tech giant would have over Amazon.  Typically, Google offers “carrots” to partners to maintain loyalty—those being Google apps, Google branding and early access to new Android builds.  “But Amazon likely won’t care about those things,” wrote TechCrunch writer MG Siegler, “They could be the first major player to use Android that Google has absolutely no control over.”

To learn more about how your business can utilize a tablet pc rental, contact us at Hamilton Rentals.  Whether it’s an iPad 2 or any other tablet, just let us know how we can help you.

Profit from Your Excessive IT Equipment with Hamilton’s Asset Remarketing

What would you do with surplus IT equipment? Let it sit in storage? Dispose of it?

What if you could make some money from it?

When you have excessive IT equipment in your inventory, you can seek the help of Hamilton Asset Management.  If you just want to get rid of it, we can dispose of the equipment for you by securely wiping the data from the devices before recycling them in full WEEE compliance.  But before you make this decision, talk to our expert asset remarketing team on how your institution can gain to profit from your surplus.

The commercial model of Hamilton will not only provide you with top-tier customer service, but will further reinforce the resale of your equipment and ensure you receive the return on value.  Rest assured that we will entirely wipe the equipment of any company data before repurposing it for resale.  We have the capability to erase all hard drives from SCSI to fibre channel and beyond, so you can benefit financially rather than being forced to destroy your former investment.

Whether the equipment you have is new or used, redundant or for any reason at all—we can remarket, and resell your goods.

To learn more about the offerings of Hamilton Asset Management, contact one of our experts today.  We have over 45 years experience in the IT sector—whether its logistics, data erasure, asset tracking or asset disposal that you need.  Let us worry about the equipment moving out of your business, and let your IT team concentrate on moving forward.