Technology Ramblings

Solid State Disk (SSD) has actually been around for many years.  Some of the first 20MB (yes MB) drives started showing up as early as the mid-late 80's.  In those days the application is many cases was focused towards early supercomputer applications from Cray, Amdahl, etc. The challenge back then was both price and longevity.  Based on RAM technologies these drives had to maintain powered states and really couldn't support one of the key tenants of disk storage which was data integrity over an extended period like you could with magnetic disk - "the hard drive". In the 90's, Negative-And or NAND Flash memory technology was had been developed by Toshiba in the mid-80's started to see their first applications is what we commonly call today "thumb" drives and SD cards. Designed for camera and PDA applications - NAND showed real promise as a storage media that was inexpensive and could support long term storage. With early NAND Flash the challeng

I've been in the IT industry now for a long time.  We used to have a joke back in 90's about having an SNMP toaster.  If you don't get that joke - then this next subject may be a little overwhelming... For the past 20 years+, various commercial and industrial equipment manufacturers had PCs integrated into their devices to run them.  They used various forms of what are called "embedded OS" from various forms of Linux, Lynx, Windows, etc.  These stripped down OS were designed to do one thing - run the app that runs the device.   In the early days these devices were often what I described as islands, you bought the tool or device whatever and never touched it.  The vendor would supply any updates.  These devices often at best had a serial port and were rarely on any kind of a modern network.    Then the devices started to be networked.  First again via serial ports and often with proprietary protocols and then finally with Ethernet.  But often those networks w

Back in November when the Threshold branch of Windows 10 was released - build 10586 - also called 1511 - it became available for both traditional PCs, Laptops and Tablets as well as Mobile devices.   So if you were a member of the Windows Insider - it was the first time that all your devices could be on the same build... At that same time - MS announced that Non Windows Insider folks - would be receiving Windows 10 Mobile sometime in Mid-January... So since then an interesting twist has occurred.   MS has performed 3 "cumulative" updates to Windows 10 Mobile based on build 10586 with a "." extension.  The most recent of those updates was 10586.63. And then on January 20, MS announced that the production release of Windows 10 mobile would delayed until late February.  Most folks think it will be longer... At the same time - PC, Laptop and Tablet users that are members of Windows Insider - started receiving builds of the RedStone branch that is planned for rel

I've owned a Samsung Galaxy S5 for about a year now as my corporate phone. It's on AT&T and is currently running Android Lollipop 5.1.1.   From a hardware standpoint the Galaxy S5 is a pretty good device, good CPU, RAM, SD Expansion capabilities.  Personally I think the camera's are a little weak but voice and data capabilities are good.  Battery is typical of most mobile devices today - just enough to make it through the day... From a Core OS standpoint I don't think that Android itself is a bad OS in fact it seems to be pretty good.  The device seems stable and quick. Adding in Google Store's amazing app portfolio is pretty good too.   There is every bit as much diversity as Apple's - and just about every app I can think of I can run. I have all 3 major Phone OS in my home - so iOS, Android and Windows 10 Mobile. Each to me has their plus and minuses.  So I've had the chance to experience each OS and ecosystem.   For android, I am seeing two

On Wednesday Jan 13, MS released the 2nd Redstone branch build of Windows 10 - 11099.   According to the Windows Blog - the focus here was on structural improvements to OneCore - MS's new core for Windows 10 that provides it's cross platform support.   As always I installed on desktop, laptop and tablet devices and as with all recent releases had absolutely no issues. Over the last few days I've only experienced 1 error and that was a pop-up dialog and some event log entries regarding the Windows Phone Companion app.   The blog post for the release also mentioned that it will be a few releases before new features start showing up.  My only hope is that MS is more forthcoming about those features than they have been.  One of the most frustrating aspects of testing all of these interim builds is the lack of consistency with which build changes are documented.   So often unless you are experiencing a specific problem on a specific platform - it's often very hard

The unlocked North/Central America varient of the Lumia 550 - the RM-1128 has started to become available via some of the on-line electronic / camera retailers.   B&H Photo is carrying this device for $149.99. Like my Lumia 735 - which I bought from B&H it is a fully unlocked "Mexican" phone.  I supports all of the North American 4G LTE Bands - 2,4,5,7,12,17 from major US carriers like AT&T & TMO as well as the 3.5 & 2.5 bands.  So it will work fine. The 550 is a Windows 10 device - and the 5x series replacement to the 635/640s' before it.  It runs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 201 chipset with a 1.1 GHz ARM Cortex A7 Quad-Core CPU, Adreno 304 CPU and 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Like the previous generation devices is supports SDXC expansion. It does use a nano SIM. The screen is a 4.7 - 1280x720 with 315 ppi resolution.  3.5 mm headphone and Micro USB port are available and it uses the same USB-Micro USB charging cable and wall socket (U

MS released the 3rd Cumulative Update to Windows 10 Mobile - Build 10586.63 to Fast Ring folks Friday Jan 8.   There was literally no announcement on the Windows Insider Blog - so therefore there is no detail on what exactly changed from 10586.36 released on Dec 17.  But obviously these "fixes" are trying to address issues with the new 950/950XL line.  But as to what they are... its a big question. As always I updated 1 x Lumia 735 and 2 x Lumia 635 devices and again as always - the install downloaded and installed without issue.  A Store update afterwards downloaded updates to XBox and Motion. Browsing around after the update - there were still a few tiny issues.  For example  in All Apps a few apps have a blank icon box.  Additionally in settings/extras - the display selection has a lower case "d" instead of Caps. I have noticed a little jerkiness to the screen with 10586.63 as well.  In the past this has indicated to me that maybe the update was not per