Technology Ramblings

So I recently switched my daily driver phone from a Samsung Galaxy S7 to the new Google Pixel 2 XL.   Here's my take on the device The overall construction and shape are excellent.  The screen is taller but the width is about the same as the S7 - so it works well in my hand.   The back and edges have a slightly textured finish that provides confidence when picking up the phone.  My Galaxy always felt slick due to the all glass vs the metal/glass mix of the Pixel.   The power and volume rockers feel very solid along with the overall feel to the device. The phone is fast.  Compared to my S7, app loads, downloads & installs, just fly.  Boot-up is quick and easy it never feels like the phone is working hard. The fingerprint sensor location on the back is very easy to reach and in the perfect "natural" position.  While it does mean you need to pickup the phone if you want to use your finger - you can just as easily double-tap the screen swipe up and enter your PI

On Oct 27, Intel announced the availability of the Optane 900P SSD.  Focused towards the "Enthusiast" market segment, this Non-Volatile Memory drive based on Intel's 3D Xpoint lithography dramatically raises the bar for SSDs in both performance and longevity. The 900p will be available in two form factors.  First is a PCIe Card in HHHL CEM3.0 form factor that consumes 1 x PCIe. 3.0 4x slot in a traditional desktop PC.  It will be available in two capacities - 280GB and 480GB. The second form factor is a 2.5" "drive" factor that utilizes a U.2 connector.  The 2.5" is only available in the 280GB capacity. In either form factor the 280GB will be priced @ $389 and the 480GB @ $599.   The specs on the 900p are staggering.  It can support 2500MB/s sequential Read, 2,000Mbps sequential write @ 10us latency and 550,000 IOPS / read or write while only consuming 14W TDP active and 5W idle. The 900P can support 5.1PB of lifetime writes, with a MTBF of 1

Here we go again.   Some MS watcher blogs have started posting articles regarding a new Surface device that they are referring to as Surface Phone or maybe Surface Note or Surface Journal. This rumored device uses a foldable screen format for what is being described as a 3-in-1 device and will be ARM processor based.  So not a traditional phone format - ergo the Note/Journal potential name. According to the articles this new device will be driven by Windows 10 Core utilizing the Composable Shell (CShell) UI codenamed Andromeda.   The articles refer to another source that states andromeda components are actually in the current RS4 17025 build. The assumption here is that Windows 10 Core may be the market name for the Windows 10 on ARM effort that MS demo'd earlier this year and that I expect to be released at the end of the current Redstone 4 branch this March. The article also goes on to state that some of these devices have actually been spotted on the MS campus in Redmo

On Oct 25, MS released Windows 10 build 17025 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead Insiders. The build itself contained some small updates to the Ease of Access settings, an option to allow UWP programs to be included in Startup, some updates to the Yahei font for Chinese simplified language configuration and then about 25 or so fixes to feedback issues.   In addition as I called out in my post on build 17017 - MS is continuing to move various UI components to the Fluent design framework. In this build it was CalendarView that is used in the clock and calendar flyout. The update installed cleanly on my test machines and seems slightly more stable so far than 17017 was.   I had been experiencing sudden black screen reboots when browsing in Chrome and so far none - albeit I've only been running the build for a couple of hours. So as my post title suggests - right now the RS4 branch is moving forward with small steps.  With all of the MS major events done for the year - we'll have

One surprise that came out this week from MS was announcement of an update the to Surface Book line of premium laptops - now called Surface Book 2. The big change was the expansion to two screen sizes 13.5" and 15" as well as updates on the i7 versions to 8th Gen Intel i7-8650U CPUs and nVidia GTX 1050 or 1060 GPUs.  MS retains the 3:2 Aspect ratio with a 3000 x 2000 Pixel Sense display for the 13.5" and a 3240 x 2160 for the 15".   The general form remains the same with a detachable screen that turns the device into a tablet.   Touch and Pen support is there - although MS does not include the pen ($99) and Windows Hello support is also there.   On the 15" you also get XBox Wireless Support. So the big performance gains are from the new 8th Gen Core CPU and nVidia GPUs.  Now with 4 cores and 8 threads there is a significant performance gain of around 40%. So these are certainly nice devices and reflective of MS continuing to push the new personal comput

Back on Oct 13, MS released what I consider the 2nd Insider release of the Redstone 4 branch - build 17017 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead users.  In effect Skip Ahead is over as both groups will now receive the same builds going forward. I am only testing these builds on two devices for now - an HP Elitebook 745 G3 laptop running an AMD Pro A12-8800B CPU and my trusty old Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet running an Intel Atom Z3740D.   In both cases the update installed cleanly.    I've decided at this point to remove several of my other devices from Insider for now.  They are all at 16299.15 - so 1709 and will stay there for a bit. If there is one trend I see so far in RS4 it's the movement towards incorporating the Fluent Design elements into the primary UI - so initially the Start Menu and with a recent Store update the Mail/Calendar/People apps. So the big thing with Fluent is the transparent theme and a more refined look around icons, fonts, highlighting, etc.   It definitel

On Oct 10 both Gartner and IDC released their PC sales research for Q3 2017.  Both firms showed yet another drop in total worldwide volume of PCs to just over 67M units.  IDC showed a 0.5% drop while Gartner showed a 3.6% drop. YTD We are at about 187M units worldwide.  That means that to meet the 250M goal I estimated for 2017 - the industry will need to sell around 63M units in Q4.  With so much much focus on new high-end phones from Apple, Samsung and Google, it may be hard for the industry to reach that number.    Looking at the US market the numbers are worse with a 10.3% drop in volume to about 14M units with a few vendors Lenovo and Asus seeing pretty significant drops of 25.2% and 22..0% respectively.  Apple also fell 7.6% Worldwide - the top 5 firms remain the same.  HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus and Apple.  As has been the trend for several years now the top 3 are gaining overall share from a consistently dropping Others category which fell 11.6% from 2016 volume. According

On Oct 8, Joe Belfiore - an MS Corporate Vice President and one time lead of the Windows Device division - effectively announced the official death of Windows 10 Mobile via a couple of tweets.. As an individual end-user, I switched platforms for the app/hw diversity. We will support those users too! Choose what's best 4 u.  and  Of course we'll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren't the focus.  MS recently announced the availability of their Edge browser for iOS and Android and also updated their Android Launcher previous known as Arrow.   So while MS has certainly developed a portfolio of apps for both iOS and Android (many of which were better than their Windows 10 Mobile counterparts).  The question now is can MS really compete and maintain any sort of brand in the mobile space. So I have an Android device running Nougat and have several MS apps installed.  But for example with Office - I reall

On Oct 2, MS announced that it will kill off the Groove Music Service and Music Pass on Dec 31, 2017 and had partnered with Spotify to allow users to transition their playlists to the cloud based streaming service. An updated version of the Groove Music app is scheduled to be released on Oct 9 that will provide a wizard to migrate your music to Spotify.   The Groove Music app will still exist but will only support playing music from your local or OneDrive libraries. Any existing Groove Music Pass subscriptions will be refunded pro-rated to Dec 31 and at that point all streaming services will stop. This announced effectively kills off MS's multiple and me too attempts to provide an alternative to Apple's iTunes.    Starting all the way back in 2004 - MS entered the Music Store business with MSN Music that introduced us to the .wma file format and the alowed PC users to play music with the then somewhat new Windows Media Player app. But MSN Music pretty much flopped and

On Oct 2, MS released build 16299.15 to Fast Ring Insiders.  In effect this build marks the end of the Redstone 3 branch and the release of the Fall Creators Update. MS calls out that they are testing the Cumulative Update feature with this release - ergo the .15 moniker - and we may receive one or more CUs by the time the public release occurs on Oct 17.   So the actual public release may be a .20, .30 or higher CU to the 16299 primary build. There was really no detail on what the CU actually addressed since the blog post basically listed the same fixes as 16299.0 The CU installed easily on my machines and from all early navigation and testing seems fine.    I'm looking forward to updating my new laptops that I'm keeping outside the Insider track.   They have the hardware to truly support Windows 10.  For my legacy machines - I'll certainly update - but as I've stated many times - the impact won't be as great.  Just as with the Creators Update (1703) I thin