Technology Ramblings

On Friday Feb 23, MS released Windows 10 build 17107 to Fast Ring insiders.  There was no Skip Ahead or 176xx builds for RS5 released.   The build had two focus areas.  First was a small change to Windows Update to support a PC connected to AC power to defer sleep or hibernate before an update completes.   Second the build contained 13 fixes.   The build installed quickly and easily and shows that RS4 is very nearly done.   I had estimated that the RS4 release build # would be in the 17120 - 130 range and I think that is still accurate.   In relation to this was the announcement of the availability of the 3 Always Connected PCs from Asus, HP and Lenovo.   Since some of these machines will be available as early as March 9 - my assumption would be that they will come with RS4 and so we may be even closer to release than I thought. As you know Always Connected PCs have two unique attributes - first is the use of Qualcomm ARM CPUs and the second is integrated LTE capability with

On Feb 14 - MS released Windows 10 Builds 17101 for RS4 and 17604 for RS5 Skip ahead. The RS4_RELEASE branch 17101 contained some updates to Emoji's and a new power scheme for workstations but was mostly about Bug fixes with around 30. The Skip Ahead RS_PRERELEASE branch 17604 - effectively began the RS5 branch - that will release this fall.   I tried skip ahead with the Fall Creators Update RS3 -> RS4 branch and saw little benefit.  So this time I'm sticking with RS4_RELEASE builds. What this does indicate to me is that RS4 - the Spring Creators Update is about a month out.  I'm guess the release build will be in the 17120 - 130 range. Again I was travelling when the update released - so not going to be too critical of installation time - but with that said - the post download stages did take quie some time. With so little in new features / capabilities in this build there is not a lot to comment on.   So now it's just a waiting game until RS4 releases.

IDC recently released their data on Tablet sales for Q4 and all of 2017 and while the overall market shrank around 8% to around 49.6M units, MS's Surface line sale fell some 19% and dropped MS from the top 5 vendors.  With only 748,000 units sold in Q4 and just about 3M sold for all of 2017 - MS's market share is some where around 1.5% Compared to market leader Apple which sold 13.2M iPads in Q4 alone and some 44M in 2017 with a market share of 26.8% - iPad outsells Surface at nearly an 18:1 ratio.  So what's happening ?   As we all know the original concept of the Surface was to promote a new personal computing paradigm that focused on high portability with good computing power and graphics along with touch and pen based input methods.   MS's goal was to create a platform that OEMs would want to emulate and try and boost overall PC sales which have been dropping now for 6 years in a row.   And so while the OEMs did take some Surface concepts and turn

On Feb 9, MS released build 17093 of Windows 10 to Fast Ring Insiders.  This mid Bug Bash release contained some 50+ bug fixes along with a couple of small improvements to Gamebar, Graphics Mgmt for multi GPU, HDR Support, Linux Subsystem, Edge Printing and Input.  MS also renamed Windows Defender in settings to Windows Security and allowed for better mgmt of Diagnostic Data. For Windows S users MS is promoting alternative authentication based on Windows Hello to try and reduce or eliminate passwords.   If you have a Hello ready system there is also some improvements to eye tracking capabilities.  Finally there was some continued improvement is MS's Bluetooth stack to better pair devices quickly. My Venue 8 Pro is still down for repairs - but updated my laptop to 17093 in the typical 90+ minutes.  I was travelling with slower WiFi - so not going to be too critical.   When I look at the features listed above there are few if any I really use.  I will check out the HDR capabili

On Feb 2 IDC released its preliminary Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker data for Q4 2017 and all of 2017. Overall unit sales for Q4 2017 were 403.5M units some 6.9% smaller that 2016's 430.7 units.  For all of 2017 units sales where 1472.4M a 0.1% reduction from the 1473.4 sold in 2017. In what has become the pattern that advertisers have dubbed "iPhone season" - Apple in Q4 sold 77.3M units, a 1.9% decline from 2016's 78.3M units but still outsold  Samsung who saw a 4.4% decline in 2017 to 74.1M units versus 77.5 in 2016.  The top two's combined 154.1M units carriers 37.6% of the total market.   As has been the pattern for the last 18 months or so, the next three top selling OEMS are Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo.   The three sold 41.0M, 28.1M and 27.4M units respectively.   Of the top 5 only Xaiomi had a sales increase - nearly 96% that allowed it to leapfog Oppo into 4th position. Looking at all of 2017, Samsung is still the overall market leader with