Technology Ramblings

Here we are again nearing the semi-annual release of the latest Windows 10 version called 19H1.   I'm currently running the latest 18351 build on two devices - a 2-in-1 laptop and an Intel NUC and to be honest - there's not a ton to get excited about or report on.   Sure there's some continued improvement to Settings, Menu, Pen based apps, game support, multi-language, and really important stuff like emojis (really ?).   But will you really notice a huge different from the 1809 release ?   In a word - No. The big question will be can MS get 19H1 out the door cleanly and without the PR nightmare they experienced with 1809 and file deletions.   I will have to say that they have improved the update process in that for both my test machines they can prep, download, install and apply a new build in under an hour.  But that's on newest generation Intel Core i5 CPUs with 16GB of RAM and NVMe.  But in comparison to my Pixelbook it's still a joke - where I see a n

Its been a while since I've posted anything in regards to the Smartphone and PC markets - so here's how we finished up 2018. Smartphones have continued their decline as Q4 showed the 5th consecutive quarterly decline in sales.  Q4 2018 ended up at 375.4M units according the IDC Mobile Tracker down some 4.9% from 2017's 394.6M units. For all of 2018 Smartphone sales were slightly over 1.404B units a 4.1% decline from 2017's 1.465B units.   The top five OEMS are Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Oppo and Xaiomi.    On the PC side Q4 2018 saw a decline of 4.3% to 68.6M units vs 2017's 71.7M units and for all of 2018 - PC sales saw their 7th consecutive year of unit sales decline to just 259.3M units vs 262.6M units in 2017 according to Gartner - a 1.3% decline.  The consolidation in this market continues as the big three Lenovo, Dell and HP now sell some 63% of all PCs.    And while MS has seen increasing unit sales of their Surface line in recent years - in the US MS ho