Technology Ramblings

On Jan 24 - MS released Windows 10 build 17083 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead Insiders. Build 17083 main feature upgrade was the addition of a Fonts section to Settings along with the ability get new fonts from the MS Store.  In addition there were improvements to Diagnostics Data Collection & Viewing, Timeline, Quiet Hours, Hello settings, UWP App Properties, Ease of Access, Hyper-V and App permissions.  The build also included nearly 50 bug fixes.   17083 is the precursor to the build for the upcoming Bug Bash scheduled for Feb 2 - 11. One key feature that will not make the RS4 branch release is Windows Sets.  MS called out specifically that Sets was taken offline as they prepare RS4 for release and will return in future builds.  More on that later.. The build did download and install correctly on my laptop and took slight over an hour.  There were a few points along the way where I thought it might fail - but finished successfully. ...

With the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update back in October and the announcement from vendors like Dell, HP, Asus, Lenovo of the availability of relatively low cost mixed reality headsets - MS was hoping to potentially spark some additional PC sales based on the Intel Core 8th Gen CPUs in Q4. The fact is it didn't happen.   Today most MR headsets are selling at about 50% of their original pricing - so around $200 and prices had already fallen to that level by the Christmas holidays.. Hopefully the OEMs managed their supply chain well enough to not have too much of a surplus.  Even Non-MS headsets like Oculus Rift amd HTC Vive sets are selling at a discount here in Jan.. Today while the technology is promising, it's still a niche product.  The only set that makes any sense to me is HoloLens - but @ $3000 for the Developer Kit and $5000 for the Commercial Kit it's well out of reach for most folks.  Plus there is really no consumable con...

PC sales for Q4 2017 were down 2% in 2017 and overall sales for 2017 dropped 2.8% to 262M units... This is the 6th consecutive year that PC sales have fallen and while better than the 250M units I estimated for 2017 - the downward trend is still there.   The top 3 remain unchanged with HP, Lenovo and Dell maintaining the lion share of the market.  These 3 vendors sold 42M of the 71M units in Q4 or 60.7% market share.  HP and Lenovo are nearly dead even in market share @ 22.5 & 22.0 respectively with Dell @ 15.2% Apple, Asus and Acer round out the top 6 and take another 15M units or 20.8% market share.  All are in the 6.6 to 7.6% market share range. The remainder fall into the "Others" category that includes folks like Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung and MS.   And even though the state of the art of the PC is as it's best in terms of CPU, RAM, Disk, Screens, along with form factor, battery life & weight- 2017 will finish some 104M ...

In recent weeks - three key vulnerabilities have been exposed with Intel, Apple and even some ARM CPUs. The first two Meltdown and Spectre are specifically focused on "speculative execution" capabilities that help modern CPUs gain performance and how they deal with memory page tables at the kernel and process level. In both cases the potential exposure is that via your browser information can be leaked about IDs, Passwords or other info.   In addition Intel CPUs specifically have had an exposure to the Intel Management Engine (IME) which is often used by IT Pros for managing large numbers of devices.   As of today, many major hardware, OS and even Intel themselves have produced patches to attempt to mitigate the exposure.  But overall this is a pretty good black eye for Intel.    With IME for example some of these exposures where known for years - but Intel never did anything to correct it - until the noise got loud enough. One of the ...

Chromebook laptops have been around for several years now - available from HP, Dell, Asus, Acer and Samsung these often entry level laptops running Google's ChromeOS offer an alternative to traditional MS and Apple devices. For many use cases - they can offer a user effectively "everything they need" in an extremely light and maintenance free OS where all services are on-line.   From the Chrome browser and add-ons, Google Office, Drive, You Tube, Mail, Calendar, Maps, Play Music & Movies are all available.  Add to that 3rd party apps like Spotify, Instagram, Netflix, Lightroom, EverNote and others and for many folks it a really great alternative to a Windows PC or Mac. Goggle themselves recently updated their Pixelbook which while seemingly pricey with a starting price @ $1000 actually offers an excellent experience.   As so while a great laptop solution, if you wanted to go Desktop and use a big monitor and traditional keyboard/mouse - your choices ...

On Jan 11, MS released Windows 10 build 17074 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead Insiders.   The build was blocked for AMD based devices - so I could only apply to one of my test devices - my trusty Dell Venue 8 Pro and while there was some expansion of insiders who received the Windows Sets feature - I did not get it on the Dell. Build 17074's main focus was on continued updates to the MS Edge browser.  There were also updates to Settings with expanded support for Storage and Sound as well as some updates to Input methods and internationalization with  "language packs" now available via the MS Store app.  And finally there were updates to Quite Hours and Near share. The build installed cleanly on my Dell tablet and overall seemed a bit more responsive than the previous 17063 build.  In addition the Settings crashes I was experiencing with the tablet have gone away. I really don't use Edge - or the features MS is promoting within - like ePub, etc - so not ...

Over the holidays - I did some experimentation with cord cutting - that approach of streaming content over the internet versus utilizing broadcast, cable or satellite providers to reduce cost and provide flexibility on the types of devices you can watch Live TV on. Like so many of you - I've been streaming some level of content for years.  For example if you rent a movie via DirecTV - you are actually streaming over the internet versus having it sent via down via Satellite.   I've also been a Netflix subscriber for years and have had a good experience whether the app was embedded in a TV OS or via a streaming device - like Apple TV.   But this time I wanted to experiment with Live TV services - like DirecTV Now and Sony's PSVue.. So first I needed a streaming device that could support both platforms.  I chose Roku's Streaming Stick+ that I was able to pick up for $49.   Next - I subscribed to both Sony's PS Vue and DirecTV Now services....

I've been a Windows Insider since the program's inception back in Oct of 2014 practically a year before the initial release of Windows 10 and have effectively run every build of Windows 10 through all known branches including the current Redstone 4 branch and am currently running build 17063. And while there has certainly been progress in the platform over those 3+ years now - Windows is still a hot mess... So a lot of folks might challenge that and say - "how can you say that ?  Windows 10 is the best Windows ever..."...   And I say yeah...but... So I'll use a scenario that kind of describes a part of the issue and I think you'll see why I say this... Over the holidays - I decided to upgrade the SSD on my laptop from a Samsung PM871 - an OEM mSATA to a Samsung EVO 960 NVMe drive.  So that meant a fresh install of Windows 10.  In this case I started from the Fall Creators Update - so build 16299.15. While the install from USB was painless and pretty ...