Technology Ramblings

I provide monitoring and repair services to a number of properties for folks - so automation capabilities have become a big deal. Depending on any one customers budget and interest - I install security, lighting, HVAC, irrigation & water mgmt, pool and garage devices.  The goal typically is to A) provide some visibility into the general state of home and B) control key functions that can save the property owner money. Here is what I've been installing recently and my experiences with them. Security Typically for me a two vendor solution - Arlo for cameras and Nest for Smoke Alarms, Door Bell and Security system.   I chose Arlo over Nest for cameras primarily due to the battery support with Arlo allowing placement just about anywhere.  While Nest cameras are very good - their reliance on a physical power connection really limits your deployment options.  With Arlo the cameras are good, its easy to set up and the cost is reasonable.  I ofte...

In 2018 - I've used all 4 of the "major" desktop OS platforms out there - Windows 10, OS X, various Linux distros and ChromeOS.   Here is my take on the state of these OS and where we're going. Let's start with Windows.  Believe it or not the Windows brand is over 33 years old.  Windows 1.0 first released in Nov of 1985 as a shell on top of the MS-DOS operating system and a reaction to the Apple Macintosh of 1984.   Even if you consider Windows 95 - the first of the modern Windows versions you're still talking some 23 years ago.    But what has really changed ?  Sure we've moved from 32bit to 64bit and the hardware has gotten a lot better and some of the underlying components such as memory mgmt and file systems have been updated.  Most recently touch,pen and Hello support has surfaced - but from a general navigation and operation stand-point not much has changed.   When you look at Windows 10 today what do you have ?...

So it's been a several months since I've posted anything regarding Windows 10 19H1 Insider builds and that's because this falls builds have been quite boring and painful.   Obviously a lot of resources were placed on the 1809 release disaster and it wasn't until Dec 24 that MS finally released to the public.  It's was in my mind the worst single OS release issue is the history of MS. There have been a total of 12 Insider releases since my last report on 18234 in September and until recently most of those builds had little to nothing of real value and when the big improvement is an update to the venerable NotePad app - you get the drift. The most recent build is 18305 which I have installed on two devices - a circa 2018 NUC8I5BEH and a circa 2016 HP Elitebook 745G3 laptop.   In both cases MS got over the first big hump with this Insider which was being able to deploy an update in a timely manner.  For most of the fall - updates where taking 2 - 3 hou...

On Oct 2, MS made the formal release of Windows 10 1809 Update available to the public.  Like many that day I updated three machines that my family members use as their daily drivers - all of which were NOT part of Windows Insiders - so where running the April creators update.. I was lucky in that all 3 machines updated successfully.   One took nearly 3 hours - but updated.  My luck may have been due to the fact that for each - I logged in using my MS account versus my wife's, daughters and grand-daughters account which had no real data on the device expect for a few downloads. But many were not so lucky.  Soon after the release users began reporting that all of their data files were missing after the update.  From Documents, to Downloads, Photos, Music, etc.  Basically everything in their users/login folders. The issue became bad enough that MS formally pulled the 1809 update from Windows Update.  Luckily it appears as though via a KB repai...

With the Sept 24 release of Windows 10 build 17763 - MS reached the "RTM" milestone for the Redstone 5 branch.  This is the 7th major release of Windows - we had Threshold 1 - the initial Windows 10 release in July of 2015, followed by Threshold 2 in November of that year.  Since then we've been on the Redstone branch following the twice per year rhythm of releases - typically in April and Oct. Has Windows 10 improved ?  Certainly it has.  We've seen continued improvements in areas like Touch, Pen and Windows Hello support as OEMs continued to update their hardware to support it.   We've also seen more and more control panel functions move to the new Settings "app".   We've seen some improvements in stability and I argue that most of the performance improvements are the result of better hardware - not the OS.   But to me the overall UX is still a hot mess.  Some UI components date all the way back to Windows 2000.  MS sti...

Sept 12 was 2018's "iPhone Day" - Apples annual event where they announce their new devices. This year we saw 3 new iPhones - the Xs, Xs Max and Xr.  All 3 had various updates to the core technologies that make up an iPhone as screen size increases.   What we also saw was a price increase at the top end.  So if you buy an Xs Max with 512GB of storage it will set you back $1,449 + tax - so effectively $1,500+.   In a recent interview - Tim Cook - Apple's CEO stated that Apple can justify these prices because it "replaces every other gadget consumers might need".  So Tim is referring to things like digital camera's, video recorders, music players, etc. But does it really ?   And Apple has been kind of on that band wagon for years back when their flagship iPhone 7 for example was about half the price. My point here is this.  While Apple has always placed itself in a leadership position in the Smartphone marketplace and has positio...

It's been over a month since I've posted anything regarding Windows 10 - either the upcoming Redstone 5 - 1809 release or the 19H1 builds... So two reasons - first on the 19H1 side there have only been 3 builds released in the last 40+ days and to be honest they've all been kind of a yawner as MS have been focusing more effort around the RS5 release builds. I tried my first RS5 update in a while on my Dell Venue 8 Pro and I really can't report on anything - because it won't install.   I had previously been on Build 18219 of 19H1 and the Venue continued to fail to install the latest 18234 build. So this morning I downloaded the production RS4 - 1803 build and performed a fresh install - then joined the Fast Ring.   While the latest RS5 Release build 17755.1 update showed up immediately - it failed at the end of the download stage - not moving on the Installation phase with a 0x8844018 error.    To me this kind of reinforces the issues with Windows 10...