Technology Ramblings

So I switch back and forth between multiple desktop OS and recently have been exercising Linux Mint 19.1 "Tessa" on a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 3647 desktop. The first question with Linux distros in my mind has always been can you utilize it as a daily driver and be able to perform all of the tasks that you would normally.   In my case it's an emphatic yes.  The OS is extremely fast even on an 4th gen Core i3 with 8GB of RAM and Intel graphics.  Compared to Windows 10 running on the same system it's night and day. The Cinnamon UI version is very intuitive to navigate and feels very natural.   While MS does not support a Linux version of Office - the distro includes the LibreOffice suite and to be honest the quality of the Office365 Web experience has gotten to the point where you have to question the need to install Office at all.    With that said - there are  two MS apps I use that are not part of our corporate E5 O365 subscription - ...

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 Pixelb...

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 year...

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...