Posts by Matt_payne666 489 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Aug 2009
I'm assuming Z13 is a 13" laptop, although physical size appears to have been left out of the review... according to the photo, there is a fair bit of chassis all round the keyboard so its either a massive chassis for a tiny screen, a comedy keyboard, or is it just really far away! maybe this is not the laptop you are looking for....
oohh.. the temptation to liken the authors skill at finding a photo of the laptop hes actually reviewing, to his ability to install an OS is quite high... but I wouldn't do that!
in all seriousness, less ranting and more photos of the laptop would have been nice, maybe some more details too - is the trackpad a haptic or old style clicky pad for instance?
Massivly on the fence with this but see a use so well prepared for all the downvotes to come pouring in...
This wont work for everyone and I expect it would run alongside traditional thick versions of windows, but its a choice...
Google has shown the chromebook has legs, this is just a Redmondised version.
Azure and AWS, etc shows that virtualising and cloud hosting server hardware is viable.
Everything is Subscription, so instead of my yearly OVS i pay a different subscription.
Fixed broadband speeds are going up and up, mobile broadband is getting cheaper,
Newer mobile hardware will have embedded broadband.
It has the possibility of extending hardware lifecycles, but to be honest, I think the 3yr cycle has long gone. A 4th Gen core processor with even a SATA SSD is more than capable of most general purpose office desktop/laptop tasks.
connecting over a VPN to a secured cloud based client will help with both physical security and DLP...
Problem with ol computers, after 7 years they are way out of warranty and more prone to hardware issues... but with a virtualised environment, issue another thin client and away they go - minimal downtime.
there will be the odd dead spot for mobile users, but this is the case with phones and chromebooks too...
Environmental, yes if I dont replace all my machines every x years thats less machines being made and less being recycled, as for power... more efficient use of centralised processing could offset the cost of connecting and idle client hardware, but i think energy savings will be minimal just as mentioned previously the point of emission has been shifted to someone else.
Not just on the reg, but its all over mainstream media...
Company policy bans entertainment app on company device - whether its leaking company secrets to the Chinese/Americans/albainians/or mersea islanders, or its just a massive time sink...
My work done allow installing unapproved software on its assets, i dont see why this is any different- Its not something I have an issue with or even considered an issue...
Phones, laptops and tablets, etc are not expensive - everyone has their own, so why put your personal crap on the work device anyway?
If I was in incharge of Gov issued phones/tablets, they would be MDM'ed to the nth degree... no app store and the minimum needed for them to do their jobs.
Yes, Mac OS never fails to be better than Windows...
My M1 mini needed updates when I unboxed it... Then out of the blue Apple announces the death of Profile manager - in 3 weeks time!
so after Apple Depreciating Profile manager, I cant update the OS as it will disable that last remaining slice of Mac Server.
but even with updates disabled I get a prompt in the top right that I have to dismiss every time I log in.
Apple Configurator too, just works*
*when it feels like it, with many a force close/server restart when it decides to just hang.
and as a side note - Windows 11 runs faster and the battery lasts longer doing comparable tasks on my 8GB i5 Macbook12 than Ventura does...
All Operating systems need updates, all software can be flaky
the bezels are that big! https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/vislab/stallion considering the usage, i'd have expected something a little less heath robinson.... but hey ho...
what really got me was the rendering punch behind it all... 36x 10 year old desktops and graphics cards?? napkin maths here, but 3 RTX6000 cards would have similar VRAM, but massively faster, couple that with some modern 12 core xeons (keeping costs reasonable) and you could equal the power and slash the energy & complexity requirement...
The cost is bonkers... but not in the brave new world of EV's
We just sold a 2020 Petrol Evoque, monstrously unreliable, but a solid, classy, lovely thing to behold... the next car was to be EV, but...
Over her in blighty, £40k just about gets you a range of cars - Hyundai, Kia, VW... without any options plus none of which are anywhere close to the Evoque. I know the new retail was £10 more, but these Electric cars should be in the £20k range, they are 'nice' and all perform the functions of transportation equally as well, but add a few niceities to the cars and they suddenly become almost £50k a few years ago, that sum bought a premium badge, upper mid spec car that was a bit special...
2020 base petrol Astra - £19k
2023 base electric Astra - £40k
in 2020 a 5 series BMW was £38k and thats a lot more car than an astra!
Im well and truly on the spectrum, not in the mild sense and fully clinically diagnosed in my 40's
its a broad brush so cant speak for the rest of them, but if I was asked that question, the answer he gave would be so far down the list of replies...
but then im also not interested in kids and even cute young teachers are not really acknowledged in that way - my kids are their age!
Us Aspy/ASD types can function in a very neural typical way and many of us do not have any sort of criminal urges!! So also chalk me up as another that sighed and rolled his eyes at another criminal suddenly being diagnosed as Autistic
These instant diagnosis also grind my gears... from consultation/referral to diagnosis took several years for me being an adult and all via organisations i had to chase and contact myself... i maybe a cynical old git, but al these criminals that 'only recently' were diagnosed cant all have been petitioning the various medical teams for years, the system can be gamed so I feel they are about as honest as the whiplash cases that used to arise after an accident...
I work in a cluster of schools and the amount of laptop screens that are damaged by people leaving a pen on the keyboard, or closing the screen with a wadge of paper bristling with paperclips and staples, in it are astounding!
but these are the same people that invariably walk about with the power lead in the socket and wonder why their laptops fail to charge one day...
do you stand up, walk to the TV and change the channel, or do you use the remote??
I have a meeting in a bit, Ill do that from the summer house, but instead of shivering in the cold, I have preheated that zone and turned the lights on, without having to let the cold into the main house...
but saying that... Ive not barked that command into a computer... thats just weird!
Im a busy user of my google assistant - TV, Lights, Vacuum, zoned heating, remote controls, device in every room, in the car, etc and I love the simplicity... i run out of anything, i just tell google to add it to my shopping and my fleshy assistant will then collect that on the next shopping run, dimming the lights or turning everything off when I go out, adjusting the temperature in any room or shuttin off the lights in the summer house when the kids forget!
but... the few times i have tried using an assistant on a computer i feel daft! its wierd! much like voice calling on a computer, it just feels wrong.
the idea of extending search accross local, network and cloudy file repositories I'll take that, but id rather do that by tyoing into a search box.
Who Pays? we pay!
Bought a Brand new Evoque last november - along with its SIM&data plan... not enough data for any usefulness, but not quite enough data to make it through the month on a couple of times... Ive had some OTA updates to the dash and infotainment, but im sure its phoning in with all manner of telemetry to use the rest of it
I really want to see something at the cinema, but at home I have a nice big screen, decent surround and sub for LFE, everything is tuned, calibrated and no neighbours to bother.
Something new and loud, bring it on! but I just cant stomach paying more than the Bluray to watch something old, that while nowhere near what the cinema can give me, my home experience is more than adequate...
If tickets were closer to a fiver for an old film, then yes Id visit with a few mates...
4K displays arent cheap?? im not sure where microsoft are buying their TV's from these days, but whereever it is... they are getting ripped off!!! Currys have a 50" 4K TV for £320
Id hazard a guess that most new TV's are 4K, not because someone has demanded the spec, but because there seem to be more 4K units than Full HD these days.
I do see the argument that lower res&higher framerate will be a reasonable trade off for spending less for the casual gamer.
but I cant see the software houses discounting the titles for people with lower spec hardware, so the saving becomes moot after youve bought a few £70 games
Can be sold for 'research' market research?
Pseudo anonymised?
No right to delete?
Reasonably secure?
The value of movement data for 60-80% of the population? Someone will be making money there!
I had reservations, now I'm pretty sure I'm not installing, but other than the paranoid and reg-readers (I wonder how big the Venn diagram overlap is on these two demographics?!)
I can see pretty much Everyone else will be installing it...
It maybe custom, which is a shame and in my mind daft. but the SSD will well outlive the console... Ive had less SSD's fail on me than spinning disks, even had a bunch of consumer ones in a RAID on a production HyperV server, after 2 years they were still 98% health - 4 years later one is still the main drive in my home server.
as for easy to replace a console drive? im not sure about the XBox, but the PS4 is a user replaceable part.... it just slides in the side, no funny screws, seals or firmware.
We started using wifi last millennium! I remember being at a trade fair, we were running Nortel kit with a similar 1mbs speed, even Apple weren't wireless back then!!!
If I remember it was somewhere around £1.2k for the pcmcia card, the access point was a similar amount and also needed It's own pcmcia card!
It was magic sharing a dial up modem over wireless at home though!!!
Plenty of phones do have internal OIS It's been about for at least 6 years... certainly on the iPhone 6 and upwards, the Lumia 920 had it and most mid-tier android phones these days.
Binning off ois i suppose allows for a more robust module and i guess would be marginally smaller/allow a larger sensor for same footprint.
Software stabilisation is getting really good.. the go-pro hero7 video is scarily smooth
tricking assistants isnt particularly new... wasnt there a TV ad a few years back that kept waking up XBoxes, or something...
with the effort needed to successfully pull off this attack, Proximity, knowing which assistant is enabled(or not) voice matching (even with AI assistance) the end result - unless spooking someone for the lol's, is a pretty meh amount of access to a device - a possible phonecall to a premium rate number? but that would probably be worth less than the time invested... maybe you could get it to open a door - but then you would need to know your target had an enabled lock and then, a brick and window would be easier...
I know - proof of concept and all that, but I use google quite a bit and the information I can get out of it - knowing how and where said data is - is pretty inconsequential!
Ok, so looks like they are taking the Android/iOS approach, sandboxing everything... pros and cons to all that doing away with the registry and forcing UEV of sorts onto the user also isnt a bad idea, but... the name has to be a clear change from Windows - to the uninitiated Windows is windows - be it XP, 7, ME, Vista, 10 - there is a familiarity that people expect - RT, S, Neo all sound like the familiar evolutions of the same comfortable experience so people will get wigged out when they cant load stuff, or cant copy and paste, save things to desktop or any manor of ordinary everyday tasks that are now changed.
Make it different and call it something different so the user expectation is managed. then - once its there, FFS just stick with it! dont can it after 18months... it takes a while for things to settle and people to warm to them.
yep.. support... well, my 2011 Macbook pro, last OS update is the one before Mojave...
It wont update due to my graphics card.
My 2011 Panasonic Toughbook - same CPU, etc... running Win10 1909
I needed to install Apple configurator on the Mac - not graphically intensive, but I cant download as my OS is too old. - solution, buy a new Mac
or borrow a new mac, log in and purchase the app through the store...
then on my old mac, it will allow me to download and install from the store, the latest older version that will work.
Old Macs are no better, no worse and certainly not more magical than ol PC's of the same age
Its never going to be as good as a real camera with a decent sized sensor... but what it is, is better than nothing, or better than the ok camera that was on the last phone you had.
Ive a Panasonic LX100 - a great little camera and it takes photos that are head and shoulders above my S7 camera - the 'feel' of the images, portrature especially. A smartphone certainly cant aproximate background blur as well as real aperture blades produce it, but HDR, low light and ease of use, the camera phone will outshoot the real camera a lot of the time...
DxO reviewed the Xiaomi note 10 which uses a 108mp samsung camera module and it looks pretty darn good for a camera phone!
the sample photo - its not a staged publicity shot, but looks like a hasty snap at the booth, use the camera properly and I expect it will produce much better results
oohh... thats got the brain thinking.... add some gyros, accelerometers, lasers, ir and temp sensors etc... think of the beautiful stats!
trigger ferocity
adhesive deployment velocity
tip to source distance
deployment angle
adhesive at tip temp
adhesive at material temp
glue viscosity target
jesus, im getting a hardon at the possibilities!!! may need a slightly bigger LED!!
I had an XPS rugged laptop as a replacemet for an aging CF-30 and it was a delight with a fast Core2duo (P9600 possibly) so fast, with a decent resolution screen... but just not as solid in any way as the Panasonic...
Thats now long gone and Im rocking a Getac V110 which is ace! you could barely tell its a rugged from its performance, it is chunkier than a normal 13" laptop, but no bigger than a mid range 14"
But I still have a CF-31 for when the going gets real dirty! (and a FZ-M1 tablet!) cant beat Panasonic for sheer strength - and bulk!! :)
I totally agree with your insight, I too thought that Facebook could go the way of myspace, AOL, friends reunited, MSN Messnger, etc... but its just so ingrained in so many users lives that I cant see anything bringing it to its knees... you cut off one head and it will grow two more....
Id have to agree here, been with them for the past 3 years now... not quite the cheapest, ive not had to call them much, the call centre is UK, but on occasion ive had a long wait...
They allow the use of your own equipment, supply static IP for a sensible price and are in general as good as everyone else...
I managed to haggle a good enough discount on my last renewal so best of a bad bunch I suppose!
I don't see the hate for cloudy storage...
I rotate between about 7 different devices depending on my need, all my documents and photos are stored on onedrive - on each device default save locations are onedrive with files locally synced for hot folders and files on demand for cold folders... it works... no matter which device I grab I have all my data at my fingertips... I dont have to worry about getting drives out of a safe, syncing them with what I hope is the most upto date machine im using - I used to run owncloud, but without colocating anther machine im back to a single point of failure... coupled with my upload speed which is significantly lower than what microsoft offer!
I have an offline cache for all my data - which I transferred to another machine the other day and that came down at line speed, yes it took a while, but thats what going to bed is for!
I suppose there is the chance that microsoft will just fold one day and all my data will disappear... but I abandoned a box of physical photos at an ex's many years back - they are long gone, its an arse, but not the end of the world!
Maybe i'm missing something here, but surely using MDM is the correct way to monitor and control device usage - and to control and monitor usage it would be necessary to Manage the Mobile Device so any interference is MDM. Privacy concerns abound, but thats the rub when you give someone else full control of your device.
One of the reasons Daughter has an android is the fact that we have a choice of MDM management solutions, that she cant disable, that works across all the software and integrates with the other devices that she is allowed to use - which are all managed via a single pane of glass.
With the restrictions that Apple has on software running in the background and interacting with other applications wouldnt that be the only way round the restrictions as well as preventing the user from just disabling it (as one could do with all the MDM (Apples included) uptill a year or so back).
It is fun to have the latest shiny shiny, but realistically its just not needed... PC's, Phones, Internet speed, for average Joe its mostly upgrading for sh1ts and giggles...
As the chap above points out - Haswell or above Core i series CPU SSD and a slug of memory, VS current gen - yes there is a speed difference (mostly due to NVMe SSD's) but its not so great... same with phones, iPhone 6, Galaxy S7 four years on and they are fine... replacements are down to aesthetics or batteries.
These days Im replacing laptops because warranties have expired or there is budget to do so... not because i need to!
I'd like a telephone that I could also use as a camera...
Well, that's just madness... thats two wildly different useage cases! here have two separate devices...
I think extendable screens will be great and with any luck reliable and cheap enough in the next few years... A Psion 5 sized device with a fold out keyboard and 12" screen would make for an excellent tool.
But they have developed and deployed a miniature tracking device....
while in house IT may not be to blue chip standard, they did manage to find enough skill somewhere to bring this project to fruition - if the data tracking module was designed and built by the charity, then one would assume the knowledge would be there to use a SIM that would have some controls on its use...
If, and i expect this is the case, the tracker was bought in, then during the sales and training for the unit someone should have impressed on the security features of the product and supplied details of validated carriers and sim types.
Then... well, im no bird expert, but I would expect that if one of my subjects had failed to move for a few days that it was probably not in a good way... and after a week of no movement Id have probably written off the creature - prompting the closure process for that particular tracker.
Its unfortunate, and a learning process, but these things happen...
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