Windows 8, I'm in

It's been a while since I bought a Windows PC, but last week it was time for a laptop. HP Envy 15" screen, AMD-A8-5550 4 core CPU, 8GB RAM, 4MB Cache, 1 TB Harddisk, 2GB dedicated Graphics RAM, 4 x USB 3.0, Card reader, no CD/DVD, Windows 8.1. It's fairly light and quite slim. Price: 475$.

A couple of years ago, when Win8 was new, I was asked to do a backup of an All-in-One PC. It was a beautiful machine with a fantastic screen, maybe 24", but behind the outer beauty lurked a sinister or perhaps just playful ghost. I tapped or dragged here and there on the screen and random things seemed to happen. I was quite confused, even slightly humiliated. After a while I accepted that I would need help, if only to make sure I didn't erase any data by mistake. I read an instructions booklet, which was enclosed in the package. It helped me understand the basics and I went on to do a successful backup. Win8 really was different from Win7.

Win8.1 is much better. My trusted friend when dealing with Win8.1 is the Windows-button. It's marked with the Windows flag and it's beside the left Alt-button. I use it to go from anywhere to the beautiful Start-screen, you know the one with all the rectangular app-icons, and back again. I like the Start-screen.

The key combination Alt-Tab is another old chum I can't be without when using Win8.1. As you may remember it switches between currently running apps, and it can take you to the desktop. Once at the desktop, a Win7 user should feel comfortable, because it works the same as in older Win versions.

The PC performs very well. It's lightning fast! Great screen too. Only one thing sometimes irritates me and that's the multi-touch pad. It does work well, except when scrolling a browser page, using two fingers, the browser often thinks I want to zoom the page and I have to ask it to go back to standard zoom-level. It could be a bug in the touch-pad driver and will go away after some software update. Still I think this is a minor error and really I'm a satisfied HP and Windows customer. I surely recommend this PC and Win8.1.

And now comes the Wow: when in a dark room, the beauty of the backlit keyboard is astounding! Thank you and well done HP!

The above-mentioned beautiful beast:

HabitXplore is a New App

Proctele has released a new app to the App Store. It's called HabitXplore.

HabitXplore is for those who want to study their habits. You might want to know if you're doing too much of something, or too little of something. This app can also help you remember when you last did something. Here's the icon:

Get Yosemite

I've moved on from OSX Mavericks to OSX Yosemite.

I started off with Snow Leopard in 2010 and been through both Lion and Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. With Lion I had to put another 2GB RAM into my white MacBook to speed it up, but Yosemite is so quick I might as well go back to 2 GB RAM and give the rest to the poor.

It seems Apple has worked on speed this time and I like that. The dashboard first load happens so fast you hardly notice it. Returning from power-saving mode with WiFi turned off takes only a few seconds, a huge improvement. With Mavericks, I sometimes had to turn off WiFi and then turn it back on to get it working. The Dock, with all the app-icons, looks like the one on iPhone. All my favorite programs start up, except Gimp the graphics program. After downloading a new version (2.8) it worked too. Some programs I've tried that are clearly better are Gimp, Mail, iPhoto and Maps and probably a whole lot more I haven't tried yet. 

Put shortly: Yosemite is great! If you're running OSX Mavericks, it's time to switch.

Anyway I need to keep up with Apple's relentless improvements or else I'll soon be stuck with a programming environment, which can't make apps for Apple's new devices. I studied their new programming language this winter, called Swift. I like it. It's going to improve the life expectancy of keyboards: it's laconic, hence great for northern, ehum ..., viking types like me. The encounter resulted in the birth of an app, which I hope to see in the App Store next week. I'll send out a ping when it happens.

Took the lawnmower for a spin yesterday. Looked at it for several seconds before I could find the starter cord - must have been a long winter. It started on second crank, which is not bad. It's going to be a long hot summer I hope. We got them sparely in the last couple decades, but there must be a blip on the curve coming.