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.

1958 Volkswagen and Battery Time

Battery time for smartphones needs improvement. It's been said before, even on this blog.

There are a few reasons for this continuing problem:

• Power-demanding functions:
• GPS
• Bigger & brighter screens
• High-speed mobile network
• Vibration notification
• WiFi & Bluetooth
• More use
• Ever thinner smartphones

The latest iPhone is always thinner than the previous version. Users like it that way. It's elegant and it's a proof that the device does indeed contain the best technology possible. It's prestige. It would be a bold step for Apple to decide it's not going to continue the race to razor blade thin devices. Someone will continue the race though, so Apple wants to keep up.

iPhone6 Plus has much better battery time than iPhone6. The reason is size. iPhone6 Plus is slightly thicker, but also higher and wider. That increases the volume considerably and that's one thing needed for improved battery time: more volume for the battery.

I came to think of my father's old Volkswagen from 1958. It had no fuel indicator. That meant you never knew for sure if you had enough fuel. It didn't even have a trip-meter, but it did have a mileage indicator, so if you knew the fuel consumption and you took note of the mileage indicator, you had a rough estimate of the fuel level. You could also shake the car and listen. And now comes the reason for this paragraph: the extra-tank-switch. You won't find it in modern cars. Say you run out of fuel. No problem: throw the switch and suddenly you had an extra couple of liters in the tank. It's almost like magic isn't it. I suppose there were really two fuel tanks in the car separated by a valve and at every fill-up both tanks got filled. The magical switch simply opened the valve so that what was in the small bi-tank quickly flowed into the main-tank.

Perhaps the extra-tank-switch idea could help getting better (perceived) battery time. It could work like in that old Volkswagen: "you completely run out of battery, no problem, throw a switch". It could also be a switch for quickly turning off/on a number of functions in a user configurable way.

There will always be parallels between old and new technology that can be of use. 

Ref: http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/boostcase-for-iphone-6-review/

Windows 7 Support & Selfie-sticks

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 mainstream support ends this month, and that support finally ends on January 14th 2020. Windows 7 was born on July 22 2009 and it has done good service. Windows 7 became popular in the working place as well as at home. I suppose some would call it the last proper version of Windows, second only to Windows XP.

The Selfie-stick is a popular product. I would never have guessed. With most people born with two selfie-sticks, there's still need for a man-made one? I've been taking selfies with me and my wife for years and never felt the need for a selfie-stick. I see selfies as pictures taken spontaneously or when there's no one around to take it for you. Carrying around a stick for the purpose defeats the whole idea of a selfie, I think. Please let me know if I missed something about selfie-sticks.

I've mentioned protective cases a few times on this blog. My stance is that they're necessary. After I bought an iPhone6, but before I bought a protective case, I managed to let it slip out of my breast-pocket three times. The period of time was 1-2 weeks. I was lucky that it wasn't damaged, because I skipped insurance. Here's what can happen if you don't buy insurance. I bought a book cover type of case in leather. I told my youngest kid, a boy of 9, that it's an Indiana Jones type of cover, because of how it mixes masculinity and old fashion. Well here it is and I recommend it:

There is one protective case, which seems to beat them all. It's made by Urban Armor Gear and it successfully protected its iPhone6 all the way from Earth up to 101,000 ft height and back. Read about it here.

Net neutrality sounds pretty good doesn't it? You know, the Internet treating all data the same, regardless of what it is. Well, having read this I'm not at all sure it's a good principle anymore. 

To round this off I'd like to say that I'm very, very happy about my iPhone6. It takes excellent pictures and apart from all the other functionality it has, it even does voice calls :-) I think it's the best smartphone ever. Only the next iPhone will be able to beat it.


Ref: 
http://readwrite.com/2015/01/14/microsoft-windows-7-obsolescence-end-support
http://readwrite.com/2015/01/13/selfie-stick-inventor-wayne-fromm-shafted-lost-out
http://www.mytrendyphone.se/shop/iphone-6-zenus-142153p.html

Cookies and Privacy

Wherever I go on the Internet, it seems every site is eager to inform me that they use cookies. The info comes as a (often) large banner with an Ok-button. If I click the Ok-button, the banner goes away and I get a lot more space on the screen. The next time I visit the site, it remembers it has shown me the cookie info. I can thank a cookie for that, the cookie that the site created on my device with the help of the browser.

A cookie is a text-file. That means it cannot be executed. It can only be created, read and modified by a site and that's all done by the browser on the site's request. A site can only interact with (create, read or modify) its own cookies. So cookies are quite innocent then and won't breach my privacy?

No, they are not innocent! There is a company called DoubleClick (a subsidiary of Google), and probably some others, that use cookies in a way that fundamentally changes their nature. It makes certain cookies global. Through mediation of DoubleClick a cookie can turn up on any site that allows it to.

Here's an example. I have a Facebook account and I usually don't click on advertizements. However a few weeks ago I did click on an advertizement in Facebook that I hadn't seen before. The click took me to the site of a well-established online-shop. Nothing sinister about that. However, since that click I've been seeing that same advertizement on Facebook, but also on some other favorite sites. That could only have happened by means of a global cookie. I don't quite like that, because it means someone can follow my web-surfing habits.

But what if you, as user, don't accept cookies at all? Sorry, doesn't work. A lot of sites wouldn't function without them and consequently you couldn't use them, so you need cookies. Removing them after every browsing session is a hassle, but it should help. Removing cookies when you switch from one site to another would probably make it difficult to follow you. However removing all cookies means you would have to give up convenience. E.g. you would become an unknown user for every site and would have to enter your login credentials at every visit to the sites where you have a login and need to login.

There's no viable or user friendly cure other than changed rules. Global cookies would have to be outlawed or somehow made impossible.

NumberWiz Solution: 265 with large numbers

In the last blogpost I challenged all you number-heads with this sum:

Add, subtract, multiply or divide the following six numbers 2 7 25 50 75 100 to get 265.

You notice that it contains all the big numbers and two small.

In an update I hinted that 5 was a key number in the solution. 
It's also worth noting that 265 = 250 + 15. 

Now watch the solution:

265 = (50 x 25 + 75) / (7 - 2) = ((50 x 25) / 5) + (75 / 5) = 250 + 15