| Don is a friend from the days we both worked at the same engineering firm. We were best man at each other's wedding, and even through we now live far apart, we continue to keep in touch 35 years later. To start off the new year, I thought I'd let you listen in as we chat by email about geeky stuff.
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I can relate to this computer reviewer's reluctance to purchase a new computer for herself -- why purchase something that's known to have flaws? "I want all the things, but also none of them" at http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/07/being-a-reviewer-has-made-me-dread-gadget-shopping/,
- Don
So true. It is due the vendors' drive to make laptops thinner and lighter, and so too many compromises are made. Remember when laptops came with everything! -- DVD drive, floppy drive, spare battery slot, PCI slots, even a remote control.
Last week I gave in, and bought a shiny new laptop, literally shiny: HP Spectre X360 with a machined aluminum body, to replace the Lenovo Yoga 2, whose RAM[soldered onto the motherboard] became corrupt just three months after the warranty ended. The HP has 2.3GHz i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB solid-state drive, backlit keyboard, 360-degree-tilt touch screen, three USB3 ports all powered, full-szie HDMI and miniDisplayPort, and SD slot.
I can get a replacement motherboard from Lenovo for US$950; with the Lenovo Authorized Repair Center's labour charge [and conversion to CDN$], the repair is estimated to cost around $1500 for a $1000 laptop. I've since found that there are places strip laptops and resell the parts that still work. From them, it would be US$300, instead of US$950 that Lenovo wants. I can do the labour myself.
- Ralph
Is Intel and their Ultrabook standard to blame for loss of functions? RAM capacity has been stalled for years. My 8 year-old (+/-) laptop is maxed out with 8GB RAM. It's hard to find a new laptop with more than 8GB RAM. None of the mainstream PC companies are catering to laptop power users.
A 256GB [solid state] hard drive is also painfully small. Are they trying to force us to store our data on the cloud? (Yes). An excellent Samsung 1TB SSD is about $480 now -- still uncomfortably expensive, although I recall spending $1000 for my first 70MB hard drive.
- Don
Is Intel's Ultrabook standard to blame? Short answer, yes.
Longer answer. It is a reaction to Apple, who looks for ways to differentiate itself from Windows. Apple began with targeting the education market, then tried colorful plastic cases, then nice industrial design, and most recently minimalism -- some might call it 'anorexic design'.
Apple's approach worked until about a year or two ago, when the rest of the industry leapt ahead and now it's Apple who peddles furiously to keep up with the latest cell phone, computer, and OS trends. Look at how badly iOS functions lag behind Android, and how Apple was last to market with a phablet.
Both Apple and Microsoft-Intel are always looking for ways to raise prices. Apple does it by appealing to the BMW-wanna-be crowd, and so charges its premium. The other way to make more profit is to cut the cost associated with hardware, as Apple does through minimalism; Intel's thinner laptop design copies the Apple excuse to cut out hardware.
Components cost $$$, and Apple's latest reduction in cost is the implementation of that single USB C port that does triple duty as power connector and video connector. So, four hardware components (2 USBs+video+power) reduced to one, leaving the consumer stuck with paying $79 for (and carrying along) the missing universal adapter (also overpriced by Apple, deliberately) to make the USBs, video, and power work simultaneously.
Microsoft and Intel are effective monopolies (as is Apple in its area), and as monopolists they fume at the low computer prices brought about by the horror of competition. Most of the laptops I bought my kids during high school were in the $300-$400 range -- complete with a free printer-scanner thrown in.
Microsoft and Intel in the past looked for ways to bring prices up to the MacBook range, but failed. The worst example was the truly awful UMPC; more recently, the Surface series is offering consumers laptops at engineering workstation pricing, what with the top-end SurfaceBook costing $4,000 in Canada.
I am starting to see a trend of BMW-wanna-be-ism among Windows users, and sowith Ultrabooks Intel has a winner. People want thin and light computers after being spoiled by thin and light cell phones and tablets. Mr and Mrs Average Consumer doesn't know what functions are missing, anyhow.
As for RAM capacity, it been stalled for years. Limiting laptop RAM to 4GB or 8GB partly is to save power, as more RAM takes more power as it needs to be continually refreshed. It's hard to find a new laptop with more than 8GB RAM, as most mainstream PC companies don't cater to laptop power users. Workstation class laptops go to 16GB.
Yes, 256GB is painfully small for a hard drive, because it is effectively 156GB after the byte-rounding, with the space taken by Windows and the restore partition, and after programs are installed. Good SSDs reserve another 10% for bit failure.
-Ralph
More on the evil new touchpads: the managing editor of Engadget has a review on the HP Spectre X2 at http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/16/hp-spectre-x2-review/:
"Too bad the touchpad isn't nearly as refined [as compared to the keyboard]. To be fair, when it works it works well, with smooth enough scrolling and precise cursor tracking. But it doesn't always work. I wasn't always able to get the pointer to go, and I frequently found myself accidentally rearranging pinned browser tabs. Worse, there were times when I swiped my finger across the large touch surface only to find that it wasn't responding. Usually, a little persistence would do the trick, as would detaching and then reattaching the tablet. But it shouldn't be that way. Fortunately, I think this is just the sort of problem a firmware update can fix."
Here's another reviewer essentially saying the touchpad on a new laptop is a complete, utter, and infuriating failure. The write rationalizes the horrible touchpad design as being "fortunate," because it's "just the sort of problem a firmware update can fix". Then she ignores her own observations, and concludes that the laptop as a "fine runner-up."
Keep an eye out for other laptop reviews. I think they'll say the same thing asEngadget: the laptop is crap, but they recommend it because it is among the finest pieces of crap on the market. No one wants to say "Boycott new laptops until touchpads are fixed."
- Don
Reviewers don't want to lose the free flow of hardware. If they write a proper review with negatives, they would get cut off.
Tech writers seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance. PC World was mocking Firefox for taking so-o-o-o long to get a 64-bit version of their Web browser out the door, but then admitted that users would find no difference from the 32-bit version -- except that some plug-ins no longer work. Do these guys ever read back what they write?
I find that the trackpad on my HP Spectre X360 is much better than my decommissioned Lenovo Yoga 2. But not as good as the one on my very old LG netbook!
- Ralph
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[Later.] I pried apart my new HP laptop and found that its SSD drive can be replaced. It uses the M.2 form factor, which is a lot smaller than regular SATA-based SSD drives. Amazon.ca has a Samsung EVO 500GB one for $261 or the fastest model Samsung SM951 for $500.
PC World recommends getting M.2 drives that use x4 PCIe with AHCI and NVMe technology, as it is many times faster than SATA -- assuming your computer supports the faster standard. What I might do is wait until the one-year warranty is over, and then replace it. By then, they'll be cheaper, too! On the HP forums, they warn to make sure you get the right physical interface: some M.2 cards have one notch, some have two.
- Ralph
I got this email from SpiderOak today. This company does cloud-based storage. You load their encryption/decryption software on your PC; your data is encrypted before it leaves your PC; the company never knows your password (assuming that they haven't installed a backdoor on your PC) and can't read your data. It's a great concept.
They allow sharing of selected on-line directories with people you trust. The idea sounds good, but my wife and I couldn't get sharing to work (we gave up without trying too hard).
It sounds to me like they're having financial problems: "As you know, a company can't survive on a free product." They are threatening me to not continue protecting my data: "Upgrade to one of our monthly or annual plans so we can continue to protect your data."
I guess this should be a warning not to entrust the only copy of your data to the cloud.
- Don
It's true: free is a bad business model. I first went with SugarSync, because they had the cloud storage functions I needed that Dropbox lacked back in the early days. But then SugarSync forced all free users onto a paid model. By then I didn't care, because I had scored 23GB free space with Dropbox and they had finally added the functions they were missing, like the ability to create an encrypted link to a single file.
The good thing about cloud storage is that there is no lock-in. Files can be moved to a new provider in minutes.
I also have 50GB free from Box, which is supposed to provide industrial strength cloud storage, but is not as convenient as Dropbox. One of the magazines I write for asked me to use Box, but horror of horrors: when I placed files in a variety of folders (for organizational reasons), the files disappeared together with the folders. So I abandoned Box.
I use Dropbox for three things; no, four things (as the writer of Proverbs likes to say):
- Secondary, off-site backup for some crucial files
- Large file transfer to clients
- Automatic transfer of photos from my Androids to my desktop (very nice!)
- As a replacement for the awful networking Windows provides. For example, when I take screen grabs on a different computer (like a Mac or a tablet), Dropbox immediately places a copy on my desktop computer. It is near-instant, because it uses my LAN.
BTW, I would never use encryption. I've heard sufficient horror stories of problems with encryption, where people lose their data because they forgot the password or for some technical reason that prevents access. I just make sure I don't have any private data public that could be stolen.
- Ralph
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"In game development, the first 90% of a project is a lot easier than the second 90%."
- Tim Sweeney, Epic Games, founder |
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The title seems odd, given that for most of Joseph Gerber's life he didn't have to choose between difficult choices. It's the other meaning of the word that David Gerber means, in that Joseph Gerber challenged himself to solve difficult engineering problems.
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