Showing 1 - 10 of 14
EU demands Apple play fair
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/06/2022
» It looks like the Apple-specific charging cable may be a thing of the past with the European Union demanding that all smartphone makers use a universal USB-C port for wired charging by 2024. The same rule will be applied to many other electronic devices like tablets, cameras, headphones, handheld video game consoles and e-readers. In the future, laptops will need to follow the same rule.
Fujitsu in first big WFH move
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/07/2020
» - As predicted, Fujitsu provided a great example when it announced the permanent closure of half of its office real estate in Japan. They will instead have 80,000 workers working from home permanently. This is a huge redefinition of work culture in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. Called the "Work Life Shift" campaign, Fujitsu is to study data on how employees use offices, with a view to giving them more tools and options to work from home, at hubs or be more mobile. This will end the habit of employees commuting to and from offices. It also indicates the allowance of a higher degree of autonomy based on the principle of trust, Fujitsu announced.
WFH causes a rethink of sales
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/06/2020
» - I love a good marketing vs predictive analysis battle. Lenovo is guessing the current work-from-home trend will be good for PC makers. This is on top of the orders for laptops that went through the roof as offices closed and staff were asked to work remotely. Sales in Western Europe for example jumped 55%. My organisation just had me take my PC home as they didn't have enough notebooks to go around. Lenovo are betting that if people are working from home on a more permanent basis that will mean more PC sales, predicting 25% to 30% growth in the next two to three years.
Got those work from home blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/05/2020
» Working from home is fine if everything is working. I use a two-monitor set-up with one for work and the other for home use. The work monitor reverts back to home use when the end of the day comes. Both monitors run off a Display Port connection from each of the graphics cards. Last week, one of the monitors decided to stop working. At first, I was thinking of a quick way to get a new monitor but after a bit of reflection, I plugged the non-working one into an HDMI port on my home computer and it worked just fine. Thinking it was the cable, I ordered a new one but when it arrived, the monitor still didn't work with the Display Port so it was obvious that port had stopped working.
A tangled web
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/12/2019
» Yes, it is the time of year where we see how well I did at predictions for 2019.
The world knows where you've been
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/01/2019
» A reminder for those operating in the digital world. This includes the internet, your phone, social media and basically anything in the public sphere. You can all but guarantee that everything you post online is eventually available to everyone. It doesn't matter what promises your provider might offer -- and maybe they're even being as honest as they can be -- eventually your data will turn up on a public server somewhere. The golden rule is simple: if you don't want everyone to see something, then don't post it anywhere on public networks.
Microsoft Paint might be fading
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/08/2017
» What is the one program you can count on to be in Windows, apart from say Minesweeper? Microsoft Paint. It's the poor man's drawing tool and screen capture tool where it is as simple as Alt-Printscreen, Start-Run MSPaint, CTRL-V, Crop Marquee Select Crop, CTRL-A CTRL-C, Switch to email and CTRL–V to get something from your screen into an email (or anything else).
A smooth watch with Android
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/04/2016
» I just took delivery of the Android based Neo X8-H Plus media player from Minix. Plugged it in, booted it up and I was up and running. The first thing I noted was that unlike all the Linux based devices I have used in the past, LAN access was simpler. All I needed to do was provide the base IP address and all shared directories were available. You can run the device as a pure Android 4.4 device or use the Minix shell. This means that once you plug in your Google password, you can install Android apps and use them while sitting in front of your TV.
Windows 10 sales decline
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/03/2016
» Microsoft's Windows 10 was always going to be somewhat of a "Hail Mary" as far as PC sales were concerned. In recent analysis from IDC both PC and notebook sales are expected to be lower this year but only at around the -0.5% mark. If governments and organisations suddenly decide to all upgrade to Windows 10 then this could move into positive territory but we will need to see what happens this year against predictions. The free upgrades didn't help hardware sales either with the obvious result that replacements are deferred. Smartphones and tablets continue to be blamed for poor sales but the general global economy is a better source to assign cause and in reality PCs and notebooks are still the staple of business users in offices.
Unconcerned China hacks the iCloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/10/2014
» Apple was temporarily enthused that their iPhone 6 was going on sale in China since this has been a reasonable marketplace for them in the past. Then it was reported that China state-supported hackers were actively implementing a so-called man-in-the-middle attack against Apple's iCloud which would give them access to people in China trying to connect to the iCloud.com server. This attack replaces the certificate used by the customer and allows monitoring of user names, passwords and activity.