Showing 31-40 of 85 results
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Much-wanted Windows 10 improvements
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/08/2016
» The Windows 10 anniversary update is out and reviews are mixed. The original Windows 10 was somewhat of a rushed release so this update addresses some of that. The Start menu has been improved but still not up to Windows 7 standards. Cortana still does a web search so that hasn't improved, it was a lot better under Windows 7 where the result was always something on the current machine. For tablet users there is a new Ink Workspace supporting pen-based applications better and will make Windows 8 lovers feel more comfortable.
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Exhausted all lifelines? Call a friend
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/07/2016
» People who use computers range in skill levels from absolute novices to advanced, but they all have one thing in common -- eventually they need to ask someone for help. Take the recent case of my Skype not working. I had exhausted my knowledge base, checked a few web searches for solutions and in the end had to call a friend who knows a lot more about networking than I do.
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Google wants your Android
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/06/2016
» Which is the world's most valuable brand? A number of them should pop into mind like Coca-Cola, Apple and Cartier. The new leader of the pack however is Google taking the slot from Apple based on the recent BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study. With a 32% increase in brand value they were a big mover since last year, while Apple dropped in value over the same period. Other IT names are in the top 10 like Microsoft at third, Facebook at fifth and Amazon at seventh place.
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LAN cable connectivity fails me
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/06/2016
» If you are an Android user then you will have heard the saying "there is an app for that". More accurately the saying should be "there are lots of apps for that", and for the most part this is accurate. With the recent purchases of some Android-based media players, I've found the app that seems to have the least variants are those that can connect to a Windows shared drive. In particular if you want an app that can connect to a shared drive and make it visible to other apps.
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Easy-to-use websites have flown the coop
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/02/2016
» I was trying to book a flight on the Qantas website recently and I realised that websites have become too busy. Consider the average traveller. They want to go from one place to another on a particular date, sometimes at a particular time, and most likely they want to come back again. For a single provider like Qantas this should be easy; pick the departure city and date, the return city and date, and a list of options is presented. You can try a test for yourself to see how easy this is. For example, you can't type in a date and the date picker take ages to appear, at least with my browser. There are some cute icons next to the date fields that I will never use and what used to be an easy task took three goes to get something back. The art of the clean, simple, easy-to-use website is for the most part lost and drowned in advertising and unnecessary options which makes them slow and unwieldy. There are exceptions of course.
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Smartphone slowdown is inevitable
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/02/2016
» The big duo of mobile phones Apple and Samsung are wondering how 2016 will be in terms of sales and they are not super confident. Apple did have a great year posting US$18.4 billion (654 billion baht) in profit, the most of any company ever. They did this by selling a tiny number more devices than last year, over 74 million of them. What they didn’t do was sell a lot more than the same time last year and shareholders are asking why. The latest versions are similar to the previous ones at least in design but Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out that global economic conditions are not good, currencies are dropping in key markets so that less can afford the newest top end units. I think that the top end of the smartphone market is saturated and a slowdown is inevitable.
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There are two sides to malware
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/01/2016
» Why do people write malware? Some people do it for fun and these people typically do so only on their own computers to see how this kind of thing works. I admit that when I was younger I tried the same thing but never let anything loose into the wild. Since then the software has become far more sophisticated. Others are just nasty and want to cause as much mayhem and damage as possible. Some do it for a cause or to highlight a perceived injustice. The group Anonymous for example are considered to be in this category. In another category are those groups paid by a Nation State to spy on other counties or disrupt a specific activity, as was revealed by the Stuxnet malware.
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When help is really a hindrance
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/12/2015
» Computer help has progressed to the point where it has become annoying. Microsoft is the master of trying to help and at least in my case, not getting it right. Users of Yahoo Mail will also know what I mean. You will be in the middle of doing something and Yahoo will refresh the inbox bumping you out of a move, a delete or some other half-completed action. Note to Yahoo, this is not helping. I can understand that Yahoo wants to get the latest emails to you as quickly as possible but I wonder how those who get lots of emails every day cope with continually being interrupted by the never-ending refresh. I can understand a drive to continually improve things but there is a point where too much help can be less than helpful, and what some consider help is a hindrance to another.
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2015 tech scene, with Hein-sight
Life, James Hein, Published on 30/12/2015
» So how did the tech sector fare in 2015?? As far as the Chinese phone manufacturers, they made a lot of ground.
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Operating without support
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/10/2015
» For most customers, Windows Server 2003 ran out of even extended support back in July but there are still plenty of people using it, including the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) where half of their servers are still running on the old but very good at the time operating system. For some, running an old operating system has no downside. What software and functionality that is running on it has probably happily been doing so for a decade or more and also in all likelihood without any problems. If the device is not connected to a public network of any kind then the risk of security breaches is also very low so missing out on any security updates is likely to have no impact. There is also no need to upgrade hardware to support a later and more demanding operating system. For some users this is a win-win.
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