The MacBook; Don’t Believe any Negativity

So it seems by reading the many reviews of the new 12” Retina MacBook that your either going to love it, or hate it, without much room in-between. By most accounts, the single USC-C port and the new mechanism on the keyboard seem to be the biggest points of contention, with the Intel Core-M processor getting a few mentions. Well before you decide those arguments are enough to sway your decision one way or the other, read on.

First thing, you cannot argue with how convenient this machine is to use because of it’s size; it’s really thin and light. This makes it very portable, and equally easy to use on your leg or on a coffee table. Right now I have it sitting on my leg while I am watching TV and writing this review. Yes that’s right I am writing this entire piece on the MacBook, using Apple’s Pages to compose it. Pages seems to be a very capable and easy to use word processing program, and it’s included with the MacBook.

Which brings me to the keyboard, I have read where some say that typing on this all day will make your fingers sore because of the short travel of the butterfly mechanism under each key. Well I am pretty sure that if you treat it like a conventional scissor mechanism keyboard with longer travel, it might get tiring on your fingers. But the real question is why are you trying to type on a butterfly keyboard with the same pressure that you would use on a scissor style? One of the things that make us human is the ability to vary the force at which we do something. You wouldn’t exert the same force to lift a piece of paper that you would a 25 pound weight, so why are you typing with the same force?

There are other points to the keyboard as well, first of all there are individual LED lights under each key, rather than the light bar that illuminates most other keyboards. This results in less light leakage around the keys, and a more uniform appearance to the backlighting. Also for a machine so small, the keyboard is full-sized, which makes for a very nice typing experience. (Did I mention I was typing this on the MacBook?)

Now the single USB-C port; simply put, on a machine like this, it makes perfect sense. The computer is built with diminutive size in mind, and by eliminating ports, Apple was able to achieve this, and if you think about it, it is really not an issue. I have a MacBook (unibody 2008) a MacBook Pro (2010) a MacBook Air (2015) and this MacBook (2015), and I don’t have anything attached to any port on any of the aforementioned machines, except for the power cable. Now yes, I do miss the MagSafe port for power that is on the other machines, I have to be careful because if I bump the cable on this MacBook it will not pull out, the computer is hitting the floor, but that is my only complaint. Even when I travel, I don’t usually connect my memory card and external hard drive to my computer to transfer images; I found that when I do, I forget about them and usually end up tugging on one or the other when I move the computer on my lap. So if you are someone that usually connects multiple peripherals to your notebook, that’s something to consider because you’re not doing that here without a dongle.

Ahh the dongle, something else to remember, right? Perhaps, but if you’re like me and your full-frame DSLR uses Compact Flash cards, you’re carrying one anyway for the card reader; most laptops don't have a slot for CF cards. Even if you don’t you still need a cable to plug an external drive in, so it’s simply adding one (I always keep a USB-C cable in the case for the MacBook)

Now about that performance thing, well that’s really up to you. I must say I don’t like ill-performing machines, I have a Windows tablet with an Atom processor in it, and I am not really happy with it’s performance. It is basically slow, and that’s even on Facebook games, something that I don’t feel any machine built in the last 2-3 years should be slow on. This MacBook plays those same games with no slowing, no hiccups whatsoever, it just works smoothly. Now I don’t have a benchmark suite here to run this machine on, and really that doesn’t much matter to me. A computer can do good (or bad) on a synthetic benchmark, how it performs in your hands is what matters most to me.

Price? Yes you are going to pay for it, but cutting edge technology is rarely cheap. Is the MacBook a value, well that would depend on the purchaser. There is really nothing to compare it to as far as size and weight, if you’re going by raw processing power or onboard storage, well that might be a different story. In the end it boils down to is it worth it to you; a Rolex and a Timex both keep time, the value of the price difference between the two is up to the consumer. 

So in my opinion, the MacBook is a great computer, and I am glad that I did not dwell on all of the negative reviews that I read, and focused on the positive. Yes there are some things that will take a little bit of getting used to, but with progress comes change. For those old enough to remember the first portable mobile phones, they were the size of a landline, and you carried them in a bag with a battery that did not last that long. Then we got hand-held sets that were still large, but had decent transmit power and a self-contained battery. As phones got smaller so did the keys (sound familiar), and the output power dropped as batteries got smaller, but we learned to adapt. 

The MacBook is not so much of an adaption as a purpose-built machine; it’s designed to be very thin and very light and it does that splendidly. If you’re looking for thin and light with a few more ports, then the MacBook Air is a better choice. But if you want the ultimate in portability, the thinnest and lightest notebook out there, then the MacBook is for you. In the theater that it’s designed to perform in, it is an A-List machine!

Windows Technical Preview (Windows 10) on Dell Studio 1555

I have just installed the Windows Technical Preview (Build 9841) on a Dell Studio 1555 (Late 2009 model). Here I will detail my experiences with the new software on this machine.

First, about the computer.
Dell Studio 1555
Intel Core2Duo P8600 2.40GHz
4MB RAM
128GB SSD
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 discrete graphics
1920x1080 15.6" panel.

If you want to try out the Technical Preview for yourself you can get it here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview  Remember this is a technical preview, and Microsoft will warn you about this but it is worth repeating. Being a preview it is not recommended to be used on a production machine; it should be used in a virtual machine, or on a computer that you do not need for everyday use that meets the system requirements for installation. Remember as well that your recovery partition of your hard drive will not be active, so if you want to go back to your previous OS, you'll have to do a clean install from recovery or installation media. Also being so new you will be using the drivers built into Windows (which are pretty good by the way), or drivers for Windows 8.1 or 7. I have some Windows 7 drivers on here from Dell (the ATI card and the touchpad) and they work just fine. As stated below these extra drivers were not required for installation; Windows detected all hardware and installed appropriate drivers during initial installation.


Installation of the software from .iso file was no problem at all. Everything on the computer was detected by Windows, including the wireless adapter; basically it worked "out of the box". Upon first boot the resolution defaulted to 1366x768, but before I could even get to the Dell site to download the native driver for the video card, the display updated to 1920x1080, nice!

I installed Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Sea Monkey with no issues. Chrome was blurry appearing at first; changing the option on it to run in compatibility mode for Windows 8.1 and disabling display scaling for high DPI monitors solved that problem. This is a similar issue that occurs in Windows 8.1 so I kind of expected it.

One issue I did note was that there was no scrolling with the touchpad, and no option to enable it using the default driver. I installed the Dell driver for the touchpad and now I have scrolling capability, but I cannot turn off tap-to-click. Also I cannot get to the touchpad properties by right clicking the touchpad icon in the system tray and selecting "Touchpad Properties", it just doesn't work. You have to go through Control Panel>Hardware to access those functions, or Device Manager. Also the "Click to Change" function on the Dell Touchpad tab flashes as if it wants to open another window, but it does not.

The "charms bar" will not appear when placing the cursor at the top right of the screen, even though that option is selected, but pressing the Windows Key + C will bring it out.

I have not seen any error messages yet, and other functions such as sleep when closing the lid work fine. I can adjust screen brightness by the keyboard, but brightness adjustment is listed as "unavailable" in the settings menu.

In general the Windows Technical Preview is quite responsive on this hardware. Everything loads quickly, and programs open fast as well. Boot times are low and it makes this 5 year old machine perform as well as a new machine. I am quite pleased with the responsiveness of the OS.

More to come as I use the software.

10/4/2014
High DPI scaling is still a bit off on Mozilla Browsers, so I had to go into default.css.dev and change the scaling from -1 to 1 to make things look proper on this monitor. Of course I could have changed the default scaling for Windows itself, but I like the larger display boxes for My Computer and the like.

10/5/2014
Decided to try more robust software than simple web browser, so I installed Photoshop CS6. There were no problems during installation; no messages indicating that I was installing Photoshop on an unsupported version of Windows or the like.

Photoshop performed as expected for a computer of this vintage, there were no errors of any kind when doing tasks such as image rotation, level adjustments or applying filters. I was able to open multiple images to edit, and save/save as worked flawlessly.

Also installed Dashlane, a password manager that I use, with no problems. It installed extensions in all the browsers that it supports and works as intended.

So far so good; I have not had any errors using the Windows Technical Preview.

10/6/2014
Everything is still working fine, no errors of any kind to report. It works a lot like Windows 8.1, but the touchpad does not create gestures that affect what you see on the screen, which to me is a good thing. So far it works much better on a laptop that Windows 8.1 did, in my opinion anyway.

I did play a few games from the Start Screen, which now appear as tiles on the Start Menu. All of these games functioned flawlessly. This particular laptop is not touch enabled, so I had to use the keyboard for the games, which was no problem at all.

10/7/2014
Windows Technical Preview is still going strong, no errors from Windows itself. I have had a couple of Flash errors while playing online games; this just may be a case of Flash not playing well with the new Windows. I kind of expected little nuances like this, as Windows is a new platform and developers have not had time to work out everything. Besides since this is a technical preview and not a release candidate I wouldn't expect a lot of changes to 3rd party software when they don't know what the final version will be like exactly.

10/11/14
Skipped a few days because there really is nothing to report! Windows Technical Preview is functioning flawlessly, and with the exception of those minor things such as the inability to turn off tap-to-click, there really are no issues. Nuances such as these are to be expected in preview software; this is really noting different than what I experienced in the early days of Linux distributions, so it's really no problem at all. I'm confident that all of these minor annoyances will be corrected in upcoming versions of Windows. Besides this is a 5 year old laptop, and really I am impressed that the new Windows runs so smoothly on here.

11/10/14
Haven't updated this blog in a while because basically everything has been fine. No issues, no errors, but there has been a change, Windows Technical Preview has been updated to Build 9860. The upgrade process was very easy; I was presented with a dialog that stated it needed to update Windows Preview, and that the computer would restart several times during the upgrade, which it did.

As far as I can tell all of the files that I had on the machine (Downloads, Documents, Pictures, etc) remained intact and unharmed. The few applications that I tried tonight after the update (it just completed 4 minutes ago) worked properly; with the exception of Firefox. It seems some of the text characters are jumbled, going to try to re-install Firefox to see if that corrects the issue.

11/13/14
So I attempted to update Firefox; first by simply re-installing over the existing installation, then by remove and re-install, but nothing worked. Come to find out it is a global issue that several testers have experienced with the update. Running Windows Update, and installing all of the available patches for this build fixed the issue.

Get your old Gmail back

If you have logged onto your Gmail account you may have been presented with the "New" inbox, that includes tabs with labels for different conversation types. The default tabs are Primary, Social and Promotions. You may prefer the "old" way of viewing important and unread conversations first, followed by ones that you "starred" and then everything else. Simply clicking on the "Settings" gear icon and selecting "Configure Inbox" only gets you to a pop-up that allows you to enable or disable certain tabs, but by doing this your inbox still does not look quite right. There is an easy way to get your familiar inbox back.

Start by clicking the gear icon in Gmail, then click the "Settings" option, then click on "Inbox" along the top selection area. Under "Inbox Type" select "Priority Inbox". Then look at the other options on the page to ensure that everything is as you want it to be. There are also other inbox types listed, so you can try the different ones to find the inbox display that suits you best. Be sure to "Save Changes" by clicking the button at the bottom, to confirm your choices.

Upgrading a Notebook HDD to SSD

Considering upgrading your notebook's Hard Drive to an SSD (Solid State Disk)? Wondering if the cost is worth it, or if it is an easy proposition? Well the answer to both of those questions is a resounding Yes!

An SSD in a notebook computer has several advantages over a traditional spinning-platter HDD, one of the biggest is of course the speed boost. In my particular notebook that I just upgraded (a Sony Vaio VPCSE23FX/S) the speed difference is incredible. I measured the boot times both with the HDD and the SSD, and there is quite a difference. With the HDD, it took 55 seconds from the push of the power switch until the log-on screen appeared, then an additional 70 seconds until Windows was completely loaded to a useable desktop (the blue circle near the cursor disappeared). After the installation of the SSD, the boot time from pushing the power button to a useable desktop, including typing the password was reduced to 28 seconds total! Quite a difference.

Another benefit of having an SSD in a notebook is no moving parts, so it is much more shock-tolerant than a traditional HDD, and they consume less power, as stated in this OCZ SSD Guide. Upgrading to an SDD is exceptionally easy, below I will explain how I did it.

Before you begin, it's a good idea to make sure that all Windows updates are installed prior to beginning the cloning process. It's not unheard of that an update can cause unintended behavior on a Windows machine, and you don't want to have an error occur after the HDD swap, and not know if is an update that is causing the issue, or something wrong with the clone. Also be sure to empty the Recycle Bin, as you intended to delete those files anyway, and if you have to copy them over in the cloning process, it will just add time to the procedure.

The first thing you will want to do is create a system image onto an external HDD just in case something does go awry during the process; besides it's always a good idea to have a working backup of your system. You can use the tools built into Windows 7 or 8 to create a system image, or use the utility in EaseUS Todo Backup, to create the image, which is also the same software you are going to use to clone your existing HDD.

Once the image is created, connect your new SSD to a USB port on the notebook using a SATA to USB adapter, and then open up the EaseUS program. Select "Clone" from the available choices and follow the prompts to start the process. Be certain that you are cloning the internal HDD to the external SSD, and also be sure to check the box "Optimize for SSD". SSD's need to be "aligned" at 4KB for the most efficient operation, and even though your existing HDD may already be aligned at 4KB, it never hurts to be double-sure. The exact procedure including screenshots can be found here.

The cloning process can take anywhere from 1 to several hours depending on how much data you have on the source disk. So once you start the process, sit back and relax and let the software do it's job. When it is finished, you should have an exact, boot-able clone of your existing HDD, ready to be installed into the notebook. Simply remove the existing disk from the notebook and install the freshly cloned SSD and boot it up.

Now there are a couple of additional steps you should do depending on your situation. The first is make sure that none of the utilities you have installed on the system attempt to defragment the SSD. SSDs do not read data in the same way as an HDD, so defragmenting the SSD is not necessary, in fact it can reduce the lifespan of an SSD since the operation causes unnecessary read-write operations to occur. So any tune-up utility (common in AV Security Suites) should be modified so it does not attempt to defrag the drive. Also if you have the Windows Task Scheduler set to perform defrag, disable that task.

You also want to make sure that Windows is utilizing the TRIM command on your SSD. Unlike a traditional HDD, simply marking areas as useable for rewriting is not enough for an SSD. The blocks in an SSD must be empty of data before it can be written to again. As the drive fills it would need to rewrite blocks that have been used previously and contain data, so the drive would have to perform an erase and then a write operation to those blocks, causing the drive to operate slower. TRIM is a command that allows the OS to inform the SSD as to which blocks are no longer in use, and thus can be wiped.  This wiping of the blocks occurs before any data would need to be written there again, helping to maintain the drive's speed. It is very easy to check if trim is enabled on the drive, simply open a Command Prompt with elevated (Administrator) privileges and issue the following command: "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" (without quotes) if the result is 0, then TRIM is enabled.

Also depending on your original system drive, you may have a recovery partition on it, and this can consume several gigabytes of useable space on your SSD. Since SSDs cost-per-GB is still higher than that of a traditional HDD, you probably have a smaller SSD capacity than you did on your HDD. Unless you have a notebook with 2 HDD bays and intend to use a second HDD for data storage, you want as much of the SSD capacity available as possible. To reclaim that space, create recovery media from your notebook vendors program, then you can delete the recovery partition and use the media to restore your system should you have the need to. To delete the recovery partition, I used EaseUS Partition Master, to delete the recovery partition and reclaim the space. This article explains exactly how to delete a partition and recover the space by adding it to an existing partition.

That's about it, the longest part of this whole operation was the time it took to clone the disk. I did have to delete my recovery partition, as it was consuming over 100GB of my new disk, and I wanted that space for my use. I did create the recovery media, and I also have the original HDD, should I ever have a SSD failure, I can put the original disk into the machine. I had no errors of any kind during the process, and now I have a very fast machine, that is more resistant to shock, which is perfect for the environment that laptops often find themselves in.

Redgage, you get paid for content views. I have some photos posted here. Use this link to signup: 
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How to make Firefox Mobile identify itself as a Desktop Browser

Firefox Mobile has recently been released for the Android platform, but on my Toshiba Thrive tablet it insisted on identifying itself as a mobile browser. My tablet has a screen resolution of 1280x800, which is more that some netbooks, so I wanted Firefox to act as a standard browser. After doing a Google search for the subject and not finding anything I could use, I set out to do it myself, and it's pretty easy. All you need to do is download the add-on "Phony". Once you do that, go to the Preferences page of Firefox Mobile, and under User Agent, change that from Default to Desktop Firefox. That's all there is to it!

Picasa Thumnails Stop Displaying after upgrade to Android 3.2

On my Toshiba Thrive, I noted that the thumbnails for the images I have in Picasa Web Albums stopped displaying properly after I upgraded to Android 3.2. I was able to get them working properly again, and this is how I did it.

Open the gallery.
Then go to Apps/Settings/Applications/Manage Applications. Select the All option
Scroll down to Gallery
Select Force Stop
Select Clear Data. You'll get the dire warning about everything is going to be deleted, respond OK
Restart the Gallery. The blue sync circle will start running at the top, and the thumbnails will reappear. They will link to the pictures as they should.
I rebooted the tablet afterward just to confirm it would survive a re-boot, and it did.

If you have a Toshiba Thrive, and you want to interact with other Thrive users, have a look at The Toshiba Thrive Forums