Archive for the ‘tech’ Category

screen resolution oddity

It befuddles me a little why people would want a mobile phone screen above High Definition resolution.

Even at Full HD – and many laptops arn’t even reaching that yet – there’s plenty of definition for the eyes to see, especially at the 5″-6″ screen size range.

Its not like you can multitask very well on these screens; nor is one likely to be carrying any media above FHD (you can, but storage is still a limiting factor even with microSD expansion).

windows 10 here?

Notice this little guy next to the Dropbox icon this morning:

Win10Icon

Mouse over says ‘Get Windows 10’.

What’s going on? Is it released? Isn’t it still in Technical Preview?

Some Monday morning excitement 🙂

 

reaffirming my love

I love my *original* ThinkPad keyboard (not the new chiclet stuff). I’ve said it before but I just felt like saying it again.

I will mourn for a long time when this X220 meet its demise someday – and I’m afraid that someday maybe soon 🙁

Its a melancholy day.

microsoft, make this and I’m yours

Latest BUILD conference have shown up many interesting progress with Windows 10. Depending on where you stand, the Empire is either striking back or the Force is awakening.

If Lumia comes out with a phone of:

  • 720p / 1080p (why waste battery on more pixels?) 5″ screen
  • PureView optical image stablization camera
  • Enough horsepower to have Continuum run like a business machine (i.e. Word and a few tabs in Firefox)
  • An external (mini) HDMI
  • Removable battery

I can see myself using this as a phone on the run and as a desktop when I’m back at home.

And if it can power this screen like a Surface 3 – I’m all Microsoft’s in a heartbeat.

IMG_20150413_063431

(Pre-release Surface 3 demo at Microsoft Store)

inbox

Wow! Got an offer to use Google’s kind-of-new Inbox, whilst using Gmail iOS app. I feel so special 🙂

Inbox is a little weird. There’s a ‘7’ appearing on the app icon – presumably indicating that I’ve got 7 unread messages – yet in the app I cannot tell which emails are part of these 7.

Maybe the paradigm is different. Maybe it means it doesn’t matter that I can’t tell which ones are unread. Maybe Inbox will show me what is important without needing me to be aware which emails are unread.

I can see how this works if new emails come in, but I’m a bit jittery about forgetting emails that I’ve purposefully left unopened. Let’s see if this new paradigm changes my habits – hopefully for the better!

 

surface-esque Android tablet

It looks like these guys are coupling Chinese hardware superiority with Western design sensibilities. Basically customising Android to behave like Windows on an ARM device, yet with productivity build into the hardware like a Surface. Interesting!

Three questions in my mind:

  1. Will Windows 10 leap pass these guys’ effort in one swoop?
  2. Are the days of paying for premium Android tablets over?
  3. How wise is it to hitch their wagon on Android?