Technology Nerd Thread

I can't really explain it. It's not like one is necessarily "better" than the other. Android does a million and a half awesome things, no iTunes would've been cool, transferring media was awesome. The photo editing apps leave a lot to be desired, not that I couldn't FB message them to my ipad and edit I suppose, but I like to click and share on the go.

I hate to admit this, but to and aging codger like myself, the polished experience of IOS is just easier to get accustomed to. I'm not looking forward to the price tag, and now I'm asking if I really want the 6 plus, and shelling out $500 for a 128 phone. But I take a million pix, and load tons of music so I guess it will be worth it.

DSLR looks cool, tho I suspect I'd need a class in how to use one and professionally edit photos, use lenses etc.

On a site note, I saw a 4k TV in the store this week. I nearly pee'd myself. Not just at the price, but the image quality. Damn! Amazing stuff.
 
Shouldn't need much in terms of learning to use the DSLR. But yeah probably need some decent editing software, Photoshop Elements should be OK.

Issue with 4K is the media. No real 4K mass media available yet. But wouldn't hurt to get it now and be ahead of it.
 
Finally settling down and playing with my long-researched and debated laptop purchase/Christmas present: a Carbon X1 Thinkpad. As I posted a while ago, was looking for a light ultrabook which could double as a desktop replacement. Got a 2nd generation model with a Haswell i7, 8gb ram, ultra HD 14" touchscreen, fingerprint scanner, and LTE mobile broadband card. Two downsides: discreet graphics and RAM is not upgradable (soldered to the motherboard). Absolutely loving it so far though , the build quality is superb and she simply flies. I'm still getting used to the trackpad and trademark ThinkPad 'nipple' as well as the adaptive LCD function keys.

Was really all over the board on which direction to go after selling off my trusty old first gen 15" macbook retina a few months ago. Purchased a i5 desktop to do heavy work on and tried everything from the Toshiba Chromebook 2, to the Surface 3, to the $99 ASUS windows laptop Staples sold on Black Friday. None worked out for my mobility needs.

The last piece for me is a new tablet. Kicking myself really hard for not jumping on a Nexus 9 I saw for $283 on Amazon. Now considering the Samsung Tablet S. Want something light, semi-powerful, but the key is a top notch screen at least 9" big. Will be using it primarily to read magazines, Pocket articles, and watch movies. Ideally, I'm hoping to spend no more than $300. Any suggestions?
 
Nexus 9 is a beast. Hard to find a good big tablet for under 300 to be honest though. Maybe the old Nexus 10 if anyone is still selling that. Or one of the old Transformer Pad. Like the TF701T. Amazon has the tab pro 10.1 which rocks for 320 now. I picked up a refurbishes Note 8.0 and I like it a lot. It's nice.

X1 Carbon is the ****. It's like my dream laptop. I just can't justify dropping over a grand on a laptop again.
 
Yeah, the X1 had been high on my list for about two years but the prices were always just insane. I found a refurbished unit on the Lenovo outlet for $1200 and then got them to knock off another $100 and extend my warranty after the first machine they sent me had a defective battery. So I ended up paying $1100 with no tax and the additional warranty. Lenovo (really, IBM since it's a Thinkpad) has the best customer support I've ever dealt with in my entire life. Dedicated X1 support line, overnighted my replacement unit from Atlanta with virtually zero hassle.

I paid $2000 for my old Retina that needed service twice (including a new screen) and was already dying after two years. So I feel like I got a pretty good deal.

What have you heard about the NVIDIA Shield? I've been seeing them for low/mid 200s and they have a great screen and killer processing power. A consensus gripe seems to be the build quality. I have a Note 4 so I worry that an 8 incher like your Note 8 wouldn't represent a huge difference for me. Same with the NVIDIA and the Tab Pro 8 (which does have a baller screen, though.)

I found a 32GB S Tablet on Cowboom for $313 which I am debating, but might just wait to see if Samsung drops another new device in February. Or see if the Nexus 9 continues to drop in price.
 
Windows 10 makes me glad I switched completely back over to Windows on all my machines. Then again, I like Windows 8.1.

And that HoloLens.

Satya Nadella working wonders over at Microsoft so far.
 
Having used Windows 10 developer, it's not wowing me yet. It's cool. But I like 8.1 more.

One thing I hope they do (or the manufacturers do) is ditch ****ing secure boot. I have a 7 machine that came out a little bit before 8 so I beta tested 8 on it and stuck with it for speed. But many windows 8 machines require secureboot through a locked UEFI to boot into Windows. Just totally unnecessary. If I'm having catastrophic windows issues (not booting, booting with malware that is disabling my ability to access windows recovery, etc.) I would have to go into my bios, turn off secure boot, activate legacy boot, and do all that to use my Hiren's Boot disk to get into a mini windows to clean things up. THen do the opposite to boot back into windows normally. At least give an easy option to boot via legacy for people who fix computers rather than make our jobs longer and more annoying.

I see no real benefit of secure boot other than making it harder to dual boot an OS

Sorry, nerd rant over.

I think 10 is a softer fix to 8. 8 like vista was a big jump, maybe too big for most. While 7 smoothed out issues that Vista had, 10 really only seems to improve UI over 8.1 and some more tablet features. I need to run my desktop sometime soon to see when they do the next round of updates for 10 preview what changes.
 
Hawk said:
Windows 10 makes me glad I switched completely back over to Windows on all my machines. Then again, I like Windows 8.1.

And that HoloLens.

Satya Nadella working wonders over at Microsoft so far.
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The 'free for one year' for Windows 10 is a head scratcher.
 
Krgrecw said:
The 'free for one year' for Windows 10 is a head scratcher.
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Not at all. Microsoft wants people on it's latest platform and they want them to like it for customer satisfaction. They want people to adopt it and hopefully gain a positive feeling then hopefully adopt tablets and smart phones. It's only free for 1 year because new computer buyers will be getting with their computers, and Microsoft unlike Apple makes mmoney off the OS. The fact there isn't a small fee attached like with 8 lets you know from a PR standpoint how disastrous 8 was for them.
 
Took advantage of a Staples 50% off clearance PC Coupon to get a satellite C55 with an i3 processor and 6 GB of ram for 130 bucks after MIR. 4 COMPUTERS!!!!!!!
 
One thing I hate about new PCs, is that you have to use the function key to use the f keys. I use F5 way more than other things. At least they could have left F5 blank.
 
So Meta I saw this and thought of you.

HP at some point or another released a super small computer similar to the Mac Mini. Comes in at basically all the same specs as the Mac Mini, it's an i3 instead of an i5, but it's a 1.9 GHz i3 3MB cache dual core to the 1.4 GHz i5 3MB cache dual core on the Mac Mini. Aside from that the only advantage I see to Mac Mini is thunderbolt. And the HP is smaller and lighter.

Not saying it's a good thing, just remembered an old argument we had while playing around on the internet
 
Hawk said:
I'm surprised Krg hasn't been in here talking about the Apple Electric Car.
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I'm glad they're in the mix. Though I heard self-driving. Which makes more sense IMO. The more companies in the mix to advance us in the war for fossil fuel independence the better.
 
Hawk said:
I'm surprised Krg hasn't been in here talking about the Apple Electric Car.
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Those things are Years away.

Although I was going to post a few weeks back that Apple had the best quarter ever and Samsung and Google can't sell phones but that's nothing new :)
 
sturg33 said:
Electric cars have been a money pit since their inception. Surprise Apple is going in that direction
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They met with Tesla last year about purchasing tesla. I guess its cheaper to spend 1-2 billon on r&d than $20 billion or whatever Tesla is worth today to purchase them
 
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