Tag Archives: Computer

Gadget Review: Surface Pro 2

Posted by Steve on October 30, 2013 2 comments

Ok so one of the benefits of finding a job again is that I have income again! Which means I can afford to get some of the things that have been needing a refresh. My laptop, for instance, is my main system that I do most of my photo processing and ….pretty much everything else on. It’s an Asus republic of gamers behemoth laptop that I bought back in 2009. (hey, in computer years, that’s ancient!) It’s served me very well and I still use it for all sorts of home use. The problem with it is that it’s giant. Yeah I know it’s a laptop, but it’s big. Way too big to actually take places and be mobile. I have been planning to replace it as a home system with a full desktop that I can update as needed for gaming and general home use, but that means I still needed a laptop.

Today’s tech trends seem to be leaning towards the tablet types, and I love my iPad for it’s portability and ease of use…but I can’t run Lightroom on it. Yes, I know I can process pictures on it, to an extent, but I can’t really do all of the things LightRoom allows me to do. So running native Windows apps was very important to me, but I liked the idea of a portable tablet.

Enter the Surface Pro 2

I wish Microsoft knew how to market this device. It really is an amazing piece of tech, but it’s just not getting the market share it deserves. For starters, it’s not an iPad replacement. I still use my iPad all the time for general browsing at the couch or in bed. The iPad is lighter and much simpler to navigate. (Not to say that Windows 8 is complex, it’s just different, and I bet it would be easy to adjust). No, the Surface is a laptop replacement. Plain and simple. You can use it with or without the keyboard, but with is much easier, which just makes it a small laptop anyways.

I have had it for a week now and here is what I have been doing with it. For starters, I have left my iPad at home, to force myself to use the Surface for everything on the road. It fits nicely in my camera bag. I bought the 256gb version with 8gb ram and the i5-4200 “Haswell” CPU. I have installed LightRoom, Photoshop, Steam, and a few other “new computer essentials”. Most of my latest P365 shots were processed on the Surface, as well as the latest RnR Comics assembled there. So, that being said, here are the Pros and Cons I have found in the week of use.

Pros:

Windows 8 in touch screen format = Easy to use
Nice bright screen with good color
Stylus makes everything better
Small and Light enough to carry in the bag
Powerful enough to run everything I have thrown at it (it’s only been a week)
Battery life = Amazeballs for a laptop

Cons:

A little heavy for extended handheld use
Windows App library limited
Screen is still small for serious LightRoom use, but good for Portable
One more USB port would be good
Slight screen edge drift with the stylus.

Overall I am really happy with it. It does exactly what I bought it for and I hope to get a lot more use out of it. I am thinking of doing a future project (after P365 is done) where I sit in a coffee shop and do on the spot portraits, processing and all. More on that later though.

if you have any questions or want to know something specific about the Surface pro 2 that I didn’t cover here, please ask away in comments or via facebook or twitter!

I love my new Razr Maxx HD

Posted by Steve on November 27, 2012 No comments

You know what else I love? Living in the future. Right now I am about 30,000 feet above the US hurling through the air in defiance of whatever laws of religion/science you can imagine and doing it sitting comfortably while typing on my touch screen computer. A few more thousand feet up and we are talking Star Trek. But all that aside, I wanted
to do a post about the new phone I picked up and have been delayed due to more work
travels. On the plus side, this has given me the chance to really break in my phone.

A few years ago the 4G market for phones started to take off and I got excited about the
prospect of high speed mobile devices. I got myself the Verizon Thunderbolt and really
liked it. That is, for a few months. The biggest complaint about the TB was the battery
life and it lived up to that. Something about the combination of components just drained
the battery to the point that the power user (that would be me) could only get about 4-
5 hours out of it. I know laptops that have better battery life!! Add on to that the blatant
lack of support after only a few months. The TB stopped seeing any of the newer IS
updates and even the MOD community kind of gave up on it.

Soldiering through, I made it almost two years before I just couldn’t stand it any more. The rag tag ROMs I was able to find weren’t stable, I was getting lots of reboots, and was extremely jealous of my wife’s new Razr Maxx by Motorola. She is not a power user and had managed to go for about 3 days without charging at one point. That and it was a world phone. With my work travels and our potential vacation travels (like that trip
to London) I was going to need something better.

With my ear to the Ethernet I heard rumblings of a new Razr Maxx, the HD version. It was pricey, but the screen was amazing, it had NFC (Near Field Communication), and came standard with the ICS OS version. Best of all, one of my co-workers bought one first so I got to get some hands on with it. (Thou shalt not covet thy co-workers Cell Phone). Once we learned he was able to root it with ease, (OWN IT!) I made the decision to get one.

I am two months in now and I love this thing! It’s on par with size of the iPhone 5 (a
little wider and a tad thicker, but barely). The stock home screen was easy and quick
to adjust to so no need to add a new home launcher. I did keep some of my more
favorite apps, like the Magic Screen Unlocker, for a separate lock screen, and the Full
Screen Caller ID. Which is, of course, one of the reasons I love Android, if I don’t like a
functionality, there really is an app to switch it.

With the travel I have been doing, I have been on my phone a lot. Emails, Tweety pages and Facey spaces, etc. It’s almost weird to look down and see that I am at 40% battery life and not panic thinking I only have about 5 minutes left. Due to the ease of use, lately I have found myself using the phone instead of my iPad to check online. (Crazy, I know!).

I am sure that something will come out that is newer and fast and better than my Razr Maxx HD, but I really have a hard time believing that it won’t last me a good 2-3 years.

Now if you will excuse me, I told myself that if I got through this blog post I would read some more of the new Cold Days by Jim Butcher, while I stare out at the fluffy clouds.

HTPC of Doom!

Posted by Steve on June 15, 2012 1 comment

Ok, it wasn’t really of doom, but I liked the title. This last week I have spent a lot of time building my new media PC to be hooked up to my TV. I canceled cable, and my Tivo service and am now relying on online services and rentals. I just got tired of missing things when they aired, the DVR not catching them for some reason and then not being able to see things.

So I built an HTPC (Home Theater PC) to pull in my DVD’s, and play videos straight off the web. I was using my Xbox for this, but, while the Xbox has been coming out with more and more apps to cover everything, it’s still not perfect. So I balanced it out with the HTPC.

Sorry for the low-rez, I was excited

Thankfully, I am friends with an HTPC expert, my friend Louis. The one I built is based on the one he owns. He helped spec out the parts and guided me through the setup. See, I haven’t exactly built a desktop PC in around 8 years. Apparently, a lot has changed since then! All of the parts arrived on Monday afternoon. This was bad. See, I a the type that wants to open and play as soon as I get stuff. So that evening I dove in to start building.

Huge Mistake.

I was up till 1am before I finally got everything installed and running. WIndows was fully patched and ready to go. Then, Tuesday, Louis had me check the mode the Hard drives was running in. Turns out they were defaulted to IDE and needed to be in ACHI. Yeah, when I made the switch (even after following instructions to ensure it wouldn’t happen) the OS was wiped out. I had to do the software portion all over again.

Long story made short, I spent the last few evenings tweaking and configuring. I am now running the following:

[amazon_link id=”B004EBUXHQ” target=”_blank” ]Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)[/amazon_link]
[amazon_link id=”B002X578GE” target=”_blank” ]G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333[/amazon_link]
[amazon_link id=”B004Q81CKY” target=”_blank” ]OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5″ 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive[/amazon_link] (SSD) (Boot Drive)
2 x [amazon_link id=”B0042SGDVG” target=”_blank” ]SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive[/amazon_link] (for 4TB Total)
[amazon_link id=”B0048D7AD0″ target=”_blank” ]SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card[/amazon_link]
[amazon_link id=”B005FE52X6″ target=”_blank” ]ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard[/amazon_link]
[amazon_link id=”B005HGPPG6″ target=”_blank” ]LIAN LI Black Aluminum PC-C60B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case[/amazon_link]

Needless to say, I may have gone a bit overboard on the hardware for something as simple as a Media Box. However, playing Civ-V on the 47” tv is pretty damn cool.

Downside, I am exhausted. Sleep soon!