Tag Archives: laptop computer

2014/05/04 (N) Northwest Winds

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The weather yesterday was mostly cloudy with occasional light rain and the winds came up strong starting in the afternoon.  They tapered off by bedtime but resumed a hard blow this morning with low, puffy, white clouds streaming in from the northwest and making the trees dance.  It was a brighter morning than we have had most of the week as the sun played hide-n-seek with the clouds.  The temperature remained cool, making for a brisk day, but it was a nice change from the cool, overcast dreariness of the past week.  Except for Thursday, when the high temperature is supposed to hit 80, the daily high temps will be around 60 all week.

Linda made her scrumptious blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then went for a walk.  She had barely left the house when she returned, very excited, to tell me she had just seen a young albino deer running through our yard.  By the time I got outside it had moved on to the woods west of our property.  We often see the same deer day-after-day as they travel their circuit, so I also hope to see this one someday.

After checking in on the blogs I follow using the Feedly app on my iPad2 I made a couple of corrections to a recent blog post, approved a comment from our daughter-in-law (the first one has to be approved), and deleted the 59 spam comments that the Akismet plug-in/service trapped since last night.  I put a load of laundry in the washer and then spent some time looking online for a padded case for my new laptop computer and a replacement for one of our APC SmartUPS units that has failed.

With the move to tablet computers, the choice of laptops is diminishing, especially those with larger screens, and along with that fewer choices for accessories such as cases.  In the past 14 years I have always purchased larger roller cases, with separate cases for the computer that fit inside, as my laptop traveled with me every day everywhere I went.  I had the most recent of these cases with us in Florida and, after getting the computer/case and accessories out of it, I stored it in a closet (where it tended to be in the way).  The next time I touched it was when I unloaded it from the bus to bring back into the house.

It was clear from that experience that I do not need another roller case.  I do, however, want something that will protect my new laptop computer.  I think I have narrowed the choice down to the Everki Advanced or the Everki Lunar, both available through Amazon Prime.  The Advanced is very reasonably priced at under $40 and has generally favorable reviews, mentioning the ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ROG) models in particular.  The Lunar has more storage space, and also has generally favorable reviews, but is over three times the price at just under $130.  Posts on the ASUS ROG Forum seem to favor one of the Everki backpack models, but I do not want a backpack style case.

Our failed APC uninterruptible power supply is a Smart-UPS SUA1000.  By trading it in on a SMT1000 we can save $75 off the retail price.  I need to confirm that the discounted price includes return shipping; the SUA1000 weighs 48 pounds.

I revised the RVillage Quick Start doc I created for the GLCC, CCO, and FTH RV clubs, making it generic for use by Bus Conversion Magazine or anyone else.  I then uploaded it to a new RVillage page on our website and revised a couple of other pages to link to the new one.  I then uploaded blog posts for the last three days.  I set up my new laptop in my office and installed seven more updates.

At breakfast yesterday I got a tip from Paul (N8BHT) on a used tower.  He e-mailed me the owner’s contact information later.  I called the owner, Wayne (KD8H), this afternoon and got a little more information about the tower.  It is an aluminum Heights Tower, 80 feet, with Fold-Over Kit (FOK) including the drive motor, a rotator and antenna mounting plate.  It is already on the ground and disassembled into sections.  Wayne is retired and I will likely go look at the tower tomorrow afternoon.  I e-mailed Paul (N8BHT), Mike (W8XH), and Steve (N8AR) to see if they were available to go with me.

Linda made lentil loaf for dinner with baked yams and fresh asparagus.  After dinner I drove to South Lyon for the May meeting of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club.  SLAARC usually meets on the 2nd Sunday of the month but pulls the May meetings forward a week to avoid Mother’s Day.  Our topic of discussion this evening was the upcoming ARRL Field Day operating event, which takes place the last full weekend in June.  We had a couple of new hams at the meeting and afterwards several of the guys helped Christine, KD8VEA, get the PL tone set correctly on her radio so she was able to participate in a group QSO with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), Fred (AC8VL), and myself on the drive home.  In spite of what many people think, including some older/former hams, amateur radio is alive and well in the North America and all over the world.

 

2014/04/29 (T) A Family Visit

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Our son decided to bring his daughter to visit with us this morning.  They arrived around 10 AM and left around 1:30 PM.  This was the first time I have seen her since December 16th.  Linda got to see her when she was back in Michigan in late February and early March.  Madeline was one year old when I last saw her and was crawling.  She is now 16 & 1/2 months and walking like she invented it.  She seems to take great pleasure in her independent mobility for its own sake; pure joy.  She also loves to go up and down stairs (with adult supervision, of course).  She is curious about everything and took great delight in exploring the main floor of our house.  It was an excellent visit.

I made a run to the post office and used my 2m mobile ham radio while in transit.  Mike, W8XH, came back to my call and we had a nice QSO.  It was good to finally be back on the air.  I stopped at Teeko’s and ordered 2 lbs each of our two custom blend coffees for pickup on Thursday.  These are half regular, half decaffeinated blends that Jeff roasts right in the store from his amazing assortment of green beans.  Sweet Seattle Dreams is 1/2 Seattle Blend (reg) and 1/2 Sweet Dreams (decaf), and we were the first customers for whom Jeff ever made thus blend.  It’s a blend of two blends, so it has at least four different coffee beans, maybe five or six.  He told me once, but I have forgotten.  The other blend is all Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  Both are excellent.

I did some research on laptop computers while Linda pulled together something for dinner.  She got a Samsung ATIV Book 8 a year ago.  It is a fabulous machine: 64-bit Intel Core i7 (Gen 3) microprocessor, Windows 8.1 (64-bit), a 15.6″ diagonal touch screen (16:9 aspect ratio), backlit keyboard, and lots of ports including USB3.0 and HDMI, but no internal optical media drive, so we bought an external one.  She especially likes the touch screen as it makes the computer work more like her iPad2.  I decided to get the Samsung ATIV Book 6 which had very similar specifications to the Book 8.  After dinner we went to the Best Buy store in Brighton to see if they had either of these machines.  When I went to the Samsung website and looked for a store near my location the only thing that came up in SE Michigan was the Best Buy chain.

Best Buy in Brighton has some people in their computer department who seem fairly knowledgeable.  I asked about the differences between Win 8 and Win 8 Pro and got a fairly technical answer.  The Best Buy chain also has small Samsung stores-within-a-store staffed by Samsung employees.  The bottom line was this:  Best Buy did not have, and could not order, the Book 6 and had one Book 8 in the store.  It had the Gen 3 processor but the Gen 4 has been available for a while.  It became clear from the discussion that Samsung has not released an updated laptop in a while and may be getting out of the laptop business.  We also found out that Sony has sold off their computer line to someone, and that Dell has not released or announced new products in many months following a private equity buyout and their continued presence in the laptop market is highly questionable.  I had Allen, the computer sales associate, show me what they had and it came down to a choice between a Lenovo (formerly IBM) and an ASUS.  ASUS actually makes the own computers as well as the excellent Nexus tablets.  I opted for the top-of-the-line model G750JM notebook computer.  At least it was top-of-the-line in terms of what Best Buy carries in their stores.

The G750JM has a 17″ diagonal HD (1900 x 1080) matte finish screen.  It is not a touch screen, which was fine with me.  The size is big enough that I can work with spreadsheets and edit photographs.  The matte finish screen means it will work well in the bus where there is a lot of light during the day and reflections can be a problem.  While the newer 4K (retina type) displays are stunning, they are only available in the smaller 13″ screen size and are often packaged with smaller capacity, but much more expensive, solid state drives (SSD).  The G750JM has a 1 TB HDD.  The HDD includes a 16 GB SSD that is primarily used to buffer the OS.  It has 8 GB of very fast RAM that is upgradable to 32 GB should I ever feel the need (and the price of 16 GB RAM modules comes way down).  It was the only laptop in the store that could be upgraded to that much RAM.  A maximum of 16 GB was the norm.  The video/graphics is powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M with 2 GB of VRAM.  The computer has built in WiFi, of course, four USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a LAN port, a bunch of other ports, and a built-in CD/DVD player/writer.  Basically, this machine is aimed at high end gamers, but that also made it well-suited to the things I need to do with it, and it was only $50 more than the Samsung Book 8.

We unboxed the machine as soon as we got home and plugged in the battery and AC power adapter/charger to bring the battery up to full charge.  Unlike older laptop computers the new ones do not require the battery to be installed in order to operate.  I would never run it without the battery, however, as the battery provides a built in UPS in the event of a power glitch.  We powered it up and it found our various home WiFi networks.  We selected one and proceeded with the initial configuration, personalization, and registration steps.  Part way into this process a fast moving storm front brought intense lightning, thunder, and high winds so we wrapped up what we were doing, shut down, and unplugged.  Ditto for all of our sensitive (read data storage) devices.

Based on my limited exposure to the computer thus far I am very satisfied with the purchase.  It will take me some time to get it fully configured and switch over to using it as my primary computer, but with the end of support for Windows XP I need to get it done sooner rather than later.  Truthfully, setting up a new computer, especially one with a (radically) new operating system, is not at the top of my list of really fun things to do.  It is inevitable, however, and always yields significant rewards once I get over the initial hump in the learning curve.  It is also an opportunity to start clean and exercise moderation with the objective of having a more streamlined and efficient operating environment that allows me to focus on the things I really need to do.