The Computer Thread - Desktops, Laptops, Windows, Mac, & Linux

Someone bought me one of those Linux television boxes. My old work mate is Indian so there is no shortage of Punjabi, Hindi and even Urdu.

That said I don't have to search for streams for footy now.
 
Sent my Asus ROG 49-inch strix xg49 vq for repair, Asus is going to replace it with a Rog strix xg438q. Let's see how this goes.
 
The numbers seem indicate a downgrade unless the q means something else.
 
20220726_163952.webp


Monitor arrived. Though the dimensions are smaller, the monitor is huge at 43 inches. This is definitely a gaming monitor. I am satisfied.
 
not that far, lol

Wtf my tv is 48” or 50” iirc

Back when 37" Aquos LCD was bleeding edge I recall there was an optimal sitting distance based on the resolution of the picture on the screen.

My personal experience is if I am less than 1 metre away from a massive screen my eyes start getting irritated from everything moving on screen at whatever hertz and probably in an ill configured torch mode brightness setting.
 
I finally upgraded to Windows 11. The first thing I did was move the start button back to the lower left hand corner.

When Satya Nadella took over Microsoft he said Windows 10 was likely the final standalone operating system running on a computer. Now we have Windows 11 which looks like Windows 10 with some more colourful icons.
 
I have this Dell Inspiron 5xxx series with a webcam that is so blurry I doubt it is even 360p. Anyway, I searched online and people told me to update drivers. Apparently that's not hitting Windows Update until it doesn't update anymore. There's a Dell Update which stopped automatically updating after my 'free' subscription expired. Still no luck. I have an external webcam that has some rudimentary tracking but it's still annoying this newer laptop is worse than my old work laptop.

The Dell Update is simply a subscription to download the same drivers you can download on their website but instead of clicking on every driver and following the prompts it seems to have automated it so you just wait for the progress bar to finish to install the 10 updates.
 
I have this Dell Inspiron 5xxx series with a webcam that is so blurry I doubt it is even 360p. Anyway, I searched online and people told me to update drivers. Apparently that's not hitting Windows Update until it doesn't update anymore. There's a Dell Update which stopped automatically updating after my 'free' subscription expired. Still no luck. I have an external webcam that has some rudimentary tracking but it's still annoying this newer laptop is worse than my old work laptop.

The Dell Update is simply a subscription to download the same drivers you can download on their website but instead of clicking on every driver and following the prompts it seems to have automated it so you just wait for the progress bar to finish to install the 10 updates.
By a new webcam or a new laptop and a new webcam.
 
By a new webcam or a new laptop and a new webcam.

The other webcam works. I used it with my work laptop when I had to do 10 sessions of online management training. But it just sucks I barely used this personal computer and it's broken already.

It was originally intended for me to go to France in 2021.
 
The other webcam works. I used it with my work laptop when I had to do 10 sessions of online management training. But it just sucks I barely used this personal computer and it's broken already.

It was originally intended for me to go to France in 2021.
Easiest fix is just to buy a Logitech webcam and be done with it.
 
Easiest fix is just to buy a Logitech webcam and be done with it.
I’ve been very happy with my stand alone Logitech cam during lockdown when half my life was spent on zoom etc. It’s so much better than the crappy laptop inbuilt cams etc. I got a proper green screen I hang off my bookshelves makes a million % improvement to looks. And I can change my background to look more professional or casual.
 
I think the difference is I'm in co-working spaces, a cafe, a canteen, on the train, in a hotel lobby. I don't have a permanent set up so lugging the camera with the little gyros around is not something ideal.

That said if I'm doing my next video conference it's either the iPad or the Chinese camera I bought.
 
I just figured out all the audio enhancing software in Windows and the drivers were killing the microphone input volumes of my Bluetooth headset on my personal laptop. Headsets worked great tethered to my mobile so I was always wondering what the culprit was.
 
Trying to find a free mail relay for my vanity e-mail that isn't blocked by major e-mail addresses (Gmail, Outlook, etc.).....:areyoukiddingme:

Hopefully fourth time is the charm.
 
Trying to find a free mail relay for my vanity e-mail that isn't blocked by major e-mail addresses (Gmail, Outlook, etc.).....:areyoukiddingme:

Hopefully fourth time is the charm.


Both HIGHLY recommended.
 
I just sent 4 scanned pages that was a PDF that was printed out and required physical stamps and signatures from a physician as 4 photographed JPG files. I'm told these files cannot be opened and I must submit a PDF. Isn't JPG more supported than PDF?
 
I tried the Viture One XR/AR pro glasses recently. It was because my father wanted a bigger screen due to his vision loss. He has very limited physical space for a big monitor and his laptop is 13" or 14".

Without any OS on the device you need to use their SpaceWalker app on Android/iOS/PC/MacOS to really use the product. Otherwise it is just a USB-C pass through for screen mirroring. The colours are bright and the text is legible but the field of view is a bit narrow - both horizontal and vertical. It's not 100% immersive. It definitely isn't as cool looking as their Minority Report like marketing material.

The computer SpaceWalker is the most developed and lets you create virtual 3 monitors horizontal or vertical, or one ultra panoramic monitor that you need to rotate your head 15 degrees left to find the start menu button and 15 degrees right to find the taskbar notifications. For the mobile apps it makes you use their browser and their virtual mini-apps - I'll just call it cockpit - to watch videos and be able to pan around to do other things simultaneously. I found the mobile apps were not as well developed as the desktop (which is weird because I think the mobile ones came out first). It's also not as intuitive as VR gear because I found myself fumbling on my iPad to use it as a touchpad or pointer. On Windows, I was having trouble finding my mouse cursor because I didn't know which monitor display it was on.

There are kinks. The SpaceWalker app sets up your Windows displays (Display 1, 2, 3 so on). It seems to always reserve one display number for your physical computer and one display for ...I don't know what - the actual glasses? And then you get the X displays for what you want to actually see in your glasses. So it doesn't replace your existing display. It's also a bit buggy because sometimes I can set up my panoramic or 3 panes and I still see the reserved display's start bar which means I have 2 start bars going on - one on top of another depending on where your head is tilted. You have to then reconnect the glass through USB-C and then restart the app. That brings me to the worse part. If you set up another physical monitor it's pretty easy to just save your scaling/resolution settings as long as you don't disconnect the monitor. Because you're connecting/disconnecting the glass all the time I couldn't save any of the scaling and accessibility visual aid settings. If you have 3 virtual panes you have to repeat that set up in Display Settings in Windows 3x every time you use the glass. In the end I returned it. Interesting technology - but it's not quite there yet.
 
I'm trying to make my father's Samsung tablet his main "computer". To be honest he only goes on banking websites, YouTube, checks the weather and e-mail. All of his mobile devices are rigged with accessibility to read text out loud, reverse contrast, large fonts and dark themes because he's blind in one eye and going blind in the other.

In Windows it was pretty easy to get control panel to set up accessibility text size and colours and it propagates into Edge. In Android it appears to kind of work in the OS, but you need to enable more stuff in Android Edge to override the bank website's colour scheme. But in the end the text size isn't respected in Edge.

So I switched him to Android Chrome and the increased text size is respected. Google.com does dark mode. But the bank websites ignore it. Chrome doesn't inherit or have default menu options to do dark mode + reverse contrast fonts. I had to browse for chrome://flags to find two options that overrode the bank website's colours. But for whatever reason the bank he uses has the top menu hidden in the hamburger/ellipsis whenever text >100%. If text is 100%, the menu reappears. In Edge the menu is always visible. What a f*cking mess. How did we go from one OS + one browser to multi OS + multiple browsers and you try the combination you need that works for you on a site by site basis.
 
I went to a 45 minute presentation from Google about Chromebook. It looks okay if you are completely embedded into the Google platform. The problem is Google Docs, Meet and other services aren't best in class anymore. Also the claims they were never hacked and held hostage for ransomware is a bit BS. When you're a small time OS, people don't bother.

The hardware looked pretty slick though.
 
I went to a 45 minute presentation from Google about Chromebook. It looks okay if you are completely embedded into the Google platform. The problem is Google Docs, Meet and other services aren't best in class anymore. Also the claims they were never hacked and held hostage for ransomware is a bit BS. When you're a small time OS, people don't bother.

The hardware looked pretty slick though.
Why did you go to this? Free lunch? Professional obligation?
 
I went to a 45 minute presentation from Google about Chromebook. It looks okay if you are completely embedded into the Google platform. The problem is Google Docs, Meet and other services aren't best in class anymore. Also the claims they were never hacked and held hostage for ransomware is a bit BS. When you're a small time OS, people don't bother.

The hardware looked pretty slick though.
You don't have to use any google services with a chromebook, if you don't want to. The biggest advantage compared to Windows (not sure about Apple) is in the OS.
 
You don't have to use any google services with a chromebook, if you don't want to. The biggest advantage compared to Windows (not sure about Apple) is in the OS.

I use Edge. That's from my days working at companies where you got Internet Explorer. I have an Android mobile so I just think it's a lightweight computer that runs Android. I first heard about it in the education space. I didn't know it moved into business beyond kiosks.

I guess it makes sense. People lose their laptops or smash them all the time. But if you're on Office 365, use Teams and store stuff on OneDrive it's kind of strange to just use the base OS to run MS Android apps.
 
I didn't know it moved into business beyond kiosks.
I believe Google developed it for internal use first, after they invented zero trust computing. The product they sell is obviously not really zero trust, but I think it is the closest thing you can actually get pre-packaged.
 
I went to a 45 minute presentation from Google about Chromebook. It looks okay if you are completely embedded into the Google platform. The problem is Google Docs, Meet and other services aren't best in class anymore. Also the claims they were never hacked and held hostage for ransomware is a bit BS. When you're a small time OS, people don't bother.

The hardware looked pretty slick though.

The Chromebooks the school district give kids here are kinda crappy. I don’t know if these are the budget versions or something
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom