Adventures in Tech

Over the last month I have been using the web version of Office applications. I switched over from the desktop versions not because I was dissatisfied with them, but I switched because I wanted to be on the bleeding edge and get a preview of the new features quickly. I also did not want to update the desktop applications every day to get the new features, and the web apps relieved me from that burden.  As I used the web apps daily, I found that I did not miss the desktop versions. Sure, the web apps have their quirks, and living on the bleeding edge with preview features does not help. However, in this case, the plusses outweighed the minuses.  For one, I did not miss the ability to work offline, as I am almost always online and connected to a high-speed network. I loved that the browser took care of managing my open documents, presentations, spreadsheets, email, and calendar tabs, and automatically restored them when I restarted my computer or updated my browser. I also love...

A couple of weeks ago I saw an ad on my phone for the new Dell XPS laptop. Out of curiosity I clicked on it, and started configuring a couple of options just for fun. I read a lot of good reviews about the upcoming XPS laptop, how the design rivals that of Apple’s MacBook laptops, and how certain configurations come with Linux preinstalled. I played around with the options, and configured two beast laptops just for fun, then I left and have not thought about it anymore, since I am not in the market for a new laptop, being satisfied with my Surface 3 laptop and all. A couple of weeks later, I received a Dell catalog for the first time, addressed to me and not to the usual “Current Resident”, that has more details about the XPS laptops, gaming laptops, desktops, and peripherals that Dell sells. The catalog also included a 15% discount, which was a nice touch. I wondered how I got that catalog, even though I have not explicitly sign up for it, nor request one, nor provide any informat...

I upgraded all my devices to the Windows May update, all but my new Surface 3 laptop. Whenever I checked manually for the system updates, I got nothing, apart from the occasional Windows Defender updates. For a week I checked religiously, and when I did not get any notifications, I started searching online to see if there were any issues with my device. It turns out that there were. There is an issue affecting the Surface 3 laptop, and other devices that use an always on, always connected networking. The issue blocks the update for these devices, per the Known Issues and Release Problems page since it leads to random restarts or crashes. The issue is currently under investigation, and once resolved, the surface will get the update. I will wait till then. Interestingly there are recommendations online to circumvent the block on the Surface, by using the Update Assistant Tool , or the media creation tool. I don’t recommend either, unless you enjoy bricking your laptop. Luckily the a...

I have been using the Windows Subsystem for Linux for a long time now and have been pretty pleased with it for text-based applications. When I need to use a graphical application, I fire up Hyper-V with a full Ubuntu install, and mount my local drives to access my directories and files. The heavy-handed solution worked well for a long time now, but over time I found I was installing the same set of programs I used frequently in both places. There must be a better solution. If only I could run graphical applications on WSL. Turns out there is a way.   I searched for a free X11 server that I can install on Windows 10 and found a couple that were highly rated. I also remembered that when I used Cygwin long time ago, it came with its own X-server, and wondered if I can install that separately, since with WSL I did not need Cygwin as a whole. It did, and I installed Cygwin/X server and fonts. After the install, I ran Xlaunch, which ran a configuration wizard to start the X-serv...

At Microsoft we get to refresh our desktops and laptops every couple of years. Most people jump at the opportunity to get the latest equipment, but I usually don’t. I don’t like migrating from an older machine to a newer one and delay the refresh for as long as I can, preferably until the equipment dies, or goes out of compliance. After approving many equipment upgrades for my team this year, I decided to upgrade my monitor. I always had a single small monitor for my desktop, and never liked the dual monitor setup, or what I jokingly call the “flight simulator” setup with 4 monitors—three side by side, and one on top. My team swears by the productivity increase of seeing everything they need at once, and I believe them.  However, for me I was weaned on Unix terminals, Emacs, and command line tools, so I learned to live within the confines of a small screen. Nonetheless, getting a larger and crisper display was appealing, so I took the plunge and ordered a 38-inch monitor...

Last week I made an impulse buy. I was at the Microsoft store trying to pass time while my kids were enjoying painting on the surface laptops and playing games on the Xbox. I walked around the store in search of something interesting and stopped at the phone display. The display had the newest family of the Samsung Galaxy phones, preloaded with Microsoft business applications. I picked up the biggest model and started to play with it. I liked its bigger edge-to-edge screen and the quality of the display. I must have enjoyed it very much, because I tried a lot of my favorite sites and applications, and compared how easy it was to read on the bigger screen than on my smaller iPhone X screen. I was so absorbed in the comparisons, that I did not see the sales associate approaching. She was very cordial, and started to chat about the differences between the two eco-systems—Android and iOS, and that most of the applications that I used including work applications ran on both. Then she...

Twelve years ago, when I bought my car, my decision criteria were simple. I wanted a car that is fun to drive, had good reliability, and was gas efficient; traits that were missing in my prior car. I did not put a lot of weight on the technological innovations the car had; I was happy with a good navigation system, a CD player that held multiple CDs, and a backup camera that made parallel parking easier. At the time, almost all car manufacturers provided undifferentiated versions of these capabilities, with minor tweaks to the user interface, which made my selection a lot easier. Over the years as the technology advanced, these originally innovative features started to feel obsolete. It was almost impossible to upgrade the hardware with newer and faster components, and software did not have a better story.   Only if either had issues or bugs, did the manufacturer offer an upgrade, through vehicle recalls or maintenance, or through map update CDs on a yearly basis, that captu...