I am sorry that I have not posted an update to this site this week about my Unorthodox Computer Challenge but it is not because I dropped the challenge but because I have been working hard at resolving my storage woes that I wrote about last week. This process is going well however complicated due to my slow workstation.
My last 48 hours can be summed up in as little as 2 words “Storage Woes”. Between Microsoft announcing that they will be killing OneDrive Storage Plans greater than 1TB and the fact that the Vensmile Mini PC seems to have one of the slowest eMMC storage modules around, I am really feeling the pressure. To make matters worse, my Cloud Storage space is a mess of old, outdated and duplicate files scattered among a few hundred GB of important files.
Dear Microsoft,
You have screwed me over plenty of times in the past and yet I decided to give you another chance earlier this year by paying for a yearly Office365 subscription for my household. When it was announced that Microsoft would be rolling out “Unlimited” storage, I signed up for the waiting list so I can consolidate a few other cloud storage providers into one. I am now not only regretting migrating my files over to OneDrive but I am also regretting my decision to give Microsoft a second chance.
I will be spending the next two weeks with the most orthodox of the machines I have selected for the unorthodox computer challenge, the Vensmile Windows 10 Mini PC. Dont let this fool you however, while this computer is technically a full fledged Windows Desktop – it is hard to find a great use-case for such a machine as it is not powerful enough to do much and the performance leaves a lot to be desired.
On September 2nd of 2008 a web browser was released that changed my browsing habits forever, this web browser was known as Google Chrome. Shortly after it was released, it put a wedge into my monogamous relationship with Mozilla Firefox and caused us to separate after many years. I have been using Chrome as my primary browser for years with no complaints, that is until I took part in my Unorthodox Computer Challenge.
Yesterday, I announced that I will be taking part in the Unorthodox Computer Challenge over the next few months and was met with quite a bit of comments and recommendations. As the challenge starts at midnight, I wanted to clarify a few things while I clean off my desk.
I often consider myself a power user when it comes to computers. My personal collection of computers that I use as daily drivers contains a bevy of high end purpose built machines. Between my Dell XPS 13 and my prized System 76 Kudo Professional, I am well equipped to handle just about anything that comes my way. Within the few week, I will be embarking on a challenge to put my 2 primary machines aside and use several unorthodox computers as my daily drivers at home. Here is how it will work.
On July 25th of 2014, Amazon took a major leap of faith with their entry into the mobile phone market with the Amazon Fire Phone. This was an Android Phone that was completely devoid of Google’s Application Ecosystem. This AT&T exclusive phone was released and failed to sway users away from existing ecosystems into the new Amazon ecosystem. Despite everything Amazon tried including aggressive price cuts, bundling a year of Amazon Prime, Firesales and unlocking the phone – it still failed to sell. This post will take a close look at the Amazon Fire Phone to try to understand the reason for its failure.
I am sure that everyone has heard that the popular dating website that specialized in marriage infidelity was hacked a few weeks ago. The brazen hackers have essentially open-sourced the entire AshleyMadison.com website and released several massive database dumps containing customer profiles, customer details (name, address, email address, phone number) and a limited amount of payment information including the last 4 digits of the credit card number. Several people I have spoken to in person do not see this as a threat as you would need the entire card number (and CVV2) before you can use the card for fraud. I have to disagree as it is fairly trivial to turn the last 4 digits of the credit card number into the entire credit card number using nothing more then a phone and a bit of charisma.
The company Jide Software released a new multi-tasking centric build of Android known as RemixOS. Unlike Android, RemixOS focuses on multi-tasking by allowing you to run applications in a “windowed mode”, similar to a desktop computer. Unfortunately the instructions published on the XDA Developers website and Jide’s own website had several issues that left many (including myself) with a tablet that would not boot. This post will go over the instructions to get RemixOS working on your (Affiliate Link)Nexus 9 (WiFi Only)