Not Another Windows Phone Post, But This Time, It’s Windows 10…

I hear quite a bit of complaining about Windows 10. Everything from, “Where did they move this to?” to “It’s just different, I don’t get those tile things.” I even get the, “Why did they ever get rid of Windows XP?” pretty often. It’s a whole ton of craziness rolled up into a few masterfully written complaints about the newest version of the OS, but how much of it is founded on real claims, and how much of it is just dealing with people that are never happy? Here’s my 5 minute take on where Windows 10 is at and where it needs to be.

Number one on the list has to be the fact that Windows 10 really does work well, for the msot part. There are very few glitches that made it through the Insiders program before it was released. It’s not like the phone side of things, which before anyone starts complaining – if you don’t have a Lumia 550/950/950XL, you are still running beta software, there’s no full version of Windows 10 for Mobiles avaialble as an upgrade yet, so don’t complain too much if you are testing it via the Insiders App. On my Acer Netbook, Windows 10 works like a charm. I do have to engage the wireless adapter occasionally, and sometimes the touch pad, but other than that, unless I am clean booting the system, I haven’t had any glaring issues at all. My Venue Pro isn’t quite so lucky as it is still plagued by the ‘wireless adapter going missing’ issue that has been there since with Windows 8 update. I’m pretty sure it was there in Windows 7 as well, but I probably forgot about it since it was so long ago. My other two home PC’s work just fine on the new OS as well. Of course, my work PC is probably the biggest problem child of the bunch as I continuously get a wireless adatper error and also the display driver error. Microsoft’s stance on that is that the driver needs to be uninstalled and it will find the correct one to replace it, but when I force that change, I lose the touch feature of my HP desktop. I think I’ll put up with the failing driver a bit longer, rather than lose touch.

Moving forward, the quality of the indvidual pieces of Windows is moving forward nicely as well. The Mail App has moved from something I couldn’t stand – and couldn’t wait NOT to use – to something that I enjoy using again. I still wish they had taken more of a Windows 8 mail look, well honestly, a Windows Phone 8 mail look, but I understand the changes they made and how they work, so I’m good with it. The 800 hundred pound gorilla in the room is still the Edge browser for me. Most of the time, it works fine, but there are quite a few times that it just stops working. Clearing this or that or resetting the App seems to do the trick, but what a pain. Spartan was supposed to kill IE in performance and all I’ve seen is just a mediocre experience at best. When it works correctly though, Edge is pretty snappy, again, that’s when it works correctly though.

Moving on to Groove Music, it’s a decent music player. I still find myself using the 1995 based Windows Media Player for most of my musical enjoyment due to the fact that it seems to cast easier to my Sony speaker system and that I can create playlists that will sync to my Android or Windows Phone devices. If you are all in, Groove will sync to your Windows Phone, but going to another mobile OS stinks with Groove – and no, I do not want ‘another’ music App on my phone. The social media Apps like Twitter and Facebook are also getting on board with Windows 10. Both of the major social media platforms work very well and no longer require me to open them in a browser for simple tasks. I also still love the OneDrive App. The full integration that the App offers is amazing and the fact that you can select which folders to sync – though it’s not as easy as it should be Microsoft! – is brilliant. I also like the ‘save screen shot to OneDrive’ option. That’s a lifesaver for bloggers.

Finally, the last piece of the Windows 10 puzzle, and my favorite, is Cortana. She’s still pretty darn buggy in her Android form, but what do you expect from a beta project? I know she’s not technically still in beta, but they are learning daily from what users are suffering through and fixing it pretty quickly. To me, that means she’s in beta – still. That said, I’ve tried using Google Now, and it’s OK at best. Cortana knows me, knows my computer and works very well. This is one area that makes me miss Windows Phone on a daily basis – how well the synergy worked between my desktop and mobile. Unfortunately, it seems that the Windows 10 App is making huge strides to become more powerful while the Android counterpart continues to roll features out to make it more reliable. News flash here, features sell, stability doesn’t. It’s a backwards way of thinking, but Android has NEVER worked correctly. Don’t destroy the feature set of your App because one stinking beta tester with a 3 year old Droid is saying that something didn’t work right. Get the features back in there and work on the integration between platforms. It will be all good at that point.

From all of this, where does Windows 10 sit with me? Honestly, I moved to Verizon Wireless over the Black Friday weekend and did three things that were completely uncharacteristic for me. First, I purchased a Samsung Note 5 – which violates two of my rules: it’s not an HTC device and I placed the camera as the number one feature I was looking for in my new phone. Now before I get flamed for this one, I got my Note for $176 without a contract – NEW. Yeah, that’s a tough one to beat isn’t it? The second is I went back to a bigger carrier after being on MVNO’s for the last 4 years. We’ve saved $1000’s over that perioud of time, even buying a few phones here and there. Honestly though, Verizon’s price is only a slight bit higher than what we were paying and we just don’t use enough mobile data to worry about overages and such. It was the right deal to get some really great new hardware and better coverage. Now the issue – Verizon currently has the Lumia 735 in their lineup… That’s it.

This is why Windows Phone is losing that market share. When it was at it’s best, WP had the 920/925/1020 on AT&T, the 925 on T-Mobile and the 928/Icon on Verizon. They also had a bevy of 520 verisons out on just about every GSM network in the world. They had devices available everywhere. Now, AT&T has the 950 and 640. T-Mobile has the lower end models as well. Verizon has a mid-range step child in the 735 and Sprint is still rocking that aged lower end stuff as well. World wide, people are so confused by what is new and old, it’s impossible to sell anything. This is where Windows 10 loses me… As much as I want to love it, I miss how easy and smooth Windows 7 was on my PC’s. Windows 7 was a finished product though, it was sold in a box in the store and it worked. This new, put it out and fix it later thing, isn’t my thing. I want, and expect, my PC to fire up and work – not give me continuous errors. Someone in marketing needs to be shot if they actually proposed the ‘Windows as a service” idea as something that was a good thing. For me, Windows is NOT a service and never should be. Windows is a lifeline to everything else we do. Windows runs PROGRAMS not Apps. Windows is what we use when that other stuff fails us. Windows isn’t a send it out and fix it later deal. While Windows 10 is making huge strides with every patch, correction and fix, it’s my opinion that they shouldn’t have been there to start with. I’m sure by year 3 they will have most of the kinks worked out, but until then, Windows 10 is only a mediocre success in my book.

This post was sent from my Windows 10 powered, Dell Venue 8 Pro using Open Live Writer. Yes, I used about 3/4 of the features I listed above to write this – and no, the drivers didn’t crash once while doing it.

Big Sound From A Small Package

When someone recommends a sound system that costs less than a decent dinner out for two, we get a bit skeptical about it to say the least. Of course, when that speaker setup has a retail of $99.99 and is marked down 73% to hit $26.99, we can’t do much more than laugh. Call us crazy, or stupid, or just plan laugh at us, but we took the bait on this one as we were looking for a nice little speaker for road trips and hotel stays. We wanted big sound in a very small package and we have to say that the Venstar Taco completely fit the bill. Not only was the price on the Venstar Taco dead on, but so was the performance.

The Venstar Taco features 2, 50mm, 3W acoustic speakers with a unique design that powers them to rival speaker systems costing much more. In fact, it might even be appropriate to say that the Venstar Taco rivals speaker systems as strong as the Beats Pill without stretching too far. The player controls are very simple. On the back of the device, a rubber cover secures the charging port (micro USB) and AUX port. The front features 4 buttons: Reverse/Volume down, Play/Pause/Fast forward/Volume up and Power. To pair the speaker, simply hold the power button for a few seconds until the LED next to it flashes blue and you are all set. Go to the add Bluetooth device on your phone or tablet and scan. It should find your Venstar Taco in seconds.

The performance of the Venstar Taco is, as we said, very good for a $100 device. It’s even better when you figure that the Venstar Taco is under $30 with free Prime shipping. The sound is clean and clear, with even a slight note of a decent low end from the tiny speakers. The lows were noticably better when the speaker was placed on a softer surface that allowed the back side of the Taco to perform a bit better. Hard surfaces led to a bit more tin sound from the speakers, but it was still much better than the sub $70 speakers you find at most retail locations. Overall, the Venstar Taco shined during our play with it.

The battery is advertised as a full 12 hour playback, but we found that it was much closer to 10 hours, which is still more than enough time to run for most uses. If you need longer, the micro USB port is compatible with popular portable battery chargers like HTC’s Battery Bar and Samsung’s Universal External Battery packs. Both of these packs were able to keep the speaker powered up and playing far beyond the 12 hour mark and can be used to charge it while it hangs in it’s included carrying case.

At the time of publication, the Venstar Taco is currently $26.99 online and includes a carrying case, micro USB cable, 3.5mm male to male AUX cable and instructions. Note, a wall adapter is NOT included with the package, but a standard phone adapter seems to charge the unit without any issues. Be careful not to use a USB 2.0 Quick Charge enabled adapter as it could overheat the battery and cause permanent damage. If you are in the market for a great portable speaker at an even better price, check out the Venstar Taco before they decide to increase the price. You won’t be sorry.

Link: Venstar Taco

GIVmobile & Ptel Mobile Shuttering After 15 Years

There’s no doubt that the competitive marketplace in cellular is claiming quite a few victims. Just recently, the popular social MVNO, Solavei closed it’s doors in December and now we have one of the longest players in the game, Platinum Tel shutting down at the end of January. It’s been a rough time for MVNO’s since carriers began getting more aggressive with their prepaid offerings in house. To think, T-Mobile offers an amazing $40 prepaid plan, Verizon has the same at $45. AT&T’s GoPhone offerings have been solid as well as Sprint’s lower priced prepaid offerings as well. In a statement via chat message, Ptel Mobile gave us the following information.

We regret to inform Ptel Mobile will be discontinuing wireless service as of January 31,2016. We urge subscribers to process their requested Port Outs by January 26, 2016 to ensure successful port outs. Additionally, all wireless accounts will remain active until 1/31/2016 to ensure carrier transfers. At this time we are working to supply details via the site. Currently an SMS has been sent in batches to subscribers to inform of service update. Please note- the next step to take will consist of porting out of Ptel Mobile in order to retain your same number. Here are the following suggested companies for service: Ultra Mobile- 888-777-0446/Simple Mobile-877-878-7908/Metro PCS- 888-863-8768/Ting- 855 846 4389/ LycaMobile- 866-277-3221/T-Mobile- 877-413-5903. To initiate a port request, please contact the new selected service provider. Please supply the new service provider with the phone number as the account number. The 4-digit PIN on the account is 0000. We appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter. Please visit the link for promotions https://www.ptel.com/pages/options

The information was also sent out to subscribers via text messaging earlier in the month. No additional information was given on the Ptel Mobile or GIVmobile websites, though the link above does offer users some direct replacement offers that are available locally if needed. If you are a Ptel or GIV subscriber, you only have a few days left to initiate your port before your number becomes lost. Also, it is worth noting that users do forfeit any balances left on their accounts and promo codes that they have available.

Source: https://www.ptel.com/pages/options

OneDrive Users: Prepare For Shrinkage!

Late last year, Microsoft announced that beginning this month, OneDrive users will need to begin to find other storage solutions for their files as their OneDrive’s will become signifcantly smaller over the next few months. The official announcements will be coming out soon, with the actual changes coming later in the year. That said, some users will need to begin acting immediately to get their files offline before the rolling dates end. The timeline for the changes that Microsoft published last year look like this:

January – Notices begin to go out about the changes. Office 365 users will be dropped from unlimited storage to 1TB of storage. Free plan users drop from 15GB to 5GB of space. Paid plans include a 1TB offer for $9.99 a month or 50GB for $1.99 a month.
February to April - Users will have 90 days to access their fires after their notification is sent. After that, your OneDrive files will become archived/read only files that you will have to download within 180 days.
May to October – The last chances to download your OneDrive to a local storage solution, or another cloud service will come during this time frame, unless you upgrade to a fully paid account that will handle your file load.

It’s worth noting as well that Microsoft is discontinuing all of their promotional data allotments during this transition as well. The Photo Upload Credit, the 10 GB Google Drive Match and some additional promotional programs will all lose their data allotments during this change. The Bing Rewards credits will stay active though, as will the ‘Lumia purchase’ credit that some users received. Basically, if you spent money or points on a spiff, you will keep it. If it was a free program that you found your way into, it will go away.
Be prepared for the move as time will fly by on this one. If you are currently using OneDrive as a storage solution for your photos or music, you will need to find other ways to access your data via the cloud or be prepared to pay that $120 a year to keep things as is, as long as you are under that full TB of data total.
You can read more on the change that was announced back in November here.

And This Is Why Windows 10 Mobile Is Struggling…

It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re surfing Facebook. You scroll through your feed to see a sponsored post from Microsoft about the Lumia 950. It catches your eye, so you begin to read about the new Lumia 950 available from AT&T. It’s a phone that works like my PC? Amazing! It’s the new Lumia 950 with ANDROID 10???

Yes, this is a promotional advertisement for the AT&T Lumia 950 that appeared in my Facebook feed on New Year’s Eve. At first, I found it funny, but then I realized how horrible this makes Windows look. That Windows 10 is so bad, they subliminally put Android in the ad instead of Windows. Wow…

Anyways, Just thought I would share this one with everyone since it was the last Windows 10, I mean Android 10 ad that I saw in 2015. Have you snagged a Lumia 950 for yourself yet? Is it still running Windows or did they pull a fast one on us and switch it all over to an Android version that won’t be out until this summer (and yes that is a dig at how fast they are releasing Android versions at this point…)

My Best Gift Finds Under $25

Phone storage can always be a problem, especially if your techie friends have a camera that shoots 4K video and they like to take along their entire music collection. If you or someone you know is that person, check out the 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive. The 64GB version is a measly $19.74 with free Amazon Prime shipping. It features a MicroUSB connection on one side and a full size USB connection on the other. Not only is it great for additional storage, but it also works wonders for transferring files back and forth between a PC and your mobile device.

Amazon: 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive

At $19.99, the Jackery Bar External Battery is quite a deal for a 6,000 mAh portable battery solution. It features enough juice to power up your iPhone 6 three times or your larger devices twice. The Jackery is assembled with only top grade Panasonic rechargeable cells, so there is no need to worry about reliability. It also features an 18 month warranty. The Jackery Bar External Battery is $19.99 and ships free with Amazon Prime to arrive in time for getting it under the tree.

Amazon: Jackery Bar External Battery

If you know someone that has been swapping out their old 16GB MicroSD card from phone to phone for the last few years, it might be time to get them something a bit newer for their stocking. Sure, 16GB was big a few years back, but now with the SanDisk 64GB class 10 MIcroSD cards running under $25, it’s a great time to grab one. This item also ships free with Amazon Prime and is just $22.99 for the 64GB model. With a bit less budget restriction, you can jump up to a 128GB for $49 or a 200GB for $99.99. That said, the 64GB should be more than enough upgrade for those looking upward from 16GB or even 32GB.

Amazon: SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSD Card

For something a bit more stocking friendly, the Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader is a home run. This little guy is under $5 and is shipped free as an Amazon Prime Add-On Item. If you are on a fixed storage phone, or just like to take a ton of media with you, use those old MicroSD cards that you have upgraded from to store some music or movies on and use this to play them back on your device. It’s very similar to the SanDisk OTG drive above, but this one uses the storage cards you already own, and is less than a Lincoln to drop in a stocking. As an added bonus to families, it is available in 4 different highlight colors.

Amazon: Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader

Rounding out our top five under $25 gift ideas for the techie that has it all is the JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub. The JDB Hub uses IC Technology to detect the optimum charging speed of your device and automatically changes the power given to that port to match the device. The first port offers 5V/2.4A charging to match the USB 2.0 Quick Charging standards used in devices like the iPhone 6s and Samsung Galaxy S6. The other 4 ports offer standard USB charging for any 1-2A device.  The compact size makes it great for nightstands or desktops. The 5 foot removable power cord also makes it easy to take along where ever it is needed. The JDB Hub also ships free with Amazon Prime and will still arrive in time for Christmas if you order soon. If you are an anti-clutter King or Queen, the JDB Hub will really help get rid of quite a few power plugs and wires around those busy areas.

Amazon: JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub

Google Sneakily Deals Another Blow To Microsoft Users

I’ve been using Microsoft’s amazing blogging platform, Live Writer, for longer than I can remember. It was always my go to publisher for my Wordpress and Blogger blogs. In fact, almost every post I have made for this blog has been through Live Writer. Unfortunately, Microsoft discontinued the product after the 2012 version, though it continued to work for me well after that point. Last week however, I was struck with the error in the image above. I figured Blogger was down and I would save it and try again later… Boy was I wrong…

As it turns out, Google, the owner of the Blogger services, performed yet another API change to shut down third party “back door” access. This is the type of access which Live Writer and other 3rd party writing Apps used to send the posts to the service. While Google has done this before in the past, it’s all too apparent that this volley was once again aimed squarely at the Live Writer program as it appears to be the only program that I use that was affected by the change.

Call it a security update or a maintenance thing, but I will call it out for what it is, Google is blocking Microsoft’s access to their services one more time. It happened with YouTube and it is happening again with Blogger. It’s only a matter of time before Google really does something terrible and blocks Gmail or something crazy like that from Windows and then we will really see an uproar.

Until then, the open source project version of Live Writer was not affected by this patches that Google put in place this week, which strangely enough is virtually the same coding, but not with Microsoft’s branding. The Open Live Writer program is available at www.openlivewriter.org and is free of charge.