Category: hardware

backups (and maybe upgrades)

I haven’t upgraded my MacBook Air to Catalina yet, but I might do it soon. I should probably wait for 10.15.2, really, but 10.15.1 might be good enough for me. I did a full backup with Carbon Copy Cloner today, and also ran a Time Machine backup, so I’m ready, I guess.

Between CCC and Time Machine, I’m pretty well covered on the Mac. I’ve been having trouble finding a good backup solution for my Windows 10 desktop machine though. After my problems from last last year and into early this year, I’ve been trying to find something that works well. I’ve had problems with both Macrium and Acronis, which seem to be the two best consumer-level Windows backup tools out there. I gave Arq a try, back in February, but had some issues with it and didn’t go back to it. And I gave Macrium one more try in September and couldn’t get it to work.

I do keep most of my important files in OneDrive, so I’m not really too worried about losing anything. And I have File History set up and working. (Though the drive I’m using for that is a little finicky.) So I’m mostly covered there. But I wanted to get something a bit more like a full backup going.

I tried something called Bvckup today, and it’s not exactly what I’m looking for, but it worked well, and it might be close enough. It’s more of a file sync program that a backup program, so that’s the main issue. It doesn’t create full system images, or even compressed files. It just mirrors one folder to another folder. I have it set up to copy all of the data folders from my hard drive to a second drive. I’m excluding my Windows and program folders, but including pretty much everything else. The backup ran pretty quickly, considering how much data it had to copy. It hit two errors, but reported them clearly in the log and proceeded past them without any issues. The two errors were CRC errors on a couple of fairly random PDF files. Both files were in OneDrive, so I replaced the copies on my hard drive with good copies from OneDrive.

I’m a little worried about these random errors, but I hope they’re just leftovers from the mess in November 2018 (or the related mess in January 2019). Anyway, I’m going to try to get regular backups going with Bvckup now. I’m on a two-week trial. If things work out, I’ll probably spend $50 on the pro version. I may also swap out the drive I’m using for File History with a slightly more reliable one. (Drives are cheap enough that I should be able to talk myself into dumping the slightly dodgy one…)

I’m also getting close to finally giving in and paying for a cloud backup solution. If I do that, it’ll almost definitely be Backblaze. If I were to decide to run it on both my Mac and PC, though, it’ll be fairly expensive, so I don’t know about that. I’m thinking about it though.

 

AirPods

I finally broke down and bought myself a pair of AirPods yesterday. I didn’t get the fancy new AirPods Pro, just the regular AirPods, with the regular case (not the wireless charging case). They were on sale for $140 at Costco. I’ve considered picking up a pair a few times over the last year, but never quite talked myself into it. But I’ve been reading and watching a bunch of headphone reviews recently, and stopped at the Apple Store over the weekend to try out both the older AirPods and the newer AirPods Pro. The “Pro” model didn’t fit my ears well, though I only tried the medium tips. But it was the kind of thing where I was pretty sure that none of the tips was going to be quite right. (And I didn’t want to pay $300 either.)

The AirPods don’t fit my ears that well either, honestly, but they’re good enough. My “use case” for them will probably be for listening to music at my desk at work, podcasts and audiobooks at home, and maybe podcasts & music on the train occasionally. So I’ll usually be fairly stationary when I’m using them. Still, I may pick up a pair of these tips from Comply or these Earhoox things to get a better fit.

I had a lot of resistance to adding a new battery-powered device to my life. I feel like I have too many of those already. I had a lot of resistance to the Apple Watch for that reason too, but I’ve really gotten to like the watch. I suppose I’ll get used to the AirPods too. I plan on charging them right next to the Watch, on my computer desk, overnight. I had to buy a new two-port USB charger so I could do that, since I didn’t have a spare AC outlet near there. (And the AirPods don’t ship with an AC adapter anyway, just a Lightning/USB cable.)

I used the AirPods a bit at work today, and they worked well. The sound quality is similar to the old Sony earbuds that I’ve been using at work, but maybe a little better on the bass end. I listened to some rock, classical, and ambient music today, and they sounded fine on all of that. The ambient music sounded best, probably because it had the most bass. The classical (some Itzhak Perlman Mozart stuff) was not terribly impressive, but I wouldn’t expect it to be. You need good headphones or speakers to really get the full effect from something like that.

There are a few semi-interesting things that you can do with the AirPods that you can’t necessarily do with other headphones. I played around with Live Listen for a bit yesterday, and I’m curious to play with that some more. I do have some problems hearing, and I feel like that might help me out in certain circumstances.

I’m also curious to try them with my Apple TV. I do sometimes use headphones while I’m watching TV, but the way I do it now is a little inconvenient. (I’m using wired headphones connected to my stereo receiver.) I’m curious to see how the AirPods would work when watching a movie on Apple TV.

I haven’t used them for a phone call yet, but I’ll try that at some point. And I need to look at the Apple documentation to see if there’s anything else I can do with them that might be worth trying.

Overall, they’re fine, but they’re not life-changing, and I’m not sure they’re really worth more than $100. (But hey, what else am I going to spend my money on?)

Hardware in, hardware out

OK, here’s one more Xbox follow-up post (previous). The vertical stand was delivered on Memorial Day. I was kind of surprised about that, since (1) it’s a holiday, and (2) all the streets around my apartment are closed off on Memorial Day for the big bike race. But, somehow, the Amazon delivery guy found somewhere to park, then schlepped a box full of packages down Main Street. He hit my apartment building right as I was about to go out and wander around a little. If he’d shown up five minutes later, I would have missed him. (It’s possible someone would have let him into the building though, since one of my neighbors was hanging out right in front of the building watching the race.) So, again, it would have been more convenient for everyone if Amazon just used the USPS, but it’s fine.

I promised myself several years ago that I wouldn’t bring in any new tech without getting rid of an equivalent amount of old tech. So I took some time today to get rid of a bunch of stuff. There’s a monthly electronics recycling drop-off for my county, in Hillsborough, so I went over there today with a bunch of stuff. I got rid of:

  • an old HP desktop PC (with the drives removed),
  • an old Toshiba HD-DVD player,
  • a very old VCR,
  • my Dad’s old Sony CD changer,
  • my old MacBook (with the drive removed),
  • an old Apple TV,
  • an old Roku box,
  • an old Samsung tablet,
  • and my old Automatic adapter.

So I guess I’m officially giving up on a few things, like ever watching a VHS video tape or an HD-DVD again. I think I really need to purge my CD collection soon too. I have way too many CDs, and they’re not organized really well. Honestly, I have a lot of stuff to purge, but I’ll save that for another post.

Back to the Xbox: After saying that I wasn’t going to sign up for any subscription services, I went ahead and signed up for a year of EA Access. It’s only $30. I will probably go in and turn off recurring billing on it, to force myself to make a decision about it in a year, rather than letting it auto-renew. I downloaded Mass Effect and Bejeweled 3, but that’s it so far.

Honestly, I’ve been playing Bejeweled more than anything else. I think I first played Bejeweled on my Toshiba e310, which would have been in 2002 or thereabouts. (I could be wrong; it might have been on one of my Palm units. Either way, I remember it being grayscale, and playing with a stylus.) It seems kind of silly to use an Xbox One for something that ran fine on a handheld in 2002, but, hey, I like playing it.

I’ve also started playing Stardew Valley. That’s interesting so far, but I’m not convinced it’s as great as a bunch of people seem to think. I may need to give it some time to grow on me.

I’ve also committed myself to reading War and Peace this summer, so that may cut into my video gaming a bit. Either way, I should have more than enough stuff to keep me busy this summer.

new iPad first impressions

I got my new iPad Air yesterday, so I thought I’d post some initial impressions.

The main issue with my old iPad was just that it was getting too slow. This new one definitely fixes that problem. Some of the apps on the old iPad had gotten ludicrously slow, including Twitterrific, which was taking several minutes to refresh my Twitter feed. That’s now back to normal, taking only a second or two. So the new iPad fixes the one big thing I needed fixed; everything else is gravy.

The old iPad was old enough that it didn’t have Touch ID, so having that on my iPad is new for me. There’s nothing unexpected there. I had Touch ID on my last iPhone (the SE), and, now that I think about it, the one before that (the 5s), so I’ve had it for a long time. (My new iPhone, of course, has Face ID instead.) I guess it’s nice having Touch ID on the iPad, so I don’t have to type in my passcode every time I use it.

The screen is 10.5″, so it’s a little bigger than the old one, which was 9.7″. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference unless I hold them up next to each other. The slightly larger screen doesn’t seem to make a noticeable difference in everyday use. I’m also assuming that the screen/display is technically better than the one on the old iPad. I haven’t really checked to see what’s changed on that, but I assume a bunch of stuff has. Nevertheless, I don’t really notice a difference in everyday use. I haven’t tried reading any comics on it yet though. I’m wondering if either the larger size or the “better” display results in a noticeably nicer comic reading experience.

This iPad supports the Pencil and the Smart Keyboard, but I didn’t pick up either of those. I don’t really have a good use case for the Pencil, though I’m curious about it. And I’d like to switch from my old Logitech Bluetooth keyboard to the Smart Keyboard, but I don’t really think it’s worth the money. (I only use a keyboard with my iPad occasionally.)

So, overall… meh. It does what I need it to do, lots faster than my old iPad. There aren’t really any mind-blowing new features or amazing improvements.

That’s probably the last big Apple purchase I’ll make this year (and hopefully there won’t be any next year). I replaced my MacBook about a year ago; I’m hoping that lasts another two years. (At minimum, I’d like to see it outlast Apple’s stubborn insistence on sticking with their butterfly keyboards. If it doesn’t, I may have to give up on macOS, at least as a laptop OS.) I replaced my iPhone and Apple Watch in December 2018. I’d like to see them both last at least until January 2021, and maybe well into 2021. I may pick up a pair of AirPods at some point, but I’m still on the fence about those.

new iPad Air

After dithering back and forth over the last few months about whether or not to get a new iPad, and which one to get, I finally broke down and ordered a new 10.5″ iPad Air yesterday. I got the basic 64 GB model, which is twice the storage of my old iPad Air, and should be enough for me, for now.

Ars Technica recently posted a fairly lengthy review of the new Air and Mini, and it’s largely positive. Most of the negative stuff either applies only to the Mini or isn’t something that I care about.

I bought my first iPad in 2010, my second in 2012, and my third (and most recent) in 2014. So I’ve waited a lot longer than usual to replace it this time. (And, heck, I bought that last one used, off eBay, so it’s really from 2013, I think.) The old iPad has held together for quite a while, but it’s really showing its age now. The battery life is pretty bad, and a lot of stuff on it is pretty slow. (I’m actually kind of surprised at how much stuff isn’t slow. But the stuff that is slow is getting to be a real pain.)

I’m using Apple’s trade-in program to get rid of the old iPad. They’re giving me $70 for it, which is just enough to pay for the AppleCare on the new iPad.

I’ll probably post some thoughts on it after I’ve received it and had a chance to use it for a few days.

Stumbling Through

I’m taking a scheduled day off from work today. My original plan was to go into NYC and see the new Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library. But I started feeling sick earlier this week. And it started getting really cold. Yesterday started out at 1° F, with a “feels like” temp of -12°. So I called in sick yesterday. If not for the weather, I probably could have stumbled through work yesterday and even made it into New York today, but it got to be too much. Today is a little warmer. It started out at 5° (at 6am), and is now up to 14° (at 10am). But that’s still cold enough that hopping on a train to New York seemed like a bad idea. So I’m cocooned in my apartment, trying to stay warm and comfortable.

I didn’t leave the apartment at all yesterday, and spent most of the day reading comics, listening to podcasts, and watching TV. I’m being a little more productive today. I actually left the apartment (to take out the garbage), and I’m currently working through my to-do list, getting some tax stuff organized and taking care of some other miscellaneous paperwork.

I was doing a lot of stuff on my desktop PC this morning, and it had been working fine, but it decided to crash again, about a half-hour ago. I thought I was going to have to reinstall Windows again, but after a few reboots, it came back up, and has been working fine. My faith in Windows 10 in general, and this PC in particular, is getting pretty shaky. I still really don’t want to have to buy a new PC right now, but I might have to. I have other things to worry about right now, so I’m going to hope for the best. But if it keeps crashing, I’m going to have to think about either getting a new PC or maybe giving up on Windows 10 and switching my desktop machine over to a Mac Mini or something like that.

Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to blog about today. I had a few subjects I was going to cover. First, I was going to return to my comic book indecision post from late last year. The news that St. Mark’s Comics is closing got me thinking about that again, along with a couple of articles related to the DC Universe service. (Specifically: Young Justice sounds pretty good, and the comic book library associated with DC Universe is getting bigger.) I was never actually a regular customer at St. Mark’s, but it was a pretty well-known store in NYC. I still like the idea of supporting independent brick-and-mortal comic book shops, but it’s not really practical for me to do that right now, even with the shop that’s right across the street from me.

I’m also still not ready to switch to all-digital though. I’m going to hang in there with Westfield for a few more months, at least until the end of Warren Ellis’ Wild Storm series. After that, though, I may stop buying monthly books again. I’m looking at my pile, and I see that I’m about a year behind on some of my books. So I’m probably going to need to take a break.

I had a few other things I wanted to blog about, but I should probably stop now. It’s almost 11am, and I want to actually read a few comics today too. I read Christopher Priest’s run on Justice League yesterday, and I want to try getting through maybe a dozen issues of something or other today. I still can’t decide what though. And I probably won’t make it through a dozen comics today either. I’m actually feeling like maybe it’s time for a nap now.

a few more iPhone XR notes

I’ve had my new iPhone XR for a few weeks now, so I thought I’d post some follow-up notes on it. My last post on it was on New Year’s Day.

First, while it has been generally reliable, it did crash once. And it required a “force restart” to get it back up, via the procedure described here: volume up, volume down, then hold the side button. It came back up with no data loss, and it’s been fine since, but I hope that doesn’t happen regularly.

Headphones

On the headphone jack front, I’ve settled on using the Belkin Rockstar adapter in the car, using the $9 headphone jack adapter with my old Sony earbuds at work, and using the Lightning Earpods at home. The whole headphone jack thing got me thinking about headphones vs earbuds vs earphones and stuff like that.

I came to realize that the Sony MDR-J10 earbuds that I’ve been using at work for so long are almost perfect. I bought them many years ago, in a Staples Express in Penn Station NY, for maybe $20. They’re not made anymore, but it seems that they were popular enough that a used pair goes for $50-$100 now. They’re regular earbuds that don’t go all the way into the ear, and they have clips that fit behind the ear to hold them in place. So they’re comfortable and they don’t fall out.

Sony makes a similar pair now, the MDR-AS210/B, but it’s not quite the same design as the MDR-J10. I also haven’t found anyone that makes a similar design that includes a Lightning connector instead of a regular headphone plug.

I’ve been using the Apple “EarPods” at home, for listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and they’re not horrible. They’re not nearly as good a fit as the Sony MDR-J10’s though. (Specifically, the left ear is a good fit, but the right ear isn’t. I guess my ears aren’t both quite the same size.) I’m thinking about buying a pair of the newer Sony MDR-AS210/B earbuds for use at home, with the $9 headphone jack adapter.

I’m also curious about these Urbanears earbuds that I saw in the MoMA gift shop recently. The design is interesting and might be a good fit. (Or not. If I buy them, I should make sure they’re returnable.)

I’m still trying to avoid Bluetooth headphones and/or in-ear designs. I may eventually give up and try Bluetooth, but I’m resisting. I don’t want to add yet one more device with a battery that needs to be charged to my already-impressive list of devices with batteries in them. And the in-ear ones just don’t seem like they’d work well for me.

Cases

I’ve bought two cases for the phone, one a sleeve, and the other a silicone case. I ordered the sleeve first, but it only showed up yesterday, since it was shipped ground from Germany. (I didn’t notice that when I ordered it.) I initially tried using the phone with no case at all, but I found that the back was a little too slippery, hence the silicone case. That case does a good job of making it harder for the phone to slip out of my hands or fall off a table.

I’ve noticed that the screen on this phone seems to pick up a lot of dust (or lint or whatever) when I have it in my pocket, hence the sleeve. I like the idea of a sleeve, for a couple of reasons. First, for the screen protection. The second reason is a little subtle, but I like having the phone in the sleeve when I’m not using it; it makes it a little harder for me to pick it up and start fiddling with it when I should be doing something else. It adds just enough friction that it’s a little easier to ignore the phone.

Of course, the sleeve is too tight for the phone to fit when the silicone case is on it, so I’m going to have to work that out. I’ll probably go back and forth between the two for awhile.

I was amused to see that Apple is now selling a battery case for the XR and XS. The XR’s battery life is good enough that I shouldn’t need an external battery any time soon. Apple’s battery case is ridiculously expensive, at $129. But that’s Apple. There are third-party battery cases that only cost $35.

Yet More Windows 10 Grief

My desktop PC has been running fine since rebuilding it back in November. But today, something happened. I don’t know what exactly. I had left the PC on all day, having taken care of some bill paying and stuff in the morning.

I noticed early this evening that it seemed to be stuck in a reboot cycle, crashing every time it rebooted. Long story short, I had to use the “Reset My PC” option to reinstall Windows 10. That option lets you keep all of your files, but forces you to reinstall all of your applications. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few hours.

My best guess is that Windows 10 decided to install some updates during the day, when I was out, and something went awry that borked my Windows install. I haven’t seem any evidence of an actual hardware problem.

Since I’ve only just recently had to redo my setup, I still had pretty up-to-date notes and install files, so getting everything back was pretty painless. At this point, I’ve installed just about everything. It took about two hours total to reinstall Windows and all of my applications.

But I’m getting a little annoyed with Windows 10. It seems like there’s way too much that can go wrong with Windows updates these days, and there’s not really any way to control them, if you’re using a consumer version of Windows 10. I’m too deeply attached to the Windows ecosystem to be able to easily pull out and switch over to Linux, or anything like that. And I love macOS, but I can’t really go Mac-only either. (And the Mac ecosystem has its own problems.)

Anyway, here’s hoping that this box holds itself together for a while longer. After some of the expenses I’ve had over the last few months, the last thing I need would be to have to go out and buy a new Windows PC.

new Apple gear

I’ve been thinking about buying some new Apple gear lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about replacing my iPhone, iPad, and Watch.

My old iPhone SE is almost (but not quite) three years old. The battery life on it has been pretty bad lately. If I go through a whole day without getting a chance to recharge, it’s usually at about 20% by the end of the day. And if I use anything that drains the battery, like Uber, Lyft, or Apple Maps, it can drain down enough that it shuts itself down. (I had this problem one day during NYCC this year, where the phone was dead by early afternoon, largely because I’d used Uber to get to the con.) And it’s been getting noticeably slow lately too, in some apps.

The iPad I’m using now is an iPad Air that I bought via eBay in 2014. The battery life isn’t good, and it’s acting a little funny sometimes, but overall it’s still OK. I’d like to replace it, but it’s not top priority.

And my Apple Watch is a “Series 0” that I bought not long after I bought the iPhone SE. There’s really nothing wrong with it, but it won’t run watchOS 5.

I’ve been looking at the iPhone XR, but I haven’t been really enthusiastic about any of the current crop of iPhones. They’re all too expensive, too big, and none of them have headphone jacks. But, well, I decided to give in and buy an iPhone XR today. I ordered it via the Apple Store app on my old phone, for pickup at my local Apple Store. I got the “(Product)Red” 128GB version. We’ll see if I can get used to the size and the lack of a headphone jack. The total price, including AppleCare, the $9 headphone adapter, and a Belkin Rockstar adapter (so I can use headphones and charge it at the same time), came to just under $1000. Which seems like a crazy amount of money to pay for a phone. But oh well. I’m too old and set in my ways to switch from iOS to Android, so I have to pay that Apple premium.

And a friend dropped by today with a Christmas present for me: a new Series 3 Apple Watch! So now I have that taken care of too. The Series 3, physically, is pretty much identical to the Series 0. I haven’t done enough with it yet to tell whether or not it’s any better than the Series 0, in any noticeable ways, but I’m happy to have it, and to now be running watchOS 5.

Setup on the iPhone XR was a little painful, but could have been worse. It took several tries to activate it with Verizon. And, since it was running a slightly older version of iOS than my SE, I had to set it up as new, update iOS, then restore from backup. Setup for the Watch was comparatively easy. It paired with the new iPhone easily, and restored from the previous Apple Watch backup pretty quickly.

Over the next few days, I’ll have to see if I can get used to carrying and using a larger phone. The XR is significantly bigger than the SE. While the larger screen is nice, it’s a bit harder to hold than the SE, and it’s noticeably heavier. I haven’t put it in a case yet, and I’m not sure if I’m going to; it looks nice as-is, and I don’t know if I want to add to the weight. (I’ll probably write a cranky follow-up post about the phone in a few days…)

Windows grief, part two

TL;DR: I got through all the steps in my previous post, and now have a semi-functional Windows install.

After getting all the data off my desktop PC SSD, I re-mounted it in the PC, using a different SATA cable, and tried some stuff. The drive was still not bootable, and attempts to repair it were still completely unsuccessful. I did manage to boot from a recovery USB drive that I created via the Dell site. None of the repair options that I could run from that worked, but doing a fresh install of Windows 10 does seem to have worked. At least, it’s working so far.

I’m copying some files back to it right now, while also letting it download Windows updates. That’ll keep it busy for an hour or two. Then, I’ll see if I can reboot and install the updates. If that works, then I’ll look into copying more files back and installing some software. Getting it back to where it was will probably take all week, assuming it holds together and doesn’t start blue-screening again.

If it does keep working, then I have to say that I’m not at all sure what was wrong in the first place. It almost has to have been a software problem. It wasn’t the SATA cable, or the port. If it was either of those, I would have had more luck with it prior to the nuke & pave reinstall. There’s probably no point in speculating too much at this point. I’m just going to keep pushing forward with it, and see how far I get.