Category Archives: Tips

08May 2013

Battery Savings that don’t cost you the Smart in Smartphone

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A recent Tweet by Richard Taylor, editor of the BBC tech show Click, got me annoyed. In it he directs readers to a video of him giving various tips, based on “years of experience”, on how to save the battery in Smartphones and tablets.

It got me annoyed because it’s no different to the lists you find elsewhere, and they’re  not any good either. Don’t get me wrong ,tips such as “turn off Bluetooth” do save battery, but what is the point is buying a device such as a Smartphone to then turn off the very features that make them “smart”?

So, here are my recommendations.

Understand the Cause

You’ll achieve nothing if you don’t understand what is actually causing your battery drain. Often it can be an app and you may want to re-evaluate your use of it to save battery.

Head to Settings -> Battery (that’s correct for Jellybean but your options may vary). Here you can view your current battery state and, particularly, what’s draining your battery.

When I had a Samsung Galaxy S2 the display was the top drain. For my Nexus 4 it’s  way down the list.

Understanding all of this can give you a better idea of what needs most attention and what, let’s be honest, is hardly worth bothering with.

Switch Off Smartly

Other than apps, big users of the battery are usually the screen, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and sound.

So, unlike other recommendations to just turn these off it’s perfectly possible to not cripple the capabilities of your phone but still disable them as required. Obviously if there’s a function you don’t ever use – such as Bluetooth – then it does make sense to switch it off. Otherwise, you need to be smarter about it.

There are a lot of apps that allow you to set profiles – these can switch automatically depending on your environment, whether the detection of a particular WiFi router or a Geo-location.  Or there are simpler ones – apps that simply mute your phone overnight.

When I’m in the car I use a specific Car Dock app for playing music through my in-car stereo via Bluetooth. One of the clever things this does, when launched, is activate my Bluetooth and deactivate my WiFi (I’m in the car after all). Once I exit out from it it reverses this – I only normally use Bluetooth in the car so this makes the most sense.

Charge Properly

When I had my Samsung Galaxy S2 I had it sat in a powered dock at work. I’d take it out to go to a meeting and plonk it back in when I returned. In no time at all the battery was wrecked.

I’ve found charging the phone only when needed is the best approach – try not to let it go flat but charge it to full.

Conclusion

All of the above means I don’t have settings un-necessarily turned off. My WiFi, sound, NFC, GPS are all on. Only my Bluetooth is usually switched off. Basically, my Smartphone is actually smart.

But does it work? The following suggests it does…

Screenshot_2013-04-04-14-46-06

11Feb 2013

Diary of a new PC build

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Updates:

Xigmatek Midgard IINot many people are buying desktop PCs any more  And that’s a shame – a large, quality keyboard and screen, whilst sat at a desk are ideal for any kind of computer-based work, particularly photo or video work.

However, less common than that are those who build their own PC. And that’s even more of a shame as it has so many advantages – you get exactly the computer you want at less of the price. And it’s a great learning exercise too. My desktop PC – a Dell Zino HD – was designed as a media PC and, hence, is small but not particularly quick. That was a number of years ago – now it’s even slower. And, because of the form factor, difficult or impossible to upgrade.

So, it’s time, I think, for a new PC. My basic requirements were something quiet but powerful – although not intended for gaming – and easily upgradable in the buy viagra online future.

After much thought I settled on the following parts…

  • Case – Xigmatek Midgard II. It gets excellent reviews, is a high quality case with excellent cooling capabilities, expandability and, rather brilliantly, has all the buttons and connectors mounted on the top (pictured above). There isn’t a removable motherboard tray but there are lots of gaps for cabling tidying.
  • Power Supply – Nexus Value-430. Exceptionally quiet and over 80% efficiency.
  • Processor – Intel Core i5 3570K. The best price/performance level. And the 3570K can be overclocked too. I intend to push it from 3.4 GHz to 4.3 GHz, which is easily achieved without pushing it too much. This processor also comes with onboard HD 4000 graphics which are more than enough for my needs.
  • Processor Cooler – no standard cooler for me. No-siree. I’ll be rocking an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2. It’s big but quiet and will support my overclocking.
  • Motherboard – MSI Z77A-G45. On the PC Pro “A” List for the quality, speed and level of features for the price. SATA 3 and USB 3, as well as easy-to-use overclocking makes this ideal.
  • Memory – Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz HyperX (2 x 4GB). Performance memory at a good price.
  • SSD – Kingston 120GB HyperX 3K SSD. I’ll be using this for Windows and program installations. SSD gives me a rather quick turn of speed – the Kingston is SATA 3 (so 6Gb/s) and has some rather tasty read and write speeds (often the latter speed is the let-down).
  • HDD – I already have a 1TB hard drive but I’ll be teaming this up with another, a Hitachi Deskstar to be precise, in a RAID 1 array providing a backup of data in case a single drive fails.

I’ve also added a black Samsung optical drive (DVD writer – not bothered about having Blu-Ray) and ordered some SATA cables too. All of this will run Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Yes, Windows 7 (I’m not yet convinced of Windows 8!).

One last thing – soundproofing! I’ve opted for the AcoustiPack ULTIMATE – 3 sheets of soundproofing material for adding to your case.

All of the above costs about £700, hundreds less than it would to specify something similar from a PC builder.

Back to the education question – I’ve done all this before so I’ll know what I’m doing. My teenager daugher hasn’t and doesn’t really have a clue how a computer works. Thankfully she is interested and my plan is to build the resulting PC with her. Most of the parts have now arrived (I purposefully left a final despatch to the last minute in case I’d forgotten anything) and, assuming they all do in time, my plan is to work on the build on Saturday with her. The only thing I’ll do myself beforehand is soundproofing the case – it’s just “cutting and sticking” and I’m sure she’s done plenty of that before ;)

I’ll update this blog with how it goes on.

Things I've learnt already

I’ve not yet started the build but there’s already some things I’ve learnt.

  • SATA 3 is double the speed of SATA 2 but you won’t get any benefit from using it on a HDD. However, you will with SSD. For a HDD use SATA 2. For any optical drives you can stick with SATA 1.
  • Look at your motherboard manual for details of memory installation – it it supports dual channel this means that if you’re using dual sticks of memory (as I am) then putting them in specific slots will boost speed.
  • My motherboard comes with a useful connector for the case connectors. Simply plug the assorted cables from your case into these little block connectors and then plug them into a single slot on the motherboard. It makes it a lot simpler than fiddling around inside the case trying to plug tiny connectors directly into the board.
  • The case I bought and the soundproofing material don’t really go hand-in-hand. Mainly because this is a gaming case there are a LOT of open areas for fans – you can either not soundproof these (my plan) or to cover them and watch the dust attract to the exposed sticky side. Never-the-less the soundproofing I will do will still be advantageous.
  • I’m told (and I’ll confirm this) that to the best way to install Windows onto an SSD is not to connect up any HDDs at first – with only the one drive to choose from it should install without a problem. I’ll do this and report back!

Tuesday

All items now received - cue cutting and sticking tomorrow night and then the build on Saturday.

I realised last night the motherboard manual didn’t include anything about RAID set-ups – however my PDF copy does. Having had a look the paper manual seems to omit quite a bit – mark off MSI for that!

Wednesday

As I said I’d do in advance, I’ve added the soundproofing to the case. I’ve decided not to cover the fan vents – the sticky side of the material will just attract dust and it will generally look a bit ugly – but I have used it rather liberally everywhere else I could. I had some foam blocks from a past build – I’ll be using all 3 internal drive slots but only 1 of the 3 external, so used two of the large ones to fill those and the remaining small ones have gone in the top to fill in the fan vents there. Voila. Looks good when the case is closed up.

Saturday - the build

The build went remarkably swiftly – within an hour and a half it was built, booted first time and I was installing Windows. Two problems were later experienced though, which are worthy of explanation…

The Cooler

Or, more precisely, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2. At first the fan didn’t spin – I thought this might be a feature (i.e it doesn’t come on until the processor gets hot enough) but after looking at some forums I found that many others had the same problem and it was often due to the fan blades not being full engaged with the actual motor. I took mine out and, sure enough, this was the case – simply push the fan blades down towards the motor and it clicks into place.

RAID

The biggest pain of all. The MSI instructions were rubbish and left an awful lot out. Here’s what I did…

  1. Installed Windows on the SSD, with the HDDs detached (as suggested in various forums to ensure that Windows installs on the correct drive).
  2. Attached the HDDs and rebooted. POST screen that the MSI instructions says should exist to configure them didn’t. In the end I found an option in the BIOS to switch the drives to RAID and then the screen appeared. Used this POST screen to set them up.
  3. Now the PC failed to boot – Windows would blue-screen. A repair wouldn’t work.
  4. Re-installed Windows. Now worked but RAID drives were not detected.
  5. RAID utility provided by MSI had an option to initialise the drives – this was needed. It’s a slow process but once complete… the drives still weren’t detected by Windows
  6. In Disk Management found I had to activate it from there (sorry, can’t remember the option name but it’s a right-click option on the recognised RAID drive). Also assigned a drive letter to it.
  7. Drive finally appeared! Updated the BIOS and then Windows wouldn’t boot again – as per earlier. However, found the BIOS updated had switched off RAID – switched it back on and Windows would now start again.
  8. Wanted to put all User folders on D: drive – not as easy as I thought and the best workaround is done during Windows installation. Didn’t want to go through that AGAIN so followed an alternative. This caused a massive number of errors during reboot and afterwards the READ utility wanted to verify and error check the drives again – this took a number of hours again.

But, after all the above, it’s working.

14Dec 2012

Apple iPad Mini vs Google Nexus 7

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I own neither and own both Apple and Android products, so I think it’s time for a side-by-side factual comparison of these recently launched tablets…

In a nutshell, the facts show the following “pros”…

Apple iPad Mini

  • Larger display dimensions
  • Smaller overall dimensions
  • Less weight
  • Rear camera
  • Dual band WiFi

 Google Nexus 7

  • Higher screen resolution (and, as a result, PPI)
  • NFC
  • GPS
  • Magnetometer
  • Built-in microphone
  • Price

This excludes what facts don’t show. Everyone, without exception, will talk about the quality of the iPad Mini. The Nexus 7 isn’t bad, but just not to the same level as the Apple (as is usually the case with their products).

I also note that the smaller size of the iPad means a small bezel. This isn’t necessarily a good thing as tablets are held by hand, not by fingertip was with a phone. A small bezel may mean often launching apps or flipping through a page of a book by mistake1.

The iPad Mini lacking a retina screen is odd, but probably just a marketing ploy to get you to buy the “New iPad Mini” next year. However, it is difficult to avoid those prices. Yes, you pay for the quality of the product. But you also need to take buy cialis online into account what you don’t get too – a high resolution screen and GPS for a start.

Yes, the Nexus 7 lacks a rear camera but, personally, people taking pictures with tablets really do look stupid. Stick to your phone. Or a camera. It’s a little heavier, but not by a great deal.

If I had the money now to buy either, it would be the Nexus 7.

Update 1

Although published mid-December the above was actually written a month previous. I have now purchased a Nexus 7 – I guess I found the benefits too beneficial ;)

  1. Apple say they’ve accomdated this with software that will take this into account – none-the-less I’ve ready many reports of people having such a problem anyway [↩]
29Nov 2012

EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) crashes on Mountain Lion

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I’ve just started experiencing EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) crashes when attempting to start Evernote or Komodo cheap viagra pills Edit and  a minute after starting Chrome.

I had no idea what was causing this and looking on Google indicated everything from faulty memory to needing to re-install Mountain Lion.

However, it was only when looking for this error along with Evernote that I stumbled across something less radical that, thankfully, fixed the issue.

First launch Terminal.

Now run..

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

Finally, reboot.

14Nov 2012

The best place to buy a Google Nexus 7

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When launched earlier this year, the Nexus 7 was available as both 8GB and 16GB models. The latter was the most expensive at £199. More recently they’ve swapped these to 16GB and 32GB, with the 32GB now £199.

However, what this appears to have done is send the retailers into a bit of a pricing spin, with odd pricing and a lack of stock.

As a benchmark, Google sell them online at  £159 for the  16GB model and £199 for 32GB. However, there’s a £10 P&P charge on top of that. It’s also the only place to buy the 32GB 3G model too.

Best Price

  • Argos sell both models but both are priced at £199 and they appear to have stock problems.
  • Tesco are only selling the 16GB model and that’s £1891. However, at my local store, depending on where you looked, it’s priced both as that and £199.
  • Sainsbury’s sell only the 32GB model for £199.
  • Asda sell the £199 model too but are, sadly, out of stock of the 16GB version, which they otherwise sell at £169.
  • At Carphone Warehouse they have them at £158 and £195, both cheaper than Google. Unfortunately, although the 16GB bizarrely appears 3 times in their search results they have no stock of it.
  • Currys only have the 32GB model, but this is prices competitively at £199.
  • PC World has it at the same price but also the 16GB model for £179. This is the most competitively priced 16GB model, other than that sold by Google.
  • Amazon haven’t caught up at all, as they’re still selling the 8GB and 16GB models – priced at £209 and £222 respectively.

I should note that these are online prices and maybe more in store.

P&P Costs

As mentioned previously, Google charge £10 for P&P, so it’s only fair that other retailer’s costs are factored in.

PC World / Currys have free P&P, as does Amazon and Carphone Warehouse. Argos and Sainsbury’s charge £3.95, and Tesco £3. Asda charge £4.50. In all these cases, you can order from their website and have delivered to a local store for free.

But what if it goes wrong?

A further consideration is what you do if your nice new Nexus goes wrong.

Google may be on the cheapest but they’re hardly none for their contact-ability  Indeed, I’ve seen such comments from people who have had this problem – returning the product has been problematic.

The best solution, for peace of mind, is a “bricks and mortar” retailer or, at least, their online equivalent – that way you can return it to a high-street shop if you wish.

Out and About

As a test today I visited a busy Nottingham retail park.

Comet has their 10% clearance sale. They had run out of Nexus 7′s but a 16GB was, for instance, £171.

Neither PC World or Currys had stock of the 16GB model and the 32GB was £199, as detailed above.

Deals

Both Currys and PC World currently offer £20 cashback if you buy a case for your Nexus 7. This offer is available both in-store and via their website. However, in store they’re also doing £10 off the official Nexus case if bought with a tablet. This brings the case cost down to £15 with £20 cashback, reducing the overall cost of the Nexus by another £5 and giving you a free case to boot. If bought online the case will cost you an additional £5 on the total price (but that’s still a good deal if you’re after a case).

Also, if you’re a Quidco user then that can make a big difference to which retailer offers the best value. For instance,  Carphone Warehouse doesn’t offer cashback for tablets but, if you were buying the £199 model, Currys/PC World return 1.5% (approx. £3) and Argos 4% (approx. £8). This would then make Argos the retailer to visit for the top model, even taking into account their P&P costs.

What’s going on with the 16GB model?

Hardly anyone appears to have stock of the 16GB model which is odd as it’s been the consistent model – the only one available all year. Maybe that’s the problem – it’s just too popular – but the fact that retailers such as PC World have been selling remaining stocks under a “clearance” label would suggest they’re trying to just get rid of them.

Back in July Google found demand outstripping supply of the 16GB model after expecting consumers to want the cheaper 8GB model. Maybe the same is happening now – at £199 the 32GB is still a bargain.

Recommendation

So, if you’re after the 16GB model the best place to go is Google and pay £169. Alternatively, pay £179 at PC World2.

For the 32GB model the Carphone Warehouse’s £195 offer is the best buy or, if you’re a Quidco user, Argos. Alternatively, if you wish to buy in store then the case offer mentioned above makes Currys / PC World the better option again.

  1. this is on Tesco Direct. However, if you search for Nexus or Nexus 7 on their website it comes back with no results. You have to drill down through the menus to find it. Odd [↩]
  2. via Quidco you’ll get 1.5% cashback – equivalent to about £1.80 [↩]

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