Windows 10 Enterprise Eval - gotchas

After an annoying turn of events where my Windows 10 Enterprise USB drive failed, attempts to install Win10 onto a computer failed miserably. I turned to the net and managed to get my hands on Microsoft's Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation. I have an enterprise key so I thought - cool! Here's the opportunity to get it going and to then upgrade the license later. Full install, patched etc and all is swell. Except when I try to upgrade.

I straight up tried changing the licence key only to get a variety of errors, most of which are pertaining to the activation system being unavailable. The I try this: https://winaero.com/blog/upgrade-windows-10-evaluation-to-full-version-easily/ but it doesn't work either.

Next I'll try this: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/174594-upgrading-windows-10-enterprise-90-evaluation-full.html

And if all else fails, in goes the bootable USB I've now created. If only I'd had this in the first instance I would not be writing this note to myself (and to you).

If only I'd found this: https://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-enterprise-without-reinstalling-windows/ first! I might have been able to dodge much of the problem in the initial stages. Learn from my pain :-)

Dell Inspiron 11 3162 Review

I bought this little 11" laptop off Dell's site after poking around and thinking it would be nice to have a little laptop again. I really missed my MacBook Air after I sold it - silly move that - so I thought why not consider this one? It's specs are underwhelming:

• Celeron N3050 processor
• 4GB of RAM
• 32GB eMMC HDD
• Bluetooth version 4
• WiFi - 802.11ac+

For what it is, it performs quite well. It's crippled though. In fact - so crippled I couldn't get the thing to start a week ago. It would try to boot into Windows 10 and just hang and hang and hang - you get the drift. I let the power completely drain then tried again. Repair windows install was the next question.... grr. After completing this it booted. That's the only problem I've had with it.

I have had the chance to use it for a couple of presentations. The built in HDMI interface is amazingly handy and the Dell drivers work well for the system, allowing for quick and painless swaps between things. It also gets 8 hours out of the battery which is very impressive indeed. I've tested this twice, and after a full day of work it still had some go in it. 

The ergonomics aren't too bad - I find the keyboard a tad small. But to give you perspective, I'm typing this on a wireless Mac keyboard and I find that a tad small too. I'm most comfortable on an ergonomic keyboard, the Microsoft Sculpt is the current choice of weapons for that. The mousepad is responsive and I find it to work quite well.

All up, this little laptop was about $275 - this model was $300+ at JB HiFi. It's worth checking the manufacturer's site for these better deals. For the equivalent money at JB I'd have only gotten 2GB of RAM. That extra RAM can make an enormous difference! Can't remember if the disk was bigger was or not, but there is an SD card slot so I've already slammed a 64GB disk into that. Combined with network storage and the high speed wifi, I'm set to go.

I think this machine is pretty good. I've got a real dislike for Windows 10 and the way privacy and updates are being handled, but I'll leave that for another post. I'm going to investigate putting Linux on this machine. I think it'll go really well with it.

For a cheap laptop, it's got some solid specs and it's reasonably good to use. 

Guidelines on purchasing a new laptop

Recently a friend asked me for advice on purchasing a new laptop. Here is the bulk of the email I sent him - perhaps you'll find it useful as you search for a new computer:

There is a lot of stuff on the market and here are some basic, ground rules for what you need to think about when your purchasing:

• set a budget figure for the new machine and stick to it. I usually drop at least $200 below my actual budget so I can include a new laptop bag or some sort of accessory (I love gadgets!)
• Decide how big you want the laptop to be - i.e. are you travelling? If so, then a 17" notebook is going to be very heavy and cumbersome and you'll hate dragging it through the airport all the time. Are you doing complex work with a lot of information on it? If son, then an 11" notebook will probably be too small. Usually I suggest an 13" or if you are doing a lot of complex work, then a 15" is probably acceptable - although these can be heavy
• Are you more comfortable with Mac OS X or a Windows based operating system - this step can easily eliminate a large number of machines
• Extra warranty can be handy - see if you can get 3 years worth of it as this is the usual lifespan of a notebook before it needs a refresh or you've broken it. 
• How much data will the laptop hold? How much does your current one hold? Are you going to be saving all your photos and videos to it?

A few notes on specifications and what they mean:

• SSD - solid stat disk: These replaced the old mechanical hard drives in many notebooks. They are faster, have no moving parts so don't get damaged if you drop the laptop inadvertently. Downside is - they are smaller and more expensive :(
• RAM - system memory: more is better but 4GB of RAM is typically enough for most day to day computing activities. If you're a gamer, get more.
• Core i3, i5 and i7: these refer to the processor and it's type. i3 is aimed at general day to day work, i5 for harder work and maybe a bit of gaming and i7 for high end work and gaming. I prefer i3's for general office type work and find them to be fast enough for anything in a normal office environment, including most finance packages. For my general work in IT I have i5's everywhere - a solid compromise between cost and power without huge amounts of heat generation. And for my gaming rig, and my high end workstation running multiple virtual machines and doing heavy lifting (in a geeky way) I've got the big i7 on my desk. It takes a heap of power and was quite expensive.

A few notes on differences between Mac and PC

• The Apple (Mac) environment is all locked up and proprietary. This is good and bad. Good because 99% of the time the software just works and the upgrade to new operating systems (like El Capitan) is free. Generally the upgrade is also pain free and just works. The bad news is, you're locked into the Apple way of doing things on your computer. There are ways to get around this - using Parallels or another virtualisation platform to run Windows and associated software, but this can be expensive in terms of cost for software (Parallels plus a Windows Licence) and expensive in terms of hardware utilisation. Generally though, the Macs on the market at the moment can well and truly handle it. The Mac will run Microsoft Office, or Apple have their own software - Pages / Numbers / Keynote.
• PCs typically will run Microsoft Windows and at the moment, they're all coming out with Windows 10. Love it or hate it - that's what you get. Lots of applications, lots of viruses and vulnerabilities. Without a fair bit of work you can't get Mac OS X to run on a PC. Generally you can get a fairly well specced PC for a lot less than a Mac.

Finally, consider carefully what you'll use this computer for, then try to match the laptops you can get in your price range to those requirements. Most people will also look at which one is prettiest and which has the keyboard they prefer. These are important factors to consider so try to get eyes and hands on a machine before you buy.

Windows 10 - Upgrading Experiences and general first impressions

I've taken the plunge and upgraded my beloved Pavilion dv7 to Windows 10 from 7. I watched with baited breath yesterday to see if anything would happen, after all, I had signed up to get the upgrade and was prepped for it to happen. Nothing happened. I experienced sadness and then I watched my download widget in Rainmeter jump up to 1.5MB/s - our full download speed here. It stayed there for some time and then trailed off. OMG! I thought exultantly that my laptop would then upgrade magically and instantly.... but alas no. Nothing happened again. Anti-climactic was the theme for Windows 10 day. After several hours where I pointedly ignored my laptop and hammered away on the desktop, I patiently waited for something to happen. Around 4pm it did - a new windows popped up and said it was ready. Just a few things to do over 10 seconds, then the install would start. I click on the Go button and waited. It turns out that 10 seconds lasted 14 hours - I went home, slept, came back and the laptop was sitting in the same spot. I killed the upgrade and then a Windows Update "Updating" popped up. The upgrade started again! Oh the excitement! I pointed it out to my fellow IT chaps here in the office. Their response was underwhelming to say the least.... especially as it seemed to stall at 15% - always a bad sign. Thankfully it got going again and my laptop continued to upgrade. Over the course of an hour it completed and now I sit here, typing away in Edge on Google's Blogger. Apart from layout changes and the GUI interface upgrades, it seems a lot like business as usual. The upgrade brought across all my apps, including RainMeter and all the widgets, Chrome and Firefox and all that other stuff as well. I'll play with it over the course of the day and see how it goes. This is a production laptop and I intend to show it off to people so they know what to expect when the upgrade comes through. First up I quite like the new icons and the look of it. The network stuff all looks very similar - there is quite a blend of the Windows 7 functionality and a bit nicer than windows 8 GUI stuff going on. I don't know that I'm loving the Start Menu - perhaps it will grow on me in time. The ads to "Get Office" annoy me - I already have Office 2013! I did have some issues in the preview "Insider" version where scrolling in the Store menu caused it to crash. That seems to have gone away for the moment. I'll keep at it for a while and see how it goes!

Windows 10 trial impressions

As all the world (not literally) knows, the newest version of the Windows Desktop operating system Windows 10 (X?) arrives at the end of the month. I've been playing with it since it's early days and throughout the updates and newer iterations of it my feelings haven't changed much.

I think the overall vision for the UI is missing internal design cohesion. My initial feeling was that they've tried to take elements of the Windows 8 menus, and blend them into the Windows 7 (and previous) familiar menu style. I don't like it. It's gaudy and unpleasant and for straight business work it doesn't speed things up at all.

My other gripe with it has been that under a VMware Player install, it only starts up once every 3 or 4 times. That concerns me. What also concerns me is the dumbing down of the control panel. Accessing the stuff in there isn't for everyone, but the people who do want to get into it need access to the internals of the machine. I can't help but compare it to Mac OS X. The new release of that 10.10.4 is out, and although there aren't huge differences, I've been able to migrate my MacBook Air from 10.8 through to 10.10.4 without any difficulties, or needing to learn a whole new GUI.

My final gripe, and I'll keep this bitch session relatively short, is the move towards subscription model licensing for Windows and Office. I'm happy to pay for an OS, or a piece of software. No worries. I'm not happy to have to pay every year for it. Particularly when I use about 1% of what Office is capable of doing *and* I can get all I want out of Google Apps, plus my email and blog and website etc for $5 / user / month! It's not that I don't want to reward the people who've worked so hard on this, but frankly, they get bugger all of the money I pay anyway. If I'm being forced to use some tarted up version of Windows, it had better be good. Windows 8 was rubbish, and we've successfully avoided upgrading most of our clients and home machines. The way Windows 10 forces itself to be know with a "free" upgrade worries me. We all know how wonderful the first iteration or two of an OS are, and I can only begin to imagine the problems we'll have with Windows 10 when it comes out.

By the end of the month I guess we'll know more!