Seemingly trivial things that elicit an emotional response of some kind

[briantrumpet]

Their newly released iPhone app is a complete disaster. Main location screen is 40% just some dump animated picture with absolutely no information. Very very buggy (pre-alpha though on full public release)

No way to change any of the units eg default wind speed is mph and can't be changed to knots (a significant number of people use knots and as I'm from a sailing background I know knots and no appreciation of mph for wind).

eg Main location screen; "Good use of small screen space?"
View attachment 12196

The screen has "Light Rain" in big text. Do we really want half the screen a grey area with a few white streaks? Does this really enhance understanding?

Exactly. Please do add to the feedback if you've not already done so! They need to know it's unqualified pants!

 

[Pblakeney]

Tonight’s response was surprise. Getting ready for bed and saw something crawling along the floor. Assumed it would be a spider.
But no, it was* a wasp. At this time of year?

*I used “was” intentionally.

 

[briantrumpet]

Narrow 'shift' buttons.

I've just commissioned a new laptop, and so far everything about it is fine, except both the L & R shift buttons are barely wider than those for letters. In particular, the RH one has the up arrow just to its right, so I keep on finding myself typing in the line above rather than having a capitalised letter in the line I'm on. I'll learn, but in the meantime, grrr.

 

[PurplePenguin]

Narrow 'shift' buttons.

I've just commissioned a new laptop, and so far everything about it is fine, except both the L & R shift buttons are barely wider than those for letters. In particular, the RH one has the up arrow just to its right, so I keep on finding myself typing in the line above rather than having a capitalised letter in the line I'm on. I'll learn, but in the meantime, grrr.

Don't get me started on modern keyboards...

 

[BoldonLad]

Narrow 'shift' buttons.

I've just commissioned a new laptop, and so far everything about it is fine, except both the L & R shift buttons are barely wider than those for letters. In particular, the RH one has the up arrow just to its right, so I keep on finding myself typing in the line above rather than having a capitalised letter in the line I'm on. I'll learn, but in the meantime, grrr.

Does that mean transferred your data over, or, does it mean you chose the characteristics of the laptop?

 

[briantrumpet]

Does that mean transferred your data over, or, does it mean you chose the characteristics of the laptop?

Settings from a previous laptop. To make the real techies quake with horror, most of my stuff is now cloud based with Google, so I only really need to install a few apps (e.g. Musescore, IrfanView) that get regular use, and I'm away, after I've uninstalled a pile of MS bloatware. It used to be a big thing to replace a PC/laptop to make it work the way you wanted it now, but now it's mostly automatically done in about 30 minutes.

So far, I like the feel of the thing, as it's taking over from a slow notebook that was sneaked into a W11 update by the backdoor. It's had two or three unexpected restarts today, but I'm hoping that they are just a teething thing, while bits of software and drivers get updated. The colour seems OK, for a cheap machine, not least as I'd never been able to get the colour calibration not to keep resetting to its blue hue on the notebook.

 

[BoldonLad]

Settings from a previous laptop. To make the real techies quake with horror, most of my stuff is now cloud based with Google, so I only really need to install a few apps (e.g. Musescore, IrfanView) that get regular use, and I'm away, after I've uninstalled a pile of MS bloatware. It used to be a big thing to replace a PC/laptop to make it work the way you wanted it now, but now it's mostly automatically done in about 30 minutes.

So far, I like the feel of the thing, as it's taking over from a slow notebook that was sneaked into a W11 update by the backdoor. It's had two or three unexpected restarts today, but I'm hoping that they are just a teething thing, while bits of software and drivers get updated. The colour seems OK, for a cheap machine, not least as I'd never been able to get the colour calibration not to keep resetting to its blue hue on the notebook.

Prior to retirement I operated in the "Microsoft world", but, once I was no longer required to think in terms of where the most potential work was, I switched completely to the "Apple World" (ie MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch), never thought of going back.

 

[briantrumpet]

Prior to retirement I operated in the "Microsoft world", but, once I was no longer required to think in terms of where the most potential work was, I switched completely to the "Apple World" (ie MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch), never thought of going back.

Yep, as with me and Google. For all the detractors, and the compromises (use of my data, big US tech, etc), it works pretty flawlessly for what I want it to do. The only thing I directly pay for is extra storage space for photo sharing: it was about a 10th of the price of doing the same through Wordpress.

When they first said that eventually we'd all be storing data online, I said "Never!", and that was when I was religiously backing up a dissertation onto 1.44Mb floppy discs. But the advantage of having stuff uniformly available on multiple devices pretty much wherever you are – especially when work n stuff is not based on one location such as an office – is undeniable. For my needs, Google Sheets, Google Docs, GMail and Chrome are mostly sufficient. I just accept that Google know a lot about me, and probably monetise that info. But I also use a couple of chunky ad blockers, so that my online experience isn't just wall-to-wall spam.

Oh, and I don't game or stream much, so that really cuts down the spec I need, which fits in nicely with my #tightwad tendencies.

"Tendencies"? Who am I kidding? Mantra, more like.

 

[Pblakeney]

Yep, as with me and Google. For all the detractors, and the compromises (use of my data, big US tech, etc), it works pretty flawlessly for what I want it to do. The only thing I directly pay for is extra storage space for photo sharing: it was about a 10th of the price of doing the same through Wordpress.

When they first said that eventually we'd all be storing data online, I said "Never!", and that was when I was religiously backing up a dissertation onto 1.44Mb floppy discs. But the advantage of having stuff uniformly available on multiple devices pretty much wherever you are – especially when work n stuff is not based on one location such as an office – is undeniable. For my needs, Google Sheets, Google Docs, GMail and Chrome are mostly sufficient. I just accept that Google know a lot about me, and probably monetise that info. But I also use a couple of chunky ad blockers, so that my online experience isn't just wall-to-wall spam.

Oh, and I don't game or stream much, so that really cuts down the spec I need, which fits in nicely with my #tightwad tendencies.

"Tendencies"? Who am I kidding? Mantra, more like.

If you are the slightest bit paranoid about your photos then I'd check that the "originals" on your devices are in fact, originals.
I only recently found out that my originals were stored in the cloud and my devices only had thumbnails which temporarily downloaded the photo when clicked. This was to save memory space. I have since changed those settings and downloaded all my originals, then backed them up. It did indeed take up a lot of space!

 

[briantrumpet]

If you are the slightest bit paranoid about your photos then I'd check that the "originals" on your devices are in fact, originals.
I only recently found out that my originals were stored in the cloud and my devices only had thumbnails which temporarily downloaded the photo when clicked. This was to save memory space. I have since changed those settings and downloaded all my originals, then backed them up. It did indeed take up a lot of space!

All my non-phone photos get backed up first onto the laptop and then onto a hard-drive as originals, in case I need hi-res versions subsequently. I don't delete anything until I know it's in at least one remote place.

 

[briantrumpet]

And of course Google compresses 'originals' anyway when you back them up there.

 

[Pblakeney]

All my non-phone photos get backed up first onto the laptop and then onto a hard-drive as originals, in case I need hi-res versions subsequently. I don't delete anything until I know it's in at least one remote place.

Yeah, it was my laptop that was "cleaning things up" and moving them to the cloud.
I do have HD back-ups but it was easier to recover/download from the cloud than various hard drives as I have 21 years of digital photos, so multiple hard drives. Many of them have very small memory while being very large physically by today's standards.

 

[briantrumpet]

Hmm, the unannounced restarting has carried on... another twice, so am reinstalling Windows. Not the best start, even if I do like everything apart from the narrow shift key. If that doesn't solve it, I'll assume it's a hardware fault and arrange a replacement, I suspect.

Am back on the perma-blue-tinge cronky notebook for the mo. Ho hum.

 

[briantrumpet]

Windows reinstalled, so let's see what emotion transpires tonight or tomorrow.

 

[briantrumpet]

Windows reinstalled, so let's see what emotion transpires tonight or tomorrow.

Well, that way didn't work - it restarted about every 30 minutes yesterday evening. Tried one or two ideas from their decent customer service, but they didn't work either, so they said I could return it via Amazon returns. So I sorted that out with a QR code to return it via the Post Office. But then I thought I'd give it one more go via the complete factory Windows reset (would have done that anyway to delete personal data), didn't uninstall any of the bloatware once it had done the biz, and so far this morning there's not been a single sudden restart, so my emotion at the moment is 🤞🤞