The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[DNSB]

Looking at my neighbour's "brand new" Windows tablet and shaking my head. It has a 7" 1280x800 display, Intel Atom 1.83GHz quad core, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 2.4GHz Wifi bgn, 16GB onboard storage plus a 32GB µSD card and came with Windows 8.1 which he was expecting to be able to upgrade. Sadly, it turned out that it does not support Windows 10/11, has too little RAM and storage for most programs and the display is too small making both reading and touching iffy.

OTOH, the local open box store where he bought it has refused to accept a return since it is not defective. My suggestion that he write off the $104 Cdn plus taxes he paid for it and consider it a learning experience was not well received.

[isarl]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Looking at my neighbour's "brand new" Windows tablet and shaking my head. It has a 7" 1280x800 display, Intel Atom 1.83GHz quad core, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 2.4GHz Wifi bgn, 16GB onboard storage plus a 32GB µSD card and came with Windows 8.1 which he was expecting to be able to upgrade. Sadly, it turned out that it does not support Windows 10/11, has too little RAM and storage for most programs and the display is too small making both reading and touching iffy.

OTOH, the local open box store where he bought it has refused to accept a return since it is not defective. My suggestion that he write off the $104 Cdn plus taxes he paid for it and consider it a learning experience was not well received.

Oh dear. Seems like a case of getting what one pays for and also a case of something seeming, and being, too good to be true.

[DNSB]

What bugged me was he heard the price and forgot all that he knew about the specs for the tablet. Similar to what you posted, he keeps mentioning "if it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn't" whenever we are discussing technology purchases.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Looking at my neighbour's "brand new" Windows tablet and shaking my head. It has a 7" 1280x800 display, Intel Atom 1.83GHz quad core, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 2.4GHz Wifi bgn, 16GB onboard storage plus a 32GB µSD card and came with Windows 8.1 which he was expecting to be able to upgrade. Sadly, it turned out that it does not support Windows 10/11, has too little RAM and storage for most programs and the display is too small making both reading and touching iffy.

OTOH, the local open box store where he bought it has refused to accept a return since it is not defective. My suggestion that he write off the $104 Cdn plus taxes he paid for it and consider it a learning experience was not well received.

That's sad that the store sells this crap and then refuses to take it back when it's not fit for purpose.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's sad that the store sells this crap and then refuses to take it back when it's not fit for purpose.

For which purpose? I dropped by the store and the person I chatted to there made it clear that she thought it was suited for light web browsing and little else. The store has the information on the tablet's hardware posted next to the boxes and the store policy is returns only if the device is defective. In this case, the defect (IMHO) was in the purchaser and not the device.

[ownedbycats]

"Light web browsing"... on an OS that will soon become unsupported (or already is?) by security updates? I hope the user has a good adblocker!

[DNSB]

Windows 8.1 support ended on 2023-Jan-10. I was going to suggest using a browser other than IE 11 as Edge and Firefox both run on 8.1 but not with only 1GB of memory. I would not have recommended purchasing that tablet but I was only consulted in the aftermath.

[ownedbycats]

Lynx would probably be easy on the memory. But not very practical.

I wonder if there's any lightweight Linux distros that might work here.

[DNSB]

Our web guy still uses Lynx when testing our websites.

[Hitch]

GRRR....

My "new" keyboard, had for a year-two now, (possibly longer?) is now making a huge clacking noise when I hit the space bar with my right hand. I have an ergo-shaped kb, a Kinesis Gaming something or other, which I got to replace the sadly woefully inadequate Matias Ergo Pros (3 of them--they continued to break in very short time). I confess, yes, I'm a pounder and of course, if you believe Grammarly's in-browser application, I type between 62-68,000 words/ week so the wear-and-tear is significant, but it means I'm going to have to dig out the spare, the new spare, and replace this. Otherwise, it will drive everyone nuts.

It's already getting on my nerves and it's not even 7:00am.

Bugger.

Hitch

[ownedbycats]

Another popular-image hosting is doing crap again.

Imgur will be removing "old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account." (Also, porn.)

I am very glad that MobileRead enforces users posting their pictures on the site itself and thus being spared by the Imageshack and Photobucket and tinypic disasters.

[BetterRed]

Grrr: when you enter a sequence of key presses that produces a WTF result, that you can't repeat . . . until you do it again, fifteen minutes later . . . rinse, repeat ad infinitum!

[Sirtel]

The touchpad on my Dell laptop just stopped registering clicks out of the blue. The laptop is only 2,5 years old. Tapping still works. WTF? Tried everything (uninstalling, disabling, updating, restarting, googling), no joy. I'm lousy with my hands, so am not going to try anything mechanical. Connected one of my mice for clicking for now.

Clicks don't work in the safe mode either. Perhaps something has gotten under the touchpad, though I can't tell - the pad still clicks as usual, they just don't register for some reason.

[ownedbycats]

Windows 10 'updated' the weather app to infest it with ads.

[BetterRed]

No ads in the 'updated' W10 weather app down under - and it now works in a vertical taskbar, but too big IMO.