HP Spectre x360 with gen6 i7 processor - Part 1

So I flip-flopped.

I was very concern that having a new laptop computer will distract me from spending time to draw.  But what ended up happened was that I was still yearning for a machine with long battery life with good performance that I kept searching online for possible good laptop deal.  So I thought, what the heck, I need to get a good computer so that I can have an ease of mind, and thus able to get back to focus on drawing once I've done with setting up the new computer.

So much for giving myself excuse to buy new gadget.

So after done some research and then went to Microsoft Store, I nailed down my selection down to 3 computers:

• HP Spectre x360 with gen6 i7 CPU
• Lenovo Yoga 900
• Dell XPS 13 with gen6 i5 CPU

They were chosen because:

• they are under US$1300 (before tax)
• they have reasonably good battery life (at least better than Surface Pro 4)
• they have good reviews online

For Lenovo Yoga 900, I like the light-weight and the form factor.  But the machine is flimsy and I am seriously worry that I may break it within 2 years.  Gotta say that I wasn't aware of it until after I read a review about how bendable the screen was.  Once I saw that comment, I couldn't Unseen it, and start getting very aware of it.

For XPS 13, I love the smaller form factor, but it doesn't allow me to flip it over, makes it less of a video watching device on the plane.  Also brick-and-mortal Microsoft Store only has the QHD+ screen, which drains battery much faster than the FHD version.  If I want to read something, I use my iPad Pro, so I totally OK with FHD if that's how I got better battery life.

HP Spectre x360 with gen6 i7 CPU has the lowest price tag (US$999) among the 3, and have the best spec (gen 6 i7, 8Gb memory, 256Gb HD).  My biggest problem with it is the weight.  But then with the solid aluminum case and long battery life, I thought it's a good compromise.

So at the end, I brought HP Spectre x360.

After using it for a few days, I have better idea about about the pros and cons of the device:

Pros:

• Solidly built case.
• Fast.
• Great price performance ratio.
• Great battery life
• Great enough display

Cons:

• Heavier than other ultralight notebook.
• Can get really hot at the bottom of the laptop after using for a while.
• A bit too reflective the screen

On the first day/night of using the device, I experienced track pad not responding very once in a while.  But then after some Windows Update and trackpad update, I don't experience the problem anymore.

I also wondered if I should get the 512Gb HD version instead of my existing 256Gb HD version.  But then I realized that a portable 1.5 Tb USB 3 harddisk does an even better job on keeping content.  and it's better to use the portable harddisk to sync content then syncing with laptop thru WiFi.  After all, most of the apps I use are portable apps. Leave too much stuff on the laptop only make it hard for me to sync data everywhere.

Surface Pro 4 experience: Part 6

Finally, it's time to say goodbye to my Surface Pro 4.

I am now resetting the Surface Pro 4, and will return it to BestBuy this afternoon.

So why I am returning it?

Stylus experience: worse than with iPad Pro

The first thing that attracted me to Surface Pro series is the stylus.  Stylus support on Surface Pro 4 is supposed to be the best Windows device can offer.  Yet, compare with the experience of sketching on iPad Pro, sketching on Surface Pro 4 is still frustrating.  For start, I STILL experience touch point alignment problem.  The spot that I put the pen tip on is still slightly away from where I draw on, no matter how many times I did calibration.  I was using Sketchbook Pro 7 on desktop, and constantly frustrated by the alignment problem, and that took me away my creative process.

With Sketchbook app on iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, I do not experience that problem.  The sketching experience was so natural and the alignment is so accurate that I didn't THINK about alignment at all, and instead focus on the thing I should really care about: drawing.

The idea that I spent more than a thousand dollar and yet still have such fundamental flaw is extremely irritating.

Having too many devices

I found this out from the hard way: spent time with Surface Pro 4 at night in the last several night took away my precious drawing time.  And come to think of it, what Surface Pro 4 provides me is simply the ability of playing games while I am on bed.  If I really think practicing sketching is the most important thing of my life other than my day job, I should eliminate anything that distract me from this goal.  This includes Surface Pro 4.

And even if I am on trip, iPad Pro my Logitech bluetooth keyboard does everything I care about.  My last Hong Kong trip is a good example that with iPad Pro, I don't need Surface Pro 4 at all.  In fact, I DID NOT spent any time with Surface Pro 4 during my Hong Kong trip.  I really do not NEED SP4.


In fact, I should also stop considering getting Dell XPS 13 (non touch, FHD screen, late 2015 edition) for the same reason: I need to spend more time to draw, and iPad Pro does it great.

Goodbye, Surface Pro 4.  You are a great device, but I think we both should see other people.

Surface Pro 4 experience: Part 5

To keep or not to keep

The idea of returning Surface Pro 4 is still at the back of my head.  In fact, I will probably make a decision in the coming 2 days.

It's not because Surface Pro 4 is really that bad.  It's just that based on my real world usage, I found Dell XPS 13 (late 2015 version) a better fit for me for several reasons.

Battery and charging

One thing I really like about my iPad Air 2 (and now iPad Pro) is that I don't have to worry about charging and having a charger with me all the time.  iPad can survive a whole day intensively using it with charging it.  And worst come to worst I always have a external battery for charging anything that support USB charging, and that includes my iPad.

On the other hand, Surface Pro 4 has 4 to 5 hours of battery life.  While it's still ok, I still have to pack the proprietary charger with me all the time, and keep worrying that I may break the charger.

There's also no battery pack solution, so even if I am willing to pay, I am not able to pack so that I can use my computer for full day without charging.  This can be avoid during long trip.

Also, additional external power adapter is costly, and I read enough horrible messages online to make me seriously concern about buying third party made power adapter.

Rarely use stylus and touch

One of the biggest selling point of Surface Pro 4 is stylus, until Apple Pencil arrived, I was craving for getting a Windows based computer with stylus and accurate digitizing.  Since then iPad Pro with Apple Pencil totally satisfied that sketching need, and I no longer use stylus on Surface Pro 4 much.  It was in my backpack that I rarely touch.

I gotta admit, though, that touch is handy whenever I need to scale the display, or suddenly need to access an application with touch.  In fact, just a while ago I used calculator with touch and found that a fantastic user experience.

The high definition QHD+ screen is contributing to lower battery life than XPS 13 FD version.  However, QHD+ screen on Surface Pro 4 does look good, and I am a bit concern that I am so used to higher definition screen on Surface Pro 4 and iPad Pro, reading on the older display may not satisfy me.

All sort of glitches

By now I already resolved all of the glitches that bugs me about Surface Pro 4.  For the failing to wake up from sleep problem, I resolved it by totally avoiding Sleeping and use Hibernation instead.  That allows me to reliability bring up the machine by pressing the power button.  I got slightly better battery life by using Windows 10 "battery saver", and that's how I got 5 hours of solid battery life.  The screen scaling problem is pretty much resolved as found either workaround or replacement applications to do things that I need to do (like using Remote Desktop Connection Manager instead of using regular Remote Desktop application).

Still, the fact that this device has all these widely discussed problems kind of bugs me, make me feel like I am using a inferior product, and that I can't trust in my very day life all the time.

I indeed need a portable PC

Whether I keep Surface Pro 4 or not, one thing is for sure:  I do need a PC.  There was a period of time that I thought I can do all I need to do at home with either my desktop PC and my iPad.  But ever since I got Surface Pro 4, I found one thing I start keep doing these days: typing while I am on bed.  It's indeed relaxing and cozy to type on bed during winter.  It feels like I am getting something done in a lay-back way, and the Type Cover keyboard of Surface Pro 4 really is fantasy.

Another thing I enjoy a lot doing on bed is playing emulator games.  Sure, Wii and PS2 emulator seems to crash once in a while on SP4, but with the instance save feature, I am not particularly concern.  The gaming experience is slightly different from sitting straight gaming on my desktop PC, and I like the option of doing things the way I want whenever I feel like.

Surface Pro 4 experience: Part 4

Surface Pro 4: good, but not great

I have not been writing anything about Surface Pro 4 because of a good reason: I haven't been using it for a while since I brought it a month ago.  This is mainly because I brought an iPad Pro a week after I brought Surface Pro 4.  Since I spent most of time on tablet to draw, and iPad Pro provides a superb sketching experience, it make sense that I prefer using iPad Pro.

But there are also things that my iPad Pro can't handle, like running a lot of those Windows based that I have been using since years ago.  As the refund deadline slowing approaching for my Surface Pro 4, I need to make sure that this is a device that I want to keep.  So once again, I started to heavily use Surface Pro 4 in order to figure out whether I should keep Surface Pro 4, or return it and buy another Windows based laptop.

One thing I need to keep remind myself: I indeed NEED to buy a Windows based laptop.  Even though I have a lot of computer devices, I DO NOT have an adequate computer device that:

• belong to me (not company laptop)
• portable
• fast enough to run basic apps, emulator games, graphic apps and utilities
• has a good typing experience that allows me to type hours and hours
• support active stylus, so that I can use it to do sketching when needed
• has a good screen that allows me to use it in portrait and landscape mode at ease
• has good enough battery life
• light weight
• reasonably priced (for the feature I listed above)
• does not have heat issue when use it as a sketching device
• stylus has no serious latency and calibration problem.

I gotta say that so far Surface Pro 4 satisfy the list a have above.  In fact, I found the fact that I can almost fully recharged SP4 in 2.5 hours an amazing feature that even my iPad Pro can barely match it.

However, being a super picky person, there are still stuff that irritates me:

Horrible wake up experience

Time and time again I found SP4 NOT ABLE to wake up from sleep properly.  The most frustrating part is that I know for sure the machine is running, and yet I wasn't able to bring up the screen.  Eventually I have to shut down the machine by pressing the power button for long time.  Also, I found that waking up the device from sleep by pressing power button doesn't seemed to work reliably.  I am now, instead, starting to train myself to wake up a sleeping machine by pressing any key on keyboard.

I also experienced problem when the SP4 continues to draw power when it was supposed to be in save mode.  I read a lot of review and they seemed to point out that the problem happens on Microsoft's power saving code, and Microsoft replied that it won't be able to fix the problem until sometime next year.  In the meantime, I think the best way to avoid extra power drawing is by shutting down the before putting SP4 in my backpack.

Windows Store app still failed to provide a proper tablet experience

I spent quite some time last week to try to see if I can consume content is exactly the same way as I consume them on iPad, and eventually found out that while I can indeed consume all these contents, I need to serious compromise the user experience.

Take podcast as an example.  There are a few ok podcast app on Windows Store that respect the power management feature (so that I can close the screen while continue to play podcast audio at the background), none of these apps are able to subscript some of the Hong Kong based podcast I frequently listen to.  At the end, I have to go for the workaround:

• Use iTunes Widows top application to download podcast episodes
• Use Multimedia 8 to play these downloaded podcast mp3

Another example is reading Chinese ePub books.  I was surprised that most book reading apps, be it Windows desktop app or Windows Store app, has problem dealing with Chinese epub file.  Here's the application that I tried and found that they have problem properly:

• Liberty (Windows Store app):
  It has no problem dealing with English ePub books, but for Chinese ePub books, it has this strange behavior that it took me a while which I eventually figured out.  It turns out that if a ePub file is not in English, the app can only handle ONE of such file.  That mean I can only have one Chinese ePub book being keep tracked (of my reading progress) by Liberty.  While I can live with the limitation since I usually prefer finishing one book before starting another, it's a workaround nevertheless.
• Nook (Windows Store app):
  It works well with both Chinese and English epubs, but it has one serious problem: it only use portion of the screen.  I seriously doubt this Nook will get updated since the whole Nook ebook business was not going so well.
• Icecream eBook Reader (Windows desktop app)
  The app has problem running properly on Surface Pro 4 as it's UI elements are so tiny on SP4's high definition screen.  I also couldn't find a feature to increase the font size.  Even though it did open both Chinese and English epub files properly, I couldn't use it and eventually uninstalled it.

There are other epub apps that I tired and having problems.  I am not listing all of them here since it would be a super long list.

Weak battery life

This issue can be controversial, as what reviewers found out seemed to be very different from what Microsoft claimed.  Based on my real world usage experience, SP4 gives me about 5 hours of battery life.  It's enough to handle my daily life and work life usage, assuming that I either have access to power outlet in the middle of the day, or I have my iPad Pro with me as my backup device.  Still, it seems to be on the weak side comparing with other latest laptop that claims to have 8+ hours of battery life.

Surface Pro 4 alternative?

In fact, if there's one reason why I will return Surface Pro 4, it will mainly because of battery life.  But then the question is: is there other alternatives?  I keep researching, and eventually found 2 options:

• Dell XPS 13 (Last 2015 verrsion)
• SurfaceBook

However, after I weight the pros and cons, I still think Surface Pro 4 is a better option.

Dell XPS 13 (Last 2015 version)

Pros:

• Longer battery life than Surface Pro 4
• However, based on what I read, XPS 13 doesn't necessary provide the 10 hours it claimed, as mentioned in this article.  The thing is that those 10 hours result are archived by minimal setting.  If I push XPS 13 to do some intense application, like running some intense game or copying tons of files thru network, I will get the similar 3 hours battery life.  Also, if I get the touch version with higher resolution, it will have the similar battery drain problem as SP4.  

Cons:

• Lack stylus support
• Doesn't provide the tablet form factor and experience.
• That means I cannot easily use it watch video during long flight, which I did tried during my trip back to Hong Kong recently, and extremely enjoying it.
• Heavier than Surface Pro 4.

SurfaceBook

Pros:

• Has a much bigger battery on the base unit

Cons:

• Too buggy to be useful in reliable business situation
• I am planning to use whatever laptop I have in daily work, including using it in the office.  Anything that doesn't run reliably is a no no.  And whatever benefit this device provide means nothing is it can't work reliably.
• Expansive
• Same configuration cost $500+ more compare with SurfacePro4.
• Heavy
• Leaving SurfaceBook in my backpack can be a more painful experience.

Thus, as of now, I will continue to keep Surface Pro 4 .... until something seriously piss me off.... will see ....

Surface Pro 4 experience: Part 3

If there's one thing that really bugs me about Surface Pro 4, that will be the way how the machine being turned on.  More than couple of times that after I press the power button, SP4 didn't turn on immediately.  If I long press for a long while then eventually the system will do a cold restart.  But that totally breaks the illusion of Windows 10 being a tablet OS.  The turn on and sleep behavior keeps reminding me that this is not a tablet.  This is a PC.  And sometimes that caused me frustration as I expected all the tablet device behavior, like instant on, long battery life and so on.

Carrying a separate power adapter around is also a hassle to me, particularly when the tablet's 5 hour battery life definitely isn't enough to satisfy my full day usage.

Surface Pro 4 experience: Part 2

So I was trying to SP4 to do a quick sketch, and found that the new Surface takes FOREVER to wake up from cold.  To be precise, it took almost 5 minutes to boot up,  Due to it's form factor, I kind of expect it to wake up much quicker.  Maybe it's just that one time, since I did started SP4 from cold in some other situations and it was working ok.

Knowing that SP4 has a microSD slot, and being a storage hog, I want to maximize the storage that I can use.  So I brought this Samsung - EVO+ 128GB microSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card and inserted it in SP4.  Maybe I had too much expectation because of this "UHS-1", so I was not too happy after seeing following tests I did:

• Sending 40.4Gb application files (with executable binaries and all setting files): took 43 minutes.
• Sending 61Gb multimedia files: took 50 minutes.
• Sending 17Gb multimedia files: took 10 minutes.

It still usable.  I was just expecting more.  Also I was told that there's this microSD ejecting itself problem on SP3.  Let's see if SP4 has the same problem or not.

Surface Pro 4 experience - Part 1

Last year, I tried Surface Pro 3, and I returned it with tons of anger and frustration.  Yet, my need for having a digital sketchbook was still not fulfilled.  And now that Surface Pro 4 had been released, I told myself that I would like to give Surface line one more try.

To be honest, if iPad Pro releases a month ahead of schedule, then I would not even consider Surface Pro 4 at all, since my sketching need will most probably will fulfilled by iPad Pro with Apple Pencil.  But iPad Pro has been arrived yet (as for the moment I type this blog), and I am heading to Hong Kong a few days later.  My options are getting a Surface Pro 4, or use my heavy and short battery life EeeSlate.  I finally decided that I deserve to use a better device.

Next I have to decide whether I should get a Surface Pro 4 or a SurfaceBook.  I ended up picking Surface Pro 4 because I concern about portability.  If I want a power laptop to use during a trip, I can use my office laptop, which has quad core i7 CPU in it.  If I want something super light weight, I will use my iPad Air 2.  Surface Pro 4 fits in my life by providing a device that is light enough to carry around wherever I go, and yet powerful enough to run my Windows based applications, including several drawing tools like Manga Studio 5, Sketchbook Pro 7 and so on.

So I brought a Surface Pro 4 with i5 process, 8Gb memory and 256Gb harddisk.  My expectation on this device was pretty high, even though I had so much problem with Surface Pro 3 before.

The first thing I realized while I was setting up Service Pro 4 was that it DOES NOT work with my generation 1 Type Cover which I brought with a Surface RT.  I was a bit disappointed, but not a big deal breaker.  I did brought the new Surface Pro 4 Type cover.  HOWEVER, I will I'll probably return the one I brought and get the one with fingerprint scanner, because I am I sick and tired of my coworker looking that me typing in my password during meetings.  Fingerprint scanner will totally avoid that hassle.

Another thing that frustrated me was that I kept losing Wifi signal when connected to one of the WiFi router at home (the "Hxxxxxx" one).  Once I connected to my network "Mxxxx", the connection seemed pretty stable.  Still, I'll probably need to verify it when I go to work tomorrow.

Since sketching is my main purpose of getting this device, I installed and fired up SketchBook Pro 7, and tried a bit.  The experience was pretty good, and the soft tip on the stylus allows me to sketch without feeling like I was drawing on glasses.  There seemed to be a tiny tiny tracking issue which makes me think that I may need to calibrate the pen input, but I even the current non-perfect tracking seemed to be acceptable.

The heat problem that drove me away on first one seemed to be improved.  I still felt heat at the back, but I wondered if it's because I am still charging my machine right now.

The new TypeCover is nice to use.  The rest area feels good.  The tracking seems nice.  And the backlit will be a great help when I was using it to type during my trip back to Hong Kong a few days later.

The default 200% resolution setting is too tiny for my to use comfortably.  So I switched to 225% and that seemed to work better for me.

The fact that I only have a single USB 3.0 port is indeed a hassle to me.  I cannot connect to both my USB 3.0 harddisk and my XBox360 joypad at the same time.  I will need to see if I can find a USB 3.0 hub to allow me to work around this problem.

Some of my "portable" application, like SketchBook Pro 7, didn't work right away, but installing Visual Studio 2012 C++ Distributable package solved the problem.

I then tried Manga Studio 5.  Just like what I experienced last year with Surface Pro 3, the default Wintab setting didn't work, and I had to switch to TabletPC mode, but then I lost the zoom gesture.  Fortunately, this time Microsoft provides a WinTab driver.   And with that I was able to has pressure sensitivity and zoom gesture at the same time.  I did still experienced some tiny tail at the beginning of some strokes when I use G-Pen, but then that's more about more needing to get used to inking style Mange Studio 5 use.

Remote Desktop (both the desktop and Windows Store version) still have that zooming problem.  As before, I used to workaround application called "Remote Desktop Connection Manager 2.2".

But then there are applications that require a more drastic way to resolve the resolution problem.  Like Daz Studio, which is totally useless when in highest resolution with text scaling mode.  So everytime when I need to use Daz Studio, I need to set to resolution to 1280 x 800.  With that, menu and everything will then look normal on Daz Studio.

Compare with 2 years ago, there are at least some Windows Store apps that makes the tablet experience on Windows 10 better than when it was Windows 8/8.1 .  For instead, "Podcast!" is a petty ok Podcast player.  For reading ePub books you can use "Liberty".  For cbr and cbz Comics/Manga reading you can use "Cover".  They don't provide as good the experience as the similar apps on iOS or Android OS, but they do the job nevertheless.

That's all for Day 1.

Sad day: no more Windows Media Center for Windows 10

I use Windows Media Center as my DVR for so so so so many year, and I really love it.  But then today when I watched Engadget, I found this article about Microsoft killing Windows Media Center.  After all the crying and such, I started trying to find alternative.  I tried NextPVR, but it didn't seemed to work with Windows 10 Pro Build 10074.

Still I need to continue to look around, before Microsoft finally shut down the data stream that backs Windows Media Center ....

Delete those damn leftover file from previous installation of Windows

I was pretty cool with the Windows 10 Preview installed on my work laptop.  When I looked closer to my system, I realized that, since I did a upgrade on an existing Windows 8.1 system, there were some system file left over.  Specifically, there's a Windows.old folder that was huge and useless in my harddisk now.

I thought, no problem.  I should be able to just drag and drop the folder in my desktop Recycle Bin.  In fact, I even changed the property  of the recycle bin so that it permanently deleted files.  It should be ultra easy, right?

Nope.

It turns out that because of the permission of a lot of these system files, I was unable to delete them.  I was like, damn it, it's my computer.  If I want to delete file, I want to delete it damn it.

So here's how I got that damn Windows.old folder deleted:

• Right click on the folder I needed to delete, and select "Properties".
• Click on "Security" tab, and then click the "Advanced ..." button.
• At the "Owner" entry, click "Change".
• Change the owner to "Everyone"
• Click the checkbox to apply such owner change to all the subfolders.
• Once completed, give "Everyone" full control.
• While you are still on the "Advanced Security Settings for xxxxx" windows, check the "Replace all child object permissions entries ...." checkbox.

Asus EeeSlate with Windows 10 Preview

I was not happy of my Asus EeeSlate for a while, and yesterday I was so fed up that I decided to do somehting because of couple of reasons:

• The bluetooth connection problem, which the driver has to be reinstalled every single time I turn on the machine, is getting unbearably painful.
• The device is getting damn slow.  It's not particularly fast in the first place, but now it's just slow.
• The machine has only 3Gb of free space left, which doesn't make sense as I only have the OS and Microsoft Office 2013 on it and that's pretty much it.

 Still, a few reasons kept me from reinstalling OS until now:

• Laziness: it does take time.
• Windows Media Center was coming with my last installation of Windows 8 and then migrated to Windows 8.1.  Reinstalling a new OS on EeeSlate means I will lost Windows Media Center.

So here's the steps I did:

• Connect a USB external DVDR drive with a USB hub which also connect to USB mouse, and a USB keyboard.  And then I connect an USB external harddisk to the second USB port.  I booted up the system with TrueImage 2010 boot disc, and with that I backed up the whole harddisk (which is like 58Gb).  That way, if something does wrong, I can roll back my current Windows 8.1 .
• Once backup completed, I boot up the machine with Windows 10 Preview by holding the F2 key of the keyboard.  And with that I followed instructions and completed the Windows 10 Preview installation.
• All the necessary drives are already there, so I do the following to make EeeSlate usable at my workplace:
• Install Google Drive.
• Install Microsoft Office 2013 with SP1
• Set up SketchBook Pro 6.2.5 in portable app fashion.
• Re-calibrate the screen/digitizer.  (it was not perfectly done, but good enough for daily use, and plus I was ... tired .... )

The whole process took me about 4 to 5 hours.

When I freshly done with OS setup, I got 44.6Gb free out of 59.2Gb.  After I installed Office 2013 and other app settings, I still have 39.1Gb.  And then I have Windows update on everything, and now I have 37.8Gb left.  This is way better than the 3Gb free space situation I had before the OS reinstall.

So Playstation 2 emulator does exist

While I was trying to get Dreamcast emulator NullDC 1.0.4 to work, something ringed at the back of my head: is there a simulate exist for another console at the same era: the Playstation2?  Endup I found this YouTube video to show that Playstation 2 emulator does exist.  The emulator is called PCSX2, and does the simulation job pretty darn well.  At the same time I found a lot of PS2 ROMs here, and then I found the instruction on settitng up XBox 360 Controller with it.

Here's the problem though: The emulator crashes frequently.  I tried to current version 1.2.1 and the more experimental 1.30 version, and they both crash somewhere in the middle of gaming.  So for now I see it as an interesting way to try out games that I never tried before, but don't want to put too much hope on commit to play it as it may frustrate me more than entertaining me.

Running Windows Phone emulator in a Windows 8 VMWare VM

I created a Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit VMWare VM using VMWare Workstation 10 for developing Windows Store application.  Since Microsoft is pushing for univserial app between Windows phone and Windows Store (tablet), so I am planning on doing my apps that way.  However, I got into problem starting Windows Phone 8.1 emulator with Visual Studio 2013.  

At the end, this post helped solving my problem.  The key steps are:

- In my VMWare VM setting, enable "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or ARM-V/RVI" option.

- At the end of the vmx-file of my VM, add the following 2 lines:

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"
mce.enable = "TRUE"

with that, I have Windows Phone emulator running properly.  I can even experience touch on Windows Phone when using my iPad with Microsoft Remote Desktop app.

Using remote desktop to connect to a VM

I can't believe that this problem caused me to fustrate and despress for hours. but the good thing is that eventually I got the problem resolved.

So here's what happened:  I have VMWare Workstation 10 installed on a new machine with a static IP address, and I use it as a closet server.  If the VM is a Windows 7, I can use Microsoft Remote Desktop to access it.  But if the VM is a Windows 8 or Windows Sever 2012 R2 VM, then the remote desktop doesn't work.

I was confused and kept trying different options.  And then I found that if I turned off Firewall, the connection works.

Eventually I found out that all I need to do is change Firewall setting to let "Public" access of remote desktop "on".  It seems like that the VM on my closet machine things that access that VM thru remote desktop on another machine in the same network is still consider "public" because of how VMWare route virtual network packet.

At least I got it working.

EeeSlate stopped recognizing my wireless keyboard, and I don't know which one to blame

Technology is meaningless unless it works work you need it to.   And Eee Slate failed to recognize my Microsoft ARc Keyboard right in the middle of my business meeting.  I had to use a fallback solution by typing on the display with soft keyboard.

I continued trying to fix the problem, and eventually gave up.  I really don't know if it's the problem of that Arc Keyboard, or if that's the problem with EeeSlate.  All I know is that, from now on, I will only carry a wired keyboard if I need to use EeeSlate.

Disk error on Windows 8.1 (in MacMini)

Just when I thought everything at home started to run fine, one of my desktop machine, a MacMini (Last 2009 model) has a disk error booting.  And since the internal DVD drive also failed to work, I had to use my external DVD drive to boot up a Windows 8.1 Update 1 disc, and start to repair process.  In fact, as of now, the repair is still going on.  The screen says "Repairing disk errors.  This might take over an hour to complete."  Oh joy.

In fact, I need to remind myself how to get to that repair screen, cause after I booted up, I got an option to Repair computer.  But then it show me options of refreshing the machine by resetting everything.  So I had to explicitly choose the "Advance Option", and then choose "Repair Bootup" to fix just the boot up part.

Well let's hope that I have some good news at the end.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 5

I spent like 2 to 3 hours trying to get Android development environment working on ThinkPad Yoga.  This is not Lenovo's fault at all.  I just found it annoying that every time I put aside Android development (either due to being busy or because ... yes, busy), I have to set up an Android development environment all over again.  But now that it's done, I feel good.  Hopefully this will encourage me to do more casual Android development.

Just when I start to feel comfortable about keeping this ThinkPad Yoga, something popped up last night and irritated me: Plugged in, not charging.  For instance, like now, I have 96% battery available, and when I roll over the mouse on the battery indicator, I saw this message: "96% available, plugged in, not charging".  As someone OCD like me, the last thing I want is when I DID something, and that something DOESN'T  yield any result.  If I already plugged in, why can't it start charging right away?

Of course, with situation like this, Internet is always the rescue.   I search online, and found this forum message.  It seems like that there's a battery feature exist to make sure your machine is not overcharged.  So I unplugged the power adapter connector from my Yoga, left the battery drained from 96% to 93%, and reconnect the connector again, and sure enough, the battery charging happened after I connected the charging plug at 93%.  Right now reaches 98% and still charging.  So the issue seems to be a non-issue .... or WAS IT?  I will keep my eye on this charging situation.

Next challenge for Thinkpad Yoga: Virtualization.

I installed VMWare Workstation 10 and tried to run some VMs, including Windows Server 2012 R2 and OSX.  I then realized that Virtualization on BIOS was NOT turned on by default, so I got into the BIOS and turned on that setting.  Sure enough my VMs were loaded and running properly.  But then, with only 8Gb of main memory, I don't expect these VMs to run smooth.  This is more or less just a test to see if the machine is capable enough to load and run VMs.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Return

After multiple attempts in trying to make the digitizer accurate using calibration technique, I finally decided to give up.  There's no way I can make the digitizer work as smooth as I want.  In fact, 75% of the Eee Slate screen doesn't a better digitizing job than ThinkPad Yoga.  It's a shame cause it's so close, but I can't accept getting such inferior digitizer after putting down US$1500.

So I going back to using EeeSlate as the portable drawing device, and use Wacom tablet with my desktop PC when I am drawing at home.

It's a shame as I was enjoying using ThinkPad Yoga so much that even considered bring Wacom tablet with me to compensate the problem digitizer.  The problem of that screen is that if not all areas are perfect, then I will get distracted and frustrated as I draw at one spot and the line shows up at another spot.  I even tried to focus on the crosshair instead of the stylus tip when I draw, but then I was like, doesn't that the same experience as using Wacom tablet board, PLUS the confusion deal to my eyes seeing things that does NOT match with what my hand tried to do?  It's destroy my drawing experience, which was the main purpose of getting the tablet.

In addition, I found that I really didn't use laptop much.  When I am in the office I can use office laptop.  When I am at home I have 2 desktop computer on my desk, one Mac one PC and they are more than sufficient for my need.  And when I am outdoor, Eee Slate with mouse, keyboard and USB 3.0 harddisk seemed more than enough to do all I need to do.  Come to think of it, I didn't really use ThinkPad Yoga much even though I brought ThinkPad Yoga to the office every day.

Another problem: even after I calibrate the screen in landscape mode, touch points got off after I turned the machine in portrait and rotate landscape mode.  I tried both lock orientation and without, and  I still got the same problem.

So I am resetting the machine now and will head out to return the machine.  So long, ThinkPad Yoga.

So what other options do I have?  None as of now.  SP3 won't work for me even with i7.  Sony Viao Pro 13 has good potential as many reviews praise the accuracy of the digitizer, but the fact that Sony is phrasing out all their inventory tells me that I won't get much support with Viao, and I had a lot of horrible experience with Viao.  I also don't want ANYTHING that I can't try locally at store, so it shunted out a lot of options.

So as for now, I'll just go for Eee Slate, until someone some company figure out a way to serve graphic artist customer properly.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : digitizer problem may force me to return ThinkPad Yoga

I am pretty happy with almost everything about ThinkPad Yoga, except ONE thing, which bugs the hell out of me: digitizer.  In fact, use the computer as a portable sketchbook is the whole reason I brought this ThinkPad Yoga in the first place.  So the digitizer has to be good enough for my artistic need.

I tried the 273 test point approach a few times, each time I got better result, but still not the perfection I wish I can be.  Someone also suggested the Wacom Feel driver.  I tried and it does NOTHING to me.  So I uninstalled that driver and was back to the 273 test point approach.

I just did around round of 273 point calibration, and seems like I got a better result this time.  So let me try it out today, and, base on the result, decide whether I should keep the machine or not.

By the way I tried the advice here and calibrate different orientation using the 4 point calibration AFTER the 273 point calibration, and found that it seems to MESS UP the the calibration on my main orientation (landscape), so I go back and just do the landscape one.  Or maybe I should try calibrate on certain orientation before using .... need experiment...

ScummVM and save game

I moved ScummVM and games (on the same folder as ScummVM) to my Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, and found that the save game I made before wasn't there.  Later I realized that the save games were stored in :

C:\Users\{my user name}\AppData\Roaming\ScummVM\Saved games

After I moved those file to my Yoga, I can load save states that I saved.  Plus, the full screen mode (ALT-Enter) works great on Yoga with proper screen display ratio.

Looking forward to continue having fun on ScummVM !

Getting old school: playing classic point-and-click adventure games

Back in the good old days, when I was a kid fascinated by all the powerful stuff my computer, a Apple ][e clone, does, there's one thing I really love to play: point-and-click adventure game.  The experience of enjoying a story in an interactive style fascinated me.  Sadly though, because of my lack of English skill, I wasn't able to finish a lot of these days.

Now flash forward to tens of years later, I felt like I want to re-live that past, and see if I can finish these games that I couldn't finish.  Of course, with all the walk through and hints on internet, I know I can definitely finish these days if I have time.  Yes, the grown up pain: that now I have all the power, money and energy, I don't have time.  Sad.

OK, back to playing oldie games.  So I have 2 games that I particularly want to finish:

• Days of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2)
• Tass Times in Tone Town

It turns out that play Days of the Tentacle is super easy.  All I need is download a free software ScummVM from here, and then download the game from here.  In no time I was playing the game.  The ScummVM even supports saving state, so I can save and load whenever I feel like.  This is awesome.

Playing Tass Times in Tone Town, on the other hand, is more challenging.  First I tried downloading the DOS version and run it on my desktop PC.  On my Windows 8.1, the exe refused to execute.  So I loaded up a Windows 7 32 bit edition VM and load the exe there.  I got a message saying "the machine does not support full screen mode" and then refused to run.  So seems like there's no go on doing the DOS way.  Plus the DOS version seemed lame since it only has 4 colors.   So my next plan is to play the game on Amiga emulator.

So I read some info about the game, and even found the walkthrough, was about to start finding emulator and whole 9 yard, until I found this message about potential problem playing the game on Amiga.  

Still, I thought I'll just move on UNTIL I found this video of playing the game from end to end.  

I spent 20 minutes to watch the whole video of someone played the game Tass Times in Tone Town from end to end, and at the end, I was THANKFUL that someone did that, and I was glad that I DID NOT play the game myself.  After watching the video, I found the game, stupid, nonsense, and if I were to play this game myself, I brought won't be able to finish it because all these command I was supposed to enter does NOT make any sense.  Great that I didn't waste my time on this.