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.