Shmee.Me

January 22, 2015January 22, 2015

Microsoft Goes Crazy At Windows 10 Event!

Well I have to tell you Microsoft really blew me away yesterday. I was expecting a boring rundown of all the new consumer features of Windows 10, and they did go over that, but I was not expecting the rest of what they announced.

1: All devices will have the same version of Windows and will be able to use the same apps. Finally. They mentioned Xbox One, but I am not sure how that will work just yet. Oh yeah and if you are on Windows 7 or higher you will have a year to upgrade for free!

2: All Windows 10 devices will be able to stream Xbox One games from your Xbox. I am hoping that means someone can be using the apps on the Xbox at the same time, but we will have to wait and see.

3: Speaking of Xbox, Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs will be able to play games together, so that should be fun. The first title to support this feature will be Fable Legends.

5: This is where it starts to get crazy…..Surface Hub. It is a 84″ Windows 10 tablet:

I am sure this is going to be pricy, but for medium to large business this will be killer. Say goodbye to crappy interactive whiteboards, this all in one should do it all.

6: Then Microsoft went full out insane. Windows 10 HoloLens:

These are like Google Glass mixed with Oculus Rift. They trick your mind in to seeing holograms all over the place. It is augmented reality taken to the next level. If it works that is. People are getting their hands on them as I type this, so we should find out soon. I would love to try on a pair.

Yeah like I said Microsoft pulled out the big guns. I hope this all works as well as they say it does, because if so Microsoft just became cool again!

December 17, 2014December 17, 2014

Playing With The 7″ Kindle Fire HDX!

I recently got a 7″ Kindle Fire HDX, and I have to say that I am quite happy with it. It has a good looking screen, and while it doesn’t have all the apps of Google Play, it has more than enough to keep me entertained, but really what I use it for is a comic book reader.

It is the perfect size for comics, and the screen makes the colors pop. While I like physical comics better, they look great on the HDX. I was hoping since comiXology was now owned by Amazon that the app would be more integrated like their own comic books, which shows how far through the book I am, and the book shows up on the start screen. Still, it works well, and there is time for Amazon to improve the integration.

Other than that it is a pretty standard tablet. It plays music and videos, and it lets me make Skype calls with its front facing camera. Nothing too exciting, but if it didn’t do those things it would be a pretty lame tablet. Amazon is also making an investment in video games buying a couple of well known studios, Double Helix for one, so there should be a lot of decent things to play if Strider and Killer Instinct Season One are anything to go by.

If you are looking for something that does everything, this is not that tablet, but if you are looking for a fast and cheap comic book reader that almost does everything, you could do a whole lot worse. I am having fun with mine, and I am sure that you would enjoy it too. Plus if you ever want it to be a plain Google tablet you can always root it. Maybe that will be a post in the near future.

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014

Windows 10 Impressions!

Well I have been using the “Technical Preview” of Windows 10 for about a day, and I thought I would let you know what I think. It is pretty much Windows 8 with a Start Menu, or if you prefer Windows 7 with an App Store. Now Microsoft has said this preview has only 10% of the changes that are going in to Windows 10, so I am sure more is on the way, but at this point it is not a huge change.

The Start Menu works very similarly to the one from Windows 7, with the added benefit that you can put Live Tiles in it. They are almost like Widgets from Windows 7 except now they live on your Start Menu. If you are on a tablet and you want the Windows 8 Start Screen back all you have to do is right click on the Start Menu and uncheck a box then log off and then back in again, and boom you are back in “Tablet Mode”. Microsoft showed a thing called Continuum that was supposed to make that transition seamless, but it is not in this build, so for now it takes a few extra steps.

There are also multiple desktops now. They are pretty much just a new way to handle multiple open windows and screens. You can have all your email and work stuff in one desktop, and all your webpages and apps in another, and then you can fast switch between the two. If you are a person that uses a lot of running programs this will be a big deal, if not than you will probably never use it.

Apps from the App store now run in Windows instead of full screen, so you can move them around and arrange them the way you want them. The”Charms” bar is now a menu, so kind of like the app version of the “File” menu in other programs. It works, and is nice to move them around freely. If you want the large frameless look of Windows 8 you can use the “Charms” menu to put them in full screen mode, and you are good to go.

The other changes are mostly cosmetic. New Icons for things that look kind of like a throw back to Windows 2000, and the frames around programs are mostly gone, but now they have drop shadows to give kind of a 3D look when they are stacked. Nothing ground breaking, but it does look nice.

I was disappointed that they are not showing off a lot with this build, but I guess that gives us something to look forward to in the “Consumer Preview” that will be out sometime in the first of next year. If you have any questions let me know and I would be happy to try and answer them.

August 1, 2014August 1, 2014

This Is Not The Hot Dog Toaster You Have Been Waiting For!

The Nostalgia Electrics Retro Series Hot Dog Toaster looks to be a hot dog lover’s dream, but sadly that dream is a bit of a nightmare. There are few things easier in this world to cook than an American Hot Dog. I mean they are already pre-cooked. You can, fry them, grill them, boil them (please don’t), steam them, hold them over a camp fire, wrap them around a light bulb, or just about any other heat source you can imagine, so you would think that a toaster would be up to the job, but I have found it to be lacking.

Like any toaster it is easy to operate. Well in theory it is anyway. You have twist dial on the side that goes from one to five to pick how long you want to cook your dogs and buns, and a leaver which you pull down to start the cooking. There is also an emergency stop button, just in case. So being the accomplished toaster-user that I am, I turned the dial to four and put in two hot dogs and two buns, and I pushed down the leaver. The dogs came out undercooked. The next two I turned the dial to five, and guess what? It burned the crap out of them.

It is crazy to me to think that the one thing this toaster was designed to do, it would be bad at. Sure it did indeed heat up my hot dogs, but it didn’t do a good job! It has one reason for its existence, and it does it poorly. I guess I could put the dogs in at five and then watch them, and then push the button when they are ready, but that defeats the purpose of a timer. Plus it can only do two at a time, so if you are cooking dogs for friends, you would have to use something else anyway unless they like to wait while others eat. If I had to give this toaster a classroom grade it would get a D+. It toasted the dogs, but just barely successfully. It gets the “+” because it looks good doing it.

Pretty much anything that heats stuff up in your kitchen or backyard is going to do a better job of cooking your hot dogs than this thing. Sure it kind of works, but not well enough to recommend it. It is such a shame too, because it does look cool.

July 18, 2014July 18, 2014

Shmee Got An ASUS Radeon R9 280 DirectCU II!

I got the last major piece of my computer upgrade, a new video card! I got an Asus Radeon R9 280 DirectCU II (say that three times fast). This thing is a beast. It runs all my games on Ultra at over 60 frames per second, though full disclosure my monitor’s resolution only goes up to 1680 x 1050, so it is not a full 1080p. It is also massive! It is like a foot long by half a foot tall. If you are going to get this card measure your case first because it barely fit in mine. It only had a couple millimeters to spare.

It is also very quiet. When this card is running flat out it barely makes a sound, which is a big step up from the card I was barrowing from my brother that sounded like a jet engine. It is amazing that it can be that quiet while keeping my card nice and cool at under 70 degrees Celsius.

Like I was saying before my games run great. I get over 80 frames per second on Ultra in Sniper Elite 3, Bioshock Infinite, and The Witcher 2. I get 45-60 in Crysis 2. It is just crazy how much better the games look with a good video card. I can’t wait to see how it handles other games!

The card is already overclocked from the stock 933MHz to 980MHz, but the Asus GPU Tweak utility makes it really easy to take the card well over 1000MHz to get those extra few frames. Since I don’t have a totally HD monitor (maybe something to save for, but I really can’t tell the difference anyway), I don’t need to do it, but it was fun to play with. Plus then you get to say you have an overclocked video card, so all the kids will think you are cool. All that power makes it very thirsty. It needs an eight pin power connector and a six pin power connector, so make sure you have a big enough power supply. I would say at least one over 550 watts.

If you haven’t guessed. I love this card, and I think if you are building a new rig or upgrading an old one, you will love it too. I use Asus in all my builds, and due to the quality of this card I will continue to do so. Time to go play more games!