Steve Litchfield

This happens at least once a week to me. I'm with a customer (or friend) and we're talking tech. I whip out my Surface Duo, currently the main Android phone in my pockets that's signed into all my stuff (social, banking), to look something up or demonstrate something in the OS. And their jaw drops. "What is that?!" I then have to explain that it's actually quite an old device, brought out in 2020 by Microsoft and then quietly forgotten. True, there was the Duo 2, which I loved in its own way, despite a compromised form factor - and this was also forgotten about. No real updates to either after Android 12L, with the Duo about to hit end-of-support this year, and the Duo 2 Autumn next year after yet more mandatory Android security updates. Oh, and you can't buy them new anymore. And if anything breaks then they can't be repaired. So almost impossible to recommend, then. I proceed with a quick demo. Two apps at once, something spanned, laptop mode, with Q...

This has blown me away. You know when you switch from one Windows PC to another (i.e. upgrading), you have to spend about a week re-installing all your apps, setting up all your plug-ins and preferences all over again, hoping you haven't missed a setting? I just switched from an old Mac mini to a new one (double the RAM and hard disk, faster graphics etc) and restored the user folder from my Time Machine hard disk backup. 98% of my entire working environment (files, folders, icon placement) got put back straight away on the new machine. I was stunned. But there were a few "?" icons on the dock, where a few of my third party apps were missing (Handbrake, Seashore, Audio Hijack Pro, Cyberduck). So I installed them from the latest versions off the web. And you know what? ALL of their settings, preferences and plug-ins were just 'there', stored in my user folder. There was ZERO work to do on any of them. Upgrading to a new computer used to be a nightmare for me, once ...

OK, I'm bound to annoy a few Linux fans with this, but hey, I need to vent. After having numerous frustrations with Windows Vista (perhaps exacerbated by a failing hard disk, admittedly) and a frustrating lack of speed, I borrowed an Apple MacBook for a while. Very pretty, fabulous hardware and terrific for most ordinary people. Except that I'm not ordinary, wanting to manage lots of files in lots of projects, use FTP and advanced image editing and much more. I found ways to do everything on the MacBook but it wasn't all plain sailing. And Apple's hardware costs a fortune. So I turned, out of curiosity, to the Asus Eee PC, picking a 701 up from eBay. Great little toy, I thought. Except that with Firefox, Skype and OpenOffice pre-installed, it was quite a bit more than a toy. Maybe Linux really can start to get more into people's homes, I thought.... The trouble is that as soon as something goes wrong, in my case a 'broken' pre-installed game and needing to i...

Oh yes. I made the mistake of ordering new roof fascias a few years ago from Anglian, a windows, doors and roofs company in the UK. The fascias were fine, and I didn't take any nonsense from the sales person, who turned out to also be a Christian and to have an ounce of integrity. Unlike the current Anglian sales team. I've been getting call after call, sometimes 2 or 3 a week, trying to sell me things. On the last call I virtually screamed down the line "Stop calling me - if you call again, I'm going to complain to BT and report harrassment". No doubt their installers are hard working people. But stay away, stay well away from Anglian's sales teams. Another Anglian anecdote from six months ago, before the current call spate - I'd been looking for companies to give me a quote for a front door. Anglian got someone to call me and he kept going on about he didn't want to come and visit when it was just me in the house - he insisted my wife was present. Ob...