Technology catch-all thread

[Y2HH]

I have one. You can certainly get the same functionality for cheaper. But it is very easy to program and control, and I bought it right after moving in when we felt like we had a lot of money for upgrades.

 

The app kind of sucks and I have trouble connecting it to wifi sometimes, but the thermostat before was such garbage we could not turn off hte programmable schedule and turn on the air when we were painting.

 

Overall 5/5 usability, 3/5 on its claims of changing temps when away. I have no idea why it doesn't find my wifi.

 

I also have one, but not experiencing any of the WiFi issues you are.

[Jenksismyhero]

I was also looking at the Nest Cams. I want one for the house and another for a baby monitor. But I was upset to learn there's a pretty massive 2-2.5 second delay in the video feed.

[RockRaines]

I was also looking at the Nest Cams. I want one for the house and another for a baby monitor. But I was upset to learn there's a pretty massive 2-2.5 second delay in the video feed.

Arlo rules

[StrangeSox]

Hey guys if you have about $500k I can sell you a bad ass intrusion detection/video surveillance system

[Jenksismyhero]

Arlo rules

 

Is there a delay? The battery issue might be a pain after a while too. Wonder what the battery life is.

[RockRaines]

Is there a delay? The battery issue might be a pain after a while too. Wonder what the battery life is.

Slight but not much, I use rechargeable batteries and they last about a month or so at a time.

[bigruss]

Loving this situation at work: business brought in a cloud app to handle email orders, they of course went with the cheapest option (to be fair it was WAY cheaper). They ask IT to expedite the integration, which according to the vendor is typically 18 weeks, we did it in 6. So of course it wasn't architected well or tested much, which lead to the inevitable complete breakage after like 2 weeks of being in production.

 

The business then runs to us saying we need to fix it, but it's a cloud app so we have 0 control over it. On top of all of that, we turned out to be their biggest customer and are in unchartered territory, and since we are the largest they aren't hosting the service themselves, they are using a 3rd party provider for the hosted servers (and a s***ty cheap one from what we can tell).

 

You get what you pay for that's for sure.

 

 

[Y2HH]

Loving this situation at work: business brought in a cloud app to handle email orders, they of course went with the cheapest option (to be fair it was WAY cheaper). They ask IT to expedite the integration, which according to the vendor is typically 18 weeks, we did it in 6. So of course it wasn't architected well or tested much, which lead to the inevitable complete breakage after like 2 weeks of being in production.

 

The business then runs to us saying we need to fix it, but it's a cloud app so we have 0 control over it. On top of all of that, we turned out to be their biggest customer and are in unchartered territory, and since we are the largest they aren't hosting the service themselves, they are using a 3rd party provider for the hosted servers (and a s***ty cheap one from what we can tell).

 

You get what you pay for that's for sure.

 

That's the issue with a lot of these expedited cloud roll outs...IMO, a lot of these cloud services simply aren't ready for prime time yet...they're works in progress, and while they may be "good enough" for a lot of things, I wouldn't be putting mission critical applications out there just yet...especially when taking security into consideration.

[Texsox]

Anyone use a Nest? I have a cheap, $20 programmable Honeywell, but my wife just found that ComEd/Nicor has a $120 rebate if you buy a Nest. New ones are like $250. My wife likes the appeal (i.e. look and fancy functionality). Anyone with reviews? I'm not sure how much cost savings i'll get since we already have the house scheduled to increase/decrease temperature depending on if we're home and if we're asleep. The Nest seems to be a LITTLE more fluid than a strict schedule, but really other than the ability to change the temp on your phone, what's the appeal? Anything else?

 

My local electric monopoly here in SA paid us $150 to install a programmable, internet enabled, thermostat in our home. It works really well because my wife and I have fairly predictable schedules. The only downside is during extreme periods of electrical use the utility has the option to raise our temperature a couple degrees to ease usage. Of course we can override the temp.

 

 

[RockRaines]

Loving this situation at work: business brought in a cloud app to handle email orders, they of course went with the cheapest option (to be fair it was WAY cheaper). They ask IT to expedite the integration, which according to the vendor is typically 18 weeks, we did it in 6. So of course it wasn't architected well or tested much, which lead to the inevitable complete breakage after like 2 weeks of being in production.

 

The business then runs to us saying we need to fix it, but it's a cloud app so we have 0 control over it. On top of all of that, we turned out to be their biggest customer and are in unchartered territory, and since we are the largest they aren't hosting the service themselves, they are using a 3rd party provider for the hosted servers (and a s***ty cheap one from what we can tell).

 

You get what you pay for that's for sure.

Psh, O365 has some of the same issues, Cloud Services when architected poorly are worse than on-prem apps. I see it every day.

[bigruss]

Psh, O365 has some of the same issues, Cloud Services when architected poorly are worse than on-prem apps. I see it every day.

Yea I'm not necessarily fighting for on prem vs cloud. And yes, the architect we had on this apparently is an idiot.

 

But, the business doesn't understand the difference and they still believe that our IT would be able to fix the vendor's problems. That's the con of going to the cloud, you lose that control. The only control you will have is whatever agreements you have for SLAs in the contract. That's what frustrates me, that they don't understand this still.

[RockRaines]

Yea I'm not necessarily fighting for on prem vs cloud. And yes, the architect we had on this apparently is an idiot.

 

But, the business doesn't understand the difference and they still believe that our IT would be able to fix the vendor's problems. That's the con of going to the cloud, you lose that control. The only control you will have is whatever agreements you have for SLAs in the contract. That's what frustrates me, that they don't understand this still.

And almost nobody enforces these SLA's or even asks for them because its so hard to prove. For example, a cloud security company cites 99.9999% global uptime and will guarantee you that SLA. But for you as a customer what it really means is if you are down, as long as some other company is up, they are still "up." If you want to see a business freak out, take away all of their access to every application because the cloud security broker is down.

 

 

[chw42]

Got my Nexus 6P today.

 

It's probably the nicest-feeling device I've ever owned and it's weird since it's made by Huawei. I had no idea Huawei had the technology and craftsmanship to make a phone that can rival the iPhone and the HTC One in terms of build quality.

[Rowand44]

Any big difference between the iphone 6 and 6s I should know about?

[Kyyle23]

There is an "S" after 6

[bmags]

I love the "live" camera pics. Went to colorado a few weeks ago and have all these awesome little vignette movies. It reminds me of Zoe on HTC One except you don't need to do anything different than take a picture.

 

The "press and hold" tasks stuff I haven't used that much, but was a little fun for pictures in text when I'm on the run.

[iamshack]

My local electric monopoly here in SA paid us $150 to install a programmable, internet enabled, thermostat in our home. It works really well because my wife and I have fairly predictable schedules. The only downside is during extreme periods of electrical use the utility has the option to raise our temperature a couple degrees to ease usage. Of course we can override the temp.

Demand-side management.

 

Does the thermostat pre-cool your house for you prior to the increase?

 

I work for a utility, in the department that determines whether to enable demand-side management, and I override it almost every time.

[Y2HH]

Any big difference between the iphone 6 and 6s I should know about?

 

It's actually a massive spec bump.

 

The A9 chip is an absolute beast (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-app...s-plus-review/6), and it's the first iPhone with 2gigs of ram (finally).

 

There are other features such as live photos (stolen from HTC), and force touch that are pretty nice, too...force touch will really shine when games start using it. A lot of people claim it's no better than long press, but that's just thoughtless banter. With force touch, especially in regard to gaming, you can now utilize all of the following to control and/or fire:

 

Quick tap: Fire button 1

Long hold: Fire button 2

Force Touch 1 (hard press) : Fire button 3

Force Touch 2 (harder press): Fire button 4

 

Anything from controlling and being able to fire 2 different ways with 1 finger, are amazing implications for games.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Y2HH

[bmags]

Did HTC ever update zoe so that you did not need to hold down for the full time? These are so much better done than what was on htc one m7 because its not out of your normal usage. With zoe it was just like...okay, so it's a video?

[Y2HH]

Did HTC ever update zoe so that you did not need to hold down for the full time? These are so much better done than what was on htc one m7 because its not out of your normal usage. With zoe it was just like...okay, so it's a video?

 

I'm not even sure it's still a thing, and if it is it never caught on.

Edited November 8, 2015 by Y2HH

[StrangeSox]

I installed a new video card last weekend in anticipation of Fallout 4. Since then, whenever I restart my computer, the first time I'll get the "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". If I power the computer off and then back on, it'll load up Windows normally. It's not a huge deal, but it's a little bit of a pain in the ass if I'm trying to restart the computer remotely (using teamviewer).

 

I have no idea what would cause it to get boot failures the first time and then boot up just fine right after that.

 

I also recently cleared out my hibernate file (hiberfil.sys), could that potentially cause the error? That was a few days prior to the video card install, and I don't think I saw this boot error between that disk cleanup and installing the card.

[Bananarchy]

Got my Nexus 6P today.

 

It's probably the nicest-feeling device I've ever owned and it's weird since it's made by Huawei. I had no idea Huawei had the technology and craftsmanship to make a phone that can rival the iPhone and the HTC One in terms of build quality.

I usually rotate phones out once a year, but I'm really liking the 6P more than I though I would. Came over from an iPhone 6. Google services are just so far superior to anything Apple offers.

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

I tried Samsung's Gear VR powered by Oculus at Costco. It was actually pretty cool, and for $100 I can see it being pretty well sold.

[Kyyle23]

I tried Samsung's Gear VR powered by Oculus at Costco. It was actually pretty cool, and for $100 I can see it being pretty well sold.

 

With something like that you really have to worry about the support it gets. I'm sure the technology is really cool but how many options do you get?

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

With something like that you really have to worry about the support it gets. I'm sure the technology is really cool but how many options do you get?

 

So far the only one the guy there knew of was Netflix.