Month: December 2019

SSD drives have fallen in price in the past few years as a slew of products from the big guns (Samsung, Intel, Micron) have pushed the price of the SSD terabyte to less than $90.

However, there’s one small player which is defying that trend. US-based vendor Patriot has dropped the price of its Burst internal SSD to $74.99 after a $5 rebate card at Newegg.

The offer will last till Christmas and includes free delivery – and although you will need to print and fill the rebate form, we believe the hassle is definitely worth the saving.

Patriot Memory is not a household name but they managed to deliver a good product at a bargain price, besting our former cheapest price by a good margin. The offer is good for the next few days so grab it while you can

Other notable features include Static and Dynamic Wear leveling, Bad Block and low power management as well as TRIM support and Smart ZIP. Patriot quotes a sequential read speed of up to 560MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 540MB/S, both using ATTO benchmark.

As always, we recommend that you get a cloud storage solution to backup your files as well as a hard drive protection plan and a data recovery service for external hard drives. These may add up to the price of the drives but like insurance, it is better to be safe than sorry.

‘Krane’ is a Chrome OS device in development that we’ve not talked about too often. As a matter of fact, we mentioned it upon its arrival in our consciousness in April of this year and once again as Gabriel found it would be only the second Chrome OS device to make the questionable decision of ditching the headphone jack. Other than those two posts, we’ve not really tracked anything unique about this device, but we have a few more clues to add to the pile that tell us a bit more about this upcoming tablet-only device.

First up, let’s get the clues from the Chromium Repositories out of the way. We have two things of interest, here. On one hand, we have proof that in lieu of a headphone jack, Lenovo looks to be assuring support for a USB Type C to 3.5mm headphone converter. That bit of proof comes with a clear reference to Lenovo, so I suppose that’s a 2-for-1 clue. Second, we have proof that they will be removing the POGO pin support we expect most of the ‘Kukui’-based devices to ship with.

Let’s start with the latter. POGO support is being removed from ‘Krane’ and if you’ve been following along, ‘Krane’ is one of a slew of new devices based on the ‘Kukui’ baseboard. This ‘Kukui’ board is toting support for things like a MediaTek 8183 chip, ambient light sensing, Bluetooth 5, detachable/tablet form factors, and more. We know there are at least 10 of these devices in development and we expect to start seeing the first ones arrive at CES in just a couple weeks.

POGO pins are, in general, used for keyboard accessories in detaching devices like the Pixel Slate and HP X2. This port gives tablet devices a quick way to pair up with a keyboard for use as a laptop when necessary and we expect to see quite a bit of this with ‘Kukui’-based devices. It would have made perfect sense for ‘Krane’ to leverage this connector, but it has clearly been removed as seen in the language from this commit in the repositories:

krane: do not support POGO dock

krane doesn’t have a POGO dock, the config should be dropped.

So, why drop the POGO pin support? We’re looking to find more clues about this, but it seems that ‘Krane’ will likely be a tablet-first and tablet-only device. There have only been a few devices like this in the Chrome OS ecosystem thus far, and they were oddities. The most popular and notable was the Acer Chromebook Tab 10. With a very nice screen and pen support, it was a decent tablet held back mainly by the poor tablet mode of Chrome OS at the time and the sluggish Rockchip processor.

I suppose it is time to try again with a Chrome OS tablet and Lenovo looks to be one of the companies giving it a shot. With pen support likely, this device could end up being very similar to the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, but with a much-improved software interface and what we’re hoping will be a much faster ARM processor than the Rockchip RK3399.

We keep referring to ‘Krane’ as a Lenovo device, and that is for good reason. The other commit we’ve uncovered is a very clear nod not only to the maker of this device, but to the fact that they’ll be giving users a work-around for the fact that ‘Krane’ will ship without a headphone jack. The language we found in this particular commit gives all this away:

krane: Add Lenovo USB-C TO 3.5mm Adapter

Add Lenovo USB-C TO 3.5mm Adapter

First up, it is very clear now that this device will be made by Lenovo. Commits don’t get written to include manufacturer-specific hardware if the device itself isn’t made by that manufacturer. Just like we saw with Dell’s Chromebook Enterprise offerings earlier this year, commits with manufacturer-specific language around manufacturer-specific peripherals make a clear-cut case for the maker of the device in question.

The bigger concern, here, is the decision by Lenovo to drop the headphone jack in favor of requiring users to get a dongle out in order to plug in headphones. Look, I know it is the 2019 thing to do, but why? With a tablet or Chromebook, it doesn’t seem necessary in the least. If the big argument for ditching the headphone jack is space, that argument just doesn’t hold water with larger devices. It seems, however, that Lenovo is doing it anyway.

With the removal of POGO pins and what looks to be the addition of the USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter in the box, Lenovo seems to be going all-tablet with ‘Krane’. Don’t expect this device to ship with a keyboard attachment in the box or show up with one available right away. My hope is Lenovo is at least considering a solution for those that would need one. I hope that, unlike other Chrome OS tablets, ‘Krane’ will get an official folio case with a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad (think Brydge G-Type for the Pixel Slate) that gives you some sort of stand function. Chrome OS on a tablet has come a long way, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that under that tablet UI is a great desktop device that many users will want to use in that way.

We’ve got some bad news for the deeper-pocketed nostalgia-tinged tech fans out there: Motorola is pushing back the launch of its foldable reboot of the Motorola Razr.

Preorders of the revived flip-phone were expected to open on December 26, with the first units trickling out on January 9, but those dates have been ditched in favour of an unspecified time next year.

In a statement issued by parent company Lenovo, Motorola said it was delaying the launch to “better meet consumer demand.”

“Demand has been high, and as a result, has quickly outgrown supply predictions,” it said.

For what it’s worth, every company that has attempted to launch a mass-market foldable phone has missed its original expected release dates. Huawei delayed launch of the Mate X no fewer than two times, while Samsung had to shelve its original release date over an embarrassing durability issue.

Early units of the Samsung Galaxy Fold had an awkward problem where removing the screen protector would essentially wreck the display. When the device finally reached shelves, screwdriver botherers at iFixit warned punters that the device was “alarmingly fragile”, particularly with respect to the screen. Furthermore, other publications, most notably CNET, shed doubts on the phone’s ability to withstand its promised 200,000 folds.

The Motorola Razr will be the first commercially available phone to use a candybar-shaped portrait display. It also mirrors the design of the original Razr down to the protruding “chin” at the bottom of the device.

And crucially, at $1,500, it would drastically undercut the existing competition, making foldable mobes (unless Escobar’s brother makes good on his promise) more accessible to a wider swath of the population.

That said, it’s probably sensible to wait for the reviews before dropping your cash on this. The Razr uses a relatively underpowered Snapdragon 710 platform, which is typically found on £300-range mid-rangers. Motorola says this is due to thermal management, and while that might be true, it’ll leave consumers wanting for power.

And with just 6GB of RAM and 128GB of ROM, a puny 2,510mAh battery, and no wireless charging, this phone underwhelms in other areas. On paper, it doesn’t strike us as a device worthy of its steep price-tag. ®

If you’re still using Windows 7, it’s time to move on. The venerable and much-loved 2009 version of Windows gets its last security update on Jan. 14, 2020 (unless your company pays for extended support) and the free Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus program will (probably) no longer be supported either.

As we get further into 2020, Windows 7 machines will be more likely to become infected by malware, and any deep-rooted flaws in the operating system that arise almost certainly won’t be fixed.

That’s not good for the roughly 28% of Windows users who still use Windows 7. If you’re among them, you should upgrade to Windows 10. Your Windows 7 PC will almost certainly support Windows 10, though you may have to ditch some programs.

How to upgrade to Windows 10 for free

Here’s a little secret: As long as your Windows 7 license key is valid, you can probably upgrade your Windows 7 machine to Windows 10 for free by downloading and running Microsoft’s own Windows 10 installation tool.

Microsoft’s user forums have instructions on how to do this, and Bleeping Computer has more detailed instructions. Bleeping Computer says you need to opt to keep all files and applications to get the free upgrade, but the Microsoft user forums say you just need the existing Windows license key. Here’s how to find the Windows license key.

How to survive with Windows 7

If you do decide to stick with Windows 7 after Jan. 14, you’ll need to take some precautions.

Update everything in the Jan. 14 Microsoft Patch Tuesday release. It’ll be your last chance to make sure Windows and other Microsoft software are as secure as possible.

Install one of the best antivirus programs. Microsoft is killing its own antivirus software for Windows 7, so you’ll need something else.

Uninstall the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. It’s a huge security hole. Use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox instead.

Ditch Microsoft Office and any of its components, such as Word, Excel or Outlook. Switch to Google’s office suite or to LibreOffice. For an email client to replace Outlook, try Gmail or Thunderbird.

Turn off Java in your browsers.

Turn off Adobe Flash Player in your browsers.

Create a limited user account for yourself and use that for day-to-day computer tasks instead of the administrator account you originally created. Limited accounts limit malware infections.