The Beanster Blog

I love Windows Phone. I still have a Treo Pro and an HTC S730 and even my first Compaq iPAQ lying around somewhere at home. In a previous post I was really tempted to get a Lumia 950XL what stopped me was the crappy service of Microsoft Philippines (or their distributor). My Lumia 532 has been to the service center twice for LCD issues which are still happening by the way. They refuse to refund me, or give me store credit so I can get another device. vertical dead pixels appear from time to time usually a reboot gets rid of it I guess Microsoft or their distributor refuses to standby their product, so why should I? Also the Lumia 950 XL has been heavily discounted in other territories but not in the Philippines. So I got an iPhone 7 Plus and am still running the Lumia 532 for work, have to reboot it periodically to get rid of the vertical lines that crop up from time to time.

Over the holiday season I received an Apple Watch Series 2 , thanks baby! The 42mm fits my wrist well, not too big not too small. Prior to receiving this awesome gift I was using a MiBand 2 as my wearable. The Good: As with most Apple products the hardware is really good. The UI is simple and intuitive. I like that you can use Siri on the watch as well. I think the device shines as a companion device to your iPhone for notifications and such. I think the fitness features are also inspiring me to be more active. Got to fill all those 3 circles, you know. I also like the variety of watch faces you can use. Text messages Phone calls Siri Controlling what's playing on my iPhone Fitness The Bad: No sleep tracking. I don't understand why this feature isn't baked in to watchOS given that the Apple Watch has tons of sensors. What gives? The Ugly: Battery life. I have to charge almost daily, my brother has advised me to use power reserve mode but then ...

Yesterday I brought both MacBook Pros to Ynzal and had them appraised. They will give 18,000.00 for the MD101 and 35,000.00 for the MC975 respectively, that's 53,000.00 off the next laptop I will get from them. I am kinda dreading the dongle life so much so that I asked if they still had the 2015 MacBook Pro with Discreet Graphics. Alas, no such luck. As per Ynzal, the distributor is projecting to have the MLH42PP/A in stock by 3rd week of January (estimate only!). It's the stock config of the 15inch 2016 MacBook Pro w/ TouchBar, as much as I would want to spec out the machine the cost is just too much as it is. So I will go with the stock config, which is a significant upgrade from my circa 2012 MacBook Pro. I guess the next step would be to reformat the MD101. I'll use this guide

NAS4Free on Wind U123H, the old clunker stopped charging this morning. Remember NetBooks? Yeah, those cheap Intel ATOM driven mini-notebooks... Well I still have one lying around, an MSI Wind U123H. I upgraded it from Windows 7 to 10 during the free period, but since it is about 9 yo hardware it isn't running so well. I've decided to re-purpose the Wind into a NAS or Networked Attached Storage. I want to use it as a Network Backup location for both Time Machine and Windows Backup, and maybe explore Media Server functions as well. Basically, I just felt the hardware was just gathering dust and wanted to do something more. I took out the 240Gb Toshiba 5400rpm with Windows 10, and plunked in the 500Gb Seagate Momentus 5400rpm that I had lying around. I was able to finally get it installed in a USB, early this morning around 1 AM. I decided it was time to shutdown the machine and call it a night. So this morning I noticed that the MSI Wind wasn't charging, I tried ...

I'm thinking up a new project... My partner's 2012 MacBook Pro 13in aka "MD101 ", has been having constant Beach ball of Death issues for the longest time. I suspect it's bad RAM or a bad HDD. Since she will be upgrading to a different machine, I am thinking of salvaging her old machine and upgrading some components. Specifically the 500Gb 5400rpm HDD to 480Gb SSD, and the RAM from 4Gb to 16Gb. 2.5" 480Gb SSD 6Gb/s SATA3 8Gb x2 PC3-12800 DDR3L 1600MHz SO-DIMM 204 Pin CL11 True, it is an old machine but it is also one of last MacBook Pros that can be easily upgraded . With these upgrades I am hoping to have a workable machine with better performance. I am also toying with the idea of having dual storage drives (replacing the built-in SuperDrive with a second HDD) but for now I am retaining the optical drive. I plan on running both MacOS Sierra and Windows 10 via BootCamp. I have already made inquiries on the components and hope to have some id...

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL I am really tempted to get a flagship Windows 10 Mobile device (might be the last for awhile, since the rumored Surface Phone is still uncertain), I am undecided between the Lumia 950 and the 950XL both flagships would be a HUGE upgrade from my Lumia 532 . I reckon since I am not upgrading to the iPhone 7 Plus (the removal of the earphone jack really really bugged me) I can update my secondary device instead. I sold my XiaoMi RedMi 1S earlier this month and have been exclusively using the Lumia 532 as my work device. Yes, I have said good bye to Android for now, my second mobile OS of choice is now Windows Mobile 10. Even if the *new* Microsoft seems less interested in their own mobile OS, Windows Mobile still gets periodic updates. I am really happy with Windows Mobile 10 even with the so-so hardware and the sparse apps, and am curious how the OS performs on beefier specs. I am still keeping my iPhone 6S Plus as my primary, so I'd still have ...