In the interim, while waiting for the Project FI sim to arrive and the old phone number to be transferred to the new FI sim, I cut down the old micro sim with a Fosom nano sim cutter from Amazon ($6.99).

It has adapters to hit the nano sim to each of the larger sizes to fit other phones.

Like most tools, it is fool-proof but not idiot-proof. As with any tool, look first, then “cut”. It’s easy and there was not a problem with the T-Mobile micro sim being too thick. (In which case you’d need to scrape the back with an emery stick.

Everything worked right off.

Because of recent price breaks, I bought a Nexus 6P (Android) Phone. It competes well against the Apple 6S and the Samsung S7. It has a pretty fast processor, a big 5.7″ quad-HD (sharp) bright screen. Mine has 64GB storage and the latest Android Marshmallow. The fingerprint reader works fast and easy to protect and wake the phone and to pay at Starbucks.

For me, the size is just right. I got used to it in a second and now my Nexus 5 (5″) seems small.

The battery is huge and the quick-charge feature, with the OEM charger is really fast. It uses a USB type C connector and communicates at USB 2.0 speeds, which is pretty fast.

Qualicom quick charge 2 or 3 Chargers will charge it pretty fast, but even Quick Charge 3 isn’t quite as fast (but ok).

I can charge it at a slower (regular) pace on any USB charger and can use the included C to A adapter to plug into the USB 3 ports on the front (!) of my computer or the C to C cable (included) to plug inti the USB3.1 type C port on the back (!). I haven’t evaluated the charging speeds, but I suspect that none of them compete with the OEM charger. I’ll report next month.

The USB standards aren’t fixed yet and so, the resistors in the cables and adapters limit the current unless the phone, cable and charger communicate over a special pin used in the cable. It’s not a one-line answer, other than the OEM charger is the fastest and Quick Charge 3 is close, but slower.

I’ll get my Project FI nano sim card tomorrow and switch from T-Mobile pre-paid to Google unlimited voice and text and (I’m starting with) one GB/month data. I’ll tell my follies in the next post.

LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE WALKING

This is a continuation of my recent posts about a seriously-fast PC build for desktop use. Read March, April, and May first.

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

I’ve installed enough big programs over the WEB in the last month that it has proven to be “the only way to go”.

This will sound like “old hat”, because I’ve been saying this for years, but with multiple examples, it has been proven true by recent experience.

High speed Internet is the only way to go. A decent router and WI-FI connection makes streaming media and fast downloads a very practical thing. Purchasing software by digital delivery (download) has replaced CDs and DVDs for software distribution.

Let me give you an example. There is a video game package called Battlefield 4 (premium edition). It is a 35 GB download (a full Blu-ray disk size). It took me approximately an hour to download. I couldn’t have driven to a video game store (if they exist) and brought home the Blu-ray home in an hour. Then would be the install time on top of that. So the time involved is much less with digital download.

It was a snap to download Microsoft Office 2016. (It’s about DVD size.)

I like Acronis so I got the 2015 version, to work with Windows (Pro) 10.

I have had a Seagate backup external drive for years, but have never used it at USB3.0 speed. It did a full system backup (44GB) in about five minutes (wow).

As a generality, I’ve saved a lot of gas in the last month. This is a step in the direction of moving data around by wire or air instead of moving around a body to carry data on a physical medium (DVD).

Some of my most recent work was done as a telecommuter. In this case, the money saved on gas and the considerable improvement in home-made breakfast and better-than-‘Bucks home brewed coffee is a tangible improvement in quality-of-life. The music or background entertainment is better, too. We used to call it “sneakernet” back in 1995 (faster to walk a floppy disk to the other location than to transmit it over a modem).

I was doing some design work on a pathetic work laptop with only a weak WI-FI connection, but it worked. Doing something similar with a REAL computer and good WI-FI connection is obviously better.

TELECOMMUTING

I mention this because many people might consider full-time or part-time work from home, and I’m telling you “Have at it!” I know a couple people who work part or full time from home and get along fine without the daily meetings and commutes.

The specter of the geek living in the basement with a big screen is not just a common joke on prime-time TV.
It’s actually a workable alternative to rush-hour commuting. No kidding.

I’m starting to like Hawaiian shirts and shorts these days.

The new machine went together without incident and is basically the same as earlier described. The parts arrived in 2 to 3 days, thanks to New Egg Premier membership and Amazon Prime membership making the shipping fast and “free”. The additional costs are absorbed by the free fast shipping. It’s maybe a wash, but fast and no-hassle are worth it.

I had a little trouble with the logistics of installing the “I/O shield” (shiny metal plate) into the back of the Corsair 200r case, but that’s just my fumble-fingers. And maybe putting in the eight screws to hold the Asus motherboard in place (and supply a ground). A magnetized screwdriver with a relatively long shaft in the #1 Philips size is almost necessary. I had to guess on how to connect the case front panel power switch because it shares power and ground with the front light. The placement of the mechanical connectors for the CPU cooler were not intuitive and the drawing (without words) were obtuse, taking a little head-scratching. But the build was basically a piece of cake.

The biggest concern I had was how to install Windows 10 Pro from a USB stick and with only a WI-FI connection. It turns out to be easy because booting from USB is a snap these days, by just selecting it. The ASUS WI-FI card at $60 has proven to be heaven-sent, fast and automatic install for Windows 10 (would have been a pain otherwise). Windows 10 just asked for my WI-FI password and it worked without incident. I used my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse and the tiny USB adapter “remembered” its earlier pairing with these two devices and they “just worked”.

I later added an AZIO gaming keyboard and also mouse, which I both love. I got a keyboard with lighted mechanical keys (similar to Cherry Red switches) which considerably improve my touch typing skills over membrane style keys. The wired USB mouse has no lag, which really annoys me about a wireless mouse. Both of these are simpler devices, not requiring special drivers to run on Windows 10. The keyboard uses the standard built-in “gaming keyboard” Windows 10 driver, which adds special function keys for browser and a knob for controlling audio volume. So, with a little fore-planning, everything “just worked”.

Windows 10 has too much built-in spyware for my liking (way too much). I consulted a few Youtube tutorials and — this is important— installed Spybot Anti-Beacon. This allows you to disable dozens of built-in tattle-tale features in Windows 10. My phone is connected to the world and I treat it that way, but I prefer to be left alone for my personal property, like books in progress.

Windows 10 is fast and  a piece of cake to learn. We’re talking about a ten second boot with the SSD. Speaking of the Samsung 850 500GB Solid State Drive, it is worth the $150 price. Samsung has a download of the latest version of their Magician software which triples the speed of Samsung 850 or 950 SSDs for a single drive (typically your boot drive). It’s a Windows app that is single drive manager to take advantage of the drive’s architecture. Well worth it.

I’m pleasantly surprised at the improved WI-FI connection from the two 8 inch antennas sticking out of the back of the case. Netflix and HBOgo have just a beautiful display. Sharp, full-screen and flawless. Game of Thrones and House of Cards are a visual pleasure to see and listen to. The HD audio on the motherboard is a slight upgrade from the standard and well worth it. Needless to say, the top of the line video from the MSI GTX970 is a pleasure to view. Graphics processors are so improved over a handful of years ago. I would imagine even the built-in HD530 video would be ok for simple 1080p streaming. I’m talking about the intigrated video on the latest processors, but I don’t begrudge the overkill, even when not working the display hard with gaming animation or something like Photoshop.

So I did this because I like to put my time and attention into the gory details of the mainstream consumer technology. I don’t recommend it if you don’t have that kind of interest or time. There is a “bang for-the-buck” element, but it could easily not be “worth it” if you screw up on a few things or don’t have the time or interest. For me, this was an entirely successful adventure without a misstep. Your results may vary…..

I’m getting closer to building a new desktop computer. It will seem like a normal gaming computer but is technically not one because I seldom play computer games. I’m leaning heavily on the gaming community because they’ve come to a rapid consensus on proven methods.

GRAPHICS

My choice of graphics cards is at the GTX970 level. This is by Nvidia. An equal card might be a Radeon 390. I’m going with the 970 because there is more information on it available. The next level up, the 980 costs about twice as much and inferior to two 970’s paralleled in, what’s called “SLI”. I doubt the need will arise but I can upgrade to that if it happens.

CPU

My choice of CPU’s is a little more overkill than I might need for gaming, the i7-6700k. It has additional features not used in gaming, like virtualization and encryption and things that make video encoding go more quickly.  For strictly gaming, an i5-6600k would save $120 and be almost as good. Processors with more than four cores are overkill for gaming because none of the games uses more than four cores. Also you have to overclock the i5 to its limits to match the i7 with just a modest overclock.

WI-FI ac

For the past several months I’ve been using WI-FI to talk to my lowly laptop and TV and I plan to continue with an upgrade to an “ac” standard router soon to handle the ever-increasing loads on the system. This necessitates a motherboard with a built-in “ac” antenna or adding a $60 one.

POWER SUPPLY

Power supplies for these parts shouldn’t dip below 500 watts and with SLI, 650 watts, like the Corsair CX750M, which has modular cables for the optional distribution to later-added GPUs. The extra cables wait in the box and don’t clutter up the air flow inside the computer case. This is a popular one and competes well in price.

CASE

I’m torn between the Rosewill R5 and the Corsair 200r cases. Either will accommodate a liquid CPU cooler, should I ever want to upgrade to that. I’ve chosen the Corsair because it is more conservative in appearance. The R5 has lights glowing through the front grill. It also has an older front panel case header with an E-SATA connector, which I wouldn’t have anything to connect to. The 200R has a couple USB 3.0 connectors (like the R5) and the usual microphone and stereo headphone jacks (like the R5). I may purchase an additional front panel pair of USB 3.0 connectors (two more are available from the motherboard) if I need them. There are a couple USB 2.0 plugs on the back, and a handful available for the front,if I would ever want them (not likely).

The motherboard is a Maximus viii Ranger, which is in the stratosphere for most gaming builds. I could have spent $40-$60 less, but would be limited a few years from now. It has, additional to the four USB connectors mentioned on the back, a USB 3.1 (ultraspeed) and a USB3.1 with a (reversible)  C connector. These are the latest USB spec and accommodate faster speeds and higher current.

MOTHERBOARD

The board accommodates two PCIE 3.0 card slots that can work in 8X8 channels, for the fastest type (of reasonably-priced) SLI arrangement of dual GPUs, should I ever feel like going to that.

It is the lowest in the upper “Republic of Gaming” series (ROG), which adds some extra overclocking features for people who like to fiddle with getting that last extra 2% out of the CPU and memory speeds. A simple overclock will give an extra 5% to the speed and the last few % after that take some tweaking and depend more on cooling and timing issues.

That’s the beauty of the z170 (sixth generation) Skylake series. It easily gives a stable overclock at a relatively low heat load. Because success is so easy, it is more of a common thing. The old pros don’t see the need for automatic software for overclocking and the new generation of overclockers pay a few extra bucks and “push a button” to get a well-balanced speed-up. In either case, overclocking provides a possible extra 8% in speed and is nothing to sneeze at.

This is a “warm-up”. These are the basic features of a 2016 desktop computer to catch you up to the latest. I’m  doing this in an overview fashion.

SSDs
By now, you should only be thinking about a Solid State Drive unless you are putting it into an old computer or REALLY need the huge storage for archives or the like.
SSDs have taken over. Even the slowest ones are about five times faster than mechanical drives. Just by cloning your boot disk you will change your boot times to around twenty seconds. And the fastest types might shave another three seconds, but that’s all.
I got onto some gaming sites and discovered that, no matter what processor or memory, or video card, the upper speed limit for data transfer during the game is below 600Megabits/sec. So any SSD with an SATA-3  6Megabit interface will be able to dish out data faster than the processor can handle it.
This may not always be the case, but it will be for the current breed of processors.
As a generality, physical hard drives get slower and slower as they get cluttered up. The latency times moving the magnetic head here and there greatly slow down the read times, not coming close to the theoretical sequential read times.
This is the advantage of SSDs. Switching from one part of the stored memory to another is just a matter of setting a few (transistor) switches. Problems with defragmented files have little consequence. This is the major advantage for your boot drive.
The M.2 specification was developed for mobile devices. The “drive” looks like a stick of gum, with a connector at either end. They’re getting popular on the latest motherboards. They cost about 1.5 to 2.5 times the cost of SATA SSDs, so you might have to spend an extra $100 for the cheaper ones. Their throughput is potentially about three times as fast, but might only shave a second off the boot time and not speed up actual compute time. You’d just have less storage for the money.
There are two faster specifications that use the PCI bus, and cost more and deliver memory at speeds even faster.
The point is to at least have an SSD for your boot drive and get 90% of the benefit.
You can buy a Samsung 850 500GB SATA 3 SSD for $150 on Newegg.com. Or you can buy a Samsung 950 256GB M2 drive for $182. Neither is THAT expensive. With older computers (like you and I have) there are PCI adaptor cards that mount the drives and fit many PCI slots.
Samsung 850 SSDs have a utility that optimizes their structure to your individual computer. This works better than the Intel speed optimizer. You can use something like a late version of Achronis to “clone” your existing magnetic drive if you want to just go faster with your laptop or desk PC. I did this three years ago. It’s easier and faster and cheaper now.
LGA 1151
The latest (generation 6) processors, Skylake-S CPUs, have the overclockers in a frenzy of excitement. With 14 NanoMeter trace size they have something like four times the density than Generation 5, Haswell CPUs, and much lower heat problems compared to the early Pentium fours of the 2000’s. So the emphasis is no longer on huge fan arrays and other extreme cooling solutions.
Until this 6th generation the clock frequency (system clock, base clock frequency) was tied directly to the PCI bus and couldn’t be messed with much, (maybe +5%) before things got unstable. PCI bus slots are the short slots commonly used for the graphics card. So the CPU “multiplier” had to be upped to get a faster CPU and Intel charged extra for a processor that had an “unlocked” (modifiable) multiplier. The voltage could be raised a small amount to make this work, but the processor got closer to overheating.
The 6th generation uses a different set of support chips, the Z170, that make it possible to again boost the BCLK (base clock) by about 30%, which is for a “locked” CPU. The “unlocked” CPUs (with a “k” or “x” designation) can use a raise in BCLK or the multiplier (or both) and a small voltage rise.
I’m not sure where it will go but most overclockers seem to be most comfortable with the (more expensive) K chip. By far the popular one is the i7 6700K, rated at 4.0 MHz, which is commonly overclocked to 4.7 MHz, costing $370 on Newegg.com. The regular i7 6700 locked chip can be operated at a similar speed with a boosted BCLK. The locked 6700 is “rated” at 3.4 MHz and costs $340, but it overclocks to almost the same 4.6MHz speed by just the BCLK boost (of a higher %), so some argue it is made “too good”. These simplifications have made overclocking easy and cheap.
The prices drop with big box stores batch purchasing, so it’s a supply and demand (price war) thing. You’ll occasionally see a 10-day price drop.
In either case you need a better CPU cooler, in the $30 range.
For those not wanting to overclock (many people) the standard cooler and cheaper CPU and regular memory (more later about this) and quiet operation are a great tradeoff. No worries, no problems.

It’s not that the newer processors are very much faster, but rather that they’re easier to work with and the new socket standard is clearly superior. So, this is about the new standard.

DDR4
This memory is faster than DDR3. In case you are not paying attention, a new chip standard, a new chipset (required) and new memory standard are a signal to start a new computer, as last year’s stuff will become obsolete. The stuff you can buy will be current for several years.
DDR4 has a nominal rating of 2100 MHz and 1.2 volts. You can buy it, up to 3600 MHz. The gamers say it is “diminishing returns” faster than 3000 MHz, given the current processors, graphics cards and games.

XMP PROFILES
Most z170 motherboards have the ability to use faster DDR4. You may have to switch a physical XMP switch or enable XMP in the BIOS. You would always download and “flash” the latest BIOS (and XMP files) after you first boot up the motherboard. “XMP” is the data of how your individual make and model of memory can be safely set to for fastest speed. The identity of the memory is read and the information is matched to this make and model. The very earliest boards came out with preliminary XMP data, so check the motherboard manufacturer’s website for the latest BIOS and XMP.

OVERCLOCKING SETTINGS
Here you should consult YouTube. There are different automatic settings for each motherboard manufacturer. ASUS, for example, has a one button automatic overclock. There is an example for each manufacturer and a few videos showing 4 or 5 main manufacturers. Just remember to enable XMP, if it’s not automatic, and use the “extreme overclocking” for the very fastest settings.
The main changes usually involve the BCLK, multiplier and CPU voltage changes.

GPUs (graphics processor units — video cards)
Most of the gaming sites either are using GTX980 or GTX970 graphic processor units (GPUs). The 970s for mere mortals and the 980s for those that can afford $650 for their viewing pleasure. Typically, almost any game can be played at 1080p and a high frame rate on a GTX970. There is a difference, but if you can see it, why are you reading this? You would already have better eyes than mine.
If you’re really into 4k video, then the 980 offers future-proofing for actually playing games in 4k resolution. The regular 970 can play 4k video, but not the 4k video games. If you’re into editing or creating 4k video, then GTX980 is a no-brainer.
No avid gamer in his right mind uses the “HD video” built into the i7 or i5 processors. They are fine for typical desktop applications like Word and Excel and seriously deficient when doing Photoshop. AutoCAD does ok on just an “ok” GPU for occasional use. But a “CAD drone” would climb the walls.

I hope this translates into something you can use in planning your next system.

Favorite Uncle Dean

FUD’S FOLLIES
REVENANT

To quote Mark Twain, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

I’ve been doing some “R&R” in Florida, and working at controls engineering here in Portland the most recent four months. I can assure you that thinking is a lot more enjoyable than watching the news on TV.

To keep things simple, let’s go lightly over what things have happened to the electronics industry in the last year or so.

VIDEO
The next time you get a TV, future-proof yourself with a 4K (quad HD) set. The prices have settled and some common of phones can have 4K video and much higher resolution than a lowly 1080P display. Quad HD is two displays wide (1920 +1920) and two displays tall (1080 + 1080). You can’t get much over-the-air, or cable content, but the handwriting is on the wall as to whether it will happen. In the meantime impress the hell out of loved ones with your photos and go-pro 4K videos.

My opinion is 3D is a slow starter if it will ever get off the ground. There’s a little 3D content on Comcast pay-per-view.

4K, by comparison, is just waiting for the infrastructure to become common. You’ll want something like Google Fiber or some similar 1 gig fiber Internet. The upgrades to the compression “CODECS” are pretty straightforward (buy a new box).

Speaking of such, when you buy your next ROKU box, of course get the best one available, so you have the future-proof abilities for watching the coming 4K content.

XFINITY SET-TOP DVR
I can’t say this is for everyone who doesn’t have $120 a month to blow on TV. This “upgrade” is a “no brainer”. It works better than previous HD DVRs from Comcast. As I described a year ago, many of the “saved” videos are really just “flags” to save one of a hundred shows that are currently saved for (the no cost On-Demand) shows, But you don’t have to wait a day if you are just time-shifting the show as you might when two shows are competing in a time slot. Also things like parades and Oscar events and other non-recurring events love DVRs.

Sorry to labor-on on a topic that isn’t much fun for all. I (of course) hacked the remote to the X1 DVR controller. Just Google it. I have a similar function to my old (hacked) DVR to jump ahead on DVR recordings. I can skip, maybe 20 minutes of commercials for an hour show. It doesn’t work for CBS (or was it NBC?) shows on on-demand (not DVR’d), but it works for most things I watch.

PHONES
The Nexus 6P, the most recent, is a real winner, with a 5.7” screen and big battery and a superfast charger and an amazing fingerprint reader. And even good stereo speakers!

As you transition to secure, fast money transactions, as you did with bank cards, NOTHING is better than a fast fingerprint reader to unlock (and decrypt) your phone. It’s useless to anyone who grabs it or wants to read your latest text or GPS or Amazon account or banking information or put you in jail with an unlawful search and seizure procedure. For fun, read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court is in agreement that the popo can’t just willy-nilly read your private e-mails.

If you haven’t a clue what the Fourth Amendment is, put down the pie, shut off the Kardassians and read a book.

Your safest way to buy things will soon be with your phone and some sort of near-field (Google it) scanner at the store.

So, for your next phone give Nexus 6P or the (new also, but smaller) Nexus 5X, each with the dynamite fingerprint reader and superfast charger. You won’t regret it for years to come. These are plain-jane premium phones with the 6P having a quite premium metal case.

If you are an iPhone fan, Apple has had hardware-ensbled encryption for several years (I think iPhone 3s). Android had out-of-the box enabled software encryption since Lollipop on Nexus phones. We’re at “m” marshmallow these days (K,L,M….). But with Nexus 6P the additional cores are put to work for encryption that is so fast, you can’t tell the difference (really). Other brands of Android devices often come without encryption enabled (for a speed increase of 40%). So it’s the 6P that gets it right (or a recent iPhone). The latest and greatest iPhone has a much-faster fingerprint reader, similar to the Nexus 6P.
SPEED VS PERFORMANCE IN LAPTOP CPUs

I’ll keep it simple. As Adelle Davis (nutritionist) once said “which apricot from which tree”, referring to avoidance of an apples-to-oranges comparison (forgive the pun). “Which i5 to what i7” might be a similar question.

As a generality the latest generation of i5 or i7 will cost more and be faster. The top-of-the-line i7-4940MX@3,1 GHz rates 9714 in a common speed test,
will be prohibitively expensive ($1000 for the cpu alone) and the other end of the scale, a core II duo @2.0 GHz’ rating 1201 might be $30. The difference is that the fast one is about 8 or 9 times faster than the miserable lowly one which powers this work laptop.

The i7’s clearly are much faster than the i5’s across the board. And there are a few i7’s that don’t cost that much.
As an example the fastest Microsoft Surface Pro 4 With the fastest i7 processor is the 6650U,
@2,2 GHz rates 4909.

running about 5 times as fast as my lowly work laptop. Much better but no speed demon compared to the i7 4770s @ 3.1 GHz, rating 9344 for $300.
Well, you get the picture. Here’s a link to the comparison page and compare to your heart’s content. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html
Additional information you might consider is that the i5’s and i7’s have HUGELY improved graphics, compared to a few years ago. You’ll want that when streaming videos on your new laptop. My Android 9” tablet is far superior in side-by-side comparisons to my Lenovo laptop with “a discreet” graphics card.

HARD DRIVES FOR BIG OR SMALL LAPTOPS
Solid State Drives are the only way to go. Maybe on a “home computer” you may also want a 1T drive for huge storage but boot from a 250 or 500 GB SSD. I’m sure Pacific Solutions can make you a fast and reliable and cheap machine. Don’t skimp on the SSD drive quality. Ones like Crucial and Intel work really well.
If you’re just speeding up your existing laptop, nothing will make it work faster than an SSD and all the RAM that will fit.
If it’s an older laptop like my Lenovo or the lowly work laptop, just join the current generation with fast 4000-series graphics, USB3, wireless AC, the latest speed hard drive (SATA 6 Gb/s) and DDR3 RAM interfaces. If you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about then get a new laptop with an i7.
If you’re buying or having built a home computer, it is, of course, as fast and as rugged as its cheapest component. There’s a degree of flim-flam that you may encounter. ANYTHING can be a little cheaper with a few weaker components. Stick to someone you trust or buy a Dell. Acer is a big name these days.

I treat laptops as just another box. I immediately add a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse and a decent 22 or 24” monitor. I ignore screen size and keyboard on laptops these days because I don’t ever open the clam shell except to push the ON button.
Depending on operating system you may have to go into (R click on empty part of screen) the “power” tab to tell XP to ignore it when you close the case. You can find something similar on the left (after R click) in Win 7. Beats me on 8 and 10, but it will be somewhere.
I NEVER “extend” a laptop screen (two simultaneous screens that you can drag things between). Works great on XP and better on W7 to just have one screen on the video card.

BTW, for fun just get a long HDMI cable and try plugging into your big screen TV. Get the cable at PCHcables (.com) or drive over to the Hillsboro Airport on a weekday. Cheap, reliable.

SMARTWATCHES
Ho-hum. Fix the power problem! Battery goes one day? Give me a break!
I DO wear a watch but my $70 analog CASIO has solar battery, talks to Colorado each night for fractional-second time corrections, automatically switches Daylight and Standard time, did I mention NEVER needs a battery change? Compare that to the clunkers you can buy for $300 and look like a geek that just fell off the Google turnip truck…..

Smartwatches or a similar “communicator” (maybe a pendant or broach with a pin) WILL take over. But not with a display. The Star Trek Next Generation broach is a workable model. It needs a voice interface. Some speech output and voice recognition.

“(machine voice) Call from Nancy. Do you accept?” “Oh, fur crissakes!” “(machine voice) Didn’t get that, do you accept?” “Yup.” Hi John this is Nancy. Did you remember the bread?” “You know me, I never forget. I’ll just turn around and stop at Freddies.” “Bye” “(machine talk) disconnect.”
That’s how it will work. If you can find someone making it, buy stock. I’m sure about this. I will quote this passage in a year or two, just to gloat.

CARS
I only buy cars every five or ten years, so don’t look here for the most up-to-date advice. All cars will have a display and bluetooth communication and will hook up to your iPhone or Android phone. Get it even if you don’t need it. You’ll be glad at resale time.

HEADPHONES
I’ve gone through several high quality headphone over the years. Often I buy Sony (studio quality around $100). For years at home I have had a wire from my receiver (hooked to my TV digital output). I like to hear what people are saying on the show and not force my show on anybody else. I watch; others can sleep.
I swear by my Bose Noise canceling headphones (BOSE QuietComfort 15) to shut out the racket when I’m working or on a plane or Max trip. Sometimes I listen to I Heart radio and sometimes (just between us chickens) I enjoy the silence. The discontinued ones with a couple rechargeable AAA batteries to swap work great at a decent ebay price.

HOUSE ALARMS
Simply Safe is an easy and cheap way to go. The window and door sensors just tape on and the communication line is through a mobile cell phone tower. No wires can be cut like a phone line.
These new video doobells (Ring Video Doorbell) that let you talk to the UPS guy from your office, just like you’re in the next room. These are a great first line of defense. Never have to open the door, always sound like you’re home. A high quality wide angle image of who’s at the door, for $200.

FAVORITE UNCLE DEAN
Dean La Voie

Yesterday Google announced the new operating system for smart watches connected to Android phones. It will be the basis for pedometers and pulse detectors and other wearables. It is roughly based on Google Glasses research but made to be easy to use and supply relevant information from Google Now (weather, time,  flight info, driving times and directions and traffic snarls, game scores that you want to follow, texts received), and the ability to respond to texts by saying “respond” and dictating your response. You can say “ok Google” and request answers to the usual simple questions like the population of Vermont or the color of George Clooney’s eyes. You can ask for a Mexican restaurant or a taxi. And you will be able (soon) to interface with home devices like the garage opener.

The display will be minimalist 180×180 with the shapes demonstrated either square or round, about the size of a silver dollar.

A handful of developers are on-board, like Motorola, ASUS and LG, and a handful of others. Even (fashionable) watch maker Fossil.

Some could come out in a few months but the best and cheapest may take till close to the end of the year.

There are few technical details announced. It will only connect to Android phones for features other than time. You will have to use the Google Now app for most of the features. Later versions of the operating system (Jelly Bean or KitKat) have the ability to pass info through the interface that Google Now uses. This would be for pedometers and home alarm apps.

The latest versions talk using a later version of bluetooth that communicates in bursts and maintains a low-power connection when it’s not doing anything.

I’ve seen no reference to the watch being able to speak, so it probably won’t. No phone calls. You could probably read the caller ID on the watch. Not sure what kind of data connection would be required for caller ID.

Maybe some sort of text-to-voice translator is in the works, but don’t hold your breath just yet. It will let you read (not hear) texts sent to you and if you say “reply” you can dictate a response and it (presumably) is sent as a real-time voice reply to the same circuitry in your phone which probably has to be connected to a data plan via wifi or telco data plan to complete the reply.

To again mention the obvious, the phone has to be Android and in your pocket or purse nearby. So “wearables” have to be associated with a phone or tablet nearby that has a data connection. But unless you’re making a phone call, you can leave the phone in your brief case or messenger case. Presumably you could go a long way with just a tablet connected to a data plan or one of those pay-as-you go devices that deliver wifi converted to the phone data, like the boy that T-Mobile would hook you up with.

There are rumors of a 2 or 3 day battery life. I, personally would like a wireless charging station. No talk of that yet.

Looks and battery life will be the horse race. Don’t buy the first one out of the gate this year. Google will compete later in the year with a Nexus device and they traditionally have a very decent price.

The details of whether you can update the software or add any “apps” are sketchy. Probably “NO” at first. Having a bluetooth connection MAY be enough without a physical connector. (I hate connectors!) At this point I can IMAGINE no connector and a wireless charger…..

I’ll let you know when I find out.

We’re getting stronger rumors about an LG nexus smart watch in June. Keep your fingers crossed.

This link to another blog tells how to add a 30-second jump forward to some Comcast DVRs. This “hack” turns on a feature built-in to the DVR to skip ahead 30 seconds through the commercial, a feature that Comcast would have had to agree to leave out to make the ED pill, and adult diaper people happy.
Thanks for the comment, coolfeature.info!

How to program a 30-second skip button for Comcast DVRs | coolfeature.info

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The second method he mentioned worked for my HD-DVR. You have to do it EXACTLY. Hate to miss all those commercials showing men with hugely different sized wings standing at the urinals (Passat).