Tech aint what it used to be

[Alaskansnowbirds]

This is seriously a good idea

Look Ma, No Batteries! Hands On With Lenovo's Self-Charging Keyboard

At CES 2025, we checked out Lenovo's new eco-friendly wireless keyboard, which ditches traditional batteries in favor of a photovoltaic panel.

www.pcmag.com

The last TV we bought is a Samsung and it's remote has a solar panel on it. The instructions till you to always lay the remote down with the panel up.

 

[rvlifer]

The last TV we bought is a Samsung and it's remote has a solar panel on it. The instructions till you to always lay the remote down with the panel up.

They are gonna be in a lot more stuff going forward. Improvement in panels have i think tripled efficiency since they were first available and there are supposwd to be improvements right around the xorner to bump it to between 50 and 75%

 

[rvlifer]

Tech in action. Our internet went out this morning. Went online to spectrums website to report it. They told me i wasnt in the middle of an outage. A couple minutes later got an automated call to notify me i had an outage and they were working on it. An hr later got another call saying it was taking longer tban expected to fix so my restoration time was being updated from 2:30pm to 2:30pm. 2 minutes later another call that my service was back online

 

[JudyJB]

"Tech in action" story sounds about right. You can just visualize the confusion in their offices.

Also, I hate buying a new laptop because it takes me at least a week to try to get rid of things I don't want--Edge is right on top of the list, as is anything that tries to store stuff on the Cloud. I back up my computer to a couple of external hard drives each month and store one in a safe deposit box or in the big gun case at my son's house.

I also remove those nifty little programs the developers think I will fall in love with and the games I never intend to play

I miss working in an office where the corporate tech staff bought Dell computers without the ads and all the add-ons that employees did not need. They came preloaded only with the software requested. They also had controls on downloading porn and some other stuff that employees did not need on their jobs!!

 

[rvlifer]

"Tech in action" story sounds about right. You can just visualize the confusion in their offices.

Also, I hate buying a new laptop because it takes me at least a week to try to get rid of things I don't want--Edge is right on top of the list, as is anything that tries to store stuff on the Cloud. I back up my computer to a couple of external hard drives each month and store one in a safe deposit box or in the big gun case at my son's house.

I also remove those nifty little programs the developers think I will fall in love with and the games I never intend to play

I miss working in an office where the corporate tech staff bought Dell computers without the ads and all the add-ons that employees did not need. They came preloaded only with the software requested. They also had controls on downloading porn and some other stuff that employees did not need on their jobs!!

If you spend the money on a business class computer from any of the major vendors they will have fewer issues and less crap on them. When you are spending millions at a time on them the companies tend to listen more and take care of issues faster. They also do more testing. The bigger companies dont want that crap either.

I only worry about backing up my data to an external drive then a copy on a 2nd external drive and an encrypted copy with a 3rd party hosting company.

 

[JudyJB]

Actually, I do always buy a business class computer, but obviously I don't have the buying power of a big company. And I also buy business software because I am used to it from working, and also in teaching. The college I used to teach at required students to buy and use standard business-type Microsoft software. (Got good student/faculty discounts then.) I occasionally got weird documents from students written in something else and then supposedly translated to Word, etc. but I refused to work around them so those files got bounced back.

The encrypting company is a good idea, but I keep hard drives at safety deposit banks in the cities that each of my kids live in, plus I carry one around with me. I switch out updated hard drives when I visit kids towns.

 

[rvlifer]

Libre office is a good free alternative to ms office. Never had any trouble exchanginf files or opening docs from anyone. Supports all the office file formats. Interface is an older version of office, no ribbon, and features are slightly different but everything i ever looked for from office in at least the document and spreadsheet apps was there. Havent done much with the powerpoint or access equivalents

 

[John From Detroit]

Libre office is a good free alternative to ms office.

Last I knew MS office only worked with MS file types. Libre Open Office was not as fussy and will open/edit MS files. as well as files prepared on Linux and IOS machines or other programs of several differnet types.. Making it far, FAR better than the MS product in my not very humble (I use it every day) Opinion

 

[UTTransplant]

I use Libre Open Office too. Commands are the same as MS in almost all instances so menus and such are easy to work with. I just save my files in MS format.

 

[rvlifer]

I use Libre Open Office too. Commands are the same as MS in almost all instances so menus and such are easy to work with. I just save my files in MS format.

I do the same and never had anyone have a problem opening them with office and been through 3 closings with diff realtors, title companies, banks, etc. It works well. Even better when i can remember where to find the sum function in calc lol.

I dont use any of them like i used to. Wouldnt surprise me if libre office doesnt have the interoperability that office does tho. Havent tried coding any calls to the other apps since i started using it

 

[rvlifer]

Anybody have this? Great idea. Wonder how well it works and whether you can add in gcwr of the tow vehicle

 

[solarman]

Last I knew MS office only worked with MS file types. Libre Open Office was not as fussy and will open/edit MS files. as well as files prepared on Linux and IOS machines or other programs of several differnet types.. Making it far, FAR better than the MS product in my not very humble (I use it every day) Opinion

quite right.. I have been using it for business use for at least 10 years, that and a linux desktop, got tired of all the windows bs with forced upgrades and built in spyware. only had a few issues with file compatibility, that was a long time ago.