Almost a Digital Nomad

Whilst I used to travel a lot and may have been a digital nomad before the term was invent, i’m not really one anymore yet I still want to be able to edit and manage my photos anywhere I happen to be. HoweverI need a bit more power than smartphones and social media offer. I have a HP Spectre, a 2 in 1 style tablet/laptop and whilst I have travel with it many time before. This trip as first time it was my only computing option. It worked wonderfully.

I also limited the accessories I carried. Two identical backpack style hard drives for backups (rotated weekly) a wacom bambo stylus/pen. usb c to usb A and hdmi dongles, hdmi cable anf a wireless mouse and  usb c charger (not shown)/ The real magic is in the software, although I have lightroom installed I didn’t touch it once. I mainly used picasa to load my photo from an old SD card reader and Photo Mechanic to quickly review rate,cull and add metadata. I then select my best and dragged those on PhotoLemur (an AI based automated postprocessor from Skylum).This was usually time for a coffee, shower &/or get ready for dinner and generally only 5 minutes after inserting the SD card.

I only use Photo;emur to show what might be possible, although I did find often that I would use photolemur Jpeg as the image to upload to instagram and very occasionally flickr. Usually then I would use either On1 Photoraw (for stitched Panoramas) and Aurora HDR (for Bracketed HDR) and either to postprocess RAW files. If the place I was staying had a suit Big Screen TV with HDMI Port I was able to review and edit my photo larger, easier on my old eyes. I had downloaded a trial version of Skylum 3 but stop using it after 2 days because I was only playing and it didn’t offer me any capability I didn’t already have.

Of course I was dependant of WIfI being available to access the internet and sometimes that wifi was a biyt unreliable. I would say I wasn’t totally committed but I did manage to post a photo a day to flickr for my 365 project and keep Instagram clicking over. I was very happy with this very light weight yet powerful IT team in my backpack.

A small crack but a big disappointment

I loved my little HP spectre but last week I opened it and found the touch screen didn’t work, and deeper investigation revealed a small crack across the screen towards the base. This is the second cracked screen in under two years and in this case the computer definitely hasn’t been mishandled. It was sitting on my desk and I opened it in the same careful manner I always used. The cost of replacing a screen in Australia about a year ago was around AUD$800. Ouch!!

The spectre can be turned on and off, the touch screen doesn’t work and it works with the mouse but with multiple mouse icons that jump around the place. Its effectively unusable.

However then I started to look on the HP forums to see if there was other repair options and what I saw was an avalanche of similar problems, most after no obvious rough handling or damage. With the only conclusion that HP spectre x2 & 360s are prone to unexplained cracking. Suddenly I am thinking twice about spending more on a computer that is at risk of yet another crack without any mishandling.

Then I tried to explain my story on the HP forums, and despite spending a couple of hours to try and log in, get a new password (I got an email without a link to change my password, shown on the right). Then I tried to set up a new account on the forum and you guessed it! Error!

The only HP advice I could find was where to find a dealer or HP repair service to replace the screen, or screen damage is not normally covered under warranty, and I looked around a lot, enough to kill my faith in HP.

Ok I’ve lost the ability to warn other HP users but I am still able to tell this story my colleagues and acquittances, those I train and the readers of this blog. Why should I pay a lot to give HP a third chance. Its my money and I’m not. Am I likely to recommend HP gear to others, I really doubt it.

Big Celebration

A brand new day :: Kimberley Coast

Its an important day my beloved HP Spectre has come home with a new screen (sadly the previous screen got cracked in my previous travels). I must admit I had become very used to tablet mode and speediness of the little computer with not a lot on it. Welcome home my little friend.

Back from the dead …

My lovely little HP spectre is back from another trip to Singapore, this time with a new mother board. It started without complaint so I certainly hope it is back to full strength and can ward off the deadly effects of the next Windows 10 update!

Seriously welcome home little fella, my photography missed you. So did my blogging and instagraming

Death By Update (again)

My joy at having my little HP Spectre home again was very short lived. Last Friday Window’s 10 updated itself and progressively lapsed into the same crashing, hanging and blue screen of death restart symptoms as before until today it can no longer finds its own boot sector, so back to the store again today.

Small but Fast

I must admit yesterday was a day of Joy at how fast and easy it was to do all things photographic from uploading and culling my photos, to processing them with a big screen TV monitor attached in a lightroom that flys again (thanks to an SSD drive). Lets hope Windows 10 on my little HP Spectre doesn’t updated its self to death again.

The aspect I noticed the biggest difference in was the time taken was in my unnecessarily elaborate panoramic postings to Instagram. I’m splitting the images into three square images from a 3:1 aspect ratio, so that when when viewed as a 3 across grid you see the larger picture. (I like thinking outside the frame, You probably see that in a lot I do). Because I can post directly into Instagram from the HP Spectre, (the Instagram app must consider it a Tablet) the method didn’t take so long just some cropping in Picasa and export the files to my Film Roll (bloody apple-esceness terminology everywhere) and upload them from there. Just takes a few minutes at most.

However when the HP Spectre was away I had to use my android phone to do the upload to Instagram. At first it didn’t seem such a big deal, I have the LG PC Suite which can transfer files, music and photos to the Phone via WiFi.  The trouble was the android upload was slow and involved jumping out of Instagram to find the next picture, yet it was workable just slow. Then I discovered Insta Grid which can do the split into 3by1 3by2 up to 3by5 grids, seemed perfect BUT it doesn’t automatically do the upload to Instagram. It does help you by guiding which sub-photo to upload next, BUT I found Instagram on the phone would often stall on loading an image part way through the sequence, very frustrating, not only that the process from having chosen the photo and down loading it to the phone to completed uploaded was now often taking 20 minutes. The long and short of all this was I had created something interesting but it was long winded and tedious to do from my phone.

The awkward return of my prodigal PC

After two full weeks away, including a trip to HP Singapore and back, my sick HP Spectre is back home. “Does it work?” was the first question and superficially it does. The Tech speak was “Reimage ok Passed all UEFI tests” which meant the disk was cleaned off (the upgrade USB I was three weeks ago had already done that!) and a new system image installed (the USB key failed to do that!) and the hardware tested ok. Great, but don’t get excited too soon.

The first task was to connect to the internet, sync up the blue tooth mouse and reset my user account and one drive, All good so far. Then I tried to connect to my Home group, very tediously nothing, ask to join and waiting while the operating system was considering the password for ages then just ignoring anything new on the network.Well at one stage I got to see the network printers. Then bugger! The computer just restarted itself (maybe an upgrade?) What about the Windows 10 Store to download a few things. Damn that wants authorization again (that’s the third message and code to my phone). Now its trying to download all my windows 10 apps. Time for a coffee. Arrrrh! another unscheduled restart. At least its not the blue screen of death (better only whisper that)

Now I had the task of reloading the software I normally use (my many photographic mistressess). That’s where the disappointment really set in. whilst I could install picasa all my other decent photo applications refused to install, with similarly unhelpful error messages during the assembly component.Why all suffered similar problems was a mystery but I decided to down load a fresh install from lightroom (not a good choice because it is huge). About 10 minutes into the 25 minute download you guessed it my system decided to do a restart. so with only about 30% download complete. I was able to restart  and continue but now it said it would take 2 hours, I’ve seen Microsoft exaggerate download time before so I pressed on. Three hours later and 6 restarts later no photo software had been installed and the lasts restart suggested 3 hours to go although the download was 700MB into the 800MB+ of the lightroom setup file. Time for bed and let it go and get the computer ready to go back to the store in the morning!!!!

In the morning all I could find was a totally blank screen with a mouse cursor I could move around. Pressing the on/off switch bought up the slide down to shutdown screen. But sliding down just got me back to the blank screen, Several on/off and holding down the key for longer and longer. I finally got the system to restart BUT it was doing an update at 100%. A 15 minute wait and the update started again at 10% and crawled its way back to 100%. Finally it restarted AND has been working fine since. I now have my cluster of photo software installed and tested and ready to use.

Welcome back my most prodigal little friend, but don’t try that again.

Travelling lighter

I’m preparing for a trip to Canada and will be away for a just over a month on the road. This time I”m travelling a lot lighter than the almost 12kgs of laptop, charges and related computer gear I took to Norfolk Island. Believe it or not the photo shows my full compliment of HP spectre and miscellanies bit, and they have a combined weight just a fraction over 2kg. Importantly it is not as if I’m missing anything. I have my photo software mistresses (Picasa, Ligthroom, Aftershot Pro and OnOne Phot 10.5 and now Nik Software add ins and Polarr) all installed. I’ve cleared off the 256GB ssd drive to 191 GB free (hopefully more than plenty of a month of photos). The customized cloth travel wallets were made by my wife and are padded. They keep everything wonderfully tidy when travelling.

 

I also have two backup drives. The one in the orange wallet will be updated daily and live in my camera bag so it will always be with me. The one in the denim will be updated as I move from one location to the next and at least weekly. It will be stored in my checked luggage when travelling .

 

I also have a couple of highly desirable accessories. The Pen of course (it came with the computer), and a Blue Tooth Mouse. Unfortunately most photo software is not touch screen friendly and you really require a mouse and to a lesser extent a tablet like a wacom(pen performs these tasks). The big advantage of the blue tooth mouse (over a WiFi/USB mouse) is it doesn’t use up a USB C port (and thus require yet another adaptor) and has a better range. While on the USB C subject it is a fast interface and it can connect many sorts of devises,  it is the way of the future. However very few devices today come with the USB C connector so you must get an adaptor cable, more precisely cables. I have three. The white one is a simple USB C to USD A style (Ie conventional USB style But works with USB 1 USB 2 & USB 3 connections). The black connector is from USB C to HDMI, which lets me connect to a wide variety of screens and data projectors. I can also use a Big Screen TV as an extension Monitor. The small black rectangular block folds out to a USB HUB, connecting two further USB C and two USB A devices. I also have a chrome cast dongle (but now would prefer to use a direct HDMI cable).

 

Note I have two card readers with my computer stuff and another in my cameras bag, because  I’ve had a couple fail and they are not expensive (but remember to buy the fast ones).

Two must have accessories

I love my little HP Spectre, its light, its fast and it runs all my grown up photo processing software, Lightroom, Nik Software, Picasa, Aftershot pro and OnOne (I am having some problems with the last two, and I’m hoping for some fixes soon). The screen resolution is fine but the screen is small (12”). Not quiet bend over and squint but you do start to hunch over it. The pen is great but mostly the software isn’t touch screen enabled, or even touch screen friendly, they really demand a keyboard and mouse. The keyboard is easy, it just snaps on and works but a USB mouse was a little more cumbersome, then I figured I’d try a blue tooth mouse, mine is the Logitech budget model M337. Wow is it good but best of all no cables or dongles to plug it. If you want to amaze your friends it even works in tablet mode. The distance you can use it is also outstanding I had no trouble controlling a Chromecast from a different room to the computer.

 

The next part of the equation was a bigger screen no problem I already had a Chromecast dongle on my big screen TV. This works ok up to a point, you have to have wifi and internet access and the full screen cast (it does warn you it is in beta) does occasionally hang and I have to do my big screen editing from the couch. However what drove me crazy was the delay, if you move the mouse the resulting action was broadcast a little latter, it seemed like many seconds and may only have been a fraction of a second BUT it soon does your brain in if you are concentrating on small adjustments. A bit of on-line investigation showed a few people talking about using a HDMI cable to give a second monitor. Fortunately the USB-C interface allows connection to several other standards and HP produce a not overly expense connector. Apple do too but at over twice the price. This was a double WOW WOW. When connected to my 32” LG VT/Monitor (currently on my desktop computer) I can sit back and contemplate my photos gloriously large. Also unlike Chromecast I can easily set up the large screen as a second monitor for software that can handle it (eg lightroom). 

If you want to get the most out of and make you photo software easy to use on a HP Spectre, Microsoft Surface or similar 2 in 1 computers these are two accessories you definitely must have.

Size matters

My HP spectre has a 256 GB SSD drive, which seemed ample for me when I bough it. Roughly 50 GB for operating system and software and around 200 GB for photos. Well that was the theory!
In practise after a week on the road I only have only 64 GB free, but my picture folders (and subdirectories) is only a little 104 GB so what has happened to the space. The culprit is mainly windows 10 update between Windows.old, $windows.~bt & SYSTEM.SAV account for 25 GB. I don’t want to deleted these just now in case I have to recover the install version.
There is still another 50 GB that’s hard to fully account for, Windows itself is Approx 16 GB and my software, mainly photo packages, is just under 10 GB, which only explain around half of this.My original theory was I would use the system for a week or so in earnest before I set up all the system recovery files so I knew I had a viable system to rely on. I just don’t have much confidence in Windows 10 & Microsoft.

Traveling companions

It didn’t take long to collect some extra things to take along with the new computer when I’m on the road again (that’s tomorrow). The most import items are the USB adaptor (the HP spectre only had USB C sockets and my card readers which are the older USB A (I have more than one because they are prone to damage and being lost). Once I had the adaptor to the conventional USB I figured a backpack style USB harddrive (for backups on the road) and a mouse (easy of use in full screen mode) may as well tag along. The mobile Wifi is to give me web access when there are no local WiFi hot stops. the phone can also acts as a local hotspot at a pinch but it is here as an extra camera.

The full kit and chargers is just over 2kg (that’s light).

I do love the spectre x2 hardware & performance

I trust I’m not giving the impression that I’m  a cranky old man. I’m just a frustrated one. I do love the HP Spectre its got a decent enough size to do “proper” photo post processing. Further the software I have Installed has worked without problem (just registration of aftershot pro has not worked yet). Lightroom in particular is blazing faster than on anything I’ve used before (probably because of the SSD drive). Even importing over 200 photos in both raw and jpeg took well under a minute (no time to go and make a coffee and stop and chat anymore). It is also really responsive in the library module as well. Maybe I’ll get better acquainted again. Picasa, OnOne, NIC software add-ins and are all more responsive than on my desktop or laptop. Aftershot Pro 2 is on steroids its so fast to load photos and scroll etc,

A downside I had not considered is the realisation that these are not touch screen aware, and have to be run full screen, when in tablet mode, without the advantage of touch screen controls, but that is where the pen comes in perfect. I’m used to using wacom tablets so the pen control is familiar to me. However if you are used to a mouse only, it might be a struggle (for the first few days, or maybe a week or so) It wasn’t long before I found a spare USB mouse for convenience, but I do use the pen mostly for photo editing.The screen is perfect for me it is more vivid and a little stronger (when set to a higher brightness +75%) for old eyes, even though it has lower resolution than the surface or a retina screen I couldn’t possible discern that extra resolution and there are plenty of tools to zoom in anyway. As with other IPS screen it is hard to read outside in strong direct daylight. Finding a little shade and having brightness at 100% works fine for me.