Wednesday, December 27, 2017

2017 Tech updates

Its been a while since I posted updates. I'm going to post in short form what changed / what I played with as an update.
  • I was debating changing my MacBook 12" for a 13" Pro with Touch bar. I did. It was not transformative. The Touch Bar, while cool, is a gimmick. You don't actually use it that much. About the only thing that is useful is the TouchID fingerprint scanner, which I do use often. The is useful. Other than that, the notebook resolved my main gripes with the 12", namely speed/grunt, and ports. The new Pro has plenty of both.


  • I upgraded my Bose QC3's to QC35's. If the QC3's were good, the QC35's are simply sublime. And I don't experience the bass issues that seem to be widely discussed. Good battery life, extremely comfortable; my absolute go-to on flights and when I want uninterrupted listening. I did contemplate the Sony equivalents, but the Bose just seemed to have better build quality and class sound. Boo to the disparagers!
  • I ended up buying a single discreet Bluetooth headset, for ad-hoc listening. The Rowkin Mini Plus headphone is absolutely discreet, well built and a good purchase for the price. Solves a gap for that "something to do while my kids/wife are busy and I have 5 minutes to kill"
  • A massive win in terms of WiFi gear that I've been playing with is GL-Inet. Its like a Swiss-army knife of AP's. It can be a bridge, repeater, router, AP, OpenVPN client-termination device, can use a phone as a modem and solves the hotel "captive portal" / multiple device problem. A definite winner!
I’ve played with a lot of gear, devices and software. Nothing so impressive as to merit a review.