For the last few months, I’ve had a D-Link DSP-W110 sitting in a drawer. I bought it when it was on sale, and have been meaning to compare it to the TP-Link HS100 smart plugs. Having put up our Christmas tree yesterday, I thought that now was the perfect time to pull it out of the drawer, set it up and tie it in to our “smart home” via the Amazon Echo.
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I’ve been through quite a few Android tablets since they first hit the market a few years back. I started with the incredibly well built T-Mobile branded Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. I actually still have this tablet and it still works. This particular tablet was during Samsung’s early days in the Android smartphone and tablet market. It is built like a tank, very solid construction despite it being plastic. Holding this device and then holding a new Samsung tablet makes the newer Samsung tablets feel very flimsy and fragile. Samsung’s choice of materials since they became popular has been one of the reasons I’ve shied away from them, that and their TouchWiz UI. which I’m not a fan at all. Luckily there are quite a few other tablets on the market to choose from, but how to choose from the many other options?
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Since the Media Players post, I’ve been working on refining our setup and getting it to the point where I can stop tinkering with it and just leave it be to run. I believe I’m finally close to that point. With that in mind, here is the last post in this series, covering all of the back end servers and front end players and everything that goes in between.
Continue ReadingSo you’ve got a lot of videos, home movies, pictures, etc., that you want to have access to from all of your devices and get them on your big screen. Sounds simple, right? Its anything but. With the huge amount of competition and proprietary solutions out there it can be very confusing and extremely frustrating trying to figure out what the “best” solution is.
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I didn’t really want a new phone but my HTC One M9 was starting to really irritate me. Specifically the battery and power usage. It got to the point where I was having to charge it at least 3 times a day or I would run out of power. I was able to watch the battery tick down two percentage points just by having the phone on and looking at the home screen. Not doing anything or running any apps, just having the screen on. Between 6:30am and 11am my battery was down to 30%. Not acceptable. This has been going on for about a month now.
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