Tuesday 13 December 2016

Lenovo Tab 2 A10-30 Review

I Recently bought a Lenovo Tab 2 A10-30 because I wanted a budget tablet. I did some research and thought that the Lenovo Tab 2 from Argos for £100 sounded like a good product, I was not disappointed.



My first impression when I unpacked the tablet was it did not feel cheap and was good quality. The back of the tablet is not cheap plastic and is easy to hold and does not slip. The operating system is Android so it was easy to quickly get started and download some apps.


The screen quality is good for the price, however when I used BBC iPlayer and compared it to the iPad Air, there was a clear difference and the iPad is superior, which is expected for 4-5 times the price.


The sound is good and comes from the Multi Dolby Atmos cinematic speakers. It has 2 cameras, a 5MP rear and a 2MP front facing, both seem OK.




The tablet is available in 2 colours, white and midnight blue, which is the one I went for.


The only issue I have with it so far, which is the same for a lot of budget tablets is that the operating system is configured for just 1 user, I would have liked to have setup my son as a user with restricted rights, which is not possible without hacking the OS or using 3rd party parental control software.


Overall the Lenovo Tab 2 A10-30 is a good product, it is not as good as an iPad, but then I would expect an iPad to be significantly better for 3-4 times the price, and maybe because of that I should not compare them. When I look at what else in on the market in the budget tablet category, I think I've done well choosing this product, and would recommend it. If I had to give an overall mark out of 10, I would give it an 8.


Pros



  • Good quality.
  • Price.
  • Allows additional storage.
  • Good sound from dual speakers.

Cons



  • Operating system has been configured to allow just 1 user.
  • Screen gets dirtier quicker compared to an iPad.

Technical Specs


CPU - 1.3GHz 32 Bit Qualcomm Snapdragon

Display - 10.1 inch 1280x800 pixels
Memory - 2Gb (older ones have 1 Gb)
Storage- 16Gb
OS - Android 5.1

Wednesday 21 September 2016

Apple AirPods - Nice looking hairdryer

When I saw the launch of the Apple AirPods my first thought was they looked like they could easily fall out and would be lost fairly quickly, my second thought was how the design looked like a hairdryer.


I do think they look well designed, as most of Apple's product are. I imagine there will be products that you can buy that will link them together to make them harder to lose. Also, because they are expensive they look inviting to someone who would want to steal them.

I know one thing, at the current price in the UK I will not be buying them.

Wednesday 15 June 2016

WCF Service - Configuration binding extension 'system.serviceModel/bindings/netHttpBinding' could not be found

I've just written a test WCF service for using web sockets.

When I publish the service and try to browse to it shows the following error:

Configuration binding extension 'system.serviceModel/bindings/netHttpBinding' could not be found. Verify that this binding extension is properly registered in system.serviceModel/extensions/bindingExtensions and that it is spelled correctly.

The solution to this is to add the following in the web.config:

<system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.6"/>
    <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.6"/>
</system.web>

Adding the httpRuntime value fixed the issue.

Saturday 30 January 2016

How to print Word document without comments

I am currently using Word 2010 and tried to print a document the other day, but it contained comments that I did not need. One big disadvantage with Word now a days is the amount of options and it's become hard to find options with the tab page menu bar. Eventually I found how to do it.

From 'Review' tag menu, change 'Simple Markup' to 'No Markup' or 'Original'.

Friday 22 January 2016

GoPro Hero 4 Session not switching off

I recently got a GoPro Hero 4 Session, it seemed to be working fine, but I had some issues with the recording switching off. After a few days I noticed it was only recording a few seconds of film, I tried formatting the SD Card changing the settings, but nothing worked, then it just froze and I could not switch it off. When I tried to restart it (10 second method) it would restart, but I could not access any menu, it would not record and would not switch off.

In the end I sent it back for a replacement. With the new one I received I tried again, but it would only record a few seconds. In the end I found the issue was that the SD card I was using was a SanDisk 32GB Ultra, this card does not work with the GoPro. I ended up buying a SanDisk Extreme card instead and now the GoPro works fine. It is a case of you pay for what you get and the Sandisk Ultra is a cheap card compared with the Extreme version.