Going paperless at home

1. Switching to e-statements, saving those locally if needed (or to cloud like OneDrive or Google Drive, if not as concerned about privacy)
2. Use scanner (e.g. http://solutions.ca.fujitsu.com/products/scansnap/ix500/) and/or phone (e.g. http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/17/office-lens-a-onenote-scanner-for-your-pocket/) to scan:
• paper receipts
• biz cards
• brochures
• manuals
• packaging with instructions, etc. on them
• miscellaneous jots and scribbles
• sections of physical books?
• hard-copy old photos?
3. Use Shredder (e.g. http://m.costco.ca/Royal-Sovereign-RDS-818C7-18-Sheet-Cross-Cut-EcoShredder.product.100090168.html) to shred statements that you can't convert to e-statements
4. Backup to external hard drive or to cloud

Evaluating Surface Pro 3: Introduction

I've skimmed a number of reviews of the Surface Pro 3 prior to purchasing my own, and generally they don't go into depth about how they use the device.  I've used the SP3 for about 40 days now, to varying degrees each day and I keep discovering better ways to make use of this multi-faceted device.  Supposedly it can replace your laptop and I want to suggest at this time that it can also replace your tablet and e-reader (smaller-sized tablet). This won't be one long article but a series that will have the tag SP3. 

Windows file system annoyances

While Windows has come a long way since when file names were restricted to 8 characters, it still has many limitations compared to operating systems like Ubuntu.  For example, the following file can't be opened by Microsoft Excel until the file name is shortened significantly.  The total length of the file path is 234 characters.

Secondly, while generally spaces in a filename are handled by Windows properly, as a developer, if I encounter a strange issue opening a file or writing to a file, I will first eliminate any spaces from filenames I am providing to my application code.  

 

OneDrive and Excel Online data loss

I think that around the time that I noticed that OneDrive's Excel Online finally got the ability to sum cells by mouse-selecting a range of cells, rather than manually specifying the range, that is when there were some hiccups at Microsoft and a day's worth of changes were lost.  Looking in the revision history of the file (File > Info > Previous Versions), there was not even a trace of any changes made on Nov 19, 2014.  So far this data loss appears to have only affected Excel Online and not OneNote, which I also frequently use.

I use Excel Online mainly for ease of use with my Windows Phone; many of my other are in Google Drive.  I hope the worthwhile changes Microsoft is making don't further adversely affect Excel Online.  So much for cloud backup.  Note, a quick search on Google and Twitter did NOT seem to indicate any problems with Excel Online.

Microsoft Windows annoyances

Although I am most comfortable using Windows, for the past several years, I have considered switching to Mac OS due to the prevalence of its usage in the software development community.  I have used Ubuntu Linux for more than a year as my primary OS at work and I tried a Mac Mini briefly.  With exposure to these other operating systems, as well as to mobile operating systems, iOS, Android, and even Windows Phone, the annoyances of Microsoft Windows has become more apparent.  These experiences are with Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Enterprise

1. If using Windows in a secure manner, by typically logging in as a non-administrator user, Windows will prompts for administrator password even though you've given it moments ago in the same program.  On the other hand, in a Ubuntu terminal window, e.g., you only need to give the root password to sudo once  
2. Windows seems to be a worse experience for handling files that have spaces in their paths , often not locating these files.  This may not be as apparent to a typical user, but is troublesome for developers working on Windows
3. Updates that require restarting the computer are too frequent.  While I recommend keeping up with software updates, I suggest "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them" for desktop computers (i.e. computers not on a metered connection) and "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" for mobile computers (i.e. on a metered connection).  Defaulting to the recommended option means your computer might restart overnight, losing any of your unsaved work.

4. Windows sometimes locks files and then doesn't indicate what process has a lock on a file/directory (Process Explorer might help).  This can prevent deleting a file/directory until all programs are closed, and sometimes even logging out or restarting the computer.  You're lucky if you get an informative window like this:
   

Fortunately Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) are extremely rare now, unless there is defective hardware involved, so Windows has come a long way. 

Windows 8.1 Pro, Disk running constantly at 100%, resolved

I was experiencing problems where my computer's disk was running at 100% constantly, as soon as I restarted the computer and switched to the Desktop.  This started happening in the last few days and was causing my computer to be almost unresponsive.  Not one single process seemed to be the culprit, similar to the screenshots found here.

After running a virus scan, a post in the above forum twigged something to try:  I went to the Action Center and saw this seemingly innocuous notification.

I discovered I could "archive" the notification and once I did, Disk usage dropped to reasonable levels.  While I was glad to solve this, I wonder how Windows can possibly operate so poorly.

Intermittent problems with VirtualBox, resolved

Trying to upgrade an older Ubuntu VM, I was experiencing intermittent problems during start-up of the VM.  These problems included:

• blank screen
• keyboard/mouse unresponsive

I tried installing Kubuntu to a VM, and also upgrade VirtualBox but continued having the same problems.  Was VirtualBox not compatible with Windows 8.1?  I considered Microsoft's Virtual PC, then tried installing VMWare Player.  Installation of VMWare Player error'd out on the fact that I had Microsoft Hyper-V enabled for Windows Phone development.  

Eventually I realized that Hyper-V might be interfering with VirtualBox.  After disabling Hyper-V, I tried multiple boots of my Linux VMs without encountering the symptoms I had before.