XPS 15 Update

I’ve had the XPS 15 for a few weeks now (well, actually it’s only a fortnight off 2 months!), and I’m still very impressed with it as a full package. The build quality is excellent, it doesn’t flex at all if you hold it by a corner when it’s open. The keyboard took a little getting used to, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and my typing speed is increasing every time I use it. The adaptive resolution that Windows 8 introduced (so you get a decent sized text on additional screens even if different sizes/resolutions) is good, but a little frustrating. I use 1080p on a 15.6" Dell laptop at work and I think the high resolution of the XPS meant I was losing screen real estate which is a big no-no in my eyes. I’ve since disabled it and set it to 125% scaling across the board which increases the sizes sufficiently to see (although the font on the Wordpress post edit box is a bit on the small size), but gives me the real estate boost I was hoping for. All in all, I couldn’t be happier. As nice as they are, a MacBook Pro wouldn’t have satisfied my needs (I wanted native Windows for Visual Studio). And the hardware is exactly what I was after (a 4th generation i7, 8Gb+ RAM, 256Gb+ SSD, 1080p+ resolution, around 2kg in weight) at a very similar price to an equivalent* MBP.

Ribbon in .NET 4.5 using WPF and MVVM

I’ve been spending some time recently to learn WPF a bit better including the MVVM pattern to encourage the separation of concerns between the view and the logic behind it.

It’s been a steep learning curve (to say the least!) but today I spent a bit of time looking into getting an Office-esque ribbon bar onto the main window of my dummy application. At first I wasn’t too sure, but I soon realised it’s not too dissimilar to any other button.

Dell XPS 15

It’s finally arrived!

I was getting to the point of wondering if it would ever get here or if it would stay in the limbo land between the factory and the courier in the UK.

I’ve had it a couple of days now and did the usual charging process (1st charge to full while setting it up etc.). I’ve since used it for around 5hrs on battery and at 12% decided to do the 2nd charge. I’ve been installing bits and pieces and just doing general setup steps so no doubt the battery will last better from now on.

Dell's Informative Delivery Service

OK, so I’m not alone here. I finally decided on an XPS 15 and ordered it 10 days ago now. After a couple of days, the Dell website showed the order as shipped and I could track it through their agent Walsh Western (a.k.a. Syncreon). I’m now sat here on the evening before my expected ETA date and it still hasn’t reached the UK. The last update is the common “DEPARTED MANU.FACILITY” which appears to be in China. Apparently this is normal in most cases and it might still turn up tomorrow, but how much should I believe it?

Laptop Shopping

… it’s just never easy when you’re picky like me.

So as you’ll have noticed from my previous posts, I’ve been using my wife’s Asus 1005P (Atom CPU) and a 7 year old Vaio C2M/W. Over the last month or so I’ve been suffering from a “crisis of confidence” where I’ve been asking how I managed to become a senior developer. After reading Scott Hanselman’s blog on the topic, it seems that it’s a common feeling amongst developers.

Connection problems in Visual Studio 2013

Since installing Update 2 on the work laptop, I’ve been unable to check for available updates through the Tools > Extensions & Updates screen as it always timed out. If I continued working (without closing the IDE), it would eventually prompt me through the Notifications pane that it required credentials for the company proxy. Once I did that, it’d report updates etc. but over the last couple of days, that is no longer happening either.

Sony Vaio C2M/W, Lubuntu 14.04 and a new battery

The genuine battery died a few months back on the “bricktop” (a Sony Vaio C2M/W), and with the hard drive starting to click, I just dumped it on the side and gave up with it. After trying to persist with an Atom N450 netbook (Visual Studio usage is soul-destroying on an Atom CPU!), I’ve dug it back out and ordered a new battery from Amazon and the Intel 40Gb SSD that was on offer at Ebuyer for 20 quid.

Installing a Canon 350D on Windows 7 x64

I have a Canon 350D which I was struggling to download the photos from onto the computer since upgrading it to Windows 7 64-bit. I’d looked around for drivers, but Canon haven’t made any 64-bit drivers for that camera (we have had it nearly 8 years) so I was wondering how I’d get around the problem. I eventually came across the site of someone else in the same situation who has blogged the following:

Raspberry Pi on a 19" Widescreen (16:10) LCD Monitor

Earlier today I booked places for me and my son on a Raspberry Pi day in Manchester and then realised I might struggle to get the TV there as it’s pretty heavy, plus I doubt we’d be allowed it on a bus! Luckily, we still have the 19" widescreen from the old living room PC, so I looked at using that instead.

The monitor was made by Daewoo, I got it about 6 years ago (or there abouts) and it has a native resolution of 1440x900 at a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Raspberry Pi & Hannspree 37" TV

I was lucky enough at Christmas for my wife to surprise me with a Raspberry Pi. I’ve wanted one for some time but never got around to actually ordering one. My wife always asks me when she’s faced with techie decisions which made it an even bigger surprise.

Anyway, I’ve spent the last few days getting it up and running but my son realised earlier that it didn’t seem to have any sound coming through the TV set, so I’ve spent the last couple of hours reading and trying stuff out and I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of the problem.