Posts by ifekas 14 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2014
Yes indeed; we had an audit form sent by the Home Office for one of our sites, and yes we have mostly Hikvision cameras as they are good and cheap, but the Hikvision cameras are on their own subnet on an isolated network and just connect to a separate ethernet port on the Milestone XProtect DVRs... so I can't see how these would be able to 'phone home' if they wanted to!
We have found the reverse! Although the 8th Gen Intel chips were great, since then we find on laptops that have say Intel i5 11th Gen (compared to Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7) runs much hotter with the associated noisy fans, and lower battery life. This seems consistent with Lenovo laptops such as ThinkBook 15 and the cheap V14s and Ideapad. We have had a number of WiFi and WiDi compatibility issues with the Ryzen laptops, though that doesn't relate to the processor itself, the laptops had IIRC a Realtek WiFi 6 card that is the issue. I've just had to price out the spec for replacement desktops for next year and it is interesting that for Lenovo there is virtually no difference in the price of Intel i5 vs Ryzen 5 (Lenovo M70 vs M75).
We actually did try Ubuntu on some of the laptops, but it was more troublesome and complicated for the intended requirement. On the Surface Pro for example, if the device went to sleep often you often couldn't wake it up and had to then hold down the power button to reset. I eventually figured out how to resolve that, It also could be funny with touchpad support on some of the Lenovo laptops. When you have to do xx numbers of devices you just want something quick and easy; though I do like Ubuntu for certain things such as running our UniFi controllers
When covid came, the organisation I work for re imaged loads of redundant laptops and Surface Pros with CloudReady, donating to anyone local/in a hospital etc who needed a device for Zoom; the only nuisance was that we could only create four or so Google accounts with one mobile phone number. Imaging was very quick and painless, and the simplicity and ease of use for the intended audience was perfect.
Although we tend to stick to Lenovo, I bought a couple of inexpensive Matebook Ryzen 5 Huawei laptops for work a month or so ago. We require the BIOS to be locked to prevent PXE and USB boot , but I couldn't find the option to restrict boot from usb on the BIOS and tried the usual things like updating the BIOS. I raised a ticket with Huawei who after checking confirmed this is not possible! Shame as the laptops are actually good for the price point and are nice and slim, but no good for business users.
Same here, I still have my Bondi Blue iMac. I did try switching it on last year, and it started booting, but the screen made worrying clicking noises, so I turned it off. I had actually sold it to a friend at some point, and many years later she asked whether I wanted it back for free! I thought the more translucent DV Special Edition was the best looking iMac of that vintage, though sadly I haven't got that anymore. I still have the half round iMac that still works, and a white Intel 20 inch (plain) one, and I currently use a 28 inch aluminium iMac, oh and the HK woofer and speakers. As you might have figured, I like them, though for work we have only Windows.
A couple of years ago at work after purchasing SOPHOS UTMs, we started migrating our endpoint protection from Symantec to SOPHOS, but in the end we decided to stop this; we currently use both but find the overhead with Symantec significantly lower, and if anything we find Symantec EP the better product. Hopefully it will continue to do the job well.
We bought 20 or so Lenovo MIIX 320s for basic tasks, but our experience with them has not been as positive. We went for the model with 4GB of RAM, and the devices have been mostly reliable; but the feedback has been that the touch screen has not really been useful and the battery life not great; many complained that the keyboard was poor, particularly the placement of the right shift key. I think many of the criticisms are related to Windows 10 on a tablet and not this particular model.
For the next batch of cheap devices we just went for the Lenovo 11e laptop, which although looking quite old fashioned (like laptops were in the early 2000s!) seem very well built have gone down a lot better - I think they were designed for schools.
I have been with O2 for many many years, even though they may not necessarily be the best for data speeds; the reason is great customer service as a retail customer regardless of whether one goes to the O2 retail shop or phones customer services.
I partly deal with the work mobile phone accounts, and find Vodafone truly dreadful, and EE not that great. Interestingly though, the O2 corporate customer tariffs and customer service aren't great
Actually, budget ThinkPads aren't getting worse. At work we have bought ThinkPads for some years; the lowest point was the E530s which had the most dreadful trackpad along with awful 1366x768 resolution, and awful BIOS too! The E570/E560s are quite nice in comparison and have been super reliable but do weigh a ton, so I personally choose to stick with my four year old MacBook Air ;-)
I like quite a few others have waited for the second revision of the Apple Watch (aka Series 2), but even though it has launched for quite a few weeks, I have found it impossible to buy from the Apple Store. They say to order it online, but I have checked and for the US the availability is approx three weeks. Without knowing how many Apple Watches are being produced it is impossible to say whether the availability issue is due to the high demand or low supply.
I have an iPhone 5 and I trialled a Nokia Lumia 520 for work, and was really impressed with it that I decide to replace my work Android (Moto G). Anyway, I recommended and setup a Lumia 735 for a friend who was fed up with poor battery life on an admittedly lowish end Samsung Galaxy, and was even more impressed with the spec for the price on that model.... so much so that I bought a Lumia 735 sim free myself. Though it hasn't replaced my iPhone 5, if my iPhone expired tomorrow I would quite happily live with the Lumia at less than half the price.
Though not a Microsoft/Windows fan, I find the Windows phone interface really rather nice and more intuitive especially compared to Android; the Nokia Here navigation brilliant, excellent battery life, and things like the 'People' section really good. On the downside, there are a couple of apps that I can't get for Windows phone, but I can live without them.
I'm not particularly keen on the Microsoft branding announced, but don't think it would prevent me buying another Lumia.
We tend to look for the best value laptops and desktops, which in the past have tended to be Acer, HP or Lenovo. Recently virtually all our purchases have been Lenovo on the lower end or Apple on the high end. The Lenovo desktops are good value and have been very reliable; the non-SFF ones come with a useful carrying handle! Apart from one model some years ago (TPEdge E520), the Lenovo lower end laptops have also been reliable, though the trackpads and keyboards on some of them don't have a very nice feel to them. They also don't tend to have excessive bloatware installed. Some of the Lenovo products such as the Yoga (both Android and Windows) are very innovative, which is a refreshing change from PC manufacturers (apart from Apple).
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