When Software Attacks!

Net Writer: A great UWP blog editor

I came across Net Writer some months ago, when it’s creator, Ed Anderson blogged about how he’d taken the newly-released Open Live Writer code and used it in his just-started Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app for Windows 10. In January it only supported blogger accounts, which meant that I was unable to use it. However, I checked again this weekend and discovered that it now supports a wide range of blog software including BlogEngine.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, March 13, 2016

A week with the Surface Pro 3

Robert unexpectedly (gotta love him!) gave me a surprise present in the form of a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I’ve now been using it for a week and I thought it was time to put my thoughts into words. You’ll pry it out of my cold, dead hands Overall, this is a fantastic bit of kit and it’s the device I have used most at home, for meetings and even sometimes at my desk.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, July 26, 2014

Using the Dell Venue 8 Pro Stylus

You will recall from my earlier post how much I like my Dell Venue 8 Pro and how disappointed I was that the stylus was on back-order until March. Imagine my surprise, then, when a package arrived at the beginning of this week with a shiny new stylus in it! WP_20140205_14_29_06_Raw As you can see from the picture, it works just great with OneNote (and it’s desktop big brother). The only niggle I feel obliged to point out right at the start is that the stylus requires a battery, which is an extremely obscure AAAA type.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Living with the Dell Venue 8 Pro

venu8prohq Some time ago I wrote about how disappointed I was with the Acer W3 tablet. I really wanted that small form factor device, but the Acer fell short in pretty much every regard. Late last year Dell launched the Venue 8 Pro – the first of the new generation of 8” Windows tablets out of the gate. I sat on the fence for a while, looking at community comments on the the device, then finally ordered one after speaking to Simon May about his impressions of it.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, January 26, 2014

Generation 2 Virtual Machines on Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 plus other nice new features

DDD North 2013 was a fantastic community conference but sadly I didn’t get chance to deliver my grok talk on Generation 2 virtual machines. A few people came up to me beforehand to say they were interested in the topic, and a few more spoke to me afterwards to ask if I would blog. I had planned to write a post anyway, but when you know it’s something people want to read you get a bit more of a push.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 15, 2013

I wouldn’t be where I am today… How encouraging kids in computing is important

I’ve been mulling this blog post for a while. Those of you who know Black Marble will have seen that we all believe very strongly in encouraging young people to take up computing and put time into sharing our knowledge and expertise. I thought it was worth sharing how I got to where I am today, which would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of three key people who worked with technology.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, August 31, 2013

Life with a Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

yoga My wife’s desktop computer is eight years old. In fairness, it was good kit at the time, and the dual core, 64-bit AMD CPU and it’s four gigabytes of RAM are still more than enough to run her apps today. But the disks are slow and, frankly, it’s just getting tired. Time to get a new one… I had no real preference whether we replaced the old computer with a new traditional-style desktop and screen, or an all-in one, or a convertible or even a tablet.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, August 31, 2013

The Acer Iconia W3: An object lesson in how NOT to design a tablet

As you may have seen from my recent tweets, I was fortunate enough to attend //Build again this year in lovely San Francisco. In what appears to be an emerging tradition, conference attendees received not one, but two Windows 8 tablets: A 128Gb Microsoft Surface Pro with Type Cover, and an Acer Iconia W3 with keyboard dock. Many column inches have been dedicated to the Microsoft device, which I won’t bother repeating.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, July 8, 2013

Living with the Nokia Lumia 800

If you call in at Black Marble you’ll see Nokia’s everywhere. They’re talking over the place. It takes me back… I remember when almost everybody I knew had some kind of Nokia or another. I started with the 5.1 on Orange, followed by a sequence of progressively smaller phones. Then came Series 60 and I walked away – I never liked the interface. I swapped to Sony Ericsson and the P800, P900 and P910.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 16, 2012

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550: A Tablet for the Enterprise

Every now and again, whilst I’m away from the office, the gadget pixies visit my desk and leave something interesting for me to play with. It’s a bit like Bagpuss, except stuff works when it arrives and I can never get the guys to wake up when I need them too. The last time this happened there was a tablet sitting on my desk. I like it enough to write about it.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, December 14, 2011