New Laptop - Over Four Years later

In 2012, I decided to purchase a gaming laptop; the Lenovo Y580. It was mostly a great laptop that was able to play older games at high settings and newer games at lower settings. Nearly four years later I replaced the Y580 with the Asus GL702VM gaming laptop.

In July of last year (2021), I managed to find the "Walmart edition" of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (L5P). That might sound like a bad thing, but finding one of these laptops in store represented a crazy bargain. The normal online price was $1529, but if you lucked into getting one in store, they were $1399. I had a routine of refreshing the Walmart page each morning. One day, it showed one in stock at the store about a 5 minute drive from me. I jumped in the car and went straight there.

So let's take a look at what has changed.

Processor

The processor change from the Y580 to the GL702VM was not particularly notable. They were both four core/eight thread processors. The i7 6700HQ in the GL702VM was faster, but not in any meaningful way.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor in the L5P is so much faster. First, it is an eight core/sixteen thread processor. Second, with all cores loaded it operates at a frequency roughly 20 percent higher than the i7 6700HQ could sustain. There is just no comparison. This is a HUGE jump that I did not see in my last upgrade.

Memory

In the Y580, I had 16GB of RAM in dual channel mode from the start. I did eventually upgrade the GL702VM to 32GB of RAM in dual channel as well. The L5P shipped with 16GB of RAM in dual channel, but I upgraded that to 32GB of RAM in dual channel fairly quickly.

Though both the GL702VM and L5P use DDR4 memory, the speed increased from 2133 MHz to 3200MHz giving the L5P considerably more memory bandwidth. The Ryzen CPU in the L5P is known to be sensitive to good, fast memory so making sure the memory improved along with the processor was important.

Storage

The L5P shipped with a 512GB NVMe SSD, twice the size of the drives of the previous two laptops and quite a bit faster. Of course, 512GB today is not nearly enough if you plan on gaming so I ordered an additional 2TB NVMe SSD because the L5P has two NVMe slots. It lacks a 2.5" drive bay, but that drive format is becoming less and less common.

GPU (Graphics Chip)

As I experienced going from the Y580 to the GL702VM, the GPU improvement in the L5P over the GL702VM is huge.

From generation to generation, the GPU went from:

• 2GB @ 64GB/s to 6GB @ 192GB/s to 8GB @ 448GB/s
• 384 cores @ 0.84 GHz to 1280 cores @ ~1.6 GHz to 5120 cores @ ~1.7 GHz, with generational improvements in between as well

As with the GL702VM when I first got it, the L5P can play any modern game with relative ease, and even has ray tracing capabilities for improved in-game lighting.

Display

The display of the L5P is really good. It increases the resolution from 1920 x 1080 to 2560 x 1600. It is much brighter than the GL702VM, and the refresh rate has jumped up to 165Hz (the GL702VM had a 75Hz display). It is a 16-inch display, so actually smaller than the GL702VM. I am having to use scaling in Windows to make things a little bigger and easier to see. As with the GL702VM, the L5P does have G-Sync, enabling an adaptive refresh rate.

The bezels around the L5P display are tiny relative to the previous laptops. Though I haven't checked exact overall size differences, the L5P doesn't feel much different.

Other Stuff

The L5P is amazing in so many ways. I have always wanted a laptop with ports at the back. This makes for a very tidy desk setup. The L5P has almost all of the ports on the back, with a couple on the sides for things like USB drives. The top and bottom of the laptop are metal and are a far cry from the fingerprint magnets that my previous two laptops were. Some people do not like the lighted Y logo on the top, but I am a fan.

It lacks a Thunderbolt port, but as it turns out this wasn't as exciting as I had hoped it would be back in 2016. There is a USB-C port that allows me to connect to a monitor that has USB-A ports. By plugging in this single cable, I get my monitor, keyboard, mouse, and webcam connected to the L5P. The only other plug needed is power.

Speaking of power, despite how much more powerful the L5P is than the previous models, the battery life has improved substantially. I used to struggle getting 2 hours out of the GL702VM. With the L5P I can normally manage 3 to 4 hours without much effort. I know I could stretch that out if I played around with the power settings.

All told, this is a much more significant upgrade than my previous one.

GeForce Now - The Way It's Meant to be Played?

The Way It's Meant to be Played is Nvidia's slogan used in games that are sponsored by Nvidia. I signed up for Nvidia's GeForce Now service and have been playing on it a little over the last week. I haven't really played enough for a review, or even a fair first impression. What I wanted to do first was provide some thoughts as to why I am trying Now, but not the other game streaming service.

First, I did not sign up for Google Stadia, though I was tempted at times. I'm glad I didn't. Early reviews of Stadia haven't been great. While Google has a lot of history and experience with streaming, that has been with "plain video". Live, interactive, and adaptive rendering of video games is an entirely different beast. There aren't many titles available for Stadia, and you still need to purchase the games in addition to the subscription service. There is also Google's notorious history of cancelled services. I can't help but wonder what happens should people purchase a whole bunch of games for Stadia, just to have Google decide to cancel the service a few years from now.

Let's compare and contrast the above with Nvidia's GeForce Now. Now has already been around in one form or another since 2013, giving Nvidia much more experience in this area than Google. Though Now also requires you to purchase games in addition to the subscription service, it uses game libraries that many people already have, including Steam. I have a fairly large Steam library, so I have a bunch of games I can play right out of the gate. Finally, though Nvidia has had a few products of their own that they cancelled or dropped support for, I am fairly certain their track record is better than Google's. Nvidia's awesome streaming box, the Shield TV, has received Android updates longer than any of Google's own Nexus or Pixel devices.

My current laptop (Asus GL702VM) has been really good, even though there have been a couple of frustrations along the way. I'm not really looking to buy a laptop just yet, but I think there are some promising upgrades coming to the gaming laptop market soon. Even though I want to wait until more compelling laptop upgrades are available, I can't help but want to check out some of the newer, more demanding games, and some of the games that utilize ray tracing. Enter GeForce Now. With the paid Now subscription, you are supposed to get the equivalent of an RTX 2080 GPU with all of its ray tracing capabilities, for $4.99 US / $6.49 CAD per month, and the first three months are free. The decision to try it out really is a no-brainer.

Fixing MacBook Pro Keyboard and Trackpad in Windows Boot Camp

After a recent major Windows 10 update in Boot Camp on my 2016 MacBook Pro, the integrated keyboard and trackpad just completely stopped working. I was able to connect an external USB keyboard and mouse so that I could continue using Windows, and confirm that everything else seemed to be working just fine.

The Boot Camp "Repair" option in the Programs and Features Control Panel did not restore any of the functionality. I managed to get things working properly again after a full re-install of the Boot Camp drivers. Someone has developed a utility to download the drivers directly in Windows, or you can follow these steps.

1. Boot into Mac OS and run Boot Camp Assistant.
2. Click the Action menu and select Download Windows Support Software. Make note of where the files are being downloaded.
3. Copy the files to a USB drive, or upload them to cloud storage somewhere (recommended for future use).
4. Reboot into Windows, copy the files from the USB or cloud, and run the setup.exe file. This will present a "Repair" option again, similar to the Control Panel option, but this really does reinstall all the drivers.
5. Reboot into Windows again.

I found the keyboard and trackpad began working immediately after the Repair/Install completed, but rebooted as recommended. After rebooting, the keyboard and trackpad again didn't seem to be working, but they started working normally less than a minute after the Windows login screen appeared.

Making the Switch: The move from Android to iOS

This is a follow up post to the previous post about switching from Android to iOS.

It has been about a month since I made the switch, and so far there haven't been any big surprises. I have argued for years that when you consider what you use a smartphone for these days, the day-to-day use of an iPhone versus Android are quite minimal. Most of what I (and pretty much everyone I know) do include email, web browsing, and some social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc). The experience of these activities really doesn't change much across devices.

There are things that I knew would be slightly different (and annoying). For example, I use Chrome as my browser across all devices. I do not want to use Safari, but Apple does not let you change the default browser in iOS. So, I sometimes have to click on a link to open a page in Safari, copy the link, close the tab in Safari (so I don't end up with 500 zombie tabs), then open Chrome and paste in the link.

Using iMessage and FaceTime with family is nice. Again, I wish iPhone users were more willing to use a messaging platform that was inclusive, but generally speaking they just aren't.

The resale value of Android phones that I mentioned in the previous post really hit home. I managed to sell my Samsung A5 2017 for roughly 25% of its original value. That hurt.

Overall, the transition has been relatively painless (apart from losing so much value in the resale of my Android device).

Making the switch: Moving from Android to iOS

I have used Android phones for nearly 10 years now. My first Android phone was the first Android phone; the T-Mobile G1. I transitioned through a few different phones, and was appreciative of the developer community that kept these phones up to date long after the manufacturers had abandoned them.

I did get tired of replacing my phone so often, but the combination of rapidly improving hardware and unstable unofficial Android ROMs made it hard to stick with a phone for more than a year or so.

Then I bought the Nexus 5. I bought it at launch. It was a phone with high-end specs and a $400 price. Google provided three years of updates for their Nexus line, and I kept my Nexus 5 for just over three years. It had a mediocre (at best) camera, and poor battery life, but I loved that phone.

I tried switching to the Axon Pro, another Android with high-end specs and reasonable price. Sadly, it only received one update despite being ZTE's flagship phone, and it was much larger than I wanted my phone to be. I switch again in less than a year to the mid-range Samsung Galaxy A5. It's not a bad phone, but it's not great and I honestly don't know how long Samsung plans to keep the A5 updated.

So, what kept me from Apple all those years, and what has changed?

Price was a big factor. The iPhone is a very expensive phone. Unfortunately, if I want to repeat my "Nexus 5" experience, I would need to look at getting one of Google's Pixel phones and long gone are the days of Google's flagship phone costing $400.

From a personal perspective, most of my family use iPhones. While I wished people would transition to a cross-platform messaging system (like WhatsApp), Apple has successfully sucked people into the iMessage/FaceTime vortex. I don't like it, but not liking something doesn't keep it from being a reality.

Phone hardware is also not changing as rapidly as it once did. Keeping a phone for over three years isn't as crazy sounding as it once was, as long as the manufacturer is still supporting it. This fall, Apple released iOS 12 for the iPhone 5S, a 5-year old device! I have a family member with that phone. It still works great, and it has current software! I am not aware of a single Android device that has official support after 3 years, let alone 5.

One final note is that every time I have changed my Android device, the depreciation was significant. I am blown away by the resale value of used iPhones. Maybe in the long run the iPhone won't be as expensive as it first seems.

So, I'm giving the iPhone thing a whirl. I know there will be things that drive me crazy, and only time will tell whether this experiment will be a positive experience.

Misadventures with Thunderbolt

The Promising Technology

Thunderbolt is a port technology by Intel, and first appeared on Macs in 2011. Originally, the primary use for Thunderbolt was as a video port (mini DisplayPort), though there were some other peripherals, such as external storage. With Thunderbolt 3, things got very interesting. The connector switched to USB Type-C, and the port included USB compatibility. The peak bandwidth was also increased to 40Gbps, opening up many possibilities for extremely high bandwidth devices such as external graphics. Even better, Thunderbolt 3 could deliver up to 100W of power, either to devices attached to the computer, or to the computer from the attached device.

On paper, things sounded amazing. Reality, as is often the case, was quite a bit different.

In 2016 I purchased an Asus GL702VM gaming laptop. Asus proudly advertised "Onboard Intel® Thunderbolt™ technology" that "gives you single-cable data and signal transmission rates of up to 40Gbits/s". I had kept my previous gaming laptop for 4 years, and the only reason I upgraded from it was the aging graphics chip it used. I figured a Thunderbolt 3 port would allow me to upgrade the graphics chips down the road, extending the life of the laptop.

At work, to support our Mac users, I use a 2016 MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports.

This year, we decided that new laptops acquired for staff should also include Thunderbolt 3, and that we could start looking for a universal docking station for use with any laptop going forward. We ordered a Dell Latitude 5480, which reviews showed as having a Thunderbolt 3 port.

Things were looking promising for Thunderbolt 3; the one port to rule them all.

And then...

I recently acquired a Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 eGPU (external graphics) box. Graphics cards are extremely expensive due to the cryptocurrency mining craze, but somehow the Gigabyte eGPU managed to be the cheapest GTX 1080 available. While researching eGPU configurations for my Asus laptop, I discovered that the Thunderbolt 3 chip Asus used was an "LP" version that only worked at 20Gbps (half of Thunderbolt 3's advertised peak speed). Asus does not list this anywhere on the product page, and this chip is essentially Intel's dirty little Thunderbolt 3 secret.

Next, our order for the Dell Latitude 5480 came in, along with the Thunderbolt 3 docks. I connected the dock to the Dell and discovered that only a specific configuration of the 5480 (with a completely unrelated GeForce 930MX graphics chip) includes Thunderbolt 3. The model we received has a regular USB Type-C port. Fortunately we were able to return the laptops and order replacements with the Thunderbolt 3 port, but Dell is needlessly creating confusion on this laptop. If you've been considering it, be careful ordering.

Finally, I connected the Dell Thunderbolt 3 dock to the 2016 MacBook Pro. Nothing. Apple has a "whitelist" of supported Thunderbolt 3 devices, and unsupported devices simply won't work. There is a hack that removes Apple's arbitrary and artificial device check. Once I went through those steps, the dock functioned mostly OK; everything worked but only one external display can be used.

Someday?

Perhaps there is some hope for Thunderbolt 3. Intel is making Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free, so it may start showing up in more devices. I just hope that laptop manufacturers stop using the slower version of Intel's Thunderbolt 3 chip, or at least are more clear which chip they are using. Other Thunderbolt 3 docks are supported by Apple (though they are significantly more expensive of course), and offer Windows compatibility as well. Although I could say I hope that Apple removes their ridiculous "supported" check, Apple's history makes that scenario unlikely.

Putting ICE on IT

I have worked in what is traditionally viewed as "IT", or Information Technology for a very long time now. However, since I began working in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, my initial IT position has evolved in wonderful and important ways. To support the Teacher Candidates and our faculty, I became increasingly involved with what has been traditionally viewed (apologies for the redundancy) as Educational Technology.

Over the last few years, I have realized that neither IT nor ET can adequately capture what is truly happening in education, from K-12 through higher education.

There are many technologies that enable teaching, learning, and research. Some technologies are commonly used in education, but can hardly be described as educational technology. Examples include presentation tools and learning management systems. I am more inclined to describe these as Instructional Technologies (though IT already exists as a separate entity). Similarly, technologies such as video conferencing and shared document editing are commonly used in education, but are better described as Collaboration Technologies. There are indeed Educational Technologies, but which category they fall under depends on their specific use. Tablets are a good example.

Almost hand-in-hand with these technologies there tend to be associated staff members, focused on specific areas.

For several months now I have been considering a more holistic approach; a combination of Instructional, Collaboration, Educational, and Information Technology. Although I am not a huge fan of acronyms, I feel that describing all of the relevant technology pieces would be a little too cumbersome.

Welcome to ICEIT.

This is more than just a name. It reflects that these individual pieces are stronger together; that there needs to be a collaborative approach to technology. Each letter does not represent an individual territory to be claimed by individual staff or units. It is a whole, and all of the members need to work together for it to be effective.

I look forward to the coming months as we start to look at this approach in the Faculty of Education.