Tech Corner

[Pol]

I'm thinking about new phone. And it seems that my current favorite is Lenovo A6010 (plus version is not offered on our market)
+ supports LTE
+ IPS display
+ can be upgraded to Marshmallow - not officially but people says that there are no problems
+ it's cheap

I was looking pretty thoroughly for some phone which would find in my hand, this is actually the biggest one. Most of 5" do not fit. I have just a few requirements, which are cost, LTE, quality display, Android 6, not lagging and fitting into my hand.

But that category is empty, now even most simple phones have dual cameras and dual sims. Asian market dictate? Seems so. This one was most close.

Do you have more hints?

[Pol]

The HBM(2) memory is planned for third quartal of this year to be on market, so finally, new generation of graphic cards is arriving. Both Nvidia and AMD have reserved lines but AMD is having quite more exprience as it does already use HBM(1). Let say that future should forget (g)DDR5.

BTW I ordered that phone, so soon I will be having my hands on cheapish chinese product with, with actually great parameters on paper. Lenovo LTE 5" budget phone A6010..

[Pol]

Confirmed, I'm proud owner o Lenovo A6010. (Single 8GB)

It's like a small tablet for me. Going to finding some use for it. Beacuse meanwile get used to a very small "tard" phone.

+ easy to handle, simple back cover removing, nice battery
+ lightweight
+ Android 5.0.2
+ LTE support
+ better IPS display
+ expected support from Indian programmers (It was created from China with love to India market.), pleasant price

- the display is not so sensitive for touch but it suffice, multitouch lags, thankfully I don't need it
- camera is to be here, certainly doesn't shine with any quality. Practically on all phones I had better. Slow focus, require more light to get a snapshot, no macro. But for that price, it's bonus that there's at least some.

Currently looking for some silikon case and apps to prepp it. It will be nice companion for a long travels.

PS That "tard" phone is small Nokia. I found it to be surprisingly usefl, with nice alarm saying the time. If they would put a little bit more effor here I would just stay with it.

Seeing as these devices are "big" we may come soon to transformer phone. Being something 5" with a small detachable phone on its back.

[Pol]

Any idea bout decent android Calc/Organizer? Naturally it should work with birthdays from contacts without any needs to be synced via google or outlook.

Just I want that normal function back!

[GreatEmerald]

Hm, I'll need to look for a new phone for my mother this summer. Her old one's screen got shattered, and now it's hardly possible to press much of anything on it.

She never liked it (HTC Desire 500), though. Apparently it's too easy for her to accidentally press things she didn't intend to press, and the earphones support is real weird (pressing the answer button brings up Google Hello of all things, and when plugged in all incoming call ringtone volume is way low). It also has really low disk space, not enough even for stock apps, and there have never been any OS updates for it (nor CyanogenMod support). She does use it for taking photos and playing music (incl. Spotify), though, so the new one will have to be some sort of a smartphone too.

[Pol]

Mmm, Sony M5?

But maybe I like Sony too much. LG xcam|X10?

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, I'm thinking about either LG or Sony myself. But the summer is still some time away.

[mr.hackcrag]

Sometimes my PC will not be able to play media files (nothing happens when trying to open file) in mediaplayer or videos on any website until I restart the pc. When I restart, I notice there is always a message saying a program is preventing the PC from restarting, but I cannot see what program it is and am unsure what the problem is. Any ideas?

[Kalah]

Hmmm... Have you tried using a more flexible player, such as VLC? Sometimes my Mac refuses to play a film for some reason but VLC is always working for me.

[mr.hackcrag]

I suspect the problem is not with the player and its not limited to the player because other media related functions cease to work. For example, audio in browser games, youtube videos won't play at all, etc. I suspect the problem is with the unknown app trying to run in the background that I notice when I try to restart the computer, however, when I click on that unknown app, nothing happens. I'm not sure how to resolve it.

[Pol]

Well, start with scanning your computer against malware, using MBAM.

And then reinstall sound drivers.

The another step will be some inspection of installed software and running. As I remember sysinternals were very good at it.

This could be some remnant of badly removed application or part of the driver or driver app. If this is the case, install just the driver again. What sound card do you have?

[Salamandre]

I bought Morrowind and the mouse lagged terribly, unplayable. After a google search, it came up that disabling vertical synchronization in Nvidia panel solved the thing. Now my further problem is with Oblivion: after 10 minutes in dungeons or caves, the game graphics get dark then I have to shut the game - it acts like video memory is constantly charged and never reset, starts to lag then more and more. I have Nvidia Gx950 and a fairly new computer with 8 GO ram so probably the issues are still on video card settings (pilot updated). Does any know what all those settings in Nvidia panel do and how could I solve such annoyance?

[Pol]

Out of curiosity I asked google and come to two hints.
#1 - disable HDR Lighting in the game and enable Bloom within the game
#2 - disable Steam overlay

[Salamandre]

Yeah already did that, first thing I did was a google search and it came with same I forgot to mention.

Now I think there is something related to video card inner settings but I am total noob at. I remember I could play Oblivion 6 years ago on XP and no problems, and now with 100 times better comp it crashes every 10 minutes. Tried without mods as well so is not the mods the issue. Thanks anyway.

[GreatEmerald]

Well, the fact that you could play something a while ago with worse hardware doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to do that now. XP (NT 5) is quite different from later Windows versions (NT 6 and 10).
Case in point: try running HoMM1 Windows version on XP or later. It won't work, because the libraries underneath have improved and interfaces have been deprecated over time.

I wouldn't know if this is the case in your case, because that requires some knowledge of the game engine. Just saying that you can't assume that things will run the same going forward

[Salamandre]

As long as I buy from gog and those games are optimized for my OS, I don't think this is the problem. I don't see many complaining about, so is surely some video card settings. Or, as a vendor told me, if my OS gets corrupted, it may produce such errors. I updated my win 7 by "fixing" it, still same. I am too lazy to reinstall everything.

[Pol]

Are there more information available to the crash?

In case that you are getting BSOS, you may try this.

As well you may try compatibility mode for GPU, I guess that it will be still somewhere buried in the OS, simply you set up slider on what all should be handled by card driver and what by sw emulation.

If you have multicore you may also have problem with CPU affinity.

Is it wrapped in something, like DOSbox or not?

[Salamandre]

I get this: Display driver stopped responding and has recovered. Looks like this is a common message when there is some conflict between video card and OS. I bought a new card, same result.

[Pol]

I will need to do some data mining from you.

What version of Windows you have?
What is version of your Nvidia driver?
Afaik last two drivers from Nvidia were a bit problematic, so it would be better to have some older.
This game is not from GoG yes? I guess that it was developed for WinXP, did you tried compatibility settings?

Do you have some problems with other apps on this machine?

Did you tried to tinker with your nVidia controla panel already? Switching off functions related to lightning&shadows? This shouldn't be caused by buffering. Try to build some neutral profile.

Or from Win, there it's simplified.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/hardware- ... -windows-7

[Salamandre]

I buy games either from gog or steam so I don't have compatibilities problems. Just run a normal build, win 7, 4 go ram, 2 processors I think, and I can run all games except Oblivion. Thanks for the link.