Posted in Products with tags EnGenius on July 20, 2024 by itnerd
This review took way longer than it should have. That’s because I needed to find the right environment to properly test the EnGenius Wifi 7 2x2x2 ECW526 Access Point as my standard testing protocol that I’ve used in the past wouldn’t work for this WiFi 7 access point. In short, I had to call in a few favours to source WiFi 7 devices and find a network and Internet connection fast enough to really give this access point a proper test. Thus I ended up borrowing a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 which came with WiFi 7 from a client who is going to have me deploy them to their workforce in the next 10 days or so. And I convinced a client who has a 10GB Internet connection and a 10GB backbone that I set up for them to leverage said Internet connection to let me use their set up on a Friday evening to test this access point. You’ll see why I went through all these hoops in a few minutes. Right now, let’s have a look at the access point.
The access point looks like pretty much every other EnGenius access point. But it has a metal base for starters. And it only has a single light on the front.
Here’s another area where things are different. It has a PoE port that does 10 Gigabit Ethernet. You read that correctly, 10 Gigabit Ethernet. There’s also a DC 12v plug. But if you’re using PoE, you won’t need it.
There’s also a Kensington lock slot to ensure that this access point doesn’t grow legs and walk away.
In terms of speeds, here’s what EnGenius says that this access point can handle:
6 GHz: 5800 Mbps
5 GHz: 2900 Mbps
2.4 GHz: 700 Mbps
Those are pretty amazing numbers if they are accurate. And it explains why I needed to source a WiFi 7 compatible device and a network that could handle these speeds.
I won’t bore you with the setup details as in typical EnGenius fashion, it is trivial to set up. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have this up and running within 15 minutes or less. But what you’re here to see is if this access point lives up to the numbers that EnGenius says it should. I should say up front that I always take the claims of those who make wireless gear with a pinch of salt. But having said that, on the 6GHz band where WiFi 7 lives, I encountered some pretty impressive speeds during my testing which involved copying a 4.65 GB file from a computer that was wired to the 10GB backbone directly to the Surface Laptop 7 on WiFi 7. Here are the results:
1 Meter from the access point: 1.95 Gbps per second
5 Meters from the access point: 1.2 Gbps per second
10 Meters from the access point: 1.03 Gbps per second
All of this was within line of sight of the access point. Meaning that if it had to go through walls, the speeds will drop. Regardless, the worst result was slightly faster than wired Gigabit Ethernet. And if you plot out your deployment of WiFi 7 to have no WiFi 7 dead spots, you can likely do a whole lot better in terms of speed. Quite simply, this is the fastest WiFi device that I have ever tested.
Is there a downside to the EnGenius Wifi 7 2x2x2 ECW526 Access Point? None that I can think of. And the price is right at $299.00 USD a copy. And if the price for one unit isn’t enough for you to jump on this bandwagon, EnGenius has a buy 2 get 1 free deal at the moment. Which means that you can deploy WiFi 7 without breaking the bank. Thus making this access point truly a cost effective way of getting cutting edge WiFi into your environment.
Posted in Products with tags Samsung on July 10, 2024 by itnerd
Samsung today is announcing a number of new products. But I got an advance look of them last week so I can speak to them in greater detail. Here’s the four items that really stood out to me.
Let’s start with the new Galaxy Z Flip6:
There’s a couple of variants of this phone with 256GB and 512GB of storage and both are powered by the Octa-core Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. Both come with 12GB of RAM and come in four colours. The main display is 6.7” with a 1-120 Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2640 x 1080 FHD+. The Flex Window is a 3.4”, 60 Hz, 720 x 748 display. The rear camera has a 12 MP f/2.2 ultra wide lens and 50 MP f/1.8 wide lens. There’s a fingerprint scanner on the Side. One of the cool things that I saw being demonstrated was this:
It has a live translation function powered by Samsung Galaxy AI that utilizes the Flex Window. You pick the language that you want to translate to and start speaking. The translation appears in the Flex Window. That was pretty cool and I can see it being useful for those who travel a lot.
Next up is this:
This is the Galaxy Z Fold6. Powered by the Octa-core Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, you can get it in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants in three colours. The main display is 7.6” with a 1-120 Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2160 x 1856 QXGA+. The cover display is 6.3” with a resolution of 2376 x 968 HD+. In terms of cameras, there’s 12 MP f/2.2 Ultra Wide, 50 MP f/1.8 Wide, 10 MP f/2.4 3x/30x Telephoto. The front camera is a 10 MP f/2.2 4 MP f/1.8 under display camera, and there’s a 10 MP f/2.2 cover camera. And if you look a the side show above, this phone has a feature where you can draw something, and then Samsung Galaxy AI can take that drawing and upscale it in a number of ways.
Here’s a look at the Galaxy Watch Ultra next to my Apple Watch Ultra. It’s a similar size and the screen looks just as bright. It also has grade 4 titanium. In terms of connectivity, it has LTE, WiFi and Bluetooth 5.3. One thing that I really like about this watch is that unlike the Apple Watch, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra has proper recovery metrics and coaching related to that. Being someone who does a lot of athletic activities, this is something that really matters to me as I want to know if I can put in a really hard training session or if I should take a rest day.
Finally, I am holding the Galaxy Buds3 Pro. It has Adaptive ANC & EQ and Auto Noise Adjustment among other features. With up to four hours of talk time and up to 7 hours of playback time, these would be a great match for any of the Galaxy products that I have previously mentioned.
The Galaxy Z Fold6, Z Flip6 and Galaxy Buds3 series will be available for pre-order starting today with general availability starting July 24.
You might recall that I have been implementing DMARC across all the domains that I own in order to increase email deliverability and to cut down, if not eliminate email spoofing via my domains. One thing that I did say at the time was that I was spending every morning looking at DMARC reports to get visibility into what was going on in relation to my domains. I specifically said this:
Now, let’s talk about the reports that I mentioned earlier. They show up in your inbox in xml format that isn’t human readable. To solve that problem, I use the MX Tools DMARC Report analyzer which makes these reports human readable. That way I have visibility into what’s going on from an email perspective. And I set aside a few minutes every day to read these reports. I admit that it’s bit time consuming. But it ensures that I don’t find out about my bad news from CNN so to speak.
Here’s the problem with that method. I am simply looking at one day at a time and one domain at a time. So I am missing out on anything that is trending for example. As in some threat actor who is spending multiple days trying to spoof my email addresses. That’s when Valimail hooked me up with Valimail Monitor. What this web based product does is that it allows users to monitor who is sending email from your domains and identify unauthorized senders. All from a single dashboard. That in turn gives you visibility as to where your good news (nobody is trying to spoof you for example) or bad news (someone is trying to spoof you, or someone inside your company is using a service that you haven’t authorized) is going to come from.
Let’s go into the weeds on this:
One of the first things that I do is to go into the dashboard and scroll through the different sections of the dashboard. DMARC status is one of the first things that usually gets my attention as that’s where I would get the first indication if anyone is spoofing me, or if I have a deliverability issue. In this case, it’s the former as seven email failed the DMARC check. That usually sends me off to the domains screen to see what is going on:
I have redacted my personal domain for privacy reasons. But it seems to be the source of the issue. Since I am a guy who likes to go down the rabbit hole on these things, let’s see why this is the case. So I am going to click the word “view” under the “Senders” column to see what’s going on.
Once I hit this screen, it becomes clear to me what’s going on. My hosting provider uses MailChannels as a proxy for all outbound mail to ensure that a bad actor who hosts with them doesn’t do anything that would cause their hosting infrastructure to be banned by other mail servers. So 100% of my email should go through there. But it’s not. It seems that some “Unidentified IPs” are trying to send mail using my personal domain.
And by clicking on “View” under the “Countries” column, it shows that what appears to be a Vietnamese based threat actor is trying to spoof my domain.
What I did from there is to increase the date range to one month to see what I found. Now Canada isn’t an issue as my email server is hosted in Montreal, and everything is clearly flowing through just fine. But I see that besides having a threat actor in Vietnam, a threat actor that appears to be in the US is also a problem as everything from that country is failing DMARC. Thus they’re trying to spoof me as well.
Now at the time that I went down this rabbit hole, I couldn’t see the exact IP addresses of the servers that were trying to spoof me. But I reached out to Valimail and they were able to get that straightened so that going forward, I can see the exact IP addresses of anything that is claiming to be sending email on my behalf. Some of them were hosted by Microsoft so I reached out to them via their abuse email address to address those threat actors. The other threat actor I have addressed by setting my domains to reject anything that fails a DMARC check.
Sidebar: Since I have done this, I have noted that phishing emails related to my domains have skyrocketed. Which illustrates that if a threat actor can’t get you using one technique, they’ll try something else.
While I continue to monitor the situation, I feel that I am in a better position to make sure that nobody is using my domains when they shouldn’t be as I have complete visibility of what is going on, and I can take action on anything that is suspect. Here’s the key part that you should pay attention to: This level of protection is free. Thus there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t use it.
Now if you need more than Valimail Monitor offers, they can help you with that. Valimail Align is the next level up from Monitor. It adds automated configuration of DKIM and SPF to allow you to get to a compliance level that satisfies Google, Yahoo, and others. It’s a great way to easily ensure that you’re in a good place when it comes to DMARC compliance.
Valimail Enforce is the top tier of what Valimail offers. It allows you to automate DMARC tasks and ensure that absolutely nothing slips through the net so to speak. For example, I set up Enforce which required me to make a number of DNS changes which are outlined here, and then I set up a MailChimp account to send emails using my business domain without telling Enforce about it. Then I waited to see what would happen next. What I found was that Enforce was able to discover the existence of MailChimp and that it was sending emails on my behalf. I was then able to add it as an authorized sender within Enforce and Enforce handed all the DNS changes in the background for me with no need to act as my own IT department to make changes to my DNS setup. It was literally a few clicks to get that done. And this is the key point. Enforce allows you to monitor every aspect of your mail setup so that you can make changes as needed, or discover email products like MailChimp for example that might be used in your organization without your knowledge. Thus if I were to put on my consultant hat on for a second, I would recommend that enterprises should head straight to Enforce as I can see that there would be a close to immediate payback in terms of security, reputation management, and cost.
Here’s the bottom line. Valimail has suite of products that I feel that any company who sends email, which is pretty much every company, should be using to ensure that their email gets to the their intended destinations, and to ensure that said companies reputation remains intact. On top of that, they will save a few bucks along the way. That’s a win on multiple fronts, which means that if you’re the guy who’s responsible for mail, DNS, and perhaps even your security stack, you need to have a look at what Valimail has to offer as in my view, this suite of products can help you in so many ways.
Posted in Products with tags HyperX on June 13, 2024 by itnerd
When you speak to competitive gamers, they will all likely say the same thing. Wired is better for winning. Wired mice, wired keyboards, wired all the things. The same is true for headsets. However HyperX is trying to change the game on that front with their HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones. Here’s what you get in the box:
Let’s start with the headphones. They are light and comfortable. They didn’t put any real pressure on my head or ears. That means that I can wear them for an extended period of time comfortably. More on that in a bit. There are adjustable and removable memory foam ear cups as part of the deal. Meaning that you can not only dial in your fit, but replace the ear cups when they become too gross to wear. The headband in the middle portion has the same memory foam as well which means that it also provides a fair amount of comfort. The headphones are made of plastic which is fine as I am not expecting AirPods Max type of materials for a gaming headset. One thing that I should note is that the microphone flips up and down. And that’s important because when you flip it up, it mutes you. When you flip it down, your speech becomes audible again. That’s pretty clever.
On the left ear, you get a USB-C port and the power switch. Pro tip: You need to hold the power switch to power these headphones on or off.
On the right side, you get a volume control. One thing that I should note about these headsets is that while they don’t claim to be Mac compatible, they worked just fine and spinning the volume control brought up the volume indicator on the screen. That was kind of neat.
Also included are a USB-C to USB-A cable for charging purposes along with the 2.4 GHz wireless receiver that you need use these headphones.
Here’s some other specs that I pulled off of the HyperX website:
Driver: Dynamic, 50mm with neodymium magnets
Type: Closed back
Frequency response: 10Hz – 20.2 kHz
Sensitivity: -12 dBFS/Pa at 1kHz
T.H.D: ≤ 2%
Microphone
Element: Electret condenser microphone
Polar Pattern: Bi-directional, Noise-cancelling
Sensitivity: -12 dBFS/Pa at 1kHz
USB Specification: USB 2.0
Bit-Depth: 16-bit
Wireless Range: Up to 20m
Now, some random thoughts before I get into the rather unique testing that I did with these headphones:
Battery life: HyperX claims 20 hours of battery life with a 3.5 hour recharge time. At the time of writing this review, I had charged them to full and used them for 11 hours without an issue on anything to game playing to Microsoft Teams calls. So 20 hours of battery life seems plausible to me.
Setup: This is laughably easy. Plug in the 2.4 GHz receiver into a free USB port, turn on the headset, and set your audio output and input to the headset assuming that you’re on a PC or a Mac and declare victory. For the record, this will also work with a PS5 in a similar manner. But I did not test that as I do not have a PS5.
Microphone Quality: People that I talked to had no complaints about being able to hear me clearly over the bi-directional noise-cancelling microphone, especially with the foam windscreen which helps reduce and filter out breathing noise. The key word is reduce because I did find one scenario where this wasn’t the case which I will get to later.
Sound Quality: The sound put out by the headset is definitely crisp and clear, and depending on what you use it with, the sound can be quite loud. On the PC side of the fence, you can install their NGENUITY software and use it to not only tweak your sound, but to also unlock DTS Headphone:X Spatial Audio for even better sound.
Now, how did I test these headphones. As most of you know, I use an online cycling platform called Zwift to help me to keep and improve my fitness. You can get more info on that here, and here. But what you likely don’t know is that I am part of an online race team called Galaxy Cycling Club. Galaxy races on Zwift as well as run group rides on the platform as well. I race two or three times a week and one of those times is a team time trial where three to eight riders ride together to get the fastest time possible on a course that is anywhere from 30 to 50 kilometres in length. Here’s a picture of one of the time trials that I was in a few weeks ago:
You can see all of us in a line. That’s done to have the first person in line break the wind, and the others benefit from being in the draft of that person because they are doing about 20% less work than the person at the front of the line. That means you can go faster and have more in the metaphorical gas tank at the end. The person in the front spends 60 to maybe 90 seconds on the front before pulling off and going to the back of the line. That requires constant communication with the rest of the team so that the line is maintained. That’s where these headsets came in handy. I used them in one of these time trials and exposed them to not only sweat, but the sound of two fans that I keep in front of me to keep me cool. I will admit that this is an extreme test of these headphones. Especially since HyperX makes no claims as to water resistance. But I had almost no issues in the one hour and sixteen minutes that I was racing (covering 43K in that time for the record). The only issue that I had was the fans were clearly audible to my teammates which implies the fans overwhelmed the microphone’s ability to cancel out noise. That I do not think will be an issue for most people as most people will have a pair of fans cranked up to the max blowing cool air in front of them.
So after doing that extreme test of the headphones, let me get to the best part about them. The price. They retail for $129.99 CAD normally, but are currently on sale for $20 off. That’s a very good value for considering what these headphones can do for you. If you’re a competitive gamer, and even if you aren’t, these headphones are very much worth a look.
I’m currently in the midst of redoing my desk setup which is being driven by my decision to run my 16″ MacBook Pro in clamshell mode full time. By doing so, it also means that I cannot use the webcam that’s built into the MacBook Pro. That’s a problem for me as I spend a fair amount of time on video calls via Microsoft Teams among other video conference apps. So as a result, I am now using this webcam and to enhance the light that it has to work with, I needed some sort of key light. Which is why I decided to go with this:
It mounts easily onto any monitor or laptop and adjusts for either use case.
It has five levels of brightness as well as five colour temperatures to choose from.
A colour temperature range from 2,700 to 6,500 Kelvin and have a maximum output of 250 lumens.
It is compatible with the Logitech G HUB that allows you to tweak all the settings digitally as opposed to using the controls on the back of the light.
It’s powered via a USB-C to USB-A cable.
Here’s a look at the light and the range of adjustability that you get. It’s pretty extensive and you can pretty much set it up to fit whatever your use case happens to be.
Here’s a look at how it looks on my monitor:
As you can see, it hooks onto the front of the monitor, then you adjust the arm on the back until you find a length that is secure. You can also see the USB-C to USB-A cable running down the back. Since I have a standing desk, I tried moving the desk up and down to see if it would fall off and it didn’t.
But the real question is this light works. The short answer is yes. The long answer goes something like this. This does output a lot of light. At full strength, it is powerful enough to light up most of my home office at night if I have the lights off. I spent some time tweaking it and that time resulted in my face being clear when on camera.There are controls on the back that allow you to make it as bright or as dull as you want along with changing the colour temperature. That way you can get the look that you want. Thus I feel more than confident in saying that you will look great on your next Microsoft Teams call after you spend some time tweaking things to suit your environment.
I tried the Logitech G HUB software on my Mac as part of this review. First of all, it allows you to tweak the settings of the software via sliders while watching yourself on screen. Which is handy to make sure that everything is dialled in before you jump on a video call. Though that’s something that you are likely to do once or occasionally at best. The other thing that I noted is that it does have the ability to turn on and off the light when the camera is activated or deactivated. Though I did note that it would not work initially until I chose the MacBook Pro’s built in camera, which then generated a prompt that Logitech G HUB wanted to access the camera. When I gave it permission to do so, I had to switch it back to the external camera and then it worked flawlessly. Speaking of permissions, this software asked me for permission to record the screen and audio. I didn’t give it permission and it continued to work fine. Which begs the question, why was it asking me for permission to do that? Permission to access the camera I can understand because that’s clearly how it knows to turn the light on and off. But to record the screen and audio? That seems suspect to me.
What makes this light something that I would recommend to you is the price tag. I got it from Amazon for $53.99 CAD which is kind of hard to beat. Thus if you need to improve your video call game, this is a great product to do so.
Posted in Products with tags Apple on May 4, 2024 by itnerd
When the topic of Apple products comes up, one of the things that comes to mind is if it’s worth it. Some things are. For example my 16″ MacBook Pro is absolutely worth it because of the speed and power that it has. Other things from Apple… I’m not so sure.
This is a review of one of those other things.
This is the Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad. And it is $229 CDN in black which is what you see in the picture, or $209 CDN in white. In other words, if you want the black colour to match your setup or to hide dirt, you’ll have to pay Apple $20 more. And that is the start of why this keyboard might not be worth it for you.
Let’s touch on the fact that this keyboard doesn’t have backlighting. Which to me is completely bizarre as many lower priced keyboards do have backlighting. I’m sure that Apple will say that it has to do with battery life seeing as this is a wireless keyboard. But that doesn’t make sense to me because competing keyboards that cost way less than this one will connect wirelessly like this one does, and go weeks if not much longer on battery while having backlighting. And there are even a few keyboards that will do all of that and self adjust the backlighting on the fly using an ambient light sensor. Apple does this with the Magic Keyboards that are built into their MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. So you have to wonder why they haven’t done it here. Having said that, battery life is one month on a charge. And I can confirm that I can go five to maybe six weeks between charges.
Incline adjustment is something else that’s missing from this keyboard. As in you can’t adjust the incline if this mostly flat keyboard doesn’t work for you. Now this keyboard as is happens to work for me, but it won’t work for everyone. I know that because I often get emails from people who buy desktop Macs and can’t cope with this keyboard. Thus they reach out to me for advice on what to replace it with. Now if you’re someone who doesn’t want to buy a new keyboard, and needs a bit more incline from their Magic Keyboard, this product might help you. I base that on feedback from clients who have tried this product and reported back that it helped to put the keyboard at an angle that works for them. But the fact that this product exists at all shows that maybe Apple needs to reconsider this design.
Finally, there’s this.
Why on God’s green Earth does this keyboard have a Lightning connector for connection and charging purposes? It’s 2024 and Apple should have moved this to USB-C by now. It’s not as if a USB-C connector wouldn’t fit in this keyboard. The bottom line is that this decision not to have USB-C on this keyboard is baffling to be honest. But on the flip side you get this:
Apple serves up a woven USB-C to Lightning cable in the box that’s colour matched. It’s a nice touch I suppose.
So this keyboard sucks right? Not so fast. A big plus to this keyboard is the inclusion of Touch ID. That’s handy for those who rely on Touch ID for anything from Apple Pay, to simply getting into your Mac, to using it for authentication purposes. There is a catch though. Touch ID only works with Apple Silicon Macs. If you have an Intel Mac, you’re out of luck. And in case you are wondering, no third party keyboard has Touch ID, likely because Apple won’t allow that for security reasons I am guessing. So if Touch ID matters to you, this is your only choice.
Sidebar: If you want to unlock your Mac and you own an Apple Watch, these instructions will help you to set that up. Which means that you won’t need Touch ID to unlock your Mac. Which by extension means that you may not need to buy this keyboard for that use case.
Another plus is the typing experience. I have to admit that despite the fact that I learned to type on a typewriter back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, which in turn made me gravitate towards mechanical keyboards, the typing experience on this Magic Keyboard is quite good. Key travel is decent, it doesn’t take a whole lot of force to type on it, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of noise. I have no issues typing on it, likely because it mimics the experience of the built in MacBook Pro Magic Keyboard.
The looks this keyboard are another plus because it fits in with the Apple look and feel if that’s what you’re looking for. It also means that you will get a clean desk setup if that’s what you’re looking for. It also doesn’t take up a lot of real estate, and the build quality is very premium. Plus setting it up was laughably easy. I took it out of the box, turned it on, went to Bluetooth settings and clicked connect. Done. Have a nice day.
So, I have to come back to this question: Is this keyboard worth it? Well, if you care about Touch ID, or you want a keyboard that is fully within the Apple ecosystem. It might be worth it. If you want a very good typing experience that is similar to a MacBook Pro for example, it might be worth it. But the thing is that there are keyboards out there that cost less money that do most of what this keyboard is capable of. Which begs the question. Why do I have one? I am in the midst of redoing my desk setup and I wanted a wireless keyboard that occupies less space as I am now moving towards using my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode. So that combined with wanting Touch ID as some of the apps on my MacBook Pro use it made it worth it for me. But honestly, I had to really think long and hard about the “worth it” part before I took out my credit card to pay for this at the Apple Store. Or to put it another way, 95% of you reading this review shouldn’t buy this keyboard and instead you should look to options from companies like Logitech, Keychron, or Matias who are my go to recommendations for Mac keyboards. Chances are those keyboards are going to be worth it for the 95% of people who need a Mac keyboard as you get features like incline adjustment and backlighting which are strangely absent from Apple’s offering for way less money.
Posted in Products with tags ZIKE on April 23, 2024 by itnerd
AirTags are great. But they aren’t perfect for every use case. That’s why third party tracking cards that are compatible with the FindMy Network are handy. Specifically the ones that are roughly as thin as a credit card as that broadens the use cases what you can track. There’s two problems with these third party tracking cards though. The first is none of them have UltraWideband support which would allow you to have the ability to precisely track the card like an AirTag. The second is that none of these cards allows you to replace the battery. The ZIKE Smart Tracking Card solves the second of those problems in an interesting way. Let’s have a look at the card:
This side of the card really doesn’t have anything interesting on it, other than the fact that it has a picture that implies that this card can help you find your stuff:
This side of the card has more pictograms that show all the use cases. A lot of them facilitated by the fact that this tracking card has a slot to allow you to have it hang off luggage or any other item. If you look at the top right corner, there’s a button that activates the card, but doesn’t seem to do anything else after that. For what it’s worth, the cards are IPX7 dust and water resistant. Which means that it expands the potential use cases.
The card is thin. ZIKE claims it’s 2mm and if you look at it relative to my PRESTO transit card, it’s slightly thicker than that card which is roughly the thickness of a credit card.
Adding it to your items on the FindMy app is stupid simple:
Open the Find My app on your iPhone
Go to Items and click on the plus sign
Click on Add Other Item
Press the button that’s located on the top right corner until it makes a sound
Follow the onscreen prompts and agree to the fact that law enforcement will hunt you down if you use this for illegal purposes.
Done! Declare victory and have a beer!
Now once you’ve added it you can track it. But only via Bluetooth as it has no UltraWideband support. Which means that you’re going to have to play a sound and play a game of “Marco Polo” until you find it. That brings me to how loud this card is. According to my Apple Watch Ultra, it puts out 76dB. By comparison, the Chipolo CARD Spot was 10dB louder. The sound it high pitched so you should be able to hear it, but it would have been nice if it were a bit louder. The one thing that it does that the CARD Spot does not have is the ability to recharge the built in battery via wireless charging:
If you look carefully at the word “ZIKE” in the top left corner, you will see a red light and a green light. The red light means that it is charging, and the green light means that it is charged. But you may have to fiddle with the placement of the card to get it to charge. Based on my testing with this wireless charger, the charging coils for the card are at the bottom of the card. I was also able to replicate that with a MagSafe Adapter (which it actually sticks to by the way). Larger wireless chargers like this wireless charger had no issue in terms of charging it. Likely because the charging coils are larger making placement less of an issue. In any case, 30 minutes of charge should get you a year of usage. I clearly haven’t had these for a year. But I can say that I charged them in about 30 minutes when I first got them, then a week later I was able to get a full charge into them in a couple of minutes. That suggests to me a year of battery life is plausible.
Now these cards aren’t exactly cheap. MSRP for each one is $66.89 CAD but they are currently going for $47.38 CAD at the moment. And there are discounts if you buy more than one. My thinking is that this price is based on the fact that ZIKE isn’t going to be selling you one of these cards every year when the battery runs out. Thus they have to get their cash up front. Regardless, The ZIKE Smart Tracking Card has earned a place in my Ekster Carbon Fibre Cardholder to make sure that I don’t lose it.
Posted in Products with tags Apple on April 21, 2024 by itnerd
In late 2021 I bought my 16″ M1 Pro MacBook Pro. It corrected all the sins of Apple laptops since 2016. On top of that it has Apple Silicon which literally destroys any processor from Intel. It’s been my workhorse since then. Now while I did a review that comprised of Part 1 and Part 2 of this notebook, I decided that I should to circle back to it to give you an update in terms of how I have got on with it.
I’ll start with the bad first. I’ve had two keyboard replacements on it. The first was a year ago, and the second was a few weeks ago. Both times the repair was covered by AppleCare which illustrates why you should always get AppleCare. But if you’re not convinced, you can read this to give you a few other reasons to always get AppleCare. Now I am chalking these keyboard failures up to how I type rather than a defect in the computer, by that I mean the sort of issues that Apple had with the infamous “butterfly” keyboard, because the exact same key on the keyboard went bad both times. Thus I have changed my setup to hopefully keep a third time from happening. Specifically I now run the MacBook Pro in clamshell mode attached to a monitor and an external keyboard as opposed to how I was running before which was in this manner. By the way, I’ll be doing a desk setup article in the coming weeks once I have my new setup finalized. I should also note that both times that the MacBook Pro has been in for repair, Apple has had to replace other parts. Specifically a new trackpad which failed calibration during the second keyboard replacement, and a logic board (the motherboard in Apple speak) during the first keyboard replacement because whatever on the logic board that interfaced with the ambient light sensor failed. But there was an upshot to these repairs. To replace the keyboard, Apple has to replace the entire top case. That top case includes a battery as well as a keyboard. Thus I got a new battery with 100% battery health both times. That’s a win.
Now over to the good. And there’s lots there that is good:
The 16″ mini LED display is still the best display available in a notebook short of going to something with an OLED display. The only display that it competes against is the super expensive Apple Pro Display XDR which doesn’t have ProMotion (variable refresh rates up to 120hz) capabilities, but has HDR capabilities like this 16″ display. In fact, if you run this in a multiple monitor setup, you’ll find it difficult to find an external display that matches the 16″display in terms of quality. Which is my challenge at the moment as once you get sight of this display, anything else is second rate.
The speakers are incredible. I honestly have never thought of adding external speakers to my desk setup because the built in ones are so good. And combine that with the microphones which record audio so good that fools people into thinking that you’re wearing a headset or you have a pro quality microphone in front of you. That makes it really handy for a Teams call if you don’t have AirPods handy.
The fact that Apple brought back all the ports that people use so that way you don’t have to live “the dongle life” is very much appreciated. For example, I use the built in HDMI port all the time to plug into projectors when I do presentations. The SD card slot allows me to pull photos off of my camera as well as update the maps for my car which reside on an SD card. The only dongle that I carry these days is a 2.5 Gbps ethernet to USB-C dongle as I often have to connect to things like enterprise routers and enterprise network switches to do things like firmware updates and to tweak their configurations.
It’s still fast. Three years later I am still able to do exactly what I need it to do and it doesn’t feel any slower than it did on day one. What I often have to do is create virtual machines with different operating systems using VMWare Fusion so that I can replicate client environments to do anything from testing to troubleshooting. But to be completely honest, If I didn’t have to do that on a regular basis I likely would have gotten a MacBook Air or something like that as I would not have a use case for this computer.
Though I will admit that this observation is affected by the fact that the battery has been replaced twice, battery life has never, ever been an issue for me. In fact, one of the few times I have taken the power adapter with me when I leave home is when my wife and I spent a week in France last summer. Bonus points for the fact that I can also use a third party USB-C charger to charge the MacBook Pro if I had to.
The camera is “only” 1080p. But it’s far from trash. It’s actually pretty good due to the fact that Apple does all sorts of wizardry to make images look good.
The only other thing that I will mention is that my wife also got a 16″ MacBook Pro shortly after I got mine. She “only” got 16GB of RAM rather than 32GB. But it does exactly what she needs it to do. Which is Word and Excel along with Zoom and Teams. It is overkill for those needs, but at the time, this was the only way to get a large screen on a MacBook as the 15″ MacBook Air had not been announced. She runs hers in clamshell mode most of the time though only taking it out of the house on a handful of occasions, including our trip to France. And she’s had no issues with it at all. Both of us agree on one thing though, we don’t see a need to replace these MacBook Pros anytime soon. This despite the fact they are three years old, and we’ve tended to replace our Macs every three to four years in the past. The fact is that these MacBook Pros were a quantum leap above the Intel models that they replaced, and the M2 and M3 versions of these MacBook Pros are more iterative upgrades. Thus unless Apple comes out with something that is a quantum leap above these MacBook Pros, our incentive to upgrade is zero. In fact, we’re not the only people who feel this way. YouTuber MKBHD reviewed the 16″ M3 Max MacBook Pro when they first came out. But before he got the review unit from Apple as he’s one of the few people that Apple will send review units to, he ordered one fully maxed out. Then cancelled the order once the review unit arrived, and he did his testing for his review. The TL:DR is that he discovered that there wasn’t enough of a difference between the M1 Mac MacBook Pro that he has been using and the M3 Max model. And keep in mind that his job is to edit videos for YouTube and he shoots them in 4K. Which means he pushes his MacBook Pro way harder than most of us ever will. Here’s the video where he explains his reasoning. But it illustrates how good the M1 series of MacBook Pros were. And still are.
One final point. If you’re wanting to get into the Apple Silicon game and you want something more than a MacBook Air, Apple on their refurbished store in Canada and the US still sells the M1 Pro and M1 Max versions of the MacBook Pro with a decent price cut. Plus you can still get AppleCare for items bought from the refurbished store. So that is a great way to get a powerful computer and save some cash at the same time. Thus if you’re in the market for a MacBook Pro, I highly recommend that you go that route as this is a great computer which will likely fit your needs for a long time as my wife and I have discovered over the last three years. Make sure that you get AppleCare, and you’ll be happy.
Posted in Products with tags Apple on April 15, 2024 by itnerd
There’s a bit of a story behind this Mac mini that I’ve been using for about two weeks now. Which is that I was planning on replacing a rather large PC that I had been using for the online cycling platform Zwift for some time with something a lot smaller and more efficient. But I was planning to hold out for the M3 Mac mini models that are sure to appear seeing as the M2 models have been out for over a year (Exactly 454 days as of the day that this review was posted). But what forced my hand was the fact that my 16″ MacBook Pro started to have keyboard issues. Again. Since I can’t afford to be without a computer as I have a business to run, this forced my hand into buying this Mac mini. Since I knew that it was possible that this could be replaced at any time by something faster, I went the route of buying it from the Apple Refurbished Store. That saved me $260 CDN and as I described here and it’s still eligible for AppleCare which I did buy as well. So once I had it in my hands, I transferred my data and applications to it from my MacBook Pro, took the MacBook Pro in for repair at The Apple Store and carried on running my business. Then when I got the MacBook Pro back (And for the record The Apple Store replaced a top case which includes the keyboard and battery along with a trackpad and got it back to me ten calendar days later), I moved my data back the MacBook Pro and factory reset the Mac mini so that I could repurpose it as my Zwift computer.
With the backstory out of the way, let’s start this review by describing which Mac mini I got:
M2 Pro processor with a 10-Core CPU (6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores) and a 16-Core GPU
16 GB RAM
512 GB Storage
16-core Neural Engine
Four Thunderbolt 4 ports
Two USB-A ports
HDMI 2.1 port
Gigabit Ethernet
Headphone jack
WiFi 6E
Bluetooth 5.3
This is one of the higher end models as the Mac mini starts at $799 CDN. But for that price you get an M2 processor with 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. To be frank, Apple’s base models are pretty useless because 8GB of RAM isn’t nearly enough for most people, and 256 GB of storage is slower than their higher tiers of storage on top of not being enough storage for most people. Which is why I skipped the base model (And you should too). Plus I wanted a more powerful processor for Zwift. Which is why I went to the M2 Pro and not the M2. I should also note that Apple has another version of this M2 Pro model that comes with 2 extra CPU cores and 3 extra GPU cores for $379 CDN more. But I didn’t see that on the refurbished store. Which is why I went with this one instead. Here’s a look at the Mac mini:
It’s a pretty small and light computer as the general design of the computer hasn’t changed since they introduced them in 2005. You could easily pop it into a backpack and take it with you if you wanted to and have space left over. It’s also a bit of a fingerprint magnet as you can see. That’s a side effect of the recycled aluminum that they use for the chassis. Though as you will see, the back end of the computer is just as much of a fingerprint magnet:
Here you see the gigabit ethernet jack, 4 Thunderbolt ports, the HDMI port, the two USB-A ports, and the oddly placed headphone jack which in my opinion should be on the front as it’s not all that accessible. Though you could also make an argument that it’s fine on the back because you’ll need to plug in a quality set of speakers into it as the built in speaker isn’t all that good to be frank. It has a decent sized vent, though in the two weeks that I’ve been using it, I’ve never felt any significant amounts air hot air coming out of it, nor have I heard the fans spin up. It’s been silent. I guess that also means that I clearly don’t push the computer hard enough. Speaking of pushing, this Mac mini moves very easily on your desk. As it slides about when you try to plug literally anything into it if you don’t hold it steady. It could use some rubber feet on the bottom to stop that from happening because if you plug a lot of stuff into this Mac, that will be something that will annoy you very quickly.
Now, another one of the reasons why I was sitting on the sidelines for the M3 models of the Mac mini is that on paper, the M2 processors really don’t have that much of a performance gain over the M1 processors. Though as you will also see, that’s an overly simplistic view of what the M2 is capable of. Let me illustrate that with some Geekbench tests. I’ll start with using my M1 MacBook Pro with these specs as a point of comparison:
M1 Pro with 10-core CPU (8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores), 16-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
1TB storage
32GB of RAM
As you can see they have the same amount of CPU and GPU cores, along with the same number of cores for the neural engine. Thus this is as fair of a comparison that you could possibly get. Let’s start with what the scores are for the M1 Pro CPU cores in my MacBook Pro:
And now, let’s look at the M2 Pro In my Mac mini:
The single core score is a bit higher. But the multi-core score is basically the same. Thus there’s no difference right? Well, not so fast. At first glance these scores would suggest that Apple didn’t spend a whole lot of time to make the CPU faster. But keep in mind that the M1 Pro has 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores. And the M2 Pro has 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. That suggests to me that Apple made this M2 Pro more efficient by swapping two performance cores for two efficiency cores, and then tweaking all the cores to allow the CPU to put out the same level of compute power as the M1 Pro. Or to use a car analogy, Apple basically went from using a V6 engine that puts out 300 HP to a turbocharged 4 cylinder engine that consumes less gas and puts out 300 HP. Apple likely did this to save on power consumption for portable computer use without sacrificing speed. It also explains why the Mac mini did not “feel” any faster than my MacBook Pro when I used it to run my business.
Now let’s look at the Metal score. That’s important as Zwift uses Apple’s Metal graphics API to render graphics on the screen. Again, let’s start with the M1 Pro GPU in my MacBook Pro:
Now over to the M2 Pro in the Mac mini:
Now there’s a bit more of a difference. Clearly Apple invested some time to make the graphics a bit faster in the M2 Pro.
So if you take the GPU and CPU scores into account, and also take into account that there was no M1 Pro version of the Mac mini, that would suggest that this would be an upgrade path for someone with an M1 Mac mini who wants a faster Mac mini. Or this would be the computer to pick if you are coming to the Mac mini from a PC for example, and you wanted a small desktop computer that has healthy amounts of compute power. While at the same time not spending Mac Studio kind of money.
But the real question is, how does this run Zwift as that was the point of the whole exercise? Well, let me get something out of the way. Zwift on the Mac platform limits the level of detail of the graphics that the game displays for reasons that I don’t understand to what they term as “high” graphics detail which is their second highest tier of graphics quality (“Ultra” is the highest that you can go on the PC side of the fence which is visually sharper than “high”, but you have to look for the differences between the two. And you need some serious hardware to run Zwift at that level. As in an RTX 3090 for example). But they do let you run it at up to 4K resolution. So what I did was some frame rate tests at 4K and my results are as follows:
The maximum frame rate that I recorded was 121 FPS
The average frame rates were between 87 and 101 FPS based on recording the average frame rate over 10 different one hour rides.
In terms of what “high” graphics quality looks like on Zwift at 4K, here’s a couple of quick video clips where I set a couple of PR’s in a couple of sprint segments while I was doing a training session:
The graphic quality is good and there’s nothing to complain about here. But you have to wonder what you would get if you could unlock the “ultra” setting on a Mac. I say that because I was monitoring CPU and GPU performance and there was headroom to spare on both fronts. Which means that Zwift can look better than it does now if they chose to take advantage of the hardware on offer to the application. As for how that compares to the PC that I was replacing? Well, first of all, you can find the specs for the PC in question here, but average frame rates tended be between 59 – 66 FPS. And I’ve never recorded anything past 67 FPS as a maximum frame rate. All of that was on the “ultra” setting at 4K. If I throttled it back to “high” I likely would have gotten better frame rates. But I think you see the point here. Which is this tiny computer has enough power to run whatever you need, in my case Zwift, without breaking a sweat. And it can do it better than some PCs.
One final observation is that WiFi on this computer is faster than the WiFi that’s part of the M1 Pro chip. How Much faster? How about 150 Mbps upstream and downstream in testing on my WiFi network? That’s not a trivial amount. And keep in mind that I have WiFi 6 here in my condo. That means that you get a bit of an upgrade in terms of WiFi performance that you may actually notice depending on what WiFi hardware you own and what you’re doing. For example you won’t notice this streaming Netflix. But I tripped over this speed difference by doing a Time Machine backup and noticing that the backups went somewhat faster versus a Time Machine backup on my MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro. I attribute this speed increase in part to the fact that the M2 Pro’s WiFi support can do up to 2400 Mbps which is twice what the M1 Pro can do. And clearly that speed increase isn’t just a WiFi 6E thing.
Gripes? The only gripes that I have are the usual ones that I have about Apple computers. They are not cheap (Though to be fair, you could make an argument that the Mac mini has the performance of a 14″ or 16″ M2 Pro MacBook Pro at a lower price point). You can’t upgrade them after the purchase which forces you to perhaps buy more computer than you need in order to increase the longevity of said computer. And the base models suck performance wise which means nobody should ever buy them. Other than that, there’s really nothing negative that I have to say.
Let’s get down the price. This specific Mac mini variant is $1699 CDN. Though I paid $1439 via the Apple Refurbished Store, which is how I would suggest that you acquire one of these computers if you have a use case for it. I say that because I fully expect it to be replaced with an M3 model or even an M4 model at any time over the next few months. One thing to keep in mind is that the Mac mini doesn’t come with a keyboard or mouse, and you’ll need to source a monitor as well. So you’ll have to factor that into the purchase price if you don’t have a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse lying around. Having said all of that, this is a good way to get a desktop Mac and it’s worth a look if this Mac fits your needs. Just skip the base model.
Posted in Products with tags EnGenius on April 11, 2024 by itnerd
The EnGenius EXT1105P Switch Extender is an interesting piece of kit with a very specific use case. And to understand that use case, let’s look at the the EnGenius EXT1105P Switch Extender:
This is the business end of the EnGenius EXT1105P Switch Extender. The gigabit input port is compatible with PoE++, which gives an input power of 51W to the switch, and the additional gigabit ports can all provide PoE+. With 802.3at PoE+, this can provide up to 25.50W to a device. And that’s all there is to this switch extender. There’s no power adapter on it because all the power comes in via the input port. Thus the use case for the switch extender goes something like this:
You need to power a bunch of devices in some corner of an office or warehouse that doesn’t have easy access to mains power. To get around that, you run a PoE cable to the location and plug it into this switch extender’s input port.
You then plug in your devices into any of the 4 ports. Given the level of power that it supports, I am guessing that this is intended for cameras or lower powered devices.
Setting this up was what I expect from any EnGenius product. Which is that it was laughably easy. All I had to do was the following:
Power on the switch
Use the QR code on the base of the switch to add it to the EnGenius app
Done. Declare victory and have a beer.
After that I pugged in some PoE cameras that I borrowed from a client of mine and everything was working perfectly. There’s honestly not much more to say here as it does exactly what it says it is supposed to do with ease. I could complain that it doesn’t do 2.5 Gbps Ethernet if I wanted to nitpick something. But that would likely require more power and make this solution border on unworkable. The EnGenius EXT1105P Switch Extender goes for $119 USD and if you have a use case involving PoE that fits this switch extender, consider this a must buy.
