Windows 10, Onedrive and odrive

As I use about ten different Widows platforms, PC’s, laptop, tablets and phones it is a must to have my data files in a reliable cloud server. Onedrive has proven to be reliable and stable, until I updated one of my laptops to windows 10. After the update I notices that all data had to be stored both locally on the computer and offline on the cloud server. This creates an unusual amount of net traffic, which actually bogs up any network connection. Many paces have still rather limited bandwidth, 10/1, or even less. And upload is usually very slow, much slower than download. Now my Windows 8 machines just use offline storage, whit occasional local backups, and this worked nicely.

After starting to work with Onedrive for Business, things became worse and I had to shut down the cloud service on my Windows 10 laptop. This has made my life easier, but it is not very sophisticated to use Onedrive files through a Web Application.

There are several work around, but not very elegant. One third party cloud client is orive, which actually integrates many cloud services, like Onedrive, Dropbox, Google and a lot of others. Just download the application from odrive for your platform (Mac or Windows) and start enjoying the lost functionality of Smart Files.  Odrive creates a placeholder on your system tray, and work just as a directory. But of course remember, these files are on the Onedrive cloud only, you can access them only when having network access.

https://www.odrive.com/download 

Presently odrive has no way for integrating Onedrive for Business, so we are still waiting for that.

Windows 10, first experience

Last night I upgraded my ACER touchscreen laptop from Windows 8.1 to 10. It took several hours, to download, install, verify and modify the new system, but everything went smoothly and without problems. All installed programs and applications worked properly in the new environment, the only exception being F-Secure antivirus, which seemed to be deleted by the new installation.

I already knew, that Windows 10 would be something incorporating the best features of 7 and 8, but actually my very first impression was slightly disappointed. In my view Microsoft took a step back, from the dynamic looks of Windows 8 to a more conservative approach, perhaps this is what the public wanted.

The good thing is that one can now decide on a Tablet view (for a tablet computer) or a Windows 7 look for a normal mouse operated laptop or desktop PC. It is supposed to work with hybrids (tablet with removable keyboard, in such a way that it automatically switches from Desktop view to Tablet view. Also the bottom Taskbar can be hidden using from the Tablet view in Settings. This is often necessary as in tablet mode the Taskbar hides the lower part of the application windows, which can cause problems when, for example, it covers the NEXT button in an application.

In my opinion, the Tablet view in Windows 10 is less elegant than in windows 8.1, but this can still be improved. The old Windows 7 Desktop look is boring and not very impressive, but at least everything works. For smaller tablets running Windows 10, the zoom function (magnifier) is still the same as with windows 7 and 8, cumbersome and missing the elegance of the iPad´s three finger gesture, or the Lumia phone´stwo finger gesture, amazing that this has not been resolved.

Windows 10 managed to resolve the problem of the two operating environments, touchscreen and mouse driven, into one operating system, which is a good thing. However, as touchscreen displays proliferate the need for a next generation operating system will come soon, as this is by far a  more interactive and intuitive environment to work in. It is so much easier to use your fingers than to find a mouse under a pile of papers!

Lost your USB-stick?

Now I finally have my Microsoft Windows devices tuned and synchronized. I have of course a desk top computer in my office, a laptop at home, a Lenovo tablet (8”) and a Fujitsu hybrid tablet (10”) all running Windows 7 or 8.1. Two Windows Phones, a Lumia 920 and a Lumia 1020 finalize my working environment.

As a geographer I work often in the field and need georeferenced data, pictures I take must be georeferenced and they are automatically stored on the OneDrive cloud when I am in reach of a WIFI connection notes I store on OneNote and I can access this data on all devices, even on my iPad which I still use as also here I can access OneDrive. All my data is stored directly on OneDrive for Business or on my Personal OneDrive.

USB-sticks seem to be already old fashioned, but still I carry some with me, as in some parts of the world internet is still not reliable and access can be slow or impossible. And to be on the safe side, it can be very sensible to make some backups on DVD disks, because we cannot be sure that OneDrive will be always there, for example F-Secure’s secure encrypted cloud Younited was sold and discontinued, leaving its users in the cold.

For important data, I can only recommend to do regular DVD backups, as everything else, USB-sticks, hard drives, everything can be stolen, broken, burnt, destroyed or get lost. Working with a cloud server gives you instant backup, but for permanent storage still a physical copy is the best you can get.

My next project will be to see how well an Android device will fit into my “ecosystem”.

Geo Cam and Lumia 1020

Geo Cam and Lumia 1020

We all know that you can geotag pictures storing location (and other information) of the image using your smart phones. If you want an image that displays this information visible in the picture you should use Geo CAM, (Geographic Camera) 

This is an easy to use and handy application for the more geographically minded.

I also got a Lumia 1020 now, the image quality is of course suburb, nothing new about that, but the GPS outperforms my old Lumia 920. The GPS gets ultra-fast fixes, and works even inside an airplane, if you are seated next to the window.  It also gives you the opportunity to save pictures in RAW format, which gives you all the possibilities of post-editing using for example Photoshop.