Random Wire Review: Issue 126

The audio clip above includes an open squelch at the beginning of the capture so that I could evaluate clipping of the audio signal. While I wanted to record some IRLP audio, instead I made this capture with my AllScan ANH100 node 578492, using a TIDRadio TD-H3 to transmit to the node. Audio is captured from a Retevis RT-85 wired through an adapter to my laptop, with Audacity used to record the audio.

Is IRLP still relevant?

The short answer to this question is: yes! As you can see from the listing of connected nodes at https://status.irlp.net/index.php?PSTART=2 there are many nodes active around the world. A simpler view is to look at the number of nodes by country at https://status.irlp.net/index.php?PSTART=5. Nodes are often connected to many other stations by radio, so it is clear that IRLP remains an active and worthwhile choice for many amateur radio operators.

A new ARM-based laptop

I had to smile as I made the decision to buy a new laptop based on an ARM processor. Would it feel like a Raspberry Pi on steroids or like an actual laptop computer?

I took advantage of good pricing during Amazon’s spring sale to buy a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7. This laptop has been a bit controversial because it is based on an ARM processor instead of an Intel or AMD processor. Before making the purchase, I read many reviews, hoping to find some clarity. While I did not find certainty, I learned enough to let me roll the dice on this device.

And so far, so good. After a few hiccups during the configuration phase (my fault), the machine is humming along nicely.

(I’ll make just one criticism about Amazon, but before I do, let me say this is very much a first-world problem. In the context of socioeconomic conditions across the entire planet, feeling perturbed because of a delay in the promised overnight delivery of a high-tech device is rather absurd. But there it is: I ordered with overnight delivery expected, then the next day it was extended, and then it was extended again. I ordered on a Friday, expecting a Saturday delivery, and received the device late on Wednesday. So: five days for “overnight delivery.” It’s not so much the delay as it is the sense of a broken promise. That makes me like Amazon just a little bit less. But the device arrived undamaged (nested inside three boxes) and in working order, so I have very little to complain about.)

So on with the report of getting started with this new computer.

MacBook Air or Suface Laptop 7?

I had narrowed down my choices to a newer MacBook Air with an M2, M3, or M4 processor, or the Surface Laptop 7 with the ARM processor. These are very different platforms in many ways, but what I was looking at was a speedy processor, a good display, portability, and reliability.

I’ve had Asus machines and while there are some attractive units from that maker currently available, I’ve encountered mechanical or electrical problems with each Asus computer I’ve owned. My nicest laptop from Asus starting having video glitches right as Covid surfaced, then Asus stopped accepting devices for repair. At that time, I bought another computer and let the Asus sit in a corner for two years. Now it is old enough that it is outdated tech.

I moved on to other brands, like Lenovo. I like Lenovo. I’ve had Dell and HP computers, but the Lenovo servers, desktops, and laptops have been utterly reliable. Not flashy, not fancy, sometimes not very fast: just reliable. That’s important, especially when I’m on the road and don’t have a backup computer at hand.

The MacBook Air has a long history of reliability and performance. I started there, but as I read reviews about the Air, I kept running into comparisons with the Surface Laptop 7. This seemed a bit nonsensical so I kept digging. I discovered that the Surface seems to have been designed to compete directly with the MacBook Air.

I really did want to re-enter the Mac world. I left it about 15 years ago as my work environments changed, but I really enjoyed using a Mac. Now that my work is primarily in a Windows environment, it made more sense to lean in that direction, as long as the hardware was on par with the MacBook.

Is it? It seems to be. While the Air and the Surface are fundamentally different platforms, I’m finding the Surface to be as satisfying as the Mac in many ways.

Slow to start

When I first booted up the Surface, I became a bit concerned. It was running slower than my not-very-old Lenovo ThinkPad X1 laptop! It took me a few minutes to realize that the system was still setting up in the background and was busy downloading updates. I let that finish and then left the computer on overnight. In the morning, the system was noticeably faster than my ThinkPad.

Erred during account setup

I made a wrong turn during account setup. To me, the prompts were a bit confusing. I have a Microsoft 365 Business account and wanted to use that as the login for the Surface. But what happened is during the account creation process, the system set up a Microsoft account with my work email address but not tied to my business subscription. That was confusing. Now I have two Microsoft accounts tied to my work email address. This continued to pop up when logging into other Microsoft services such as Teams, where I am prompted: is this for a personal account or a work account?

Eventually, I reset the laptop, taking it back in time to how it came from the factory. That went smoothly, fortunately.

For the second attempt at setting up, I used my personal Outlook.com account for the laptop. Once the Surface was up and running under that identity, I logged into my Microsoft 365 applications using my business account. That worked. The system is running well in this configuration.

Automatic import of apps: not so much

Microsoft offers to import the applications and settings from another Windows machine. I assume they used my Outlook.com account to know these things. I said yes and ended up with a bunch of shortcuts that didn’t go anywhere. My apps from the ThinkPad showed up in the Surface start menu, but the apps weren’t installed.

(And interestingly, the shortcuts on my Surface desktop pointed to OneDrive locations, and when I started deleting the shortcuts, I was warned it would delete the link and the app everywhere I had it installed! I’m sure someone thought this was a great feature but I think it is a bit of a disaster.)

I spent a few hours the next day actually installing and configuring some of the daily apps I use, including:

• Tailscale – For easy VPN connections between most of my machines.

• PuTTY – For SSH connections to various AllStar nodes and Linux machines.

• LogSeq – For daily journaling. The journal files live in a OneDrive folder.

• Notepad++ – For notes, Markdown editing, HTML and PHP editing, and more. Folders I use as workspaces live in OneDrive folders.

• Joplin – For current notes but I’m shifting to LoqSeq journals and Notepad++ workspaces instead; Joplin has thousands of pages of historical notes. Those notes live in a Google Drive space but I note that responsiveness has declined as the number of notes has increased.

• iaxRpt – For connecting to one of my AllStar nodes over iaxRpt, and can connect when traveling by tunneling the connection over Tailscale.

• Brave browser – For most web browsing.

• Zoom Workplace – For video conferencing.

• Audacity – For audio recording and editing.

Despite issues identified by others when installing non-Microsoft software to the ARM-based Surface Laptop 7, I have encountered no problems. So far, all is well.

I keep a daily journal in LogSeq. It’s an interesting approach to journaling that I find works well for me, as long as I remember to hashtag each note. If I keep up on the hashtags, then I can see a “graph” of the topics and can also get a report of entries for a specific topic. That makes it easier to generate my monthly activity report.

The graph view shows the topics (hashtags) used by day. Is it strange? Yes, but perhaps not so strange if you’ve ever tried mind mapping.

Clicking on a hashtag gives a date-ordered list of all items with the same hashtag name. For example, clicking on #randomwire yields these notes:

I’m also experimenting with using folders as workspaces in Notepad++. I am keeping notes in Markdown format so I can use headings, links, and other Markdown goodness. Here is what three folders as workspaces looks like, as shown in the left side of the application window:

One other change I’ve made is to install a simple dashboard as my browser home page. I’m using the free version of a DAK board. In the screenshot below, I’ve obscured the Zoom meeting IDs and passwords. This dashboard pulls from my personal Google calendar and my work Outlook calendar to populate the daily appointment listing. The nature-themed image changes regularly (I have mine set to change every 5 minutes, but you can set it to as brief as every 5 seconds to as long as once every 4 hours). I also have an RSS feed at the bottom of the screen for one of my work websites.

I don’t like clutter and I do like going to a single place for key information. I’m liking the DAK dashboard. It seems like a good compromise between information overload and simplicity.

Android phone storage

I’ve been watching my available storage decline over time on my Samsung Galaxy phone. A little digging showed that the Audible app was using 25 gigabytes of storage. Unbelievable.

To figure this out for yourself, in Google Play, tap on your profile picture in the upper right corner, then tap on Manage apps & devices. Partway down that screen you’ll find the amount of internal phone storage consumed by your applications. Tap on that line to get a list of apps and the storage used by each. If you need to sort the list, tap the three bars to the right of the Apps title, then select Size. That will give you a size-ordered listing.

Apparently, the default is to store downloaded audio books to the main storage of the phone. I found a different setting where I could specify saving audio books to the 512 Gb microSD card. After specifying that change, I rebooted the phone.

After making this change, I saw the internal storage change from 90 Gb used to 69 Gb used. That makes the phone run noticeably faster and that makes me a little happier.

That’s a wrap. When I started issue 126, I wondered if I would have enough to write about. When you touch a radio every day, the learning and discoveries just don’t seem to stop!

73 to all,