So today is June 23rd, 2024, this is Mobybody at 516, I'm Todd Agassar, my good friend and a good doctor who is full, and our special and frequent guests is our buddy, Swanyu Hanssen, who has bought a toy that is tempting me. And that's really why you're here, Swen. You are, you're going to make Todd feel good about his life choices or bad about his life choices. No, it's going to be bad either way. Either way, I want to feel bad. But before we get to a couple of miscellaneous items, one, I didn't put the two together until I watched the YouTube video by somebody, but Affinity, which has some really highly regarded photo and drawing and basically imaging apps. They've got three apps, publisher, photo and designer. They have a 50% sale right now for all three, no subscription, one price. I think it's $80 for all three. For Picapitio Lations, current revision is 2.5 for all of them. And for those who don't know, Affinity was bought by Canva in, I think, March. And there's some concern that Canva is going to apply a subscription to Affinity, but right now, they claim it's no subscription. Oh, and that $80 for three products is for iPadOS, Mac OS and Windows. So it's a pretty good deal. And I didn't understand why they were doing it until somebody pointed out that so many people are annoyed with Adobe for various and sundry things right now, that a lot of people that say I quit Adobe and Affinity and Canva are offering this remarkable purchasing opportunity. So, and they also have free educational licenses for educational institutions. Okay, that's number one. Go ahead, Swin. Sorry. I looked a bit a little bit. I'm kind of tempted to that. So, you're. Yeah. I bought it at 50% off. I did pick up the suite and I played around it a little bit. There are some great tutorials on YouTube that walk you through the affinity suite. So I did play around with those for a few days. Yeah, they're powerful and I'm really excited to see. Maybe I'm optimistic. I'm hoping Canva adds in some things since I use Canva as well that would be really kind of cool to have in affinity. So we'll see. I'll try to be optimistic and not pessimistic about it. Yeah, that's always a good thing to be. And, and I bought it also again before it occurred to me why, you know, this sale was happening. But also I have not played a designer. I've been mostly playing with, I'm sorry, I've not played a publisher. I've been mostly playing designer for my doodle a day projects. I've done three doodles with it so far. And I think I've used photo once or twice to like, you know, caption a photo or something. Nothing fancy. I'm hoping to learn how to use it to restore some old paper photos that I scan, but that's in the future. And on a sadder note, Google, once again, the serial killer that it is has killed yet another service that I use. And that is Google VPN by Google one, which shut down a few days ago. And I actually used it. So this is not something that I'm just saying, hey, I'm, you know, they killed something that's only been around two years, I think two or three years. It was something I actually used and I don't go out and much into the world anymore. But when I do, when I'm standing around in a, you know, in a supermarket, which has Wi-Fi or whatever, I turn on my Wi-Fi and I turn on, I used to turn on VPN by Google one. And I felt probably unrealistically safe, safer, but, you know, it's gone. There's supposed to be a pixel VPN by Google for pixel phones, which includes, I think goes on to seven and seven a, which includes my seven a, but when I try to look for it, it's all grayed out. So I can't turn it on my seven a right now. And I have not received a pixel June update from a pixel seven. So that might be the cause. And I understand there's a big delay and for some of us anyway. So when did your eight A or whatever you have it? I did. And I did turn it on. I'm looking to see where the heck that thing is. It did take a little while to find it. Yeah. So yeah, my, I can see it in the options. It's just grayed out and I can't turn it on. Yeah. There is still going to be a button. Yeah. So anyway, that's disappointing and sad. And as I said, I think I put it on threads with all the money Google has, they should license queens. Another one bites the dust and play it on campus every time they kill a service. So, you know, it probably probably be played every darn day on campus, a very nice campus. I had a chance to visit it once several years ago. Okay. And before we get started with a whole bunch of questions for swing, John, you bought a keyboard. I don't feel like I can afford the magic keyboard for the iPad, crow 2024. 11 inch and I've been using it. So as I mentioned, it's kind of my low time of the year to be using my iPad because I'm not in person teaching right now, but I do have used it at the office. In fact, last week I was in the office, I only took the iPad. I didn't take my Mac book, which is just new experience. I hadn't tried that. Just I do it every so often to see if I need to keep bringing my Mac book or if I can do most of what I need to do on the iPad. And it's always about 99% fine. And then that 1% of noise can I end up being Mac book with me. But the keyboard, I've had no issues with it. It works well for my hands. It's been reliable. The trackpad. I have to remind myself I have because I'm just not used to having a traffic on my keyboard. But yeah, I've been pretty happy with it all in all over the last few weeks. That's good to hear. You know, and go ahead. You've got the newest one. Yeah. Because I got the original one and the only thing that I found that was a little strange is that when you set it up, you only got that one angle and it's simple. Yeah, I cover up the top row of keys a lot. So you kind of have to put your hands in kind of straight rather than on top. So I don't know if they've noticed that too much because I don't use that top row keys that much. The function keys. Yeah. And it doesn't cover the but the number keys at all. So I'm fine with that. So they moved that down a bit to put the function keys on it because mine doesn't have function keys. Yeah. That might have been it. Yeah. So when he John had to buy the new one because this is this only works with the M4 iPad pro. So the older one doesn't work with the new. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. I had. It's changed. iOS. I did find a feature recently. So Apple introduces these features during WWDC and then we forget about them until you notice them on your phone years later. But when they introduced new lock screens last year, they introduced a photo shuffle option on lock screen and you basically can choose if you want people or if you want your pets or any other things that you want on there and it will go through and add those. You can add people pets nature cities. You can even choose which people you want it to cycle through. But the feature that's really cool. What? Or not. Yeah. I guess you could select everyone except what are two people. Yeah. Don't show me this person. But the fact I think you can't actually say feature this person more or less. But one of the features that I had not realized is that not only can you change the shuffle frequency right now, I have it set to hourly. But yesterday I saw a photo come up and I thought, gee, when did I take that photo? Where is that photo from, you know, and it will crop in and zoom in. You can't actually go into the editing mode of the lock screen and choose show photo in library and it will then pop up your photos and show you that particular photo. And in this case, it had cropped in quite a bit. So I didn't recognize where that photo was from, but that's a feature that I thought it should really have. And after a little bit of digging, it actually does. So if you've not used rotating or shuffle home screens or shuffle photos, try it out. And if you find yourself looking at a photo from 10 years ago, or it's actually only a year ago, it looks like it's 10 years ago, you can easily figure out where it's from. Nice. That is nice. Speaking of features that were, I think this one's kind of recent too, that I only noticed yesterday, is if you're going to Apple music and if you have playlists, it now makes recommendations of music to add to your playlist. And you know, it's not bad, I, you know, it's not 100% of course, nothing is, but it does surface music that either I might not be familiar with, but it turns out I like, or, you know, music already know that I just never added to the playlist for whatever reason. So I thought that was pretty useful. All righty. And so now to the main part, yeah, I'm not going to like swing after this conversation either way. I mean, this is me. I wouldn't, I wouldn't convince you to buy this one, it's, it's, it's a fine machine. I like it. It does what it's supposed to do. I wanted it largely because it's the co-pilot plus PC and they took away one of the major things of that. But that's a. Yeah. So you got the, the higher end Microsoft Surface Pro. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted the higher end processor that came with other stuff that was higher end. Yeah. So I'm on it now. This is, that's what I'm doing this off the podcast. Yeah. And yeah, your microphone is a microphone your headset because it's still, yeah, I could try the headset, but then you'll be a lot of other stuff. Okay. It's pros. Okay. These things that I stuck in, if I have other options, if you want me to try something else. I was just wondering if that was the internal mic or something else. Okay. Now I know. No, it is. It is. Okay. In my ears. So, so that's it. I did put a couple of good things in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. I just for, you know, for whatever this, this thing is two pounds, 11.5 ounces. The MacBook Air is two pounds, 11.1 ounces. I've got one over your son that way. So why is that much difference significant to form factor, of course? This is slightly smaller spring than an air. It's interesting. I think Microsoft compares this thing to the air, not a pros. And that's probably valid. This is a, this is not a high-income PC, you're not going to do architecture on it. Well, it's not cheap. No, it's not cheap, but then, you know, it's actually cheap. Yeah. This is less cheap than when you just start, because I'll come with a key. But that, I will, I'll defend Microsoft on that. You can buy a cheap keyboard, or you can buy a medium expense keyboard, or you can buy the high-end keyboard for it. So you have choices, you know, with the air, what you got is what you got. Right. So you have the keyboard, basically what else I say here, you asked about heat. I have not heard the fans coming on, and I assume there are fans, and it's, it's like the lower end, or lower end surfaces don't have little, as well as long, the little places where you can see heat would come out. This one does, of course, so they're expecting the pushy, but I have not heard fans turn on. Yeah. Have you tried anything like a processing video from your DJI camera or anything? I, I have tried, I have, so I haven't done anything super, uh, intensive. Intensive. Yeah. The only thing I have done, you have, I do use access, that's one of the things I was concerned about. Access is not one of the programs that Microsoft has decided to, we're going to make an arm version of. Yeah. So, and I was, I got a little notice at first, I fired it, loaded my office products from my office account through a 65 account, Microsoft through a 65 account, actually, uh, it didn't load access, you know, it just loaded the standard tree, and I said, uh, oh, well, let me go out to Microsoft and go find it, and I couldn't find it, but I noticed that, uh, since I use one drive, my access stuff is on one drive. It sat there, it had the right icon in it, so I clicked it in and said, hang on a second while we install access. Hmm. And it did, and it's now it's there, and it's, well, I did the same with publishing. So, um, so it works fine with it. And I even have a little access program. One of the things it does, I do some kind of stuff, and they have these things where they go from station to station, and, and do events, and I wrote a little, uh, retained or randomized that, you know, I've got, I've got a dozen troops and seven events. I want them to go to events and not see the same troop twice. Uh, so, so I just go randomize and like that, and I ran that, and it, I was, I was impressed by how quickly I've had some where, uh, you know, a regular PC with people, how to do it. But so, I, I, it's fairly quickly. I haven't been able to get a definitive, well, I shouldn't say I haven't been able. I'm not sure I have a definitive answer on whether Microsoft Office have been ported to the arm. I think the answer is no, but do you, do you know, yes, the three word PowerPoint Excel are definitely arm, arm. Okay. But not access. Some of the access brochure, Vizio, you know, project stuff like that. Yeah. And those aren't included in the non enterprise Microsoft office anyway. So Vizio and, um, project access is right and publisher. Okay. And the reason I should say, and this is kind of embarrassing for Microsoft, I think. So I went to Microsoft co-pilot, you know, the service, not the, not the PC. And I said, uh, I asked, you know, has Microsoft Office been recompiled or ported to, to work on the Microsoft co-pilot plus PC running, you know, Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. And it gave me a commercial about, you know, how great the co-pilot plus PC is within answer my question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't know about its own products. Um, and when I went to Google Gemini, it said that none of them had been ported. So neither of them made me a correct answer. I had a similar experience, I once again, uh, it decided it wanted me to use Outlook instead of mail. So it like clicked the mail icon and Outlook WhatsApp and they've taken away the little switch on Outlook to, to do it, to put it back. They, you now have to go through the settings to get mail back. Um, so I said, and I saw that pop up once, just once, and I forgot where it was. So I went to co-pilot and said, how do I, you know, get out about looking back to mail? Oh, she was nearly mail from that I just did not want to tell me how to do that. So I had to do something like we, yeah, one of the downsides of alleged AI, right? It's yeah. That's it. Depends on who trains it. They serve their masters. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my, my other question was, which, you know, I mean, I see your answers in, but you can just to get into the surface pin is, uh, and so that was that. Yeah. So how do you like it? How is it basically the same as previous four? Yeah. Well, it's this. It's a, your carpenter's pencil. Mm hmm. It's, it's pretty nice. I mean, I, I don't know when it would be like the artist or a wedding artist. Um, I have to say it feels comfortable and it feels comfortable. This one, it's a, you know, it's a flat carpenter's pencil. Right. Carpenters pencil. So it's. Yeah. So it's, it's pretty nice. It's got, you know, some features. You can click the back of it and have three different things happen with any, but double click or click a hole. So you can set it up to, you know, just click hold it back down and it brings up the screenshot stuff. So you're the only, you can use the candle for your area. So stuff like that. I have used it a couple of times. Yeah. Go ahead. Is the tip, um, really firm, like an apple pencil tip? Or is it, is it one of those soft. It's a little softer than an apple pencil. Okay. It's a little softer. I need to do an apple pencil. I think. Well, you know, um, I don't know. I expect there's people that provide extra. Oh, yeah. You can buy. You can buy. Yeah, I had a, um, when before I retired for several years, I had a, I had a series of surface pro fours because they all broke on me. I had three surface pro fours, all of which self-destructed. And it finally, after the third one died, uh, all under warranty, I should say when the third one died, I said, I never want to see another surface on my desk again. Um, and so I got a nice Lenovo, which was an ugly tank, but it was solid and didn't explode on me. So, you know, non exploding PCs are good. Um, and by explode, I mean, boom, I mean, you know, the battery bloat and system. I know what you mean. Yeah. I mean, because I haven't been exploding PCs, but it's not one of those. So not, yeah, not, and, and I, the one thing I did use it for was that clicker on the top. I think you mentioned. Yeah. I said it to a advanced PowerPoint slides. I think I had it click the advanced PowerPoint slides and maybe click click to go back or something. That was really handy. And people were impressed that my pen could do that. Yeah. And you said you bought a flex keyboard, what's the flex keyboard? I don't, well, what's the alternative to the flex keyboard? Well, Microsoft's got three different keyboards, um, any of the old ones. Can you take one a second? All right. Any of the old keyboards, ones that you have, uh, storage, like this is, uh, this is about eight, eight. It has storage for it, but the new flex keyboard is what you can actually take off the surface and use it. Oh, so it doesn't have to be connected magnetically like the other you connected yet. Yeah. Got it. Got it. So yeah, I think it's one thing for, for art type stuff, but I think it would be useful is you can lay the surface almost flat, um, lay it down to a very strong angle and if you're drawing on it and the keyboards in front of it, it kind of gets in a way. Oh, so you can pull the keyboard and set it on the side. Use your pen to draw and if you need to do something on a keyboard, I'll just go to the side and do it. Yeah. So I think that's, that's, um, I think a lot of people would just connect between keyboard to it. Yeah. If they were going to do that sort of thing. I'm not even following the surface. I should, I should ask John if he's, I think I asked him before and he was kind of curious but if he's curious at all about these Microsoft, because you've been pretty much all Mac for a while. Yeah. I know you had a surface at work. I bounced back and forth because I did like my surface at work and there, I do run a Windows virtual machine on my Mac because there are times I just need Windows for something. But the problem is the things I keep Windows for. I don't know if they would run on ARM because they tend to be very old software anyway. It's a certain utility I need or a driver or something that just, you know, I've got to pull up that virtual machine because, you know, in some cases I have to pull the Windows 7 virtual machine, some of that stuff I don't think is going to run anymore. So yeah, that's the only thing that kind of keeps me off and plus right now with my Mac book being an Intel 2020 Mac book, I'm really interested in thinking about getting an error and maybe getting an error for my wife as well. So if I'm looking at buying one or two Mac book errors over the next year, I don't know if I have the time to really play. I have budget. I just don't know if I have the time to play with multiple places. I don't want something to sitting here that I don't end up using. Yeah. I already have those. They're called Raspberry Pies. I have, I have my Raspberry Pi 5 in, as you might know. And boy, that thing is impressive. It is so much faster than even overclocked for. But any rate. Okay. So I'm looking, I know, and a swan, you did a little use the, what's the, what's the painting thing called, the co-creator or something, create a paint? Yeah. So create and paint. And you can look it on the. Yeah. I'll put those in our show notes. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's that, you know, child's drawing on the, on the one where I've got the entire screenshot there. Right. And then the thing on the right is what it did with it. And I think it did a pretty nice job, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just plain old Microsoft, you know, click the co-creator button and it puts the little thing off on the side and you can slide back and forth. They showed that, you know, with an actual artist drawing something sort of, and it did a better job than, but it had something to do. I'm impressed by, by what, you know, it took, you know, your, your drawing, which is actually pretty good all by itself. And it really added some more realistic details, I mean, it's still artsy, you know, it's not a real. Yeah. It's not. It was what intended to be in that. And that's not even an option really, you can select what kind of drawing you want with a may or oil paint or water or something like that. Right. Photo realistic. Just one of the options. Yes. I think, I think Google may have turned that off too on theirs because, you know, people are doing so many things, but, yeah, I'll put that in our blog. I wish I knew how to cast photos on to our, on to our recording here. That'd be interesting. But I just don't know how to do it. Okay. So the next question I have is how does the keyboard feel? I mean, I know it's more free, but the one you got. Yeah. It feels fine to me. I always have to caveat that I'm not a touch type of this, I hunt in tech, or the evil method I say for three times in school. So it does feel fine to me. It doesn't. It doesn't. They said that they made this one a little stiffer than the other ones. And I mean, I may agree with that. It does like the other ones give you a little lift. It folds up against the front of the, of the tablet itself. So there's a little bit of an angle. I don't think it's as much as the other keyboard, but the other keyboard also hides the pen when you fold it all. This one, the pen is right in front of me. And for one of the next things, I'll show you what it looks like when we get down to it. But keyboard feels fine to me. I do think the air is the Mac keyboards better, but you know, it's just a reasonably good keyboard, I think. Okay. I think I'm very fussy about keyboards in the last couple of years. Yeah. Well, keep in mind, if you wanted this thing, you could buy the tablet and not buy any keyboard, but whatever keyboard you want to attach it to it. Right. It just becomes a keyboard. Although the keyboard is also, it's cover, it's screen cover, right? Yes. Yes, it is. It does have so, you know, if other value, $129 keyboard that they make that doesn't have the pen hold or anything in it, you could use it as the portable keyboard. And then just, you know, whatever the truth, like the keyboard you want, you get it. Okay. So separate questions about hardware and software compatibility. So we'll start with hardware. So printers, any problems with drivers or anything like that? I have not. I've got, you know, good number of printers in the house. Mostly a Dell's and Epsom's gotten rid of all of the HP's. But they're all in the network and I had no problem finding any of them. I've got it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So they just work. There's no nothing special. Yeah. Yeah. I went to the printers. I found them. Okay. So go ahead and run with that. Any issues with USB drives, some of the drives, SSDs, anything like that. I thought I had one when you asked. I question. I went and grabbed a, a, what's a sand, sand disk thing. I plugged it in. Yeah. So nothing. Absolutely nothing. I heard it go in when I plugged it in. Nothing. So I said the same drive over to my desktop PC plugged it in, I don't do nothing. And I said, Oh, it's just bad. Now this is formatted to my Apple. Oh, so it just, it doesn't, it doesn't see. So I grabbed it. It had no problem. So I was a little, I'm not the only one right. I have to say that, yeah, one of the things that's got two USB C ports and that's all it's got on it. Yeah. Need a hub. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten a whole bunch of hubs I've been playing with over the last year, especially. But I would you want to say, you know, for, for drives, I've been formatting using XFAT, exFAT instead of the proprietary, you know, the NTFS for Windows or shoot, I forget what the Mac OS for priorities are the Linux formats, essentially. So I can move back and forth. Yeah. Well, this one I kind of got up and got it is a, what's Apple's time machine sort of thing. Yeah. So I kind of bought it for that. So that's, I let it format it for them. So that's probably why I can't see it. Well, you know, speaking of, I mean, not exactly time machine, but you know, one of the downsides of the copilot plus AI PCs for me personally is the one feature I actually wanted. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. Was pulled. I was so many privacy concerns and stuff. So it actually has appeal to me right now than it did a week ago. Yeah. The, the, the co-create kind of stuff is kind of interesting. I'm opening up pictures and I don't, I don't have the same for a couple of days. Right. I have to, I have to work for all of them. So I can afford this stuff. So not like you retired guys. But yeah, the other thing and yes, but an external webcam, I got a large tech stream cam that I just don't plug from my machine and plug into this and pop it up. Okay. No issues. What's. And what, which camera are you using right now? I think this podcast. Are you using the built in camera and the built in camera software also has a lot of features on it that are different. It's got to apply visual effects within the system. So it's camera. So is it possible for you to go into the, the, what you call it, the mic that we're using Google meet the Google meet microphone option at the bottom and let us hear what the built in surface microphone sounds like. Yeah. Sure. I should be able to do that. Okay. It's on the little mic in the middle. Okay. Okay. That's a good beat. Oh, you actually sound better. Yeah. Yeah. This actually sounds better than the beats. Way better. Okay. Well, I'll leave it this way then. I'm just using the beats to here so that it's not blasting around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have something. The other thing that's, I've got AirPods pro to here, but I'm using a Yeti Nano to, you know, actually, actually talk. The other, yeah, the other thing that is kind of interesting here is Microsoft has this phone link thing that used to be your phone. Right. It works with, uh, androids and then one of the things they, one of the things they do do is let you use the camera on the phone. So I actually have that set up like a Mac and I see it, but yeah, it's just kind of like a Mac. So let me, let me see how I can do this for you here. Oh, here we go. Go ahead and tap the camera and now that's from, that's from my phone. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's on my pixel eight. Yeah. So I can switch to the back camera on the pixel eight. And now, huh, now you are looking at you. So, um, yeah, that's not the, the greatest, no, it really isn't very good, but yeah, I'm not sure why I'm not sure why because I know the picture with camera. Yeah. It was pretty good. Oh, maybe because you've got a background blur on. So if it sees a human head, it's kind of happy like right now. It's pretty happy. Oh, yeah. Let's turn the, let's do the background. Let's, let's turn that blur off and see if that's the wrong one. Okay. The blurs off. Okay. Oh, yeah. Not clear. Yeah. So now the, yeah, so now that's what the keyboard looks like and the pen is right at the top here. Yeah. So it's always there. It's very, very convenient to get to. And that's a 13 inch display, right? It is a 13 and air is a 13 and a half. Yeah. I did measure those this morning. So that's what it looks like. So that's actually works fairly decent or switch to front camera there and there I am on the pixel. Yep. Yep. Rather than the, it's just off the side to me. I could actually. It's fun. Yeah. So it's, you know, that was a kind of a neat thing. There's, there's less you can do, believe it or not with a phone link with a pixel than you can't do with any Samsung. I don't know what they're in bed together somehow. Can we go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Put me, let me put together this back on the front here. So surface camera, front, so it's pretty interesting. So that's kind of neat. So if I've, if I've got somewhere else, I can, you know, actually have the front camera of the surface, the back camera, the surface, the front of the back camera of the, of the phone. And if I plugged one in, I got it, you know, I get five cameras. I could switch between. I got to say, by the way, I'm, I'm really impressed by the microphone on the surface. It's a lot. I mean, not only is it better than the beats. I mean, like a lot better, but it is just better than I expected period because most, like my Apple, my MacBook Pro microphone with on the webcam is, you know, at best, which is, you know, which is why I use an external mic. So I'm really impressed by that. So it does, uh, when I, when I selected, it says microphone array, Qualcomm, AciX static endpoint audio device. So so it's supposed to be a pretty good mic. If I were using that, I wouldn't even bother to use an external mic. I mentioned I hate you, right, Swen? I mentioned this before, I think. Yeah, well, you know, so it's, it's, and I don't know, I don't know how well it does some of the filtering stuff. Like if I put a background on here, let's take this thing. Right. Okay. So is that a feature is that a Google Meet feature you use right now? No, this, this is actually a co-pilot feature or a Windows feature. I'm not sure which, but it's just, yes, I mean, I can do this. If I just bring up the camera app, I can pull this up and do that. So it's got the filters and it, I don't know how, you know, it seems to catch pretty well, what, you know, not, not too much looks good, aliasing on the side. So no, it looks pretty good. One of the things we got to try one of these days to see how, how well it does with translation, you know, so we'll have you and me and Jack Cook and we'll try Bostonian and Hawaiian vision. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Let's see. Let's go here. Let's go here. Ah. Appetown. Yeah. So there's a bunch of options here. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we talked a little bit about the software option. I mean, not software option. Software compatibility is the Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or all, ARM native ARM. Yeah. And the rest are presumably not running on prison. Well, yeah, certainly, you know, Microsoft stuff, but you know, the people are building stuff for it and they have for a while because it's, you know, they can X surface X, whatever that was. Yeah. You know, that started out their arm stuff. So people have been, you know, porting stuff to it, Adobe and various people. Right. It's, I looked it up. I did find you can, if you go into a task manager, you can find a place where it will tell you what it's running, but it has to be running. So you have to have it and run it and you can look and see if it's ARM or X64, X86 emulation. So you can't find out which one it's doing. So this is like a, um, a Windows 11 for ARM feature or something else? No, it's a task manager in task manager. Oh, just a manager. Okay. Got it. Yeah. It's just, there's a column in there that says, uh, Oh, interesting. Something. I don't remember what it says anymore. Okay. So there's a, there is a place that actually lists how it's running. And I should know, you know, and the vast majority of this stuff, I say, you know, you open up task manager on a, on a Windows machine, there's 800 tasks running. Right. So, and the vast majority, I mean, the vast majority of things are ARM and only when I start something like access, I can, I can go dig for that and yeah, and I should know that by that column, my, you know, my hesitancy to go to, to this platform, aside from paying all that money is, um, I had, not only have I had horrible, horrible experiences with the Surface Pro, um, you know, Intel version, but I also had a misfortune of buying the Surface RT in 2012. And I, I really thought that that was going to be a kind of like a, you know, post-net book, Greek Chromebook, forget when the Chromebook came out, but anyway, it seems like a good alternative for me, but it turned out to be terrible. So, uh, that's why I'm speaking to trusted friends like you about this to, you know, find out what I should, I think, I think what they did wrong with the RT is instead of building a tablet for people who want a tablet, they tried to build a tablet and throw windows on it on an ARM based platform. Yeah. Well, the other problem is the next supported it, you know, it didn't get an update after about two years and, you know, also my keyboard, you know, my alpine terra keyboard, whatever I bought for it, which was a separate purchase, it has life on it now. I, I should take some pictures and maybe I should do a time lapse because there's stuff growing on, there's like mold or something, you know, and so I don't want to throw it away because I feel like I would be, you know, killing something. But there is a e-waste, um, I should note the RT still works, unlike my Surface Pros, which all died, my Surface RT still boots, batteries, you know, it's over 10 years old now, 2012, so it's for 12 years old. Oh, yeah. But if I plug in the God awful adapter on it with that awful magnetic, because there was no USB-C option to power it, um, it'll still boot. That reminds me, the Surface Pro has, people seem to like it, but I don't like the idea of this magnetic, that rectangular thing, but it also can be powered via USB-C, correct? Yes. As a matter of fact, it's got the Surface Connector, that's what they call it. It's the- Okay. The narrow little thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's this thing. Right. But it's, that's pretty useful, actually, because that's how you can attach all, you know, Microsoft's got docs and stuff that detach that way. And when I do attach a dock with that or charge it with that, I still have two USB-C's, which until my current air, which has the MagSafe connector on it again, you know, if you got a, if you got an air, you got two USB-C's, that was it, you charged it, that was one of them. Yeah, which is why I have a series of hubs, but yeah, yeah, but I did actually, I, I was playing with this thing down where I normally sit and I have a Surface go through. The problem I had with the, um, Surface Connector on the RT, by the way, I feel like I have to spit every time we say the name, but I'll avoid doing that, uh, is that it never, even when it was new, it never quite lined up a hundred percent of time. I always had to kind of wiggle it and, you know, before it actually would charge it. I've never, yeah, I've never had that problem. I, mind of all, was I get it close and it snaps in and it's, it goes. So, yeah, well, again, this was, I think the first surface with that connector. So that might be the Hawaii, it might be the humidity out there or something. It was like that one is brand new out of the box and it was winter, so it wasn't very humid when I got here. It knew it was going to Hawaii. Yeah. I got it December, 2012. I remember it vividly, um, and I was, I was really up on it. In fact, you know, and I'll be honest, if you go back, I think information week still has an archive of my review of it. And I was quite, I was quite pleased with the concept, I think I was more pleased with the concept than actual thing, which, you know, over, which soured on me over the months to follow, but, um, I was really high on that. I thought it was like, this is something that could happen. It could, it's better than a netbook in theory, right? Um, see, that's why you don't get high on anything other than drugs. Exactly. Wow. Exactly. Technology will always let you down. It will always lead you down a path that will, but, you know, drugs, they're more reliable. Um, sometimes they're cheaper, depending on, you know, where we get on. Well, I think they're more or less regulated, you know, amongst our friends, I think we have had several discussions over the years, especially when we used to get together in person that, you know, our habit is way more expensive than drug habits. Sometimes you think so, yeah. But, uh, anyway, okay, and I think, I did, and I know the answer to this already, but I know you, you, you have not yet tried the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 software on it. But I'm not when you do, or if it is at all. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure I'd, I'd use it much, um, you know, because I use the, the, the software that's on the phone or whatever to, okay, you know, to, to run the, the Osmo. But I think for the videos, I just put, bring them into something else, those videos. Got it. Okay. And I, I don't do that much with it anyway. You know, I take the video and that's what I get. It would be, um, more critical is one of the things that I, instead of the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, I bought the Insta360 X4, which does, you know, kind of a sphere records a sphere around you at all times. And one of the things I learned that, you know, I should have occurred to me before I bought it, but one of the things I learned after the fact when I actually started working the video is when you work on these sphere videos, the important thing is not how you take the picture because it's taking a picture, everything. The important thing is how you edit that, the focus of what you're actually looking at in a video, how you choose, you know, you become like a videographer, how you choose what to, what to focus on. And so I'm highly dependent on its software to sort of pre-process the video in, in that sense. And so what I usually do is I, not usually, what I always do is I have to bring it into the software from Insta360, you know, choose the, what I am focusing on and how I'm moving around into video over time. And then once I finish that, I'll bring it into, um, you know, I move you on an Apple or, um, what's that thing on the windows? It's actually pretty good. But you know, yeah, cook champ, which is actually pretty good actually like that. Uh, to, you know, put titles and things like that on. So I, if I, if I, uh, uh, I'm just going to avoid running to Costco right after we speak, but if, if I, you know, closely, well, I, I know you're not looking at his surface anyway, but, um, yeah, I do look and see what processor that has on the Costco, what have the, uh, had the, uh, not the elite, but the plus, I think. Yeah. I, I, we'll talk about that in a minute because I, I, yeah, but anyway, that's pretty, there is, you know, I have an article that I linked earlier in the show notes stuff from who is it? It was pretty trusted. So it was Tom's hardware and I think they're pretty good. So Tom's hardware, um, you know, and, uh, some other folks have, uh, of articles about some of the software that doesn't run well or doesn't run at all. I think Adobe may have issued a, some kind of, um, new statement that they're soft, some of their products do not run on the Samsung co-pilot plus PC, for example. I don't know why they just chose Samsung, but, um, so there's that. Okay. And, um, I guess that's about, oh, here it is. Here it is. Yeah. It's Tom's guide. Sorry. Not Tom's, which is, I think the same, but the compatible building notice first reported by Wall Street Journal states that many security programs, there is Adobe software and even apps like Google Drive won't currently run on Samsung's new co-pilot PC. It doesn't mention any other brand. So I don't know if it's specific, but yeah, that sounds odd. I'm not terribly worried about the security software, you know, um, I'm happy with what Microsoft has done for me over the years for nothing. I don't need to get some prior KGB guy to do my software for me. So, um, and you know, I have been using more PC, Mac software for a while. I was just doing everything in my iPad or not everything, but many things on my iPad. But you know, having gotten the new camera, the Insta360 X4, one thing that I found out, by the way, is it's way easier to use either the Windows or Mac OS version of the Insta360 editor than even an iPad, which is in a great, which is still good, but it's just way easier to me to work on them. Seems like they have more features or the UI is easier to understand or something, but just, I just like it, which is sad because the fastest computer in my home right now is the M4 iPad Pro. So anytime I move to, you know, it does not work laptop, I'm stepping down and processing power, um, which is fine. Okay. Oh, and there is one article, uh, PC world says, most apps work on co-pilot PCs without a fuss. There are a few exceptions, which is, you know, kind of rehashes what Tom's hardware and I guess the New York, every time we get a new PC or a new OS, there's, you know, issues with something. Well, this one in particular, the right, because we're shifting from the X86, you know, Intel AMD to, to ARM and of course, RT was just a disaster because nothing ran on it. Um, I forget what that ran on it. Not well. It came with like, I for something, but, or six, whatever it was, I could live in four. Um, all right. So that's about it. Okay. So now let me tell you my story. So, you and John, you and John and my other buddy Sterling, the three of you, terrible people, also Paul Lawler, the four of you, terrible people. So, you know, you guys always come in like, oh, I got this really cool thing and I go, oh, I don't really, oh, it is kind of cool. So I was looking at a number of non-Microsoft co-pilot plus PC options, Dadel XPS 13 looked really interesting. The Acer and Asus had a couple of interesting things. So, you know, I was thinking, now with all my horrible experiences with the Surface Pro, I'm not going to get another Surface. But then I, you know, I looked at your config and go, that's too expensive. I can't afford that. But as you said, you know, Costco's bundles are pretty interesting. And so I was going to get the low end bundle. I forget what it's called. Well, it's not really a bundle, low end machine, which is the, you know, standard clamshell surface, Microsoft Surface Copilot plus PC. But then I looked at the, let's see, what is it called? I thought I posted it here, but per chance I did not. Oh, here it is. I did put it in our show notes. Costco has something called the Microsoft Surface Pro Copilot plus PC bundle. And at first I said, I don't understand the difference because there's a 13 inch Surface Copilot plus PC and there's like a 13.5 inch and the 13 inch is more expensive. And what I noticed was the 13 inch version is, well, first of all, it's a much higher resolution display. Both got the same amount of RAM, 16 gig, same amount of SSD, one terabyte. But this one, the 13 inches, also the two in one. So the keyboard snaps off like yours. But the bundle includes a keyboard and includes the surface. But it probably doesn't include the flex keyboard. Yeah, but it includes a keyboard. So yeah, and the difference between the flex and the one right below that is that the flex you can take off and use it remotely. Oh, god, this one has to be connected to this one. Yeah, that one would have to be connected. They could fold it completely back underneath. Or just take it off and use it as a tablet. Or just take it off. Yeah, yeah, like my Surface 4T and my Surface Pro 4. Yeah, I mean, they've always been able to write completely. Or just pull off. And it's not the elite. It's the plus. So it's not as snappy as yours. But it's also not as expensive as yours. And I think it's 1599. In fact, I still have the tab up here. Yeah, $1,600, essentially. But includes a keyboard, includes a surface pen. It's got a lot of, you know, SSD at one terabyte. I think the surface, the copilot plus PC started with 56 generally. So it's a little bit extra. Yeah. So I mean, you can, so you can, you know, with the surface, you get that nice thing. So you can actually take that thing way down like that. So if you're drawing. Yeah, I'm really tempted, especially because it comes with a surface pen. And it is a two in one. So I have other devices that fold over and they're just not comfortable to do the long when they're folded over. And if you still got, if you still got an old surface pen, that'll work on it too. No, I do not. All the surface pens I had were work pens and I returned everything when I retired. So actually, well, okay, so here's a funny thing. So I told you that after my third surface pro four blew up, I replaced it with Lenovo. And this is years ago, I kept the surface pen because it worked fine as a PowerPoint clicker. They do have a Microsoft pen protocol to do the writing, but the clicker part is Bluetooth. Yeah. So if you pair it, it'll do whatever it wants. It was great. It was truly great as a presentation tool pre-pandemic when we still did presentation. So this tells you how long ago this all happened. This was like 2019. Wow, it's five years ago. That's a long time ago. Anyway, that's what I'm looking at. I 1600 blocks plus tax. Oh, Costco, by the way, in addition to upping the storage and including the pen and keyboard, blah, blah, blah. They also, I think the surface, most laptops come with one year of warranty. And this price includes a second year warranty. So yeah, two year warranty. And it says in warehouse pickup on the web page. So and I live a mile and a half from Costco. I'm of course, you know, given my luck with the world, I'll go there all excited and don't have any. So which is probably for the best. I don't need to spend more money. Probably for the best. All right. But yeah, I think about this for you because I know you do enough drawing and stuff like that. It would be an interesting thing for you to try it on, you know, with with the Microsoft pen. Yeah, the surface. Whatever they want to go on. I am looking forward to it, especially since I, you know, I bought the affinity bundle, which includes windows licensing for affinity designer. And if that's the other question, will it run on, you know, in the prism emulation mode? So that'll be an interesting question. But what if it runs and it's got a certain, I will, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go ahead and buy that thing for, you know, like 52 bucks or whatever it was, I think it was, it's, it's, it's worth it for the three different platforms and it was several. Yeah, it was 70. Oh, I bought it already. I bought it. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I might do it. I'll let you know if it runs. Oh, oh, yeah. Thank you. That'd be great. So I'm definitely a little thing and say, Hey, it works. We're not about it. Okay, I'm going to think about it. I see my post father days gift to myself since my dad has passed away and my father-in-law has passed away. I've got another dad to buy for except me. Except you. That's how it works for dad, Jim. Like last week, when the, when the, you know, I think what was it? That's the somebody said, I don't remember who it was. It says, sure, we can do this on Father's Day. It's not like it's important like Mother's Day. I forget this. It might have been done. Yeah, I, there's a routine. I forget the name of the comedian. I saw him on, it showed up in my YouTube feed last week on Father's Day. And his, his deal was, he says, you know, Father's Day is the 20th, 20, number 20 on the list of most celebrated, you know, holidays. It's not really like a vacation holiday, but holidays. It was number one, it's Christmas. Number two is Mother's Day. So you are competing against Jesus and your mom. Yeah. You, you are not competitive as a dad at all. But anywho. All right. Thanks, Swen. Thanks, John. John, you got, I mean, I kind of dominated the questions, but well, I'm just trying to save as much money as possible before a vacation later this summer and potentially buying new computers. So I am intentionally trying to distance myself. I hear you. And if I were, if I were as smart as you, Dr. Westfall, I also would but sadly, I am not. And so here we are. All righty, movies, podcasts, 516. Thank you so much to, of course, the good Dr. John Westfall, but especially to Mr. Johansson for being a terrible, terrible friend for many years now. And I think the next time I go to Costco, I'm not going to rush out. I'm not going to rush out. I'm going to think about this. Next time I go to Costco, I am going to look for it. If it's there I'll buy it. If it's not there, I will go home sadder, but not as poor. So we'll talk to you next time.
