My first week with the Microsoft Surface Pro 4

Not a review

Third times' the charm and the Surface Pro 3 announced last year was probably the best representation of a tablet which can replace a laptop. But the question is, how do you succeed a pretty solid device. Well, Microsoft's new Surface Pro 4 tablet builds upon the existing form factor of the outgoing Surface Pro 3 and improves on it with some new hardware configurations all while boasting a thinner and lighter design. The star of the show is the new 12.3" PixelSense display which has 5 million pixels and also Intel's new Skylake CPUs which are more efficient compared to the Haswell processors on the Surface Pro 3.

New Surface and Lumia, thoughts on the Microsoft event — "While Apple happily called Microsoft the productivity masters during their iPad Pro announcement, Microsoft was not shy to compare Apple's products with their new hybrid tablet offerings. Panos Panay did not directly compare the new Surface devices to Apple's iPad Pro but instead did a more subjective comparison between similar products." Continue reading.

But despite the somewhat incremental update, there has been a fair share of the problems that Microsoft is facing with the Surface Pro 4 (and Surface Book). The Surface Pro 4 has been plagued with some hardware defects and software issues from screen bleeding to speaker pops and issues with battery life, this is by no means a small problem since there has been a lot of complaints and Microsoft even issued an official note to acknowledge the problems being faced by early adopters. Even I had problems buying the Surface Pro 4 and had to outright replace the first unit that I received due to a hardware defect.

So, yeah I bought the Surface Pro 4 last week and I have been using it to do some daily tasks for the past week. After an adventurous week of dealing with some software and hardware issues of the Surface Pro 4, here's what I think about the device.

I bought the Lumia 1020 in 2015

41 megapixel love

Mobile World Congress 2012, Nokia unveiled the 808 Pureview which is 5 years of mobile camera innovation jam packed into a smartphone that had no future. It was running Nokia's burning Symbian OS and shortly after it's announcement, Nokia confirmed that the 808 Pureview is the last of it's kind at running Nokia's homegrown mobile operating system that once dominated the entire mobile space. At that time, Nokia has just started off the Windows Phone race with the availability of the Lumia 800 and it was perfectly fine that the 808 Pureview ran Nokia's Symbian OS.

With the 808 Pureview being the last symbian smartphone, the later announced Lumia 920 adapted the Nokia Pureview technology in a less aggressive 8.7MP sensor that included optical image stabilization to improve low light photography. But only in 2013 that Nokia would introduce the spiritual successor to the original 41MP smartphone dubbed the Lumia 1020. Nokia managed to replicate the 41 megapixel image size but the sensor was shrunken a little to just 2/3" which is still bigger than conventional smartphone cameras even till today. Ironically, Nokia announced that they are being acquired by Microsoft shortly after the Lumia 1020 went on sale.

My Thoughts On The Lumia 1020 — "Earlier today while i was researching about the device i found out that there are some pretty positive feedback from both tech sites and the commenters. It seemed that the people which had their hands on with the device found that it is very nice to hold in the hand and is not too thick by any stretch." Continue reading.

Well, the story then continue to the present day. Microsoft now owns Nokia's mobile division and the Windows Phone ecosystem is still playing the third wheel against the likes of both the iPhone and Android. The Lumia 1020 is listed as a discontinued hardware product with devices like the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 950 continuing the tradition of the Pureview technology. This is where I slot in, last week I bought a pre-loved (second hand) Lumia 1020 and I think it was a hell of a deal.

Understanding the Hour of Code challenge

What happens after that hour?

If you have been on the internet in the last two years, you might have already heard the term "Hour of Code" on social media, on videos, and even on the news. The Hour of Code program was introduced in 2013 by non-profit organization code.org. The organization led by Hadi Partovi is dedicated to spreading the word about computer science and one of their biggest initiatives is the Hour of Code challenge. While you can certainly learn just about anything the Hour of Code program has to offer during any time of the year, it is only during the annual Computer Science Education Week that the program will be at it's full swing at teaching everyone everywhere about computer science.

This week will be the third consecutive year that code.org will be running the Hour of Code challenge and this year tens of millions of people across 180 countries will be writing their very first lines of codes through the interactive game environment. The hour long program (hence it's name) will also be available in over 40 distinct languages and anyone that's able to use a computer will be able to learn how to code. Just like the 2014 and 2013, this year's Hour of Code is going to be the biggest one yet and there will be over 500 million lines of code that will be written in the coming week.