Technology and me 2022

 Every year around this time I do a little post on my personal use of technology - here's the one for 2022.

Compared to last year, we've had some changes, but nothing dramatic, more incremental change as machines come to the end of their working lives.

 My venerable MacBook Air finally curled up its electronic toes and I also took the opportunity to ditch the 2008 vintage iMac I kept around for viewing images on its large screen - it had simply got too old and the software too out of date to be usable any more.

At the same time my Dow's project laptop decided that it couldn't see its battery any more, leading to its replacement with a refurbished ThinkPad.

The project documenting Dow's pharmacy continues to inch closer to fruition, and after a couple of problems with wheelie boxes, I invested in a decent wheeled computer bag, which has proved the ideal solution.

Despite it's age, my old iPad Mini continues to be useful as a notetaker, as strangely enough is one of my old Handspring Visors that I resurrected as a way of being able to take notes while wearing my blue examination gloves - I favour the slightly thicker pathology style ones, one never quite knows what one's handling when it comes to nineteenth and early twentieth century patent medicines.

My Huawei MediaPad continues to give excellent service, but I'm becoming increasingly impressed with my ChromeBook Duet's abilities - fold out the keyboard it's a ChromeBook, fold back the keyboard it's a web tablet, albeit a rather heavy one, but close to the ideal as a travel computer.

The dogfood tablet continues to do its job, but this past year I've been trying to work my way through my 'to read' pile of second hand books, so it hasn't seen as much service as it might have

My four year old Lenovo laptop is still doing its job, and I see no reason to replace it for at least another year. Likewise the refurbished Thinkpad I bought back in 2018, albeit now with Kubuntu, continues to be incredibly useful, as does an old Dell laptop I acquired that now sits in the corner of Judi's studio (actually our garage) fitted out with Raspberry Pi desktop - incredibly useful for checking the weather, packing lists, or indeed updating lists of supplies that we need to order.

Still giving excellent service is the little Lenovo I bought as a travel computer, as is my old refurbished Yoga, as a second machine.

The little Lenovo came to my aid when I did a presentation for our local U3A group, as it turned out to be the only machine I had with a modern external HDMI interface - the curse of using refurbished machines I guess.

The one real failure has been the e-slate I bought out of curiosity - I still really havn't found a use for it.

But it's not all work here at Moncur towers - having discovered the Lenovo smart clock we've ended up with three scattered around the house, plus a Google assistant enabled speaker in the lounge room to play background jazz plus I bought myself a Google Hub really to use as a podcast player that sits on the shelf above my desk.

So, basically incremental change this year.

We've arguably still got too many computers between us - J ditched her iMac for a new HP windows laptop earlier this year, and I have my eye on the refurbished Dell latitude I bought her during the pandemic as a potential second kubuntu machine - however we do have a pile of older devices to go the the e-waste centre.

I'm expecting the Dow's pharmacy documentation project to draw to a close in 2023 (or at least my involvement in it) and that will probably mean some changes in our use of technology next year ...