Some things you might want to read
Plus some thoughts on Twitter and an update on the transition from Substack
I was happy to return to ZDNET last July after a six-month sabbatical and realized today that I haven't officially announced that fact. So, consider this an announcement. These days I'm publishing regularly at ZDNET (with the big redesign a while back, the style is all caps now). I've published a few articles I'm sure many of my readers here would find interesting. But you probably missed them, because I have been doing a terrible job of promoting my own work.
It's Elon Musk's fault, frankly. I used to promote my projects regularly on Twitter, and it was pretty easy to keep up if you followed me there. I even had a tech-only, links-only feed for people who wanted to avoid my thoughts on politics and just wanted to see the tech stuff. But I no longer post there. That guy has turned it into just a terrible place as he reveals exactly who he's been all along.
It's just infuriating that something so big stumbled into existence and connected people from all over the globe and then some rich asshole came along and turned it into 4Chan with blue checkmarks.
So, anyway, here are some articles you might want to read, starting with one in which I describe my workspace. It has a picture of my desktop (the physical one, with the big display on it) as clean as it's been in years.
Ed Bott
As I mention in that post, a Thunderbolt 4 dock is the piece of technology glue that holds everything together and makes for a neat but powerful (and quiet) workstation. (I really do not miss the noise and heat that a couple of tower PC's cranked out, and I was happy to leave that behind in New Mexico.)
I also spent a little time recently with ChromeOS Flex, Google's free offering aimed at turning underpowered old Windows PCs into slightly hobbled Chromebooks (no access to apps on the Google Play Store, for example). If I had an old, cheap laptop that was on the supported list, I would probably enjoy it, Instead, I tried it on the only spare PC I had lying around: a small Surface Go 2 tablet. You can read about the whole experience here.
Ed Bott
Coming up next week at ZDNET, I have an explanation for why Windows laptop touchpads mostly don't suck any more, plus some cool tricks you can do with a few three- and four-finger gestures on a Precision Touchpad. (I like being able to snap a window to the left or right side of hte screen with a flick of the touchpad.) You will also find an explanation of the difference between a touchpad and a trackpad.
And an update on the move from Substack. This newsletter is coming via Ghost Pro, which has been pretty easy to work with but is not free as Substack was. You'll probably notice that this newsletter has a new address: edbott.news. I had a different domain name for the previous edition but decided that using this address was better branding.
I'm probably going to send a short email to Substack subscribers alerting them that I've moved, with a link to this newsletter. If you were a subscriber on Substack but you didn't get this one and you're reading it in a browser, I would like to hear from you. I know email can be tricky, especially with a new domain sending a large number of emails from a new source.
All the standard advice applies: Check your spam/junk folder, and consider adding the address these emails come from, ed-botts-read-me@ghost.io, to your "safe senders" list. (For instructions on how to do this in Gmail, see this support article. To do the same in Outlook.com, follow these instructions.)
As always, I also look forward to your comments and questions below. (And I'll have more on Spain later, I promise.)
