AirPlay on PC

My (slight) struggles with my unholy alliance of iPhone SE and a Win10 laptop continue. This time my issue was AirPlay for Windows. Tomorrow I demo Nintex Mobile App at a customer and, well, since it is a mobile app, it would be quite essential to be able to show my phone screen to them. Since you can hardly have a meeting room full of people all gather around you to gape at the small phone screen, I started looking for the best way to mirror my phone on the laptop screen.

Now AirPlay is simple enough (*cough* not *cough*) when you are in an Apple device wonderland, like you airplay to a MacBook or AppleTV etc. And really it is usually quite straightforward, unless you try to do things like control the AppleTV vie AirPlay etc. But PC? You need an app, of course.

Simple googling reveals that there are plenty of Win apps for this purpose available. Starting with the free and simple LonelyScreen, ending in slightly costly (in my opinion, for my random needs) apps like the Mirroring360 and the Apowersoft Phone Manager, which I tried and found a bit too complicated to my taste. It said something about updating iTunes and connecting the phone with a cable etc. and I lost interest.

Tech iOS World ranks the LonelyScreen best of the PC mirroring apps. From my short experience and trial and error of all of two apps, I'd say I agree. Simple enough, strictly to the point, easy to use, no extra hokum it most definitely seemed to suit my purposes the best. My only problem was that my phone would not show the AirPlay option no matter what I tried.

My phone and laptop were on the same network.
I rebooted my phone AND my laptop.
My phone IS up to date software-wize.
I allowed LonelyScreen access through the firewall. 
I even disconnected the Direct Access (well, actually, the disconnect doesn't work for me, so I stopped the whole service, but anyhow...).

I was getting desperate. How can stuffs just always be so darned difficult?! Finally, as my last straw, I turned on the personal hotspot on my phone and connected my Windows to the Internet using the hotspot. And - TA-DAA! - AirPlay appeared on my phone!

My conclusion? LonelyScreen works like a train's toilet (A Finnish idiom that I just chose to use here, don't ask) and is exactly as good and simple as expected. However, I believe our home network is just too complicated what with all of our own firewalls etc. in between everything. That's what you get in a geeky household. Anyway, I'm actually really glad it works with this hotspot, since that is the way I most probably will be using it tomorrow at the customer's.

Oh HP, please!

I have a super grandma. She'll be turning 90 in May, but she's still sharp as a knife and in better health than a whole lot of people half her age. A couple days ago she called to ask my help with some laptop stuff. Her laptop, a good 7 or maybe 8 years old, I'd guess, had died in the middle of a word (my grandma writes a lot - runs in the family ;) ). She wanted to know what could be done to the laptop and whether it was salveagable or not.

My educated guess, when I listened to the symptoms, was that not much was doable to the old laptop and so as soon as I got a word in (she talks a lot), I told her, "Listen, on Monday when you come here for the birthday coffee, you're leaving with me and a new laptop. I'll take you home and set it up for you." She nearly broke into tears. In my mind, whatever little things I can do to pay back all the good she has brought to my life, I do with joy. Besides, we had an extra laptop, only a year and a half old, collecting dust.

Today was that Monday. My grandma came here for my youngest daughter's twelfth birthday with my dad and his wife and I took my grandma home (yes, she lives alone, in her own row house appartment) along with that new-old laptop that I had fixed for her use. I showed her how to use Win8.1 and Word 2013 - I don't even know what versions she had been using before. Everything looked different, but she learned well. I set up her mobile network - she has a usb stick for internet connection so that she can use the same at her summer home easily. And so on. Just the basic stuff.

And then there was the printer. An HP Photosmart C4270. Win 8.1 did not recognize the device on its own so I thought, "piece of cake, we'll just download the driver from the HP support site." Oh, was I wrong about that! The only piece of cake today was the one I ate with an espresso!

I googled. At first, this is all I got: http://www.hp-drivers-download.com/hp-drivers/hp-photosmart-c4270-all-in-one-printer. The page seems to promise a driver download, when in fact it gives you some goddamned driver fixing tool that asks for some licence numbers. WTF?

I removed that and tried searching, tried this and tried that and all I ever found was some similar kind of tools, that I personally just rate as spyware. I do not want that on my grandma's laptop! Finally, by accident, I stumbled upon this page here (which for some strange reason is the first search result for me here at home, on my own laptop, but I could not find it when searching with my grandma's laptop - how odd is that?): http://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-Photosmart-C4200-All-in-One-Printer-series/3192751/model/3300210/drivers/

There, finally!

I downloaded the driver and started the setup. It took like a half an hour! It did this, it did that, step 1/8 for this, step 8/8 of something else. Device recognized, finalizing installation. This may take a few minutes. No kiddin'! It took like 10! And then the setup application said: "An unknown error has occured, rolling back installation." And I was like, hell no you don't! I paused it and for the lack of other ways to halt the rollback for good I killed the setup with Task Manager.

Yes, the printer was installed and working fine. I have no idea what that error might've been, but it did not have anything to do with the printer and its ability to print out stuff!

HP, please! Couldn't you just offer a nice clean driver for your devices instead of these horror packages? I mean, how can a printer driver be 180Mb and take a half an hour to install on a relatively new computer (albeit not the fastest kid in the block)? And hey, I've been in IT business for 16 years and I was working on this shit for an hour. How do the non-IT people do it? Contact your Support? Can't you just make it a bit more simple, please!

[P.S. This: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers. Yup. Thanks, Jukka Niiranen (@jukkan)!]

HP Ultrabook 850

Nothing was exactly wrong with my old HP laptop, but I cannot say that I'd be the least bit sorry for getting a brand new work laptop. Especially one as nice and sleek as the HP Ultrabook 850. It's thin, lightweight, got a backlit keyboard, battery power for 7 hours with basic battery, and what best: a touchpad similar to the macbook trackpad!

My Macbook-loving husband asked me why was it worth its while to get a laptop that was as expensive as a Macbook, and in many ways a quite shameless imitation of the Macbook experience. Why not buy Macbooks instead? Two words. Micro and soft. I cannot very well do my MSWork with a Macbook. I am bound to Windows via SharePoint and Visual Studio and... even if I mostly use a remote server.

Besides, I have problems understanding the OsX. But I do love the trackpad! And now I have something truly similar in my Win-powered sleek Ultrabook, that is not a nuisance even while slouching on the couch with it. Not heavy, not overheating all the time. And it's quiet - no fan going wild all the time either.

So in summary, I love my Ultrabook <3 And here's the tips for the touchpad-trackpad-mouseDevice:

• two-finger tap: you get the quick menu (normally right mouse click) by tapping the pad
• two-finger swipe: scrolling - and you can do it either vertical or horizontal
• three-finger swipe (or flick): scanning through browsing history in browser, or images in image viewer etc. this I needed to activate myself in the mouse settings, it was not enabled by default
• pinch zoom: zoom in browser by pinching, but also e.g. in Word and other Office apps
• rotating with two fingers: handy when doing a lot of photo work and needing to rotate images

There's other options too, but these are my favorites!