Readers’ comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web
A Lenovo no-no?
I’m writing in appreciation of Tom Bruce’s excellent “deconstruction” of the Lenovo Yoga Book C930 (se e issue 298, p48). There were so many no-nos, I guess it was only because of innovative design that it got two stars.
In his boxout on p50, Tom states that it has no direct competition, but E Ink is becoming a feature of several machines and more are in the pipeline. As reported elsewhere, Asus is developing a product with both a virtual and a physical keyboard, due out later this year. To me, this appears a worse idea than the dual-screen Lenovo Yoga Book.
Would the Lenovo easily take a plug-in keyboard (to take a leaf out of Microsoft’s Surface Book) to satisfy typists who prefer a physical keyboard? Geoff Alexander
Letters editor Nik Rawlinson replies: The C930 has dual USB-C ports, so you could always add an external keyboard through these (a USB-C adapter is your friend). It also had Bluetooth version 4.2, which would offer another option for connecting external input devices. While the C930 didn’t get a stellar rating in our review, I’d like to see more hardware incorporating E Ink and even a laptop that uses E Ink as its primary display. As E Ink isn’t great for video playback, I’d be happy to make compromises elsewhere – perhaps a less powerful processor and minimal storage – restricting it to mainly business-focused
applications or web apps. As it wouldn’t need a powerful backlight, you could use it late at night without suffering the LCD blues and even in direct sunlight without the screen becoming unreadable. I might be biased, though: such a spec would be a perfect writing machine, which is what I do all day long.
Router rotation remedy
In your article, “Turbo boost your Wi-Fi for free” ( see issue 298, p42), you missed one trick with routers, which is to try turning them through 90°. I’ve found this has helped loads of times.
I’ve pinned foil to the plasterboard in a friend’s house too, as mentioned in the feature. His Wi-Fi router was stuck in a cupboard next to the front door, and you couldn’t get Wi-Fi more than 5ft away. I found the BT master socket in the pantry and looked for somewhere to mount the router close by, which turned out to be the ceiling, just by the door to the hallway.
That required a short run from the master socket, with Ethernet cables to the front room TV, home office upstairs and the conservatory, feeding a Wi-Fi repeater for the garden. The result was a clean install and very good coverage throughout the house and long garden. Michael Ashworth
4K: yay or nay?
I bought the NEC MultiSync EA271U monitor ( see issue 293, p62) on your recommendation and I’m pleased to say I am getting on very well with it. I’m an ordinary user who wanted something that would be less likely to give me eye strain, so I thought why not go for the best?
I noticed fairly soon that it doesn’t have HDR capabilities and wondered why you would recommend an item that’s seemingly behind the curve. I’ve since done some research and found that you can’t directly compare computer monitors with televisions like my HDR 10-capable Panasonic.
However, now that I have the NEC, the 1080p monitor I’m using alongside it pales in comparison, which leaves me wondering whether I should invest in a second 4K monitor that supports HDR in some way, rather than a vanilla 4K, to future-proof my setup? Haden J-Robbins
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies:
Whether you should buy an HDR display or not depends on its intended use. HDR is
great for games and Netflix but pointless in day-to-day business use (although Windows is adding more support with each update). It’s possible that, as your setup and software selection evolves over time, the move to HDR becomes a must-have. However, by then, monitor technology will have moved on still further. You might feel locked in to the monitor you bought in 2019 because it still works when, really, it’s keeping you behind the curve. Personally, as you may have guessed, I’d wait.
Battery bother
Have any other PC Pro readers had battery issues since Windows’ May 2019 update rolled out?
I have a few laptops that have been updated and, in each case, Windows now reports the battery level as being substantially lower than it actually is. I’m writing this on a 14in Lenovo, and Windows says the battery has “33% remaining” – yet the machine’s own applet shows the power to be at 97% with two minutes to full charge. The problem is that, even though there is
In each case, Windows reports the battery level as being substantially lower than it actually is
plenty of juice left in the battery, Windows will turn on battery saver and then shut down the machine when it says it’s down to 5% power.
My ageing HP Envy 17in suffers from the same issue but this is less of a problem as the battery duration is so short that I tend to use it permanently on the mains. Chris Moxham
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: How annoying. We haven’t heard anything about this particular problem, but you may want to roll back to the previous version (head to Settings, click on Update & Security, click on Recovery and choose the “Go back to the previous version of Windows 10” option). Also note that you can change advanced power settings, including what happens when you hit critically low levels, by heading to Power Options in the Control Panel.
CORRECTION
In last month’s Labs, we included battery life results for the machines ( see issue 299, p92). Due to a moment of insanity, we wrote the results in minutes/seconds, rather than hours/ minutes, so apologies for any confusion. The Acer Chromebook 11 (for example) will last for 11hrs 38mins, not 11mins 38secs! Thanks to Mark Taylor for pointing out the error.