Some experiences are exceptionally formative. I had one of them on my birthday in 1985, when my heart was racing as I opened my presents. An elongated box immediately caught my eye. I tore it open and stared at the magic letters that said Commodore C64 MicroComputer. A bunch of disks and two joysticks were also included. It was a life-changing moment! This intriguing "bread box" would teach me the value of patience and the fundamentals of the BASIC language. The fascination for technology and the drive to explore I felt that day would take a firm hold and stay with me for the rest of my life. Now, the C64 is back, kind of. Same design but contemporary hardware. Naturally, I had to try out this homage to a milestone of home computing.
Our web developers at Ashampoo are quite pleasant fellows. Gentle folks with fawn eyes. But even their looks turn to stone once the I word is dropped, i.e. Internet Explorer. For years, IE set the standard, being both a bane and blessing. Whether unadventurous private user or member of an IT staff, Internet Explorer was the gateway to the world-wide web for many. And web developers in their quest to have their websites render correctly more often than not suffered the many awkward development decisions by Microsoft. During my time as a QA clerk, I had to report time and time again that sites that were working fine in Firefox or Safari didn't behave as expected in Internet Explorer. But that's all in the past, since Edge is now built on Chromium! Old name, new underpinnings! So what's new?
Many a one proud owners of Android cellphones know the story: You boot your device up for the first time, go through the setup procedure—and are faced with a welter of unexpected apps. Depending on the manufacturer, a large portion of your screen may be plastered with them. This bloatware scourge is especially prevalent in the lower price range. Some retailers even openly advertise the "extensive software bundle". Not all of these apps are useless or dangerous, customers simply would like to have a choice! Uninstalling is often barely possible, which is especially vexatious with resource-hungry memory and performance hogs that eat away at your battery. Time for Google to take action!
Christmas is over and I'm seriously hoping you had a great start into the new year! Naturally, my presents included a few tech gadgets, along with a genuine surprise: a pair of wireless headphones. I had already owned a pair of over-ear wireless headphones but they were bulky and heavy, thanks to the sizable batteries—and they won't get any prize in terms of design either. Definitely unsuitable for sports or casual listening on the go, which is why I unwrapped the Aikela TWS-X10 with glee. I had neither heard of the company nor ever owned in-ears, so it was a double premiere so to speak.
The first Christmas in new surroundings always has a more magical feeling to it. Last year, I experienced this first hand in private, this year, the Ashampoo team is spending the Advent season in their new HQ. And there are plenty of differences to prior years: I'm no longer staring at gray rooftops but a (quite pretty) fire pond, we're no longer packed like sardines but have lots of open space and a neatly decorated Christmas tree is sitting next to the main entrance (and it's doing a far better job of conveying the spirit of Christmas than that pile of snow tires ever did in the old building). But some things never change!
