….Amazon seems to be running away with this one to capture mind share in peoples homes
http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-echo-will-now-talk-your-ecobee-thermostat-help-keep-your-home-warm
. Its a Broadwell i3 with an integrated Intel HD card that is capable of playing 4k video.
I had some trouble with a previous i5 model where it would not recognize the hard drive at all making it a brick. I had no such trouble with this one but wanted to outline the steps to get it all set up because the documentation around it is really sparse.
To get 4k video playing smoothly, you need two sticks of RAM. This machine is quite picky about the RAM you install, I went with Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 1600 
Once that is done you have to flash the bios from the files provided on MSI’s site using a bootable USB drive (remember to turn off Windows 8/8.1 features in the bios else you wont be able to boot in to DOS). After that is done it will recognize the RAM in the second slot and windows will be able to access it.
Figuring out this bit was quite annoying and I spent a lot of debugging this than I thought. After that however the machine runs like a dream and plays video smoothly which is what I need from the HTPC.
Hopefully this helps out other people who have purchased this and cuts down set up time. If you have questions post in the comments below
I have a Nexus 6p and so far battery life has been excellent in my usage. The phone lasts all day with ease but when I read Russel Holly’s article on how you can get some more juice out of your battery I decided to remove the app and go with his approach (I still kept messenger)
While I cant claim to have notified any speed differences in the phone the battery usage is a lot better. I’m setting the phone to charge at least an hour or two later I’m the day than I used to which is quite impressive. I wonder what happened to Facebook’s internal quest to have an amazing Android app where employees were using the app on Android devices and making improvements.
Anyone else seeing any difference ?
http://www.androidcentral.com/it-turns-out-uninstalling-facebook-android-pretty-great
Steve Harvey has some competition
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/31/10878544/microsoft-onedrive-free-storage-claim
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/inbox-by-gmail-find-answers-even-faster.html
I had posted a list of my apps from 2013 and forgot to do one last year, so lets see if I can keep it going from this point forward.
In terms of arrangement, logically nothing has changed. These are all apps that I use on a daily basis. Newsblur replaced GoRead & Flipboard, Official Twitter app over TweetLanes.
The interesting addition is the Messengers folder. In it I have WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal and Google Messenger. While Hangouts remains on the bottom bar I wouldn’t be surprised if WhatsApp takes its place by the end of this year. In terms of usage WhatsApp has just eclipsed every other messaging app for me and the group chats are essentially micro social networks. Its no surprise why everyone is trying to own this market and Google is trying yet again with a supposedly new messaging app.
I also feel that Foursquare and Swarm might not make it to the end of this year. I have been using Google Places a lot more and like the timeline feature that Maps has built in. Even with points and gamification back Swarm has just lost what made it special in the first place.
While I was planning to do a wish list of items that I wanted to see ( I still might at a later point), I wanted to hit on one item quickly and that is Hangouts. While id like to see some of the smart features pointed out in the article, the game changer for me would be SMS relay over Hangouts to all my devices that support Hangouts. Yes I know you can do that already with Google Voice, but I havent used that in ages and have stuck with my carrier number since a lot of people have that with them.
Id like the ability to use my carrier number and have text messages sent to my phone, show up everywhere Hangouts is. The implementation wouldn’t be too different from existing applications where your phone receives/sends the text messages and then syncs across various devices. The ability to send an SMS from a browser or tablet would definitely help in the adoption of hangouts as well. Why this hasnt been introduced in the app from day one is still a mystery.
The last big updates to Hangouts alluded to infrastructure changes for some cool changes ahead and Im hoping SMS relay is one of them
PS :- Also please add the ability to send videos over hangouts