Over on Matt’s Big Fat Arse (my weight loss blog), I review Oat Milk.

Oat milk: Is it worth the fuss?

I ordered the HETP because my old power bank was super cheap and hardly any use to anyone. While I am yet to put it through its paces, what I have seen so far has been good.

These are my first impressions of the 30800mAh solar-powered HETP Power Bank.

With over 30k mAh, the HETP Power Bank promises to be a beast. All the power I could need and plenty to spare. Unsurprisingly the user guide does say a full day of bright sunlight will not fully charge the device. Even so, if you are stuck in the middle of nowhere, being able to charge your phone from the sun could be dead handy.

The HETP Power Bank has a decent LED torch built-in and a rugged design. All of which suggests it is designed to be taken camping. It charges pretty quickly given the battery capacity.

I’ve even dropped it a few times – I am so clumsy. It took it all with a smile and just did its job.

Once I have given the HETP Power Bank a full workout, I’ll come back with another review.

Get the 30800mAh solar-powered HETP Power Bank from Amazon and probably other places.

I recently wrote about my first reaction to Windows 10. My review of the OS was far from favourable possibly due to the poor hardware it came on. Since then, I have had the chance to use better hardware and so am revisiting my review.

This is my revised review of Windows 10 giving it the benefit of reasonable hardware.

I admit that I still may be a little biased. I like working with Ubuntu. An Ubuntu PC largely does what I tell it to do when I tell it to do it. I don’t need antivirus. I do not have to restart very often (every few months or so). It remains stable for months without being shut down. New apps are usually free.

Second reactions to Windows 10

The PC I am using this time is a middle to low-end Acer. Nothing special is going on here. It has four cores and 4 GB of RAM. Much like the iOTA Flo which was garbage.

The set up did not force me to work with Cortana. Windows was already not in S mode. Firefox was already installed.

Installed Chrome. I installed the other FOSS software that I like. I also put Steam and my preferred video editing software on there.

It did not grind to a halt. It worked happily. I had it downloading a bunch of stuff over WiFi and installing at the same time. All while chrome went and get my standard set of plugins and extensions like a good little browser should.

It did not break.

Ease of use

Windows 10 is still not winning awards from me here. I still have zero ideas what Microsoft is playing at with the way that the start menu and app search. It is still a UI mess that can frustrate you when you just want it to close and get out of your face.

Installing software

Starting not in S-mode was a lot nicer. Windows threw much less of a hissy fit when I started to install my chosen programs.

Like Ubuntu, it now asks for the user passowrd (or PIN as it tries to call it) to unlock some things and requires user authoristation for a program to make chnages. This is annoying but effective. I imagine the one step of seeking explicit user input before software and system changes means less hijacks and unwanted software.

It would be better if Windows embraced a repository system that could keep your installed applications updated. It does have an app store but the only FOSS I saw there were third party app store ports.

Overall, the app store is a pile of poo and not worth the effort for finding what you need. The odds are, what you want is not in the app store. Unless what you want are free-to-play games.

Hardware footprint

There is seriously no reason for a freshly set up OS to hog so much RAM. While writing this I checked a no apps open look at use 2% CPU (speaking to 10%) and 60% RAM – while idle.

60% RAM when idle. What the actual…? That is roughly 2.5 GB of RAM to do nothing at all. Sure that’s for the graphics driver as well but why should doing nothing cost that much hardware utilisation?

Anything good to add?

I mentioned stumbling upon a Linux shell compatibility setting. This is called Windows Subsystem for Linux. I enabled WSL but have yet to figure out how to run BASH on Windows. Knowing Microsoft, I probably have to restart.

Final score for Window 10

Adding up those scores we get a mean average of 2.8. Which rounds to 3.

Not quite a hard pass on running Windows for me. However, I’m still not a fan.

I’ll post a review of the Acer PC that Windows arrived on very soon.

This is the iOTA Flo 11.6-Inch notebook. It boasts 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM with 64GB eMMC Storage and an Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core 1.1 GHz processor. Assuming they get restocked you could pick up the iOTA Flo for around £180.

For a display, the iOTA Flo offers a tiny 11.6-inch 1080p display backed up by an integrated Intel graphics card sporting – so Amazon says – 8 GB of dedicated VRAM. It also features an HDMI type C port. The HDMI port is key to my plans for the notebook.

Windows reports not 8 GB of VRAM but 128 MB and 2 GB shared.

The iOTA Flo weighs just 950 grams and runs almost silently. In terms of external connections, the iOTA Flo comes with built-in Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, 2x USB 2 and 1x USB 3 port. There’s no optical drive because where would you put it on a device this tiny?

The Amazon description said “SD card reader” but failed to add Micro SD only. Not much use for pulling images and video from my DSLR.

In theory, the iOTA Flo should be pretty nippy for such a small item. Unfortunately, my too-old-to-run-most-newer-apps tablet can still run rings around the iOTA Flo.

The Operating System is Windows 10 S which means that it is only any good for single application use. With the same hardware, I could run a full Linux based media centre. Well, if the VRAM claims were true anyway.

At first, I entirely blamed Microsoft for the iOTA Flo’s lacklustre performance. Although the 1.1 GHz clock speed didn’t help matters, the fib about the GPU might have been part of the problem too.

I toyed with cracking it open and modding it to overclock the CPU but with such a tiny form factor, I doubt I could do much good in there.

The iOTA Flo’s GPU

The iOTA Flo’s tiny 11.6-inch display at 1080p looks as sharper than larger 4k TVs. However, it has a very small total screen real estate. The integrated Intel graphics card with dedicated VRAM stood out as the only device I could find (on short notice) with VRAM at all. Which is a shame it was not true.

I managed to get the display up to 2k although it did make the GPU cry. While I am writing this, I am waiting to see if the iOTA Flo can start City Skylines. I’m not holding my breath. It looks okay running my TV as a monitor although you can tell it is a 1080p optimised GPU pushing 2k resolution.

The iOTA Flo’s Power

If you are looking for something with a bit of welly, the iOTA Flo is not the device for you. It is a passable travel computer and, a reasonable, platform for on the go video watching (I hope – I did not test this). For any real use, you will want to use HDMI to hook up to a TV screen.

Gaming on the iOTA Flo

I installed both the GOG and Steam clients to test the iOTA Flow running a few of my favorite games. My hope was that my Windows only titles might be playable.

Installing City Skylines and starting GIMP left the iOTA Flo unresponsive. Not a good sign for actually running the game itself. Steam was sitting at between 50% and 65% CPU but only because Windows was using the rest. GIMP maintained a small footprint the entire time I had it open.

City Skylines took ages to load. It is not a fast starter at the best of times but this was extra slow even by the game’s own standards. The iOTA Flo finally got halfway and had the CPU running at 2.3 GHz before giving up and aborting the game.

All that said, the iOTA Flo did take a crack at starting and running City Skylines. The frame rate was terrible and the graphics were a touch choppy. However, it surprised me by getting as far as it did.

Value for money

At the low price point, the iOTA Flo competes on general specs with more expensive laptops. 2 cores and 4GB of RAM seems to be pretty standard these days.

Correct specification reporting

Overall score

The iOTA Flo is little more than a children’s toy. Fine for a bit of social media and YouTube but no good for even a bit of demanding work. As a dedicated user of many many tabs, I can tell you that the iOTA struggles to render three Chrome tabs.

The iOTA Flo is currently out of stock on Amazon. It is hard to say if this is because the model is being retired or because of Christmas. As the iOTA Flow only came out this year, I am going to guess that lots of people will be getting this notebook PC from Santa. This is, after all, a good starter PC for a child and comes with a modest price tag of £180.

At the low price point, the iOTA Flo competes on general specs with more expensive laptops. 2 cores and 4GB of RAM seems to be pretty standard these days. However, it is disappointingly prone to becoming unresponsive.

I’ve been running Linux exclusively for many years now. Long enough to forget what a lot of fuss doing things with Windows was. The only legacy of windows in my home is the laptop I use for video editing.

That laptop died. Thus, forcing an upgrade to a smaller, sleeker, more powerful notebook. It ran Windows 10.

I didn’t like it.

I admit I may be biased. I’m used to working with Ubuntu. I’m used to a computer that does what I tell it when I tell it to. I’m used to a computer that works.

First reactions to Windows 10

This laptop has twin cores, 4 GB of RAM and 8 GB of GPU VRAM. This should run so fast… WTF?

After set up which resulted in a swift muting of Cortana, I took Windows out of S mode (no thanks, I like to control my stuff myself; also I want Chrome and some FLOSS).

Installed Chrome. The notebook was now running at 50% RAM usage and 100% CPU – doing nothing! Well, running chrome with one tab open.

Windows 98 ran better than that.

I had to reboot just to get the computer under control.

Ease of use

Windows 10 is not winning awards from me here. I have no idea what Microsoft were playing at with that start menu but they need to rethink.

If I open the Ubuntu start menu by accident. I tell it to close and it closes. Windows fights you all the way. I think I actually said, “shut up and just do what you are told.”

Thank goodness for Lockdown and no one being around to hear me talking to a laptop like it was a naughty school boy.

Installing software

Microsoft clearly wants to treat its users like children. Windows 10 came locked down to only the official Microsoft app store. I soon changed that. No S mode for me, thank you.

It is not just the third-party software lockout that annoyed me. Windows threw a massive hissy fit when I tried to make Chrome the default browser. It objected and got all kinds of salty with me.

Anything good to add?

I did find a Linux shell compatibility setting. It is hidden where only an expert user would even look to start with. It seems crazy to make all that effort to get Bash into Windows and then turn it off and hide it.

Windows 10 is not a total failure but I’m in no hurry to give up the much more reliable and less resource-hungry Linux.

Final score for Window 10

Adding up those score we get a mean average of 2.15. Which rounds to a 2.

Hard pass on running Windows for me.

I’ll post a review of the notebook that Windows came on once I have seen how hard I can make it work. I’m going to try it out running stuff for tonight’s D&D game.