Surface Duo review roundup, this is what all your favourite YouTubers are saying

Surface Duo review roundup, this is what all your favourite YouTubers are saying

Today, Microsoft is shipping out its Surface Duo Android-powered dual-screen mobile device to customers. This means we will hear in-depth reviews about the device. Here is a Surface Duo review roundup from some of your favourite tech YouTubers.

Like every other device review, the Microsoft Surface Duo review reactions are mixed. Most are fascinated by the hardware and design concept. A lot of them believe there is room for improvement and look forward to the next generation device to correct these shortfalls. Every reviewer seems to focus on an area of the device.

Microsoft Surface Duo Review Roundup

Here are summaries from the lengthy videos. Do well to click and check out the full videos for their thoughts on the Surface Duo.

Surface Duo review MKBHD Microsoft
MKBHD

MKBHD: It is an amazing piece of hardware but … it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It is the first of a lot of things. I don’t think most people should buy this.
Overall, practicality suffering at the expense of folding in half is the thing that’s holding back all first-generation folding phones. And it is happening here with Surface Duo. When the fold is just another feature, that’s what i’m looking forwarding to.
But keep an eye on it, i really think they are on to something. I like the dual-screen thing … because the productivity, flow, compartmentalization of having two screens work, it’s real.
Click to check out the full review video.

Surface Duo review iJustine YouTube Microsoft
iJustine

iJustine: This has a great future. I don’t think this is perfect by any means, there are so many things they will need to make this better. For a first-gen, i’m pretty excited about what the Surface Duo can be.
Click to check out the full review video.

Surface Duo Daniel Rubino windows central Microsoft
Daniel Rubino – Windows Central

Daniel: Microsoft nailed the hardware. The battery life is actually pretty good, it isn’t a two-day device, it should last you a full day. The camera is actually better than i thought. Where it fails should be obvious, night time. It’s kind of surprising, i like the colour science that Microsoft has done. Images look really nice even though you don’t get a lot of details. The front-facing camera is also very good for selfies and video conferencing, which is the focus of this device.
The software is underbaked and Microsoft is going to have to work with Google to improve that and i expect they will. The OS is a little buggy, the hardware is missing a lot of stuff on it. This is early adopter stuff.

Click to check out the full review video.

More views …

Mr. Mobile Microsoft
Mr. Mobile

Michael Fisher: The Duo is more expensive than competing products. It is more ambitious as well. You probably shouldn’t buy one in its first generation, … almost every first-generation product is a risky buy.
The things i was most concerned about going into this review, have been the least of my worries. Pocketability is a pleasant suprise.
The lack of a cover display for notifictaions is solved by a smartwatch. The watches also let you tap to pay. You probably don’t need an outside display as you think.

Click to check out the full review video.

Brad Sam - Sams Report review
Brad Sam – Sams Report

Brad: The Surface Duo has average specs but opening it up is a lot of fun. The hinge is buttery smooth. Microsoft put in a lot of effort into this hardware. This device has a lot to offer and for the right user, this is going to be a fun thing to put in your pocket. When you hold it in your hands it is large, a big device, in a thin package.
There’s a lot that goes on with the OS though, that is something we should talk about. There are a lot of minor hiccups and jaddering that appear from time to time. There is definitely a learning curve. It is not a great smartphone for the price.
What you want this device for is to be your productivity hardware. Outlook is fantastic, Teams is fantastic. It is a great piece of hardware for getting work done.

Click to check out the full review video.

and even more reviews

Jenna Ezarik

Jenna: Lots of you asked different questions and i talk about them. I’m pretty impressed in the quality of the display. Compared to the iPhone this is very very clear. I think the hardware is there, the software needs some updates and improvements. It is a really cool device.

Click to check out the full review video of the device.

David Imel – Android Authority

David: The hardware is different from any other you’ve ever used. There is going to be a lot of tradeoffs if you make a device that is this thin.
The key problem is developers have to specifically implement the duo API into their app to get it to span correctly. Right now not even Google has done this. At the system level the duo thinks it is a tablet, the system registers it as one big display. The Microsoft Duo isn’t optimized yet. Microsoft needs a little bit more time to get the software under control.

Click to check out the full review video.

[jetpack_subscription_form show_subscribers_total=”true” button_on_newline=”false” custom_font_size=”16″ custom_border_radius=”0″ custom_border_weight=”1″ custom_padding=”15″ custom_spacing=”10″ submit_button_classes=”” email_field_classes=”” show_only_email_and_button=”true”]

Decoding Bill Gates, Netflix documentary goes inside Bill’s Brain

Decoding Bill Gates, Netflix documentary goes inside Bill’s Brain

Online video streaming platform Netflix, makes a three part documentary video series about Bill Gates. Taking a look at Bill’s early life with Microsoft and his current work at the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation. Produced by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, the docuseries is about an hour long each.

Netflix documentary

Bill Gates arrested and gets struck in the face with a pie. Plus many more details of his life you might not have heard of. Watch Melinda Gates, Bill’s wife, his sisters and aunty share very fond memories of him. Memories of his parents and family, school and making friends. One such friendship is Bill and Paul Allen leading to the creation of Microsoft.

Hear from Melinda, Co-chair Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and other colleagues talk about how it’s like working with him. What and how they take on global challenges at the foundation. It is interesting watching this Netflix documentary. Getting to know the approach and commitment the foundation gives to global issues.

Bill says “I don’t want my brain to stop working” when asked about his worst fear.

Take a trip inside the mind of Bill Gates as the billionaire opens up about those who influenced him and the audacious goals he’s still pursuing.

Watch the Trailer

Unpopular Opinion from the Netflix documentary

A very important observation. Bill Gates has been dressing the same way since childhood. lol ?

Melinda Gates is amazing. I’ve listened to her talk a few times. But you can only see how amazing she is as she represents the heart of the Gates Foundation. With the kinds of perspective she draws into discussions.

I see Bill’s love for Microsoft Surface devices. It’s evident in his having a Surface Studio on his desk, Surface Book on the road and Surface hub in the conference room.

Check out other cut out stories and scenes from Bill’s notes. Watch the full docuseries of Inside Bill’s Brain on Netflix.

Is the Amazing Vacation Offer any good?

Is the Amazing Vacation Offer any good?

How will you like the freedom to explore, learn, discover and have amazing experiences? An unlimited world of opportunities for a month, albeit at an extra cost. Vodafone Ghana announced a fixed broadband offer targeted at students on vacation. The Amazing Vacation offer. Is this offer any good?

Amazing Vacation Offer

Last month students returned home from school and Vodafone Ghana introduced an unlimited fixed broadband (FBB) monthly package. Giving customers unlimited data usage for a month. Even though it is geared towards students on holiday, anyone can subscribe to it. Currently non of Vodafone Ghana’s FBB package is unlimited. With the highest consumer data package offer being the 400GB data size ‘Office package’.

However to be able to get this unlimited offer you need to have an active FBB package subscription. Then pay an extra one hundred Cedis to get the unlimited data.

So I checked the amazing vacation offer out. I payed the extra one hundred cedis to confirm if this was true and if the experience was any good. You know how you are usually promised a thing and get another.

After paying for this I realized I received an unlimited vacation bonus data of 1TB (1023.72GB). This overrides the existing data and is valid for a month.

I haven’t experienced a throttling of internet speed as my fiber package has worked as normal. Experiencing speeds of 40 to 100 mbps.

You still have the opportunity to move your main FBB data bundle to your linked Vodafone mobile number. So you can basically move all of it and use on the go.

Should you consider this package? The offer is currently available till the end of September. But should Vodafone make this happen every vacation it might be worth it. That’s if you use or want to use more data.

Why Microsoft Software Asset Management(SAM) Program is good for your organization

Why Microsoft Software Asset Management(SAM) Program is good for your organization

Software Asset Management

Our co-founder Christopher Bennett was invited to participate in a training program last year at the Microsoft office in Nairobi, Kenya. The training gave more insight of Microsoft’s Software Asset Management program to partners from across Africa.

https://youtu.be/zUV6UC_Z25g

What is Software Asset Management?

Software Asset Management (SAM) is a set of proven IT practices that unite people, processes, and technology to control and optimize the use of software across an organization. SAM can help you control costs as well as manage business and legal risks, optimize software license investments, and grow IT systems to accommodate your organization’s expanding needs.

Five reasons why you should implement SAM

(1) Improve financial security

(2) Volume discounts for better price points

(3) More liability control

(4) Smoother operations

(5) Increased long-term business value

Some more benefits of SAM

SAM eliminates waste, overlap, and duplicate purchases throughout your organization. By optimizing your software assets and streamlining your internal processes, SAM can help you save time and money, improve workflow, and increase your competitiveness as your company grows in size and maturity.

Reach out to us and let’s help your organization get the most from your software investments. By analyzing your infrastructure and making ensure you are correctly licensed. Teach your IT team how to properly manage your company’s software asset.

Review: Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband Data Sharing with Mobile Number

Review: Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband Data Sharing with Mobile Number

In this review i talk about the Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband service that solves my 4 years old need. Better late than never as it is a money saver.

UPDATE: There’ve been changes to the service after I first published this post. Kindly scroll down to read about it.

As someone who is always on the go and mobile, i tend to spend a lot on mobile data. I am a heavy user of data. Mobile data isn’t cheap, not in Ghana and any African country. I remember some years back when it was so obvious this was going to be my routine i decided to find a solution. My pocket was feeling the drain by telecommunication companies.

My quest was to find that network that will offer me good internet speed, more data and a reasonable price. I searched, researched, spoke to telecom business managers on their various mobile data options but there was no hope. No one had it all. The closest i came to was super expensive. I was being offered a dedicated line et all but seriously out of my budget.

So i stuck with using Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband at home and a mash up of other mobile data packages on the go.

Not the Saviour

I remember when a friend suggested GLO was the saviour i needed. He wasn’t far from right. The pricing was great and they gave lots of mobile data. Maybe as a way to wow in more clients. There was a slight problem though. In the locations i frequent and have to use it, there is either poor or no signal. I would have to use about 30 minutes to 1 hour finding the right spot to place phone or mifi. Oh and this was in Accra and also around the airport so GLO really where does your network work, lol?

Fast forward to June last year when Vodafone Ghana announced it was introducing a new service. Where any suscriber of its fixed broadband service can enjoy their fixed broadband data on their mobile phone. I was like wow God has finally answered my cry.

To put it in context, it means i can walk around with over a 100 GB of data on my mobile phone for less than how much it will actually cost to buy that as mobile data. Let me help you get a clearer idea.

Vodafone currently sells 20GB mobile data at GHS 199, 200GB at GHS 399. Whereas Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband packages range from 20GB at GHS 85, 40GB at GHS 125, 80GB at GHS 180, 200GB at GHS 265 and 500GB at GHS 400. (these prices might have been changed as at the time of reading). This means if i buy the 200GB for FBB and transfer it to mobile i have saved about 134 GHS.

Vodafone Ghana Fixed Broadband Delight

Now this is why i’m delighted and like this service offer. It offers me lots of data at a very good price. Compared to buying the mobile data at a very expensive amount for even less data. Vodafone 3G’s service – (see i’m not even mentioning 4G, that’s for another post) – is everywhere and offers good speeds to do most of my work.
Streaming isn’t the best with light buffering on HD content, so i won’t stream HD away from the fiber broadband router (which offers great speeds up to 100Mbps on default routers). But it does however offer everything i had wanted some 4 years ago.

From the terms and conditions of the service, i can buy a data package and as long as i don’t move all of the data – to render the account inactive (you can leave only 1MB, lol) – from the broadband i can keep moving it back and forth till it is either exhausted or package expires. Rendering your FBB inactive after moving all the data to your mobile sim means you can’t reverse it.

Does it work?

Does it work? Yes it does work. I have suscribed to the 200 GB FBB package and moved plus or minus 100 GB to my phone. I spend only nights and weekends at home so balance i guess. Also don’t judge me, lol, i stream everything on HD with the broadband, i mean why not.
When i’ve watched various premier league matches, movies, documentaries and run the FFB data down i just use the USSD or the myVodafone portal to send more data to the FBB to top it up. The app can be used as well.

So far i’ve linked two different mobile numbers to the FBB account. Oh one mobile number at a time. Vodafone says “the linked number can only be changed after 30 days of linking“. Well i was able to do that in less days so not so sure about the real limits. The data on the SIM has a three months validity which is good.

I have been able to find more hacks around this to enjoy the service to it’s max. More of that in another post. Subscribe to be updated on new posts.

Want to know what this Vodafone Fixed Broadband data sharing is all about and more? Read about this on the Vodafone website.

Have you used this service offer? Did it work for your needs? Got more questions? Share and leave them in the comments or ask me on twitter.

UPDATE

Vodafone has reduced the validity of the shared mobile data from 3 months to align with that of your broadband.
You can only link 1 mobile number in all the FBB packages except the office package. (Vodafone really! At least let the 200GB and 400 GB packages link to 2 numbers)
Notice anything else? kindly share.

Review: Zuku Kenya Home Internet broadband service

Review: Zuku Kenya Home Internet broadband service

Zuku

I was warned about Zuku fiber, but it has been a great experience so far. Let me share it with you. Update: Two years on from when I posted this it is still going great. Read my recent answer to if you can use it for learning and new speed details here.

I’m poised to spend the next three months in Nairobi, as my executive editor will say, as the East African correspondent. Previous visits in Kenya have been brief or short. Maybe a few days, weeks or at most a month. So to be here for that long means I had to find a good workstation. Primarily for me this will be mostly getting a good, reliable and fast internet. Electricity too, but I think electricity is more stable in Kenya. As I’ve experienced few disruptions which last for hours or minutes.

Be Curious, ask questions

I always will encourage anyone looking to use a service to ask questions, listen to other users concerns before deciding. It might or mightn’t influence your final decision but you would have been thoroughly informed. Also bearing in mind several factors might make your situation different from theirs.

So i reached out to my techy, thoughtful friends and inquired of their opinions. What is the best internet service around? I asked around, talked to some internet service provider vendors and looked at my budget. First and foremost i wasn’t trying to break the bank. So i believed a fixed broadband service will be way cheaper than mobile broadband.

From my collated data, Safaricom will be the go-to service provider. A lot of consumers trust Safaricom to be reliable and fast. But it had a hurdle. Firstly, Safaricom home fiber service isn’t available around the neighbourhood i stay in. My only option was to get the Safaricom GIGA box; a 4G tv digital box with hotspot. Secondly, its GIGA box is expensive. You don’t get a bundled service. You pay for the box and then buy data as well.

So that wasn’t my way to go and somehow that seemed to be the issue with other providers like Faiba and Airtel. You buy the 4G router and then buy data. As a consolation, these others have lower data prices for much more data sizes than Safaricom. For reliability, I opted to get a Safaricom 4G sim card and hotspot from my phone. I didn’t see it worthwhile to get a 6,000 KSH or 9,999 KSH router. The only issue is I’m a big data user. Safaricom’s 10Gb weekly data bundle of 999 KSH finished before mid-week. My going for their free unlimited WhatsApp bundle proved a scam, lol, literally.

Why not Zuku?

I hadn’t looked into Zuku because I hadn’t seen any customer care shop in my hood. There was this one time i was returning from Naivas when I was approached by a Zuku sales agent. She gave me a brochure with Zuku data packages and pricing. My only question was, is Zuku fiber service available in this area and reliable? To which she replied yes. oh, I had a second question, how soon can this be done? As soon as you pay. Perfect! I then remembered that guest houses, Airbnb apartments and hotels I had stayed in during previous visits had Zuku and it worked very well for me. Zuku also had my attention with FREE INSTALLATION and Unlimited data. These sounded like music to the ears of a heavy data consumer. Technically most fiber internet services come with free installation. I was like bring it on.

So i called Doreen the sales agent i had met and spoken to and asked for the service to be installed in my apartment. I was ready to give it a try but not commit whole heartedly. Here’s why. A day to when it will be installed, i saw a tweet from another friend wishing Zuku good bye. I reached out and it was more like run away whilst you still can.

For me at that moment it was the better option; unlimited data for a month and i was ready to try an alternative. So i went in for the internet only (Zuku has internet, TV and phone call) service. I didn’t need the others. I have a digital smart tv and will only loose out on a few Zuku channels. The Zuku phone, calls other zuku lines for free but pays more to other networks per-second. I’ll pass, thank you.

The thing with African internet service providers is when they give you unlimited data they can’t give you a higher internet speed as well and vice versa. In testing the service I decided to go in for the Zuku fiber 5 Mbps internet speed package which costs 2,499 KSH.

Review using Zuku Fiber Home Internet

According to Zuku “the performance of Internet component of the Services depends on the number of concurrent users. And customer may experience degraded performance the more the number of concurrent users“. The internet speed has been what I paid for. Never exceeding 5MBps and never lower than 3MBps. I really don’t have to worry about this and even with heavy usage and a lot of devices connected it works great with a few buffering’s. I have concurrently streamed HD videos from YouTube on the smart Tv and streamed live sport on my laptop. Skype and WhatsApp video and audio calls have been excellent.

I have had moments during the night when the internet had blanked out on me but its returned shortly. I’ved had to restart the router if it takes more than 5 minutes. But i am yet to have to call support service for assistance.

I was suprised to recieve a Zuku customer care support call checking up on me after 4 days of usage. Wanting to know if service quality was great and if i had queries or needed any help. Good customer care relationship is always good isn’t it?

All in all, i think I made a great call and I’m saving. Hopefully, this rosy relationship doesn’t turn sour. If it does I will come and tell you in a post update.

Visit the Zuku website for more details on their packages, locations etc. If you want to confirm some other details or have the service set up for you call Doreen[0710 305 250].

Some take away. *Make sure the internet service is available in your hood. *Find out from neighbours if it works. If it sounds like it is half and half, see if the benefits are more to you and you won’t lose much. Then make up your mind about it. You can give it a month’s trial and if it works, good. If they become shitty and you begin to hate them, eeerrrr just move on, lol.

Update 2021: Included “Update: Two years on from when I posted this it is still going great.” to the post.

[jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_placeholder=”Enter your email address” show_subscribers_total=”false” button_on_newline=”false” submit_button_text=”Hi,
sign up so you can get the latest
in breaking news, reviews,
opinions, events,
opportunities and
community updates right
in your inbox. ” custom_font_size=”16px” custom_border_radius=”0″ custom_border_weight=”1″ custom_padding=”15″ custom_spacing=”10″ submit_button_classes=”” email_field_classes=”” show_only_email_and_button=”true”]

Check out other stories making the news in the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East.