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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I have been with idrive since 2009. At the time they were the only ones that allowed backups of network attached storage on their cheaper personal plans. Everyone else saw that as an “enterprise” feature which required a business plan. Which was bullsh*t, because lots of home NAS devices were being sold.

    Anyway, I haven’t done a recent comparison of services, but I remain happy with idrive.

    Thesedays I no longer backup on a computer with a mapped drive, but directly from my NAS which runs the idrive software.

    I had a catastrophic dual drive failure a few years ago, one failed and another failed during the raid rebuild! I was able to restore about 1tb of data and didn’t lose anything important.

    They also offer backup and restore by shipping a drive to you if you want to avoid the huge initial backup or a total restore, but I haven’t used that feature.

    They do also have a mobile app, but last time I tried it, it wasn’t great.


  • I’ve been a bit stuck on Samsung phones.

    If I think about why, it’s mainly due to two things, in order of importance:

    1. One UI and Samsung Goodlock. I’m probably going to get roasted for this, but I like Samsung’s UI a lot more than other varieties of Android. When My Note 10 went in for repairs in 2021, a friend lent me their Pixel 6 Pro (they didn’t like it and went back to an I iPhone) For me it felt very basic and I was happy to go back to my Note. People hate on Samsung’s UI, but I reckon it’s gotten really good in the last few years.

    2. The S-Pen. I’m not using it constantly, but I am using it several times a week and love having it there. Main uses for me are not to make notes (I’d rather type). I use it as a shutter button, planting my phone somewhere stable and taking less shaky photos. I use it to edit photos, so much better than using my finger. I use it to sign documents (probably only about once a month but it’s so handy to have it when you need it).

    I do also like Dex for when I’m on holidays and I can plug it into a hotel TV with my mini Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. But that only gets used once or twice a year so I could live without it.

    Given the above, I feel like Samsung has me by the b*lls right now when it comes to phones! I don’t know if that would be described as “loyalty”, but I have been sticking with the brand.




  • Using Authy. Pretty happy with it. It’s key feature for me has been the ability to easily restore if you lose, reset or upgrade your device, without having to mess around with your own backup and syncing.

    Would suck to reset your phone and discover the sync had failed and the backup was not up to date.

    I would like to have it on Wear OS though…






  • Galaxy S23 Ultra

    Best things: long battery life and versatile camera (zoom options open up some great creativity)

    Worst thing: size and weight. Top tier phones have gotten just a bit too big now. My old Note 10+ was ideally the biggest comfortable size.

    BTW my summary on the S23U would be: it’s a great all-rounder. You might find a phone that does this one thing better or that other thing better, but the S23U seems to do a very good job of everything. It’s definitely by far the most enjoyable user experience of any phone I’ve ever owned.