Ask Paul: July 11 (Premium)

Happy Friday! We’re back in Mexico, the weather is cool and wet, and I’m exhausted from a lack of sleep. So this is the ideal time to get the weekend started a bit early so I can wind down. But first…

? It ain’t over until the fat lady Samsungs

dremy1011 asks:

Curious how your move to Samsung went, and when you think you’ll release you’re “final” thoughts (is anything ever final)?

In From the Editor’s Desk: Interstitial (Premium), I mentioned that I wanted to finish up as many laptop reviews as possible before we came to Mexico because the logistics of bringing these things back and forth can be a nightmare. What I didn’t mention was that my Samsung Galaxy S25+ review was impacted by this as well. Phones are much easier to travel with, so I brought three of those here as well.

I don’t write device reviews in a single sitting, of course, and as with my laptop reviews, I start with a template-based empty document so I can keep notes in there as I go. So I’ve worked quite a bit on that review over the past two months. But I’ve also been thinking about tackling this from a different angle.

Back in May, I wrote about how much I like One UI 7, which Samsung first delivered with the Galaxy S25 family of phones, and since then, I’ve been using the One UI 8 beta, which is tied to Android 16, with new features being rolled out over time. (I’m also using the latest Android betas on my Pixel 9 Pro XL.)

Also, there’s a story in there somewhere about how OS releases are no longer events for the most part (Apple being a partial exception) because all the big platform makers just release features over time now, and there are pros and cons to that. JR Raphael touches on this in his latest article about Android, and that starts off with an interesting overview of the differences between Android and iPhone, or really those two ecosystems, which is something I think about a lot. “When people ask me about the difference between Android devices and an iPhone these days, my answer is almost shockingly simple: It’s all about choice,” he writes. And then expands on.

I find that moving between platforms, desktop or mobile, can be instructive. For Mexico, I moved my phone number to the iPhone for a few reasons, including its superior battery life and the major changes coming in iOS 26 (and across the board with Apple’s other products). But I have a Google Fi data eSIM in the Samsung and enough notes and experiences over two months for the review. And I do keep using it. And switching between those phones, and to the Pixel as well, is always interesting. It’s a mix of pros and cons. Which I guess is why I wrote The Perfect Phone (Premium). My opinion of which is “best” (for me) shifts as new features arrive on whatever platform, but my opinion that none of them are really best continues. They all have things I like and things I miss when I’m using a different device.

For the Galaxy S25+ specifically, the two biggest wins are its incredible light weight compared to the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Pixel, and One UI 7/8, which I see as a sort of mashup of Samsung and Google ideas and an early peek at some things others will finally get in some future Android 16 upgrade. And there are lots of other things to like, of course, like the general performance, the gorgeous display, and so on. But the things I miss when using other phones are the light weight, which is meaningful, and One UI.

There are negatives, of course. The battery life isn’t great, and I’m surprised it’s not any better than that of my Pixel. And then there are things that are maybe better described as ecosystem implications, most tied to things that Apple gets right and/or has just been particularly successful with. AirPlay is one, in part because I have a lot of Sonos speakers at home and I do not want to use the Sonos app; on an Apple device, I can use any app I want, and AirPlay will manage the speakers. MagSafe is another one: Samsung has MagSafe-compatible cases, but it’s not just built into the phone as it should be, and I very much prefer a Samsung case that does not have this. So you fool around with flat, circular magnets that you can stick to the phone or a case and hope it works well enough with the MagSafe car mount you use. Which they do not.

I often complain about how Samsung piles on redundant apps and services, and one of the things I’ve explicitly done with the Galaxy S25+ is just give in–similar to my recent articles about OneDrive Folder backup and Microsoft Edge–by accepting the terms of every Samsung license agreement (and there are a lot of those) and enabling every single Samsung AI feature available and just trying to have that Samsung experience. I haven’t uninstalled any Samsung apps, and while I don’t use a lot of these things regularly, I’ve tried them all, and I’ve just tried to adjust to this and see if it’s in any way OK or even desirable. And I have a lot to say about that, but for now, I’ll just say that it’s mostly OK.

But that’s also why I’ve been thinking about handling this review differently. I may not. But I wonder if there isn’t a way to discuss this differently than in a straight-up review. Maybe it should just be separate. But with the understanding that everyone’s needs/wants are different, I do like the Galaxy S25+ quite a bit, and I could see myself just using it going forward, and I feel like most people who aren’t diehard Apple fans would love it as well. It’s a great phone.

Anyway. I will post a review or something like a review next week. When I look at this trip and the schedule, I have two laptop reviews to post, more to get to when we’re home in August/September, and whatever else. But that review and the two laptop reviews are the big reviews I want to get finished this month.

? NAS love

DKRowe asks:

Didn’t see the NAS in the list of items brought to Mexico this trip. How is that project going?

The NAS has been a success beyond my expectations. It’s been a while since I provided an update, but there are reasons for that. One is that I just need to use the thing over time and make sure it works reliably and doesn’t at some point start showing some warning signs. But I’m also still not sure exactly what the second NAS will be, and there’s a timing issue just tied to money: I don’t want to put this on a credit card or whatever, I want to pay for it and be done.

Each of these is coming together, but the short version is that there will be a second Synology NAS this year, and one of the two will be coming to Mexico.

To me, the NAS is mostly about addressing two concerns: My day-to-day work, which was the happiest surprise with Synology, thanks to Synology Drive, and then the archival bit, where I can have a local copy of all my work and personal data over time that I control and is safe/redundant and accessible. Beyond that, there are less important use cases like media sharing, which I’ll rarely use but do spend time on, and other Synology/NAS functionality that may/may not be useful. For example, there’s a Google Docs-like Synology Office solution that I do want to at least look at even though I don’t have any plans or even thoughts about switching to that. Whatever, it’s all worth examining.

From a day-to-day work perspective, my workflow hasn’t changed much over the years at a high level, but the specifics have changed a lot. In short, any transition needs to be either seamless or so much better that having to do some work is worthwhile. So I have these folders I work out of–To do, Book, etc.–and moving from OneDrive to Google Drive was mostly seamless, as was the more recent move to Synology. But there was one thing that didn’t work in Google Drive that I can’t explain. If I store a Visual Studio-based project in OneDrive so that it syncs to all my PCs, it works flawlessly. If I try to do this with Google Drive, it fails, Visual Studio just doesn’t work. So over the period of time I was using Google Drive, I had to keep my coding projects in OneDrive. Not a big deal, OneDrive is on all my PCs too. But weird, and it’s vaguely better to have everything in one place. With Synology Drive, this seems to work fine. I can store everything I’m doing in that one place, it all syncs everywhere, and it seems to work perfectly. Again, time will tell. But so far, so good, and it’s been about two months.

With regard to the second NAS, the simplest thing for me to do is just get a duplicate of what I already have, sync them up, and bring one to Mexico. But I have been researching whether it makes more sense for me to get a higher-end NAS with more drive bays so that I could use the additional drives for local backup. If I do that, I would bring the original, smaller NAS to Mexico and use the new one in Pennsylvania. If not, it doesn’t matter which I use where, of course, but I would then add external USB storage to the one in PA for local backup. Just buying a higher-end NAS would be more expensive, of course, and that’s before getting two more drives. But if it makes sense, I would do it. I’d have to get a two-drive external USB solution for backup regardless.

But even if I just get the same NAS with the same memory upgrade and drives, that’s about $1000, and I’m not exactly swimming in extra money. So this was always going to be a July thing, as I knew I had some Leanpub royalties arriving then that would cover the cost. When I bought the first NAS, I wasn’t sure when we were coming back to Mexico, but now we’re here, of course, and we’ll be here through early August. The Leanpub royalties arrived last week, which was too close to this trip to get the second NAS. So between now and our return home, I will figure out which NAS to get, and then I’ll order it just before we go home. I’ll configure that in August/September, link up the two, and then I’ll bring one of them to Mexico the next time we come to Mexico. Likely at the end of September.

I also need to get a UPS for Mexico, but I’ll order that here. And a third Eero wireless node for Mexico, so I can wired the NAS into it, and that will be another couple of hundred bucks. Which, come to think of it, is something I should have done for this trip so it could just be here waiting for the NAS. I always forget something.

But it’s all coming together. And the Synology NAS experience has been nothing other than extremely positive. We had a power outage in Pennsylvania while we were in Boston over a long weekend, and when the power came back up, an old alarm in the condo that we don’t use started ringing (I was alerted by my HomePods, plus Eero tells me when it’s down), and so I had my brother-in-law go there to turn it off. But also to turn on the NAS: It didn’t come up after the power outage either, because I had neglected to enable that feature. It’s enabled now. But that’s another thing to test over time, and not the type of thing I want to fake just to make sure it works. I’m sure we’ll lose power again, lol. Here, too, I guess.

Speaking of which …

? Maybe Mexico isn’t the best place for smart home

Anlong08 asks:

I was thinking about your Mexico camera setup as well as the nas and future nas. Would some sort of SD WAN make sense? I know Ubiquity products can be a polarizing topic to some in the networking world but their line may have something that hits the price/performance/ease of setup mark. There’s probably some network admins here that could chime in with thoughts, I certainly am not one. It certainly won’t change the batteries for you.

As I was putting the camera back together–the sync module had failed while we were away for some reason, and I added a bigger battery pack, as described in From the Editor’s Desk: Interstitial (Premium)–I had a thought, and not for the first time, that I kind of wish the camera was better. It’s fine for what it is, and it was inexpensive. But it’s only 1080p, doesn’t have a way to zoom in or adjust the view in any way, and the edges of the picture are horribly skewed, as per an ultra-wide lens. So there’s the possibility of going in some other direction. I like the Blink software/service enough that I’d stick with that if it made sense. But the camera I have, a Blink Outdoor 4, is the only outdoor camera they offer. There is no upgrade.

Somewhat tied to this, Stephanie and I have discussed whether it makes sense to have a smart door lock of some kind and possibly a smart water sensor for the laundry room, where the water heater and main water shut-off valve are. This is especially important because we’re not here for much of each year. And now even more so because our neighbor across the gap between the two “towers” (they’re only six stories tall) that make up this building did have a water leak. And it was triggered by seismic activity (most likely) and the way the building was constructed. So it’s possible that continued shifts will cause a similar leak here. And if that happens when we’re away, it might not be caught quickly enough to avoid serious damage to our apartment and then below us.

The camera isn’t exactly mission-critical. It’s not a security thing, it’s just a view away from the building that’s basically due west, towards where the sun sets. We like the view, and it’s neat to be able to check in on it when we’re away. So it’s not necessary per se. And if we do expand on the otherwise non-existent smart home functionality we have here, it doesn’t all have to be on the same platform/system.

But even the camera we do have could be “better” in the sense that it could be wired to power. It would be, too, if we just had a power outlet out on the balcony. But we don’t, so I use batteries, and given the year-ish of uptime you get with just two AAAs, I’m OK with that. But we could get a power outlet out there, or drill a hole in the wall and thread a wire inside to the power there. And in one of life’s great coincidences, the guy who would do that work is visiting today to see about fixing a couple of blinds. He’s done some incredible electrical work for us already, and I will ask him about this. Again, it’s not necessary, but having a way to get power out on the balcony would certainly be useful for this, a future camera upgrade, or whatever else.

I also know from our experiences with smart home technology in our house in Pennsylvania that less is more. And I’m not sure I need to overthink this. Our electricity and Internet services are more reliable here than they are back home, but outages can still occur, and do very occasionally. Is it worth building in some form of reliability/redundancy, as I plan to with the NAS and a UPS? Probably not for a camera that’s not in any way necessary. But if we do go with a smart door lock and/or water sensor, that might be more necessary. We have neighbors/friends here with keys to get into our apartment and vice versa for emergencies. But they travel and are away sometimes too.

My thinking on this isn’t as far along as is the case with the NAS(es), but it’s an ongoing concern and something I will need to address one way or the other at some point.

? Book it

helix2301 asks:

Like I said I’m working on a book. My question is when do you get to point of saying ok let me release it. I know you are always adding to the book. So my question is the initial release when do you say ok that’s enough to release is it based on chapter, word count or just your feeling on book.

There is literally no way to answer this. Put another way, there are a million answers to this.

It depends. On the book. The topic. You. The audience. How you’re publishing it. And so on.

I have tried different approaches over time. And I always talk to others who write books, curious about how they do things. My stupid brain can get in the way, for sure. With the most recent book, Eternal Spring, there was (still is) this worry about not being a true subject expert and needing/wanting to get it right. So we started down this path a year ago April but didn’t publish the first incomplete version for readers to buy until December. And it’s still not done, though it has gotten longer/better over time, and we’ll keep working on it.

For that book, like the Windows 11 Field Guide, there were two related concerns. One, I use a service, Leanpub, that’s designed for authors who want to publish a book in incomplete form, update it over time, and still allow readers to buy it while it’s in progress. And two, the desire to have enough content that someone might want to actually buy it, even though it will be incomplete. As soon as Microsoft announced Windows 11, I knew I’d be writing a book. But then I decided to write it over from scratch rather than just update the Windows 10 Field Guide (stupid brain again), and that took a lot of time.

Since I’m on this, I should mention that I’m likewise mixing things up for the next book. That is, the Windows 11 Field Guide will follow the model we use with Eternal Spring, where there will be annual editions instead of just updating the same edition for some indeterminate period of time. That’s something I should have done long ago, but tied to that, I also want the book to be shorter, and it’s just gotten too long. This is the opposite of not knowing when to publish something new, but not really: The next edition, Windows 11 Field Guide 25H2 Edition, will likely be a different book, too. Not completely rewritten, per se, but shrunken down and more of a reference. I’m working on that now, and I haven’t really written about the change yet because I’m still not 100 percent sure of the format. I’m experimenting with specific chapters and different styles. (In fact, I plan to work on that a bit today.)

So that’s a lot of machinations, and that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It’s also me. You’re different, and you will do things differently. Which is absolutely correct.

So the “when” of publishing, whether it’s tied to word or chapter count, or any other metric, is a personal decision. My desire to offer value even in incomplete form is either laudable or ridiculous; it’s hard to say. But even though I can defend it, I can also admit that it gets in the way. Some people publish their work in real time as they write. For example, when Andy Weir was writing The Martian, he did so over time as a series of blog posts, and the initial book publication was a 99-cent Kindle eBook. When Mark Russinovich wrote his first fiction title, Zero Day, he did so privately and then shopped it to publishers as a complete work. There are probably a nearly infinite number of ways to do this.

I guess my advice here is to do what makes sense for you, which is like not giving any advice at all, I know. I wish I wasn’t so wrapped up in doing things the way I do them, and there’s no good reason for me not publishing my last two books more quickly and in less complete form. I regret that, and I will try not to do that with the next book. But in experimenting with new formats, I’m just engaging in another form of procrastination, really.

And that might be my only good advice. Don’t be like me. Meaning, don’t let yourself get in the way.