The car that used to be my white whale

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This post was originally written for Oppositelock, but with the impending death of Kinja user blogs, I’m reposting it here.

The Volkswagen 1-Liter-Auto concept, from 2002. It was one of Ferdinand Piech’s three projects designed to create a corporate culture of cheating to make the boss happy as halo cars to demonstrate the technical prowess of Volkswagen – the other two being the Phaeton and the Veyron. The Phaeton’s goal was to be the best luxury sedan in the world, the Veyron’s to be the fastest car in the world while still being easy to drive, and the 1-Liter-Auto’s goal was… to consume 1 liter of fuel for every 100 kilometers, or in ‘murrican units, 235 miles per US gallon. And, it had to do this while actually being capable of decent speeds – top speed was 120 km/h, or about 75 mph.

Continue reading “The car that used to be my white whale”

A Primer on Hybrids, part 1

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This post was originally written for Oppositelock, but with the potentially impending death of Kinja user blogs, I’m reposting it here.

Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid system

As a hybrid enthusiast who’s noticed quite a few questions about hybrids here on Oppo (as well as on Jalopnik), I thought it might be useful to write up a primer on hybrid technology, the various configurations of hybrid systems that are out there, and what all of that means.

Continue reading “A Primer on Hybrids, part 1”

Dieselgate and CO2 emissions

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In case you’ve been living under a rock, Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions testing with their 2009-2016 diesels. Recently, a proposed settlement including a buyback program (as well as, potentially, a fix) has been announced for the 2009-2015 2.0 liter vehicles. One concern, however, is the CO2 emissions impact of this buyback – both in terms of manufacturing emissions, and in terms of fuel consumption. Continue reading “Dieselgate and CO2 emissions”

Windows 10 DPI scaling and window positioning issues on laptops

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If you’re using a Windows 10 laptop at anything other than the default scaling factor for your display, you may encounter an issue where closing the lid causes your window positions and sizes to be forgotten. I discovered this on my MacBook Pro Retina, which I run at 100% scaling (the default is 200%). This may also apply on Windows 8.1, but I haven’t tried it on this hardware. Continue reading “Windows 10 DPI scaling and window positioning issues on laptops”

Quick guide on upgrading a WinBook TW700 to Windows 10

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It’s rather tricky to get Windows 10 onto a WinBook TW700, between WIMBoot’s inefficiency, the inability to delete things from the preload, and the limited storage available on a TW700, so I thought I’d write this quick guide on how to get the device updated. These instructions should work on any WIMBoot device – or, for that matter, any Windows 8.1 Update (and possibly earlier versions of Windows, I’m not sure if Win10 will run from 8.0 or 8.1 pre-Update) device that’s short on space. Please note that your profile and apps will NOT be migrated – I’d use User State Migration Tool, from Windows 10’s Assessment and Deployment Kit, to save profiles, and then restore them after you have the device reloaded. I’ve not used USMT in quite a few years, though.

Following this procedure will result in the loss of all data and applications on the device, and I will not be held responsible for data loss as a result. You are responsible for ensuring that you can get everything restored.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Two USB thumb drives of 8 GiB or larger capacity (one of these may not be necessary)
  • A MicroSD card or a third USB thumb drive of 8 GiB or larger capacity
  • A USB hub, keyboard, and mouse (shouldn’t be necessary, but it’s useful in case something goes wrong)

Here’s the procedure that I followed in a nutshell:

  1. Create a USB recovery drive and put it in a safe place. This will allow you to go back to the factory preload at any time. This is a good practice even if you plan on staying on Windows 8.1.
  2. Reset your PC (Microsoft directions, go to “Remove everything and reinstall Windows”). This is necessary to get free space back.
  3. When the Out-of-Box Experience comes up, connect to a wireless network, but do not log in using a Microsoft account (you don’t want any OneDrive data downloaded), and disable Windows Update (you do not want updates taking up the storage space you just freed).
  4. Use the Media Creation Tool on another Windows machine to create a install USB drive for Windows 10 Home 32-bit English (US), then connect that USB drive to the tablet and run setup.exe on it. You may not need to do this, it may be possible to use the Media Creation Tool’s ability to update the computer it’s running on, but I played it safe.
  5. The Windows 10 installer will mention that you need more space to install. Either use a USB hub to connect another thumb drive, or insert a MicroSD card, and select that drive in the installer.
  6. I personally chose to change the settings that would have migrated my profile and apps, and chose to only install the OS. This one’s up to you, though.
  7. Proceed to wait a while, while Windows 10 is installed. There may be a few points where the device freezes during boot, just shut the device off by holding the power button down, then release the power button, wait 5 seconds, and press it again, it will proceed normally.
  8. Go through the Out-of-Box Experience and adjust settings to your liking. Once this is complete, the device may be sluggish for a while, as it’s performing a lot of background tasks (updates, driver installations, and the like). Let it complete these before continuing.
  9. Delete your previous version of Windows. Why keep it around, when it’s just the preload missing the software that came with it, and you’ve got a thumb drive with the USB recovery drive?
  10. Somewhere along the way, a driver update will have happened, and Windows will have decided to run at 125% zoom. If you like this, leave it alone. If you don’t, go to Settings, System, Display, and change the size of text, apps, and other items to 100%. Do note that Modern UI apps are rendered smaller than in Windows 8 (and currently don’t appear to respect the system scaling setting), and Universal apps tend to have smaller UI elements than Modern UI apps did in Windows 8. However, Win32 apps are rendered the same at 100% as in Windows 8. This one’s up to personal preference, really.

That’s all there is to it. (Well, there may need to be a Bluetooth driver update, I haven’t checked that fully yet…) There’s still some glitches in Win10 (the on-screen keyboard only really works the way it did before when in a Universal app – Modern UI apps at 100% don’t quite behave right, and Win32 apps don’t move out of the way at all), but generally, things should work. And, it’s faster, lower RAM usage, and lower disk usage than before (Win10 has a much better compression mechanism).

WinBook TW700 first impressions, survival guide

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So, Micro Center is selling Windows 8.1 tablets for $60. No, really. That includes a Windows license, a quad core Atom (that’s right, this isn’t even RT), an IPS display, and a friggin’ Office 365 Personal license (even with rights to install on a desktop or laptop)! Now, it does only have 1 GiB RAM, and worse, only 16 GiB of eMMC, so there were corners cut. However, even with those limitations, the price really does seem a bit too good to be true.

Then again, it’s only $60, and Micro Center does take returns (and there are plenty of open box units for $48, although I strongly suggest avoiding those for a couple of reasons), so… I ultimately couldn’t resist (if nothing else, it’ll be a decent device for running the excellent VCDS Volkswagen diagnostic tool by Ross-Tech), and I’m typing this post on it. Continue reading “WinBook TW700 first impressions, survival guide”