Tag Archives: review

The T-Bao TBook R8 – 5 Weeks On

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It’s been 5 weeks since that nice gentleman from DPD delivered the epitomy of chinese computing to my doorstep. Since then it has aquired a few scratches, admiring looks in the office, and I have a bit more experience with it. So far, the experience has been 80% positive. As expected, it’s not particularly a powerhouse. While zippy in most applications, it seems to struggle with large pdf files (audibly giving MusicBee or MediaPlayer a hard time while playback), it’s file transfer rate between devices is atrocious (max speed 15Mbit/s) – I am sure there is a connection somewhere. If I had any clue about its hardware architecture, I would probably be able to comment on it, but its motherboard is as obscure as they come and google resistant (if you’re interested in this sort of thing, here’s its dmesg). Which brings us to the next point: OpenBsd/Linux installation seems to be a genuine slog due to its -ahem- idiosyncracies, so I didn’t even attempt it, although I am sure it would benefit from a leaner operating system such as LXDE. The built in wifi is atrocious, as are its speakers, but this is remediable with an external USB wifi dongle and an audiocable.

Ok, enough moaning.

On the plus side, it runs an up to date Windows 10 (currently 1803) and Office 2016 without any issues. Unsurprisingly it doesn’t like more than 3 or 4 resource hungry applications running at the same time, but it’s perfectly usable. I have used it as a base station with external keyboard, mouse and monitor quite happily, and after some research found that the official Intel update software will keep its drivers up to date. Both my VPN and Anti-Virus software seem to be needing only a few CPU cycles, making it not the quickest, but certainly the most cost-effective laptop I have ever owned. It would be nice if T-Bao released a tool to control the mouse pad (the usual windows drivers seem to ignore it) to address its sensitivities, but these are minor quibbles. Most importantly, the MacBook Pro has been replaced by the T-Bao as my ‘on the road’ laptop: I can’t afford an uptodate MBP, so it’s nice to not expose it to the rough and tumble of mobile working for the moment.

This blue wonderlaptop continues to deliver. Long may it be so.

Buying recommendation: idiot proof.

The cheapest 15.6 inch laptop ever?

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I recently discovered the joys of Chinese online distributors. It’s not really my fault, but Germany’s leading technology magazine “C’T” featured one of their yearly robotic vacuum cleaner tests in last month’s edition, and for some reason the best girlfriend ever suggested contributing to the test’s best performer, the (admittedly amazing) Xiaomi Roborock S50 2. While it unfortunately sends architectural schematics of my groundfloor and my network details back to China, it really does an excellent job of cleaning the place and swallowing the crumbs and garlic pieces I seem to be distributing around the place. But vacuuming is beside the point here. Now that I am on the books of the Chinese distributor of the contraption, they keep sending me offers of more delicious technology, so I obviously had a look at their laptops. Browsing brands I’d never heard of, I came across the T-Bao Tbook R8.

The ad promised me a 15.6″ screen laptop for £156 pounds, with another 20 quid for shipping and insurance. A 15.6″ inch laptop for under 200 pounds? “Hell yes”, to quote Ed Milliband, so I pulled the trigger, and less than one week it’s here on my lap. First impressions are what I expected: a bigger version of my Pinebook, with a very similar feel to the plastic, keyboard and trackpad. A tiny ‘welcome’ piece of paper, no manual and a far too short AC adaptor cable with a universal plug. So far, so expected. Its hardware specs make it clear that this is no gaming laptop: 4GB of RAM, 64 GB of EMMC storage, an Intel Cherry Trail X5-Z8530 CPU (a recent Atom, as far as I understand), Intel HD 400 graphics, one 2.0, one 3.0 USB slot, a rubbish webcam, a micro SD card slot and headphone output. Nothing to be excited about. Have a look at an unboxing ceremony by those lovely people from OSReviews here:

64GB storage is – I am sorry to say – not a biggie anymore. While my Sinclair ZX-81 had 1kb ram -which I was perfectly content with for ca 1 week – 64GB pretty much covers your cousin’s wedding in pics and movies these days, so I was a bit sceptical whether I could turn this into a work – laptop. Nevertheless, it seems to work out ok: Windows 10, Office 2016, various small tools and – most importantly – my work related files on my iCloud drive – seem to need exactly 40GB. That leaves me enough space for potential updates and any additional media (Music/Movies) that can be stored on a SD card.

   

How does it feel working with it? Surprisingly good: the keyboard is a step up from the terrible Pinebook keyboard (though it does look remarkably similar) and is generously sized, though the keypad is, as expected, not great. This is not going to be such an issue for desktop work, as one would use an external mouse, but it will need some adaption to not impede workflows. Speedwise, I can’t complain: with Spotify streaming to my AVR, Outlook downloading bits and bobs and Firefox having 3 windows open, the CPU reports 63% load (though 80% memory in use). It nevertheless feels super-zippy and the display is very comfortable on the eyes. The Cherry Trail CPU has a very modest power consumption, so battery life is pretty good and will last you at least 4 hours while doing routine stuff. I have to admit that I haven’t tried any graphics – heavy applications (though I might give the GIMP a go later), but this is not what I bought the laptop for. The built-in WiFI is pretty rubbish, but a small a/c/n 3.0 USB wifi adapter has dealt with this beautifully. The DAC seems to be ok as I had loads of fun with my headphones on, listening to Spotify.

So, in conclusion:

Pros

Price, Keyboard, Screen, Power Consumption, Speed, Silent

Cons

Keypad, Connectivity, Storage, RAM

Is this the perfect low cost laptop? Undobtedly, yes. Find me a similarly handsome, zippy machine for this price, and I will eat my Pinebook. Is this the perfect laptop? No. It’s certainly no Power Mac (still my go to machine for all ‘professional’ work’), nor a Thinkpad, but for 156 quid with its great keyboard and limited, but acceptable functionality it’s a no-brainer.

 

Matt Bianco: Gravity

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It’s only been 7 months since Mark Fisher’s death, and we already have new Matt Bianco album. I didn’t know what to think about that. For me, Matt Bianco meant Mark Fisher’s catchy keyboard harmonies and Mark Reilly’s characteristic voice (I know, there was a different Matt Bianco with Danny and Basia, but that never did it for me). My favourite MB tunes were all Fisher/Reilly collaborations, so with him gone it was difficult for me to imagine what a Fisherless MB album would sound like.

While Fisher was ill, Reilly already collaborated with the dutch alternative jazzers New Cool Collective. I quite liked what they came up with: the album had some cracking tunes and I liked the New Cool Collectives idiosyncratic melange of brass and rhythm. So for the next Matt Bianco album Reilly again switched musicians: out are long time collaborators and studio heroes such as Tony Remy, Andrew Ross, Nick Cohen, Simon Finch, in are Graham Harvey (him of Incognito), Magnus Lindgren (Scandinavian Sax wunderkind), Dave O’Higgins (ditto, just not Scandinavian and already on Gran Via’s ‘Victim of Love’) , Geoff Gascoyne (British jazz bass legend) and Martin Shaw (Trumpeter extraordinaire). Elizabeth Troy – who got the background vocals job after Hazel Sim left) was allowed to stay.

So, all new personnel, new sound? Definitely, yesyes.

Out are the sequencers, the drum computers and electronic percussion. No more layered synthesizer harmonies, appregiatos and funky rhythm guitars. This is Reilly accompanied by classic acoustic jazz band, doing a Kurt Elling impersonation. This is not meant as a slight, as it works really well. A longstanding joke between the three remaining Matt Bianco fans is that you usually get two or three cracking songs per album (that’s ten pound per song if you order the Japanes import), and Reilly and his collaborators don’t disappoint: ‘Heart in chains’ and ‘Before it’s too late’ are excellent, and up there with the best of 30 years of Matt Bianco.

The album has been on heavy rotation at Chez Fordiebianco’s for 6 weeks now (tolerated by the best girlfriend ever – some sort of compliment, I’m sure) and I am still enjoying it. If you think about it, becoming more jazzy was always on the cards as Fisher and Reilly became more mature. HiFi Bossanova was already halfway there, so it feels natural that Reilly and the Jamie Cullen Band (which is what his marry men apparently are) have just progressed to where they should be.

This is a beautiful album that is beautifully produced and as such deserves a first class hifi system.

Nice one, Mark.

China delivers. Again.

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Hello!

The tubification of the household continues. After the introduction of one of Aric Audio‘s pre-amplifiers to the livingroom’s audio chain I was on a roll: what I needed now was similar tubey, valvey goodness for the man cave upstairs. I already had a lovely little pre-amplifier from the nice man at BTE-Design and another chunky Marantz SM-80 to drive the rather power hungry KEF LS-50s, but what was missing was a DAC that could deliver tubey, valvey goodness and decode the bits and bytes coming from the computers in the man cave.  Many audio forums were scrutinised, hours were spend on ebay, and in the end the Xiang Sheng DAC 01-A, a tube DAC and headphone amp was chosen. Recently updated with a new XMOS-U8 USB interface supporting DSD64 and 128, this was future proof for more high res music and backwards compatible enough to play my old 128k MP3s from 2001. Doukmall from Ebay again delivered on time and on budget and for £150 there was really not that much risk.

As promised, ten days later a package from China arrived, direct from the manufacturer,  XiangSheng Electronic Co in Hefei. DHL get around, don’t they?

Well packaged, with a moderately readable instruction booklet its compact and has loads of inputs:

USB, optical, coax and two analog inputs. The outputs are straight analog or tube enhanced.

Sorry, didn’t have a banana at hand.

If you want to, you can open it up and switch the jumpers to turn it into a pre-amp instead, rendering the headphone amp obsolete. Xiang Shen’s custumer service was quick to help with any questions and the unit has been working faultlessly ever since it arrived. To play higher resolution tracks via the USB 2.0 interface, you’ll have to download XMOS’s driver which is ubiquitous on the net and which works well on Windows 10.  It sounds brillant, with significant improvement to my last DAC, even though that was significantly more expensive. Another win for China MidFi. I certainly bow to our new Chinese MidFi Overlords.

 

 

Douk Audio Mini Valve Tube Phono Turntable Preamplifier MM Stereo Class A Preamp

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Quite the title, innit? This is the official (well, the seller’s) title of the newest piece in my one of my audio chains. Do I have more than one? Embarassingly, yes. I know. The best girlfriend ever fortunately has never been able to identify the small black boxes that appear and disappear on the IKEA shelf next to the TV and usually doesn’t notice when there’s one more or less. At present there’s one more. The “Douk Audio Mini Valve Tube Phono Turntable Preamplifier MM Stereo Class A Preamp”. Which it, I can reassure you, it is what it says on the tin. I wasn’t aware that there were class A preamps (with tubes no less) but a quick Google search confirmed that this wasn’t a marketing gag. On the other hand, I have seen catchier pre-amp names. Saga or Lync come to mind.

Anyway, the above mentioned piece of kit has been available for on ebay and various retailers of Chinese Hi-Fi and for £54 is not so expensive that when it explodes it leaves a particular bitter taste in your mouth (apart from the chemicals and the small glass tube pieces in your chin) but dear enough to be moderately reassuring. Douk Audio is one of the  brands of Shenzhen Cavins Technology ( Nobsound [yes, really] being the other one), and they seem to be flooding the market with affordable tube gear for tube-curious . Read the classic audio geek/nerd/anorak sites like DIYaudio or Audiokarma , and you get the impression that these things are walking, er, delivered death traps, full of unsafe soldiering, incomplete grounding, dodgy contacts. Well, this one didn’t have point to point soldering but – as far as I can see – comes on a PCB board. Delivery took reasonable 5 days and after unboxing, this was what I found in the little package:

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…which, after a bit more unpacking, revealed this (sorry, didn’t have a banana available):

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The tubes are 2 small 6J1 (apparently not the bee’s knees in the audio world).  p1030928

Putting the little pre-amp together and hooking it up between my turntable and my amplifier (the lovely Musical Paradise MP-301 MkIII) suddenly gave me an all tube audio chain.

First impressions: it works. And it’s silent. Having had issues with noisy tubes before, the little preamp was completely quiet, and even turning the amp up to max didn’t reveal any extra noisiness. So far so good.

Second impression: listening to my vinyl test panel (ABC: Show Me; Matt Bianco: Summer Song; Donald Fagen: Century’s End) it turns out they are bit bright. Not in an unpleasant way, but you can definitely tell they favour the upper frequencies. This improved after a few hours (and with higher volume) but according to the lore web one is supposed to exchange them with some higher quality tubes which I will do. For the moment the thing works and I have no qualms about the purchase and the best girlfriend is happy because she likes tubes (she likes the glow).

Phew.

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