IT

Lenovo P50 RAM Install

Posted on by Adam Fowler


After reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad P50, I decided to double the RAM from 16GB to 32GB. You can buy it with more RAM, or install it aftermarket. The RAM that came with mine was Samsung brand, but I bought and added Kingston DDR4 RAM with no issue.

Depending on your RAM configuration, you may just need to add RAM to the bottom of the laptop – as mine already had the sticks under the keyboard.

Lenovo have some great guides on how to take the laptop apart, which I followed:

Step 1 – Remove Battery

Step 2 – Remove Bottom Cover

Step 3 – Take Keyboard Off

Here’s a video I created on opening up the laptop and adding the RAM based on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cnrinaquPc

 

Any questions please ask below!

Update: As Eric Xu pointed out to me, there’s also the great Lenovo Service Training Guide you can check out too :)

Instagram to Twitter With Images

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Instagram to Twitter integration sucks.

If you post a picture to Instagram, and use the inbuilt Twitter option, your tweet will end up looking like this:

 

A link to your Instagram photo rather than the photo itself. However, there are ways you can have your Instagram photo embedded in the tweet, along with a link back to the Instagram post if you like:

A third party app is required to do this, but the good news is that it’s free, automated and runs in the cloud.

If This Then That (IFTTT) can do a bunch of cool automations, called ‘recipes’. It will read off hundreds of different platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The recipe I’m using is “Share your Instagram pics as native Twitter photos” which will monitor your Instagram posts, and automatically copy and tweet anything you do with the Instagram image embedded. You don’t need to use the Twitter option on Instagram itself, as Instagram isn’t doing the work here.

To set this up:
1. Sign up for IFTTT (free), either ignore or go through their introduction.

2. Go to the Recipe and ‘Connect’ to each channel for Instagram and Twitter

3. Click ‘Add’ on the Recipe window (this shows up once the channels

4. Go to ‘My Recipes’ in the top bar. You’ll see the recipe where you can turn it off, run now (not needed to do since it runs when a new image is posted on your Instagram only) and you can edit the recipe if you want it changed, such as using different text.

That’s it. Post a photo on Instagram and see what happens!

 

Intel NUC 6th Gen

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Almost two years ago, I wrote about my Media Player Quest. The end result hardware wise was an Intel NUC, which has been dutifully serving me media content and left on 24/7 for over two years.

It’s time to upgrade that now, and check out Intel’s newer lineup of NUCs that have the 6th generation Intel CPU inside.

The unit I received was the NUC6I5SYK – there’s also the NUC6I3SYK which is identical apart from having an i3 CPU rather than the i5 I received (a big step up from the Celeron in my old unit!).

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There’s a bunch of different NUCs both old and new, but in the latest batch there are 5 to choose from. The cheaper ‘Pentium’ powered NUC NUC5PGYH, the NUC6i3SYH and NUC6I5SYH which are i3 and i5 powered NUCs with 2.5″ drive support, and the two I mentioned above, which are identical but don’t have 2.5″ drive support. All other specs are the same.

At this point you may be wondering which is best or which one to choose. Luckily this is pretty clear cut – if you don’t need much grunt, go for the NUC5PGYH. This still takes a 2.5″ drive, so you may be able to find a cheap small SSD to use. Otherwise, i3 and i5 are both pretty good, you’ll only need an i5 if you want to use it like a proper PC and play games or edit photos and videos, or other CPU intensive tasks. Finally, the SSD – go 2.5″ if you already have one to save money, or don’t care about the extra height. The M.2 version is a lot sleeker, but there should only be a small difference in SSD performance, which you probably won’t notice based on the common use cases for a NUC. If you’re hiding it behind a monitor, it’ll be easier to fit the M.2 version next to a wall.

My unit isn’t as tall as the 2.5″ models, because instead it takes a M.2 SSD instead. They look similar to RAM, but have the slot on the short side, rather than on the long side (see below). Don’t get these confused with mSATA – M.2 is the next generation of those and they have different connections. There’s a lot more technical information about this, if you’re interested check this guide out.

It’s worth pointing out that an Intel NUC isn’t a fully working PC out of the box. You’ll need to provide your own RAM and drive (HDD/SSD), but they are incredibly easy to install. 4 screws need unscrewing to take the bottom plate off:

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and you’ll need to add two types of components:

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1 & 2 are DDR4 SODIMM RAM sticks. 2 x 2GB in this one but they’ll take a maximum of 2 x 16GB = 32GB – more than enough! 3 is the M.2 SSD, mine of which (as you can see from the label) has a capacity of 120GB. I’m not storing too much locally – apart from Windows 10 and a few software installs, the media I’ll be playing is streamed either from the internet (care of services like Netflix) or via local network (care of Kodi).

Once those are added (and they’re incredibly easy to obtain from any PC parts supplier) the NUC is ready to go – at least, ready to have your OS of choice installed on it.

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Port wise, the Intel NUC has more than enough for it’s small 115mm x 111mm x 32mm size.

Front: USB 3.0, USB 3.0 + charging, Audio In/Out 3.5mm jack, Power light, Infrared sensor

Right: Kensington lock, SDXC Card Slot

Back: Power, Air vents, HDMI, 1000mbit NIC, 2x USB 3.0 , DisplayPort

Also on top is power and HDD/SDD light:

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This new NUC is a lot short than my previous unit, so I thought I’d introduce them to each other before sending the old one away:

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Once I had the new NUC up and running, I did notice a smoother experience. The old one wasn’t actually slow for general Windows 10 usage, but things felt snappier and more responsive with the much updated hardware.

Overall I can’t fault this unit. I loved the last one, and this just gives a refresh with newer hardware and more connection types. What isn’t there to like about this? VESA mounts are included too, which will turn a screen into an all in one PC with ease. Other Mini PCs exist, but Intel support their own hardware well and let you decide on your own RAM and storage requirements, rather than bundling the lot.

Intel know this makes a great Media Box and have created some Intel only apps, such as the “Intel® Remote Keyboard” which lets you use your phone as a keyboard and mouse which I’ll cover seperately soon.

Any questions about the NUCs? Comment below!

The Intel NUC covered in this post was provided by Intel Australia.

Lenovo ThinkPad P50 Review

Posted on by Adam Fowler

“That’s not a laptop…. that’s a laptop.”

This is the phrase that sits in my head when I think about what the Lenovo ThinkPad P50 is. If the Yoga 900 is a Ferrari, then the P50 is a Monster Truck.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, so I’ll take a deep breath and start again.

Lenovo has released two high specc’d laptops – the ThinkPad P50 and ThinkPad P70. I was lucky enough to receive a P50 to review care of Lenovo, once I wiped the drool off my mouth.

“High specc’d” doesn’t do these laptops justice either. Although they come in a wide range of configurations, here’s what I have:

  • Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 Processor (8MB Cache, up to 3.70GHz)
  • Windows 7 Professional 64 preinstalled through downgrade rights in Windows 10 Pro
  • 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), anti-glare, IPS
  • 16GB DDR4-2133MHz ECC SODIMM (8GBx2)
  • NVIDIA Quadro M2000M 4GB
  • 720p HD Camera with Microphone
  • Backlit Keyboard with Number Pad – English
  • 3-button TrackPoint pointing device and 3-button multi-touch touchpad
  • Integrated Fingerprint Reader
  • Hardware dTPM Enabled
  • 1TB 5400rpm HDD
  • 256GB SSD OPAL2.0
  • 170W AC Adapter – ANZ (3pin)
  • 6 Cell Li-Polymer Battery, 90Wh
  • Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260, 2×2, Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 4.0

Let’s go over some of these settings.

CPU – An Intel Xeon, a server CPU in a laptop! Xeons are normally reserved for servers, but Intel has now released a line for mobile workstations. You can read Intel’s announcement here.

OS – This one came with Windows 7, but a Windows 10 Pro license. It’s now running Windows 10, but good for those who need or want to run the older but reliable Windows 7, fully supported.

Screen – 15.6″ is a decent size for a laptop. The bezel around it is reasonably thin, and the actual image quality I am impressed with. There are options for a touch screen, or a higher res 3840×2160 screen – but 1920 x 1080 has less issues at the moment, especially when remote desktopping to other servers that won’t like the super high res.

RAM – 16GB came with this, but I’ll be adding in another 16GB for a total of 32GB. The laptop can go all the way up to 64GB(!!) and has 4 RAM slots, so you can put in 4 sticks of 16GB. I’ll *only* have 4 sticks of 8GB – but this amount of RAM is great for someone looking to run a bunch of virtual machines off their PC, or do some very high end artist work (images/video/3D rendering etc).

Video Card – The Intel Xeon CPU has an onboard Intel® HD Graphics P530, but beyond that, there’s also a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro card, with 4GB of RAM attached. Not designed for gaming, but will still do a decent job of it. The Quadro card gives the laptop the ability to support “four independent displays; Max resolution: 3840×2160@60Hz (DisplayPort via Mini DisplayPort cable); 3840×2160@60Hz (Thunderbolt); 3840×2160@30Hz (HDMI)” which is a big WOW!. You will need a few different cables to make this happen, but 3 extra screens at such a high res, straight off this laptop is very impressive.

Fingerprint Reader – A simple addition, but works really well. Check out my video here.

Primary Disk – Yes that’s right, just the primary for starters since you can have up to three. I *only* have two but that’s ample for what I need. The primary disk, running the OS is a 256gb SSD. There is an even faster SSD option, the 512GB SSD running over PCIe. If you want to know what that is, put on your reading glasses and check this article out – there’s a lot to learn.

Secondary Disk – Spinning disks still have their place, and I have a 1TB HDD in this. Still fast enough for most things that don’t need the crazy SSD type speeds of reading and writing. Perfect for storing things like movies, television, and virtual machines!

Weight – As I have the bigger 6 cell battery, this weighs in at 2.67kg. It’s not designed to discreetly fit into a small bag, you can’t contain a beast like this that way!

Other things like wireless, bluetooth, backlit keyboard are all standard (although you may have noticed this is big enough to have a full keypad too!).

Let’s see some more pictures!

20160311_124430P50 170w battery pack above a normal 65w Lenovo adapter – this thing needs juice!

IMG_20160306_222121Top of the P50

IMG_20160306_222222Bottom of the P50 – dock connector visible

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Keyboard, trackpad, fingerprint reader – all great!

IMG_20160306_222517Backlit keyboard glowing in the dark

20160311_131102Right Hand Side – 3.5mm Audio out, 2 x USB3, Mini DisplayPort

20160311_131050Left Hand Side – ExpressCard/34 slot (above), 4-in-1 reader (MMC, SD, SDHC, SDXC) (below), Smartcard reader

20160311_131111Back of laptop – USB 3 (always on), USB 3, Ethernet, USB Type-C/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Power

Thoughts – There’s a few similar laptops in this space, but not many. These are perfect for the heavy user, and personally as an IT Pro, I love it. It has enough grunt to run up a full test environment where I can muck around with different servers and software, but all be enclosed on a device that sits on my desk, and can be moved around with ease.

It seems to be very well built and incredibly responsive when mucking around on it. I forgot to mention the battery life – I’ve left it on my desk for days unplugged, and it still has over half its battery life. The claim is “6-cell Hybrid Graphics: up to 13.2 hours” which is really good!

These aren’t cheap, but you’re paying for the high end hardware. They’re very customisable on the web though, so you can pick and choose the bits you do and don’t want.

Got any questions for me about the P50? Feel free to ask below!

IMG_20160306_222322

Update 24th May 2016

As requested in the comments, here’s the RAM latency from CPU-Z after mixing Lenovo and Kingston RAM

Untitled

Turning Out Of Office Off and On via Script

Posted on by Adam Fowler

There has been a long-lacking feature in Outlook – the ability to automatically set your Out of Office message to turn on and off on a scheduled basis.

It would be great to be able to have a bounce back on anything sent outside your working hours, but it isn’t easily possible natively unless you use a vbs script inside an Outlook rule – requiring Outlook to actually be running.

I decided to come up with my own solution. This isn’t good for individuals, but is good for centralised mailboxes, say an IT Helpdesk mailbox that you want people to know when someone will look at their request or not.

Step 1 – Set the Out Of Office message you want on your mailbox manually. Outlook, OWA, however you do it, it doesn’t matter. Your message will be saved on the server.

Step 2 – Save the script below as a .ps1, and change the variables to what you want. I have two scripts, one that enables, and the other that disables Out of Office

Step 3 – Create two Scheduled Task on a server. One will be when you want the Out of Office on, and the other when you want it off. Below I’ve created one for the ‘on’ part, which triggers weekly on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30am. The Off would do the same, but at 5pm.

snip1

The conditions of the Scheduled Tasks would be to run the powershell script files, again matching up the on and offs. The command to use is “powershell.exe” and the arguments pointing to the location of your newly created ps1 scripts in the format ” -file “C:\scripts\admin\Out Of Office On.ps1″ ”

snip2

The task needs to be set to ‘Run whether user it logged on or not’.

The account used to run the task needs to have the correct role based permissions to connect to Exchange, and make changes to the auto reply config.

The script will also generate an email to advise that the status of Out Of Office has been changed, pulling the value afterwards so you can check that it’s toggled correctly.

If the script doesn’t run automatically, you may need to adjust your Execution Policy settings.

That’s it. You should have two scheduled tasks that run to turn Out of Office off and on against the mailbox you want.

PowerShell Script:

#TODO – Definie Mailbox name and state enabled or disabled
$mailbox = “name”
$state = “enabled”
$exchangeserver = “exchange server name”

#Connect To Exchange PowerShell Session
$session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://$exchangeserver/Powershell -Authentication Kerberos
Import-PSSession $session
#Turn Out Of Office On
Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration $mailbox -AutoReplyState $state
$results = Get-mailboxautoreplyconfiguration $mailbox |select Autoreplystate

#Emails the current status
send-mailmessage -to “Displayname 1 <[email protected]>” -from “Displayname 2 <[email protected]>” -subject “IT Help OOO Status” -body “The OutOf Office Message is now $results” -SmtpServer smtp.yourserver.com.au

Remove-PSSession -Session $session

 

Update 15th March 2016

I’ve also realised that Softera Adaxes which I reviewed previously, can do the above quite easily. Here’s how their scheduled tasks work, but simply put you can create a scheduled task to run on weekdays, that sets the Out of Office message and turns it on today, then off today +1 day (i.e. tomorrow), and run that daily to update the date! That’s a more elegant solution, but you need to buy Adaxes or already have it. I’m still using it and recommend it, and decided to do the above this cleaner way. This isn’t a sponsored comment :)