Opinion: What a spreadsheet taught me about the future of 3D printing

This was supposed to be a hands-on of our first 3D printer here at TechRadar. Instead it turned out to be an eye-opener into how far away we are from user-friendly, plug-and-play 3D printers altogether.

Note that this is not in any way a scathing assessment of this particular brand and make (the surprisingly affordable XYZPrinting Davinci 1.0, £500). Don't get me wrong, I believe in 3D printing and the snag I hit was a small one in the long journey to reaching consumer mass market.

Indeed, I interviewed XYZprinting last month at IFA and couldn't have been happier about what I saw.

To be fair, the enthusiasm of the team here at TechRadar was understandably high after we had printed our first two 3D models, samples provided by the manufacturer.

We decided to print something we wanted, an awesome iPhone 6 case with Han Solo. You only have to load the file you've downloaded from thingiverse and press print. But things didn't pan out as expected.

Days before, we received the Da Vinci 1.0. It came in a massive box and a cautionary note from my contact; "there will be a canister at the side," she wrote, "and if it has gone a redish colour, don't accept the order and ask for it to be returned as it will have been shaken up too much and won't work correctly."

At 23kg, it is bulky - and it looks and feels like a workgroup laser printer - and while installation is a breeze, there were a number of caveats. 3D printers consume a lot of power (probably the best part of 1Kw) and the consumables are rather expensive (about £50 per kg).

3D Printers - especially those using FFF (fused filament fabrication) technique - tend to be noisy (very noisy) because of the mechanical parts. They also emit rather pungent fumes.

These problems are further compounded by the fact that printing something - anything - in 3D takes time. A lot of time. Our first sample took more than an hour to process, print and cool (hat tip: open the printer's door to accelerate the cooling process; you'll have to live with the smell). The case we wanted to print was expected to be finished more than four hours after we pressed the print button.

Anyway, assuming that the printer is to be stored somewhere else (remember though that it comes with USB 2.0 connectivity only so likely to be used on a desktop near you), you still have to deal with mishaps.

In my case, I forgot to put UHU glue (yes, UHU glue) on the heating platform. Never underestimate the importance of UHU; hindsight taught me that it provides the initial grip on which the 3D model will 'grow'. What happened next in my Han Solo Case Printing saga is what tech nightmares are made of; the printer nozzle got clogged as the molten filament didn't stick to the base.

What a clogged 3D printer head looks like

When I tried to clean it, I mistakenly - I think - disturbed the platform which ended up needing a recalibration. Calibration is a critical process which ensures that the printer nozzle is perfectly aligned with the printing base. Get that wrong and you have exactly zero chance of producing whatever you had in mind. That's why the printer comes pre-calibrated so that you can use it out of the box.

The calibration process, it turned out, is a proper pain. You have to turn three knobs on the side of the platform but, as our images show, the underlying logic couldn't be more complex.

The manual could have been way simpler

That's where I resorted to a spreadsheet, the ideal tool to crack the code and find the link between a trio of random numbers. I spent nearly two hours tinkering with it and tried more than 20 combinations before I gave up. Want to have a go at it? Check the table below and good luck!

Have a go at it if you're bold enough

Speaking of luck, Gartner reckons that 3D printer manufacturers won't need it as it predicts that sales will more than double over the next year. But for the device to reach mass market, 3D printer makers will need to make them far more foolproof than they currently are.

Until then, expect 3D printers to remain a pipe dream for the rest of us and a play thing for serious enthusiasts.

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Opinion: My love/hate relationship with the BlackBerry Passport

No one's been talking about BlackBerry for a while. The square-shaped BlackBerry Passport, launched a little over a week ago, has changed that at least – although not all the chatter has been positive by any means.

Even so, I'm impressed that a company that has been struggling to compete for a number of years now has managed to pull out a product so strikingly different from the iPhone 6-shaped status quo. And, according to BlackBerry's figures, 200,000 Passport handsets were bought in the first 48 hours of going on sale.

It's a gamble, BlackBerry – and I like a gambler. So that's reason one why I'm prepared to give the Passport a good word to folks who'll listen.

Here are four more:

There's a great battery life to be had from the 3,450mAh beast stuck in the back of the Passport. Seriously, if you don't want your productivity hampered by the need to charge a smartphone, then BlackBerry has done you a favour here.

It's comparable to the 4,000mAh battery inside the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 phablet in terms of longevity.

The 3GB (count 'em) of RAM means that multitasking is handled with business-like efficiency.

Even the layout has a designated homescreen for tiled shortcuts of whichever apps you happen to be running.

There's no lag when it comes to switching either because BlackBerry's plumped for a Snapdragon 801 processor.

The Passport's 4.5-inch Gorilla Glass 3 screen displays 60 characters across instead of 40. And for websites, emails and office documents, I'm enjoying all that extra width.

The 1,440 x 1,400 resolution is crisp and detailed, and I don't need to constantly zoom in and out to work my way around a document.

Even better, a double-tap on BlackBerry's keyboard lets me scroll up or down the page without obscuring any of the screen.

The extra screen size is useful

There are also some useful software upgrades working away underneath the black and silver chassis – not least the BlackBerry Hub, which is a substantial plus for me.

Grouping all notifications together in a single place and giving you the ability to dive in and out of them rapidly is a bit of a USP for BlackBerry, and a productivity godsend when you're compiling messages from multiple work accounts.

BlackBerry hasn't made a perfect sweep by any means, and the main problem with the Passport is that when you can't operate a phone one-handed, it becomes a much harder sell. At 90.3mm in width, you won't be using the Passport while holding the rail on an escalator or clutching a bag in one hand.

Here are four more reasons I'm not won over by the BlackBerry Passport:

Apps are the lifeblood of smartphones and BlackBerry's been notoriously dry for far too long.

Adding the Amazon Appstore to the Passport is a step forward, but when that still means I can't get hold of Instagram, BBC iPlayer, Pocket, Feedly, Snapchat, Endomondo or Uber, it's not a very big step.

Some of the big names are here, but not nearly enough of them to compete with what Android and iOS have to offer.

Unfortunately the Passport's most defining feature – its keyboard – is also one of its most awkward. Time was when resistive touchscreens made typing out lengthy messages on-screen a pain, but now we've moved past that into a capacitive Utopia of SwiftKey and friends.

Typing on the Passport's keyboard, while arguably more comfortable, is still a lot slower than on the iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Time is money.

Typing on the BlackBerry Passport's keyboard is slower than a virtual keyboard

Even business users want to watch a movie or TV show at some point – think of all the flights and train journeys. But watching a 16:9 video on the Passport screen means a letterbox view that won't go away.

It's not a great experience. Music? Yeah, you've got 32GB of storage, a microSD port, Spotify and decent speakers, but that's just part of the story.

Expect to be weighed down by this phone: it tips the scales at 194g and you'll notice every gram. The size also makes it awkward for conventional trouser pockets.

Clearly, the Passport demands you dress for business at all times with a suit jacket, or possibly a holster.

BlackBerry did what it needed to do to get noticed in a cut-throat smartphone market that, thanks to Apple and Samsung, had all but forgotten them. And for that, I say well done.

The sheer size and weight of the BlackBerry Passport means it won't have mass-market appeal

The company has made sure the Passport can compete on specifications and performance. But the fact remains that the form factor, app limitations and media shortcoming mean this is never going to hit mass-market appeal.

BlackBerry's Passport is interesting by virtue of being different. And, while it handles the business side of things well, there's too much wrong with the design to displace the likes of the iPhone or Galaxy phones for most people.

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Opinion: Should Microsoft follow eBay and HP by splitting up?

Redmond's hardware division is in danger of impeding its software business

The past month has been notable for split ups of well-known companies into two separate entities, both of which are entirely independent of the other. First off, eBay and PayPal split, creating two publicly traded companies each having a new CEO and new focuses and goals. PayPal can now focus on the threat from Apple Pay, Square and Stripe, all of which have been eating the company's revenue when it was consolidated with eBay.

And then Hewlett-Packard split into two companies after nearly one hundred years of existence. One company will focus on laptop, printing and PC hardware while the other company – headed by current HP CEO Meg Whitman – will be focused on enterprise technology.

Both companies generate tens of billions in revenues and billions in profit with the split enabling each to be more nimble and to focus on the "lightning fast" world of technology that was previously unapproachable as a behemoth company focused on hundreds of simultaneous products.

One company that didn't split up over the past month was Microsoft, despite repeated calls from investors, analysts and pundits over the past decade. The Microsoft of now is incredibly different from the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s which was a force to be reckoned with, creating and destroying industries and generating billions in revenue.

Now, the market changing decisions are made by different giants: Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. They now rule where Microsoft used to. While the world still does rely on the services provided by Microsoft – Windows, Office, Azure – the move to smartphones and tablets has undermined the core business of Windows and Office.

Microsoft's businesses are essentially broken into two sections: hardware and software. The hardware side (also known as "devices") includes Windows Phone, Surface and Xbox and is supposed to work in synergy with the software side (also known as "services"), which runs Windows development, Office, Azure and so on.

Hardware-wise, Microsoft is little more than a mess. Significant resources have been invested in Windows Phone, which has captured less than 5% of the global market and less than 3% in the US and UK, two highly profitable sectors where Apple and Samsung reign supreme. Despite releasing Windows Mobile in 2000, Microsoft missed the opportunity to create an iPhone-like smartphone operating system early enough, choosing instead to rely on the continued dominance of Windows PCs.

Running in parallel with Microsoft's blunders regarding smartphones have been blunders with tablets, leading to the Surface line – a venture that has lost Microsoft over $1 billion (around £620 million, AU$1.15 billion) since 2012. While the Surface hardware is nice and could rival the iPad, consumers have never warmed to the devices. The idea of a laptop/tablet hybrid is so different from the current convention of computer use – and from the ideas promoted by the iPad – that it has never caught on, leading to poor sales.

In 2014, Microsoft parted with $7.2 billion (around £4.5 billion, AU$8.25 billion) to purchase Nokia's hardware division. Nokia has now been rolled into Microsoft, causing layoffs of thousands of workers and destroying the brand that has adorned phones for nearly two decades.

The layoffs, which were meant to eliminate two people doing the same job, still leave Microsoft approximately 16% bigger than it was before the Nokia deal, bringing the total headcount up to 128,000 as of June 30, 2014. Apple, by comparison, employs 80,000 staff worldwide – 50,000 of which are in the US – most of who work in Apple Stores.

This raises a question: how can a company with 128,000 employees across the world, acting out countless strategies and working on a myriad of products remain nimble in the fast changing technological world of 2014?

The answer is by splitting the company in two. One side would be hardware (devices) and the other software (services).

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Opinion: From Apple to Android then Apple again: why I swapped the HTC One M8 for an iPhone 6

A few months ago, in the midst of switching carriers and desperately needing to upgrade my two-year-old iPhone 4S, I decided to make the leap to an Android phone.

After a long period of deliberating different devices, I picked the HTC One M8 - TechRadar's pick for one of the best Android handsets around. At first I was hesitant about making the switch, but I was excited to see the experiment through with the hope of moving over to Androids permanently.

Fast forward to the Apple launch where I found myself waiting for the new iPhone 6 to arrive in the mail where afterwards, I realized I would never go Android again. Here's why I went crawling back to the land of Apple.

The other smartphone always looks nicer from afar

The grass always looks greener on the other side. As part of the Apple camp I always longed for the freedom Android users had with customizing everything.

Everyone's iPhone home screen pretty much looks the same. Other than changing your background and moving around the app tiles, iOS offers few ways to customize your phone. The one advantage of keeping things homogenous on iOS made the interface feel much more fluid and snappier compared to Android.

Prior to my HTC One M8, I dabbled with owning a first-generation Nexus 7 tablet. I had no problems switching back and forth between my two devices despite the two different platforms. Looking through the Google Play Store, I could find almost every app I would use on my iPhone. Adding in the greater amount of freedom on Android made it alluring enough for me to switch.

With my mind made up, I decided to get my first Android smartphone with plans to fully assimilate myself into Google's ecosystem.

Android wins the compeltely customizable competition

Like a honeymoon, my first month with the HTC One M8 was amazing. The hardware by itself was a major step up from my old iPhone with a better screen, more power under the hood and amazing stereo speakers. It was simply a flat upgrade across the board save for some issues with the camera, which I'll get into later.

I had more fun using Android than I ever did with my tablet. I spent hours arranging every screen on my phone to my exact liking. As silly as it sounds, it was liberating to be able to move around your app tiles the way you see fit instead of having everything bumped off to the upper right on iOS.

Google Now was perhaps the most surprisingly useful tool on Android. Unlike Siri, which is pretty much a voice-controlled computer, Google Now would intelligently prompt me with directions and restaurant suggestions all on its own.

Android L will finally bring lockscreen notifications

I started to feel less excited as I spent more time with Android thanks to the increasingly obvious flaws. My biggest gripe was the lack of notifications on the lockscreen (a feature that will reportedly come to Android L).

I quickly fixed the issue by downloading a third party app called SlideLock, but then another problem cropped up with the tiny virtual space bar on the stock Sense 6 keyboard. Again I solved my nitpicking issue by installing a custom keyboard. In time, I replaced the default launcher, swapped Gmail with Dropbox's Mailbox, and practically replaced every stock application with a better third-party solution.

"Don't like what comes stock with Android? Just replace it," a fellow Android-using friend once told me; this seems to be the mindset behind Android, which makes it so amazingly customizable. Yet, at the same time it's an admission that Android on its own lacks the same level of polish compared to iOS.

You can call iOS drab and restrictive, but Apple knows how to make a good-looking and intuitive interface. The Cupertino company opening up to the concept of custom keyboards could be the first step towards a more customizable iOS interface.

Apple holds onto its lead in the apps race

Apple isn't just leading in better UI design, it's still the top platform for apps. iOS users have access to a few more apps not available on Android - like Facebook's Paper, Tweetbot and Yahoo News Digest. On top of this, Apple's mobile OS also often gets first dibs on applications that have or eventually will make it to Android - such as Lightroom Mobile and Instagram's Hyperlapse.

Apps simply come to iOS first with Android being an afterthought for most developers. This is true of gaming as well. Despite Android being used as the backbone for gaming devices like Nvidia's Shield Tablet and the MadCatz Mojo, games are just as big as a part of iOS. Case in point, Hearthstone has still yet to arrive in the Google Play Store when it has been available for iPad since April.

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Opinion: Why Microsoft must ensure Windows 9 is a big success

According to Gartner, 2013 was the worst year in the history of the PC business as sales plummeted by 35 million units year-on-year.

Rather than giving PCs a shot in the arm, Windows 8 appeared to have put them to sleep: in February 2014, Netmarketshare reported that Windows 7 had 48% of the PC market compared to just 11% for Windows 8. Windows XP, a 12-year-old OS, had 29%.

The good news is that things are looking better this year and PC sales are on the rise. The bad news is that that the reason doesn't appear to be Windows 8.1.

According to August's figures from Net Applications, Windows 8.x is suffering from declining market share – a small decline, but a decline nevertheless.

Sales haven't rallied because businesses have learned to love Windows 8. They've rallied because Microsoft finally pulled the plug on Windows XP. Microsoft needs to persuade businesses not to stick with Windows 7.

That's a terrible indictment of Windows 8, and it puts enormous pressure on Windows 9. To have your most important customers shun one major OS is unfortunate. To have them shun two would be disastrous.

Writing on Windows IT Pro, veteran Windows watcher Paul Thurrott argues that Windows 8 was more of a disaster than Windows Vista. "With Vista, the solution was easy: Just make it faster, lighter, and smaller, and slap a new name on it – Windows 7 – and watch the accolades roll in," he says. "But Windows 8? Oh boy."

Windows 8.1 did improve things, but it couldn't solve the fundamental problem with Windows 8: it's two completely different operating systems bolted together, and it's particularly confusing on the non-touch PCs that most Windows users have.

That's been great news for Microsoft's rivals. We've seen Chromebooks make big progress in education and iPads in enterprises. Apple continues to hoover up the biggest profits in the PC industry, and iOS and Android dominate the mobile device market.

Windows 8 has been a disaster, and come October it'll be the only disaster in town. That's when Microsoft is killing off Windows 7 on new PCs, a year after ending sales of the software. Unless you go for the pricey Windows 7 Pro, come November if you want a PC it'll come with Windows 8.

That's where Windows 9, also known as Threshold, comes in. Its job isn't just to repair the damage Windows 8 wrought – it also needs to persuade Microsoft's largest market, its most important customers, to upgrade to its latest OS rather than stick with a version it's already trying to take off the market. If Windows 9 can't do that, then Windows' future looks awfully like its very recent past.

We're expecting to see Windows 9 at the end of this month, but it won't be available to everybody: according to reports, the "Enterprise Technical Preview" of Windows 9 will be unveiled on the 30th of September but previews for consumer users, including phone and tablet users, won't arrive until 2015.

From the images and details that have leaked so far it's clear that Microsoft has taken some of the Windows 8 criticism on board.

The Start menu has been changed to combine traditional menu items and tiled icons; Modern-style apps can be run in windowed mode in the desktop environment as well as full screen; the much-hated Charms appear to have been binned; there are virtual desktops; and there is a new notification centre.

Speculation also suggests that Windows Phone's virtual assistant Cortana will make the move to the desktop, and leaked images showing Windows Phone devices without the Phone bit underline Microsoft's plan to make a single unified operating system across multiple platforms. That would mean the end of Windows RT and Windows Phone.

Windows 9, aka Threshold, isn't the only Windows on the horizon. Windows 8.1 with Bing, a low-cost version of Windows for small tablets and laptops where OEMs set the default search as Bing (users can still change the default if they wish), is spearheading a wave of low-cost Windows devices such as Toshiba's £103 Encore Mini.

That puts Windows head-to-head with small Android tablets, Apple's all-conquering iPads and Google's increasingly compelling Chromebooks.

One of the most compelling Windows 9 rumours is that Microsoft will do what it did with Windows 8.1: make it available for free.

According to analyst firm Net Applications, the Windows 8.1 update has gained significant market share very quickly: 53% of PCs running Windows 8.x are running the most recent version just seven months after it was introduced. Windows 8's uptake was significantly slower.

Writing in Computerworld, Gregg Keizer suggests that Microsoft may be considering making Windows 9 a free upgrade not just to Windows 8.1, but to Windows 7 too.

If he's right, the effects could be significant: just imagine all the low-cost devices sold with Windows 8.1 with Bing and the corporate computers sticking with Windows 7 all upgrading to Windows 9.

It wouldn't be overnight, but Windows 9 would accumulate significant market share much more quickly than if it were a paid-for product.

That makes Microsoft's job easier, with the bulk of its customers on the most secure version of Windows to date, using its most recent web browser, able to access its Windows Store and using Microsoft's various online services.

That market share would be in the consumer sector at first, because of course businesses are more careful and tend to upgrade much more slowly, but the corporations would eventually get on board too.

In that scenario the money Microsoft would lose on OS sales would be more than compensated by the money it would make from selling services. Perhaps the Threshold codename is prescient: Microsoft could be on the threshold of something very interesting indeed.

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Opinion: Standing at the Threshold of Windows productivity enhancements

The next version of Windows looks to have something for everyone

For my first TechRadar Pro article, I thought it would be appropriate to look forward, towards the future and a piece of tech that's soon to be coming down the line. Over the years I've spent a lot of time focusing on helping people with productivity. Whether it's at talks and events, in videos or through other mediums, such as this article, productivity is at the core of what we all need to get out of our PCs, and it's for this reason that the next version of Windows (codenamed Threshold) is getting me very excited.

I've written a lot about Windows over the last few years: how to get started with it, how to customise it and exploit its hidden functionality, and how to repair problems if everything goes horribly wrong. I'm in contact almost every day with people who have used Windows for work, study or play for years now, but still I encounter many who struggle to make the most productive use of their time.

Part of the problem is the complexity of an operating system the size of Windows, and more problems arise because of Windows' need to be something for everyone. Windows 8 was an interesting step in a new direction (though it didn't go without a few hiccups) and Windows 8.1 has refined the idea further.

However, with Threshold – bearing in mind we don't know the full story concerning this OS yet, by any means – it looks like Microsoft has put the entire focus on productivity, and Redmond's engineering teams are working on nothing but.

There also looks to be something for everybody, from programmers able to save valuable time by having a unified code base for Windows Phone, Modern apps, Xbox and, perhaps, even the desktop, with apps that can scale and change dynamically to fit the device you're using, to talk of major productivity enhancements for desktop Windows users (who felt a little left out last time around).

When I give talks I regularly extol the virtues of features such as Workplace Join, Work Folders and Windows To Go, just a few of the plethora of productivity features that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 introduced. Not to mention enhanced multi-screen desktop support, Miracast, mobile tethering, Powershell 4, Wi-Fi direct and NFC pairing, InstantGo, gesture control and everything else that makes up the productivity enhancement package.

With a renewed focus on the desktop, and how we use it day to day, it's looking like Threshold will be the Windows release that I personally have been expecting for many years now.

So what do I know that's got me all excited? In truth, not a huge amount, but there are nuggets in all the right places. It's long frustrated me that so many aspects of the Windows UI date back to early versions of NT, especially the Control and Management functions. The introduction of Windows Server 2012 with its "live tile" interface shows the way forward, and what can be done with the expected overhaul of all these systems.

Without a doubt, I am very excited about the features that Threshold can deliver in terms of helping everybody from developers, through system administrators, to end users get done what they need to do in less time than it's taken before. After all, this is what progress is all about, right?

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