Cortana Can Sing!

I'm sorry to have kept my avid readers waiting - as they are aware, this is my first blog post for the year. I suppose I hadn't had anything notable to write about... So, a belated Happy New Year to you all!

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I'm a bit disappointed in myself, to be honest. I can't believe that I only learnt today that Cortana can sing (sing me a song)! I am quite the Cortana fan and I enjoy asking her to tell me jokes (tell me a joke). It's a nice little bonus when she raises the pitch of her voice at the end. In fact, Australian Cortana has quite a nice voice and it doesn't have an overly synthetic sound, which is fantastic.

In some ways I probably like Cortana because I was never able to participate in the Siri craze. That doesn't bother me though and I'm not ashamed to admit that I've never properly or extensively used Siri. Before I moved to the green pastures of Android (absolutely no regrets, by the way) I had two iPhones. Now I don't like Apple (personally and morally) and their products don't appeal to me (too basic and dysfunctional, but that's another story), but I will admit that I loved my iPhone 3GS. It was my first smartphone and it served me well. Until it fell victim to the all-too-common extra-sensitive-won't-stay-on-silent silent switch issue. Then I had an iPhone 4. It was OK but nothing special. After that I got my current phone: my trusty and much-loved Nexus 5 (first-gen, not the X). Of course, neither of my iPhones had Siri. And I've never had an iPad and don't intend on getting one. I'm an Android person. Vanilla Android. So I've had a Nexus 7 and I'm now on a Nexus 9.

Anyway, that's why when Cortana finally launched in Australia on Windows 10, I was excited. (And I'm still waiting on an official Cortana app for Australia on the Play Store, Microsoft!) Of course I'm going to be biased (and I can't actually speak for Siri), but who cares? I love Cortana. She may be buggy and may force you to use Bing, but her AI is fun and her Australian accent is top-notch. And as I mentioned before, she has prosodic features! Cortana is the best mobile and desktop AI out of "OK Google" and Siri. And speaking of "OK Google", as much as I love Google and Android, "OK Google" just isn't fun. It can answer you and read Wikipedia snippets in a fairly natural voice, but it doesn't have a name or gender and - granted, I only found out today about Cortana's lovely singing - can't sing. To be honest, for such a massive, influential company, Google surprises me and probably a lot of others with their fairly basic (obviously not in terms of programming) AI.

Cortana can also do impressions (do an impression). I also didn't know this until after she finished singing and suggested - textually - that I tell her to do an impression. And what better introductory impression than... 'It's going straight to the pool room'! And if that doesn't make you love Cortana, I don't know what will. Maybe her telling you where F3 is on the photocopier.

~LP

As always, leave your comments!

I want to know: Does Siri tell jokes with expression? Do you use Cortana? What do you think about Cortana?
How well do you know quality entertainment? Did you get the reference in the last sentence?

When I Didn't Buy Enough Laptops

Bring Back Toshiba

This started a few months ago when I was buying parts for my desktop at a computer shop. I overheard one of the salespeople saying that they had low stock for Toshiba laptops as the future of the brand was uncertain.

Now, since my first Toshiba laptop - a Satellite Pro L300 - I have been a great fan of Toshiba. In fact, I'm on my third. So this rumour was a little unsavoury to hear.

Thus, when I left the shop I had to get on to the internet and look up the rumour. It was indeed plausible based on the articles I found.

Time passed and different articles started appearing suggesting Toshiba would enter a deal with Fujitsu to continue making consumer laptops. It appears that this deal has since been put to rest.

The sad truth is Toshiba is stopping production of consumer laptops because they claim to be losing money from them. There is good news for businesses though: Toshiba is still going to be making business laptops.

To make matters worse, I now have no idea what laptop I should could get when the time comes to get a new one. And that's because Toshiba laptops just make sense. The keys are the right size, the spacing is near-perfect, the design doesn't "try too hard" and most of them still have DVD drives. (They're still handy to have.)

HP could be a possibility, but the up/down arrow keys are a completely different size to the left/right arrow keys. Asus... They're just not the same. And Acer isn't renowned for reliability. And when it comes to Lenovo, let's just say I will probably never go there.

Perhaps as equally upsetting is that I will now no longer be able to own my dream laptop: a Qosmio.

Unfortunately, I just didn't buy enough Toshiba laptops to save them. I thought they'd always be there, and I'm sure many others did too.

We'll miss you, Satellite.

~LP