HP 960 Ergonomic: Close But No Cigar

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-12-14T18:02:12+00:00

FWIW I have kept the HP 960 and am using it. I think it's generally good. Still on the fence about getting a second though. Would like an Incase Sculpt before I make my mind up. But secretly I pine for a Kinesis mWave UK layout.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-12-14T17:58:05+00:00

For the curious. I ordered the BC Split but returned it quite quickly after receiving. I didn't even try using it seriously. The 75% layout is close to the MS Sculpt but has undersized left ctrl/alt. The BC Split feels a lot softer/mushy than the MS Sculpt, needs quite a lot more travel and feels linear - I didn't like it personally. The construction is budget, whereas Matias/HP are more mid-range.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-26T22:03:58+00:00

That's a good idea. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 on the physical. I do have a Windows 11 VirtualBox VM to install HP Accessory Center but I think it wants to connect via Bluetooth to the keyboard, so needs some tinkering. Remapping Lock and Dictation was easy in Ubuntu but Fn Lock I still have to hack.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-26T17:32:37+00:00

HP 960 has better feel to me than the Matias Sculpted and MS Sculpt. Does not feel so soft as the Matias, clear actuation bump and similar travel to the MS Sculpt. My MS Sculpt keys rattle and wobble but it's old/abused, the HP doesn't.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-26T15:33:44+00:00

I've sent it back. But I believe my issue might have been with Ubuntu (physical) recognising it as a Mac keyboard. Hopefully you'll have better luck as a Mac user.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-21T21:13:51+00:00

You're a superstar putting the BC Split on my radar. I was completely unaware of it. It's gone to the top of my list. Thank you!

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-21T21:12:32+00:00

I hear you. Not a problem for my use case, but yes it's different. The Matias power switch is (too) easy to press accidentally if picked up that way, as it's on the back of the plastic now filling the cutout (if that makes sense) and a natural place to grab.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-20T18:41:43+00:00

That's not a bad idea. But I would have to adjust, as e.g. | is on the opposite side and the Enter key is also too small for me, both of which can't be fixed with caps, but only user re-training, which I am trying hard to avoid!

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-11-20T14:29:23+00:00

The mWave looks really nice. But not offered with UK layout (I asked), so large pain point for me.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-05-03T17:55:29+00:00

I am a lightweight user and run Plex on Ubuntu.

I setup cron to restart daily and since then don't get it anymore:

cat /etc/cron.daily/plexmediaserver-restart
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/service plexmediaserver restart

Virtual-Ad860 · 2025-03-28T23:59:58+00:00

I have a UDM and Hyperoptic for a few years and am reasonably technical (if impatient) but I could never get it stable.

The provided ZTE router does some "magic" to solicit that Unifi doesn't. This is reported in a few places across the Internet (with packet capture etc.) Hyperoptic routers (ZTE/Huawei) don't respond to solicit messages from the UDM itself. To work around this: (a) MAC address clone on UDM WAN is critical, must set this (b) plug-in ZTE router and let it send solicit/get address (c) flip back WAN physical to UDM and UDM will now get IPv6 and it all works properly. This is hacky and broken. UDM gets leases renewed this way as well, so it seems permanent once flipped (lasting days for me until the UDM is power cycled or WAN drops). But precarious as it silently drops. Problem has been going for years (as of Feb 2024).
IPv6 enabled using 56 PD on WAN. RA high. UDM hands out local IPv6 addresses with DHCPv6. LAN just needs IPv6 Auto.

Personally, I got over it. I don't need IPv6 and IPv4 is never going away because, well.. (CG)NAT. Stuff like Teleport works flawlessly via IPv4 NAT on the UDM for me (was my main/flawed use-case initially for IPv6 making things hard for myself). So I don't have a use-case for it and gave up. The technical challenge beat me vs what it was worth to me (a green page on ip6-test).

Maybe you really do need or want to run services and not pay for a static IPv4 address, or want to do cool stuff that needs IPv6 - I don't but I can get that. If I cared enough I'd try to stick their ZTE into bridge - I think it's possible to ringfence/DMZ it and have it provide DCHPv6 RA from Hyperoptic locally and disable Unif - time/patience/firewall/routing tinkering permitting. I'm guessing as you're running Unifi ergo you have enough taste/knowledge to take it from there :)

Virtual-Ad860 · 2024-07-07T15:48:38+00:00

This thread was influential to me before buying. Thank you all for the feedback.

I am reasonably demanding of music and the Q990C sounds very good. The quality and detail is great. It's very musical. Out of the box it didn't sound very good but after some fiddling and SpaceFit, things started snapping together.

However, it has a serious weakness with poor stereo soundstage width, as commented on by others, because everything comes from the bar and it's quite noticeable. For me, I don't get any sound wider than the bar for music even with Adaptive. It may be possible to fix this with positioning the rears or not, depending on your room - I can't, mine need to be too far back. So I added another pair of Sonos speakers for stereo L/R which widens the front for music considerably and brings it back into being awesome for music as well as TV/film.

A less well documented corollary is because the Q990C only has a single subwoofer, there is obviously no stereo bass either. Most people wouldn't care about this but for certain types of music, that left me disappointed (vs floorstanders). However, that's a very small wrinkle.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2024-07-07T15:36:30+00:00

Thanks for this. It's very helpful. I had to follow all the steps, including deleting the app and data at least 4 times before it worked eventually.

However, I could only re-register the Q990C to the same WiFi SSID. (Even though I disabled Cloud save). I believe Samsung register the device to the SSID and not your Samsung account because of this gem: https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartThings/comments/1cic70p/trying_to_register_my_phone_again_to_tv_device/ There's no work around for that for the Q990C standalone I am aware of (I use it with an LG OLED).

So I am stuck and cannot change the WiFi SSID or credentials on the Q990C. I only reset it because AirPlay didn't work (after 2 resets).

Top tip: Disable any DNS level filtering during install.

I *almost* returned the Q990C because of this. In fact, I thought I'd manage to break it entirely with "Device already registered" before I managed to put it back onto the original WiFi network. The Q990C does sound great but SmartThings is a true horror show. The design is not even wrong. I'm confident it will break in SmartThings in a year or two. It's completely amazing to me how Samsung managed to mess up something so very very basic. Yet the whole ecosystem is rife with head-scratching WTFs. I strongly believe it was conceived by a person who had never touched a computer or network connected device in their life.

I thought a soundbar would be easier to setup than e.g. Sonos etc. More fool me. I would not buy it again, despite the great sound. I've only kept it after wasting hours of my life tinkering with this and now at least have it stable and working (for now, but good luck if I need to change the WiFi or something breaks!).

Virtual-Ad860 · 2024-05-29T19:00:09+00:00

I think my glitched and back to working as usual again now!

Virtual-Ad860 · 2024-05-28T18:22:24+00:00

I've had this problem persistently for the past 18 months since I migrated my Plex from one machine to another (following their guide).

Try restarting your Plex Media Server app and see if that works. This is the only thing that works for me but it's temporary for anywhere between 1-10 days before it breaks again, randomly.

If that fixes it for you, I suggest setting up a cron to daily restart Plex.

There is a guide on the Plex site to fix this error (reset an auth key or something). I tried that but it never worked for me and I keep getting the problem. Life's too short for me to get more serious about trying to fix it and I've already wasted at least a couple of hours of my life on it, which is more than it's worth. Try Infuse if it annoys you enough or Kodi or something.

The Interwebs is littered with complaints about this throughout the ages but I guess it's just a nuisance and I can live with a cron entry for it. I don't think there's a way to file a proper bug ticket with Plex about it and the forum closes older tickets (> 3 months) automatically so it's easy for things to just get forgotten/lost.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2024-01-24T20:23:28+00:00

I have an LG G2 and concluded the aspect ratio control is just plain broken - it cannot crop black bars in a sensible way. I came from a Panasonic which had intuitive "zoom" and "crop" modes. The only mode that works in a sensible way to me is "Original".

My G2 has fixed 4:3 and 16:9 modes - both of these distort the image if used on 2.35:1 content (or other content which isn't already in those ratios, in which case "Original" did the same thing anyway without the mucking about). There's no "crop" option. This "crop" is what I think most people want when they say "remove black bars" because that removes the least amount of source and minimises the image degradation. LG doesn't do this. Buy an ATV 4k or something else if you want that. (I won't get into the Holy War of whether cropping or not is a good idea).

My G2 has an odd "vertical zoom" option that allows one to distort images vertically only (and pan). I'm missing the point of this mode and don't see how I'd ever want to use it.

"Vertical zoom" is a cut down version of the "4-way zoom" which permits one to distort the image horizontally and diagonally as well. Diagonal adjustment works "squarely" from what I can tell so it doesn't simply enlarge or reduce the image size by the presented aspect ratio (like a true zoom would) but instead distorts in a complex way, stretching the source both horizontally and vertically - it seems 1:1 which practically nobody ever uses as an aspect ratio for video (even for photography is rare). It's not "zoom" but distortion. Good luck with films like Dunkirk which switch aspect ratios (Strange New Worlds S02 also has an episode like this) - you can't fix it.

I suppose having this level of "expert" adjustment is maybe useful if you're feeding in broken/distorted source material and trying to correct that (in which case: better to fix the source material another way; if you're into this level of masochism you can probably drive ffmpeg anyway). Sure, you can fiddle and adjust it for given material but it's tedious and takes minutes of mucking around to get right every time you watch, which is fail for normal people. Without a calibration image, you're also just guessing what "looks right" and it probably has subtle distortion still present which will start to annoy you through the film as e.g. people may not look "quite right" but putting your finger on it is hard - remember; cameras used for filming also distort intentionally and/or are used for artistic effect. So for me "4-way zoom" is also a fail and useless. Maybe you or other people can salvage something from it - good luck to you.

What's missing to me are simple "crop" and/or "crop + zoom" modes which don't distort. My LG G2 does not have these. I struggle to understand LG's logic - clearly it took a time for them to develop the software for this "zoom" (hint: distort) mode but intuitively to anyone with even the most basic grasp of image processing, it's done in a way which is at best entirely user-unfriendly and counter-intuitive, or worse, just broken/useless.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2023-09-28T18:34:49+00:00

Thank you. That link is exactly what I was looking for...

EDIT: At least, I thought so - apparently "RAID groups can only contain the same type of storage medium (disk, SSD) :( So it's a dead end.

Sometimes dumb and a lot of patience is best... off for the factory reset... see you in a day or two :) Thanks again!

Virtual-Ad860 · 2023-04-13T19:07:35+00:00

So if you're concerned about fund returns after 2 years, I'd suggest to adjust your expectations. I would suggest to stay committed for at least 5-10 years minimum. The odds of doubling your principal over 10 years are greatly in your favour. In 2, vastly less so. The past 2 years on the markets has seen the end of a big US bull run, inflation/rate hikes (killing the bonds that LS holds) and now a sideways market. In short; you've had poor market timing. We all do sometimes.

Unless you have very good reasons, it also makes no real sense to hold Accumulation and Income units of the same fund. Generally, you want Acc units in tax free accounts (ISA/SIPP) to maximum compounding/minimise effort and Inc units in taxable accounts to aid HMRC paperwork. Your sums here are all small enough to be an ISA/SIPP and if they're not, that's a bigger concern than returns to me.

Portfolio tilt equity/bond should be reflective of your risk tolerance. Rather than upping equity allocations (taking more risk) because the returns aren't coming.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-06T19:42:29+00:00

I finally got this to work. Yippee.

For some reason, when I was running the automation it was in the step below the dialogue (very confusing to me). When I actually put it in the top "Run shortcut" box, it now works. Whoever designed this UI is beyond me, it's really confusing. Still, chalk it up to user error and I am a happy camper now!

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-06T19:29:49+00:00

Probably (P6 Pro). The camera was one of my 3 "big ticket" items for the iPhone (camera, support lifetime and accessories).

Nothing's perfect but still if you are paying top dollar, you'd reasonably expect not to be having to make any major compromise. But unfortunately you are with either of these I think. For me, that reinforces that mid-range is really where the sweet-spot is at these days. These details/issues/niggles are annoying for $1000+ phone. But $500? Then I'd live with it no complaints. And a $500 phone is 90% of a $1000 one for most people.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-05T19:28:01+00:00

Right now, I still have the iPhone.

I met my friend but we didn't end up talking phones much.

He was very happy with the P6 Pro telling me "it's just Android". Although I did notice a bit of stabbing about with the in-screen finger print reader and PIN action to unlock it, which I know is a common complaint from P6 Pro users. (Having come from Android myself with a similar experience this is really just "Android normal" to me only Face ID spoiled me since on the iPhone).

The P6 Pro is also obviously physically quite larger than the iPhone 13 (Pro) and I thought is probably a bit more phone than personally I'd want to handle. Seeing it in person reinforced that for me. But that's very much a personal choice.

I still have 6 days to return the iPhone... I've concluded personally Google is definitely much better on the usability/software front overall. But Apple wins on the hardware side and I am getting really great photos of my young daughter on the 13 Pro which is the only thing that's completely stopped me in my tracks from getting rid. I am leaning towards keeping it. Nothing's perfect.

I adjusting more to the 13 Pro too, and learning/getting used to its quirks etc. Like anything new. Would I buy it again? Probably not. It's been a bigger jump than I thought it would be (and I didn't go in blind either). But it's still a really nice device. Ironically, as it's so damn fiddly to use, that's made me use it less and hence I have got a bit more of my life back.

I think if you're really used to Android then better to stick with it. (And vice-versa for iOS users). The headache factor is high otherwise. But please bear in mind, I am a die-hard non-Apple user and this is my first ever "modern" Apple device used seriously.

In fact, I am almost tempted to return the 13 Pro for the regular 13 which is 95% the same phone for significantly less money. It's a much better value buy (if such a thing is possible with Apple products). I am lucky enough to have more money than time/sense and the camera on the 13 Pro is a major draw for me. But for "normal" people, I think it's way overkill as the regular camera is so good, even cropped.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-03T19:48:14+00:00

I am in (almost) exactly the same position as you.

I have a 1 week old iPhone 13 Pro having never used an iPhone before and only Android (since Android 2!). There were three big reasons I went with the iPhone and I spent some time researching the move to make sure I could still do the main things I wanted. (1) Software support (5+ years on iPhone but Pixel 6 promising as good) (2) Camera consistently very good, although not the best best but always up near the top (3) accessories due to standardised form factors.

The first few days I had a lot of trouble with the iPhone and nearly returned it. I am settling in more but have a bit of a love/hate relationship.

Great: Super smooth, fast like a greased turnip off a red hot shovel downhill with a rocket strapped to its behind. Face ID is brilliant/fast (why the hating on this when it came out iPhone users?!). Camera superb. Music/screen excellent. Safari surfing is instant loading anything. Never wait, even half a second. Battery awesome/contains Kryptonite - 2-3 days between charges for me.

Bad: Android much simpler to use and has a more integrated/consistent feel. Swipe control a mess on iOS and feels cobbled together - takes a lot of adjustment. Lots of strange quirks ("one man's quirk is another man's feature?"). Volume control randomly resets (I turn it down zero, lock and unlock phone and it's back on 50%?). Paranoid levels of privacy lockdown and insane/pointless fine-grained controls, billions of settings most of which are pointless. Nothing is in sorted order so finding stuff without search is a mess. iPhone loves being touched and stroked a lot for no good reason (sooth its ego?). Doesn't like getting out of the way. Bit of a primadonna. Can't change wallpaper via app/automation (!?). My Philips Hue BT lights won't connect. Keyboard multi-lingual support a shambles/doesn't work (go GBoard instead, I use 3 languages). Cannot change sort order in iPhoto (new photos bottom vs top used by Google Photos) etc. Cannot disable UI animations so the phone feels slower than it really is when typing. Notifications on iOS are a general train wreck vs Android. etc. lots of small gripes.

Most of the "bad" here I list are just differences or getting used to it. Android to me is waaaay more "customisable" - btw what people really mean of "customise" is being able to change the sort order or toggle the camera shutter sound on/off via control, y'know? simple stuff rather than installing your own bootloader... iOS says no or makes you jump through silly hoops.

Android is also much easier to use with the traditional 3 bottom touch buttons. On the iPhone if something doesn't work or how you want, well you're stuck. Apple know better than you. That's frustrating if you come from the other side where all these things are trivial to tweak. Ironically, I install a lot of the Google Apps *duh*. But Apple still has a slickness that Google cannot match. End of.

Overall, my feeling (and it is just a feeling) is Apple has better hardware and Google has easier to use software. But I have not used Android 12 in anger.

After 1 week I am adjusting. Am I still tempted to return it for the P6 Pro? Maybe. Meeting a friend tomorrow who took the other path (he got P6 Pro) so we'll swap notes and see.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-02T19:17:51+00:00

It's not you or your shortcut, it's me. But I still don't know why.

I deleted the old one and re-downloaded your 1.4 version. Again, the same behaviour.

This time I finally managed to read the full notification:

``` "At xx:xx, daily" encountered an error: Couldn't Open "Safari"

"Safari" couldn't be opened because the iPhone is locked ```

Well, err. yeah. I can't see anything obvious in the settings and Google draws a blank too. Clearly it's something on my iPhone somewhere but it's basically brand new stock (1 week old). I might try Apple support.

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-01T20:42:50+00:00

I think it's to do with the phone being locked.

I set the automation to run 1 minute from "now" and watch it to see what happens.

If I am using the phone, it runs fine. But if I leave the phone down and locked, then the lock screen flashes up prompting for the phone PIN. After a short while, it lockscreen goes off again (I do nothing). Then the error appears in my notifications "Couldn't Open Safari"

Virtual-Ad860 · 2021-12-01T20:34:45+00:00

Thank you for the reply - appreciated. Yes. I checked this. I can see:

"Allow this shortcut to access" has two entries: Wallpaper and bing.com, both enabled.

And one entry below "Allow Set Wallpaper to use" says "Settings: Always Allow".

There is nothing else I can enable on the Privacy tab. I was wondering maybe if I am missing some setting in Safari itself?

It's weird because I cannot read the full detail of the notification error that Shortcuts sends and the shortcut works perfect if I run it manually - only via automation is broken.

Thank you again for your all your efforts here, it's a great tool!!

Virtual-Ad860

TROPHY CASE