Okay -- I am looking for a decent but dirt cheap tablet, manly for recipes, spotify, youtube/VLC, maybe some simple puzzle games. I want the largest tablet I can get for the fewest dollars spent

Not a lot. I was looking at the Lenovo Tab M11 or something around there.

Also, ideally something that can take a crap-free Android ROM.

quick edit: I gave up on this for a few days because I got into the 'this one is better... but this one is better...' and before I knew it I was hitting a grand for something I'll barely use. I just ordered a Lenovo P11. I don't expect it to be amazing, but it'll be fine for the very basic tasks I'll be using it for.

Its surprising how much old stuff is for sale on Amazon. iPads from 2018, for instance. Doesn't seem right.

double edit: I returned the under-powered P11 and got a Lenovo Tab K11 LTE w/ 8gb and 128gb eMMC. Not a big fan of eMMC, but it'll be fine for my uses.

I'm a new Deck owner, recieved unit in May and played sparingly for the past 2ish months.

Overall really liking it, gushed about it everywhere to everyone, and big fan of Valve. But two days ago, one of the Deck shoulder buttons stopped working suddenly. Reached out to steam and they're having me send it in, which is what I would expect. But the way they phrased it kind of souring my initial high of owning the Deck:

Based on the information you have provided, we believe it is unlikely that the current issue reflects a problem with this device as it was delivered to you. It may instead be related to your particular use of the product. Regardless, we would like to offer complimentary service as a gesture of goodwill.

So it's one of those kinds of warranty that excludes regular use? Is this one rep just awkwardly placing blame on me or is that their overall vibe? In contast, I have PS1, PS2, xBox original/360 controllers that still have all the shoulder buttons functioning normally, along with super old PSPs, DS, DS Lites, 3DS, Switch'es and none of them have failed aside from the infamous Switch drifts. Nintendo, for their part, fixed the drifts without implying it was my fault.

Anyone else dealt with Valve customer service and warranty?

Hey there,

Title is pretty self-explanatory, looking for some web camera recommendations, USB obviously¹, good price to value, higher quality the better, microphone not required, but appreciated.

¹ Don't need any MDR-26/SDR-26/CameraLink connectors, or Game Boy Camera recommendations here /s

I've been on a hunt for a new monitor for over a year now. Something that can be for personal use and WFH with these specs:

• 4k
• 144Hz
• MiniLED
• <=34" (no curve)
• Built-in KVM switch

Having briefly experienced the INNOCN 27M2V, I expected a "perfect" monitor on the horizon.

Soon after I stumbled into a blog post announcing BenQ's reveal of a monitor that featured all the specs I wanted. I've finally got my hands on that monitor today having waited ~6 months.

First impression was the size. This monitor is a thicc boi. Made me think of a television, but not as heavy as I expected. I mounted it on my monitor arm (VESA 100) without problems.

The OSD is nifty and easy to navigate. There are 5 "quick menus" (ALPHA, BRAVO, etc.) that let you customize settings for each and quickly switch between them. These menus can be customized to select 3 "favorite" settings (e.g. brightness) so that you don't have to dig through the entire menu.

• What you see when you initially open the OSD
• Customizing quick menu favorites

After tinkering a bit, I've fired up Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. I've set the display profile to use the per-configured "Fantasy" color mode (with mini-led enabled). Honestly I don't know what I'm doing these settings, so I don't know whether this monitor is calibrated at all, but it was gorgeous. I don't think any picture I take will demonstrate how good it looks.

I don't have much to say about the KVM yet. But I connected my keyboard+mouse to the monitor, then connected the USB to USB-C to my desktop. I also connected my work laptop (USB-C to USB-C). Everything works, but it'll take a couple of days of normal use to see if there are hiccups. I like switching between desktop (waking from sleep) and my work laptop then vise-versa. I'm curious to see if the "auto scan" works like I want it to.

Unfortunately, I've discovered 2 "stuck" sub-pixels. According to BenQ's dead pixel policy, this is "acceptable". One of the sub-pixels (green) is almost in the center of the screen and I zero in on it almost immediately. I'll reach out to their support regardless because I prefer not to have defects at this price ($1199.99). If I'm lucky I'll discover another stuck sub-pixel.

BenQ's Specs

Sorry in advance if this is kind of a ramble. Thanks for any thoughts you may have.

This post asking about specific hardware made me realize that I have lost touch with major architectural changes in PC hardware. Back in college (over 20 years ago), I was constantly upgrading and rebuilding computers, talking about them, reading about them. But that's probably par for the course in a EE program. I'm sure there must have been other online resources, but Slashdot is the thing that sticks out in my memory of that time.

Then in grad school, my last set of desktops from college carried me through the first few years, and I had a series of laptops provided by school.

Since then, I've always just bought laptops because they've gotten good enough to do everything I want, and with kids, it's much more flexible to be able to work anywhere in and out of the house. My latest (now several years old) has a high end I7 cpu, an NVIDIA GPU, two solid state drives (1.5TB total). It weighs just a few pounds and does everything I want, including things like Solidworks, zbrush, and older PC games.

Since I can remember a time when I was excited about 90mhz processors and feeling like I was getting a screaming deal to pay $500 for a 500mb hd, sometimes it just feels surreal for this to be so normal.

So, am I out of the loop? Or is this reflective of a more general shift? What do you read / where do you post to discuss hardware, hardware compatibility, etc. Are you still building desktops? Laptops? Cyberdecks? What are your thoughts on cost/value trade off of dell, etc. vs rolling your own?

I am planning to go back to a desktop after using laptops for years.

I already have an 1080p IPS monitor. I want just the tower.

There is the new Zen 5 coming out soon.

I was thinking about buying a Ryzen 7600 and maybe buy a GPU in the future if I want to play heavier games. The Ryzen 7600 has integrated graphics for basic things.

My main use now is just some casual gaming (Afterimage, Hollow Knight, Fallout 4), movies, browsing the web and compiling some software (Gentoo Linux).

I use exclusively Linux and I want to keep using AMD.

Should I wait the Zen 5 to come out and see if the 7600 price drops or this probably won't happen?

I know it isn't a good habit. I like to watch movies, "T.V. shows" on my computer. It was never a problem with older style monitors.

However with newer style monitors ( like I have ) and T.V. screens you either have to be far away from the monitor or be sitting up straight for the images not to fade. Worse, you can't see anything with night scenes.

Anything I can do about it aside from buying a hug TV and sitting on a couch at the other end of the room?

Update: I got the monitor /user/ButteredToast recommended. It works noticeably better than my old monitor and the price was very reasonable

Can someone recommend a KVM that works? I've been looking for a couple of years now.

Requirements:

• 2-port, 1-monitor, DisplayPort 1.4 KVM
• Has a wired push button switch (and cable can be extended if needed)
• Runs at 3840x2160 @ 120 Hz (or 60 Hz)
• Works with HP docking station (HP USB-C Dock G5 for business)
• Works with Classic 101 Black Buckling Spring USB keyboard
• Works with Logitech TrackMan Marble Trackball
• Works with HP laptop and custom desktop build (NVIDIA T1000 GPU)

Anti-requirements:

• Does not intercept keystrokes (or can be disabled)
• Does not intercept mouse scrolling (or can be disabled)
• Does not randomly repeat keys
• Does not block certain keystrokes (e.g., ctrl+shift+t)
• Does not let Windows laptop go to sleep
• Does not require manually re-waking Windows laptop by pushing power button
• Does not require switching back-and-forth to re-establish connectivity to both computers
• Does not take more than 3 seconds to switch between computers
• Does not randomly blank the screen for 1 second
• Does not require unplugging and re-plugging the USB keyboard

Here's the setup showing both computers and the push button switch:

• https://i.ibb.co/5nrDk21/kvm-setup.jpg
• https://i.ibb.co/hFsjT3S/kvm-switch.jpg

I have tried:

• IOGEAR GCS62DP (almost perfect; kills keyboard after 60 swaps; RMA'd)
• DiamondTiger KVM Switch EDID 8K@60Hz, 4K@144Hz, DP 1.4 (repeats keys, blanks screen, has screen tearing, and many other issues)
• CanadaComputers iCAN HDMI USB KVM Switch 2x1 with Switch Extension 4K 60Hz (completely blocks certain keystrokes)

Wendell's Level1Techs Store offers a highly recommended KVM, yet lacks a wired toggle button.

What other KVM switches are available that "just work" and have a wired push button for switching?

The next KVM I'm thinking about trying:

• GiantMatrix with LINDY EDID Emulator

ATEN also has a switch, which is on par with the IOGEAR (4K @ 60 Hz, no EDID):

• 2-Port USB DisplayPort/Audio KVM Switch

According to SteamDB, at the time of this posting:

• There are 5,006 Verified games.
• There are 10,240 Playable games.

I thought this was a noteworthy milestone worth sharing -- The Little Linux Handheld That Could now has a definitive library of >15,000 games!

(The actual library size is significantly larger when you consider how many games run on it that don't yet have a rating, and even that's saying nothing of non-Steam games and things like ROMs as well).

I like to write notes for work and sketch/draw in my spare time. I'm about to finish another paper notebook, and I noticed a few ads for the ReMarkable & decided to check it out. A few YouTube videos later, I'm now quite interested in getting an e-ink tablet to replace the notebooks I've been going through.

Thing is, with this type of technology I'm always a bit worried that I won't use it enough to justify the price. If anyone has one of those - have they managed to replace the classic paper/pen combo for you? Do you regret your purchase or are you happy with it?

If anyone is curious, I was specifically looking at the ReMarkable 2 and the Supernote Nomad. The ReMarkable seems to be the most popular choice, but I really like how the Supernote emphasizes repairability (notably, the battery is replaceable). I'm also very much open to other suggestions if you have any!

Are there any other people on Tildes who regularly use VR?

• What has the experience been like for you?
• Which headset do you own?
• What do you use it for?
• Do you use it regularly?
• Any favorite/recommended games/apps?

Hiya folks,

I work remotely, and I've got a little deck with a table and umbrella that I like to work at for most of the summer. The trouble is, my umbrella can never be fully angled to shade me from the sun.

I find my laptop screen (13") to be woeful for working on outside. Not only is it tiny and promotes bad posture, it also doesn't have amazing brightness. Lots of squinting and hunching, depending on the sun!

Every monitor in my house it turns out is 350 nits, except my laptop screen, which is 500 nits.

Does anyone have practical experience lugging a monitor outside and working on it during the sunny day? If so, what brightness gets you over the usability threshold?

It seems like I could get a 1000 nit monitor relatively easily. Anything above 1000 the market seems to narrow quite quickly.

I have a KZ ZSN Pro IEM and it's been going strong for 4+ years.

I also have a cheap Bluetooth QCY IEM that I use for podcasts and when I don't want wires tangling me.

Whenever I change from the Bluetooth QCY to the wired KZ I am in awe. The KZ ZSN Pro is a blast to listen to. Specially metal. The definition, the sound of the bass drums, everything is clear and powerful.

So I decided to try some entry level open back headphones and bought the SHP9500 that was cheap on Aliexpress recently. I thought I would find it even better since a lot of people sang it's praise for the price, but I am underwhelmed.

I find my KZ to have way more definition and power.

Also I need to up the volume of my smartphone quite a bit compared to the IEMs. It is near max volume.

Of course they are different beasts and the IEMs are literally inside my head. I don't really know what I expected.

I'm sure beyerdinamic or other more expensive brands might be better, but I don't feel like going down that path.

I'm going to keep the SHP9500 for a week more to see if I like it for different situations, but for now I am not amused.

I'm very sorry, but this is going to be rant. One that may seem to come up almost daily, but I still feel the need to vent.

Every day I feel like I'm jumping through hoops to keep a little bit of privacy and autonomy, without ever winning. DuckDuckGo is my search engine, use a paid mail provider, I try to stay away from anything Google and Meta, use only Signal, ad blocking everywhere, hosting most services locally, etc. It seems, however, to make no difference in the long run. The user-profile-building just seems to enter the home faster than I can mitigate it. Kids install some new app or new hardware ends up listening in, privacy infringement is there.

The reason I'm starting this post now is because I switched ISP and TV provider recently, but it has been on my mind for a long time. Finding one that isn't owned by one of huge 3 parent companies, is almost impossible here. After a year of deciding, I finally figured it was time to throw in the towel and just pick the least bad option. Yesterday was the day of switching and it has been such a frustrating process.

The provided router doesn't allow me to turn off its WLAN. I live in a city, so the airwaves are already crowded enough as it is. No need to keep that antenna on, but screw me, that's not possible. Opened up the device to just remove the card, but everything is soldered on the board and disconnecting the antennas didn't do shit.
It's possible to buy a modem/router myself, but it'll need to follow their requirements and will set me back $200. It would be okay if the rest of the service was great, but here comes the TV part!

The device they use for TV is apparently Android TV. I assumed it would be IPTV with this subscription, but Android TV isn't that. Booting the device makes it immediately clear they are here to harvest data. It makes me so unhappy that a service I'm paying for, is also making money on the side by collecting data. To get a quick idea of what's being done, I routed the box through wireshark to sniff DNS traffic. It's riddled with domains used for data collection and ads. That combined with the features this box wants me to agree to (location, using the mic, access local network, sign into PlayStore, make a profile including real life information) does not make me trust this device. So I've decided to not play and will be sending it back.

People around me are pretty conscious about what they do online, but compared to them I'm highly paranoid. Wherever I look, there are privacy issues. It seems impossible to escape from. How are other people dealing with this?

UPDATE: I don't know if anybody is really interested, but I thought I would update anyway. I decided to listen to my gut and I cancelled the subscription. It feels like the best decision I've made in a long time. It's nice to feel like I'm still a little bit in charge, even though I know that's also just a false sense of autonomy. Suck it, Google! You're not the boss of me :-)

Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

Help?

I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω

I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far.

The AKG K240 mk2 (55Ω) seems to be a popular choice with people who own another multi effects (HX Stomp) with a different impedance (I think it's 12Ω).

This headphone is within my budget, but it seems too close to the 47 output of my multifx.

Will I have a problem with this?

I read somewhere that the headphone impedance should be much bigger than the output impedance, but another text I read somewhere explained that they should match closely.

I'm really confused about this.