I did some big upgrades this year! I'm now rocking: A late 2013 13" Macbook Pro An iPhone 12 Pro Max And a self-built gaming PC: Ryzen 9 5900X RTX 3080 GPU 32GB DDR4 RAM a Lian Li Meshcool II case...
I did some big upgrades this year! I'm now rocking:
A late 2013 13" Macbook Pro
An iPhone 12 Pro Max
And a self-built gaming PC:
Ryzen 9 5900X
RTX 3080 GPU
32GB DDR4 RAM
a Lian Li Meshcool II case
Whatever 1TB SSD I had in my old build, I think a Samsung 960 EVO
This is hooked up to a 27" Acer XB280HK 4K 60Hz Monitor I bought a few years ago and another old 24" Acer S242HL 1080p 60Hz monitor
Last year I changed almost entirely to Apple products. MacBook Air M1 (seriously an amazing product) iPhone 12 Mini Apple Watch S6 iPad Air 3 with a Logitech keyboard case AirPods Pro Phillips Hue...
Last year I changed almost entirely to Apple products.
In early 2019, I got the galaxy s10e. On an impulse, and with the lure of good financing, I also got the galaxy watch. The galaxy watch showed me just how awesome and convenient a smart watch...
In early 2019, I got the galaxy s10e. On an impulse, and with the lure of good financing, I also got the galaxy watch. The galaxy watch showed me just how awesome and convenient a smart watch could be. It also showed me just how far tizen was from being a good smartwatch platform. I wanted to go biking with only my watch and some earbuds, and listen to podcasts. I could not find a podcast app for the watch that was not terrible. Even if I did, the watch only had about 1.5 Gb of storage available. While looking, I found all of the much better podcast and audiobook apps for the Apple Watch.
My previous experience with iOS was an iPod touch 4. Compared to android at the time, iOS was far behind. I kept an eye on iOS but only using android after that. I figured that iOS was still as far behind android as it was when I left.
I decided I wanted an Apple Watch. My grandfather had an old iPhone 6s+ that I borrowed. I wanted to see if I could deal with an iOS phone in order to get the benefits of an Apple Watch. Instead I found that iOS is a better os than android in many respects. I also found that the day to day performance of the iPhone from 2015 was better than the Samsung from 2019, though the battery was shot and the screen was much worse.
From there I found a great discount on an Apple Watch S3, and got some AirPods Pro. I kept borrowing old Apple devices from family and friends, which helped me justify the purchase of my own new devices.
The Apple ecosystem is just really good. I think many people who criticize Apple and praise android have ever given Apple a real try(myself included). There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Apple, but much of the criticism on the internet is outdated and wrong.
Well, as I said before, Apple makes sense if you go all in, since the integration between devices is really good. If you must integrate devices of multiple brands, Apple is a nightmare. Apple...
Well, as I said before, Apple makes sense if you go all in, since the integration between devices is really good. If you must integrate devices of multiple brands, Apple is a nightmare.
Apple products (as well as accessories and repair) are also absurdly expensive in Brazil, it’s very much a luxury brand. I assume the situation is the same in similar countries.
I wouldn't say so. I use 3 desktop OSes and 2 mobile ones on a daily basis, and I think the most egregious thing is that MacOS doesn't allow MTP access to android phones by default, you have to...
If you must integrate devices of multiple brands, Apple is a nightmare.
I wouldn't say so. I use 3 desktop OSes and 2 mobile ones on a daily basis, and I think the most egregious thing is that MacOS doesn't allow MTP access to android phones by default, you have to download a 3rd party application (although it also doesn't work on Ubuntu for me right now, not because it's not supported, but because... actually I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's isolated to whatever is happening between hardware and software on my installation). But overall there isn't really more friction between all the permutations.
It's more that Apple will put no more effort to other platforms. Like I use Airpods with 5 different OSes (Ubuntu/Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android) and it works fine on all of them, just that on iOS I can have it determine the size of my ear and do spatial audio (sometimes).
But there's also limited availability for that kind of in depth sync with other platforms since Android and Windows/Linux are not by any means a unified front or anything. So in net it's not that noticeable.
I was literally never able to download all my pictures from two iPhone 7s to any of multiple Linux machines with different distributions, including MX-Linux which has an utility entirely dedicated...
I was literally never able to download all my pictures from two iPhone 7s to any of multiple Linux machines with different distributions, including MX-Linux which has an utility entirely dedicated to interacting with Apple devices.
And, even in the off chance that it “works”, it randomly becomes unreadable, interrupting the copy process. It also takes many tries for the system to recognize the iPhone at all.
Besides, iPhone’s file system is almost entirely locked up and you cannot really transfer lots of things simply using an USB cable. You gotta go through whatever app you’re using.
I’d call that a nightmare.
Since KDE’s native feature is unreliable, I have to use the program Android Transfer (or something like that) to correctly manage my tablet’s storage,. But it works every time.
That's mostly true for iPhone -> MacOS as well. In general the iPhone is just designed for a different mode of computing - Android phones as well, but they do have the legacy fallback of MTP and...
That's mostly true for iPhone -> MacOS as well. In general the iPhone is just designed for a different mode of computing - Android phones as well, but they do have the legacy fallback of MTP and an open filesystem. One where data lives mostly on servers, and apps are fully sandboxed entities.
But really I would imagine most people keep persistent data in cloud storage, rather than go through files - certainly that's what Apple wants you do to, considering how gimped wire transfers are for anything except data transfers (i.e like get a new iphone, transfer data to new iphone), but even that has a local wireless mode.
That's not to say that you can't classify that whole process of Apple not allowing data through USB as "a nightmare" - not really looking to get into that. But rather that this isn't intersystem friction between ecosystems, it's just Apple hates wires for whatever reason.
Well, I don't mean specifically iCloud. Since I use 5 OSes, I keep my files on Dropbox since across all of them it works the most consistently and has an actual client for all of them, and I don't...
Well, I don't mean specifically iCloud. Since I use 5 OSes, I keep my files on Dropbox since across all of them it works the most consistently and has an actual client for all of them, and I don't have any issues. But Next cloud should work as well. So unlike with nest it's the max(cloud provider support)
If you mean, what if all cloud providers stop supporting your device? Then yeah, I suppose you're kinda stuck, but I'd imagine that level of time horizon (10+ years) isn't in most consumers thought processes.
I keep seeing this repeated a lot, across different forums. I presume it's because the Brazilian currency is really weak compared to the USD and other western economy currencies, and not just...
Apple products [..] are also absurdly expensive in Brazil
I keep seeing this repeated a lot, across different forums. I presume it's because the Brazilian currency is really weak compared to the USD and other western economy currencies, and not just because Apple is slapping on more of a margin onto products sold in Brazil? Are there any import or sales taxes on that?
If this is the case, wouldn't it be just as absurdly expensive to buy any other form of gadgetry too? If a high-end Samsung phone like the Note 20 is US$999, and the iPhone 12 Pro is also US$999, those phones should be similarly priced in Brazil, right?
It's a tough problem to solve, because Apple is a global company, and if they simply dropped prices in Brazil to cater to that market—you'd create a grey export market where people in other countries would go to Brazil to buy their Apple devices.
It’s a combination of weak currency, shipping, high import taxes*, and the Apple premium. Apple also don’t have a presence in Brazil (not really), so there’s no such thing as Apple Care, etc. This...
It’s a combination of weak currency, shipping, high import taxes*, and the Apple premium. Apple also don’t have a presence in Brazil (not really), so there’s no such thing as Apple Care, etc.
This disparity is common in Brazil, McDonalds is very much a middle to upper class thing, for example.
* Other brands frequently perform some relevant step of production in Brazil, while Apple products arrive fully assembled — they pay more taxes because of that.
Gotcha. Makes sense. The import taxes for non-manufactured products would totally make a lot of Apple's already expensive products even more non-viable. Unfortunately that's a political issue, and...
Gotcha. Makes sense. The import taxes for non-manufactured products would totally make a lot of Apple's already expensive products even more non-viable. Unfortunately that's a political issue, and I know the political situation in Brazil is not great, so no chance of that changing probably.
There's no AppleCare or Apple Stores in my country either—it makes dealing with returns and services a complete pain.
Interestingly, last year import taxes for videogame consoles where reduced from 40% to 30%, and portable consoles with a screen (like the New Nintendo Switch) are now taxed in only 6%. To justify...
Interestingly, last year import taxes for videogame consoles where reduced from 40% to 30%, and portable consoles with a screen (like the New Nintendo Switch) are now taxed in only 6%.
To justify the decision, fascist president Jair Bolsonaro told the press that “the youngsters are complaining about videogame prices”.
Well, videogames are not that important, but at least he’s hearing someone, I guess?
How do you feel about the M1 Air? I just bought mine and so far I'm in love with the design and obsessive attention to detail but there's also some real head-scratching UX decisions imo.
How do you feel about the M1 Air? I just bought mine and so far I'm in love with the design and obsessive attention to detail but there's also some real head-scratching UX decisions imo.
The M1 hardware is astonishingly good. I am sure that any of the myriad reviews can speak its praises better than I can. I now have a laptop that has no fan and, in some workloads, is better than...
The M1 hardware is astonishingly good. I am sure that any of the myriad reviews can speak its praises better than I can. I now have a laptop that has no fan and, in some workloads, is better than my gaming desktop. It can even run factorio admirably. It is almost as fast as my desktop at factorio, and that is running through Rosetta.
I only started using macOS with Catalina. I only used it for a few months before Big Sur came out, so I don’t know much of the history and evolution of macOS.
What I do know is that almost every UX decision is miles better than windows. I really wish Mac gaming was possible, or that vale released proton for Mac. If they did, I would go through the headache of turning my desktop into a hackintosh.
There are some pretty annoying things though. The notification interaction is the biggest problem with Big Sur. It was way better on Catalina. Having to hover over a tiny cross section of the popup to close it is stupid. Not having the options there unless you hover is stupid. Still, I have to deal with windows regularly. I would take macOS over windows any day. I would even pay the “Apple Tax” on a gaming computer if it were possible to game on Mac (although not if that Apple tax reached Mac Pro levels).
I tried this for the better part of 18 months. It's certainly a ton of fun, but simultaneously exceedingly not fun if you want a stable compute environment. At least in the pre-ARM-era of x86...
If they did, I would go through the headache of turning my desktop into a hackintosh.
I tried this for the better part of 18 months. It's certainly a ton of fun, but simultaneously exceedingly not fun if you want a stable compute environment. At least in the pre-ARM-era of x86 hackintosh solutions (when I was doing this, Sierra was the main OS release), it's easy to boot into macOS—which gives you an impression of it being super easy, but orders of magnitude more difficult to make it six-nines stable. It's what comes after that's hard. Like, 4 weeks down the road, all of a sudden your speakers stop making sound when you just want to watch a video, and you end up mucking around with kexts and EFI files again.
As I'm sure you know, you have to really do your homework beforehand before jumping in. Your motherboard has to be compatible/recommended (right down to even a specific rev), AMD CPU's are usually out, as are nVidia GPU's that don't have published drivers available.
You usually need to buy a second-hand Apple-genuine WiFi/BT networking card that's been taken out of an old iMac if you want AirDrop and iMessage to work at all, you may never ever get sleep/wake to work properly (no matter how much you fuck with pmset), sound may decide to work at some times—or, if you're me, your hackintosh will wake from sleep at 3AM, for no goddamn reason at all, you'll probably never have proper fan speed control working, oh, and opening System Info may kernel panic your machine.
So damn frustrating, but when it does work, my god is it awesome having a desktop that outclasses any available Mac (this was before the new tower Mac Pro) for a fraction of the price, running the best desktop environment in the world.
It was also the thing that made me bite the bullet and just buy an iMac :). Enjoy your M1 Mac!
When I last checked, things for amd cpus were a bit better. (Don’t quote me on this) Anything ryzen would work, it just can’t run 32 bit code, only 64. Since Catalina sunsetted all 32 but...
When I last checked, things for amd cpus were a bit better. (Don’t quote me on this) Anything ryzen would work, it just can’t run 32 bit code, only 64. Since Catalina sunsetted all 32 but libraries, that isn’t a big issue.
I also think nvidia gpus are out completely now. Maybe the really old ones. Really a bummer for me as I have an nvidia gpu and gsync monitor.
I have an oculus rift, which will never work on macOS.
I pretty much decided to not bother with a hackintosh when LinusTechTips said even they couldn’t get messages working on their hack pro. I think my eventual goal is to keep my gaming pc connected only to my rift, and get some Mac as a desktop. Then I can use steam game streaming for my flat gaming.
What do you use your laptop for mostly? I have been having a headache of a time with things not being built for the M1 chip. Though it’s been almost two months since I had time to sit down and do...
What do you use your laptop for mostly? I have been having a headache of a time with things not being built for the M1 chip. Though it’s been almost two months since I had time to sit down and do anything with my laptop so maybe things have improved a lot since then.
I use it for all of my general computing tasks. Web browsing, light programming, document writing, a few steam games, etc. The only issues I have had is bad performance in steam (the app itself,...
I use it for all of my general computing tasks. Web browsing, light programming, document writing, a few steam games, etc. The only issues I have had is bad performance in steam (the app itself, games are fine. Something to do with gpu acceleration), and steam input game pad drivers not working (because valve still uses deprecated kernel drivers for steam input).
I am honestly curious what programs you have a problem with on an M1. In my experience, the Rosetta performance and accuracy is amazing. The only way to really tell what programs use Rosetta is through resource monitor.
I just remembered brew. It is a bummer not having it available for M1 yet. I know there are ways to run it through Rosetta, but it doesn’t distribute universal binaries yet, and I couldn’t get it to work.
My biggest ones were Brew and Discord. Discord I could get to install but had issues of infinite-looping when trying to load, something I saw many others with M1 chips experiencing. There were...
My biggest ones were Brew and Discord. Discord I could get to install but had issues of infinite-looping when trying to load, something I saw many others with M1 chips experiencing. There were some others that when I have the laptop in front of me I'll add in. This hasn't been a breaking issue for me since I can get around that by using a web browser version for most things. It really hasn't been anything unworkaroundable, more just frustration that this is the first laptop I bought in 8 years and sold myself on buying a new on by saying that I'd finally have a new gen laptop and macos and be in the apple ecosysteem so everything would work and play nice and be simple and then that wasn't what happened :/ It's been getting better, but not quite there yet.
See also "What's your computer/PC like?", from last August. My setup is unchanged since then. I guess I can add (also unchanged, but not mentioned in that comment): I run a home NAS, based on an...
I run a home NAS, based on an AMD A4-3300, running FreeBSD using ZFS over 3x 1.5TB HDDs in RAID-Z, serving NFS. It's actually awaiting a major hardware swap while I figure out why my intended replacement motherboard isn't working.
My home router is maybe worth mentioning: it's a Buffalo WZR-600DHP running OpenWRT.
a desktop computer with a Ryzen processor and SSD. It’s a good machine but it looks awful on my desk, so I put it in my closet for the time being since I’m not really using it. A Galaxy Tab S6...
a desktop computer with a Ryzen processor and SSD. It’s a good machine but it looks awful on my desk, so I put it in my closet for the time being since I’m not really using it.
A Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. Pretty good device. I use it to read books, manga, and comic books. I also installed Emacs on it using Termux and it works great! I’m using a Logitech Folio keyboard to write my book on the tablet. It’s a neat setup. I use the app Lock Me Out to block all distractions so the tablet becomes a glorified typewriter.
A 50” smart TV for Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services. It’s also connected to my Xbox Series S (which has an awesome Green Lantern cover — irrelevant but I felt like sharing :P) and serves as monitor for my computer.
A pretty old iPhone 7.
A Kindle paperwhite. I haven’t used it at all since I got the tablet.
There was a time where I thought about purchasing an android tablet and use it for small coding/writing tasks with Termux. What do you think is the biggest con of using that S6 as a little...
There was a time where I thought about purchasing an android tablet and use it for small coding/writing tasks with Termux. What do you think is the biggest con of using that S6 as a little laptop/typewriter?
The biggest con of using a tablet as a little laptop is that it is not a laptop (:P). Termux has a limited amount of packages and is not really a Linux distribution. It doesn’t even comes with...
The biggest con of using a tablet as a little laptop is that it is not a laptop (:P).
Termux has a limited amount of packages and is not really a Linux distribution. It doesn’t even comes with sudo. If you use it to program professionally you’ll eventually hit its limitations. The screen is quite small and not ideal for multitasking. This can probably be alleviated by using a mouse but I don’t have one yet. I still don’t know how to put apps side by side, and Emacs packages that depend on external programs won’t always work. That said, I’m using Doom Emacs without major issues (although not to program yet). Remapping the keyboard outside of Emacs is not trivial. And I don’t think a proper IDE like Jetbrains’ even exist.
Given that the language is available on Termux and you’re fine using a command line text editor, I’d say that an Android tablet is more than adequate to study programming and performing simple tasks. I wouldn’t recommend it as a main workstation.
As a glorified typewriter for writing prose, I think it’s quite awesome, as long as you don’t mind typing on a very small keyboard. I bought the Logitech Folio because it is universal and I was unsure if my tablet would fit in other models.
Update: it looks like you can install a Linux distribution under Termux, making it even more viable for programming. I haven’t tested this yet. See: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot
Update: it looks like you can install a Linux distribution under Termux, making it even more viable for programming. I haven’t tested this yet. See: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot
Phone: Oneplus 6t, on Ting (cheap, I'm unemployed, it's ~20/month). Desktop: i7 8700, 16GB of RAM, a ton of storage (250GB system drive, 1TB/4TB storage drives, 1TB drive for my Arch install),...
Phone: Oneplus 6t, on Ting (cheap, I'm unemployed, it's ~20/month).
Desktop: i7 8700, 16GB of RAM, a ton of storage (250GB system drive, 1TB/4TB storage drives, 1TB drive for my Arch install), nVidia 1060 GTX 6GB, dual, vertical 24-inch monitors (which I got for the year I'm stuck doing school at home, and were the cheapest I could get).
Microsoft Surface Go, 128GB ssd for travel stuff, note taking at school. I usually use my Lenovo T430s to handle actual schoolwork because it's more powerful with the same battery life and a bigger keyboard.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A for digital textbooks because some of the Android apps make it easier than reading on my computer, particularly if I'm at school on a laptop. I like it a lot, and would wholly recommend it. I don't like to get the cheaper generic tablets because they can be a crapshoot.
That's one hell of a lot of storage! I feel comfortably overprovisioned with 16TB total (plus two empty bays) - I'd be fascinated to know what you're using between 64 - 112TB (depending on RAID...
That's one hell of a lot of storage! I feel comfortably overprovisioned with 16TB total (plus two empty bays) - I'd be fascinated to know what you're using between 64 - 112TB (depending on RAID mode) for?
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
Storage:
SSD: Corsair MP600 Force Series Gen4 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME
HDD: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5” 7200RPM
HDD: Western Digital Black 4 TB 3.5” 7200RPM
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon RX 580 8 GB Gaming 8G
Monitor 1: BenQ PD3200U PD 4K UHD
Monitor 2: Samsung Syncmaster TA550
Monitor 3: Samsung SyncMaster T240HD
Case: Corsair SPEC-06 ATX Mid Tower
Power Supply: Corsair CXM 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX
Keyboard: IBM Model M
Mouse: ROCCAT Kova RGB Wired Optical Mouse
Mouse pad: steelseries QcK Gaming mouse pad
Audio mixer: Yamaha MG06
Headphones: Sennheiser HD 280 pro 64 Ohm
Speaker: Anker SoundCore Mini
Operating System: Gentoo Linux
WM: KDE Plasma
Some highlights:
I love my [new!] BenQ monitor. 32" 4k, with excellent colour accuracy and good contrast ratio. Gives great results at a calibration site like http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ , for example. It's my first concrete experience with 4k, and I didn't think I'd notice a big difference from HD (1080p), but I do. Fonts are rendered so nicely (smooth curves, crisp serifs). 4k images and video are noticeably sharper where there are fine details (hair, gravel, thin lines). I have my old HD monitor(s) set up right alongside, so I can directly compare their appearances.
I'm happy with my Roccat Kova mouse, as I really like the two buttons that are immediately beside the standard two mouse buttons. I don't care much for mouse buttons on the sides of mice (perpendicular to desk surface), because my fingertip grip doesn't allow me to use them easily. But the Kova's aforementioned two extra buttons are perfect, and allow for quick access to a third and fourth button. For normal day to day work, they're mapped to Page Up and Page Down. For gaming, I assign these to common actions, like reload and grenade in FPSes. Sadly, the primary click switch is starting to wear down, and it occasionally issues inadvertent double clicks. Switch replacements are expensive unless I go to some sus website, which I don't want to do.
I'm proud of my antique IBM Model M keyboard, too. Very classic and retro.
The T480 is the best laptop I have owned so far. Keyboard is excellent, the battery life is great if you have one of the bulkier batteries and taking it apart is relatively easy. Performance is...
The T480 is the best laptop I have owned so far. Keyboard is excellent, the battery life is great if you have one of the bulkier batteries and taking it apart is relatively easy. Performance is also really good.
I got a really nice Rigid worm drive circular saw recently and I’m adding that to the others; a Makita angle grinder, a Ryobi bench grinder, a pair of Bosch cordless drills, a 22' Werner...
I got a really nice Rigid worm drive circular saw recently and I’m adding that to the others; a Makita angle grinder, a Ryobi bench grinder, a pair of Bosch cordless drills, a 22' Werner multi-position ladder (I sold off the 28' extension ladder recently), a stepladder, a jigsaw, a reciprocating saw, an oscillating multi-tool, a dremmel with a million attachments, a pancake compressor, and a pretty big assortment of other power and non-power hand tools. And I’m in the market for a miter saw as well.
Edit: Oh, not that kind of hardware? Edit 2: Yeah, that should have been ' and not " (a 22" ladder wouldn't be very useful).
Laptop: HP Envy 17-u108ca (17 inch display, 16GB ram, i7-7500U 2.7, up to 3.5, GHz, GeForce 940MX) w/ aluminum laptop stand. 2nd Monitor: Acer R240HY (23.8 inch display, 1080p) Speakers: Logitech...
Laptop: HP Envy 17-u108ca (17 inch display, 16GB ram, i7-7500U 2.7, up to 3.5, GHz, GeForce 940MX) w/ aluminum laptop stand.
2nd Monitor: Acer R240HY (23.8 inch display, 1080p)
Speakers: Logitech Z150 2.0 Channels
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S8
External SSD: 128 GB (for storing stuff to watch on Plex, this used to be my laptop SSD but I upgraded it to a 320 GB SSD)
External HDD: 4 TB (for backups)
Headphones: Sennheiser HD 201 (had them for 6 years now, the only issue is that the shiny part around the foam is finally starting to tear away; love these headphones, best $30 I ever spent)
Keyboard: Redragon K552
Mouse: Logitech G502 LIGHTSPEED (wireless)
I also use a (dying) 4 port USB3.0 hub, as there's no dock available for my laptop and it unfortunately doesn't have enough USBs (3 USB3 and one USBc, all which are used).
here's my stuff... Late 2013 MBP 15" (full spec'd, on an arm to my right) w/ Magic Trackpad 2 25" 1440p Asus monitor (for MBP) (on an arm in front of me) Little NUC as a media center (mounted to...
Late 2013 MBP 15" (full spec'd, on an arm to my right) w/ Magic Trackpad 2
25" 1440p Asus monitor (for MBP) (on an arm in front of me)
Little NUC as a media center (mounted to desk, Win10LTSC)
Dell 24" TN monitor for media center (on an arm to my left)
Toshiba Chromebook 2 w/ GalliumOS/Xubuntu (this is my out-on-the-town laptop)
iPhone SE1 w/ Checkra1n and a new battery
A WD EXT4100 NAS with 3x 4tb reds.. everything runs in Docker and I hate this NAS, even though it does work well. Everything stays on the NAS in case any of these systems craps out.
I'll also link to the what's your PC like thread for my desktop and laptop. In addition, I have a Lenovo Ideacentre AIO (acquired for free from a former coworker) that does double duty as a second...
In addition, I have a Lenovo Ideacentre AIO (acquired for free from a former coworker) that does double duty as a second monitor for my desktop and my home server (which handles NAS, torrent, Pi-hole, media serving, and ebook library hosting at the moment). It's super low specced (AMD E2-9010, 4GB RAM, originally just a 500GB HDD for storage)-- I've added 2TB of HDD space (scavenged from old external drives I used in college for backups and the like), as well as a 256GB SSD for the OS install, but other than that it's just as I got it. For free, I can't complain.
My phone is a OnePlus 8 5G on T-Mobile. It's been a great phone, but one I didn't want to purchase in the first place. Unfortunately I managed to drop my Pixel 3a off a balcony into a puddle, basically precluding any hope of salvaging it, during the month I was moving into a new apartment and so was in a budget crunch. Had to get a phone on financing from T-Mo (no reason to put it on a credit card instead of taking the 0% interest carrier financing, I figured), and the 4a/4a 5G hadn't launched on them yet, so this is what I ended up with. Luckily, my line itself is free for me (ported back onto my parents' plan when T-Mo was doing a free line promotion a while ago, before this I was on AT&T prepaid and paying $50ish/mo), so that's one expense I don't have to worry about.
Router: I have a Nighthawk R8000 running OpenWRT, and the bog standard Zyxel VDSL modem my ISP issues in bridge mode. The Nighthawk is absolutely overkill now for what I need (I live in a 400 sqft studio), but since my complex has a mesh wifi network for tenants with an AP right outside my unit (it's pure garbage, to where paying for my own ISP connection is worth it), something this overpowered is the only way I get useable WiFi.
Since the last time (link to my last response) a thread like this has been posted, I finally got around to building a new Desktop, with the following specs: Intel Core i9-9900k AMD RX 5700 XT with...
Since the last time (link to my last response) a thread like this has been posted, I finally got around to building a new Desktop, with the following specs:
Intel Core i9-9900k
AMD RX 5700 XT with 8GB VRAM
32 GB RAM
256 GB SSD boot drive, and a 4TB and 1TB drive for games/music/etc
Windows 10
I really wanted to get an rtx 3070, but honestly there's enough of a backlogs of games that my last computer couldn't quite run well enough, and probably by the time I play through them, I should be able to find an upgrade pretty easily.
Past just the raw specs of my desktop, since making the last post, I've also upgraded my desk space, and now have room for 3 monitors. One of them is still the 1650x1080 dell monitor mentioned in the previous post, but I now have two dell 1600x900 monitors paired with it. However, later this week I have two Lenovo 1080p, 144hz monitors coming in, I'm planning on still keeping one of the outdated monitors around as well (I really like the triple monitor setup for WFH) but I'm not really sure.
From there, I have a Pixel 4a (the non 5G one) as a phone, it's pretty nice, though I've only ever owned budget/generations old flagships up to this point, so I don't really have much else to compare it to.
Main desktop: This small-but-mighty Silverstone case Ryzen 7 2700 (8 cores / 16 threads) 32gb DDR4 500gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus NVMe drive GeForce 1050 low-profile card Very happy with it, though...
Very happy with it, though the GPU could perhaps use an upgrade. I have 3 monitors and playing Factorio on one monitor and watching YouTube TV on another causes some stuttering of the video. I'm not 100% it's due to the GPU being the bottleneck but I think I've ruled out everything else. Even if it's not, it's getting a bit long in the tooth compared to the other components, but the general GPU shortage as well as the need for a not-huge form factor in this case means I haven't been able to find one at a price point I like.
8x8TB hard drives of various brands (but all NAS-quality drives in some form or another)
250gb SATA SSD, repurposed from previous desktop, acting as cache drive for the hard drives
The hard drives in the server are in a ZFS stripe+mirror (aka raid10) setup. The cache SSD uses ZFS's L2ARC, and at some point soon will be upgraded to OpenZFS 2.0 to take advantage of the new persistent L2ARC feature.
I have several Lenovo laptops, 2 of them are from work and the rest bought used on eBay. There's also a NUC near my apartment window with an antenna attached for ADS-B decoding.
Phone is a OnePlus 6T, and it's the first phone I've never really felt any desire to upgrade when it reaches 2ish years old. It's still completely fast, battery life is still good, no complaints. It has 8GB of RAM and the oldest laptop I have kicking around is a 1st-gen X1 Carbon with only 4GB. It still blows my mind a bit that I have a phone with more RAM than a working, usable laptop.
Network gear is all Ubiquiti - I have an 5-port Edgerouter and 2 Unifi 2.4ghz/5ghz APs. Very pleased with them. I recently upgraded my mom's wifi as well, replacing the all-in-one modem/router/AP renteed from her ISP with a separate DOCSIS modem, Edgerouter X and AP. Best part of this is that the Edgerouters can do site-to-site VPN, so if I need to play tech support for my mom, I can remote desktop in securely over the VPN without having to worry about opening up her laptop to security issues.
I'm a noob about things like this, but some anecdata for you: I recently got a third monitor, and a 4k at that. Previously, I could play Battlefield V at max settings (Radeon RX 580) at 30+ fps,...
I have 3 monitors and playing Factorio on one monitor and watching YouTube TV on another causes some stuttering of the video. I'm not 100% it's due to the GPU being the bottleneck but I think I've ruled out everything else.
I'm a noob about things like this, but some anecdata for you: I recently got a third monitor, and a 4k at that. Previously, I could play Battlefield V at max settings (Radeon RX 580) at 30+ fps, with two 1080p monitors (one for game, another for non-game stuff). Once I added the 4k, the fps dropped significantly, and became pretty much unplayable. I lowered graphics settings to rock bottom, and it didn't matter. What did fix it, though, was actually disabling the two HD monitors in KDE('s Display settings). The RX 580 showed that it can easily run 4k at max settings -- as long as it's only driving one monitor.
Phone: iPhone 7 Personal Laptop: MacBook Pro 2013 upgraded to 8GB of RAM Work Laptop: MacBook Pro 2018 Media Center: 2008 Mac Mini running Linux Mint, upgraded to 4GB of RAM. Took me a few tries...
Phone: iPhone 7
Personal Laptop: MacBook Pro 2013 upgraded to 8GB of RAM
Work Laptop: MacBook Pro 2018
Media Center: 2008 Mac Mini running Linux Mint, upgraded to 4GB of RAM. Took me a few tries to set this up!
TV: Vizio 32” 720p from...2007ish
You might be able to tell I keep my technology for as long as possible. I really like to be driving the technological choices in my life rather than having them driven for me. You may argue that the Apple ecosystem runs contrary to this, but the HW is durable, and I only have to think about upgrading every five years or so.
Not exactly my new hardware setup but recently i joined a subscription of Shadow Boost using Shadow PC, blown my mind how great it is playing games and doing other tasks remotely:...
Not exactly my new hardware setup but recently i joined a subscription of Shadow Boost using Shadow PC, blown my mind how great it is playing games and doing other tasks remotely: https://shadow.tech/specs/
Primarily i use a MacBook and some RPI 4 at home. Smartphone i use an Android and for TV i use Nvidia Shield 2019 Pro.
Details: To prevent the previous comment from going on to long, I'll provide some details here: >Pop!_OS systems: Pop!_OS is the best distro for casual Linux users bar none. The "Pop Shop" makes...
Details:
To prevent the previous comment from going on to long, I'll provide some details here:
>Pop!_OS systems:
Pop!_OS is the best distro for casual Linux users bar none. The "Pop Shop" makes software management a breeze and has flatpaks or .debs for all of your favorite software. You can also add your favorite repos to Pop Shop if you can't find what you want. Install IntelliJ, Pycharm, Steam, Android Studio all in one place (and update in one place.) It comes with a built-in toggleable tiling manager! which is a godsend if you are a developer. Oh, and it's Linux, so setting up your dev environment is far easier than on any other OS. With Proton, literally 90%+ of your Steam games will work as well.
>Windows 10 AME:
Windows 10 Ameliorated edition is a lightweight, privacy conscious mod of Windows 10 that replaces many core utilities with open source alternatives. Cortana/Windows Explorer, Windows Updates/Licensing, Windows Store, Mail, etc. are all removed and/or replaced. The only concern I have is keeping the system patched, so I only use this system for gaming and nothing else, not even web browsing. Going to experiment with applying the latest security roll-up to my Windows AME VM.
>PiHole:
PiHole is a DNS server that takes about 3 minutes to set up. It will block ads at the network level for your home. You can install it on pretty much any Linux device, not just a Pi.
>pfSense:
pfSense is a respected, easy-to-use, open source router/firewall/security appliance. Set up isn't too difficult, and the documentation on their site is pretty good.
I did some big upgrades this year! I'm now rocking:
This is hooked up to a 27" Acer XB280HK 4K 60Hz Monitor I bought a few years ago and another old 24" Acer S242HL 1080p 60Hz monitor
Are you using 2 sticks or 4? I’m confused on if the quad band benefits performance over dual. Leaning towards ‘yes’ though.
Sorry for the late reply! I’m using two sticks
Last year I changed almost entirely to Apple products.
In early 2019, I got the galaxy s10e. On an impulse, and with the lure of good financing, I also got the galaxy watch. The galaxy watch showed me just how awesome and convenient a smart watch could be. It also showed me just how far tizen was from being a good smartwatch platform. I wanted to go biking with only my watch and some earbuds, and listen to podcasts. I could not find a podcast app for the watch that was not terrible. Even if I did, the watch only had about 1.5 Gb of storage available. While looking, I found all of the much better podcast and audiobook apps for the Apple Watch.
My previous experience with iOS was an iPod touch 4. Compared to android at the time, iOS was far behind. I kept an eye on iOS but only using android after that. I figured that iOS was still as far behind android as it was when I left.
I decided I wanted an Apple Watch. My grandfather had an old iPhone 6s+ that I borrowed. I wanted to see if I could deal with an iOS phone in order to get the benefits of an Apple Watch. Instead I found that iOS is a better os than android in many respects. I also found that the day to day performance of the iPhone from 2015 was better than the Samsung from 2019, though the battery was shot and the screen was much worse.
From there I found a great discount on an Apple Watch S3, and got some AirPods Pro. I kept borrowing old Apple devices from family and friends, which helped me justify the purchase of my own new devices.
The Apple ecosystem is just really good. I think many people who criticize Apple and praise android have ever given Apple a real try(myself included). There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Apple, but much of the criticism on the internet is outdated and wrong.
Well, as I said before, Apple makes sense if you go all in, since the integration between devices is really good. If you must integrate devices of multiple brands, Apple is a nightmare.
Apple products (as well as accessories and repair) are also absurdly expensive in Brazil, it’s very much a luxury brand. I assume the situation is the same in similar countries.
I wouldn't say so. I use 3 desktop OSes and 2 mobile ones on a daily basis, and I think the most egregious thing is that MacOS doesn't allow MTP access to android phones by default, you have to download a 3rd party application (although it also doesn't work on Ubuntu for me right now, not because it's not supported, but because... actually I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's isolated to whatever is happening between hardware and software on my installation). But overall there isn't really more friction between all the permutations.
It's more that Apple will put no more effort to other platforms. Like I use Airpods with 5 different OSes (Ubuntu/Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android) and it works fine on all of them, just that on iOS I can have it determine the size of my ear and do spatial audio (sometimes).
But there's also limited availability for that kind of in depth sync with other platforms since Android and Windows/Linux are not by any means a unified front or anything. So in net it's not that noticeable.
I was literally never able to download all my pictures from two iPhone 7s to any of multiple Linux machines with different distributions, including MX-Linux which has an utility entirely dedicated to interacting with Apple devices.
And, even in the off chance that it “works”, it randomly becomes unreadable, interrupting the copy process. It also takes many tries for the system to recognize the iPhone at all.
Besides, iPhone’s file system is almost entirely locked up and you cannot really transfer lots of things simply using an USB cable. You gotta go through whatever app you’re using.
I’d call that a nightmare.
Since KDE’s native feature is unreliable, I have to use the program Android Transfer (or something like that) to correctly manage my tablet’s storage,. But it works every time.
That's mostly true for iPhone -> MacOS as well. In general the iPhone is just designed for a different mode of computing - Android phones as well, but they do have the legacy fallback of MTP and an open filesystem. One where data lives mostly on servers, and apps are fully sandboxed entities.
But really I would imagine most people keep persistent data in cloud storage, rather than go through files - certainly that's what Apple wants you do to, considering how gimped wire transfers are for anything except data transfers (i.e like get a new iphone, transfer data to new iphone), but even that has a local wireless mode.
That's not to say that you can't classify that whole process of Apple not allowing data through USB as "a nightmare" - not really looking to get into that. But rather that this isn't intersystem friction between ecosystems, it's just Apple hates wires for whatever reason.
Well, I don't mean specifically iCloud. Since I use 5 OSes, I keep my files on Dropbox since across all of them it works the most consistently and has an actual client for all of them, and I don't have any issues. But Next cloud should work as well. So unlike with nest it's the max(cloud provider support)
If you mean, what if all cloud providers stop supporting your device? Then yeah, I suppose you're kinda stuck, but I'd imagine that level of time horizon (10+ years) isn't in most consumers thought processes.
I keep seeing this repeated a lot, across different forums. I presume it's because the Brazilian currency is really weak compared to the USD and other western economy currencies, and not just because Apple is slapping on more of a margin onto products sold in Brazil? Are there any import or sales taxes on that?
If this is the case, wouldn't it be just as absurdly expensive to buy any other form of gadgetry too? If a high-end Samsung phone like the Note 20 is US$999, and the iPhone 12 Pro is also US$999, those phones should be similarly priced in Brazil, right?
It's a tough problem to solve, because Apple is a global company, and if they simply dropped prices in Brazil to cater to that market—you'd create a grey export market where people in other countries would go to Brazil to buy their Apple devices.
It’s a combination of weak currency, shipping, high import taxes*, and the Apple premium. Apple also don’t have a presence in Brazil (not really), so there’s no such thing as Apple Care, etc.
This disparity is common in Brazil, McDonalds is very much a middle to upper class thing, for example.
* Other brands frequently perform some relevant step of production in Brazil, while Apple products arrive fully assembled — they pay more taxes because of that.
Gotcha. Makes sense. The import taxes for non-manufactured products would totally make a lot of Apple's already expensive products even more non-viable. Unfortunately that's a political issue, and I know the political situation in Brazil is not great, so no chance of that changing probably.
There's no AppleCare or Apple Stores in my country either—it makes dealing with returns and services a complete pain.
Interestingly, last year import taxes for videogame consoles where reduced from 40% to 30%, and portable consoles with a screen (like the New Nintendo Switch) are now taxed in only 6%.
To justify the decision, fascist president Jair Bolsonaro told the press that “the youngsters are complaining about videogame prices”.
Well, videogames are not that important, but at least he’s hearing someone, I guess?
How do you feel about the M1 Air? I just bought mine and so far I'm in love with the design and obsessive attention to detail but there's also some real head-scratching UX decisions imo.
The M1 hardware is astonishingly good. I am sure that any of the myriad reviews can speak its praises better than I can. I now have a laptop that has no fan and, in some workloads, is better than my gaming desktop. It can even run factorio admirably. It is almost as fast as my desktop at factorio, and that is running through Rosetta.
I only started using macOS with Catalina. I only used it for a few months before Big Sur came out, so I don’t know much of the history and evolution of macOS.
What I do know is that almost every UX decision is miles better than windows. I really wish Mac gaming was possible, or that vale released proton for Mac. If they did, I would go through the headache of turning my desktop into a hackintosh.
There are some pretty annoying things though. The notification interaction is the biggest problem with Big Sur. It was way better on Catalina. Having to hover over a tiny cross section of the popup to close it is stupid. Not having the options there unless you hover is stupid. Still, I have to deal with windows regularly. I would take macOS over windows any day. I would even pay the “Apple Tax” on a gaming computer if it were possible to game on Mac (although not if that Apple tax reached Mac Pro levels).
I tried this for the better part of 18 months. It's certainly a ton of fun, but simultaneously exceedingly not fun if you want a stable compute environment. At least in the pre-ARM-era of x86 hackintosh solutions (when I was doing this, Sierra was the main OS release), it's easy to boot into macOS—which gives you an impression of it being super easy, but orders of magnitude more difficult to make it six-nines stable. It's what comes after that's hard. Like, 4 weeks down the road, all of a sudden your speakers stop making sound when you just want to watch a video, and you end up mucking around with kexts and EFI files again.
As I'm sure you know, you have to really do your homework beforehand before jumping in. Your motherboard has to be compatible/recommended (right down to even a specific rev), AMD CPU's are usually out, as are nVidia GPU's that don't have published drivers available.
You usually need to buy a second-hand Apple-genuine WiFi/BT networking card that's been taken out of an old iMac if you want AirDrop and iMessage to work at all, you may never ever get sleep/wake to work properly (no matter how much you fuck with
pmset), sound may decide to work at some times—or, if you're me, your hackintosh will wake from sleep at 3AM, for no goddamn reason at all, you'll probably never have proper fan speed control working, oh, and opening System Info may kernel panic your machine.So damn frustrating, but when it does work, my god is it awesome having a desktop that outclasses any available Mac (this was before the new tower Mac Pro) for a fraction of the price, running the best desktop environment in the world.
It was also the thing that made me bite the bullet and just buy an iMac :). Enjoy your M1 Mac!
When I last checked, things for amd cpus were a bit better. (Don’t quote me on this) Anything ryzen would work, it just can’t run 32 bit code, only 64. Since Catalina sunsetted all 32 but libraries, that isn’t a big issue.
I also think nvidia gpus are out completely now. Maybe the really old ones. Really a bummer for me as I have an nvidia gpu and gsync monitor.
I have an oculus rift, which will never work on macOS.
I pretty much decided to not bother with a hackintosh when LinusTechTips said even they couldn’t get messages working on their hack pro. I think my eventual goal is to keep my gaming pc connected only to my rift, and get some Mac as a desktop. Then I can use steam game streaming for my flat gaming.
What do you use your laptop for mostly? I have been having a headache of a time with things not being built for the M1 chip. Though it’s been almost two months since I had time to sit down and do anything with my laptop so maybe things have improved a lot since then.
I use it for all of my general computing tasks. Web browsing, light programming, document writing, a few steam games, etc. The only issues I have had is bad performance in steam (the app itself, games are fine. Something to do with gpu acceleration), and steam input game pad drivers not working (because valve still uses deprecated kernel drivers for steam input).
I am honestly curious what programs you have a problem with on an M1. In my experience, the Rosetta performance and accuracy is amazing. The only way to really tell what programs use Rosetta is through resource monitor.
I just remembered brew. It is a bummer not having it available for M1 yet. I know there are ways to run it through Rosetta, but it doesn’t distribute universal binaries yet, and I couldn’t get it to work.
My biggest ones were Brew and Discord. Discord I could get to install but had issues of infinite-looping when trying to load, something I saw many others with M1 chips experiencing. There were some others that when I have the laptop in front of me I'll add in. This hasn't been a breaking issue for me since I can get around that by using a web browser version for most things. It really hasn't been anything unworkaroundable, more just frustration that this is the first laptop I bought in 8 years and sold myself on buying a new on by saying that I'd finally have a new gen laptop and macos and be in the apple ecosysteem so everything would work and play nice and be simple and then that wasn't what happened :/ It's been getting better, but not quite there yet.
See also "What's your computer/PC like?", from last August. My setup is unchanged since then. I guess I can add (also unchanged, but not mentioned in that comment):
a desktop computer with a Ryzen processor and SSD. It’s a good machine but it looks awful on my desk, so I put it in my closet for the time being since I’m not really using it.
A Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. Pretty good device. I use it to read books, manga, and comic books. I also installed Emacs on it using Termux and it works great! I’m using a Logitech Folio keyboard to write my book on the tablet. It’s a neat setup. I use the app Lock Me Out to block all distractions so the tablet becomes a glorified typewriter.
A 50” smart TV for Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services. It’s also connected to my Xbox Series S (which has an awesome Green Lantern cover — irrelevant but I felt like sharing :P) and serves as monitor for my computer.
A pretty old iPhone 7.
A Kindle paperwhite. I haven’t used it at all since I got the tablet.
There was a time where I thought about purchasing an android tablet and use it for small coding/writing tasks with Termux. What do you think is the biggest con of using that S6 as a little laptop/typewriter?
The biggest con of using a tablet as a little laptop is that it is not a laptop (:P).
Termux has a limited amount of packages and is not really a Linux distribution. It doesn’t even comes with sudo. If you use it to program professionally you’ll eventually hit its limitations. The screen is quite small and not ideal for multitasking. This can probably be alleviated by using a mouse but I don’t have one yet. I still don’t know how to put apps side by side, and Emacs packages that depend on external programs won’t always work. That said, I’m using Doom Emacs without major issues (although not to program yet). Remapping the keyboard outside of Emacs is not trivial. And I don’t think a proper IDE like Jetbrains’ even exist.
Given that the language is available on Termux and you’re fine using a command line text editor, I’d say that an Android tablet is more than adequate to study programming and performing simple tasks. I wouldn’t recommend it as a main workstation.
As a glorified typewriter for writing prose, I think it’s quite awesome, as long as you don’t mind typing on a very small keyboard. I bought the Logitech Folio because it is universal and I was unsure if my tablet would fit in other models.
Update: it looks like you can install a Linux distribution under Termux, making it even more viable for programming. I haven’t tested this yet. See: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot
Phone: Oneplus 6t, on Ting (cheap, I'm unemployed, it's ~20/month).
Desktop: i7 8700, 16GB of RAM, a ton of storage (250GB system drive, 1TB/4TB storage drives, 1TB drive for my Arch install), nVidia 1060 GTX 6GB, dual, vertical 24-inch monitors (which I got for the year I'm stuck doing school at home, and were the cheapest I could get).
Microsoft Surface Go, 128GB ssd for travel stuff, note taking at school. I usually use my Lenovo T430s to handle actual schoolwork because it's more powerful with the same battery life and a bigger keyboard.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A for digital textbooks because some of the Android apps make it easier than reading on my computer, particularly if I'm at school on a laptop. I like it a lot, and would wholly recommend it. I don't like to get the cheaper generic tablets because they can be a crapshoot.
That's one hell of a lot of storage! I feel comfortably overprovisioned with 16TB total (plus two empty bays) - I'd be fascinated to know what you're using between 64 - 112TB (depending on RAID mode) for?
FYI, I'm getting access denied to your domain from cloudflare.
No VPN, and I'm in India.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2cNHJf
Some highlights:
I love my [new!] BenQ monitor. 32" 4k, with excellent colour accuracy and good contrast ratio. Gives great results at a calibration site like http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ , for example. It's my first concrete experience with 4k, and I didn't think I'd notice a big difference from HD (1080p), but I do. Fonts are rendered so nicely (smooth curves, crisp serifs). 4k images and video are noticeably sharper where there are fine details (hair, gravel, thin lines). I have my old HD monitor(s) set up right alongside, so I can directly compare their appearances.
I'm happy with my Roccat Kova mouse, as I really like the two buttons that are immediately beside the standard two mouse buttons. I don't care much for mouse buttons on the sides of mice (perpendicular to desk surface), because my fingertip grip doesn't allow me to use them easily. But the Kova's aforementioned two extra buttons are perfect, and allow for quick access to a third and fourth button. For normal day to day work, they're mapped to Page Up and Page Down. For gaming, I assign these to common actions, like reload and grenade in FPSes. Sadly, the primary click switch is starting to wear down, and it occasionally issues inadvertent double clicks. Switch replacements are expensive unless I go to some sus website, which I don't want to do.
I'm proud of my antique IBM Model M keyboard, too. Very classic and retro.
The T480 is the best laptop I have owned so far. Keyboard is excellent, the battery life is great if you have one of the bulkier batteries and taking it apart is relatively easy. Performance is also really good.
Super practical machine. I love it :)
I got a really nice Rigid worm drive circular saw recently and I’m adding that to the others; a Makita angle grinder, a Ryobi bench grinder, a pair of Bosch cordless drills, a 22' Werner multi-position ladder (I sold off the 28' extension ladder recently), a stepladder, a jigsaw, a reciprocating saw, an oscillating multi-tool, a dremmel with a million attachments, a pancake compressor, and a pretty big assortment of other power and non-power hand tools. And I’m in the market for a miter saw as well.
Edit: Oh, not that kind of hardware? Edit 2: Yeah, that should have been ' and not " (a 22" ladder wouldn't be very useful).
I also use a (dying) 4 port USB3.0 hub, as there's no dock available for my laptop and it unfortunately doesn't have enough USBs (3 USB3 and one USBc, all which are used).
here's my stuff...
Audio/Misc
That pretty much sums it all up.
I have a pretty basic setup.
2012 iMac (upgraded to 24 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD)
2015 MacBook
iPhone XS Max
Apple Watch Series 5
I'll also link to the what's your PC like thread for my desktop and laptop.
In addition, I have a Lenovo Ideacentre AIO (acquired for free from a former coworker) that does double duty as a second monitor for my desktop and my home server (which handles NAS, torrent, Pi-hole, media serving, and ebook library hosting at the moment). It's super low specced (AMD E2-9010, 4GB RAM, originally just a 500GB HDD for storage)-- I've added 2TB of HDD space (scavenged from old external drives I used in college for backups and the like), as well as a 256GB SSD for the OS install, but other than that it's just as I got it. For free, I can't complain.
My phone is a OnePlus 8 5G on T-Mobile. It's been a great phone, but one I didn't want to purchase in the first place. Unfortunately I managed to drop my Pixel 3a off a balcony into a puddle, basically precluding any hope of salvaging it, during the month I was moving into a new apartment and so was in a budget crunch. Had to get a phone on financing from T-Mo (no reason to put it on a credit card instead of taking the 0% interest carrier financing, I figured), and the 4a/4a 5G hadn't launched on them yet, so this is what I ended up with. Luckily, my line itself is free for me (ported back onto my parents' plan when T-Mo was doing a free line promotion a while ago, before this I was on AT&T prepaid and paying $50ish/mo), so that's one expense I don't have to worry about.
Router: I have a Nighthawk R8000 running OpenWRT, and the bog standard Zyxel VDSL modem my ISP issues in bridge mode. The Nighthawk is absolutely overkill now for what I need (I live in a 400 sqft studio), but since my complex has a mesh wifi network for tenants with an AP right outside my unit (it's pure garbage, to where paying for my own ISP connection is worth it), something this overpowered is the only way I get useable WiFi.
Since the last time (link to my last response) a thread like this has been posted, I finally got around to building a new Desktop, with the following specs:
I really wanted to get an rtx 3070, but honestly there's enough of a backlogs of games that my last computer couldn't quite run well enough, and probably by the time I play through them, I should be able to find an upgrade pretty easily.
Past just the raw specs of my desktop, since making the last post, I've also upgraded my desk space, and now have room for 3 monitors. One of them is still the 1650x1080 dell monitor mentioned in the previous post, but I now have two dell 1600x900 monitors paired with it. However, later this week I have two Lenovo 1080p, 144hz monitors coming in, I'm planning on still keeping one of the outdated monitors around as well (I really like the triple monitor setup for WFH) but I'm not really sure.
From there, I have a Pixel 4a (the non 5G one) as a phone, it's pretty nice, though I've only ever owned budget/generations old flagships up to this point, so I don't really have much else to compare it to.
Main desktop:
This small-but-mighty Silverstone case
Ryzen 7 2700 (8 cores / 16 threads)
32gb DDR4
500gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus NVMe drive
GeForce 1050 low-profile card
Very happy with it, though the GPU could perhaps use an upgrade. I have 3 monitors and playing Factorio on one monitor and watching YouTube TV on another causes some stuttering of the video. I'm not 100% it's due to the GPU being the bottleneck but I think I've ruled out everything else. Even if it's not, it's getting a bit long in the tooth compared to the other components, but the general GPU shortage as well as the need for a not-huge form factor in this case means I haven't been able to find one at a price point I like.
Main home server:
This heckin' chonker
Ryzen 5 2500 (6 cores / 12 threads)
32gb DDR4
250gb NVMe boot drive, don't remember the brand
8x8TB hard drives of various brands (but all NAS-quality drives in some form or another)
250gb SATA SSD, repurposed from previous desktop, acting as cache drive for the hard drives
The hard drives in the server are in a ZFS stripe+mirror (aka raid10) setup. The cache SSD uses ZFS's L2ARC, and at some point soon will be upgraded to OpenZFS 2.0 to take advantage of the new persistent L2ARC feature.
I have several Lenovo laptops, 2 of them are from work and the rest bought used on eBay. There's also a NUC near my apartment window with an antenna attached for ADS-B decoding.
Phone is a OnePlus 6T, and it's the first phone I've never really felt any desire to upgrade when it reaches 2ish years old. It's still completely fast, battery life is still good, no complaints. It has 8GB of RAM and the oldest laptop I have kicking around is a 1st-gen X1 Carbon with only 4GB. It still blows my mind a bit that I have a phone with more RAM than a working, usable laptop.
Network gear is all Ubiquiti - I have an 5-port Edgerouter and 2 Unifi 2.4ghz/5ghz APs. Very pleased with them. I recently upgraded my mom's wifi as well, replacing the all-in-one modem/router/AP renteed from her ISP with a separate DOCSIS modem, Edgerouter X and AP. Best part of this is that the Edgerouters can do site-to-site VPN, so if I need to play tech support for my mom, I can remote desktop in securely over the VPN without having to worry about opening up her laptop to security issues.
I'm a noob about things like this, but some anecdata for you: I recently got a third monitor, and a 4k at that. Previously, I could play Battlefield V at max settings (Radeon RX 580) at 30+ fps, with two 1080p monitors (one for game, another for non-game stuff). Once I added the 4k, the fps dropped significantly, and became pretty much unplayable. I lowered graphics settings to rock bottom, and it didn't matter. What did fix it, though, was actually disabling the two HD monitors in KDE('s Display settings). The RX 580 showed that it can easily run 4k at max settings -- as long as it's only driving one monitor.
Hope that helps, or at least explains.
You might be able to tell I keep my technology for as long as possible. I really like to be driving the technological choices in my life rather than having them driven for me. You may argue that the Apple ecosystem runs contrary to this, but the HW is durable, and I only have to think about upgrading every five years or so.
Not exactly my new hardware setup but recently i joined a subscription of Shadow Boost using Shadow PC, blown my mind how great it is playing games and doing other tasks remotely: https://shadow.tech/specs/
Primarily i use a MacBook and some RPI 4 at home. Smartphone i use an Android and for TV i use Nvidia Shield 2019 Pro.
Hey folks! Love the chance to talk about my tech habit :D
Laptop (primary system):
Desktop 1:
Desktop 2:
Desktop 3:
Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (1):
Raspberry Pi 4 (2):
Details:
To prevent the previous comment from going on to long, I'll provide some details here:
>Pop!_OS systems:
Pop!_OS is the best distro for casual Linux users bar none. The "Pop Shop" makes software management a breeze and has flatpaks or .debs for all of your favorite software. You can also add your favorite repos to Pop Shop if you can't find what you want. Install IntelliJ, Pycharm, Steam, Android Studio all in one place (and update in one place.) It comes with a built-in toggleable tiling manager! which is a godsend if you are a developer. Oh, and it's Linux, so setting up your dev environment is far easier than on any other OS. With Proton, literally 90%+ of your Steam games will work as well.
>Windows 10 AME:
Windows 10 Ameliorated edition is a lightweight, privacy conscious mod of Windows 10 that replaces many core utilities with open source alternatives. Cortana/Windows Explorer, Windows Updates/Licensing, Windows Store, Mail, etc. are all removed and/or replaced. The only concern I have is keeping the system patched, so I only use this system for gaming and nothing else, not even web browsing. Going to experiment with applying the latest security roll-up to my Windows AME VM.
>PiHole:
PiHole is a DNS server that takes about 3 minutes to set up. It will block ads at the network level for your home. You can install it on pretty much any Linux device, not just a Pi.
>pfSense:
pfSense is a respected, easy-to-use, open source router/firewall/security appliance. Set up isn't too difficult, and the documentation on their site is pretty good.
If you have any questions, please let me know!!!