Pretty much what the title says - I’ve been looking for something small and not too expensive to run a few VMs on recently, and I’m just genuinely amazed at where the tiny SBC space is at right now.

The Celeron N5105 seems to be the go to choice at the moment. You can get an entire machine running that CPU that’s slightly smaller than an old double CD jewel case, for $150. Less than $200 if you want 16GB RAM and a fast NVMe SSD in there too. Four decent quality 2.5GbE NICs thrown in as a bonus. And it’s not that much slower than my expensive full size desktop from late 2020.

Part of me thinks I’m just getting old - phones have been plenty of people’s primary computer for years now, after all - but there’s something about having a real standalone x86 PC that size for literally 1/5th the price of a flagship phone that just blows my mind.

I know it's a technical question but I want to know specifically from freelancer perspective. A freelancer's decision making differs from that of regular corporate worker in this regard due to many reasons:

1. Freedom to choose: Unlike corporate, a freelancer isn't imposed any process or specific software guidelines to follow. They're free to use Linux and open source if they want to.
2. No team compatibility: A freelancer can work on specific project with a geographically distant team but they don't have to submit to any long-term compatibility constraints.
3. Budget constraints: A freelancer can't typically afford costly licenses. With corporate, they can scale well and bring down the licensing costs which isn't true for freelancers. Hence, open source software is typically more suited to their workflow (even when using a Windows OS).

Given all these factors, do you think a Windows or Linux laptop is more suited for a typical Freelancer? What do you happen to use?

Step right up and claim your raspberry pi!

I have the following to give away (will cross off as things get claimed, first come first served):

• Raspberry Pi 4 / 4 GB + PoE hat + microSD card
• Raspberry Pi 4 / 4 GB + PoE hat + microSD card
• Raspberry Pi 4 / 4 GB + PoE hat + microSD card
• Raspberry Pi 4 / 4 GB + PoE hat + microSD card
• Raspberry Pi x4 "rack" acrylic enclosure
• 5 port gigabit network switch + 4x 6 inch patch cables

Just pay for shipping. Please only claim one thing (or one Pi and the enclosure).

So I disassembled my old PC, and there are a few spare parts that I believe are still good. According to the technician, the motherboard is fried. I have no way to test this, so I'm believing him for now.

I wish to use those parts on a new desktop PC, but I have no idea where to begin... what do I need to buy new? Of what kind/brand/specification/pricepoint?

So here's what I got:

• AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor
  • with the AMD cooler that came with it
• 1TB 7200RPM non-SSD hard-drive
• 1 Ballistix by Micron 16GB 2400MHz RAM stick
• 1 240GB WD Green Sata SSD M.2 2280

I may have access to another 8GB RAM stick of unknown origins from my partner's old PC, but she's a bit protective of those things so I'll way for her to be home to open it in front of her :P

There's a power source attached to the case, which reads ATX-600W. Image1, image2.

The computer case itself is a little beat up but I don't care about looks at all. Its external dimensions are 34.5cm by 35cm, with a width of 16cm. Here's how it looks (Xbox controller for scale).

I wanna build a new machine with the goals of:

• video editing
  • so Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, some audio work, and maybe streaming.
• gaming
  • nothing super high-end, I'll probably get one or two 1080p 24" monitors because 4K reduces my options quite a bit. But here are some of the games I'm looking forward to playing (all MMOs): World of Warcraft Classic and Retail, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Ashes of Creation (which I believe is an Unreal 5 game).

My budget (including the monitor or monitors) is roughly 1400 US dollars. I understand that is not a lot of money for the majority of Tildes users, but that is just my reality. My 1400 US dollars PC is very much a luxury around here.

If needed for budget purposes I can get just one monitor now, and another down the road.

So, what's the best I can do?

Thanks! ;)

I am looking to buy a new laptop soon because of the holiday deals.

I am looking for a laptop with:

1. high performance (most important)

2. high battery life (i dont mind carrying a charger around, but I would like not to).

3. does not overheat too much (not much of a problem since I will be living in basically a tundra for the next few months, but it might be a problem around summer).

My current laptop is a Macbook. I don't mind buying another one but I prefer Windows so I can game. My one problem with Windows is that every time I buy a Windows laptop, it gets slow as fuck for no reason after a month of use, which isn't a problem I've had with my Mac.

Cost isn't much of an issue. And feel free to get into the nerdy details. I don't know much about hardware and would like to learn.

Thanks!

EDIT: If you have any recs for cool accessories, let me know about those as well.

So, next year, I will spend two 3-month periods at a place that is 1400km away from my home. Because of my somewhat large, superfast dog, with a tendency to run away and topple people, I will have to go by car, dog in hand (don't worry, I won't be driving :P). Each roundtrip amounts to 42 hours on the road.

At the same time, I'm budgeting for a new desktop workstation for gaming and video editing (so both fun and work). I could get a much inferior gamer laptop with the money, but I wanna have a good machine for things like Adobe After Effects, and the inferior part bothers me quite a bit.

Hence the question: how can I safely transport a desktop PC plus monitor for an 84-hour car trip? Should I take it "whole"? Disassembled? Or not at all? I really don't wanna screw up my brand-new PC!

I started studying again this semester, and have to read a lot of stuff because of it.
As we get nearly all our Books as PDF and reading on my notebook or my phone gets tiering quite fast. So I'm thinking about getting myself an e-reader to make things go easier.

So i tried to find some ressources to learn about e-readers, but the internet (or search engines) these days seem to suck.
So maybe my lovely tildes can help.

must haves:
can read PDF
needs to make reading this "shitty" two colums pages my PDF have good and easy

nice to haves:
FOSS
Backlight

can somebody help me out? or do you know about a resource where I can learn about the pro and cons of the different e-readers, I'm starting with close to 0 knowlege as I never thoght I will need one, I generally prefere to read proper books.

After reserving a Steam Deck twice, and letting it drop, trying to get FTL running acceptably with touch controls on my old generic Windows Tablet, and doing the bulk of gaming and leisure time with my phone, I wonder if the best solution to my varied tech needs might be just to bite the bullet, turn in my Android cred and take a walk on the iPad side. I haven't used an Apple device regularly since my iPod touch from ten years ago and ever since that was stolen, I was all Android, all the time. But if I want a device to read comics (PDFs, Kindle/Comixology, Hoopla), watch streaming (Netflix, Prime Video, Youtube), try out games (Apple Arcade, Xcloud Web) but have the option to go back to my old reliables (FTL, Binding of Isaac), should I consider dropping $200 on an older iPad and see if it fits my needs? Should I do it now, or wait on rumors of new ones in October? I know they're supported for longer then the average Android, but at the same time, I don't want to pick one up just in time for it to be a security risk either.

I struck me while using my Steam Deck the other day to watch Twitch that the device has almost everything it needs to provide users with a tablet-like experience alongside being a gaming device. When you're not in desktop mode Steam provides you with a high quality UI optimized for many of the same constraints as a tablet. For "great on deck" games and the store/library UI you get an easily navigable touch screen-supporting experience. If Valve can bring in Android apps for Twitch, YouTube etc. we could get that kind of experience universally.

Desktop mode can peacefully co-exist with a tablet experience as you will switch between the two distinct modes of operation. This seems like a great way to capture a market of users normally turned off by ideas of tablets replacing their normal computers. I haven't used a tablet in years but I would use one that was a full Linux gaming OS at the same time.

Long story short, I wiped my keyboard with a moist towel and I knocked out exactly 6 keys on my mid-2020 MacBook Pro (Magic Keyboard, A2251).

I'm now looking at either paying $300+ to have it serviced by a technician. But I have the tempting option of buying an aftermarket replacement keyboard for less than $100 and replacing it myself. That + I'm in the spirit of DIY repairs to keep my things going longer.

Has anyone attempted this before? Any tips and advice?

It seems slightly daunting because the keyboard is adhered to the aluminium body so I would have to literally tear the existing one off.

Final update: See here.

Update: Thank you ALL for your valuable feedback. I'm definitely looking into refurbished models now and I have a lot better grasp on what what I should be considering. I'm going to do some digging and a ridiculous amount of overshopping over the next couple of days, and then I'll let you all know what my final pick is!

Hey techy Tildes! I'm back with another support request from you knowledgeable and helpful folks.

I need a laptop that does exactly three things: gets me online, displays PDFs, and runs office software. I have a large number of online courses that I have to take in the coming years, and I need something that I can just grab while on my couch or in bed to work on papers and assignments, hence the 13" size preference. Long battery life would be highly preferable.

I looked for options that come with Linux preinstalled, but there's really nothing available that hits what I'm looking for -- there isn't much of a market for 13". As such, my plan is to just buy a standard Windows laptop and then put Linux on it, but I have no idea which particular hardware will play nice with a Linux installation. Budget would be sub-$500 (if possible). I don't need the laptop to do anything other than stay on for a long time and let me type, so I have no need for a powerhouse.

Can anyone point me in the right direction with some recommendations?

Hi folks! I am, unfortunately, probably going to have to build a new PC soon; my beloved Thelio-r1 is slowly failing, and while my original plan was to buy a Ryzen 7 5800X and keep riding this PC for another three to five years, I don't know that I'll actually be able to make that work.

I like the NXT H510 I used for my boyfriend's gaming build, but the thermal performance isn't amazing and, most importantly, I hate tempered glass!

Yes, I understand that people want to show off their (ridiculously!) expensive components. I understand that lots of things have RGB. However, metal is cheaper, easier to work with, doesn't shatter, and I can modify it if I need to.

So, does anyone know of a good mid-tower PC case with decent airflow, up-to-date features (no 5 inch bays, good cable management hardpoints, a cable hiding bay, etc.), and no tempered glass or, preferably, acrylic?

Thank you!

I've seen a few posts about the Framework Laptop on Tildes and since I received mine, I thought I'd do a write up for it.

I've been using the Framework laptop for a few weeks now and it's been great so far. I was originally skeptical but I decided that I would take a shot at it as I've been growing increasingly unhappy with the design decisions that Apple has been making with MacOS.

I ordered the DIY kit, which was nice since I already had an NVMe SSD I could use with it, so I ended up saving about $150. It only took about 20 minutes to get the RAM, SSD and wifi card installed.

Specs:

• Intel i7-1165G7
• 32 GB of RAM
• Intel WiFi 6E card

Total cost: $1,422.03.

Unfortunately my first laptop arrived with a dead display. The Framework support team was pretty helpful and quickly sent out a new one, which works perfectly.

After toying around with Linux Mint and a few other distros, I ended up installing the Windows 11 beta. Getting the drivers installed was easy, since Framework offers a single download that runs one script to install all necessary drivers in unattended mode. Just hit one button and restart - all the drivers are installed. I wish all manufacturers offered something similar.

Overall construction is great. For something as modular as this, it feels extremely solid and well built. While the build quality isn't equal to something like a MacBook, I'd say it's on par with a Dell XPS or similar high end machine.

The screen is nice and bright, with accurate colors. I've always been a fan of 3:2 screens on laptops and moving from a MacBook Pro with a 16-inch 16:9 display to the 13.5-inch 3:2 display on the Framework doesn't feel like losing too much real estate. Having the taller display is great for sites like Tildes, where it can fit almost the same amount of content as a much larger screen.

The keyboard and trackpad are both great. The keys remind me of the older pre-2015 style MacBook keyboards before they switched to the butterfly mechanism. They are bouncy and responsive, with a nice feedback that doesn't feel too harsh like the butterfly keyboards do. The trackpad is pretty good and it uses the Windows Precision drivers, so it supports swiping and pinching if you like that. It does sound a bit louder than my MacBook Pro's trackpad.

The speakers are a bit disappointing. The max loudness is pretty anemic. Even in a normal acoustic environment (A/C running in a house), you have to actively listen to hear. Coming from a MacBook Pro 16-inch, I would say that the speakers are the biggest downgrade.

The main draw of the Framework is the expandability and upgradability.

The Framework modules are a fantastic idea and I love them. While they don't save you from having to carry around adapters, it is really nice to have those adapters slot in to your machine and feel more integrated. I purchased 2 USB-C, 2 full-sized USB, a DisplayPort, and an HDMI adapter. Being able to just slot in a USB A port and swap it for a display out one on the rare occasion that I need it has been great. I love being able to adapt the ports on my laptop to a situation without having to have dongles coming out of the side of my laptop.

The adapters are tiny and easily fit in any backpack or carrying case. I'm really curious to see what new adapters they offer in the future and what crazy niche ones third parties come up with. I'd love to see a cellular modem jammed into one of these things. Or maybe one that can hide a dongle for my wireless keyboard and mouse?

Battery life is...fine. It's an all day machine, but you'll definitely need to charge it every day if you're using it a good deal. The battery is on the smaller side, but it gets me through a normal work day so that's good enough. But when the battery goes bad (as all Lithium-Ion batteries do), it's an easy fix.

In terms of upgradability, getting into the laptop is dead simple. There's five screws on the bottom and then entire top deck (keyboard and trackpad) comes off. Everything is easily accessible and sensibly laid out. It's also all labeled with QR codes that take you to specific guides on how to install/upgrade those components. I think the educational component is great. It really shows people who would have never thought to upgrade their RAM or storage how easy it can be.

That's the big selling point for me. If I decide in a year or two that I need more than 1TB of storage, I can just buy a larger drive and stick it in there. Or if my display dies, I can get a one for a lot less than the cost of replacing the laptop. Or if the keyboard or trackpad dies, then I can easily replace just that component. On my MacBook Pro, replacing the keyboard is an $800+ repair, since it involves replacing the entire top case, which includes the motherboard and other expensive components.

For years we've been hearing from manufacturers that they can't make a laptop thin, light and upgradable. This laptop proves them wrong.

My biggest concern is the long term viability of the company. It's nice that they made an upgradable laptop, but if they aren't around in a year or two to keep selling replacement parts, then it doesn't matter much.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the Framework and I plan on keeping it and making it my daily driver.

EDIT: I forgot to mention my absolute favorite feature, one that I've missed ever since Apple went all USB-C on their laptops: It has a light on the side to tell you if it is currently charging or fully charged!

I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need off the drive is backed up, but I would at least like a drive to put it back on to!

In short, it became slow after I had to force power-off the system it was connected to (Pop OS installed on another external drive which I unplugged by mistake) and I haven't bothered to try to fix it in the six months since.

I've tested it on Pop and it takes about 10-20 minutes to mount, and 2 minutes to unmount and safely remove. The data itself seems fine but performance is slow, accessing a 20MB image takes several seconds and selecting the drive in GNOME Disks caused it to freeze.

The drive sounded louder than normal, especially after plugging in.

On Windows, the drive was recognised and browsable immediately, but browsing through folders was very slow - opening some folders causes Windows Explorer to freeze for a while. Some of my double-clicks were mis-recognised as click-to-rename, which took several seconds to activate and during which time Task Manager reported the average response time between 5000 and 11000 ms.

Attempting to load an audio file resulted in lots of buffering. Task Manager reports an active time of 100% (even when not loading files or folders) and the activity never exceeded 100 KB/s (and doesn't sustain it for more than a second). Ejecting the drive takes forever - after ejecting it using the tray icon, the tray icon is not removed (even though there are no other drives connected or listed) and the active time is still 100% with the indicator LED blinking non-stop. The system did not enter sleep right away after me asking it to either.

All of that to say, does anyone know what the issue could be, or how I could find and fix it? Thanks!

Edit: fixed and normal functionality restored (at least so I can check the drive a bit easier) using Scan & Repair in Windows (see my comment).