Background:

I've been using a 9-year-old 13.3 inch Dell Latitude 7370 laptop running MX Linux to stream games via Moonlight from a beefier desktop machine. It is SO good and works flawlessly. My only complaint is the smaller screen size.

I would like to upgrade to a larger computer, and given that the computer will literally only be used for streaming games, it doesn't need to have great stats. I'm looking at used/refurbished models -- both for price and because buying something new feels like complete overkill for my needs.

My only requirements are:

• 17 inch screen
• USB-C charging

That's it! I'm assuming that literally anything I can get with that will work for what I need given that my small, decade-old laptop is already doing the same job perfectly. USB-C charging is a must-have for me. I already have USB-C power cords in all the places I plan on using it, and I don't want to have to use a separate charger for it.

My Situation:

Because I'm searching for used/refurbished models, I'm limited to what's available rather than going for any specific model of computer. I can easily find listings for computers with 17 inch screens. What I can't find easily is whether or not they support USB-C charging. Most sites don't have a filter for that, and a lot of the listings don't specify the type of charger used and just list "AC adapter" (or don't mention it at all). Many sites don't have pictures of the ports, or the pictures they do have are stock photos that aren't of the exact model.

Is there some easy way to find these that I'm missing? Some keyword, or a site that does have a filter for that, or brand knowledge that can point me in the right direction?

Also, if anyone has any recommended sites for used/refurbished laptops, let me know. I have had success with Backmarket for used tech before, but I'm open to recommendations.

So I bought this caldigit hub along with this USB hub.

I originally had the Aceele connect to my computer through the CalDigit Hub, but when I connected my keyboard to my Aceele, I noticed that when I hit F11, the boot menu doesn't get activated.

I connected my keyboard to the caldigit hub directly though and was able to pull up the boot menu just fine.

Then I connect my keyboard to the Aceele hub and then connected that directly to my computer and it still was not able to connect my keyboard to the computer pre-OS boot. So clearly Aceele waits till the OS is actually up before it can connect (I think?)

However, I don't know what tech specs to look for in a hub that ensure that anything I connect to it will be detected pre OS-boot. I am looking for a hub that specifically plugs into a USB-C port, has 4 USB-A ports and is USB 3.2 gen with 10 gbps. Is that possible?

finally getting to be that time where I need a USB-C slot on my tower that I built back in 2017 so I started looking into expansion cards.

One thing I can't tell is how to tell if a particular expansion card supports the usb-c ports with DP-Alt mode for a 4k display if the need arises.

for exmple, had my eye on this one and I can't tell much if it does have that kind of support

I have an external drive (3.5" hdd, SATA) in an enclosure (usb 3) (purchased separately), connected to a thunderbolt dock (OWC) connected alternately to an iMac and a macbook pro. The HDD goes to sleep, and causes problems. Freezes, weird internet access problems, kernel panics.

I have done some research, and can't seem to figure out:

how to know whether it is the drive, enclosure, or computer causing the sleep, although, fiddling with various settings on the mac seemed to have no effect, although it may have increased my battery usage :(

how to adjust settings on the drive, or in the enclosure.

How to determine what the sleep behavior of prospective drives will be.

As a workaround, I tried to write a zsh script to touch the drive ever few seconds. This kinda worked, but was a struggle to figure out appropriate permissions issues and how to make it run automatically.

I welcome all guidance, pointers to resources, clarifications, incantations, well-wishes.

Edit: I changed some windows settings based on advice here. The situation is improved and I am going to see how things go before buying new equipment. Thank you everyone

So I recently bought a new laptop. I use an external mouse, keyboard, headphones etc, all of which come with usb A connectors that worked well with my old laptop.

When the new laptop arrived there weren't nearly enough ports for either usb A or usb c so I invested in a peripheral that links four usb a connections to one usb c connection on the laptop. Edit, it is powered and plugged in. Now the connection with everything plugged in seems to be intermittent and the mouse and external keyboard don't work reliably.

I have read a couple of articles and I am even more confused but they seem to be saying that usb c is not plug and play the way usb a was. What the fuck. Why do this like this? What do I do now?

I just spent significant money on this computer and I don't want to replace a functioning mouse and keyboard

I recently upgraded my phone and to my dismay everyone followed apples moronic choice to remove aux ports.

I want to keep using my KZ in ears, and while they have bluetooth adapters I rarely like how bluetooth sounds and also don't want to worry about having to charge them either.

Both adapters I've bought either buzz like crazy or my phone is convinced is constantly disconnecting and pausing my music. Anyone know of anything in the budget range thats as good as KZ or good adapters?

OK, so this is kind of a weird question, but has anyone here ordered a USB cable recently, and if so, how long did it take to arrive? I ordered a 3 meter USB A male to USB A male cable on June 27th from NewEgg, who have been fairly reliable in the past. I got an email later that day or the next saying the shipping label had been printed. So I thought, OK, it will go out in the next day or two. It still hasn’t shipped. After about 2 weeks of waiting, I ordered another one from B&H Photo. It also hasn’t arrived yet. I know there is a global chip shortage. Would that affect cabling too? It just seems odd that it’s taking so long to get a single USB cable. Anyone else experience this or am I just unlucky this month?

I've been trying to find a small capacity (64GB or less) flash drive with decent read and write speeds, but haven't been able to find anything. I'm looking for something in the 200-300 MB/s read/write range, but I can't seem to find anything that reliably breaks the 100 MB/s mark even in larger capacities. The SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB seems to have adequate performance, but at $65 is a bit out of my price range since I'd like to purchase a handful of drives.

Does anyone know of any other smaller flash drives with SSD-level performance?