Technology Android

[dilla]

So I got my MBP back today. Something strange happened.

When I went it in, I told them about the obvious issue: the battery was at 60-65% of it's design capacity and I think that was causing the Mac to heat up even more than usual when under load. I think the excessive heat melted one the clips/brackets on my keys and my W key fell off because of it. It could be wear and tear and but the W key area was unusually hot the past few months when playing games.

I told the Apple Genius this and was quoted a $200 fee for battery and top case replacement. Battery and keyboard have to be changed together so if one goes, the other gets replaced as well

Went to pick it up today and the Genius gave me a briefing on what was done. Apple straight up replaced everything. I felt the SSD was shitting itself but the Genius' test a week ago showed no issue with it. Maybe there was something showing up and the technician just said the system failed to boot up in order to replace the Logic Board.

Then another issue was "found" with "PCBA/IO/TONGUE). Not sure wtf that means obviously something to do with the ports. That might have been anither reason to replace the Logic Board.

Its possible the SSD is soldered to the Logic Board? Is that how it works? So maybe there was an issue with the SSD and the tech made up some stuff to get it covered.

So basically I got a new top case with touchpad and keyboard new. A new MoBo and SSD snd battery for $200.

Still paid that Apple Premium years ago but now I've got half a mind to sell this thing locally and show proof of the work done. It's basically a refurbished 2017 MBP complete with a fresh battery and 90 warranty from Apple on the work done to it.

I'll check eBay and see what's a competitive price for it. Apple did me a solid but I think I'm set on switching anyway.

 

[masta247]

Maybe Micro Center had a renaissance in the past ten years and became more popular? It's always been at the same location near me since as long as I can remember. It's off to the side of a road full of dealerships and is next to a grocery store chain in the Chicagoland area. Basically, not a heavy traffic area and out way of most other stores that sell tech, including Target and Walmart. Not too far off but about 3-5 miles away. It also had a run down look, from the outside but the inside was very nice. It's still small compared to other Microcenters I've seen in YouTube videos but it's nice enough.

I always assumed it was on the brink of bankruptcy and shutting down when I was in high school. I remember the last time I went there and bought something was 2007 before college and it was an IDE hard drive and an enclosure for it. 500 GB and an enclosure for like $150 or so. I haven't purchased anything from there since then but I've gone about a dozen times when they sent out coupons for free stuff like mini drones or flash drives or SD cards. Still never purchased anything.

Bu t in the past four years or so, I've noticed they've sponsored videos from UrAvgConsumer and Austin Evans and those locations were huge compared to mine. I found it odd at first since Best Buy would also sponsor some videos for the same channels and I didn't consider MC to be on the level of BB. Probably isn't but they matched BB's sponsorship budget it seems.

There's two MCs in the Chicago area. One actually in the city and I've never been to that. Another is fortunately a short, 10-15 minute drive from my house. I didn't realize how lucky I was lol. For someone looking to build their own PC, their component department is stacked with stuff, just like you see in videos. It's just my location doesn't look to be as big as the ones Austin goes to in SoCal.

I don't think Raptor Lake comes to notebooks until Spring of next year, right? That'll be a wait. From what I've read in the fights that take place in the comment section of review sites, it sounds like Intel really got the kick in the ass they needed from AMD's come back and is now slightly better on pricing too, at least compared to performance. Efficiency is still an issue and I'm still gravitating towards an AMD/Nvidia set up but I don't think Lenovo does that often or might have stopped completely with the gen 7 Legion 7s. The Legion 5s have them, though.

I think I specced a 12900H or HX or Lenovo's site with a 3070ti for about $1800 after discounts and cash back. I keep thinking I'll use my laptop away from a desk and charger but I have a feeling I won't once I keep battery life in mind and opt for a Ryzen instead and then rue for the performance I may not even notice of the Intel lol. I know myself, it'll happen.

Im going to check out the 7 Slim and see if I prefer the form factor over the non Slim. I know it tops out at a 3060 and while it will serve me well, I'll still wish for what I don't have and miss the 3070ti. Again, I know myself and I'm a bastard.

Is going for 32 GB of RAM for the sake of future -proofing the machine a good idea? Lenovo has some weird pricing and is discounting some 2 TB and 32 GB models for just 100-200 more than a 1 TB and 16 GB models.

Raptor Lake is desktop only for now. Likely early next year is when first laptop devices with it would be coming out. I suspect in laptop it won't be all THAT different from12th gen as much of the gains come at the expense of more power. It will be faster for sure, but maybe by low double digits if I had to guess.

I just looked up Microcenter and sadly there are no plans to expand to Canada. I hope to stop by one of them next time I'm in the states. It's weird that the locations seem to be mostly really far from actual population centres.

Yeah Intel got a major kick in the ass and they're actually the value king now. They are also faster with Raptor Lake vs Ryzen 7000. They turned things around after years of getting their ass whooped by Ryzen. Within 4 years an i5 went from 4 cores to 14, at nearly the same price, and the performance jump for each of their cores over the last two years was bigger than they delivered between 2010 and 2020.

As for 16GB vs 32GB, for casual use cases 16GB is still the sweet spot and more than enough. Unless you're into professional content creation, there won't be any one killer app that would use even close to this much. So you only buy more if you like having LOTS of stuff open at the same time and got some spare money to spare on 32 gigs.

 

[dilla]

Raptor Lake is desktop only for now. Likely early next year is when first laptop devices with it would be coming out. I suspect in laptop it won't be all THAT different from12th gen as much of the gains come at the expense of more power. It will be faster for sure, but maybe by low double digits if I had to guess.

I just looked up Microcenter and sadly there are no plans to expand to Canada. I hope to stop by one of them next time I'm in the states. It's weird that the locations seem to be mostly really far from actual population centres.

Yeah Intel got a major kick in the ass and they're actually the value king now. They are also faster with Raptor Lake vs Ryzen 7000. They turned things around after years of getting their ass whooped by Ryzen. Within 4 years an i5 went from 4 cores to 14, at nearly the same price, and the performance jump for each of their cores over the last two years was bigger than they delivered between 2010 and 2020.

As for 16GB vs 32GB, for casual use cases 16GB is still the sweet spot and more than enough. Unless you're into professional content creation, there won't be any one killer app that would use even close to this much. So you only buy more if you like having LOTS of stuff open at the same time and got some spare money to spare on 32 gigs.

I know macOS and Windows are different but I don't know about their memory management. But for the past year or two, I have had about 7 GB "active" and another 7-8 GB "cached" as per macOS' Activity Monitor. I don't notice the slow down at all but that might not always be a symptom of running low on RAM?

I'll typically have Firefox open with 5, or so, tabs open in a worst case scenario. I stream YouTube in the background when playing games and DOTA I know, for sure, takes like 11-12 GB of RAM, for some reason. Maybe that's normal?



I think the upgrade from 16 to 32 us $60 or $100 so it isn't that much more expensive.

The only nagging issue I have is what I mentioned in a previous post: going the AMD route and getting the supposed better battery life or going the Intel/3070ti route and getting the performance when plugged in. I'll miss one or the other depending on which one I get but I think I'd miss the battery life more. Whereas the game performance seems almost abstract since it's a difference of about 10-15 fps and a lot of the games I saw ran at 90+ anyway.

The AMD GPU they offer is the 6850M XT and its performance slots in between the 3070ti and the 3080, closer to the former. I can live with that and take the extra battery life an AMD CPU would provide. It's priced similar to the Intel/3070ti unit and well below the 3080ti 7i on Lenovo's website, which I am not getting.

One negative thing I read on Ultrabooks Review is that the Legion lineup has some real shit speakers that are only downward-firing. But there's nothing quite like the 7i with a 15 or 16" screen and pseudo-professional aesthetic.


As for Intel's jump in performance, I remember you telling me there wasn't a big difference between CPUs from the 2010 era through 2018, or so. That the Core 2 Duo in my 2010 MBP was not too difference, for 7 years of updates, from my 2017. I still don't quite understand that but your sentiment is shared by a lot of other people when discussing the Intel vs AMD thing. What seems to be a consensus among everyone is how much more efficient AMD chips are and how people looking at occasional high end gaming but mostly "work" stuff should consider an AMD CPU. And Lenovo's 7 lineup is only AMD-AMD and Intel-Nvidia. The legion 5 pros have various setups with AMD GPUs and 3070 TIs but then the dumbass in me thinks "but muh premium materials."

 

[dilla]

I saw a Galaxy Watch 4 on sale for like $170 or so at Best Buy. I wasn't in to wearables too much but my surgeon has a Galaxy Watch of some sort. And a Z Fold. I'm assuming he got it as a bundle. Seeing how he used his Watch got me thinking about getting one too but I'm reading that the battery life is ass on Samsung watches and people are opting for Amazfit or even Garmin watches. The latter being more for people who want to track their runs lol. I don't run.

I'll keep an eye out and see if the prices drop further. At $150 it might be worth trying out.

 

[dilla]

lol what do you know? The price dropped again. A 44mm Watch 4 for $200. Or a Watch 5 for $260.

I don't think there's a better option for Android users than the Galaxy Watch, right? That Pixel Watch seems kind meh.

 

[dilla]

Raptor Lake is desktop only for now. Likely early next year is when first laptop devices with it would be coming out. I suspect in laptop it won't be all THAT different from12th gen as much of the gains come at the expense of more power. It will be faster for sure, but maybe by low double digits if I had to guess.

I just looked up Microcenter and sadly there are no plans to expand to Canada. I hope to stop by one of them next time I'm in the states. It's weird that the locations seem to be mostly really far from actual population centres.

Yeah Intel got a major kick in the ass and they're actually the value king now. They are also faster with Raptor Lake vs Ryzen 7000. They turned things around after years of getting their ass whooped by Ryzen. Within 4 years an i5 went from 4 cores to 14, at nearly the same price, and the performance jump for each of their cores over the last two years was bigger than they delivered between 2010 and 2020.

As for 16GB vs 32GB, for casual use cases 16GB is still the sweet spot and more than enough. Unless you're into professional content creation, there won't be any one killer app that would use even close to this much. So you only buy more if you like having LOTS of stuff open at the same time and got some spare money to spare on 32 gigs.

What a mess the 4090 turned out to be. It's all that's being posted to the PCMR sub, be it memes or pictures of melted cables.

I was stuck choosing between two L7 models. The 12900/3070 TI and the 6900?HX/6850M XT. And the latter went out of stock lol. I still don't know if I'll miss the smidge of performance from a 3070 TI or the much better battery from the AMD Advantage model. Between the sale prices and depending on if the cash back deals get to rumored 20% back from Lenovo, both machines are about the same price at $1700 after CB. That'd be a hell of a deal. If it were in stock.

 

[dilla]

So I didn't know that AMD's 6000 CPUs packed an integrated GPU that was so powerful on its own. The 680M is what's in a lot of these handheld gaming PCs, or whatever they're called, and people are playing the latest MW2 on it with ease. I'm not sure on what settings but....probably won't even start on an Iris Xe, right?

I still have my eye on the Legion 7 with the 6850M XT but now I'm wondering if I should get a nice non-gaming laptop with the Ryzen 6XXX chipset and try doing my gaming on that. It won't run at 1440p Ultra, I know, but it also won't be nearly $2K either.

 

[masta247]

Yeah Ryzen 6000 chips have a decent integrated GPU. And much better drivers than Intel, so it would run any game a discrete AMD GPU can run, just much slower. It's not going to be as fast as a proper GPU, and is in a different class altogether than something like the 3070/3080, but you could do all the e-sports games at 1080P and some modern AAA games at lower resolutions or settings.

To be honest, I'd be happy enough with the 6800H for gaming on the go, if it came in a laptop with good cooling where it doesn't throttle.

 

[dilla]

Yeah Ryzen 6000 chips have a decent integrated GPU. And much better drivers than Intel, so it would run any game a discrete AMD GPU can run, just much slower. It's not going to be as fast as a proper GPU, and is in a different class altogether than something like the 3070/3080, but you could do all the e-sports games at 1080P and some modern AAA games at lower resolutions or settings.

To be honest, I'd be happy enough with the 6800H for gaming on the go, if it came in a laptop with good cooling where it doesn't throttle.

I still wouldn't really game on the go, it just wouldn't be as expensive of a machine.

I still have to work on selling the RX 580 and its enclosure, as well as the MBP. And then I'd still have a Series S. That's too many options and a lot of overlap. I think selling the MBP and eGPU would be like 70% of the funds for a decent L7 but I'm also not sure what the market is like right now those two things.

 

[dilla]

Not the best source: https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company

But the comments on this submission on Reddit resonated with me. Apple today isn't the Apple of a few years ago, or even ten years ago. The design and UI are so cartoon-y and it's starting to look less and less professional and more like something catered towards people 35 and under. And even 35 is pushing it; this looks more for people born in the 2000s who now live their lives through their phone and apps.

After using Windows more regularly the past month or two, I've run out of things that I, personally, do that can't be done on Windows. Some menus are still cumbersome but macOS can be too simple and locked-down, even for a novice user like me who doesn't tinker around too much with settings but sometimes has to when an issue arises. I get what people were saying years ago but I just never did it often enough to miss that ability.

About the article itself, I thought ads in Apple News was OK because Google News also has some promoted or sponsored content/sites as well but now it's just bad that both do it. I think I've read of ads popping up in macOS too? I think it started in the latest version, Ventura, but I have not upgraded as yet from last year's version because I read bad things about bugs in Ventura. Not ready to deal with that. Sure, all software has bugs but factoring in other things about the OS that make me unhappy, I'm not looking to get something somewhat-new just to deal with bugs. Plus, a lot of macOS' new features are geared towards those with iPhones and iPads and who use both in their workflows on their Mac. Which isn't me.

Aside from the premium feel of the chassis of Macs, there isn't much else that interests me which is why I'm now looking at other options to upgrade from my MBP. I'll miss the aluminum feel and sturdy chassis but it's not like Lenovos and Dells are snapping left and right from normal use. Oh, and I'll miss the big trackpad on Macs and the gestures but I'm sure Windows has those options too. Or a third party app can bring most of those gestures to Windows.

 

[Casey]

Got a Pixel Watch for £150. It's the LTE version which retails at £379. Brand new, still sealed. Looking forward to it arriving later today. I've had half a dozen Wear OS devices going back to the very first one (LG G Watch) back in the day, and I'd say the OS/hardware have been a mixed bag. I loved the original one and the first version of the OS. More recent ones prior to Wear OS 3 have been disappointing. So hopefully this one puts things back on track.

 

[Pittsey]

I'm still trying to get a Rolex at retail


I picked up Google WiFi pro. I now get 400 meg. Which isn't great, as I pay for 900 meg.

 

[dilla]

Got a Pixel Watch for £150. It's the LTE version which retails at £379. Brand new, still sealed. Looking forward to it arriving later today. I've had half a dozen Wear OS devices going back to the very first one (LG G Watch) back in the day, and I'd say the OS/hardware have been a mixed bag. I loved the original one and the first version of the OS. More recent ones prior to Wear OS 3 have been disappointing. So hopefully this one puts things back on track.

I received a Watch 5 44mm last week from Costco. $249 with an extra charger and an additional year of warranty from Samsung. I'm liking it so far and the battery life has been better than what I was expecting. I was expecting to have to charge daily while in the shower but I'm getting over 2 days with sleep monitoring and constant HR monitoring. I did disable "tilt to wake" and the AOD so I have to tap to wake the screen, but that's not a big deal for me.

I'm still trying to get a Rolex at retail


I picked up Google WiFi pro. I now get 400 meg. Which isn't great, as I pay for 900 meg.

I have an Eero Pro setup, three of them, throughout the house. I only get 400 or 500 Mbps from Xfinity but I imagine I lose a good bit of bandwidth by not doing a wired backhaul. It's good enough for the house since the most "intense" it needs to be is when I play a game online. Otherwise, it works well for streaming or just basic web browsing. I did look in to getting a MoCA setup but I think I'd be the only one that would appreciate it. The house isn't wired up for ethernet so that's a bummer.

 

[dilla]

Just saw that Huawei is planning to leave the EU.

And then this comes out about Eufy:

 

[dilla]

I think I'm down to getting this SKU L7: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeo...-Legion-7-16ARHA7-laptop-review.649927.0.html


or the L5i Pro with the 3070ti. They're both around the same price of $2kish but if I keep it for 5 years, I think it will resist being outdated better than getting a 3060-equipped machine.

 

[Pittsey]

I have an Eero Pro setup, three of them, throughout the house. I only get 400 or 500 Mbps from Xfinity but I imagine I lose a good bit of bandwidth by not doing a wired backhaul. It's good enough for the house since the most "intense" it needs to be is when I play a game online. Otherwise, it works well for streaming or just basic web browsing. I did look in to getting a MoCA setup but I think I'd be the only one that would appreciate it. The house isn't wired up for ethernet so that's a bummer.

They've updated the firmware and it works a lot better. I do need the Ethernet backhaul, but it's on my list. I've bought a new house and it needs fully renovating, so I'm currently living on a building site

 

[dilla]

They've updated the firmware and it works a lot better. I do need the Ethernet backhaul, but it's on my list. I've bought a new house and it needs fully renovating, so I'm currently living on a building site

Yeah, it can be pricey to put in ethernet on a house that's already built but if you're destroying and rebuilding it, it might be a bit cheaper and definitely easier.

 

[Pittsey]

Yeah, it can be pricey to put in ethernet on a house that's already built but if you're destroying and rebuilding it, it might be a bit cheaper and definitely easier.

It's just a few cables run in the walls

 

[dilla]

It's just a few cables run in the walls

Yeah, if the house is still in the process of being built, it's simple, but once the house is already built, it's several hundred bucks to get it done from a proper electrician.

I looked in to it and it was much cheaper and "cleaner" to use a MoCa setup since it would have required a good bit of labour hours to get it throughout the house.

 

[Pittsey]

Yeah, if the house is still in the process of being built, it's simple, but once the house is already built, it's several hundred bucks to get it done from a proper electrician.

I looked in to it and it was much cheaper and "cleaner" to use a MoCa setup since it would have required a good bit of labour hours to get it throughout the house.

It's an SDS drill and some easifill