951–960 of 1001 posts
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You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
That is still a blackbox code implementation which could be updated at any time. I trust wires, not programmers.
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Windows license stored inside BIOS. When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically. What's more troublesome is that some laptops require drivers and customizations, so you need to tinker with your fresh Windows by installing carefully selected subset of drivers, so your hardware works and at the same time you don't install the same shovelware. The driver situation for Windows is truly dire. There a…
> When you install fresh Windows, it'll get activated automatically. Same happens with some crapware provided by vendor. You can wipe drive all you want, but ASUS motherboard will ask Windows to automatically install "essential drivers", and to be specific - "Armoury Crate".
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After growing up in eastern Europe it's still wild to see young Americans stupidly demand less choice and more monopolies in their market. Like seriously, having laptop choice is causing you crippling issues? Is other people having a laptop to choose based on preference causing you distress when you go to Apple store?
The problem is not that there is choice, it's that the choices don't make sense and overlap in weird ways. Apple presents a lineup that can be described as "good, better, best" while Windows OEMs have 20 models, all overlapping where one has a hinge that snaps in a year, the other has a defective trackpad, the other is the same thing as a another model but designed and manufactured in another country. You'd have to b…
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Same. I got the 2024 15" Macbook Air when CostCo had it for $849.00* Hadn't purchased a laptop new since college scholarship decades ago . This machine continues to make an immediate impression. The entire thing is thinner than just the bottom of my college CoreDuo. It also lasts 8x longer, on battery. I just use mine as a tertiary machine (i.e. bedtime reading/podcast), but if you ever want to run the machine hard l…
> if you ever want to run the machine hard long-term, you can use 1mm thermal pads between the heatsink and bottom of external case (and then it'll never throttle). That will spread the heat to the battery and degrade it much faster.
This removes heat from the internal compartments (which logic board heat sink and battery co-habitate [0]) by transferring it outside via heat conduction through the case. There is no detectible heat increase (to touch) — consider the heat masses relative sizes (processor v. entire metal case).
[0] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXY9tCBpf48&t=188> — thermal pad placement goes between four central screws (above processor)
As a thought experiment: how would ejecting heat from the inside increase its temperature?
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Eastern europe here. At mobile operator that offers laptops for 2 year no interest loans. The only laptops that are cheaper than Neo are essentially atom garbage with crappy screens. And those that cost about the same are also 8gb ones.
You should compare it with the much higher price it will have in europe.
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Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year. It looks like this computer is about as performant as that one, so I guess they started to have trouble sourcing components and came up with the Neo as their replacement.
It's pretty obvious to me that the Walmart Wonder sold better than they expected, and they wanted to make it widely available.
They waited until they could do it in alignment with Apple’s brand, going back to Steve Jobs saying during the netbook hysteria: “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk. [1]”
And to their credit the Mac Neo is not a piece of junk.
[1]: https:http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/blogs/21bits-read-m...
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As opposed to Microsoft, the good guys right now? I don’t see how incessant privacy violations, selling your data, and general shovelware behavior of Windows 11 is better. In many ways, it’s much worse in my view.
Nah, as opposed to Linux (for me).
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Why? Like many people I don't do serious work on my laptop. It is used for Web browsing, email, and to SSH into other machines. A simple, affordable, but well built machine like the Neo would be ideal for this, on the condition that I can run Linux on it. I currently use an aging XPS in that capacity and the Neo would be quite compelling as a substitute.
If web browsing, email, and SSH is all you do, then macOS is almost identical to Linux, while being so much easier to use.
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> The SSD in the Neo only manages around 1,500 MB/s in sequential benchmarks, it's not an impressive drive. That's sequential, not what you want for swap, but already a good start. I agree that it's not impressive, but already leagues ahead of a SATA SSD. And for swapping a 8GB machine it's more than enough (when the swap pattern is sequential though): you swapped your whole system memory in 3 seconds, which is impre…
> you swapped your whole system memory in 3 seconds, which is impressive. As a user a 3 second hang is unusable. Also, critically, swap consumes the life of the drive. Since the Neo's isn't user-replaceable, a 3-5 year lifespan before death is actually a non-trivial compromise, although time will tell on that one I suppose.
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> The number of overlapping iPad models and variants, for example, is getting kind of crazy these days. Sort of, maybe (not)? First off there is the "mini", which is basically if you want a small screen / most portability. After that, the two questions you need to ask are "How much horsepower and storage do you need/want?" (plain vs Air/Pro), and then "How fancy of a screen do you want/need?" (Air vs Pro): * https://…
Do I want an iPad Air or Pro? Both seem pretty thin. Why is it called 'Air'. What am I not getting with the Air? When was the last time each product was updated, since I remember a time when different models were updated at different times (and I never updated my internal barometer if this changed)? Further, I see older versions of the iPhone on display at the apple store. Does this mean I'm potentially browsing an o…
Horsepower (M5 vs M4), display ("XDR brightness: 1000 nits max full screen, 1600 nits peak (HDR content only"; "ProMotion technology"), option for more storage (2TB).
Hence the two questions I put forward:
* horsepower and storage (A16/M4/M5; ≥1T)
* display