[X] My Assistant

Notice how none of those "good" hardware products were made after Bill Gates left. Their hardware declined alongside the rise of their shitty modern software development practices. And even those had some major problems compromising their potential.

The Microsoft hardware accessory products were great. I loved the wired and wireless intellimouse since they were the only ones with that patented anti-carpal syndrome palm-rest angle. Of course, they couldn't advertise it as such because that would become lawyer bait for every hand, wrist, and arm injury. My last intellimouse finally wore out due to excessive clicking in games. They had two faults. The wired intellimouse often broke its wire at the point where it entered the mouse since there was no strain relief reinforcement to prevent the wire from flexing so much at the point it entered the mouse body. Mine would break, so it needed to be repaired every now and then. The other intellimouse problem was the rubberized friction coating on the wireless tiltwheel 3.0 mouse. It was made in China and they used something that caused the rubberized coating to become a gummy mess after a few years if it had skin oil on it. It was hard to remove the gummy mess so I neutralized its stickiness with orange oil and then used rough surface paper towels to carry off the gummy slime. Right now, I am using the Logitech M720 mouse which is okay as it also has some of that anti-carpal angle to it although not as much as the microsoft mouse had.

Another microsoft hardware product I liked a lot was their [en.wikipedia.org] DSS80 2.1 speaker system. I still have it and use it. I also bought a used one as backup in case the first one stopped working.

I use Dell/Harman Kardon HK395's myself.

win10

[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/PSVre75g.png)

The new RTX 3080 I have been planning to get turned out to be way too long for my case, good thing I checked the length while I was taking a shit. Now I have to get a shorter (and more expensive) one.

The new RTX 3080 I have been planning to get turned out to be way too long for my case, good thing I checked the length while I was taking a shit. Now I have to get a shorter (and more expensive) one.

cant you just get a bigger case or cut into the mostly useless metal?
especially if its going to cost more

I had that issue initially, luckily I could go with a shorter cheaper version. Some 3000 series cards are way shorter than others.

The founders editions without the cooling block is crazy short.

cant you just get a bigger case or cut into the mostly useless metal?
especially if its going to cost more

I cut a notch in the heat sink on my motherboard's main "chipset" IC so that PCI-X cards would fit in the case/on the board in 32-bit PCI slots.

That's the extent of my experience cutting heat sinks (on PC parts; I have done it more for other stuff).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 18 2022, 04:40

Win 11 prebuilt PCs are being encouraged to only have security keys to allow Windows to boot. Also encrypting the PC by default with the only recovery key on their Microsoft account servers.

What is the point of trusted computing, if they do not trust the user/owner of the PC.

Win 11 prebuilt PCs are being encouraged to only have security keys to allow Windows to boot. Also encrypting the PC by default with the only recovery key on their Microsoft account servers.

What is the point of trusted computing, if they do not trust the user/owner of the PC.

(IMG:[files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/6z9b0r.png)

Win 11 prebuilt PCs are being encouraged to only have security keys to allow Windows to boot. Also encrypting the PC by default with the only recovery key on their Microsoft account servers.

What is the point of trusted computing, if they do not trust the user/owner of the PC.

They've raised a generation of retards, and now they think they have to make computers retard proof.

That or they're domineering capitalists and terrified at the prospect of losing market share so they're doing everything they can to keep people on their platform.
Take your pick.

Maybe both.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 18 2022, 14:17

work

Had to explain to someone why their gamecube emulator was tearing on their 144Hz monitor.

"But why doesn't it just run at 144fps?"
(IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/dQRf2ux.gif)

They were adamant about not just lowering their refresh rate.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 18 2022, 16:11

"But why doesn't it just run at 144fps?"

Just tell them to set frame skip to 9 and then put them on ignore.

Just tell them to set frame skip to 9 and then put them on ignore.

They are an IRL person I know.

Bought some laptop parts after dropping my thinkpad again; new lid, bezel. Also got a palmrest since my current one was broken even before the drop, and some other parts too. They (accidentally?) shipped me two palmrests instead of one, so I'm glad to have a backup without a touchpad now (previously my only backup had a touchpad; I hate the touchpad on the x201 series).

Also finally wrote a cron job to make my laptop sleep when the charge of the battery (or batteries if there's more than one installed) are below a certain level, unless plugged in. Checked every five minutes, but I might lengthen or shorten that period. In the past I'd tried to catch ACPI events to handle it, but that rarely worked (maybe one time out of ten).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 20 2022, 02:28

Bought some laptop parts after dropping my thinkpad again; new lid, bezel. Also got a palmrest since my current one was broken even before the drop, and some other parts too. They (accidentally?) shipped me two palmrests instead of one, so I'm glad to have a backup without a touchpad now (previously my only backup had a touchpad; I hate the touchpad on the x201 series).

I remember someone telling me the plastic is intentionally breakable so it protects when dropped and you can always replace it. always doubted it but the plastic sure does crack especially when aged a bit, all mine are as well.
did you just get them off ebay and do they feel like original quality? china has been inventing new ways to cheapen plastic to the point it feels hollow

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Jul 20 2022, 21:04

I remember someone telling me the plastic is intentionally breakable so it protects when dropped and you can always replace it. always doubted it but the plastic sure does crack especially when aged a bit, all mine are as well.
did you just get them off ebay and do they feel like original quality? china has been inventing new ways to cheapen plastic to the point it feels hollow

They are from ebay, and I am pretty much certain they are original parts. If not, they are original quality.

The part of my lid that broke was the plastic part they use to hold the antennae. The magnesium part was fine.

Lenovo (like IBM before them, and Unicomp) tended to use a Polycarbonate + ABS mixture in their plastics. This suffers from ABS's problem of turning brittle.

Also constantly having my laptop in a heavy dock when carrying it wasn't doing it any favors in a drop situation.

I got a new (secondhand) dock as well since mine's got barely any screws left to hold it together after the screw posts cracked. That had a problem where the latch spring didn't prevent it from flapping around. Opened it up and used some cracked off screwpost from the old dock to re-form the plastic piece the spring was supposed to be stopped by.

The old dock is now permanently assigned to the battery-less non-tablet X201 I have hooked to the TV, due to its DisplayPort output.

Also bought a lot of laptop chargers so I don't have to keep moving them around everywhere.

my hard disks have survived at least five major drops now. So it's doing pretty well, at least in my book.

I have also started to change how I hold the laptop so hopefully the palmrests won't crack anymore.

Yes, you read that right; I was "Holding It Wrong.™"

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 21 2022, 22:35

God I love Apple, they are the only ones who can make a technological revolution become a scam trash in less than a year

What is the point of trusted computing, if they do not trust the user/owner of the PC.

Guessing it could be a feature that supports future government control or banning of hostile computing devices. Windows 11 does support hardware bans??