HiWire

Totally missed this – thanks, everyone!

Yes, they are so greedy. It's going to be difficult to time the market or get a good value because they will withdraw the old stock availability as soon as possible, so you can't count on highly-discounted old stock to stay around. There have also been compatibility problems reported with old games using Windows 11's new scheduler and Alder Lake – not all developers of old games are in business any more, so it remains to be seen if some old games will remain incompatible (or poorly optimized) indefinitely on the new systems.

Not a big enough jump going from Coffee Lake to Alder Lake, in my opinion. I've been looking at new computers and one of the things to mention is that the Intel processors are some of the hottest and most power-hungry they've ever been on this newer process, Intel 7 (10nm). The upcoming Raptor Lake processors will also be manufactured in Intel 7 and they are increasing the number of cores, so expect a bit more performance from that update. AMD's Ryzen 7000 series will be built on TSMC's 5nm process and they've increased the maximum power limit to 230W (15% performance increase estimated). In my opinion, the value proposition hasn't changed radically for most PC users, especially desktop users. You're more likely to notice an improvement from other factors, like a new monitor, better speakers, larger SSD drives, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet or Wi-Fi 6 in daily use. Yes, GPU and CPU power is important in gaming and some other applications, but they haven't pushed CPU and overall system performance as heavily because of the number of people using older hardware in the market and delays in software development. The last few years of supply chain shortages haven't helped things either. Prices are starting to drop, thankfully, but I think a lot of people are still waiting for really substantial changes to come down the pipe (like the new Nvidia GeForce 40-series and AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs) rather than incremental changes like PCIe 5.0 or DDR5 that take several years to fully optimize. People are still waiting for Windows 11 to implement some basic features, too. I played around with a co-worker's Win11 system, but it didn't seem much better than Win10 to me. Here's a list of missing features: https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/03/should-you-upgrade-to-windows-11-heres-a-list-of-missing-features/

I might get a Yamaha MODX8 later on... looks well-suited for my needs (a bit pricy, though).

Happy Birthday!

Depeche Mode – Violator Sounds better than the last time I listened to it...

Commodore 64 demo scene still going strong:

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

It's always been too high for me. Sometimes it's simpler (not cheaper) just to get a MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt jacks.

Happy Birthday!

Three times the price... the review from Singapore mentions how slow the Android interface works. You'd think Sony would have figured this stuff out by 2022. Their previous DAP products have been a hodgepodge. I looked at the much less expensive and positively reviewed Sony NW-A55(L) out of morbid curiosity, but it's hard to find and somewhat antiquated at this point. I'll stick with my phone and ancient iPod Shuffle from 2009 for a while longer. They work quite well and without the hassle of Sony software. There is also the question of what to do when the internal batteries die. I've returned quite a few iPhones to Apple for battery replacement and the Sony path is much less clear.

Reasonable pricing by Astell&Kern standards...

Sony announced a new MP3 player (or DAP): https://musicphotolife.com/2022/05/sony-wm1zm2-review-digital-audio-player-walkman/ It's breathtakingly expensive, that's for sure. I was thinking of getting the Mojo 2, so if this thing sounds better, maybe it's better to have everything in a Sony money box. Also available in gold if you're so money: https://www.sony.ca/en/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1zm2 In other news, the new Sony money cans may not be as good as the old money cans – ain't nothing like old money: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/sony-wh-1000xm5

The Kills - No Wow

I'm waiting for the M2 Pro, etc. to be announced later. I like that they bumped the memory limit to 24GB for the MacBook Air and Pro. The M1 Pro and Max are massive overkill for most of my office, but also a bit of future-proofing (I think the "M3" is closer to fitting into my upgrade timeline). Apple was smug, but correct about current Intel, AMD, and Nvidia products being huge power suckers. Sometimes it takes a lot of power to do the job. Their specs page claims you need a 67W power adapter to use the fast charge function on the MacBook Air. Hopefully people won't need that all the time (the standard bricks are 30W and 35W).

I'm a little bummed about macOS 13 dropping support for Macs before 2017 (the full list is on their macOS Ventura Preview page), but it was inevitable. Looks like a new Mac will be in my near future. https://www.apple.com/macos/macos-ventura-preview/

I'd go with Macrium Reflect, then. I hesitated for years about buying the Acronis subscription... looks like things went badly sideways after I had to use their product.

A bit late to the question, but I had good experiences with the former Acronis True Image, now (vaguely) renamed Acronis Cyber Protect. They have an example of their compression rates: https://kb.acronis.com/content/16791 However, the latest PC Magazine review of the software was kind of lukewarm, so maybe they're not as reliable as before. You can also use Windows' built in File History application to manage disk image backups: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-full-backup-your-windows-11-pc

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Chromeo – Date Night: Chromeo Live!

O No