Haven't bought much recently, I did buy one of those Folding USB-C monitors...a really cheap one from Amazon for like $200. Despite buying the cheapest option kind of loving the damn thing. Also bought a new desktop a few months ago, a prebuilt Alienware with an i9/RTX 5080 that Microcenter was had on sale for just little more then 2K. Been meaning to experiment with Local Generative Ai/Comfy Ui and this was the cheapest entry point. I really wanted the RTX 5090 but that jumped the price up another 2K. But more recently I decided to up the Ram and SSD (at the worst time ever), from 32GB/2TB to 96GB/4TB. Sadly local Generative Ai is no where near as capable as Ai based options. But its nice to have something I can at least play around with. As much as I love my NUCs...the power of a tower was missed.

I am looking forward to some eventual new purchases. Kind of long overdue for a new phone, still rocking my ZFold5. Gonna try and hold out till the 8 (or maybe the Tri)

And Nvidia is expected to shake up the market with their ARM/N1X platform. Probably going to be stupidly expense. I'm hoping they unveil it at GTC.

I probably will.

I'd have preferred a landscape layout though.

A little bit of everything except Android because Google doesn’t want me to have an account anymore. I had deleted my old account last summer and now if I try to make a new one they figure out I’m the same person and cancel it because of the multiple account rule—somehow they think my previous account still exists… probably their 🤬AI is hallucinating that it still exists. And going through the incredible hassle of getting to real people and resolving things is more trouble than Google is worth to me at this time. Screw ‘em.

I’ve been kind of rotating between MacOS, Windows, and Linux on M4 Pro Mac mini/RTX 4060 gaming laptop. iOS/iPadOS don’t change for mobile—I have no issues with my iPhone 16e & M2 iPad Air 11, the latter now with a Magic Keyboard I got myself for Christmas. I like it.

Windows 11 on the 1TB SSD on my Lenovo Legion gaming laptop is minimized, cleaned of crapware and neutered so that it never checks for updates (via Titus Windows Utility). It’s only for gaming that won’t play well on Mac or Linux, so only rarely connected to the internet (for Steam, GOG & NexusMods downloads). Often, if possible, I’ll download on my iPhone and transfer to the laptop via the LocalSend app.

Mac by preference for anything else.

Linux on my laptop’s 2TB SSD for an occasional, temporary change of pace—it always breaks my Skyrim modded setup sooner or later no matter what distro I try (too many dependencies maintained by too many different hobby/spare time programmers… most of whom hate Nvidia)—and I’ve gone through a dozen different ones in the past six months.

Kindle Paperwhite + Scribe round it out. I’m pretty satisfied with my assortment of devices at this time. Which is fortunate since the 🤬AI-bubble high-prices & shortage of RAM makes getting new stuff most likely out of my budget for a long time to come. Rumor has it that Valve will probably delay the Steam Machine for a better time some years from now. The price will be too high to be successful right now. 😿

I can’t be tempted because I don’t have a MacBook, but it looks interesting.

For those curious about the pen, in the FAQ it says:

Will other styluses work with Magic Screen?

Only USI certified styluses are supported.

On one hand I'm glad to see a return of the traditional swivels screen device. Outside of 3rd party iPad Cases, that form factor has been dead and buried for a while. Fitting Lenovo would resurrect it. Its an interesting gimmick, but there are plenty of Ai USB Cameras that can track people the same as this. I could think of a few use cases where this can be useful, but none compelling enough to justify actually buying this.

It’s not like Linux (-derivatives) on ARM haven’t been done. Android and ChromeOS for major examples. Others:

System76, the Pop!_OS Linux developers, also make the most powerful commercially available desktop using AMD’s Amphere ARM chip and Ubuntu Linux.

linuxiac.com

System76 and Ampere introduce Thelio Astra, an arm64 desktop built for autonomous driving, ADAS, and SDV developers.

Asahi Linux works on M1 Apple Silicon, with various degrees of support for newer chips.

asahilinux.org

And Valve has SteamOS (Arch Linux) coming for the Frame Headset using Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Their FEX translation layer is like Proton for ARM and looks promising for future Linux on ARM implementations.

www.pcgamer.com

Now Arm is Valve's best friend.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite (X1E) SoC maybe just isn’t a good choice for Linux.

well, it is a Vector program. if it was Raster based that might be a more glaring issue, but I know a few vector artists that make due with trackpad/mouse alone.

Want to take bets that the attorney will try to put the blame on their over-worked, under-paid paralegal?