I’ve had my M4 Pro Mac mini for almost 1.5 yrs and it’s been great. But I have been pushing its limits lately (heavily modded Skyrim SE in particular—there’s always a neat new mod that taxes performance a bit more) so I took a look at potential upgrades.

Apple offered to take my mini as a trade-in for only $150 less than I paid for it if I got a new M5 Max Studio. How’s that for holding its value? You really need to take that into account when getting Apple sticker shock…

Windows gaming alternatives to the base M5 Max Studio ($2500), spec and performance wise, are ~$500 more whether desktop or laptop (RTX 5070/5080-ish, 32GB RAM). At MSRP anyway. So we’re not talking a huge difference and after trading in the Mac mini it’s half the price of a Windows equivalent. About $1500 spread over 12 months, interest-free,…

So I wandered over to Woot today. This was partially motivated by a video of someone trying to daily drive a pixel fold with GrapheneOS, so I went looking to see if they still had that fold deal going, and they do!

Original Pixel Fold - $449

http://electronics.woot.com/offers/new-google-pixel-fold-5g-smartphone-256gb-1

Remarkable bundle deals:

https://computers.woot.com/plus/remarkable-paper-pro-bundle-2

And for funsies, the Surface Go 2 with LTE that I've been enjoying so much:

Just when I thought that pens and folding phones were done with each other, along comes the Razr. The 6200nit Motorola Fold has an option for a pen that has its own charging case and is roughly the size of the Samsung Fold 7. It has interesting possibilities. Hopefully, it will prompt Samsung to think about bringing back the pen. I'm hoping that the Fold 8 Wide comes with an S pen option but I'm not holding my breath. Here is link to the first Razr Fold review I have seen. Motorola Razr Fold

in Graphite, w/ a 3rd-party (Cobak) case which was on sale. Not that wild about the case (debating on getting an "origami" case off eBay which is far more affordable than the equivalent Amazon listing.

Sans case it is remarkably lighter than my original. The case is ~260grams and brings the heft back to something like the original. (If someone has a recommendation for a case which is: lightweight, easy in/out, subdued appearance w/ minimal branding, I'd be interested in recommendations.)

Am I the only person who doesn't like the new pen? Swapped it to my O.G. Scribe --- hopefully whoever ends up w/ it won't mind the grippy/rubbery eraser --- it being a featureless cylinder save for the button (and Kindle logo which is high up and visible, not palpable) is annoying as well.

The UI really needs an option where the colours which are on the device are…