So, bought another keyboard, not sure if it was entirely worth it.

So I'm not a huge keyboard snob, but I do have preferences and I don't like using really cheap spongy keyboards that feel like mush when typing. 

Gengerally I've been sticking with mechanical keyboards using either Cherry Blue or Brown keys, but I haven't spent more than 100$ on a keyboard until this week. This week I picked up a Logitech MX Mechanical Mini for almost 200$.

Now a real keyboard snob is going to look at that and start sneering about it, but I didn't actually shell out 200$ for the thing - it was bought using reward points from a laptop purchase that I did recently so it cost me about 15$ in shipping costs. And that's probably a good thing given that I'm not as enamoured of it as I would have thought given the price tag for the thing.

For comparison I have been using a Keychron K6 for a while now, This is something that I picked up for a good price and it's been a great keyboard for personal work on my desktop machine. The only thing that I find that I'm missing is dedicated function keys across the top. The one that I've just picked up has the function keys across the top, and the key feel isn't bad but it's not the same as what I've been used to on the other one. 

Given that the newer keyboard has low profile keys that's probably where most of the difference is coming from. The key profile is fine, but it feels like things are bottoming out quicker more like a laptop. 

The funny thing is that a lot of this comes down to keyboards being very personal devices, what I like isn't always going to be the same as what someone else likes. Although if I could get this type of typing response on a laptop I would be very happy with that. To bad that all the laptop manufacturers are going to thinner and thinner devices leaving no space for things liker a mechanical key switch in the device. 

Either way, it's probably a good thing that this one didn't wind up costing me as much as it did. For 200$ I would probably be taking this thing back, but for the cost of shipping it's definitely worth keeping around. 

New Intel Processors, more of the same (kind of).

Now that some of the reviews have hit on the Core Ultra Series 2 processors it's interesting to see how a lot of the reviews are panning them.

Personally I like the fact that they are getting the power draw down on these things, for the past couple of years it's just seemed like both AMD and Intel just kept pushing the power limits higher and higher to clock more performance. At some point it has to stop - personally I'm not wanting a computer that's pulling 1500w on the CPU by itself. 

The thing that gets me though is that there's nothing that's come out since I built my last machine that was a "must have" upgrade and that was a Ryzen 3700x when I put it together. I did wind up tossing a 5800x in when the price tanked on those at one point but it was more a convenience thing since it freed up the 3700x to go into another machine. Even my recent purchase of the Macbook Pro wasn't driven by a need to get something faster - that was a need for something portable. 

And while the ARM based Apple Silicone and Qualcomm chips are pretty dammed cool it's going to take time to find out if they will disrupt things enough to really make a difference in how things are going. Apple's transition is pretty darn smooth, but the Windows side of things is a different situation entirely. 

I would really love to see more disruptive stuff in the CPU space but these days it's not about the hardware, it's about what you can do with the software that's going to govern who's stuff is successful in the market. 

Back in the day spreadsheet applications where the killer apps, these days, there's so many out there and technology is so integrated into our lives that there is no single killer app kicking around. So there's a potential that we could start seeing specific types of computers used for different tasks. High efficiency lower powered devices for using for day to day office type work, higher powered x86 systems to run games on, or something else for other specific scientific workflows? 

Either way I hope there's something new on the horizon. Faster is cool, but it would be nice if there was something compelling to upgrade to that wasn't some "faster" version of something that we already have. 

Macbook Pro for personal use, what about the office.

Well, I've been posting about the Macbook here for a while, it's not really the tool for me to get work done on. It's not that I can't get the work done on a macOS system, it's that I have to use a lot of Windows specific tools and running through hoops to make that work just slow me down and complicate things. For work I prefer to just keep things simple. 

So when my previous work laptop started acting up I wound up sourcing a replacement device. First thing to note we are generally a Lenovo shop, at least for laptops. 

As far as what I needed;

• Reasonably quick device for general office use and Windows admin tasks.
• Ability to run VM's for testing. 
• Solid battery life. 
• Lightweight and portable. 

Since I use the device docked most of the time the screen has to be "good enough" and since I don't use the thing for gaming I'm not looking for anything with a high refresh rate display or dedicated graphics since most of my work is just admin work and zoom meetings. 

Many of my coworkers are running current versions of the X1 Carbon, and while that device would have worked fine it's limited to the U series of processors, and they are a bit larger than I would have prefered. The 14 inch thinkpads are a little smaller footprint but not quite as thin, but still don't have a H series CPU. However, for whatever reason, Lenovo sells a x13 Gen 5 where you have a option of a Core 7 155H processor as opposed to the 155U or 165U. 

While the 155H has a lower base clock than the 155U, it's also got more performance cores and better integrated graphics compared to the U series chips. Given that I'm running VM's on the thing those extra performance cores won't go unused. The battery life won't be as good I'm assuming - but I generally don't run the VM's when I'm not docked, and I can't imagine that the battery life will be that horrid comparing the two. 

As far as the AMD options. I've had two AMD based devices from Lenovo and both have had problems. For the most part it's all small stuff, but there's enough issues that the friction that they put into my workflow was just wearing on me. 

The other big thing that I like about the Lenovo devices is that I can get them with a built-in cellular modem. 

Yes, you can hotspot off a phone, and if you have a macOS system with a iPhone that process is very good. However with the built in modem you just pull the laptop out and you are online, and for work that let's me run the device without having to worry about burning through two device batteries at the same time if I'm working remotely. 

For personal use it's not something that i'm that concerned about, but for work, hell yes. Add that thing in there. 

After a week with the new work laptop the biggest takeaway from it is that it just seems to blend into the background and get out of the way while I'm working. The keyboard works, and is well suited to long typing sessions. The screen is good enough that it gets the job done. It's not as nice as what's on the Macbook, but it's not offensive by any means. And it's light enough that it doesn't feel like anything has been added to my backpack when I'm carrying it around.

Again, check back in three months and we will see where I am with it, but unless it's going to do a complete 180 and become a basket case it's probably a keeper and will just get used until eventually something does fail (hopefully out of warranty).

Finally something good about video games.

I tend to bitch a lot about the state of gaming right now. 

It all boils down to a lot of games just not being worth shelling out 80$ for something that's a rehash of some other older concept or a game that just is not really enjoyable.

Even things like the freebie gatcha games are only interesting for a short period of time, they then either become boring grinds or holes that you sink buckets of money into just to try to progress your game further. 

However today I got my hands on something that. was actually fun to play. It got it's hooks into me and I sat and played at it for several hours over the course of the day and had a lot of fun just messing around. I died a pile of times and it really didn't bother me because the game is fun and has a awesome soundtrack (I'm almost wondering if I can extract it or something). 

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Squirrel with a Gun.

You are a Squirrel.

You have a gun.

That's the entire real premise of the game. The graphics are simple, controls aren't too hard, and it's one of the most fun things that I've picked up in a long time. 

It's 25$ Canadian. 

I've already gotten enough play time out of the game to justify what I've spent, and I'm nowhere near bored of the thing yet. 

I wonder if they have any plans for making a co-op version? 

Thoughts on macOS & Windows

Ok, so now that it's out Sonoma is installed and for the most part, it's much the same as what was in place before. The one new thing that I'm really playing around with is the iPhone mirroring. 

Having the ability to just hit the iPhone and grab 2fa tokens, or poke a App on the device that I don't have sitting around on the computer is neat. I'm, not sure that it's a game changer but it's something that you just don't get on a Windows device at this point. 

The integration that Apple has on it's ecosystem is something that's really easy to overlook if you are looking at any one device. There are computers that can outperform, there are phones that have more unique features or better performance, there are better headphones, but as far as I know there are no combinations our there where I can be listening to audio from my computer and have the wireless headphones flip back over to the phone when a call comes in. 

And I'm sure there may be some, but not ones that I've come across that just freaking work right out of the gate like Apple's stuff does. 

At the end of the day I would love to see Microsoft get to a point where it's got the same level of integration that Apple has, but at that point I don't see how you could do that given the number of different companies making machines that run Windows.

Macbook Pro - M3Pro - What's it like now that the new toy feel has worn off.

 Whenever you purchase a new toy there's always a period where it feels like the greatest thing that you have ever bought. After a while, once the newness of whatever it is has worn off, that's when it's interesting to hear what people think of the purchase. 

For the Macbook Pro that I picked up the newness has kind of worn off, and it's kind of time to update my thoughts on the device.

For about 80% of what I'm using it for it's overkill.

There were a lot of things that I used to justify the purchase, and there's not a lot of point in going into them again, but at this point the device still feels like it's a good purchase. While it's overkill right now as new versions of macOS show up and things change over time having the extra headroom will be good to keep the device from becoming obsolete overnight. The screen kind of hits the sweet spot for me, sitting between the 15 and 13 inch options on the MacBook Air's and having one that runs at 120hz is definitely something that I'm enjoying.

It's almost got me thinking about getting a higher refresh rate display for my desktop machine. 

Either way, still satisfied, and hopefully this will last a good long time before I have to worry about replacing anything. 

Is it just me, or is the gaming industry a bit of a hot mess right now.

So over the last couple of years there have been a number of large and not so large studios that have wound up folding or having large budget games completely bomb, and honestly I'm almost surprised that it's taken this long to happen.

The most recent example of this is Concord, a game developed by a studio owned by Sony that was released and the pulled from market after about two weeks after it's release. 

There's lots of chatter about why this failed, but my personal thought is that the game didn't hit well because there are already many other games just like it floating around that are free to play. Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Fortnite, all have modes that sound like the same thing that Concord was offering. Without some interesting hook or gameplay mechanic that would make the game unique I'm not shocked to hear that it flopped.

Looking at a bunch of games that were huge in their day many of the sequels are just re-hashes of the same game over and over again. 

If you look at what's been going on this year it's painting a interesting photo;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_video_game_industry_layoffs

It's not just one game being canceled this year, that link has a list of multiple game studios that have been closed, and paints a rough picture of the layoffs that have happened this year. And honestly my thought is there are just too many games that are being positioned as AAA games that are rehashes of the same dammed thing over and over again and I think that people are starting to notice and are getting less and less interested. 

I've been around long enough to remember the video game crash in the early 80's that happened. And I'm feeling that we are looking at something similar. I don't think that we will see the industry completely collapse and burn, but I would not be shocked to see more larger studios collapsing and taking smaller ones with it as they go. And honestly while I can sympathize with the folks caught in this I also think that might not be a bad thing. My hope would be that the process would carve room for some new developers to come up with something that's not a rehash of existing games and stories.