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  • That New Laptop Experience

    Can I interest you in some shovelware?

    I’m in the office today and staging a few Windows laptops for employee use. It takes me about an hour to set up a Windows laptop these days, mostly because of Microsoft and shovelware bloat…

    The image above is what you’re faced with when setting up an HP laptop currently… Whee! And I have to manually delete all of it to ensure the system is clean for testing…

    Microsoft on the other hand is really, really interested in your personal information, and getting a machine set up for testing with a local account gets harder with each update.

    Most of the time you can shift-f10 into a command prompt at the setup networking screen, type in oobe\bypassnro, and wait for the reboot to get a tiny little “I don’t have Internet” link that will let you set up a local account. But Microsoft is getting rid of that too… The only recourse at that point will be to roll my own OS installers and then go dig around in the manufacturer’s website for drivers.

    When I bring this up most people will point out that Apple does the same sort of thing… But not really.

    See, Microsoft is a software company and therefore has to do a lot of incremental sales and tap as many small revenue streams as possible… For example, Windows 11 Home costs $139 and Microsoft still injects ads into it and data-mines you as a revenue stream… And some people think the insistence on a “free” Microsoft account is innocent…

    With a Microsoft account what you get is another vector for Microsoft to sell software and services to you, and acquire data from you to sell… If Microsoft gives you an email address, it’s purely to sell you Office 365 and tell you about how great Edge is because Edge is another sales / data-mining vector. If Microsoft gives you cloud storage, it’s just to rifle through your data for anything they can resell – when OneDrive feels like working at any rate. And the device settings sharing with a Microsoft account simply tells Microsoft what hardware you have and lets them unify your advertising IDs across platforms…

    Apple on the other hand is a hardware company, so their interest is in selling you more hardware for large sums of money. And the Apple Account exists to get people locked into the ecosystem… There isn’t really a need for an incremental advertising / data-mining revenue stream if Apple can just sell people a new $1000 phone every year because all of their photos are in iCloud and their apps are tied to their Apple Account.

    And annoying users with ads and data-mining is counter productive to that “sell more hardware” goal – Apple wants you happy with the ecosystem, so injecting a McAfee installer into the start menu at random is just not something Apple will do.

  • The Current Rig

    As mentioned previously, I generally lean towards Apple computers for my personal computing needs… But I work with Windows professionally and I’m also a bit of a gamer – so I’ve kind of oscillated between the two platforms for decades now.

    For example, three years ago I built myself a no-holds-barred bleeding-edge Windows rig based on the systems I build for work…

    The above is a Supermicro X12SPL-F mainboard, Intel Xeon Gold 6312U processor, 128G of DDR4-3200, and a Zotac RTX 3090. And in 2022 this thing was the 1200 watt ultimate beast of a computer.

    The problem with the machine was three-fold: it consumed about 400 watts at idle and welding current at full tilt, was essentially a space-heater and would raise the temp in my office to unbearable levels which prompted running the central air more often – so even more electrical cost, and Windows 10 was nearing end-of-life and Windows 11 is a total travesty…

    I mean, I dislike Win11 so much that in 2023 I spent about a month turning Server 2022 into a workstation OS just to get around the Win10 expiry issue… And while I got it to work – mostly – the effort required to hack drivers and whatnot prompted me to sell the Xeon-based machine above and just go buy an M2 Ultra Mac Studio.

    Before the fedora crowd chimes in – I use a lot of Linux professionally as well, and I rather like Linux – in the same way someone who has to haul 80,000 pounds of bananas likes a semi truck… Linux is a great workhorse, but I’d rather not use it as my daily driver.

    Anyway, the M2 Ultra was an exceptional machine that outperformed the Xeon computer above in pretty much every way, while using a max of 270 watts… So, when the M3 Ultra was announced I upgraded on the spot.

    That there is my current rig. An M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 96GB of ram and 1TB of storage.

    It’s sitting on a K&N V-Rod motorcycle air filter with an adapter I had 3D printed. This does a great job of keeping dust out of the machine without impeding airflow.

    The monitor is the 27″ Apple Studio display which is amazing as well. And behind the air filter is a Thunderbolt 4 M.2 adapter holding my 4TB storage drive.

    The Liebert UPS supplies backup power to the computer and monitor, and currently shows 71 minutes of runtime because the computer and monitor use so little power…

    And yes, my desktop audio comes from a pair of floor-standing B&W DM640i speakers powered by an Onkyo TX-SR353. So the Mac sounds pretty good too.

  • Smiles Per Hour

    29,000 miles now

    Something I do to keep track of miles and maintenance over time is snap a photo of the odometer every thousand miles to timestamp it.

    I bought the car with 24,800 miles on 31 MAY 2024 – 383 days ago. So I’m averaging 10.96 miles a day – and anything over 10 miles a day on average is officially a ‘daily driver’.

    Overall miles average since new though (delivered to the dealership on 22 NOV 2016) is 9.2 miles per day – which is part of why I bought it.

    See, buying a car literally built to be abused is typically a very bad idea because, well, it’s been abused…

    But my Hellcat had tons of detailed maintenance records and the first owner leased it – and only put 12,000 miles on it in the four years he had it before trading it in. The second owner was the shop manager at the AutoNation where I bought it, and he too only put about 12,000 miles on it over four years.

    Meanwhile I’ve put about 4000 miles on it in a single year – and it sat in the garage all winter. But I also tend to drive my cars instead of look at them.

    Since I bought it I’ve installed the best automotive alarm system money can buy, put in a new battery, had the radio / head unit replaced, flushed and filled the diff, put in new plugs, replaced the drive belts, rotated the tires and put two new Nitto Motivos on the back, replaced the front rotors, pads, and brake fluid, had an alignment done, did an oil/filter change, and replaced the fuel pumps…

    Mostly maintenance stuff and some upgrades… I think I’ve got about $5000 in the car at this point not counting gas and insurance.

    The reward for this expense and effort happens almost daily…

    See, when you drive a murdered out Challenger Hellcat, you’re a bit like the old gunfighter in a western and every punk kid with a pistol wants to take a shot.

    Last year most of the challenges came in the form of ricers – tuned nitrous sucking imports with ‘bees in a can’ exhaust, too much camber, and not enough torque to be taken seriously.

    They are plenty fast, but they aren’t purpose-built drag cars, and the Hellcat is still undefeated against the turbo cars I’ve come across in both digs and roll races.

    This year it’s mostly been EVs wanting a shot at the dinosaur, and while a performance EV (especially high end Teslas) are stupidly quick, I can still hold my own because I tend to have the better driver mod.

    I mean, I’ve been building and racing cars since the mid 80’s – and old age and treachery will always win out over youth and enthusiasm…

    This morning on the way into the office saw another speed contest – this one came in the form of a new BMW M4 Competition…

    I was minding my own business, just tooling along the divided three-lane road on the way to the office. I’d just left the light in the right lane and made a bit of noise to get to my usual 50 in the 45 – as you do – and put a dozen car lengths between the pack and myself. And in the mirror I spotted the battleship gray M4 with that comically oversized grill desperately weaving around cars to catch up and prove something…

    As he was being a danger to himself and others I analyzed the situation; no traffic in front of me for about a half mile on a straight, dry, divided road with good visibility. The Hellcat was showing 170 degrees in the transmission and my intake air and oil temps were satisfactory – so I down-shifted into my 50mph power band and waited for him to start his mad charge as he got around the final car in front of him.

    He came flying up to do a high speed pass to show me up, and as he got to my door I nailed it… The Hellcat exploded forward, pulling the front wheels up and the supercharger screaming its warning to the half mile around us – and the M4 instantly appeared in the rear view mirror.

    I went from 50 to three digits in about three seconds, and let off at three times the posted limit at about 5 seconds – which put probably 3 car lengths between us…

    The M4 then flew past me and high-tailed it into the traffic up ahead, and started being a danger to himself and others again.

    This is the ‘driver mod’ that lets the old gunslinger keep pace with the punk kids… And was a pretty typical drive to work all things considered.

    I really should get a ‘gap cam’ to record the beatdowns, but then again I probably shouldn’t be recording myself doing this sort of stuff… I’m too old for jail time.