Nova let me turn off animations and effects I didn't care to see and because it allowed me to back up and restore my home screen layout, it made the process of switching to a new device completely painless, even across different Android versions and OEMs. My Android experience has been identical for the last dozen years even as I used LG, Pixel and Samsung phones and a half-dozen different tablets from cheapies to premium models.

Microsoft Launcher probably isn't going anywhere, but I'm still pissed at Microsoft for killing Swype + Dragon, the best keyboard experience Android had. Gboard is barely acceptable, but since it requires me to manually import a user dictionary I have to maintain as a plaintext file, it's never going to live up to just signing in and getting all the acronyms, jargon and proper nouns I use daily back. Lawnchair might be functionally fine for me as well and probably isn't actively fucking me with datamining, but I don't think it fully replicates all the things Microsoft's does.

All in all, this whole deal just sucks.

I'm perfectly willing to do it for others, whether they know how to or not. Someone reading Slashdot comments PROBABLY has the know how to implement the fixes I suggest as well, even if they'd rather just hang out and troll.

Microsoft wants to idiot-proof their OS, but I've run across absolutely tragedies that wouldn't have happened if a user had just not switched to Windows 11, like a retired college professor who can no longer access his life's work because it's on an encrypted PC where he no longer has access to any established authentication due to the effects of early-onset dementia.

I start by using an autounattend.xml that explicitly creates a local-only account and uses relevant ADMX files to set group policies to prevent using Onedrive as a default save location. I run a script on first user login that enables GPOs for Windows Home SKUs if necessary. My default Windows install does not install OneDrive, Recall, Copilot or Outlook by default, although each product can be installed and used by positive user action if they so desire. I also disable automatic Bitlocker encryption on primary drives in Windows 11, which is another massive headache for systems that aren't going on a domain. I know they mean well but it just makes life harder for no good reason. People don't even know what their microsoft account is and then they rapidly become confused about the difference between the account password and the PIN they set up and it's just awful all around. Just fucking say no.

OneDrive / Microsoft 365 is absolutely invasive and if you don't buy the value add of Office in the first place, Onedrive just brings nothing to the table. I have yet to see the combination of misfortunes that would make Onedrive valuable but I've definitely run across people locked out of their own files because they can't get back to a particular wifi network and told microsoft their phone number was an un-textable land line.

Here's the problem with installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware: Upgrades are very difficult to install. If you were to install Windows 11 24H2 on your i5-7500 PC today, the 25H2 version won't be available to you. Yes, you're on a supported Windows release for about another year and you'll get updates to 24H2 for that time, but soon you'll be back on an unsupported version of Windows again.

There's a fix that involves swapping some files from a Windows Server ISO to the Windows 11 one that DOES make a working upgrade installer, but it's a headache to have to do it every time there's a new version of desktop Windows out in the world.

Soldered RAM is standard for Intel's Lunar Lake lineup and for most AMD's Strix Halo APUs. I can't speak to how well Lunar Lake works but I have deployed some AMD HX 370 systems and they were absurdly nice for ~$750 mini PCs.

I'm not defending the practice of building systems that way but it seems to be an architectural choice by the CPU manufacturers rather than a defect of particular notebook models.

I have nothing but good things to say about the 14" T, X and P series Thinkpads I've bought and supported, even though there is a clear difference in build quality between the T61 I had 20 years ago and the P14s I have now. If nothing else, Lenovo has gradually stepped up its display game in a way IBM definitely never even considered and even without the titanium frame, it's still better made than a Precision 5490.

I shoot with Canon (R5, R6ii) and Sony (A7r3) mirrorless bodies and I have a Samsung S25+ that I regularly forget has any value as a camera at all. I've made efforts to add smartphones to the work that I do, but even with contemporary flagship devices and a willingness to shoot in LOG format for use in big-boy editing software, it's a lot more work to deal with output from a phone than to use a proper camera. Low-light performance is poor at best and shutter lag is a real thing on phones even when they're just being used for photos. The phone is fine for anything I don't care about, but since I do want output of a certain quality, I'd far rather have a big-boy sensor and a fast aperture lens for my projects.

With regard to people shooting professional cinema projects on smartphones, do please go watch behind the scenes footage. Overwhelmingly, you'll see that they're still using tens of thousands of dollars worth of lighting and production assistance to make that workable. Put a couple 36" beauty dishes with 500W continuous sources just out of frame and I think you'll see that even at 30 year old Kodak DC290 will take amazing pictures.

With regard to fixed-lens pocket cameras, the appeal is most often in something that's pocket friendly and dedicated purpose, even if that purpose is just "I know I'm going to be shooting a lot, so I'd rather drain the battery of this thing rather than kill my phone's battery while I'm walking around." You can get to roughly the same place with a smaller Sony full frame body (e.g. A7C R) or a Pansonic/OM Digital MFT camera and a pancake lens, but by the time you buy in to either platform, you've probably spent hundreds or thousands of dollars anyway. It's all well and good to say that you don't need such a thing, but pocket cameras definitely have better sensors that anything in the action-cam class of product that probably represent the cheapest dedicated portable cameras available otherwise.

Fuji's GFX line have larger-than-full-frame sensors that sometimes get called Medium Format. Given the limitations of Fuji's lens ecosystem, you're almost definitely a professional portrait or nature photographer if you're buying one, and since the only competition they have in that space are Leica and Hasselblad bodies that ALSO cost north of US$8000, this isn't a huge deal. Fuji is actually a bargain in comparison.

But lenses and cameras have seen prices raised across the board. None of the pricing is out of line from Tariff policy, but it does mean that I'm not buying any new gear until someone sane gets back in charge of trade policy in the USA.

Given that China doesn't allow everyday citizens unlimited access to the internet, we can assume the only ones allowed out are bad actors like badbot, so blocking China entirely would be a net benefit for the entire world. We'd have to get the VPN operators to cooperate, which is near impossible since they'd sell their own mothers for a quick buck.

Not 50 yet, although at one time I had a FOUR digit UID, but that login was tied to a university email I no longer have.

My next door neighbor for some period of time was a dancer. I got to know her and people she worked with and I've had a revolving door of current and former dancers in my life. Some of them have been fuckups, but mostly I've come to know these women as just normal folks who have a slightly more miserable job than most other service workers.

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but having a Facebook account was a requirement for Tinder users for the first several years of operation.

Most of my real life friends are strippers. Even when they're honestly just trying to meet somebody, their accounts get banned constantly just from doing normal Tinder stuff. Even for the most blessed with attractiveness, Tinder is a goddamn hole of suck.

A zillion years ago, I had a contract position at Disney. But I was a temp worker, so they didn't give me a desk. Or a phone. Or a PC to use. Or any official way to check my e-mail. But somehow they DID give me Forest Admin credentials for their ENTIRE Active Directory.

I was there for six months and when the full time replacement admin finally showed up, they had armed guards escort me out. My replacement let me know after the fact that someone done fucked up setting up my user account. I could've fucked the entire company, so I the order was given that I be treated as hostile until I left the premises. Why they didn't just, I don't know, select and delete the group memberships my account wasn't supposed have, I do not know.

Last year some IT worker at Disney got in a lot of legal trouble by using his still-active credentials to make tiny changes to the printed menus used on Disney Cruise ships. He apparently thought investigations into how that happened would eventually lead to getting his job back, but honestly ruining a print run or three of menus is probably about the most malicious thing I would've guessed WOULDN'T get LEOs to your door. It's just nice to know Disney's IT hasn't gotten any better since I worked there.

I do volunteer "IT Stuff" for a community center near my home. This includes helping high school age kids through CompTIA A+ certification. There's even a grant to pay for exams for a few kids every year, which is honestly a big deal since the exams themselves are very expensive. I also do a Help Clinic a couple times a month that is primarily geared toward cleaning off malware, doing data transfers and counseling people interested in buying something new.

HP has absolutely staggering mindshare in relation to anything involving printers. It's selling $150+ single tank inkjets RIGHT NOW, as if that is a good idea and a quality product from some actually reputable manufacturer. There are a very small number of low-cost HP color laser printers that are actually kind of a good deal as used/refurb products, but I beg and plead that people consider the humble Brother monochrome laser models for their home printing needs. Almost no one listens, even though an equal number of people will concede that any positive experience they've had with an HP printer was either 30 years ago or involved the dishwasher sized printers they have in their office.

I actually had a lot of respect for him. He was from probably the last gasp of computer magazines as useful sources of timely information. I am sorry to hear that he has passed. I hope that he did not suffer.

Fuck cancer.