OT: Video Games/Computers/Gadgets/Gizmos

[MikeIsGood]

I took my laptop in about six weeks ago because it was having heating problems and my extended warranty was about to expire. It ended up having a busted fan that they sent in for repair, expecting about a two week turnaround. Windows gaming laptops - even the best - don't have the longest shelf life. Desktop? Sure, I've had the same one for seven years going strong. But my laptop was three years old. I knew what I was getting into.

Fast forward five weeks later, the parts were on backorder the entire time and it was never repaired. The terms of the warranty I got says that I get reimbursed some to purchase a new laptop, but even when it became clear it wouldn't be repaired - it's three model years old, so of course they aren't making that fan anymore - they refused to junk it out and kept me in repair purgatory. No reimbursement, but also no laptop. I have plenty of options at home, so I know it's first world problems, but it really sucked to be without my main non-work computer and my only Windows laptop.

When it comes time to get reimbursed, I end up getting less than expected because the terms had changed, which apparently was built-into the warranty. I still got a decent amount, but when you factor in the cost of the extended warranty and that I didn't have a laptop returned to me to sell or keep as a backup, the net was that I got about $400 bucks gained. It's not nothing, but for my money it was not worth six weeks without a laptop.

My credit was to Best Buy, which is fine/I still kind of like them as a retailer, but worth noting that it's not possible to call your store anymore, and their offsite call center is straight-up rude. I truly am a kind and understanding person on the phone with support; I've worked for companies with big call centers and know how horribly their agents can be treated even though things are totally out of their control. I took the same approach here but was met with not just unhelpful, but hostile agents both times I (had to) call. When I went into my store to look at some new units in person, the guy I chatted with said he's heard that from a bunch of customers and he thinks it came with a change they made in summer '24. He also confirmed it's literally not possible to talk to anyone in the store. Maybe it's because I live in a smaller city, but that's all really sad to me.

All of that said, I'm now proud owner of a new Asus Zepherus G16. Sucks I couldn't wait any longer to get a new 50- series unit, but I did get a nice deal since they're clearing out the 40- units. The screen is gorgeous, it has the best speakers I've ever heard on a Windows laptop, it's unibody aluminum in a slick dark slate gray, and it's plenty powerful to meet my expectations. Almost 2 pounds lighter than my last (overpowered) MSI, to boot.

Alls well that ends well, knock on wood, but what a journey.

[ReasonablySober]

Pouring one out for my little 13" M1 256GB Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM. It served me well for five years.

But I traded it in for a 16" M4 Pro 512GB Macbook Pro with 24GB of RAM. Just a slight upgade.

[stellation]

Pouring one out for my little 13" M1 256GB Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM. It served me well for five years.

But I traded it in for a 16" M4 Pro 512GB Macbook Pro with 24GB of RAM. Just a slight upgade.

Outstanding! We got the M4 Pro 1TB/14 core CPU/20 core GPU/24 GB RAM 14” for my kid, as an upgrade for their >10 year old Air.

These are wild, wild, wildly powerful machines- just the load time on relatively bloated apps is absolutely crazy. Open in an instant, to the extent I was tinkering and wondering “Is this the full app?”

[ReasonablySober]

Pouring one out for my little 13" M1 256GB Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM. It served me well for five years.

But I traded it in for a 16" M4 Pro 512GB Macbook Pro with 24GB of RAM. Just a slight upgade.

Outstanding! We got the M4 Pro 1TB/14 core CPU/20 core GPU/24 GB RAM 14” for my kid, as an upgrade for their >10 year old Air.

These are wild, wild, wildly powerful machines- just the load time on relatively bloated apps is absolutely crazy. Open in an instant, to the extent I was tinkering and wondering “Is this the full app?”

For a while now I've been bringing my little Mac Mini home every night. Easy enough to do, I've got two sets of monitors and accessories in the office and at home. That one's an M2 Pro. Even up from that it's wild how much of a noticeable speed upgrade the M4 Pro is.

Got everything transferred and installed on the new machine. The decision for me was whether I wanted to go with the 14" and 1 TB hard drive, or the 16" and 512 GB drive. I opted for the latter and I doubt I'll regret it. After everything was moved over I still have almost 80% of my HD space available. I'm paying apple for 2 TB of cloud space every month; if I need it I'll put to use.

I'm extremely happy to finally have three displays available. That was honestly my big reason for making the upgrade. Between those, the iPad, and the TV there's gonna be so much sports

[jschligs]

Shameless plug again for Schedule 1. I've now put in almost 15 hours since I bought it and would've done more if I wasn't sicker than a dog this week. Stupidly fun.

[TroyD92]

Time for a new Baldurs Gate playthrough next week I guess.

[ReasonablySober]

Time for a new Baldurs Gate playthrough next week I guess.

12 new subclasses? Sheesh.

[TroyD92]

Time for a new Baldurs Gate playthrough next week I guess.

12 new subclasses? Sheesh.

Hexblade warlock sheesh

[FrieAaron]

Been going back to some older games I've missed recently:

Yakuza 0: Pretty decent gameplay and I enjoyed the campiness. I accept JRPGs often have loads of cutscenes, and that's fine, but I found a lot of them extremely repetitive and overly long. I enjoyed it, but having seen that most consider this the best of the series don't feel a particular need to jump back in to others at this point.

Halo: I've mentioned before that I love FPS games, but playing them on console makes me want to jump out a window, so I've never played through any games of this series. Have almost finished a playthrough of the first with my wife and it's been fine. It seems to be revolutionary specifically for what it did bringing the genre to consoles. From a PC standpoint the game was released 3 years after Half-Life so I consider it to be fairly unremarkable in comparison to the PC games from it's era. Still, we'll probably stick with the sequel as it's been a quick playthrough and fun enough to keep going and look for improvement.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury: The Cat Suit is a fun addition to the game but 3D World I think is just way too easy until around the final world. Bowser's Fury, however, has been a blast. It's still quite easy, but running around an open world Mario game is just...fun. Would really like to see them expand on this idea further.

[GoldenAntlers]

Time for a new Baldurs Gate playthrough next week I guess.

12 new subclasses? Sheesh.

Hexblade warlock sheesh

Oh, is the update being released? Nice.

[TroyD92]

12 new subclasses? Sheesh.

Hexblade warlock sheesh

Oh, is the update being released? Nice.

Tuesday

[ReasonablySober]

Alleged images of Oblivion Remastered

[Ron Swanson]

Ok yeah, I'm 100% in on that.

[MikeIsGood]

It's supposed to be shadow-dropped sometime. Looks great. I just hope they fixed the leveling system, which felt dumb even in the early 2000s, let alone in 2025. Either fixed, or easy mod support so someone else can fix it.

[Ron Swanson]

It's supposed to be shadow-dropped sometime. Looks great. I just hope they fixed the leveling system, which felt dumb even in the early 2000s, let alone in 2025. Either fixed, or easy mod support so someone else can fix it.

Dumb as in you could easily cheese XP by spamming low-level magic spells and athletics just by constantly run-jumping? Cuz yeah, true, but that was also kinda the meta in Skyrim if I recall.

[MikeIsGood]

It's supposed to be shadow-dropped sometime. Looks great. I just hope they fixed the leveling system, which felt dumb even in the early 2000s, let alone in 2025. Either fixed, or easy mod support so someone else can fix it.

Dumb as in you could easily cheese XP by spamming low-level magic spells and athletics just by constantly run-jumping? Cuz yeah, true, but that was also kinda the meta in Skyrim if I recall.

No, dumb as in you level up after raising 10 of your "major skills" by a point, with your attribute increases tied to what skills were leveled. It led to having to intentionally NOT do things so that you wouldn't raise things you didn't want to on accident, because the enemies increased in level when you leveled up, too. It was possible to quasi soft-lock your progress if you accidentally raised non-combat skills too much.

They should just make it match Skyrim's system.

[ReasonablySober]

I ever played Oblivion, but yea, that sounds super dumb.

[MikeIsGood]

Yeah, if they don't change it, there's going to be a bunch of people playing it for the first time wondering wtf we were doing 20 years ago.

[Ron Swanson]

Oh that's right. Yeah, that was an incredibly weird system. Tying it to level based enemies/difficulty made the late and end game an absolute slog if you didn't "level up" your combat skills correctly. Hopefully they at least tweaked it.

[PintSizedBox10]

I never got around to Oblivion back in the day, but I saw the news on twitter and now I require a release date asap.