Category: Hardware

I ended up ordering my next phone, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, from Hong Kong. Hong Kong uses UK standards, but the phones ship with Snapdragon CPU instead of Equinox. And the price is lower by some 10 to 20 percent. So, you end up getting a more powerful phone for less. A no brainer, really.
It took 10 days for the phone to arrive. Looks legibly sealed, so if it was tampered with, someone at TechInTheBasket did a great job to conceal it.
There is a bit of bloatware, but it’s easy to uninstall.
Fingerprint sensor works great. It’s super fast and recognizes both hands well enough for now.
Camera hole in the middle of the screen is slightly annoying, but that’s the norm nowadays.
Funny, but it seems to be nearly impossible to operate this phone without a case. All the lenses are on one side, and stick out too much.

I wanted a new keyboard for a long time. But I didn’t really need a keyboard. That’s how I ended up using Logitech K310 for almost 10 years. But everything has to end, so I decided to try out a new keyboard.
I almost certainly wanted something from Razer, since I’ve been using their mice for at least 10 years, if not more. And I didn’t want any gamer features, such as lighting or extra keys. I was thinking about tenkeyless (TKL for short) keyboard. But what if I wanted to play a retro game that needed that numpad? 😅
So, I ended up going with Razer Type Pro. Didn’t want the armrest Ultra adds, since I like my keyboard not taking too much space.
First impression: tall and heavy. But maybe that’s because Logitech K310 was a complete opposite: low profile and very light.
I thought that you can also use this keyboard wired, but turns out the cable is only for charging. Since my motherboard has Bluetooth built in, I ended up using it in a Bluetooth mode.
On the downsides, the keyboard will go into sleep mode after 15 minutes, and it takes about a second for it to wake up. Need to get used to this.
Also, which is really strange, there’s no battery indicator. Not even in Razer Central / Synapse.

Spend the weekend going back to Windows 10.
Unlike upgrades, which are quite straightforward and preserve everything, downgrades are hard.
Had to install it from scratch, first time in maybe 10 years. Until now, I was always just upgrading, from Windows 7 to Windows 10, then to Windows 11, preserving all of that junk. It migrated probably between a few HDDs and SSDs. Not anymore.
What broke me was strange UI freezes, as if it was trying to read something from a slow disk. Couldn’t find anything concrete about that problem: Internet is full of “7 ways to fix your Windows”, with suggestions to reinstall mouse drivers 🤦‍♂️
Also smaller things: no previews on folders, dumb taskbar and useless websearch instead of working local search.
As part of the migration, I also moved from Opera to Firefox. I was on Opera by inertia, really. Same as I was on this copy of Windows.

To install Windows 11 you need your Windows 10 to boot in UEFI mode.
And to boot in UEFI mode you need your boot drive to be formatted in GPT.
And to format drive to GPT you need a few hundred megabytes of unallocated space. So I had to shrink my system partition as well.

Windows 11 installs tons of junk. Facebook, Spotify, Instagram, you name it.
Also, they screwed search. Again. It will search Internet, but won’t find local files.

By the time I finished installing Windows 11, I already forgot why I wanted it in the first place.

Later I’ll describe all the process of building my new PC, but today just a fun fact.
I hoped that all the parts will arrive before Friday, so I could assemble it during Easter.

Case, cooler and CPU were all available for next day delivery on either Amazon or Scan. But not the motherboard. It was due to arrive only next week, 22th instead of the 15th. But I ordered it anyway.

Imagine my surprise that it actually has arrived yesterday, in under 2 days, and a week ahead of the schedule.

It turns out you can’t upgrade your PS3 HDD without an original Dualshock 3 controller, which I never had.
System just goes into “safe mode”, and won’t accept any input from a third-party controller or Dualshock 4.
The not so funny part is that even if you put the original HDD back, the system still won’t go out of the safe mode.
But, if you pull it out, let the system complain that no HDD was detected, and then put the original HDD back in without turning off the system – it suddenly works!

Consoles are fun, they said. No hassle upgrading, they said.

Понял для себя, что когда я за компьютером, то никогда не пользуюсь колонками.
Даже если я в квартире один, все равно использую наушники.
Так что теперь у меня ПеКа стоит вообще без колонок, чтобы место на столе не занимали. А Klipsch еще и огромные были, к тому же.

А вы колонками пользуетесь, когда одни за компьютером?

Непонятно, зачем переплачивать за OLED телевизор, когда в топовых LED’а нет никакой проблемы с черным цветом.
К тому же, LED’ы не выгорают, в отличие от OLED’ов. И с яркостью у них все отлично.