djames4242

When my wife needed her own computer earlier this year, I tried to convince her to get another Mac. She bought one of the older 2009 MacBooks and never figured out how to use it, so she decided to stick with what she knows (because, work) and opted for a Surface Pro. I agree with this article that it's a really, really nice piece of hardware. She also likes that she can detach the keyboard and use the tablet for watching videos when she travels.

I personally don't care for Windows and, unless Apple really screws up down the road, will never own any Microsoft products myself. However, for those who want Windows, the Surface line is really nice.

I have the slightly smaller (918+) version of this and it’s one of my all-time favorite devices. In addition to safely storing my important documents, it also functions as my Plex server and runs several other services (one of which has its own vpn client) running in their own Docker containers.

I cannot recommend Synology strongly enough!

jimh2 said:

The shocking part of this article for me is that people still buy Motorola phones.

My previous work phone was a Moto X and it was awful. Decent screen and ergonomics, but the battery (which was not user-replaceable) gave out after less than two years and, much like most Android devices, it received a singular major Android update before it became obsoleted. The replacement is a low-end Galaxy (J3). It feels like a cheap piece of crap and also received only one major update before becoming obsolete. Its battery life is excellent, however, and the battery is easy to replace.

Also, Android sucks. Putting widgets on the home screen is brilliant and I wish this were possible with iOS. However, in every other way it just feels like a cheap knockoff to me.

VariedThinking said:

Looking into the future which in the computer world you try to do with some success. I would stay away from HD's and drop the extra money on a 2TB SSD and get as much RAM as you can afford and what the hardware can hold. 

I think that for a desktop machine, a 1TB SSD is plenty. I bought a maxed-out 5k iMac last year and that's the storage I opted for. I wanted enough to hold my OS, a couple of VMs, and my primary apps. For anything else I can hang external storage and pay less for it. For the price of going from that 1TB SSD to an internal 2TB SSD I could have added at least 2TB of external SSD storage and it would be plenty fast. For data (and backups), I have a Synology with four 8TB drives. Over a wired gigabit connection, access is plenty fast.

For a laptop, however, I would agree that a 2TB drive would be better over the life of the machine. You don't want external drives dangling off a portable machine.

Comcast can screw themselves. The worst company I have ever dealt with. They have lied to me so many times, refused to honor contract pricing (while also refusing to give a written contract so I could call them out later on their refusal to honor contracts), adding of features I've never requested (including, randomly, the Latino package and some obscure 'voice access' feature to replace their modem rental fee, even though I had no voice services). If I didn't watch my bill every single month, I'd probably have been paying $60,000 a day for services with all the crap they pulled.

The final straw was when our bill hit $270 for basic television, Internet, and a home phone that we weren't using. When I called to cancel the home phone I was informed they'd raise our rate by $20 and cut our Internet speed in half. Fine. Let me turn in my cable modem because I have my own. "You can't do that, because your bundle requires compatible equipment" (meaning it had to be compatible with the home phone service we weren't using). They're absolute shisters of the worst kind.

Thankfully CenturyLink offers fiber service in our area, so we're now paying $75/month (for life) for gigabit up and down without the stupid data cap Comcast imposed. We have DirecTV Now for TV service (yes, the interface isn't great, but it's the best streaming TV service out there in terms of available channels and video quality, plus the adding for HBO, Starz, and Showtime are far less expensive than any other option), and Ooma for our home phone (my wife and I both work from home and need this).

Of course canceling our service with Comcast was a nightmare, and they tried claiming we never returned our equipment despite having receipts showing that we had. It took months to get a refund on what they owed us.

Our total bill is now roughly half what we paid to Comcast and we have better service. Mostly though, giving Comcast the middle finger was priceless.