DrMacintosh
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Posts posted by DrMacintosh
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2 minutes ago, oofki said:
I’d rather keep them secure. I have practices in place to back up my keys securely.
Yeah ok, but OP clearly didn't. The average user would rather have their data recoverable from a dead pc/dying drive than know their data is protected from someone having local access to the machine, ripping their drive out, and copying the files from it. BitLocker also is just not very smart at times.
For example, I upgraded a Dell Inspirion 17". It had a 5400rpm HDD in it and was almost unusable. I found out it had a empty M.2 PCIe SSD slot. So I went to clone the drive but discovered it had BitLocker enabled.....
So I had to wait about 5-6 hours for BitLocker to decrypt the drive. When that was finished I was able to clone the drive to the SSD, boot into Windows, and re-enable BitLocker.
After I confirmed everything was working, I formatted the old HDD and reinstalled it. I booted the machine and everything was working, the old HDD showed up and Windows accepted it and encrypted the drive.
Now after all this, I replaced the battery since it had some bloated cells.....after I did that and turned on the machine..... BitLocker was preventing the machine from booting......Why? Because it somehow didn't log/save the key for the old HDD. Removing that drive let the machine boot. So to get back into the machine I had to disable BitLocker entirely and reformat the old HDD.
tldr: BitLocker and user serviceability are at odds and you're screwed if you ever lose the key.
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36 minutes ago, oofki said:
enable bitlocker again
just disable it honestly unless your data absolutely cannot be compromised. Windows does not have a good enough backup tool to justify BitLocker locking away peoples files forever just because you swapped out a minor part and forgot the key.
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7 minutes ago, F TANK said:
I cloned the drive
Plug the old drive back in and write down the BitLocker Key or copy it to a USB drive. If you already formatted the old drive and can't boot from it, your data is gone since you don't have the key.
Format the new SSD in another computer that doesn't have BitLocker on and fresh install in that case.
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8 minutes ago, ThorSaysWeJack said:
So I was wondering is this sensible to do?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this. There won't be any input lag as long as your keyboard and mouse are plugged into the device directly. Though I recommend unplugging it from the wall when you aren't using it to reduce the strain on the battery.
- ThorSaysWeJack and Lurick
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23 minutes ago, HelpImInLaptopHell said:
an "Apple iPad Air (10.9in, WiFi, 64GB 4th Gen, 2020)
Well the 4th Gen iPad Air is a pretty great device. Much better than the 9th Gen iPad. If you can get away with the lower storage, and that iPad Air is in good condition, get that.
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I see 4 viable options at that price range:
- A new 64GB iPad 9th Gen: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-10-2
- A refurbished 64GB iPad 9th Gen: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FK2K3LL/A/refurbished-ipad-wi-fi-64gb-space-gray-9th-generation?fnode=17adaff6b6fd6edebbc6000c9a167f540c718496137be97b95f7f573dcb1e4c122fd0217737152b7be73b2ce34fc9124a4b9d6fce94ecef892a077001f3b2bfa1f7de3b55ec42f0c9d8908694000bbb3
- A refurbished 256GB iPad 9th Gen: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FK2N3LL/A/refurbished-ipad-wi-fi-256gb-space-gray-9th-generation?fnode=2947b82315c013bf4af8d6f10bfc317e38734dea091ba563e67e1493c2618c7b90d2c5b6c2c6275b14817490fe3a4eb00e031d3a63337969dd3bf7861d153a41f9dd4068396407ea53a32e5ded7df02c
- A refurbished 128GB iPad 8th Gen: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FYLD2LL/A/Refurbished-iPad-Wi-Fi-128GB-Space-Gray-8th-Generation?fnode=2947b82315c013bf4af8d6f10bfc317e38734dea091ba563e67e1493c2618c7b90d2c5b6c2c6275b14817490fe3a4eb00e031d3a63337969dd3bf7861d153a41f9dd4068396407ea53a32e5ded7df02c
You could expect roughly 2 more years of major operating system updates for the 8th gen iPad.
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10 hours ago, sandals100 said:
Never actually considered the mac's, the price is also quiet attractive for what there. Would there be a minimum ram spec I should aim towards?
If all your are going to do with is is Plex, (and I use mine as an SMB server also) all you really need is the base config with 8GB of memory and the 256GB of storage (internal size won't matter bc your media will be on external drives). If you want to run VMs on it, maybe get the 16GB version.
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I know you don't want to, but iCloud really is the best way to go about doing this. Its actually very affordable and just makes life easier.
If manual transfers via a cable are failing, I suggest doing smaller batches at a time.
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I would seriously consider an M2 Mac mini. The power and power efficiency in such a small, cool, and quiet computer can't be understated. Plex supports hardware accelerated Transcoding and Apple Silicon is simply unrivaled when it comes to video hardware acceleration.
This is an video based on an M1 Mac mini, M2 only improves things from here:
What you have to consider is storage, you need an external solution of some sort. I recommend a 4 bay DAS. I personally bought the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad and love it:
Of course individual drives will work, they are just messy.
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16 minutes ago, gtech02 said:
I'm preparing for some AI/ML heavy programing courses.
Is this an entirely remote course? You're building a desktop which entirely locks you into one place of work, which is fine if you don't have lectures to attend in person or a professor to have one on one time with. Just a thought.
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Should you buy an OLED display that is also a computer monitor? Absolutely not. OLED as a technology is simply not viable for use cases that require static UI elements. The following video is specifically regarding TVs, but the underlying technology is the same and the reality of burn in is the same.
I would personally not buy a OLED display on a computer, and only on a TV if all I ever did with the TV was watch movies/shows (specifically not cable or news/game shows) for a few hours a day max.
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6 hours ago, Leyf said:
The enclosure is Gen2 though, does it matter?
That "Gen2" that you are referring to is actually just the USB standard that the enclosure uses, not the PCIe interface speed. The enclosure is USB 3.1 Gen2 which is theoretically up to 10Gbps (1.25 GB/s). The Crucial M.2 NVME SSD I recommended can go up to 3.5GB/s in an ideal workload. The drive will be bottlenecked, but not in any meaningful way considering the cost to removing the bottleneck is more than the drive is worth and the extra performance you would gain by getting an expensive thunderbolt M.2 enclosure is minimal.
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51 minutes ago, Leyf said:
do you recommend going for an M.2 and an enclosure
Absolutely. NVMe SSDs are so cheap these days. I recommend this combination of parts:
SSD: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B25LZGGW/ref=twister_B0B5FJCDGT?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
For compatibility between Mac and Windows machines, you'll have to format the SSD as exFAT.
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21 minutes ago, Elfomartinez said:
The idea is in the future to have a PC cause it's obviously better
In what way?
The main question in determining if a Mac is viable is knowing what apps will they be using. If they dont run on a Mac, then clearly a Mac is not an option. If they can run on Mac, and they like the Apple ecosystem, a 14" MBP might be worth checking out.
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36 minutes ago, oofki said:
You’d want a windows laptop with a lot of VRAM
Apple Silicon has unified memory. 64GB of effective VRAM is entirely possible on a MacBook Pro.
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Refurbished M1/M2 Mac mini
The only potential downsides are drive size (to that I say leverage network or cloud storage as a business) and program compatibility. But for office tasks the Mac can do everything a PC can do in a small plug and play package.
Amazon sells renewed M1 Mac minis for $429, I'm sure you can find new old stock from other retailers.
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1 hour ago, Silverflame said:
there has also been concerns raised users with impaired vision who rely on 3rd-party apps for accessibility features
Source 7 seemed mainly worried about transcribers not being able to transcribe content on Reddit:
QuoteUnfortunately, new Reddit, and the official Reddit apps, just don't provide us with the levels of accessibility we need in order to continue effectively running this community. As well, the Transcribers of Reddit, the many dedicated folks who volunteer to transcribe and describe thousands and thousands of images on Reddit, may also be unable to operate.
For general accessibility concerns, I would take those up with your operating system of choice. Many operating systems, such as macOS and iOS have industry leading accessibility features. If the user choose to not use said features to make their lives easier, that is not someone else's responsibility.
Reddit should be accessible, and it mostly is. Laws like the ADA mandate accessibility, so companies build accessibility features into their products and people either use the features provided to them or willingly choose to not use them. Those that choose to not use the features have no grounds to complain imo. Reddit charging for API access does not impact the use of screen readers.
Can Reddit improve its accessibility? Absolutely. But using third party applications and services that attempt to back port accessibility into Reddit is not how accessibility on the web is supposed to work. The source of the content needs to be accessible.
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On 5/24/2023 at 9:20 PM, johnt said:
I'm curious to know what happened with the satellite service from the last phones. Will there be new service fees? Can I just not have a satellite subscription?
When Apple announced the Emergency SOS feature they did say it was going to be free for X amount of time. I don’t recall how they said it would be free for. Either way, yes, it will be optional and you don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want it.
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Yes, for example, my PC has an optical drive in it, but if I wanted to I could connect a portable USB optical drive and can address each drive at the same time. This would hold true for BluRay drives as well.
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Honestly, take a look at the new Beats Studio Buds +. The reviews seem pretty positive and they work well with Android.
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Even newer Macs do not encrypt whatever external drives are connected to them. I find it odd that this issue is only allegedly coming from Macs when other drives connected to the same models of Mac do not seem to be affected at all. Where are all the other external drives blowing up? As such it does not seem like blaming Apple would be a good idea and it seems more likely that SanDisk shipped bad firmware and their engineers don't want to admit they missed something that every other OEM figured out.
Framework repairable and upgradeable laptops
in Laptops and Pre-Built Systems
Posted
Was there doubt about Framework laptops being very acceptable machines?