PianoPlayer88Key

I'm not against reasonably supporting creators. (I am against supporting them too much, though, for example I won't name names but there are some out there who may only do as little as a few hours of work writing a piece of music, or maybe a thousand or so hours writing software, books, etc, and it turns out to be a huge hit, and due to copyright law, they or their family or whoever they sold the rights to (that's another gripe I have too) are still getting tens or hundreds of millions in royalties even decades later.) Also while I'm not against some advertising, if it's properly done, I do not like self-promotion, paid promotion (I prefer independent reviews, anecdotes, recommendations from friends, etc, truth, honesty, don't try to sugarcoat things, tell the bad with the good, etc), and I especially don't like, as the OP mentioned, stealing our bandwidth and data. (Speaking of which, my preferred max to allow for advertising would basically be like the equivalent of storing the original Commodore 64 boot loader, or Xerox Alto, or Apple I, or some other now-ancient boot software, or one of those boot sector floppy games (the ones that fit entirely in the boot sector), on whatever storage would be the equivalent of Petabyte Project III, Google's, Amazon's, BackBlaze's servers combined, say, 50 years from now.)

Hehe, all I remember is 3.1415926589846 .... somewhere around the 10th or 13th digit or so my memory of it starts to differ from what I've recently seen π assigned. (Also back in the day when I had a calculator with a π function, something like that was the number that it would return.)

Ahh interesting. Yeah I recently was learning a bit of binary counting, but have forgotten some of the basic building blocks (hopefully temporarily, maybe if I "refresh" myself it'll start coming back.) I've memorized a few powers of 2 numbers myself ... I think I've recently lost a few but let's see what I can remember without looking it up...

Basically, the main question is in the title. I won't even begin to try to describe even the TL;DR's of the things on my mind (including IRL / physical things), whether directly or indirectly. I feel if I were to try to do so, just the plain unformatted raw text (no pictures, videos, formatting, anything else) to TL;DR them would take up every single bit on every single one of these Okay there probably isn't LITERALLY that much, but it seems like it in my mind! Sure, not everything I think of is all that "important" / critical in the grand scheme of things, but the vast majority of it has some significant interest to me personally. Anyone have some general recommendations as for how to try to organize / keep track, or resources or whatever? I feel like I can identify with the saying on a magnet attached to the side of my mom's microwave.... Maybe I need to cut some things out, but how would you decide what to cut, or at least put on the back shelf? (I could keep going but I think I'll end the post here.)

My laptop sometimes takes upwards of 35 - 45 seconds just to POST, then when it finally gets to Windows, it might take another several minutes to restore from hibernation, especially on the frequent occasions where I'm using upwards of 3-4x or more my 64GB RAM in pagefile. For a clean boot, sometimes it takes the same amount of time to post, sometimes it posts within like 2-3 seconds, then gets to Windows in another 10 or 15, I haven't timed it in a while though. I'd post a couple video clips, but idk how to do it without attracting the ire of the moderators. This laptop has an i7-6700K, 64GB DDR4-2133 RAM, and is booting Windows 10 Pro from a 1TB WD Blue SATA SSD. My dad's old laptop, with a Core 2 Duo T7250, 2GB DDR2-667 RAM, booting Windows 10 Pro from a 240GB Crucial BX200 SATA SSD, could often be all the way logged in, before my i7-6700K laptop would even POST. I haven't timed my 4790K desktop in a while (and it needs a new CPU cooler fan on the Hyper 212 Evo so I can't really power it on right now, and it's not even in its case anymore.) Haven't timed my newer 5950X desktop build either, and that's not ready for power on right now either, cause the table I had it on collapsed partway cause a couple legs broke. (I've been thinking today about doing a little physical computer shuffling, for example putting that 5950X desktop in the desk where I have my laptop now, and moving my laptop to my bedroom or somewhere else, problem with that is my bedroom only has 2-prong electrical outlets, house was built in 1962.)

Can't remember if I replied to this topic before (and a quick search doesn't turn anything up) so ... I play the piano, and I use the entire range of the piano keyboard when I do. (Most pianos have 88 keys, some very old acoustic ones have less, for example 85 was common in the mid/late 1800s, into the early 1900s in some places, and some cheap digital keyboards have less, like 76, 61, 49 for example. I've also played a few pianos with 92 and 97 keys, and know of a couple with 102 and 108.)

I'm hearing a little click too, at the halfway point in the recording. I'm not sure what it is, though ... almost sounds like what I get sometimes when splicing two things together when it's not exactly a clean splice (where one sample is fairly loud and the next one is really soft or zero, and you get the resulting pop/click from the sudden change), but I don't think that's what's happening here. @jammer2001 it's quite subtle, I was listening on earbuds jammed in my ear with the volume at a moderately elevated setting. (My environment wasn't super quiet, but it's not loud either.) I listened to the clip several times, first time it was obvious, next few times I didn't hear it at all, then adjusted the headphones again and was picking it up again. As for sound much lower overall .. I wish I could remember how I fixed a situation I had with something a while ago ... recording with a microphone, it would start peaking well below max level. I think basically there were like 2 or 3 volume settings, and one of them was set too low and another too high but I can't remember. (One of my senior church friends has been having the same issue with her voice on zoom, her level is really low like 30 dB or so less than everyone else, and it's overdriving somewhere in the audio chain. Last couple weeks though she's used an iphone for her audio which is much better, but it would be nice if I could figure out how to help her fix the other audio issue.)

Hi ... (Wasn't sure where to post this, cause I couldn't find any one forum to put it in. It mentions phones, cases (phone and computer), PSUs, and a couple other things. Putting it in phones wouldn't work cause I also mention cases and PSUs, and putting it in cases or PSUs wouldn't work cause I also mention phones. I didn't see a multiple-topics forum...) So I bought a couple things (among others) during the holiday period (actually November 7, 2021), intending to put them to use, but now I'm starting to think I may end up not using them, but idk yet. I have until January 31 (2022) to return them. They are: OtterBox Defender Series Case for Google Pixel 3a - Retail Packaging - Black (77-61233) - paid $22.84 Seasonic CORE GM-500, 500W Power Supply, SSR-500LM - paid $44.99 I was intending to use the phone case for my Pixel 3a. Yeah, a little late, I know, for those who have seen my other thread a little while ago about the cracked screen and other things (like flaky USB port & front camera), which I had been hoping to have repaired. The replies in that other thread, though, seem to give me the idea that I would be better off getting another phone. I'm just having some trouble deciding what to do. I really don't want to have to buy yet another case for a new phone (although returning this one might lessen the sting a little, as long as the new case is no more expensive than this one was). Repairing the existing phone may still be possible, but from what I can tell, it might end up being almost as expensive as getting a new phone. I just really don't want to have to re-setup everything (things have never worked properly for restoring whenever I've gotten a new phone - for example I might lose game progress, my text messages would be cleared, a lot of settings would be reset to defaults, some apps might not be there, and so on). If I did get a new phone, I'd want it to have updates as quickly as possible (for example the 3rd or 4th week in September for a new Android version, unless Google themselves delays it, NOT waiting several months like most other phone makers do), would want at least security updates for a long time cause I'd probably be keeping the phone several years or more, I'd still want the free uploads to Google photos (like my 3a has, I think the 4a has it too, but the 5a lacks it), 3.5mm jack, 5G, among other things, and it would have to be available from USA-based retailers, brands, etc. I was briefly looking a few weeks ago but wasn't finding anything that fit the bill that costs about the same as what repairs to the 3a would cost. (Literally the ONLY phone I found that might meet most requirements is the Pixel 4a 5G, but that's almost $500 and I wasn't planning on spending that much on a phone until maybe like 2025 or 2028 or so. As for the PSU ... my intended use for that was to have a way to still be able to power on my older desktop platform (i7-4790K, ASRock Z97 Extreme6, Hyper 212 Evo although it needs a new fan and I do *NOT* want to remove the cooler, it was a total pain in the gluteus maximus to install(!!), 32GB of 4x8GB G.Skill Ares DDR3-1600 CL9, 1TB 970 Evo, 256GB Crucial M550, various HDDs). My existing PSU (Corsair AX760) got repurposed for the newer platform (5950X, B550 Taichi, Liquid Freezer II 360, 128GB of 4x32GB Team Expert DDR4-3600 CL18, EVGA SC GTX 1060 3GB, repurposed 1TB Silicon Power P34A80, 250GB Crucial MX200, more HDDs), as well as my case (Fractal Design Define R5). My idea was to just plug the PSU in, and run the motherboard open-air on a wood table, or a motherboard box on said table (or, on some other wood surface). However, considering I'd want to have 3.5" HDDs plugged into it (the motherboard has 10 SATA ports and I might have all of them in use), I'm thinking it might be safer to run it in a case. I just can't find any case that's compact and still will fit a full ATX motherboard and 10 or more HDDs. Seems like every case I've seen in my relatively brief searching expects to have a lot of empty space in it, and/or expects to have lots of water cooling hardware, high-end video cards, etc ... but I'll just be using the iGPU, existing air cooler, and want to fill the rest of the space with HDDs. (When it's full, the case should be as densely packed as a laptop or other SFF system.) The Cooler Master N400 does support 10 HDDs (I think - one of the 3.5" bays is external, and I'm not sure if it would support the wider screw spacing of higher capacity HDDs, also there's 2x 5.25" bays but I do have a couple adapters), but at ~40 liters (or ~7.4" x 16.7" x 19.7") that thing is absolutely huge, and I think ~$85 is a bit expensive. (It is currently available, though.) There's also the HEC 7106BB, but ~ 29 liters (or 17.2" x 16.8" x 6.1") is still a bit big, and it doesn't support as many HDDs, and I don't like the idea of paying ~$70 for something that might not meet my needs. I also looked at a couple cases which only have a few drive bays, but it appears there might be room to add another cage or two. I just don't want to do anything that would void any warranties (no dremeling allowed, for example), and they're still colossal. The cheapest option I found, DIYPC Solo-T2, is ~$37, but almost as big as the N400 (39 liters, 17.2" x 8.2" x 16.9"). A slightly smaller option is the BitFenix Nova Mesh SE, but is still gigantic at 36 liters (or 15" x 8.3" x 17.7"), and is ~$57, sold by an Amazon 3rd-party seller. I'd rather have something that's a lot more compact while still having full compatibility with the hardware - maybe something like 7" x 12.5" x 10" or so, or about 14.3 liters. (An internal layout I have in mind is in the photo in the spoiler - just imagine a case around that.) Basically I'd want to be able to mount hard drives directly over the motherboard - flanking the CPU cooler, taking the place of expansion cards (since I won't be using a dedicated GPU), wedged between the PSU and the motherboard, etc. I can't seem to find any case like that, though. I have no confidence that I would be able to design and build my own, even though I've heard of people that have custom-made their own enclosures. I suppose I could get rid of the 4790K platform, but it still works, and I was thinking of repurposing it as a NAS or backup server (with at least one gripe, if I used it for that, being that it does not support ECC RAM). (Also the idea popped into my head of using it as a replacement of sorts for my photos backup from my phone, among other things, like using it as a server, but there's a bunch of issues with that, like security, limited upload bandwidth, data cap, and so on.) If I was going to get another platform entirely, then I would have a pretty limited budget to do it in (for example, the entire setup, not including storage, needs to cost less than a single 12 or 14 or 16 TB hard drive or so), and the requirement that things be compact (for example mounting HDDs directly over the motherboard, etc, and being as packed as a laptop or other SFF system) would still apply. I just don't have any practical physical place to have two full-size standard ATX cases. Anyway ... Should I keep the two things I bought and try to work with them? (Otterbox Defender for 3a, & get that phone repaired, plus Seasonic Core GM-500, and find a compact, sub-15-liter full ATX case) Or, should I start the process of RMA'ing them, and look at getting another phone, and look into a different platform for a NAS, backup server, etc?

ad blocker on desktop, ads on mobile for now. Forgot about pihole, also wasn't aware there was a way to block ads on mobile (ublock origin & other extensions don't work on chrome on android among other things) i've off & on been thinking about getting yt premium though ...

Ahh @Donut417 ... (btw I'm having to rewrite my very incomplete post, because, while I was typing on my other PC.... I shut down the PC and moved the tower, so it currently doesn't have peripherals or power / internet hooked up. (Also the 2nd pic was taken after I moved the PC, but it had been in the same spot on the table.) Anyway ... hmm... (now if I can remember some of what I had typed...) I did a bit of brief checking for providers available at my parents' address (where I am now), and there is no fiber available here. We're in a bit less rural of an area than some places I've been looking, btw. (On the map, we're basically just inside the highlighted area, south of El Cajon, east of La Mesa, northwest of Jamul.) Doing a bit of brief checking on cable, etc, it looks like Cox's 35 Mbps upload on their gigabit plan is the fastest upload available. A couple days ago we looked at a house in Crest (a few miles east of El Cajon, north of Jamul) - we really liked the area, but the house itself lacked some things that caused us to decline to pursue it further. A few days before, we had looked at one on the east side of El Cajon that we liked, but someone else snapped it up literally an hour before our offer went in, and our offer actually might have been higher. Also a week or two ago, I briefly looked at a couple other places - well, went to the area to get a feel of what it's like (didn't actually tour the houses though) - a couple in Descanso (north of the Interstate 8 freeway some distance east of El Cajon), and one basically north/northwest of Campo (near where the main freeway makes a bit of a couple curves, or, a bit outside the area that I drew on the map). I liked both areas, however the Campo one was a bit farther out than we would like for now (and you'd have to go through a border patrol station every time you wanted to go toward San Diego), also there was literally NO cell service there. (I'm on T-Mobile, don't yet have a 5G phone.) The Descanso ones have since gone to pending on the site I've been using to search, also while I might have liked one of them in part, there were some other things that made us decide no to pursue it either. I also looked at one in Ramona, and a couple in Escondido, but found various issues with them or those areas as well. BTW Cox, afaik, has an add-on available to have uncapped data for an extra $50/month. Also Comcast is one that I've heard recommendations (including from my brother) to stay far away from, there was another one or two as well but I can't remember which it was. As for finding good (fiber) internet at the house .... I wonder if there's some way to do that if there's a bunch of places I'm looking at, without having to go to each one or plug their address into an "is fiber available here" search? (I wonder if there's a way my brother-in-law might be able to find that out more easily, he's a realtor that we're working with, also we've done some with my sister as well but the BIL is more involved than her right now, mostly because of the current work she's doing.) One thing that popped into my mind was 5G home internet ... I wonder if that might be a possibility somewhere? Although, I'm not getting too much hope when I briefly look up some things, especially concerning the upload speeds. Some of the things I want to be able to do with the internet wherever I move to include (but aren't limited to, and/or may not be all of them at first: Stream in 4K, like to YouTube. (Also interested in Twitch, but that only does 1080p.) My Panasonic FZ1000 records 4K 30fps at 100 Mbps, and I'd prefer to have no perceptible reduction in quality, or as little processing overhead (GPU or CPU) in transcoding on my end as possible. Record in 4K, for later upload to YT, etc. The more ambitious part of my mind imagines me eventually ramping up to, say, 10-12+ hours a day sometimes -- which, if I recorded in 100 Mbps, and uploaded in the 10 Mbps we have now, would be absolutely impossible. Also IDK how well my desktop's 5950X would do at transcoding from my camera to something that would be more able to be uploaded with our current connection (or even a 35 Mbps uplink), and -- well, I'm pretty sure that NO format exists that we can transcode to that would incur no loss of quality from 100 Mbps while still fitting in < 10 Mbps.) Also if I did any transcoding, I prefer using all I-frames. As for content, I'm thinking of doing a lot of playing the piano; and am also considering possibly branching out into other ventures as well, but idk what just yet. (As of right now I'm basically not considering becoming another tech youtuber, although I might consider doing something occasional on the side.) Start doing offsite backups -- I was looking up some things regarding backups online, like full, incremental, differential backups, and I was seeing some references to daily full backups and hourly incremental / differential backups. I haven't signed up with any provider yet, but Backblaze is one I may consider. It would be a challenge to do daily full backups of all of this though - and by full backup I mean every sector, the firmware, UUID, etc - everything. (Also it doesn't include my phone, or SD / µSD cards, etc.) Maybe doing daily full backups is a bit much, although it would be an improvement over what I have now - last backup I did of any kind was about a year and a half, maybe 2+ years ago, I forget now. Also would I need to keep every bit of every single backup I ever make from the beginning to the end of time? Later / eventually, add a few extra cameras for video production, and -- for example, if I have four 4K cameras going simultaneously for different scenes in, say, a 2x2 grid, then maybe record & upload and/or stream in 8K. (That probably won't come for a while, though, and I'm hoping I may be able to earn enough $ from various things to then buy my own place, maybe in a few years or so - for example maybe west/central Texas like 200-300 miles (320-450km) west of Austin or Fort Worth, or maybe somewhere in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada like 200 miles (320km) north of Vegas, etc. -- basically have a lot of space around me (for example look briefly at a few videos posted by Kate's Ag on YT - she works on a probably thousand plus acre family farm - I don't need quite THAT big of a backyard but it would be nice later to have some nature & space / room around me without bothering the neighbors, have the ambient noise level outdoors be like < 10-20 dB except when the local wildlife breaks into song or a thunderstorm comes through, etc), be able to see stars at night (for example Bortle scale level 1 or 2), among other things. Also something I'd like to be able to do is host my own content. I was looking at a YT video from BPS Customs earlier today (well actually yesterday cause it's 12:41am as I'm typing this) -- I can't link it here, but if you look for "2021 Year In Review, w/ Paul's Hardware, Gamers Nexus, Badseed Tech!" posted on December 25 (that's what it says for me), the section where Wendell from Level1Techs talks, from about 7 1/2 minutes to almost 10 1/2 minutes, he talks about "self hosting". I would like to be able to do that, and find some way to do it safely. Anyway ... it looks like finding a place with decent upload in the type of semi-rural area where I want to live will be a bit challenging, any ideas are appreciated. I do know that 35 Mbps will not be anywhere remotely near enough.

So we've been house hunting for a little while now, and I was thinking ... I would like to make sure I can get good internet wherever I happen to end up. By "good internet", I mean a minimum of 100 Mbps UPLOAD, preferably 1 Gbps (or at least such that the upload & download speeds are the same), and no data caps. My brother has recommended trying to find a place where Cox is available. He has it, also we have it at my parents' house now, and generally haven't really had any major issues with it. However, I looked on their site, and their fastest upload speed available is 35 Mbps, and that's on their "Gigablast" (1 Gbps download) plan. One thing complicating matters a bit is, I'm really hoping to find a place that's not smack dab in the middle of town, but rather a bit out, where I can have it be nice and quiet, have nature around, etc. Here's a screenshot of the approximate area I've been looking in, east of San Diego, CA. (There's also been some places we've considered a bit closer to town as well.) It's been a while since I've looked into it, but a couple years ago or so, it seemed that fiber was really only available in places that were really dense, like high-rise apartments near downtown major metro areas. Yesterday we looked at a house in Crest, CA (a few miles east of El Cajon) - we loved the ambience of the area, but the house itself had some shortcomings that caused us to decline any further pursuit of it. Also a week or two ago I saw a few places I liked in Descanso, Pine Valley, Campo, but those are pushing it for being a bit too far. (Also the one in Campo area had no cell service (I use T-Mobile), which didn't give me much hope for there being good internet there either.) So .... Anyone have suggestions on how to find out where good internet is available, with at least the aforementioned 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps upload speeds, and no caps? When I was looking for areas with fiber earlier, they wanted an address to see if service was available at that location, but I don't have an address to give them. (And last I checked, my parents' home doesn't have fiber available, although idk if that may possibly change considering there are some new houses being built across the street.) Part of my criteria for even considering a place to move to is going to be the availability of good internet there, and I really don't want to have to plug in each individual address of the hundreds of places that have come up in my search, nor do I want to risk possibly violating people's privacy (maybe because by giving the ISP the address, the ISP or someone they sell the info to might try to sell something to whoever currently owns that address).

where I live (near San Diego) I've seen fixer uppers for like $500-600K (well they're semi livable, but need some work; the gutted ones might still be like 300-400K though I think.) A bit farther north in the same state (California, near San Francisco bay area) I've heard of fixers going for upwards of 7-digit prices.in some places.

if I had $10K I'd probably save / invest most of it. Might buy a few things that add up to maybe several hundred or a couple K $, but not much more. Also what I did buy would more likely be several less expensive things, rather than one thing that is the entire amount that I spend, so no RTX 3080s for me. For example, right now I might need to get a new phone (Pixel 3a has a cracked screen and flaky charging port, looking at anywhere from $100-500 for a phone), and I'd like to get some streaming equipment (mics, maybe an extra camera, also headphones / headset, thinking anywhere from $300 to $1k total there but idk). Also I might need a computer case to put my older motherboard in and turn it into a NAS. (it's an LGA 1150 / Z97 motherboard with 10 SATA ports, my main gripe against making it a NAS is that it doesn't support ECC RAM and only supports 32GB. Also I'd require a minimum of 10 HDD bays and a maximum price of $100 for the case, preferably less.)

Is there also a version of the poll for voting for ones that I know I HAVE used? Some on the list I know I haven't used, some on the list I know I have used, and some I can't remember. Also does it count if I used something that had that connection but I wasn't involved in setting it up? If so, there's a few missing from the poll that I have used equipment that was connected that way / had those connections. For example the ST-506 interface for MFM / RLL hard drives, 30-pin SIMMs, parallel port, RCA jacks, spring terminals (speakers), etc.

I strongly prefer pay once up front and that's it. New content still gets added of course, maybe some by the developers, some by the community. I think the $5 or $10 I paid for Half Life 1 / Team Fortress Classic back in the day is probably among the best value I've had in gaming, in terms of the content not only at launch, but added over the years (some in especially later years by the community), and how much enjoyment I've gotten out of the game. I *STILL* play TFC sometimes even now. If I do F2P, I generally try to avoid micro transactions. (I learned my lesson with farmville, probably spent over a thousand or couple thousand bucks over the years on that ) Generally I don't like to pay more than about $5 or $10 for a game, sometimes $20 and once in a very rare long while $30 or $40. (That applies regardless if it's all at once up front, or micro transactions over time.) Not only that, I prefer not spending more than maybe a hundred or a few hundred bucks every several years or so, total, on all software / content.

Ahh, ugh, that's a hassle I really don't want to deal with. (Having to deal with multiple individual systems, apps, etc, dig up my music although in my case much of it was produced by church friends for church events and never available on the general market, and so on.) I just want to be able to hit the ground running so to speak - from a software perspective it would be like I never changed devices. Also often in my past upgrades, the Android (or other OS) I was using was several versions old, so updating to the latest on the old device wasn't possible. T-Mobile G1 to Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G - Android 1.6 to 4.0 Moto G4 Play to Google Pixel 3a - Android 7 to 10. (Briefly had 9 for the first week or two or so.) (Dad's phone) Samsung Galaxy Core Prime to Google Pixel 4a - Android 5.1 to 10 (my mom's still using a SGCP, desperately wants a new phone but dad's concerned the massive change in user interface would frustrate her so much she wouldn't be able to use it hardly at all; he himself has quite a bit of trouble with his 4a and he's the more tech literate, worked as an engineer much of his life) (Dad's laptop) Dell D830 (C2D T7250) to Dell Inspiron (i7-8550U) - Windows XP to 10 (My desktop) Athlon 64 X2 4000+ to i7-4790K - Windows XP basically to 10. (Briefly had 7 during 1H 2015 while waiting for 10's release. Also I shared dad's D830 for a few years while my AM2 motherboard was dead & I lacked $ to upgrade or replace it.) My family and I tend to prefer to hang onto the same software, interface, etc, for a long time, not even liking minor changes frequently. My brother, last I knew, was still using Windows 7 on his primary PC (i7-4770K) at home, my parents' kitchen has a stove and (currently not working properly) oven original to the 1962-built house (moved here Nov 1978), my mom's having to get used to her 2012 Toyota Camry SE (replaced a 2002 Honda Accord that was having fdabsnideio---I hate typing on phone keyboards, I mean "transmission" and suggestions (I disable autocorrect b/c too many problems with it & horror stories of inappropriate often sexual "corrections") wasn't even suggesting it with what I had typed which I left in unedited--issues among other things), and I'm sure there's other examples if I could think of them.... Also another thing I was hoping to have on my next phone is the same multitasking capabilities, user interface, arranging windows/apps, playing multiple sounds/videos simultaneously, run multiple VMs (I currently often run 5 concurrently on my laptop (example of 4 in screenshot in spoiler) but anticipate running upwards of 20 maybe more eventually), being able to actually touch type by feel without looking at a keyboard, etc, that my desktop (at least my older one with a 4790K & 32GB RAM, recently upgraded to 5950X + 128GB) and even laptop (6700K + 64GB) have. Even my dad's older laptop with Core 2 Duo & 2GB RAM beats my Pixel 3a in those areas in spite of the 3a having better CPU & more RAM, except for VMs which I don't think either can do. Just noticed the Windows uptime in task manager ... I hate frequent reboots as well, would love to have the multiple years or decade-plus, or "6 or 7 nines" of uptime I've heard some servers have.

@dizmo: I know ... I don't spend $1K on phones, but I see flagship phones that are priced like that so I'm sure people buy them. Also the Pixel 2 / 3 series are older phones, and likely have their OS support already ended or about to be. (My 3a will be ending around the middle of next year I think.) If I get a new phone, I at least want security updates for quite a while, like several years, or at least as long as I choose to use the phone. @FakeKGB: Ahh... I wonder what you mean by "pain in the butt....not updating phone" vs "did get everything sorted" ... ? And that's a tough one .... I was planning for my phone to last quite a bit longer. It technically still works for most things but..... If I did replace it much sooner than originally planned, then the replacement would need to last an especially long time, as I don't plan to bump up my future upgrades. My next upgrade from the Pixel 3a would have been around 2025 or later, then after that would have been, and still is, like 2030 or 2033 or so. From Q3/4 2008 to Q2 2013, I had a T-Mobile G1. That thing lasted at least 4 and a half years or so, and was a significantly worse phone, even taking technology of the day into account, than the Pixel 3a. I was anticipating using the 3a until it got to be as "bad" due to its age as the G1 was in 2013. (The G1 eventually died, forcing me to replace it, which ended up being a Galaxy S Relay 4G.) Also I was hoping that when the time came to replace the Pixel 3a (originally planned for like 2025), it would be better than the desktop PC I had at the time I got the Pixel 3a. (i7-4790K, 32GB RAM, GTX 1060 3GB if I had it installed, 25-40 TB storage depending on what HDDs I had plugged in, etc.) Then when I replaced THAT phone around 2030+, I would have wanted it to beat what I had been hoping to get in a desktop PC in 2022. That ended up not happening cause of pandemic, innovation being too slow, products being delayed, prices too high, etc, but in 2017-2018 I was envisioning something like dual-socket CPUs with core counts exceeding that of a GPU the same price as the 4790K when I bought it, like a GTX 970 for example, 2 TB RAM, a fair bit of storage, a GPU that could play the latest games at 4K or 8K 120+ fps max settings, etc - like maybe enough to store every movie I've ever recorded in RAW uncompressed 4K/8K, and I have probably over 10+ TB of compressed 4K, 1080p, 480p, etc... (In a nutshell, I was hoping a phone bought at a particular time would be better in pretty much every way than a decent desktop PC from about 10 years or so earlier.) Also a couple side notes (in spoiler)...

(crap, thought hitting tab would autocomplete a user entry, not highlight the post button ... come on, can't we have a standard user interface across software, platforms, generations, etc -- if you use a certain key sequence to do a certain thing on one platform/generation, the same should work across all, I've lost count of how many times I and others have made mistakes like that) Still working on the post... okay done finally Ahh @FakeKGB & @dizmo ... ... Yeah, I really am not ready to get a new phone, at least from a financial perspective. (More psychological than actually not having the funds, tbh, although I still need to be careful with my $ - buying something a bit more expensive than I normally do is okay as long as I only do it very infrequently (see spoiler).) I was planning to keep the Pixel 3a for at least a few more years, yes, beyond the "end of support" date. (I was thinking like 5 or more years originally, possibly a bit longer, bought it in September 2019, so was thinking of replacing it in late 2024 or 2025 sometime with a $300-400 phone then, keeping that one for 5+ years, and so on.) I'm not about to join the club of people who spend a thousand dollars on their phone and replace it ever year or two. (I might spend a thousand dollars in a DECADE on phones, if that.) Even the people that only spend several hundred dollars every few years ... I don't even spend that much on my COMPUTER if you were to average it out, probably. I wouldn't even have any idea what phone I'd go for if I was to get a new one, except I know I don't want an iPhone. I also strongly prefer a headphone jack, or at least something that works with my existing headphones (or a future pro-grade pair of headphones that I'd want to be compatible with everything from home / studio equipment from <=1950s to stuff that's just now being invented, but more on that would be better in a different topic which I'm not ready to post yet) without needing to use something that prevents me from charging the phone simultaneously, and expandable storage would be a huge plus, also repairability, etc (like fairphone, etc) is a big thing. I don't need (or even want) a "super thin" phone - I'd actually love something that literally has a SO-DIMM (or DIMM) slot or two (that supports registered ECC so I could put plenty of RAM in it) and an M.2 slot, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. And hopefully the "transfer data from old to new device" would work better than it did for my dad. He upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy Core Prime (running Android 5) to a Pixel 4a (Android 10 at the time I think), and while it transferred some of his data over, pictures, phone background, etc ... it failed with some apps. For example there was a notepad app that he used with his Samsung phone and he had a lot of notes in it, and that didn't get transferred over. Also he's still using his old phone for some things, like alarms. I want literally *EVERYTHING* transferred over when I migrate phones. On my last one (Moto G4 Play to Pixel 4a), not everything got transferred either - many of my text messages are still on the old phone and not on the new one, same with archived voicemails, and some other stuff. Also there might still be some untransferred things on the Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G I had before the LG G4 (skipping that one cause when it was repaired it was factory reset, bummer cause I wanted to salvage some things off that but couldn't cause of bootloop), and even my T-Mobile G1 might have had some stuff, but it's essentially dead so idk how I'd get anything off of it now, same with the Motorola A1200, MPx220, V300 and V188 I had before that. A couple recent successful "transfer" experiences with PCs, that kind-of reflect what I want to be able to do with the phone: 1 -- dug up an M.2 SSD that I'd installed Linux on in my laptop, which uses an i7-6700K CPU. (I didn't have it in the laptop, cause of some complications regarding M.2 vs SATA ports, drive configuration I had set up, etc, beyond the scope of this post.) Popped that SSD in my newer desktop build (using a Ryzen 9 5950X) ... and it booted up just fine pretty much. (Sometimes I get a popup that mentions something about a system issue, but I think I was getting that before as well.) 2 -- pulled a 240GB 2.5" SATA SSD I have Windows 10 & Linux on out of my dad's old laptop (Core 2 Duo T7250 - Dell D830), plugged it and a 1.05TB SSD into my desktop, used "dd" to clone the drive, then popped the 1.05TB SSD in the old laptop, and that booted up just fine too. (Also expanded the partitions - did it separately cause I wanted to test without expanding first -- both scenarios worked, although interesting thing, the expansion process for the Linux partition froze up in GParted to the point where I had to hit the power switch on the PSU, but I wanted quite a while (like a couple hours or so) before doing so and it turned out alright.) On the other hand, one reason I still boot from a SATA SSD in my laptop even though it supports NVMe is ... I tried cloning from SATA to NVMe, but couldn't get it to work. (Also I didn't even try cloning from my 6700K laptop to 5950X desktop, cause I've heard Windows doesn't play nicely with being migrated to new PCs. I have a fresh install on a cleaned 1TB SP P34A80 that I'd pilfered out of the laptop.) It's just a huge disruption for me to have to reinstall / reconfigure things. This 6700K laptop I'm typing on now is like 6 years old and I *STILL* don't have it set up the way I want, and am still missing some things I would have like to have from like 2 or 3 or 4 PC upgrades prior, dating back to like the 1990s or so.

Hey ... so I need to get a few repairs done on my Pixel 3a: Screen's cracked near the upper left, affecting the selfie camera (I forgot to open up selfie mode in the video clip below, but it probably wouldn't have been very visible anyway), the USB-C port doesn't have much of a grip on cables. The cable falls out easily easily, and when it is in, it will only charge if it's in a certain way, and bump it just a little and it disengages. Putting the same cable in a Samsung T5 portable SSD then dropping it, the cable holds the SSD just fine, but it was falling right out of the phone in a later part of the video. (Earlier in the video it wasn't falling out as easily, idk why.) 56-second video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xFUsKkXb5d9tpW1i8 (Hopefully this doesn't need to get deleted, a moderator deleted a video I posted a little while ago of a timelapse of booting my laptop, trying windows update, failing at that, then opening browser and it taking like 15 minutes or so just to open Chrome, was trying to see if I could get help figuring out some things related to it in that thread.) A pic of the phone: And, in a spoiler, comparison of selfies (via screenshots from the phones) with the Pixel 3a vs my Moto G4 Play. (I would have liked to use my dad's Pixel 4a for the comparison but I'm not sure how I'd get the picture off of it.) So I was looking into taking it to my nearest ubreakifix location (Santee, CA) ... but.... (BTW I see some guides on iFixit, but I'm afraid that I might muck something up) For one thing I'm having some difficulty finding out how much it would cost to repair. A while ago, I had somehow come up with a figure of around $110-130 or so for the screen repair, which I'm prepared to pay, but I can't remember where I found that. I'm hoping that repairing the USB port wouldn't be the same amount again. I really don't want to pay much or any more than about $120 to $150 or so, cause then I'd be getting into new phone territory, and I'm really not ready to get a new phone for a few more years. (I was anticipating spending about $300-400 or so for a phone around maybe 2024 or 2025 or so, maybe a bit later.) Looking up that location online often shows a several hour (most of the day, or into the next) wait before my phone would even be looked at for a walk-in appointment. I don't get to that area very often, and when I do it's usually spur of the moment (both ways - I sometimes decide to go at a moments notice, and sometimes I'll cancel a trip to the area quickly as well), so making appointments ahead of time isn't really practical for me. Also I wouldn't want to be far away from my phone for any length of time away from home, and I don't see any other place (store, whatever) within sight of the ubif storefront that I'd want to spend an hour or two in while waiting for the repair. (There is a Subway across the parking lot, but I probably wouldn't hear them calling my name and they wouldn't be able to contact me via phone, and I wouldn't want to spend a couple hours there and I might not even be hungry anyway depending on time of day and other factors.) Also just earlier today I came across an article that mentioned the issues people were having with pictures leaked, etc, and the article mentioned a policy of factory resetting / wiping the device before any repair commences. Problem is ... I don't know how I would do a full backup of my phone. There's 64 GB internal storage, and my Google account only has a total of about 17 GB, and just about 12GB of it is used already. When I say "full backup" I mean "full backup" - backing up EVERYTHING! An equivalent for Linux (which yes, Android runs, so if I was to open a terminal....) might be something like "dd if=/ of=//drive.google.com/...(whatever location for my account / backups)" ... but ... idk. A while ago I was seeing some things about adb backup via a usb cable, but my cable / port is very flaky so I might not be able to use that option. Also, on past phones with micro USB cables, the cables would frequently deteriorate so that they wouldn't work for data connection quite early, but would still work for charging for a relatively long while --- "relatively" cause even the charging part would die after a few months or so. This cable has actually lasted the entire time I've had the phone, since about September 2019 or so. Any ideas what I can do about it? The screen got cracked probably a year and a half ago or so, maybe more, when the phone was dropped onto a tile floor at a local ice cream shop that I used to frequently go to before Covid. I did recently (few weeks or so) buy an Otterbox Defender case for the phone, for about $18 or $20 or so (too lazy to look up my Amazon invoice) in anticipation of having it repaired. I would have bought one a lot sooner, but there were a couple issues... Somewhat recently (several months ago maybe) when Amazon had it for like $12 or $13, I didn't have enough other stuff ready to order to make it free shipping (I don't have Prime cause I don't use Amazon & related services nearly enough for it to be worth it). And back when the phone was new, I was hesitant to buy a case cause they were like $50-60 then ... AND I had previously, maybe a couple years before or so, bought one for an LG G4, but didn't even have time to put it on before I got the bootloop issue. (I had to get a new phone - a $100 Moto G4 Play - at the time, although later I was able to get the LG G4 repaired due to them extending the warranty for that issue, but by then it was impractical to go back to the LG phone as a main phone.) It's almost looking like the best course of action would be to get the parts and use the ifixit guide to repair it myself, but I'm afraid of ____ing something up in the process. And I'm not sure that I have the right toolkit anyway...