KuzunohaXXII

I'm planning on getting a gift for my parents next month, and since they kinda just have a pretty crummy old laptop I figured I'd splurge a bit and get them a new and actually fairly decent one. I'm torn between the Asus ZenBook 13 UM325UA-DS51 (https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00115543) and an M1 Macbook Air. They'd basically just be using the laptop for video calls, web browsing, having a computer to take on trips, and Office apps. I know both laptops are perhaps a bit overkill for what they'd do with it, but I do want them to actually have a decent computer for once that's also very portable. The ZenBook is a couple hundred dollars less than the Air, and they're also more used to Windows though I'm sure I'd have no trouble teaching them how to use a Mac. If the Air's a better deal I'm all for spending the extra couple hundred. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

With Windows Virtual Desktop out, I have been seeing a lot of talk about Microsoft having a goal of moving all Windows computing to the cloud, and that we'd only have barebones machines that would just be used to connect to the virtual desktop. I know WVD, as it currently is, is meant just for enterprise users, but the talk I've been hearing is that all use-cases will be moved to the cloud eventually. I realize there's a lot of uncertainty among consumers in regards to this, as this effectively makes all computers completely useless if you have no internet connection or your connection drops, not to mention it would spell the end of local storage meaning all data would have to be cloud-stored and I know many would be uncomfortable with that. There's also the issue with services like Stadia still having significant latency issues. There isn't any kind of official roadmap published by Microsoft in regards to this, but are any others worried about enthusiast PC-building days being numbered? I suppose we could build our machines that connect to the cloud, but that definitely wouldn't be the same.

I've got a 3700x and an Asus X570-P motherboard that has two M.2 slots. I've got one WD SN750 in which is my OS drive, and I also have an older SATA III 860 EVO and a surveillance HDD plugged in as well. I've got a 1660S and a wifi card in my PCI slots. If I were to get a second M.2 for that empty slot, would this cause any lane clogging? Would it potentially reduce my performance at all?

Ah! That's good, thank you! Yeaaah, unfortunately that's what I tried to do, but it tells me the folder I'm selecting needs to be empty. So, I'm going to have to make a brand new folder and move them all into it to get Steam to recognize it I guess.

One thing about reviews is that they're often going to be skewed toward bad experiences because people who have bad experiences are more inclined to write about it. People who have good experiences tend to not even think about reviewing a product. Thus far I've had no bad experiences with any Seagate or WD drive, internal or external. I do think that external drives in general can be a bit more on the fragile side since people move them around a lot more, but as long as you are careful with it it should be fine. If you want added assurance, you could always get an internal drive and buy an external enclosure to make it into an external drive. Doing this lets you customize the kind of drive you'd like to have as an external. This can be more pricey though.

I just recently built a new computer. I got a new M.2 drive as my boot drive and I've attached my 1TB 860 EVO from my previous computer to it. The 860 has my old games already installed on it and I was able to get battle.net to recognize my Blizzard games already installed on it just fine. Planning to do the same for my Steam games installed on it but Steam's making me declare a new folder that I'll have to move my old steamapps folder to in order for Steam to recognize them. The idea behind this is I don't have to reinstall hundreds of GBs of games back onto the drive. It's still far below the 860 EVO's max TBW, but might as well keep it as healthy as possible. I'd just like to know if I move the steamapps folder to a new steamapps folder on the same SSD, does that damage the SSD as though I'd re-downloaded all of those games? Googling this only gives me info on moving items between two different drives, so figured I'd have to put a question out myself. Any help appreciated!