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I do think I'm siding with the 14" model. I'm going to try to go to the store in the next few days to compare sizes, but may order the 14" in the meantime to get that shipping clock rolling. FWIW though, I never found my 15" to be particularly cumbersome.

I need something portable. Even if I don't travel with it, I will use it in places other than my desk.

I've been using my 13" from work the last couple days and I'm getting used to the smaller size and 14" might be just enough bigger that it's a viable option. It will also end up being about $300 cheaper, which would be nice (14" w/ 10c/14c vs. 16" w/ 10c/16c) since it would almost cover the ridiculous RAM upgrade cost. Unfortunately opting for 32gb RAM seems to push the delivery/pickup window from immediate to 3-4 weeks (at least with 512gb).

I've actually been debating 16 vs. 32gb. 16gb should be plenty for right now, but I would ideally like to plan to keep this computer for another 8~ years, and during that period 16gb might no longer be enough as software demands change. On the flip side, I also wonder if 8 years is a realistic expectation to have. My 2013 rMBP lasted 8 years, but there was 4 years or so of stagnation (Haswell -> Skylake) whereas that might not be the case with the M-series chips and the software itself might change significantly (relative to the previous 8 years anyway) during that time period too. Yeah, USB-C doesn't concern me. I'm also not stuck with Nikon's software -- any photo editor that can manipulate Nikon's RAW files (which is all decent ones) is fine since I don't do anything complicated. 1" corresponds to about a 15% difference, so it's not too surprising.

I actually find my 13" to sometimes be a bit too small physically. But like I mentioned in my initial post, I've never been bothered by the size/weight of my 15". Plus, there's a decent chance I would travel with my 13" anyway for work reasons. I think I very much would prefer the 16" and I'm just trying to convince myself that I could live with a 14", which is almost certainly a terrible idea. So if I was being smart I would completely drop any consideration of the 14".

Isn't it only a concern if the battery is completely discharged and then charged at some later date? According to Mac OS, the battery isn't being charged at all currently.

Program support isn't super concerning since I basically just use Chrome and Nikon Capture NX-D (which could realistically be replaced by any software that supports Nikon's RAW files). It looks like I could probably get $200-250 for it if I replaced the battery, but I'd probably just keep it at that point and use it exclusively plugged in.

This will mostly come down to personal preference, but I could use a bit of a sounding board. My 2013 15" MBP is in need of a new battery and that got me thinking that I might just upgrade it instead of replacing the battery (that said, I imagine I might opt to replace the battery for the measly $80 anyway since it's still a perfectly good laptop). My use is just general web browsing (with way too many tabs). I also technically take a bunch of photos that I should go through but inevitably dread going through. At most I just do some very light photo editing. So nothing particularly intensive. That said, the photo review/editing could definitely benefit from the brighter/better screen of either the 14/16" compared to my current 15". I'm thinking about either a 14" MBP with 8 core M1 Pro, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD or 16" MVP with 10 core M1 Pro, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD. 14"/16" (compared to current 15") Brighter/better screen -- nice to have for photo editing/review) Better (and working) speakers -- my right speaker is broken Faster CPU/GPU/SSD -- possibly completely meaningless to me. The only thing that would be nice would be faster RAW file processing, but I'm not quite sure what limits that and if any of the above would actually help much there. The issue I have is that when I'm going through RAW files in Nikon Capture NX-D (and any software I've tried thus far -- LR and Nikon Capture NX2), it can take a second or two for each picture to fully load. There is a full screen preview that loads immediately, but it isn't fully loaded (it's a bit fuzzy) -- it takes 1-2 seconds for the image to become clear. I've tried using a RAM Disk in the past and that didn't improve anything, so it doesn't seem to be IO limited. I also had the same problem on my 4690k at 4.4ghz, so I don't know if it's CPU limited either. USB-C charging (would be nice, but not super important) USB-C dock support (also would be nice, but not super important) 14" has about 15" less space than my 15", 16" has about 10% more space than my 15" Larger trackpad, Touch ID 15" is no longer supported by Mac OS Monterey and onward (meh) More storage -- would definitely be nice as I occasionally do run out of space (I'm aware that I can upgrade the storage in my current 15") 16" vs. 14" 16" is $500~ more expensive 16" has 2 extra CPU cores (probably not particularly helpful) 16" has 30% more screen space 16" has better battery life 14" is smaller/lighter (but I've never found the extra size/weight of my 15" to be a hinderance compared to my 13")

I think the battery in my 2013 Macbook Pro is finally completely dead. It's been in the "replace" stage for several years at this point and has over 3k cycles on it, but starting this morning it will no longer charge at all -- it will work plugged in though. I'm assuming the issue is a shot battery and not a bad charging circuit, but is there any way to confirm that? If it's just a bad battery, I might consider replacing it, but if it's a bad charging circuit, well...I'll probably just upgrade to a new 14" MBP.

I figured as much, I have a 60gb SSD that I can throw in as the boot drive. It's not ideal, but I'd rather not spend $90~ on a SATA SSD vs. $110 on an NVME drive that I'd be more likely to carry forward if/when I upgrade.

I'm going to replace my system's drive with a 1TB SSD via a PCIE/M.2 adapter to my Z87 system. I took a look at the pinned tier list and was planning on getting one of the following. Is there any reason to go for any one over another or are they roughly the same? Team Cardea Zero Z340 WD SN750 SE SK Gold P31 ADATA S7 ADATA S11 Pro ADATA SX8200 (Currently the cheapest)

According to Apple, the wallet is shielded, which shouldn't come as a surprise.

Promotions can certainly impact that. If you're on Verizon, you get $440 for trading in an iPhone X towards an iPhone 12/Pro compared to $250 when trading in for an iPhone 11. Making the 12 and 11 virtually the same price when comparing both at a non-sale price.

Another option that was mentioned and is worthwhile considering is shucking a WD 8tb easystore or WD 8tb elements. It's more of a hassle to pull the drives out of the enclosures and you would have to put them back in the enclosure for any warranty replacements, but they tend to be significantly cheaper. You can't go smaller than 8TB for the WD external drives though since you end up with SMR drives in that case (16tb in the case of Seagate). In terms of the boot drive, FreeNAS only boots off the drive and loads fully into memory -- so even a cheap 16gb flash drive is more than good enough. Even if the flash drive fails, all you would have to do is load the configuration file back into a fresh install on a new flash drive. You can even add a second flash drive for redundancy if you don't want to worry about waiting around while you reinstall FreeNAS on another flash drive in the event of a failure.

@Dedayog @TVwazhere Any thoughts on the Antec P101? It seems to have generally good reviews, but I haven't been able to spot a good picture of the caddies indicating if they have any anti-vibration. I can get it for $30 less than an R5.

I don’t disagree, but the Source 210 I already have is honestly “good enough”, it was just a thought that it might make sense to spend $70 or something on a nicer case as opposed to “wasting” $20 on grommets. At $120-170, it’s not really worthwhile. Unfortunately that’s what i figured.

Anything cheaper around worth considering? The R5 was what I was looking at originally, but it’s a bit much to mainly just avoid spending $20 on rubber grommets. @Dedayog @TVwazhere

I’m doing some NAS upgrades and want to either get some rubber HDD mounts or a new case with them built into the bays themselves. I’m currently using a source 210. Cheaper is better — the main reason I’m considering a new case is that if I’m already going to be paying for some anti vibration mounting hardware then maybe it makes sense to pay more to get a case with it built in that is also easier to work with (eg drive sleds).

I don't think I'd bother with 6tb drives. It seems like too small of a bump and likely not "future proof" enough to account for when/if I ultimately update the rest of the array. 8TB would be my minimum and even then I've considered that if/when I decide to add the remaining drives to complete an actual z2 array that 8tb drives might seem like a silly option. Then again, paying a premium now for the off chance in the future is a bit more silly (especially since I had the same thought with these 4tb drives).

It's not a compatibility issue that would concern me with mixing drives but rather the age of the mix. Namely that half the array would be significantly older with a significant number of running hours (40k~/drive). So, I'd be spending a decent chunk of money on low capacity drives solely because I have existing low capacity drives to pair with.

I would of course prefer a z2 array with approximately 24-30TB usable, but $$ and all that good stuff. Adding four 4TB drives onto my existing four 4TB drives could in theory get me to the lower end of that threshold while also not being too cost prohibitive, but I'd be mixing onto four 4tb drives that are 5 years old and also still only being at the lower end of my target capacity while costing more than double what a single 8tb would cost and tying me into smaller capacity drives. I also looked a bit more (and past my slight bias towards WD since I have Reds already) and have a few other options on the table that all are a bit more economical than Reds and on paper have better reliability ratings. 8tb WD Ultrastar HC320 -- $175 8tb Seagate Exos 7E8 (ST8000NM0055)-- $193 14tb Seagate Exos x14 -- $307 8tb Red -- $205 12tb Red -- $305 12tb Seagate Exos X16 (ST12000NM001G) -- $276 There isn't much Backblaze data on most of the drives available at reasonable prices with only the 7E8 really having some usable worthwhile data. The 7E8, Ultrastar, or X16 seem like the best options of the bunch.

I'm looking to expand my current FreeNAS setup (currently 3 4TB Reds and 1 HGST5K40001). They're currently not in any form of RAID, which I know isn't ideal, but the most critical data is backed up elsewhere as well. I'm leaning towards adding an 8/10/12TB WD Red and don't really foresee myself buying 4 additional 4TB drives to switch to a Z2 configuration (with an additional 8TB of storage). Regarding the single 8/12TB drive route, I was wondering if there are any current reliability benefits to one over the other (I remember long ago that drives with 1.5TB platters tended to be less reliable than others, but I don't know if there is still some similar phenomenon). There are obviously other pros/cons to larger/smaller drives, but that's something else that I'll have to give some thought over before making my final decision. At the moment, all are approximately the same $/gb. 4x 4TB Iron Wolf -- $420 (Combined into a Z2 array with my 3 existing CMR 4TB Reds and 1 HGST5k400001). 1x 8TB WD Red -- $205 1x 12TB WD Red -- $305 P.s. I might end up putting two of the 4TB Reds in a mirror configuration for the most important data (currently on a mirrored pair of Blues) assuming I go with the 8/12tb route. P.p.s I was also considering a WD Easystore 8/10/12 if these still have CMR Whites (Reds), but I would also need to replace my PSU (RM650x) since it doesn't support the SATA 3 spec regarding the 3.3v pin and I'm not interested in modding/taping molex connectors, so that route is likely to be less cost effective.

Verizon has also been planning on shutting down their older networks for years (last I checked it was scheduled for Dec 2020). It’s not really a handicap when it applies to all (relevant) carriers.

RJ 12

Since it's only for office use, memory shouldn't be a problem.