79wjd

57 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Ah, if portability is important, snag the 14-inch model. The 16-incher isn't a throwback to the bad old days of laptops, but it's not exactly compact.

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.

4 hours ago, rikitikitavi said:

@79wjd, I don't believe you have mentioned how mobile you need to be, except that you might travel with your old laptop.

In case of being mostly stationary, did you consider getting a nice colour accurate monitor instead? And if performance is needed - get 14", or maybe even wait for a rumoured beefed up mac mini (or current if you won't benefit from graphic cores as much).

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

49 minutes ago, Commodus said:

If you can swing 32GB, do it. Eight years might be stretching things, but an extra year or two of life (and a better experience during those years) would be worthwhile. I'm glad the leaps to USB-C and Apple Silicon are non-factors.

 

Me? I use Photoshop and might occasionally dive into video editing tools, but I could see myself sticking to the 14-inch model for portability's sake. But I know everyone's case is different.

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).

6 hours ago, Commodus said:

I'd say it's time, and get the 16-inch model. 32GB of RAM would be ideal, but 16GB will be fine for your uses (M1-based Macs appear to make better use of memory). When you find yourself with a growing list of items that could stand to be better, you know you'll get your money's worth. Think of it a bit like a car — at a certain point, the cost to keep the old machine running isn't worth the frustration.

 

I'm presuming you're not worried about the lack of native USB-A, or that Nikon's app may have to run in Rosetta for a while (though eight years of CPU advancements could still make it faster than what you have now).

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.

6 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

The 14” is actually a larger screen than it lets on due to the notch. I had a 15” for a bit and the 16” does feel a lot bigger than the 1” size let’s on both in weight and size. 

1" corresponds to about a 15% difference, so it's not too surprising.

28 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

I'd personally go for the 14". I have a 14” Surface Laptop and the form factor is fantastic. Super light and small. Easy to take anywhere. There may be times when a bigger display might be beneficial, but you can get that with an external monitor, or even a portable external monitor.

 

As far as upgrading in general goes, the metric is will you benefit from it (yes) and can you afford it (that's for you).

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".

4 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Maybe but maybe Nikon might release new software. Would say the screen is a big plus for photos though. 
 

if the battery is fucked don’t use it plugged in it could literally explode 

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.

3 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

The upgrade is worth it I would say. That MacBook isn’t supported anymore so you’re not getting updates which’ll eventually cascade down to programs not getting updates. Would go with the 14” though I had the 2019 MBP 16” and it was a bit cumbersome. Gonna eventually get a 14” M1 MBP myself when I can afford it  

 

would look on eBay to see how much yours goes for though the $80 fix might be worth it if you can sell it for say 200 or so 

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.

12 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Most likely you won't be able to boot from it, just FYI. Most systems without an M.2 slot from that era don't have BIOS/UEFI support for NVMe boot.

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)

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Just realized something. That MagSafe wallet/card pocket? There are still credit cards that use magnetic strip. Imagine people putting those magnetic strip credit card in a pocket, next to super strong magnets. What could possibly go wrong...

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

2 hours ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

For most people, the iPhone 11 series is still the one to get, especially now that it's gonna be cheaper. The iPhone 12 series seems like a giant waste of money.

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.

5 hours ago, el_zappa said:

well 10th is not available in my country until january. So you suggest to just get a like a 250gb ssd for the os? 

I dont know the 4 Tb cost about 80 CHF and the 8 Tb is like 220 CHF. So it seems like a good deal here.

yes I use Plex. But I also will want to stream my own data, Since I have to travel a lot. 

I don't need the cheapest but I don't want to leave money on the table either.

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.

7 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Considering the cost of 8x HDD's of decent size... a $150 case is just a small chunk of the cost.

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.

10 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Not in my opinion

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).

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

So, yea. But what you could do is pick up some 6 TB drives instead, use those with the 4 TB drives, and as the 4 TB's get older they will start to present issues, and then you can start rebuilding with 6 TB drives. Once all drives are 6 TB, you will gain that new effective space. Thats one way to go about it...

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).

3 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Mixing and matching with older drives isn't really an issue. But yea, its not a cheap investment. I added a single 10 TB drive not in RAID for "throw away data" recently. My 10x4 TB array was up past 70% usage so I figured I would offload some throw away data to a single drive.

 

Too bad backblaze doesn't have good data, I guess in that case just get whatever is cheaper tbh. All will be damn near the same, and really just end up being luck of the draw.

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.

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I don’t know of any reliability issues. I would google backblaze Reliability metrics, they publish info every quarter and they have LOTS OF DRIVES to do good statistics on.

 

I would consider RAID, but it just depends on your use case I suppose. 

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.

9 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

That's so dumb..... Why would T-Mobile and AT&T kneecap themselves like that?

 

In the UK not supporting 2G is slightly controversial (See: Three being a 3G and above network without 2G whilst all others have 2G and above).

 

Anybody who has 2G rn in the UK isn't looking to lose it anytime soon and 3G is staying in the UK for at least the next 3-5 years I would say.

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

20 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

TL;DNR No experience with that monitor, just a general aside

 

it may be a good idea to make sure you’ve got the hardware to drive 4k.  Which of course you may have already done.  Video memory can be a concern is all.  iGPUs use system memory so if using one the extra memory pulled can cause issues if memory is already in short supply.

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