Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

My first printer was the BJC-4300. It actually wasn't that unreliable, but that was 1998 and it hadn't been sitting for 25 years. We used to get bottles of ink and refill our cartridges, it was easy without chips on the carts. The printer died after the house across the street was struck by lightning. Print quality was pretty terrible, especially compared to the HP Photosmart my uncle had a the time that saturated the paper with ink.

I had the scanner too and frankly it's pretty awful. In my examples every scanned image had a pattern of lines across it, not sure if it was from light leaking in from the front of the machine and if the results were better in the dark. The red, green and blue lights were pretty though as it scanned. Here's one I dug up from backups, a scanned photo of my pet rabbit from 2001. Scan lines clearly visible.
bun 3.jpg
 
Matt2000 said:
My first printer was the BJC-4300. It actually wasn't that unreliable, but that was 1998 and it hadn't been sitting for 25 years. We used to get bottles of ink and refill our cartridges, it was easy without chips on the carts. The printer died after the house across the street was struck by lightning. Print quality was pretty terrible, especially compared to the HP Photosmart my uncle had a the time that saturated the paper with ink.

I had the scanner too and frankly it's pretty awful. In my examples every scanned image had a pattern of lines across it, not sure if it was from light leaking in from the front of the machine and if the results were better in the dark. The red, green and blue lights were pretty though as it scanned. Here's one I dug up from backups, a scanned photo of my pet rabbit from 2001. Scan lines clearly visible.
View attachment 3572439
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I remember the printer being awfully slow when printing in black and geologically slow when printing in color, but it wasn't unreliable.
Quality was "it's the 90's".
 
I only remember how slow it was because I remember seeing my first Epson that printed 3-4 lines of text at once and being amazed.

It's still much faster than my old electric typewriter though, I've now finished my conversion to use that as a daisy-wheel printer and it takes 10-15 minutes per page. :LOL:

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Can anyone recommend a decently powerful micro PC that would handle two 1080p outputs with YouTube streams running? The RPi just isn't capable of running one and keeps reverting to 360p. HP Elitedesk 800s look decent but the newer models are silly expensive for a basic machine, as is an Intel NUC.
 
Something based off of a Ryzen APU? I think you've mentioned you never had AMD-powered PCs, but from what I've heard, when it comes to micro PCs, they're a much better bang for buck than comparable Intel offerings.

While I'm on the topic of micro PCs, I'm thinking about getting one as well, even if I don't need one. But first I need to research would Plex solve my purpose of running it on a PC just for video playback (esentially a HTPC, if those are still a thing), and if a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client could handle 1080p video playback. I also have a hunch that would be €50 better spent elsewhere.
 
I haven't looked at micro PCs since 'nettop' computers were a thing and the big selling point was attaching them to VESA mounts. :ROFLMAO:

I've found some AMD ones, they're more expensive but the Ryzen processors usually come with a 6-core, 12 thread processor instead of a 4c/4t Intel and they all have 8GB of RAM instead of 16 unless you pay even more. Probably overkill for what I want but ideal for a mini server. I'll probably buy this and put Debian Linux on it:

View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-3750H-TRIGKEY-S3-Graphics/dp/B09MFKZFYG

It's only slightly more expensive an an old SFF Dell or HP with a much older processor.

The thin client should handle 1080p playback, I mean for local video the RPi can do 1080p playback but it's just the overhead of playing the video in a browser that's the issue.
 
I was about to suggest something Intel N100-based. The chip seems rather nice, very low power (most solutions are passively cooled even) and powerful enough for the intended use.
 
I've ordered the N100 model, really can't complain at that price. 15W power consumption is great and right now it just needs to run a full screen 1080p stream. If my current server dies I can probably use the micro PC instead, for a while at least.
 
leviathan said:
I was about to suggest something Intel N100-based. The chip seems rather nice, very low power (most solutions are passively cooled even) and powerful enough for the intended use.
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The Intel N series are awesome, except for one tiny, very Intel detail, they do not support more than 16GB of RAM. The only reason I can think of for this limitation to exist is that Intel is afraid it'll cannibalise sales of Core i3 (or whatever the hell they call them now) chips.
 
New N100 micro PC arrived and to my surprise it already had Windows 11 installed, albeit 21H2 and I can't remember if it was Home or Pro. Needless to say, I don't trust the legitimacy a whole lot but it activated and it's nice to know it's there if I need it. I don't think I'll need more than 16GB of RAM for my use, even if I repurpose it as a basic file server.

I set up a Debian 12 dual boot and set up VNC on there, didn't take long to get it configured and it has now replaced the RPi for playing the osprey live stream. Quality through the DVR is much better now that the PC can actually play the 1080p stream.

Next I'm going to replace the 4 year old 1TB disk in the DVR with a 4TB WD Purple, allowing me to view significantly more CCTV history for my cameras and this stream.
 
I'm really satisfied with my M1 MBA so far, it seems like a fantastic little machine. My previous XPS would collect dust most of the time because I'd gravitate towards desktop. I still gravitate more towards desktop, but that's because a 27" screen is much more comfortable to work on than the 13" one. Okay, there's also the thing that I'm used to Windows, but I'm trying to get better hang of macOS too.

Now I'm thinking of combining the best of both worlds and docking the MBA. I do have a couple of options when it comes to that, though:
  1. Getting a Satechi dock, plugging in my current monitor (Dell U2717D that I've had for five years), and call it a day
  2. Take the opportunity to sell my current monitor to my parents, who need a new monitor anyway, and upgrade
The option 2) would give me some niceties such as being able to pick a monitor that has USB-C and PD (we have Dell U2722DE at work, the one-cable solution kinda spoiled me). And then I could get a 4K monitor, maybe even a 32" one at that (although that's probably too large for me).

The first option would be cheaper, but not by much, if I'm looking at used market as well. Heck, even when it comes to the new market, I could get an extremely color-accurate Asus ProArt PA278CV for just €320, and it has USB-C, PD, and it seems like a really decent monitor overall. But there is something I'm worried about, and that is scaling.

Doing some reading online, I've read that macOS doesn't play well with 100 ppi (approximately the resolution of 27" 1440p screen, such as all the monitors I've mentioned so far), leaving the picture looking blurry. The same goes, however, for anything non-retina, i.e. not 200-220 ppi. Monitors of such resolution are a handful, especially if we're talking about 27" monitors with PD. There's the LG Ultrafine 5K (about €800 on the used market), the Apple Studio Display (about €2000 new), and umm... that's it. There are a few more options if you're willing to forgo PD, but a) I'm not, and b) such monitors are impossible to find.

There is allegedly some 3rd-party software that takes care of that, but I need to do more research on whether that works as intended. It's not a particularly elegant solution, either. Still, I'm kinda leaning towards a second-hand 27" 4K monitor. It just needs to be color-accurate and have USB-C with PD.
 
Can confirm that 27“ 4K is awesome with MacOS. I run my three AOCs at 150% scaling („simulated resolution“ of 1440p), and stuff is perfectly crisp. At work we have 1440p 24“ panels, there I run non-scaled 100% - it’s not great, but workable.
 
Pinterest was standardized on Apple's previous Cinema monitors for quite a large portion of the staff until those models were retired, and then switched to LG. From what I understand the switch went very smoothly. They wouldn't have switched if there were scaling issues like that, for a company that focused so much on visuals.
 
I have been running my M1 MacBook Air with two cheap monitors: A Samsung LS34J55 and an LG 25UM58, connected via HDMI through a Gen. 2 Hyperdrive 6-in-1 hub. Both works just fine.
 
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