I had an Aya Neo 2 at work the other day so here's my brief take on it from an experience perspective.
All the other hand held PC's that aren't the steamdeck are just that, hand held PC's. When you reset or reinstall windows you have no drivers have to plug in a keyboard and mouse to get a driver package of about 19 different things before it's usable then you need to install Aya Neo Space and have that auto launch at startup so that you somewhat get a hand held console experience.
The deck by contrast is just a single recovery image that is good to go and just works.
So I'd say if you want something that just works well buy a steamdeck while it may have less games than the others it truly is a pick up and play experience, if you want to tinker look into the others however I'd suggest you avoid the Ally due to the melting SD card issue for now.
It's the quality of service that they offer, I don't mind paying £60-70 a month for all my tv/movies but when the services don't even work well, have terrible experiences and constant caveats to using them it's just not worth it. Go spend the money on a self-hosted solution for a better experience and be done with it. It's not exactly cheaper either it's just less of a headache.
Some of us have very good reasons for pirating, I was paying for every service under the sun in the UK last year and I dropped them all simply because the moment I went on holiday practically none of them worked. At that point, I realised that they just weren't worth it and I could build something out and self-host a far better service.
So I spent something like 2 grand doing that knowing at least I'll never have that issue again, Piracy is always a service issue first and foremost and most of these services are crap. Netflix still at least has a reasonable interface and a good experience across every device but Prime video is atrocious, P+ is likewise terrible and don't ever get me started on NowTV.
I’m with you on this, I used to avoid using apple products at all costs due to the way they are so anti consumer and lock you in heavily to their ecosystem.
But in terms of security and privacy they aren’t even playing on the same level. Android will never be as privacy or security focused as apple due to the way google runs its business so long term a Linux mobile operating system would be the dream.
Until then I stick with what I can use which is the apple products for now.
Overall a solid episode, a little different but ultimate felt very core Star Trek TOS with strange alien life and coming to a resolution.
Paul Wesley continues to impress me in the role of James T Kirk but his character did not need to be in this episode, they need to be careful with how they use him going forward.
Just how little it seems people in my role seem to actually do or know about their role.
Also how it seems that every time I try to make requests based on facts, figures and numbers it always ends up being more of a we'll do things based on the vibe because they don't need to see the data as they already " know " the data.
Basically, I make a request for more budget, but I get pushed back your budget should be like Y budget as we have looked at the numbers and deem it so. I have data that proves our budget can't be like Y budget due to 2 to 3x the workload. Surprised Pikachu face.
It's happened to me 3-4 times now and it makes me think maybe I take my job too seriously.
I haven’t seen all of them in person, but the other day someone showed me the StarLite which is their budget laptop and honestly it really surprised me. The only thing with similar build quality I’ve seen at such a low price was the google pixel book go which can be had used absurdly cheap.
I think they’re the company I’d use to buy Linux laptops if I used one daily, these days I use a MacBook Air m2 simply because the battery life beats all and for how I work that’s what I need most.
The price to pay for myself to move is way too high, I use 3 chrome profiles daily. 1 as my personal gmail and 2 work email profiles and trying to manage that in Firefox is just not worth it.
A lot of businesses use the google services and when you’re locked into using them through work there’s absolutely no reason to not just do everything in chrome with profiles.
There’s also the fact that Firefox sync is absolutely shit compared to the google sync features and while I understand why from a user perspective it’s a massive loss of functionality.
Press a massive X to doubt on reduction of micro transactions. See halo infinite on that front.
The reason I personally don’t want this as someone who does not own a PlayStation or a Nintendo console and likely never will is this leads to a future where Microsoft builds up enough IP where suddenly everything is locked into Microsoft game pass and their own store and windows that anyone wanting to use a different platform may as well just fuck off.
It’s the first step on the road to anti consumer practices that Microsoft has historically always done.
I mean last year I had a guy come up to me at the bus stop as I got off to get home at the high street ask me to buy him some food cause he was hungry, me having recently had a pay rise and genuinely being in a really good mood was like sure I'll get you something there's a chicken shop right next to us let's go there I'll grab you a meal.
His instant reply was no he'd rather get Mcdonalds so I was like urgh whatever fine let's go to Mcdonalds, then it turned into I want Mcdonalds but not now please give me the cash for later.
I just said no I've tried to help you and just walked off, some people who genuinely need help are getting such a bad name from people like that.
The scene while nonsensical in terms of what we've established in Trek Science is at least visually cool and fun.
I'll check out the season when it airs, I just hope it is better than I expect.