I have a set of Loops and a set of off brand Loop-like ear plugs from Amazon called Curvd. I'm not a super big fan of the ear fins in the Curvd but they're somewhat cheaper than the Loops. They come with a carry case and you can buy lanyards for them. If I'm honest though I prefer the loops.
I did something of the opposite. I had a Verizon number. I moved it to Google voice. I had a second Google voice number that then became a google fi number. So now I have a Verizon coded google voice number (that my bank accepts etc), and a google fi number that was originally a google voice number. I'm curious how this honestly effects me. My work numbers have never been associated with my personal accounts so there's that.
Yeah. But the ROG Ally X just got a price increase so it's $100 more now than what I quoted in the first comment. And that's for the 1TB version with the 2TB version costing $1000. This handheld will have less RAM and an new chip with unknown benchmarks? That's gonna be a hard sell in markets constantly under threat from tariffs. Especially with other handhelds now available at cheaper price points. I'm not sure how much more they can sell this thing for and actually get people who already have a handheld to buy it (or entice people who have held off this long to buy it). Most people looking for a handheld are looking at buying a switch or a steam deck. The things they have going for them is mostly that they're available for purchase in stores and Lenovo's steam os variant is gonna be out in the wild and available by the time this thing hits shelves.
Nah. The ROG Ally X they already make with windows 11 and 1 TB is $800+tax. The ROG Ally that came before it was $700 and currently sells for like $400 or so.
The 2TB Rog Ally X is about $1k + tax. I honestly doubt they can get people to pay more than that for a handheld, regardless of the Z2 chip. They are having trouble selling the ones they currently make. Add to this that Lenovo just launched the steam os variant of their newest handheld and it's significantly cheaper.
The Xbox system is a windows based system optimised to run on the consoles hardware. It has been since launch. Modifying it for handhelds with the ability to navigate to a desktop environment. The addition of a desktop environment isn't so difficult that it should take three years to accomplish. They launched windows 11 4 years ago and it didn't take but a few months for them to start shoehorning AI into every crevice of it.
Asus has a product already in production that could be used for the purposes of test bench testing and development. The original ROG Ally is even around the same price point as a steam deck.
So all in all the only two excuses MS has are that they are bad at understanding trends and getting in on the ground floor, and they are bad at optimising windows specifically because that goes against their business plan to gather user data and weaponize that data against their competitors.
All.in all we don't have an Xbox handheld at this point because they're greedy and fail to act on trend analysis.
While I agree that the actual code base needs to be develop and augmented on the backend to make this work, that's not really what I'm saying. I'm pointing out that they already have the visual design and working template for a handheld based OS ( navigation and so on). Just that coupled with something like what they had with Windows 10 (the tablet interface for 10 was better than 11) would be fine. It could literally be an Xbox version of steam' big picture mode (because you can launch directly into it from Windows on 10). There even already exists a slimmed down version of Windows 11 to save on resource hogging.
The steam deck has been out long enough for them to have implemented this kind of thing. They've had time to design it. They've just been using that time to deliberately figure out how to shoehorn AI and telemetry and the rest into it because at the end of the day they still want to siphon up all that data.
They already have the Xbox framework. I don't understand why it's so difficult to just use that for gaming and give the handheld the ability to launch a lightweight version of Windows similar to the easy way Steam OS will let you exit to Linux desktop.
I'm not switching over from Bazzite. For my device the Bazzite support is still better at the moment from what I have read. But I am glad that Steam OS is coming to other handheld devices.
For what it's worth I have a ROG Ally X with both Windows 11 Pro and Bazzite both installed. It came with Windows 11 Home but I upgraded windows to get more access to things like Group Policy Editor specifically so I could turn off pretty much everything MS put on it that I didn't want. Local Account. No telemetry. No ads. No tacking. No copilot or AI. The only handheld that comes with Steam OS right now is the steam deck and the Legion Go S. All the others come with Windows.
For the purposes of using steam, windows isn't inferior exactly but I don't like it as much. Touchscreen support for Windows 11 (os-wise) is pretty poor in comparison to previous Windows distros like 10. You can limit but not completely prevent other processes from running in the background in windows. But once you launch steam big picture mode it's basically the same. There's very few functional differences (hardware things mostly that are handled by other apps like RGB lighting or fan curve and TPM and battery charge limits).
How windows performs is ultimately dependent on the hardware and that's a lot of the reason that I can't speak for how windows would perform on a lower specced device. I doubt windows on a steam deck would perform the same as steam os on a steam deck.
ISP's give us access to the Internet. And we pay them for it. Google makes money via ad aggregation. We already know they were able to do this without siphoning up all your data because they literally made money doing it before 2004 when they launched Gmail. What you're talking about already exists though. User subscriptions for Email, VPN's, Search Engines etc already exist and people are using them. People are paying for them.
People also generally understand that if they aren't paying for a service then they are the product. The thing is though, lots of those people are fine with ads so long as the ads don't get in the way of them enjoying the product. If I open a website they don't need to have a full page ad open up when the site page loads. But they do that anyway and that's what people are largely pushing back against.
Additionally, if these companies want our data? They should do a much better job of safeguarding it, or be held responsible in a meaningful way.
I find it funny that Cozy Grove is exactly the kind of cozy game hiding a really sinister plot title they're talking about but there's no mention of it. You know, the game where you (a girl scout style spirit guide) get sent to an island all by yourself for your first scouting adventure and then shipwreck, essential marooning you on an island, and your Troup leader then realizes she sent you to the wrong island but not to worry, she'll rally to recover you. Eventually. If she remembers and can figure out where you are. In the meantime she'll comfort your parents as best she can and remind them they signed a waiver and can't sue. Just you know. Help the spirits that haunt the island you're on until rescue arrives. If you can get them to move on, more power to you, you can have a badge for that.
This is how it happens for me. Names, dates, important details. I know them. They are on the tip of my brain. But I can't access them in a timely fashion.
I have a set of Loops and a set of off brand Loop-like ear plugs from Amazon called Curvd. I'm not a super big fan of the ear fins in the Curvd but they're somewhat cheaper than the Loops. They come with a carry case and you can buy lanyards for them. If I'm honest though I prefer the loops.