Words On Wednesday

I am fiending for a Steam Deck, and I’m not even ashamed about it. Although I have discussed before how there is a time and a place for consoles , I’m finding myself gravitating more toward the idea of PC gaming lately. I’m not saying that I’m done with console gaming; I still think the Nintendo Switch is probably the best gaming console ever made from the perspective of form factor. A single device that can be both a handheld and traditional console is amazing, and my family leverages that capability to great extent. And maybe that’s why I’m now becoming more interested in PC gaming specifically with the Steam Deck. Effectively, it’s the PC equivalent of a Nintendo Switch. It can be a handheld, you can dock it for a more stationary experience, and the OS seems to be very much geared toward browsing a game library and selecting something to play. My aversion to PC gaming traditionally has largely involved the difficult decision between building out a desktop rig and buying a high end l...

I’ve long said that I don’t really like laptops because they don’t seem to last long, and they are difficult or impossible to upgrade. One company is trying to change that. A coworker introduced me to the  Framework laptop . I had recently purchased my  Surface Pro 7 , but I was immediately intrigued. I’ve always gone budget tier with laptops, mostly because I treat them as almost disposable. It’s going to break down and become obsolete pretty soon anyway, and there’s no sense in paying a lot for one if my best option is going to be replacing it with a new model anyway. My Surface was a tentative bet on more premium lasting a little longer, but there still aren’t many ways you can upgrade it besides swapping out the solid state drive. The master plan of Framework is a device that is modular. You pop open the case with the provided tool and switch components as necessary. Need more RAM? Pop in a larger chip. Processor isn’t fast enough, or you’re working with a model that’s a f...

Shifting jobs again has made me reconsider exactly what I put on my work computer, and whether I truly need a personal computer. Spoiler: yes, I do. Confession: I have used employer-issued devices for personal purposes a lot through my professional career. At one job, I would use my work computer to edit GoPro videos between assignments because it was more powerful than my personal computer at the time. Several times, I’ve used my work computer to make Amazon purchases, or order pizza to pick up on the way home. I figured it wasn’t a big deal. I was still getting my work done, this just made it easier to do some non-work things when I had a free moment. When I worked at RedSail, especially during the last few months, I was doing most of my work from my personal laptop and accessing my work computer via remote desktop for anything that had to be done on the network. After I was terminated there, I still had my personal device, so there wasn’t really any significant shift in my computing...