Re: Microsoft to force new Outlook on Windows 10 PCs

On 1/16/25 12:10 PM, Paul wrote:

On Thu, 1/16/2025 6:22 AM, -hh wrote:
 

>
Of course.  Overall, a challenge with the DIY topic is differences in motivation:  is the DIY because money's tight? Or is the motivation because tinkering with hardware is an entertaining hobby/pastime?
Both motivations can & do exist, and can get conflated in discussions.

 The motivation, is we don't want to buy shit.

One does that by not buying junk brands, which has nothing to do with if one is components or complete systems.

Do I want a Dell with a four phase VCore, when
I can have a twenty four phase VCore on an
expensive motherboard ?
 Do I want a 230W power supply on a Dell, when
I can pick up an 850W power supply at Best Buy ?
Now, I can plug in an RTX4090 when I want to.
On the Dell, that's... impossible (even if you
went out and bought the 850W supply, it probably
would not fit in the small Dell case, neither would
the Dell cooling system be adequate for the thermal
load and there wouldn't even be a mounting location
for a fan to be added).

That's a criticism of Dell, not of all PC system manufacturers.

When you do a build, you control everything, and
no screwing around or taking shortcuts.

Doing all of in in-house is taking the "longcut", plus you've effectively adopted all possible repair & warranty headaches too. When the costs are significant, its not a trade-off to casually commit to.

Let's take an example, Mr.LaptopMan.

Okay, Mr Logical_Fallacy_Man, because noting that the marketplace reality is that 80% buy laptops now isn't an endorsement of that fact that should get you upset and slinging lame Ad Hominems.

Take the lady
in the computer store the other day, a salesman
explaining to her that "the laptop with the 4070
is faster than the laptop with the 4060" for gaming.
Well, what the salesman didn't tell the gaming lady,
is that the owner will beat the piss out of the laptop
and it will be knackered after only four years. While you
are having a gaming experience, it won't last.
 Whereas, with a desktop, if I wear the keycaps off my
keyboard playing Tetris, I just swap keyboards, takes
about ten seconds. If the video cards burns the
connector off, chuck it on the table, pop in another.

When the customer wants a laptop, offering a desktop solution is inappropriate & will be disregarded.
Consider a guy going into a dealership to buy a sports car to race on the track on weekends:  a you really going to try to tell him that his needs are all wrong and he should buy a big old truck instead because it can haul more manure?

And if I want four NVMe storage, I can pop in a board
with four sleds on it, and boom, done.

Or buy one of these for a laptop...boom:
OWC Express 4M2 - Four-Slot Thunderbolt (40Gb/s) NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure for NVMe M.2 2280 SSDs
<https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2>
OWC Express 4M2 - Four-Slot Thunderbolt (40Gb/s) NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure for NVMe M.2 2280 SSDs

With this, I could install twenty four NVMe on six cards.
 "Asus Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE"
     https://dlcdnwebimgs.asus.com/gain/f8c9b3f4-1a07-4645-aa79-594c48bd4090/w692
 (Note desktop I/O style on the left)
     https://dlcdnwebimgs.asus.com/files/media/35d86ad4-c99a-49d7-b8bb-09601ad49164/images/swiper_left.png

Sure, but that's just a niche of a niche.  And since Thunderbolt can daisy-chain a half dozen devices per port, 6x4 = 24 NMVE's too.
Now to escape from niche corner cases, contemplate how many TB of SSD storage users actually have, applying the Parato Principle to determine what the ~80% max capability required use case solution is.  YMMV, but I doubt its more than 4TB.

You're in control of the build. If something breaks,
you're in control of the repair too. No returning a unit
three times, hearing "no fault found", haranguing tech
support for a replacement machine and so on. Think of
the hair loss saved.

You very well may have little to no choice other than to try to fix it yourself.  What shops will even touch a DIY build these days?
FWIW, I had a conversation with a shop owner two weeks ago on servicing some old sports gear I have and his response was that he's discontinued it because the revenue's no longer worth the liability exposure risk.

I don't want to use anyones "warranty service".

You may not have much choice in the matter anymore.
YMMV, but I recognize that there's value in having the option of DIYing themselves, or delegating the headache to someone else to service.
-hh