What You've Just Bought!

[PP Mguire]

Picked up a ATOTO F7 CarPlay / Android auto head unit on sale on Amazon for my 2000 Tundra. I always take the Mustang on trips so just using a aux cable had never been a issue but for $150 it's worth a shot, and now I don't need to remember to keep a usbc - 3.5mm adapter in there

Also picked up a huge set of Torx sockets as not having the right ones has become an issue lately.

I have an ATOTO in my Mustang, had it a few years now. It's basically a huge pain in the rear lol. I'm going to move to one of those Carplay standalone units and 3.5mm out to my amp.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I have an ATOTO in my Mustang, had it a few years now. It's basically a huge pain in the rear lol. I'm going to move to one of those Carplay standalone units and 3.5mm out to my amp.

This one has been a pain also lol, harness was too short so I had to extend all of the wires in it, then it turns out the unit is dead even when directly powered off of 12v. Waiting on a rma but if I still have issues I'm just going to consider it a lesson learned and get something better.

 

[PP Mguire]

This one has been a pain also lol, harness was too short so I had to extend all of the wires in it, then it turns out the unit is dead even when directly powered off of 12v. Waiting on a rma but if I still have issues I'm just going to consider it a lesson learned and get something better.

Mine leaves a constant draw on my system, because of that I haven't changed my battery in almost 10 years. It's slow as hell to do anything natively on it like Google Maps or a music app. I opted to do the SD card route for my tunes and the stock music player is a chore to use and worse while driving. I finally gave up and just did bluetooth from my phone which if I'm doing that I figured I might as well just do Carplay. To avoid draw problems or a potential ground loop in my system I'm just going to get a standalone Carplay only dash mount thing.

 

[PP Mguire]

Just bought a 14900k to replace my 12700k. I would have bought the new board and RAM to go with it, but in the middle of building a server room in my garage so can't spend too much. I didn't need it, but the my current platform will be moved to a 2U rack mount to be a dedicated Plex box.

 

[Joe C]

Well I have been using Windows 10 for 7 or 8 months now and I have to say.... it sux.
I'm seriously considering going back to Windows 7 because it works so much better

 

[PP Mguire]

Can't agree. As somebody who works on server OS from 2003 to 2022, it's definitely more of a pain to do things on anything below server 2016 because it's simply slower in terms of performance. 2012 sucks because of its stupid W8 metro interface, and 2008 sucks because it lacks modern function that we use on a day to day basis. On the same server hardware the difference in performance between 2008 R2 (W7) to 2022 (W10 22h2) is easily noticeable because of kernel differences.

 

[Joe C]

Can't agree. As somebody who works on server OS from 2003 to 2022, it's definitely more of a pain to do things on anything below server 2016 because it's simply slower in terms of performance. 2012 sucks because of its stupid W8 metro interface, and 2008 sucks because it lacks modern function that we use on a day to day basis. On the same server hardware the difference in performance between 2008 R2 (W7) to 2022 (W10 22h2) is easily noticeable because of kernel differences.

I'm not going to disagree, because your comparing Server editions to standard windows versions which is like comparing apples to oranges

 

[Trotter]

I actually liked Win10. I used a third party app to make the Start menu look like Win7, but that's as far as I went with customizing it. Once the early bugs were worked out I had no issues with it.

I am enjoying Win11 for the most part. It took a little getting used to but seems to be solid now.

 

[PP Mguire]

I'm not going to disagree, because your comparing Server editions to standard windows versions which is like comparing apples to oranges

They share the same kernel, much like Windows 11 and 10 do. Even Windows 2012/R2 has the same MetroUI like 8 which makes it a massive pain to use as an admin. At the end of the day modern OS's are faster because they have better support for devices that actually make your machine faster like NVMe storage and memory management. Sort of like how my 2500k system is faster in many areas on Windows 7 than XP despite 7 taking up a lot more resources initially as an OS than XP and both having native driver support from Asus for the board.
Another thing people grossly overlook is the amount of native power/boost management updates provided in newer versions of Windows including core management which is a boon to Ryzen users with dual CCDs and 12th-15th gen Intel users with E cores still enabled.

I actually liked Win10. I used a third party app to make the Start menu look like Win7, but that's as far as I went with customizing it. Once the early bugs were worked out I had no issues with it.

I am enjoying Win11 for the most part. It took a little getting used to but seems to be solid now.

I didn't even wind up touching 10 outside of disabling Defender/Telemetry. After using 8.1 for a bit and Start Classic just having a native start menu was nice enough as is. I even started to prefer being able to pin what I wanted to the 10 start menu. When I moved to 11 I disabled the shitty new context menu and Defender/Telemetry and called it a day. They have since brought back most of what I wanted as a backpedal to community backlash like unhiding/grouping taskbar labels. The centered start menu with small pinned icons showing ALL of what I want in one small group is also nicer after I got accustomed to it. The only major complaint I had after that was Explorer not opening This PC like native My Computer but they also updated that with an option to default back to it instead of "Home" or Onedrive way back in 21H2. First time I did not hate my day job switching over and actually preferred it outside of not being able to use the standard context menu at work. Good thing is most of what I do on a day to day basis is within Server OS which still uses 10/prior style OS's. I should be self sufficient with my own business by the time they finally start moving to 2025 which unfortunately uses a Windows 11 style GUI.

It's about like me going from being an absolute Apple hater being disgusted at the thought of looking at Apple products to me now owning my own Mac Mini, and a full house of Apple only products. Sometimes you have to sit back and put your BS to the side and understand how things are better to properly appreciate certain things without being closed minded to change. In fact, all my company employee assets will be Apple simply because the ecosystem allows easier sharing of product purchase, longer lasting batteries in Macbooks, native Arm/x86 dev on single device, and Apple MDM is a lot easier to implement. Not even a full cloud Entra deployment is easier than most Apple MDM solutions. Hell, I now even have multiple Linux bare metal machines deployed right now as business solutions despite my native hatred toward all things Linux/Unix CLI. Without it I wouldn't have an awesome corporate VPN solution.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Pre ordered the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. I'm disappointed with the camera specs not getting a upgrade this year but they offered a trade in for Fold 4 that was too good to pass up.