I’m bad enough for buying gadgets but this lockdown malarky has increased it 🤣
My sister was asking for recommendations for a new laptop to do faster video editing for £200, I tried not to laugh.
I decided to give her my laptop, an Asus ROG which has an Intel I7 with Gt1050. It’s pretty good at it as I originally bought it for 4k video editing for my drone.
So now that I was laptopless I had to see what I could get for myself, requirements: lightweight, good screen, decent CPU so here it is
Asus Zenbook S 13.3″, weighs 1kg and had a 4K screen which is gorgeous. Very happy with it, nice and light for taking offshore. They could have reduced the price by about £100 if they just went for normal packaging, even the box is lovely to touch.

Other than the laptop I’d already bought 2 new camera lenses, a new phone (OnePlus 7T pro), god knows how many games. Hi, my name’s John and I have a problem 😭😭😭

Don’t keep us in suspense: how much was the laptop (in GBP)?

It was £899, some of the ones I was looking at are utterly silly money. Don’t think I could buy a 3 grand laptop

Awesome! Now get rfactor!

I have a previous model ZenBook from three or so years ago, still going strong. They are beautiful devices with great build quality.

I haven’t bought anything yet in lockdown but sorely tempted to upgrade my PC now I spend all day working from home on it. Needs a new CPU, but that means new mobo and RAM too. I’d do that then maybe update the SSD/GPU later in the year. Haven’t decided yet.

Haha yeah I had been looking at PC’s again but that’s a huge money pit when you start looking at all the goodies you can get for them

Think I need a monitor to supplement my laptop for work. Can’t be dealing with just one screen for so long. Otherwise it’s been quite good for me financially. Not spending nearly as much as I usually do.

My work has been supplying people with monitors but I already had a dual monitor setup. A few of us tried to wrangle some Hermann Miller chairs from the office but that was a no go. 🤣

I’ve been on a few ROV systems with Herman Miller chairs and although they’re comfy they are a pain in the ass when the ship is rocking about as they bob up n down quite easily. If the boat rocking doesn’t make you seasick then the chair would give it a good go. Also not easy to be doing tricky piloting when the chair is moving you about. Now on newer ROV systems we have fully electric Recaro seats with heaters and fans built in, now they are comfy.

It might be controversial but I don’t think Herman Miller chairs are that amazing, especially given the price. They are better than an IKEA chair sure but they are not worth a grand.

    I bought a Manfrotto pixi mini tripod to mount a webcam I ordered on. The tripod has arrived, the web cam somehow won’t turn up for two weeks.

    There’s been a glut of people buying webcams for work from home purposes apparently. Crazy days

      Brave Yeah, you pretty much can’t get a Microsoft or Logitech one anywhere. This was a ‘never heard of’ Chinese brand but it at least had a decent spec and some reasonable not obviously fake reviews. Now I find it’s being shipped direct from Shenzen so Its probably going to get sodding quarantined or something…

      Right now I’m having to use the camera built into the MacBook but a) it’s actually rubbish spec wise and b) it’s utterly impossible to not end up getting the ‘looking up the nose’ camera angle and still use it as a laptop. I was using an old phone and an app called EpoCCAM which basically turns your phone into a USB webcam. That worked really well, but the drivers aren’t signed and a MacOS update seems to have killed it entirely…

        Been fiddling with the new phone and Dolby Atmos sounds bloody excellent, very impressed with it.

        1st world problems I know, taking a bit of getting used to a laptop with only thunderbolt ports and no USB at all. It did come with an adaptor that plugs into 1 of the Thunderbolt ports to give me 1 each of HDMI/USB/USB-C
        It has 3 thunderbolt ports and anyone of them can be used for plugging in power to the laptop which I found pretty cool.
        The laptop is also touch screen and comes with a touch pen which is pretty cool but doesn’t have anywhere to keep the pen unlike some dell 2 in 1 laptops I’d seen. Ah well like I say 1st world problems especially in these times. Keep staying safe everyone 😅

        I got a stick on holder for my Apple Pencil on my ipad. Works very well. Maybe something like that would do the trick?

        I concede to purchasing a rowing machine and pressure washer. 😀

        Ooooh. Rowing machine eh?