PC Tech Thread

Yeah, my boot drive is one. I have a cheaper SSD as a data drive and was just going to add another boring SSD because that's easiest. I presume I only have a single M2 slot.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170MX-Gaming-5-rev-10

1 x M.2 Socket 3 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA & PCIe x4/x2/x1 SSD support)
3 x SATA Express connectors
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors

Does your machine not have M.2 NVME

My machine doesn't even have SATA😢

Mine is SATA Express, whatever that means. I remember the days when I used to give a shit about this stuff.

Even my Amiga 1200 has a (CF via PCMCIA) solid state drive...

Yeah, my Psion 3 had CF, but my desktop has spinny disc via PATA. I'd upgrade, but you know how it is; the computer you want is always more than you can justify spending, the computer you can afford is an advance on what you have but not enough to make you tolerate the hours it takes to make it drive like the old one.

Parallel port HD? Must be getting on for 20 years old?!

Must be getting on for 20 years old?

Approaching its 10th birthday. The slow storage is what's most annoying at this point, the Gen3 Core i5 and 6GB RAM would seem modest for a telephone in 2023, but are sufficient for my needs.

Even my 2011 desktop with a 2nd gen i5 has SATA (edit: 3rd gen SATA I believe), no PATA and I'm pretty sure the one it replaced had SATA too.

Parallel port HD?

PATA was the old internal connectors that looked like:

The last actual parallel port stuff I had, other than a printer, was a Zip 100 drive back in the last 90's.

Yes OK, Parallel ATA or IDE / ATAPI or whatever. I had an internal ZIP on one of these. It's almost definitely still in my loft.

Yeah, I binned my old Zip drive a year or so ago at the start of the grand clearout. Checked on eBay first and there were loads there (and not going for much) so wasn't worth trying to sell it (or ensure something rare went to a collector or anything).

My first MP3 player was a parallel port one in the early 2000s. Think I could just fit one low quality album on it.

Ah yes, Diamond Rio PMP300. Kept that one when I did my clearout. I got it the day it was released as I was living in SF at the time and whoever I ordered it from shipped it a day early.

Used to use it for cycling by sticking a load of music on it, downsampled to mono 32kbps mp3 to cram in as much as possible. (Who needs quality with crap headphones and wind noise.)

Even my 2011 desktop with a 2nd gen i5 has SATA

Yeah, turns out I was wrong, it is SATA inside this box

All the prime deals are up now, looks like crucial are the biggest savings.

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I see what they do. The "Prime Day Saving" is what you save off RRP so it looks massive.

But in the case of the Samsung external drive, that was £128 and is now 90. So, a decent saving still but not that crazy. It also means that I can't buy it now unless I join Prime, whereas before I could've.

The 4TB SSD is £172 whereas before it was about £190

I could've saved £40 on my new router. Ouch.

Yes, in the UK they're forced to put the non-prime deal price on there too, and you should be able to buy it without Prime.

So for the 4TB drive in Clockwise's example you see the Non-Deal Price there at £185.10 compared to £164.99 on the Prime Exclusive Deal. That's a ~11% discount.

If you chug the Prime cock already (many people do for the Football/Sports/TV, free/quick delivery, ebook deals, etc) then it's just a bit more off. I don't because I really want to avoid giving any money to the Bezos empire.

But mostly it's an event designed to get people to:
a) finally cave in and subscribe to Prime, or
b) sign up for the free trial with the intention of unsubscribing and then either forget or give up attempting to cancel their prime subscription)
and also buy some shit they wouldn't normally buy but feel they are "missing out" if they don't buy it in the sale.

Can you get a free Prime trial?

You could order another router and return it at the higher price, if you can be arsed.

I wouldn't feel guilty about doing that to Amazon.

I've got a mate local who has prime. So I'm thinking I might get a Samsung external 2TB and try it out to see how fast/slow it is and if I'm not happy then I can get the 2TB internal drive for my PC that I'd originally planned to get which isn't Prime cheap so I won't feel bad paying their asking price.

The router hasn't even arrived yet so would be a bit awkward. I could do it but can I be arsed?

The router hasn't even arrived yet so would be a bit awkward.

You can probably just cancel it then.

Nah, it's arriving today

I've gone for a Samsung 2TB external via a mate with Prime. Thanks for the tip off.

If I don't like it I'll get the 2TB internal one for the PC anyway.

In case anyone cares, you can run Threads for Android on Windows 11 if you install a few utilities https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-install-threads-on-windows/