Dell inspiron 14 screen flickering
I got New Dell Inspiron 14, which is a brand new laptop. It has an 11th Gen i5 CPU. So, it should be very fresh, with the latest drivers and design. After I used a week, I found its screen is flickering if that is not connected with the power adapter. That is strange. I am worrying that it is a hardware failure. I entered the BIOS and ran the diagnosis test. That is fine. Then I did some google searches. The older models got similar problems after the windows upgrades. The suggested solution is just running the drivers upgrade. However, this is a new laptop, which should be just coming out from the factory not long ago. Well, that is no harm to do a driver update. Then I upgraded all drivers and BIOS. Then that is the problem. Strange, I think that laptop should be already with the latest drivers, but actually, that is not.
WordPress is still worth to use
Wix and Shopify are very popular. That is a cloud website builder. You can use them to build a website very easily. Even you can hire some professional to do that for you. The main advantage is they are cloud solutions, so you do not need to have a server and maintain the CMS. That is much easier for small business. So, a lot of businesses which are using WordPress are moved to them. However, WordPress is still worth to use. Nowaday, WordPress is very user friendly now, there are a lot of drag and drop style builders for WordPress. For Us, who are with some programming experinces, WordPress is very customizable, it can do the things faster than Wix and Shopify, and we can build extra easily too. Lastly, there are a tons of pre built web templates for WordPress. So I think that is still worth to consider as your CMS.
Apple M1 Mac, Alternative Storage - Samsung Extenral SSD T7
I got M1 Mac Mini. The major disadvantage of this computer is costly storage. That is around AUD for $300 for 256GB. In my case, I upgraded the base model from 256GB to 512GB, that is already cost me $300. Because the internal storage is much faster than the external storage, I think that is already about seven times. I believe I do not have many programs to be installed. However, I got many data required to store, such as photos, video, and source codes. In this case, I believe the external NVMe SSD via thunderbolt 3. It has 1Gbits speed. That is fast enough for reading and writing data files. Lastly, it got an aluminum case, and it looks reliable and cool. It is only $300 for 1TB for the price, which is a much better deal than the internal storage.
Apple M1 is very good for video editing
I started to use my new Apple M1 MacMini for video editing with DaVincci Resolver 16. That is not native for M1 yet. But that is still very fast. For 1 Minute 4K video, the exporting time is less than 1 minute. I believe the M1 and the new MacOS is tuned for this purpose. Lastly, the internal hard disk for M1 MacMini is very expensive. I got 512GB Hard Disk, but that is very limited. So, I got Samsung T7 external hard. That is still very fast enough for video editing via thunderbolt, that is about 1Gbits and that is around half price of the internal hard disk
Intel NUC 8th gen i7 as my development box
During Black Friday sales, I bought a 8 Gen i7 Intel NUC. It got i7-8559U CPU, which is not bad. I got it around AUD$500. It checked 8th gen vs 10th gen is not much different. At the best, that is only 10% more powerful, that is more in gaming. As a development box, that is good enough. Then I bought my 500 m.2 hardk and 32 GB RAM for $277, they are on blakc friday specials too. I found the system is very good. It is quiet and very powerful. I found it even is faster than my work laptop, 8th Gen i7 XPS with 16GB RAM. Maybe, the RAM played the major roles, because I mainly anulgr apps.
Yes, I know the most ideal box, should be a full-size ATX with a desktop i7, but it will cost around $1000. Now, I can build under $800!