I just this … https://a.co/d/ijxaPae

It really depends on what you use your laptop for. My 2013 MBP lasted 9 years and was how I got my work done. That comes out to 76¢ per day, and I make a fair bit more than that per hour.

But if you’re looking for a personal computer to surf the internet, yes, that could be cost prohibitive. But then it also matters less what device you buy.

As for ports, I’ve never needed a dongle on the 2013 model. I did need one for a USB A drive on the newest model, but this little thing has solved that problem easily. I didn’t even have to buy that since my monitor has USB A ports – I was just too lazy to reach around the back to use it every time. I’m not sure I understand all the complaints about the occasional need for a dongle.

I definitely did not get that email. WTH?

Synology devices all have authentication enabled by default.

The only reason Google is still my default search engine on desktop is …. dates.

I’m a dev and the date next to each search result helps me skip a ton of irrelevant links and get to the ones that most likely apply to my situation. DDG and other search engines usually don’t show any dates.

I’ve sent feedback to DDG on this but obviously that had no impact. If they add dates, I’m done with Google.

On mobile I still use DDG since my searches are generally not date specific.

In all fairness, my usage is still minimal at this point. I’ve only searched a couple of times, but the thing I needed popped right up. Maybe my experience will change over time.

I’ve been an Airmail (Mac) user for many years now. But it’s been really buggy lately and there’s no motivation to fix the issues apparently. So I switched to Thunderbird about a month ago after a lot of research. It’s … ok.

• Search is great.
• Seeing stats/charts on my last 20 years of emails is super interesting.
• Composing emails is not great, but I use a markdown plugin that makes it better … but it’s still pretty bad UX.
• I hate the way it quotes previous emails with “>” for each line instead of an indented block quote. Maybe I’m missing the setting to turn that off.
• I miss having an avatar/icon for each sender. It let me quickly visually scan my inbox for the person I want to talk to instead of parsing through all the text.
• The spacing of elements in certain places is weird and inconsistent. In places where it’s too tight it feels cramped and bothers me.
• You can’t compose a reply inline. You just have to use a floating window on top of the rest of the app.
• I miss the one-key shortcuts to label and archive emails. This was originally a GMail feature and Airmail also implemented it.
• Sending an email doesn’t happen in the background. You have to stare at a progress bar modal while it sends, and it seems to take forever. I just want to move on to my next email but I’m stuck waiting.
• The tabbed interface is really nice. It’s definitely an underrated feature.
• I wish it had super advanced rules like you get with MailMate. But what it offers is fine for 99% of users.

Again, I might be missing some settings to correct some of these issues, so take it all with a grain of salt. But these are my takeaways after about a month of usage.