• Prices of SSDs are in free fall because (a) nobody is buying anything and (b) there isn't a cartel propping prices up.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Western Digital's 1TB SN770 - a basic but generally decent drive - has dropped from $90 at the beginning of January (and since it is still February that's less than two months ago) to $60 today.  The 2TB model is also great value at $120.
  
  Prices are expected to continue falling at a slower pace during the year.  Manufacturers are cutting production but since it takes months for wafers to go through the pipeline and turn into chips that get put into SSDs, that's going to take a while to have any effect.
  
  
  
• The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro is currently available for $154.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I'd suggest spending another five bucks and getting the Western Digital SN850X, because Samsung's drives have had some...  Problems, lately.

• The US government has blacklisted Inspur, Loongson, and 33 other Chinese tech companies.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Loongson makes crappy CPUs in China, for China.  Nobody wants them, not even China, except Russia.  China is stuck making chips at 14nm while Taiwan and South Korea are ramping up production on 3nm, but Russia is stuck at 65nm, which is 18 years out of date as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
  
  Inspur however is the largest server manufacturer you've never heard of, producing about 10% of the servers in the world.  That is going to cause some ripples.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 780M - the integrated graphics in, um...  The 7940HS, that's the one - is as fast as a GTX 1650 Ti or something.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's what the headline says, but the scores given in the article do not include the 1650 Ti, so take it with a pinch of pepper.  It's only 25% faster than the previous generation 680M, and for that it requires fast new 7500MHz LPDDR5X RAM, but it still it is 150% faster than Intel's best integrated graphics solution.
  
  
  
• Gigabyte's AERO 14 OLED BMF is a 14" laptop weighing 1.49kg (22,994 grains) with a 2880x1800 OLED display (you might have guessed that), an Intel 13700H CPU with 6 P cores and 8 E cores, a 1TB SSD, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one regular USB, HDMI 2.1, a microSD slot, a 1/8" audio jack, a separate power connector if you don't want to charge via Thunderbolt, Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics with 6GB of dedicated VRAM, the Four Essential Keys in their proper location....  And 16GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM that is impossible to ever upgrade because fuck you that's why.  (Gigabyte)
  
  If they had a 32GB option, it would be the perfect small laptop.
  
  They do not have a 32GB option.
  
  There is a larger 16" model with a 3840x2400 OLED display, RTX 4060 or 4070 graphics options, and actual DIMM slots so that it's not instant e-waste.  But that's also 40% heavier.
  
  And 30% to 50% more expensive.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 05 2023 08:38 AM (BMUHC)

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