for those shopping for new PCs and are open to build one, it seems like the overall BOM has been overall lesser than a few months back. the big caveat being that you need a decent GPU.

having been in the market for one, i did make some compromise for the build (single stick of 16 GB for now; a non "future-proof" GPU within the budget). however for a decent spec (last-gen x3D CPU, mid-range RTX) build, the GPU price reduction made up for the premium on RAM.

the sad reality since the turn of the decade is that the $1000 mark for a well-rounded (gaming) system has now bumped up to $1500-$2000.

crazy time to be alive, where on laptop side, macs are now a "decent" value. especially if you were going to get the higher spec to unlock the specific memory tier. thanks work for setting me up well with one!

so many parties peddling AI related services should also agree with the sentiment (so do i). a lot of people in the stack are acting as wrappers. most of their tools are always changing (e.g. see the commit counts in openclaw project), often full of breaking changes and while forcing to migrate to newer version regularly.

if you want something specific without ever-changing needs, it makes sense to do it with fewer dependencies as possible. this should be even more ideal if you believe the code made is of high quality, as it reduces the pain of updating the project for non-functional reasons.

this sentiment ironically goes against the existence of these services, as they themselves are always working on matching the ever-changing dependencies to give the impression of a stable platform.

only if it was possible to have the cake and eat it too

> Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life

Unless you've stumbled upon it by chance, the LTSC version of Windows is by far the recommended approach by forums online, particularly for those who do not want to run random scripts to remove unwanted elements.

Windows 11 happen to have its own variant [1], I wonder how it compares to the gold standard of the previous version.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-...

used it extensively in high school as a more approachable way to learn about countries without the daunting amounts that wikipedia pages tend to have.

come to realise down the line the "writer's biases" in the latter half of the articles. almost comical to see how nuanced situations are distilled down to "our perspective". recall how you could "learn" about the drug trade situation in almost any country, regardless of how you perceived the country's safeness before reading the page.

not quite as technically rich as i came to expect from previous posts from op, but very insightful regardless.

not ashamed to say that i am between steps 2 and 3 in my personal workflow.

>Adopting a tool feels like work, and I do not want to put in the effort

all the different approaches floating online feel ephemeral to me. this, just like for different tools for the op, seem like a chore to adopt. i like the fomo mongering from the community does not help here, but in the end it is a matter of personal discovery to stick with what works for you.