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Search - "usb keyboard"
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So I decided to give Linux a try again.
Created live usb. Prepared myself to go through all the hassles at the beginning.
Booted in live USB. I can't see mouse cursor.
Searched in google, apparently a common problem with GTX 1070/1080 graphics cards.
Installed proprietary nvidia drivers with keyboard only. Took me about 20 minutes.
Finally managed to get the mouse cursor and install ubuntu. Time to boot and smell the fresh air of linux again.
Sound card doesn't work. Even the integrated mobo sound card doesn't work. Looked for a solution, found the bug in lunchpad but not solution yet. Everyone recommending to buy an external sound card.
I can't code without music. Decided to remove linux.
Booted back to Windows and removed linux partition. That fucked up my bootloader although I installed linux's efi loader completely separately.
Now I am sitting in front of my computer, with black grub screen, while trying to make a Windows 10 usb with my 7 years old broken laptop.
Next time I see a rant about Windows 10 that glorifies linux, I swear I'm gonna smack your face over standard TCP/IP47 -
Someones keyboard just stopped working in my job.
They called the helpdesk and i told them to unplug the keyboard from the back of the PC and try a different usb port before i send them down a new keyboard.
Their reply?
‘How am i meant to do that? I mean... *laughs* I didn’t go to college for this kind of stuff. I know you did but you need to explain it in English for me instead of using technical terms.’
....
So i had to describe what a USB looks like, and tell her how to follow the (only) skinny black cable she has on her desk, down the back of the desk and into the PC. She got overwhelmed by this cable being the same colour as the thicker VGA cable, so ended up unplugging everything!
Its fine though, as when she plugged them all back in, everything was back working.
She finished the call by saying:
“Like, i know how to use a computer but I just don’t understand all this technical mumbo jumbo, like USB’s and stuff? How should i know about that?”
...
I sincerely think interviews need to have just 5 minutes dedicated to the person showing that they know what a bloody USB is!!, can turn on/off a PC, open outlook, and follow basic instructions.
Ugh I work with idiots 😢17 -
this.title = "gg Microsoft"
this.metadata = {
rant: true,
long: true,
super_long: true,
has_summary: true
}
// Also:
let microsoft = "dead" // please?
tl;dr: Windows' MAX_PATH is the devil, and it basically does not allow you to copy files with paths that exceed this length. No matter what. Even with official fixes and workarounds.
Long story:
So, I haven't had actual gainful employ in quite awhile. I've been earning just enough to get behind on bills and go without all but basic groceries. Because of this, our electronics have been ... in need of upgrading for quite awhile. In particular, we've needed new drives. (We've been down a server for two years now because its drive died!)
Anyway, I originally bought my external drive just for backup, but due to the above, I eventually began using it for everyday things. including Steam. over USB. Terrible, right? So, I decided to mount it as an internal drive to lower the read/write times. Finding SATA cables was difficult, the motherboard's SATA plugs are in a terrible spot, and my tiny case (and 2yo) made everything soo much worse. It was a miserable experience, but I finally got it installed.
However! It turns out the Seagate external drives use some custom drive header, or custom driver to access the drive, so Windows couldn't read the bare drive. ffs. So, I took it out again (joy) and put it back in the enclosure, and began copying the files off.
The drive I'm copying it to is smaller, so I enabled compression to allow storing a bit more of the data, and excluded a couple of directories so I could copy those elsewhere. I (barely) managed to fit everything with some pretty tight shuffling.
but. that external drive is connected via USB, remember? and for some reason, even over USB3, I was only getting ~20mb/s transfer rate, so the process took 20some hours! In the interim, I worked on some projects, watched netflix, etc., then locked my computer, and went to bed. (I also made sure to turn my monitors and keyboard light off so it wouldn't be enticing to my 2yo.) Cue dramatic music ~
Come morning, I go to check on the progress... and find that the computer is off! What the hell! I turn it on and check the logs... and found that it lost power around 9:16am. aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd. My 2yo had apparently been playing with the power strip and its enticing glowing red on/off switch. So. It didn't finish copying.
aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd x2
Anyway, finding the missing files was easy, but what about any that didn't finish? Filesizes don't match, so writing a script to check doesn't work. and using a visual utility like windirstat won't work either because of the excluded folders. Friggin' hell.
Also -- and rather the point of this rant:
It turns out that some of the files (70 in total, as I eventually found out) have paths exceeding Windows' MAX_PATH length (260 chars). So I couldn't copy those.
After some research, I learned that there's a Microsoft hotfix that patches this specific issue! for my specific version! woo! It's like. totally perfect. So, I installed that, restarted as per its wishes... tried again (via both drag and `copy`)... and Lo! It did not work.
After installing the hotfix. to fix this specific issue. on my specific os. the issue remained. gg Microsoft?
Further research.
I then learned (well, learned more about) the unicode path prefix `\\?\`, which bypasses Windows kernel's path parsing, and passes the path directly to ntfslib, thereby indirectly allowing ~32k path lengths. I tried this with the native `copy` command; no luck. I tried this with `robocopy` and cygwin's `cp`; they likewise failed. I tried it with cygwin's `rsync`, but it sees `\\?\` as denoting a remote path, and therefore fails.
However, `dir \\?\C:\` works just fine?
So, apparently, Microsoft's own workaround for long pathnames doesn't work with its own utilities. unless the paths are shorter than MAX_PATH? gg Microsoft.
At this point, I was sorely tempted to write my own copy utility that calls the internal Windows APIs that support unicode paths. but as I lack a C compiler, and haven't coded in C in like 15 years, I figured I'd try a few last desperate ideas first.
For the hell of it, I tried making an archive of the offending files with winRAR. Unsurprisingly, it failed to access the files.
... and for completeness's sake -- mostly to say I tried it -- I did the same with 7zip. I took one of the offending files and made a 7z archive of it in the destination folder -- and, much to my surprise, it worked perfectly! I could even extract the file! Hell, I could even work with paths >340 characters!
So... I'm going through all of the 70 missing files and copying them. with 7zip. because it's the only bloody thing that works. ffs
Third-party utilities work better than Microsoft's official fixes. gg.
...
On a related note, I totally feel like that person from http://xkcd.com/763 right now ;;21 -
New job, started two months ago. Forced to use a MacBook. First time using iShit in my life.
- Laptop reboots randomly every three weeks or so "because of an error" (thanks, very informative error message).
- Sometimes if I use two screens and I lock my laptop, only one screen gets locked.
- The most simple tasks require a fucking large number of clicks. There are almost no keyboard shortcuts. My hand hurts because of this, and after two months the pain is getting worse and worse.
- Yes, I know there are apps that give you extra keyboard shortcuts, but those don't help much. I never used a mouse in 10 years.
- Window management sucks. It's so broken and poor in so many ways, I don't know where to start.
- Random errors and pop-ups are the norm.
- I have only four fucking USB Type C ports. I can somehow understand having only Type C because it looks cool, but fuck at least give me 6 of them, or 8. Do you really have to force me to use a USB hub, in addition to a shitload of adapters?
- Multiple monitors don't work unless the laptop is connected to the power adapter.
- The above point means, in practice, that I have exactly zero USB Type C ports available to me: one is used for the power adapter, two are for the two monitors, and one for the USB hub. Whenever I have to connect something that has Type C, I have to choose between monitors and going fuck myself.
- I don't want to comment on performance, cooling system or battery life. This would be a waste of time. Let's just say that it's shit.
Now, dear Apple fangirls and fanboys, please downvote this rant. I want your downvotes, so please don't hesitate to press that (--) button. But please let me say that these products are shit, pure shit. Fuck Apple and their overpriced products.22 -
OK morning rant from yesterday.
Get into the venue, connect my surface to the dock, keyboard won't work.
Try more USB ports, try another machine, keyboard (corsair k70) is totally broken.
Ugh.
Fine.
Disassemble keyboard, someone asks me a question, turn around and knock full coffee cup over my surface book.
Fuck sake.
Now I need a new laptop.4 -
I really, honestly, am getting annoyed when someone tells me that "Linux is user-friendly". Some people seem to think that because they themselves can install Linux, that anyone can, and because I still use Windows I'm some sort of a noob.
So let me tell you why I don't use Linux: because it never actually "just works". I have tried, at the very least two dozen times, to install one distro or another on a machine that I owned. Never, not even once, not even *close*, has it installed and worked without failing on some part of my hardware.
My last experience was with Ubuntu 17.04, supposed to have great hardware and software support. I have a popular Dell Alienware machine with extremely common hardware (please don't hate me, I had a great deal through work with an interest-free loan to buy it!), and I thought for just one moment that maybe Ubuntu had reached the point where it just, y'know, fucking worked when installing it... but no. Not a chance.
It started with my monitors. My secondary monitor that worked fine on Windows and never once failed to display anything, simply didn't work. It wasn't detected, it didn't turn on, it just failed. After hours of toiling with bash commands and fucking around in x conf files, I finally figured out that for some reason, it didn't like my two IDENTICAL monitors on IDENTICAL cables on the SAME video card. I fixed it by using a DVI to HDMI adapter....
Then was my sound card. It appeared to be detected and working, but it was playing at like 0.01% volume. The system volume was fine, the speaker volume was fine, everything appeared great except I literally had no fucking sound. I tried everything from using the front output to checking if it was going to my display through HDMI to "switching the audio sublayer from alsa to whatever the hell other thing exists" but nothing worked. I gave up.
My mouse? Hell. It's a Corsair Gaming mouse, nothing fancy, it only has a couple extra buttons - none of those worked, not even the goddamn scrollwheel. I didn't expect the *lights* to work, but the "back" and "Forward" buttons? COME ON. After an hour, I just gave up.
My media keyboard that's like 15 years old and is of IBM brand obviously wasn't recognized. Didn't even bother with that one.
Of my 3 different network adapters (2 connectors, one wifi), only one physical card was detected. Bluetooth didn't work. At this point I was so tired of finding things that didn't work that I tried something else.
My work VPN... holy shit have you ever tried configuring a corporate VPN on Linux? Goddamn. On windows it's "next next next finish then enter your username/password" and on Linux it's "get this specific format TLS certificate from your IT with a private key and put it in this network conf and then run this whatever command to...." yeah no.
And don't get me started on even attempting to play GAMES on this fucking OS. I mean, even installing the graphic drivers? Never in my life have I had to *exit the GUI layer of an OS* to install a graphic driver. That would be like dropping down to MS-DOS on Windows to install Nvidia drivers. Holy shit what the fuck guys. And don't get me started on WINE, I ain't touching this "not an emulator emulator" with a 10-foot pole.
And then, you start reading online for all these problems and it's a mix of "here are 9038245 steps to fix your problem in the terminal" and "fucking noob go back to Windows if you can't deal with it" posts.
It's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING, I spent a whole day trying to get a BASIC system up and running, where it takes a half-hour AT MOST with any version of Windows. I'm just... done.
I will give Ubuntu one redeeming quality, however. On the Live USB, you can use the `dd` command to mirror a whole drive in a few minutes. And when you're doing fucking around with this piece of shit OS that refuses to do simple things like "playing audio", `dd` will restore Windows right back to where it was as if Ubuntu never existed in the first place.
Thanks, `dd`. I wish you were on Windows. Your OS is the LEAST user friendly thing I've ever had to deal with.31 -
Do you have a spare usb phone cable?
I have but I'm using it to charge my phone
Do you have a spare laser pointer for my presentation?
Sorry, I don't
Do you have a spare mouse?
No :)
Sometimes things become a little weird
Do you have a spare keyboard?
No sorry. :/
Do you have a spare monitor?
:/
Do you have a spare computer?
what?
Do you have a spare mac?
>:(
Do you have two spare computers and one printer for each? Would be nice for the conference that we are going to hold tomorrow if someone need to print.
What's wrong with you people. I'm just a developer, not a fucking warehouse9 -
Linux is great they said
Linux works well they said
Linux is totally awesome they said
- - -
4 live cds
(Ubuntu, mint, Debian, Antergos)
3 wouldn’t boot beyond splash screens or even into setup.
no fucking keyboard
No fucking wifi
No fucking trackpad
Now I’m sitting here with Antergos, with a USB keyboard, USB mouse and an ethernet cable plugged into my laptop 🤷♂️
Good news... I think I might be getting through the hard parts26 -
--- SUMMARY OF THE APPLE KEYNOTE ON THE 30TH OF OCTOBER 2018 ---
MacBook Air:
> Retina Display
> Touch ID
> 17% less volume
> 8GB RAM
> 128GB SSD
> T2 Chip (Core i5 with 1.6 GHz / 3.6 GHz in turbo mode)
Price starting at $1199
Mac Mini:
> T2 Chip
> up to 64GB RAM
> up to 2TB all-flash SSD
> better cooling than previous Mac Mini
> more ports than previous Mac Mini - even HDMI, so you can connect it to any monitor of your choice!
> stackable - yes, you can build a whole data center with them!
Price is 799$
Both MacBook Air and Mac Mini are made of 100% recyled aluminium!
Good job, Apple!
iPad Pro:
> home-button moved to trash
> very sexy edges (kinda like iPhone 4, but better)
> all-screen design - no more ugly borders on the top and bottom of the screen
> 15% thinner and 25% less volume than previous iPads
> liquid retina display (same as the new iPhone XR)
> Face ID - The most secure way to login to your iPad!
> A12X Bionic Chip - Insane performance!
> up to 1TB storage - Whoa!
> USB-C - Allow you to connect your iPad to anything! You can even charge your iPhone with your iPad! How cool is that?!
> new Apple Pencil that attaches to the iPad Pro and charges wirelessly
> new, redesigned physical keyboard
Price starting at 799$
Also, Apple introduced "Today at Apple" - Hundreds of sessions and workshops hosted at apple stores everywhere in the world, where you can learn about photography, coding, art and more! (Using Apple devices of course)16 -
*Opens devRant*
*sees everybody saying how great Linux is*
*Tries deepin OS*
*Keyboard backlight not working *
*Searches YouTube for a fix*
*Fixes the Backlight*
*Screen resolution set to 800*600 by defualt (monitor 1920*1080)*
*Grub decides there is no need for a windows entry*
*plugs in Windows USB*
*Opens cmd*
*diskpart*
*list disk*
*sel disk 0*
*list vol*
*sel vol 3*
*clean*
*boots into windows*
*Follows a guide to remove grub*
*Learns the lesson*
*Ooh OS X seems nice*
FML23 -
So yesterday our team got a new toy. A big ass 4k screen to display some graphs on. Took a while to assemble the stand, hang the TV on that stand, but we got there.
So our site admin gets us a new HDMI cable. Coleague told us his lappy supports huge screens as he used to plug his home TV in his work lappy while WFHing. He grabs that HDMI, plugs one end into the screen, another - into his lappy and
.. nothing...
Windows does not recognize any new devices connected. The screen does not show any signs of any changes. Oh well..
Site IT admin installs all the updates, all the new drivers, upgrades BIOS and gives another try.
Nothing.
So naturally the cable is to blame. The port is working for him at home, so it's sure not port's fault. Also he uses his 2-monitor setup at work, so the port is 100% working!
I'm curious. What if..... While they are busy looking for another cable, I take that first one, plug it into my Linux (pretty much stock LinuxMint installation w/ X) lappy,
3.. 2.. 1..
and my desktop is now on the big ass 4k fat screen.
Folks. Enough bitching about Linux being picky about the hardware and Windows being more user friendly, having PnP and so. I'm not talking about esoteric devices. I'm talking about BAU devices that most of home users are using. A monitor, a printer, a TV screen, a scanner, wireless/usb speaker/mouse/keyboard/etc...
Linux just works. Face it
P.S. today they are still trying to make his lappy work with that TV screen. No luck yet.17 -
A friend bought a new PC and asked me to help him set it up. He said he got everything working except the CD drive. He said it took him forever just to figure out how to get the keyboard and mouse to work. "I mean, have you ever owned a computer where the keyboard and mouse had to plug into the monitor instead of the computer?"
He bought a desktop PC, and and all-in-one thinking it was a monitor. He had the HDMI going from the all-in-one to the desktop, and was trying to use the CD drive on the desktop.
Wish you could've seen his face when I unplugged the desktop computer and his "monitor" didn't shut off. He looked at the desktop, and then the all-in-one, and said, "Wait... How is it still on?"
He also had his old USB wifi plugged into the desktop thinking that's what was providing him with an internet connection.11 -
We live in a world where portability is more important than usability.
I've got to buy a fucking adapter just to get enough USB ports to use a mouse and keyboard with a monitor, as well as ports for other things like my laptop fan.
It's also becoming evident with the lack of headphone jacks to save that 0.000001" of phone size. It's fucking bullshit that adapters are required to charge phones and listen to music at the same time.11 -
So here goes my home setup. The leftmost screen is the first computer screen I ever had about 13 years ago. The right one came next and I upgraded it this year with a monitor arm to make it vertical. The center one is 27" 1080p (1440p was too expensive).
The wooden thing on the left is a ghetto stand for my laptop. Another salvaged thing is the fan on the middle, it's just pushed to a cut usb cable, not even soldered, but it works.
Peripherals are pretty standard: Cheap mechanical keyboard, Logitech g502 and a drawing tablet. My headphones are the shp9500 (best thing I ever bought).
Little by little it came to this and Im pretty happy about it.
PS: Say hi yo my dog.10 -
*desolders Ethernet, USB and GPIO rails from Raspberry Pi to decrease height*
(Desoldering that shit from a Pi fucking sucks btw, no idea what solder or pads they use but it's garbage)
*boots up Raspbian to see whether it still works and to set things up*
...
Oh shit.. I need keyboard and mouse for this :') fuck me I guess... Long live planning ahead. Does there exist a KVM over TCP/IP yet? 😅19 -
Here's my current setup. Needs a bit of improvement still.
A few years back I thought getting two big touchscreens would be amazing to use for making music. I rarely touch them. They get dusty all the time. They are too reflective. The border around them is way too thick. They are too big to be useful in this configuration. I'll be replacing them with normal screens and probably go for a vertical arrangement instead.
As you can see, there's a fair bit of stuff on my desk. There's a USB sound interface that could be rack mounted but I've been too lazy to buy or make anything to house it. I have a pair of headphones, a wireless headset and a Rift hanging off of the microphone stand. I rarely use the microphone and guitar at the moment (considered trying some voice acting, not particularly good at guitar!)
The desk was originally 2 desks from an Internet cafe that was being refurbished. I cut the ends off them and joined them together to make a desk to fit the space I had and stuck some metal legs onto it (used to have a big ugly brown metal frame). Oh and made some holes to add cable grommets and it has an IKEA cable tray underneath.
There's also a slide out music keyboard underneath (made from some bits of wood and a drawer runner, it's quite clunky and I'm tempted to use some rack rails instead).
The drawers were to store stuff from my desk in but I just replaced that stuff with other stuff...5 -
Dad called me over for "tech support". He'd bought a wireless mouse and keyboard and couldn't for the life of him get it working. The issue with my dad is that he never lets you touch the computer when he needs help. 20 minutes and 20 questions later, I finally ask if he plugged in the USB receiver. Answer? "It's wireless, it should just... work!"2
-
2012 laptop:
- 4 USB ports or more.
- Full-sized SD card slot with write-protection ability.
- User-replaceable battery.
- Modular upgradeable memory.
- Modular upgradeable data storage.
- eSATA port.
- LAN port.
- Keyboard with NUM pad.
- Full-sized SD card slot.
- Full-sized HDMI port.
- Power, I/O, charging, network indicator lamps.
- Modular bay (for example Lenovo UltraBay)
- 1080p webcam (Samsung 700G7A)
- No TPM trojan horse.
2024 laptop:
- 1 or 2 USB ports.
- Only MicroSD card slot. Requires fumbling around and has no write-protection switch.
- Non-replaceable battery.
- Soldered memory.
- Soldered data storage.
- No eSATA port.
- No LAN port.
- No NUM pad.
- Micro-HDMI port or uses USB-C port as HDMI.
- Only power lamp. No I/O lamp so user doesn't know if a frozen computer is crashed or working.
- No modular bay
- 720p webcam
- TPM trojan horse (Jody Bruchon video: https://youtube.com/watch/... )
- "Premium design" (who the hell cares?!)14 -
I haven't ranted for today, but I figured that I'd post a summary.
A public diary of sorts.. devRant is amazing, it even allows me to post the stuff that I'd otherwise put on a piece of paper and probably discard over time. And with keyboard support at that <3
Today has been a productive day for me. Laptop got restored with a "pacman -Syu" over a Bluetooth mobile data tethering from my phone, said phone got upgraded to an unofficial Android 9 (Pie) thanks to a comment from @undef, etc.
I've also made myself a reliable USB extension cord to be able to extend the 20-30cm USB-A male to USB-C male cord that Huawei delivered with my Nexus 6P. The USB-C to USB-C cord that allows for fast charging is unreliable.. ordered some USB-C plugs for that, in order to make some high power wire with that when they arrive.
So that plug I've made.. USB-A male to USB-A female, in which my short USB-C to USB-A wire can plug in. It's a 1M wire, with 18AWG wire for its power lines and 28AWG wires for its data lines. The 18AWG power lines can carry up to 10A of current, while the 28AWG lines can carry up to 1A. All wires were made into 1M pieces. These resulted in a very low impedance path for all of them, my multimeter measured no more than 200 milliohms across them, though I'll have to verify and finetune that on my oscilloscope with 4-wire measurement.
So the wire was good. Easy too, I just had to look up the pinout and replicate that on the male part.
That's where the rant part comes in.. in fact I've got quite uncomfortable with sentences that don't include at least one swear word at this point. All hail to devRant for allowing me to put them out there without guilt.. it changed my very mind <3
Microshaft WanBLowS.
I've tried to plug my DIY extension cord into it, and plugged my phone and some USB stick into it of which I've completely forgot the filesystem. Windows certainly doesn't support it.. turns out that it was LUKS. More about that later.
Windows returned that it didn't support either of them, due to "malfunctioning at the USB device". So I went ahead and plugged in my phone directly.. works without a problem. Then I went ahead and troubleshooted the wire I've just made with a multimeter, to check for shorts.. none at all.
At that point I suspected that WanBLowS was the issue, so I booted up my (at the time) problematic Arch laptop and did the exact same thing there, testing that USB stick and my phone there by plugging it through the extension wire. Shit just worked like that. The USB stick was a LUKS medium and apparently a clone of my SanDisk rootfs that I'm storing my Arch Linux on my laptop at at the time.. an unfinished migration project (SanDisk is unstable, my other DM sticks are quite stable). The USB stick consumed about 20mA so no big deal for any USB controller. The phone consumed about 500mA (which is standard USB 2.0 so no surprise) and worked fine as well.. although the HP laptop dropped the voltage to ~4.8V like that, unlike 5.1V which is nominal for USB. Still worked without a problem.
So clearly Windows is the problem here, and this provides me one more reason to hate that piece of shit OS. Windows lovers may say that it's an issue with my particular hardware, which maybe it is. I've done the Windows plugging solely through a USB 3.0 hub, which was plugged into a USB 3.0 port on the host. Now USB 3.0 is supposed to be able to carry up to 1A rather than 500mA, so I expect all the components in there to be beefier. I've also tested the hub as part of a review, and it can carry about 1A no problem, although it seems like its supply lines aren't shorted to VCC on the host, like a sensible hub would. Instead I suspect that it's going through the hub's controller.
Regardless, this is clearly a bad design. One of the USB data lines is biased to ~3.3V if memory serves me right, while the other is biased to 300mV. The latter could impose a problem.. but again, the current path was of a very low impedance of 200milliohms at most. Meanwhile the direct connection that omits the ~200ohm extension wire worked just fine. Even 300mV wouldn't degrade significantly over such a resistance. So this is most likely a Windows problem.
That aside, the extension cord works fine in Linux. So I've used that as a charging connection while upgrading my Arch laptop (which as you may know has internet issues at the time) over Bluetooth, through a shared BNEP connection (Bluetooth tethering) from my phone. Mobile data since I didn't set up my WiFi in this new Pie ROM yet. Worked fine, fixed my WiFi. Currently it's back in my network as my fully-fledged development host. So that way I'll be able to work again on @Floydian's LinkHub repository. My laptop's the only one who currently holds the private key for signing commits for git$(rm -rf ~/*)@nixmagic.com, hence why my development has been impeded. My tablet doesn't have them. Guess I'll commit somewhere tomorrow.
(looks like my rant is too long, continue in comments)3 -
I do not like the direction laptop vendors are taking.
New laptops tend to feature fewer ports, making the user more dependent on adapters. Similarly to smartphones, this is a detrimental trend initiated by Apple and replicated by the rest of the pack.
As of 2022, many mid-range laptops feature just one USB-A port and one USB-C port, resembling Apple's toxic minimalism. In 2010, mid-class laptops commonly had three or four USB ports. I have even seen an MSi gaming laptop with six USB ports. Now, much of the edges is wasted "clean" space.
Sure, there are USB hubs, but those only work well with low-power devices. When attaching two external hard drives to transfer data between them, they might not be able to spin up due to insufficient power from the USB port or undervoltage caused by the impedance (resistance) of the USB cable between the laptop's USB port and hub. There are USB hubs which can be externally powered, but that means yet another wall adapter one has to carry.
Non-replaceable [shortest-lived component] mean difficult repairs and no more reserve batteries, as well as no extra-sized battery packs. When the battery expires, one might have to waste four hours on a repair shop for a replacement that would have taken a minute on a 2010 laptop.
The SD card slot is being replaced with inferior MicroSD or removed entirely. This is especially bad for photographers and videographers who would frequently plug memory cards into their laptop. SD cards are far more comfortable than MicroSD cards, and no, bulky external adapters that reserve the device's only USB port and protrude can not replace an integrated SD card slot.
Most mid-range laptops in the early 2010s also had a LAN port for immediate interference-free connection. That is now reserved for gaming-class / desknote laptops.
Obviously, components like RAM and storage are far more difficult to upgrade in more modern laptops, or not possible at all if soldered in.
Touch pads increasingly have the buttons underneath the touch surface rather than separate, meaning one has to be careful not to move the mouse while clicking. Otherwise, it could cause an unwanted drag-and-drop gesture. Some touch pads are smart enough to detect when a user intends to click, and lock the movement, but not all. A right-click drag-and-drop gesture might not be possible due to the finger on the button being registered as touch. Clicking with short tapping could be unreliable and sluggish. While one should have external peripherals anyway, one might not always have brought them with. The fallback input device is now even less comfortable.
Some laptop vendors include a sponge sheet that they want users to put between the keyboard and the screen before folding it, "to avoid damaging the screen", even though making it two millimetres thicker could do the same without relying on a sponge sheet. So they want me to carry that bulky thing everywhere around? How about no?
That's the irony. They wanted to make laptops lighter and slimmer, but that made them adapter- and sponge sheet-dependent, defeating the portability purpose.
Sure, the CPU performance has improved. Vendors proudly show off in their advertisements which generation of Intel Core they have this time. As if that is something users especially care about. Hoo-ray, generation 14 is now yet another 5% faster than the previous generation! But what is the benefit of that if I have to rely on annoying adapters to get the same work done that I could formerly do without those adapters?
Microsoft has also copied Apple in demanding internet connection before Windows 11 will set up. The setup screen says "You will need an Internet connection…" - no, technically I would not. What does technically stand in the way of Windows 11 setting up offline? After all, previous Windows versions like Windows 95 could do so 25 years earlier. But also far more recent versions. Thankfully, Linux distributions do not do that.
If "new" and "modern" mean more locked-in and less practical and difficult to repair, I would rather have "old" than "new".12 -
Sometimes my "L" keys stops working. Then I have to plug in another keyboard to press the "L" key there. After that I can unplug the second keyboard since the original key started to work again.7
-
So my laptop is a Lenovo y50-70 and it's quite good. The keyboard is amazing compared to most other Laptops I've tried the screen is nice, it's durable and it's got some decent specs. With it (and also my desktop) I dual boot Kubuntu and Windows 10.
About three years ago I decided I wanted to reinstall both OS' since they were starting to get cluggered. Lo and behold I wasn't able to do that because, and I quote: "EFI USB Device boot failed".
Hours were spent trying to Google different things to the point where I was even desperate enough to go beyond page 0 on the different searches with (as you might have guessed), no luck. "Fuck that" I thought. It worked and I could clean it manually anyway.
Fast forward to the last part of August this year where I upgraded my Kubuntu from 17.10 to 18.04 and shit got weird. You can read more about it here:
https://reddit.com/r/kde/...
but the TL;DR is in the link. Windows was also quite annoing as well (but don't take my word for it).
As you might understand it made me really frustrated. I couldn't update my BIOS since they were already at the current version, but one way or another I had to fix it. After a while was almost about to give up when I decided to give this:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/...
a go. It was weird though. Like imagine the conversation:
"Can't boot from USB bro, what do I do?"
"Just update your kernel, bro"
Well IT. FUCKING. WORKED.
So I imideatly installed Linux and have just now bothered installing Windows (since all of the teachers are vacation so I had plenty of time to set it all up).
But got damn.4 -
Why me. Why is it always me who has issues with Windows. (The OS)
I HAVE to use windows for a specific thing right now. Fair enough, I have an old system lying around somewhere with not the best specs ever but it'll do. Windows 7, clean install.
Firstly, let's boot up! Booting goes fine, login goes well... "Installing device drivers" (keyboard and mouse combi). I connected this set a gazillion times before so no clue why windows would need to download the drivers YER AGAIN. But, fine, it works.
Let's connect a USB webcam and to to the hardware testing website to see if my setup is right!
(I mostly don't blame this part on windows)
The webcam drivers install successfully, good. Although the page says it isn't working, it displays the live cam footage well so whatever.
Installed Chrome (not chromium too badly) to see if it shows fine there but chrome doesn't detect ANY cam/mic combination at all, not even the integrated one(s).
Annoying so let's reboot and see if it works normally with all checks okay on Firefox.
Rebooted.... aaaaand the USB webcam driver installation fails. I'm weirded out since the drivers were installed BEFORE the reboot already. Firefox now does not display any can/mic.... until it does after a few reloads. Windows is still saying that the driver installation failed.
The testing webpage, however, still says its not working while I'm literally seeing my ugly smug on screen. I contact support which does a remote check and says all is good but there was probably "a glitch with Windows" while the checks are still mostly red, I take a copy of the chat log just to be sure.
Now, I kinda want to shut this system down until the time I'll need it but I'm rather afraid that Windows is going to throw driver conundrums yet again and I simply *CANNOT* have this right now. So, I'm leaving this system on until I need it, and I'll pray windows plays along well.21 -
Sometimes, I really fucking hate Windows.
Having trialled Linux for a week on a spare HDD, I wanted to move to a proper dual boot with Windows on my SSD, and I decided I may as well downgrade to Windows 7 at the same time (10 had started to really annoy me).
Booting into the initial USB yielded an unresponsive mouse and keyboard. Hmm, not a great start. Turns out the Windows install USB doesn't like the rear USB ports or the wireless mouse. Strange but plugged in a spare USB mouse into the front and could install Windows.
This install was very unhappy about not having SP1 - to the point where I couldn't even install the network drivers so I could download SP1. Fine, I just downloaded an ISO with SP1 on my Mac.
Then I discovered that you can only really make a Windows USB with Windows. But I've just removed both my Windows and Linux partitions so I can reinstall them ...
After hours of searching and trying to create a bootable USB on my Mac, I finally give up and install a trial of Parallels. So I ended up using the same ISO to install a VM of Windows on my Mac, so I can create a bootable USB, so I can install Windows on my desktop. Well done Microsoft ...
And then I needed to install various drivers for the install to be even remotely useable.
To top it all off: Linux just worked. The keyboard and wireless mouse worked when installing. I didn't need to do any additional set up to be able to use it all. It can even use all 3 monitors, rather than just the 2 that Windows recognises for some bizarre reason.
Thanks to Windows being special, I've lost a day of productivity 😡16 -
Short: Still supported after 10 years
First Chromebook sent to testers.
Long: Lost my voice recently so need to use text to speech on my phone but to many typos so slow...
If only I had a keyboard... Wait a laptop... Hm... Chromebook...
Looks for cheapest on Amazon
But go.... Wait I already have one.... That I installed Ubuntu on and then somehow corrupted.
And never got around to fixing it because didn't really need it... Or have a 8gb USB stick around at the time.
Well now I saved $100 assuming the battery still works too6 -
Last week my university decided to give away old hardware to students (CPUs, displays, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printers etc.). My roommate got me this beast. I was so excited and decided to boot it up only see to GRUB error 22 :( I think the hard drives were wiped before handing it out.
I've never set up a server before and I've been trying to boot up an Ubuntu server via USB drive but it's not detecting the OS installation files. I've been searching all around to make this work but it's not fucking working. I don't have any other cables or CD drive to try something else. I want to make this work. I have exams next week and I can't stop thinking about this. Godammit8 -
Got my dad to try Fruity Loops so that he can compose with his Tyros 3 keyboard on the computer. If he likes it, I will buy producer edition (that one can also record, that's why) for his bday soon. For Christmas I already ordered midi to USB cable for him. Finally I know what to give to someone who already has everything. He needs stuff for his stuff :p
It will be much fun experimenting together with it. My dad can go very hard on new things, he always becomes a pro in it.
I hope it will be just as nice as the time we spent together on Autocad. He later even made Autocad exams for schools.
He learned me how to install windows 3.11 as very little kiddo.
I like my dad doing computer stuff. It's the moment we really bond.3 -
Feeling pretty accomplished for someone who did no "work" today lol. I needed to work on side gigs but instead I:
1) Factory reset a 2011 Macbook Pro I'm selling and reinstalled Mojave using a patch (this laptop is officially unsupported by Mojave as of June).
2) Migrated all personal files from my windows desktop to my NAS. I'm turning this computer into a gaming rig now that I exclusively use my 2017 Macbook Pro for development.
3) Setup RDP from my macbook to my desktop.
4) Fixed registry errors and deleted junk apps off my desktop.
5) Erased and formatted all USB drives I had lying around.
6) Packaged up an old Xbox One for my brother-in-law which will get mailed tomorrow (included a few USBs for him since I rarely use'em).
7) Tested streaming my Xbox One X from my PC but it's laggy as F (both are wired, have static internal IPs, and use my router for DNS...it's just the app I guess).
8) Scored a like-new Scuf Vantage for my PS4 for $140 (the guy who was selling it paid $214 a month ago lol). I traded my spare Xbox One S for a PS4 slim and in an attempt to get used to it, I got this controller with thumbsticks in the same position as Xbox's.
9) Fixed and updated my Synergy app (mouse/keyboard sharing - I can use PBP on my 38" LG ultrawide and it's fairly seamless going between them).
10) Cloned a buddy's repo and set the project up to work locally.
11) Starting to get some work done while watching the Vikings game.1 -
I don't know if this is a problem only in Belgium or also in other countries but while I love Bluetooth for audio playback (headsets, speakers and everything) despite being extremely convoluted as a protocol.. FUCK Bluetooth keyboards.
Several of them I've tried. Several of them, from various brands. Pairing, setting the Belgian keyboard layout (which on that shitty Android 7.0 tablet that I want to use the fucking things with apparently has to be done *every fucking time you connect*, because reasons) all well. Except half the keys don't fucking map properly. A keymap, it doesn't get easier than that! How hard is it to make buttons map to the right keys!? They're literally fucking push buttons on a matrix! Seeing which points in the circuit make contact and sending that off to wherever it needs to go!
And to put the icing on the cake? USB keyboards with the same fucking layout settings work without any problems. So it's extremely likely that it's something in those shitty keyboards' controllers or Bluetooth going full rart on all of them.
Of course, Bluetooth being as convoluted as it is, manufacturers just copy each others' implementations of it if they can.. so there's that.
Can really nobody make a product halfway decent anymore before putting it on the market!?
Another one bites the dust.. JUNK!!! Every single goddamn one of them!1 -
hey ranteros! i like to dream and i know many of us dream of a nice machine to do anything on it, if you want to post the specs of your ideal build(s) (even a laptop, pre-built pc, space gray macbook pro... doesn't matter). and your current one.
here's mine:
ideal: {
type: desktop-pc,
cpu: intel i7-8700K (coffee lake),
gpu: nvidia geforce gtx 1080ti,
ram: 32gb ddr4,
storage: {
ssd: samsung 960 evo 500gb,
hdd: 2tb wd black
},
motherboard: any good motherboard that supports coffee lake and has a good selection of i/o,
psu: anything juicy enough, silver rated,
cooling: i don't care about liquid cooling that much, or maybe i'm just afraid of it,
case: i accept any form factor, as long as it's not too oBNoxi0Us,
peripherals: {
monitor: 1080p, maybe 1440p, i can't 4k because of the media i consume (i have tons of shit i watch in 720p) + other reasons,
keyboardmousecombo: i like logitech stuff, nothing fancy, their non mechanical keyboards are nice, for mice the mx master 2 is nice i think, i also don't care about rgb because i think it's too distracting and i'm always in darkness so some white backlight is great
},
os: windows 10, tails (i have some questions about tails i'll be asking in a different post,
}
i think this is enough for ideal, now reality:
current: {
type: laptop,
brand: acer (aspire 7736z),
cpu: pentium dual-core 2.10ghz,
gpu: geforce g210m 2gb (with cuda™!),
ram: 4gb ddr3,
storage: hdd 500gb wd blue 5400rpm (this motherfucker stood the test of time because it's still working since i bought this thing (the laptop as it is) used in late 2009 although it's full of bad sectors and might anytime, don't worry i have everything backed up, i have a total of 5 hdds varying from 320gb to 1tb with different stuff on them),
screen: 17 inch hd-ready!!! (i think it's a tn panel), i've never done a test on color accuracy, but to my eyes it's bright, colorful, and has some dust particles between the lcd and backlight hah,
other cool things: dvd player/burner, full-sized keyboard with numeric keypad, vga, hdmi, 4 usb ports, ethernet, wi-fi haha, and it's hot, i mean so hot, hotter than elsa jean and piper perri combined,
os: windows 10, tails
}
if you read this whole thing i love you, and if you have some time to spare on a sunday you can share your dream rig and the sometimes cruel current one if you dare. you don't have to share them both. i know many will go b.o.b and say "what you're hoping to accomplish, i already did bitch.", that's cool as well, brag about your cool rig!6 -
I keep a 20 year old PS/2 keyboard around specifically for that rare event I need to edit my bios settings. My mobo doesn’t enable usb until half a second after it stops listening for input because who uses usb keyboards, anyway?7
-
I HATE SURFACES SO FRICKING MUCH. OK, sure they're decent when they work. But the problem is that half the time our Surfaces here DON'T work. From not connecting to the network, to only one external screen working when docked, to shutting down due to overheating because Microsoft didn't put fans in them, to the battery getting too hot and bulging.... So. Many. Problems. It finally culminated this past weekend when I had to set up a Laptop 3. It already had a local AD profile set up, so I needed to reset it and let it autoprovision. Should be easy. Generally a half-hour or so job. I perform the reset, and it begins reinstalling Windows. Halfway through, it BSOD's with a NO_BOOT_MEDIA error. Great, now it's stuck in a boot loop. Tried several things to fix it. Nothing worked. Oh well, I may as well just do a clean install of Windows. I plug a flash drive into my PC, download the Media Creation Tool, and try to create an image. It goes through the lengthy process of downloading Windows, then begins creating the media. At 68% it just errors out with no explanation. Hmm. Strange. I try again. Same issue. Well, it's 5:15 on a Friday evening. I'm not staying at work. But the user needs this laptop Monday morning. Fine, I'll take it home and work on it over the weekend. At home, I use my personal PC to create a bootable USB drive. No hitches this time. I plug it into the laptop and boot from it. However, once I hit the Windows installation screen the keyboard stops working. The trackpad doesn't work. The touchscreen doesn't work. Weird, none of the other Surfaces had this issue. Fine, I'll use an external keyboard. Except Microsoft is brilliant and only put one USB-A port on the machine. BRILLIANT. Fortunately I have a USB hub so I plug that in. Now I can use a USB keyboard to proceed through Windows installation. However, when I get to the network connection stage no wireless networks come up. At this point I'm beginning to realize that the drivers which work fine when navigating the UEFI somehow don't work during Windows installation. Oh well. I proceed through setup and then install the drivers. But of course the machine hasn't autoprovisioned because it had no internet connection during setup. OK fine, I decide to reset it again. Surely that BSOD was just a fluke. Nope. Happens again. I again proceed through Windows installation and install the drivers. I decide to try a fresh installation *without* resetting first, thinking maybe whatever bug is causing the BSOD is also deleting the drivers. No dice. OK, I go Googling. Turns out this is a common issue. The Laptop 3 uses wonky drivers and the generic Windows installation drivers won't work right. This is ridiculous. Windows is made by Microsoft. Surface is made by Microsoft. And I'm supposed to believe that I can't even install Windows on the machine properly? Oh well, I'll try it. Apparently I need to extract the Laptop 3 drivers, convert the ESD install file to a WIM file, inject the drivers, then split the WIM file since it's now too big to fit on a FAT32 drive. I honestly didn't even expect this to work, but it did. I ran into quite a few more problems with autoprovisioning which required two more reinstallations, but I won't go into detail on that. All in all, I totaled up 9 hours on that laptop over the weekend. Suffice to say our organization is now looking very hard at DELL for our next machines.4
-
New macbook pro has no usb ports , that's apple way of saying "fuck all developers" . That is such a dick move , also the shitty butterfly keyboard i don't know if any developer will like it , any thoughts?7
-
The monitors came in today. 2x 24" Dell P2419HC monitors. Picked up keyboard from Best buy this morning. Let's get this set up going.
Oh and if you care to know, the laptop on the floor is HP Pavilion running Elementary OS with a 128gb SSD. It runs really well but battery life is a misery. I've had it for over 8years and I still use it. Love it!! 😍6 -
I've been looking into the world of mechanical keyboards, and damm I'm overwhelmed by the possibillities of configurations and products. Why is chosing a keyboard for the MacBook 12" which has only 1 usb-c so hard? Any advice on keyboards and keyswitches?5
-
New job, new laptop, which happens to be 2k euro MS surface crap.
It comes with win10 S which only allows store apps to be installed, so yeah no making bootable linux for me untill windows drag my ballsack through 2 hours of updating to a pro version.
Wanted to do a nice sweet new debian on it - nope, keyboard not supported in the installation.
I restart...and the fucker completely denied me untill it does another update, which is taking an hour..for now.
And wtf only one usb and mini dp port? In such an expensive laptop?
Cant even plugin my display untill my dock arrives.
Guess I'll have to suck it up and get used to windows for developing for now.
Thx microsoft11 -
All of the USB ports on my PC have suddenly stopped working...
And how am I supposed to fix this exactly given I no can no longer use a keyboard or mouse...?
Brilliant.7 -
Public Service Request to Users from Tokyo and those with good knowledge in buying keyboards.
Which retail shop sell tenkeyless mechanical keyboard such as HyperX Alloy FPS Pro? With English words not Japanese 😬
I can't find it at my country and my gf is currently at Tokyo for a training, so.
On further note, I'm looking for a keyboard with following requirements. Would appreciate your recommendation.
- without numpad
- standard qwerty layout (US/UK)
- backlit (any color, as long as keys are visible in dark)
- USB wired
- easy to clean and maintain
- must last for more than 3 years9 -
Run dual boot Mac Catalina and Win 10. Got a bunch of Razer shit from wife for Bday... super stoked. Big mat, mouse, keyboard.
Works like a charm on Win.
Works for fuck all on Mac. The app to manage device is no longer supported.
Went waaay down the rabbit hole trying to sniff the packets that were being sent to the devices via USB to sync their colors and patterns.
Finally give up that route.
I have now built a VM for windows to run synergy... then a VM for Linux for Polychomatic because the keyboard is older and not supported by synergy.
And I found if I boot them both then quit them both the settings for the peripherals stay until the next reboot.
But JFC... I literally have to boot three operating systems to pull it off.
Talk about some gift of the magi shit... I was so happy with the gift and at this point it has wasted dozens of hours.
Fuck fucking Razer. Looks cool. Doesn’t work.8 -
In from of a cinema. I was doing my BSc thesis involving a GPS receiver. The pointcloud on my pc had to be synchronized with where the receiver was, so it had to be tested outdoor. I and my teacher drove around some streets to see if my code worked, and everytime it didn't we had to stop in a parking lot (the one of a cinema). I couldn't code inside the car because the GPS receiver my laptop was connected to (via USB) didn't get a decent signal there, so I had to fix bugs sat on a brickwork in front of the cinema. My teacher kept looking at my monitor constantly, it was summer with 28°C, the sun hitting on me and my monitor, I couldn't see shit, the sweat of my hands flooding the keyboard. After a while I was saved by my laptop's battery which gave up. Thank you laptop <31
-
Its 5:32 am been working on a new social media website opened up devrant to check whatsup and found out people really have amazing pc setups ♥️ I couldn’t post mine because my laptop has a broken keyboard and i use a usb keyboard also my laptop overheats so i stuck skateboard wheels to two of the back supports its an i5 processor with 3gb of ram but I love it,its what you do with your resources that really matters right ? with that broken keyboard i created a website for my college department which now 720 students and teachers use and we have around 8k entries in 3 days. Running the website on a local server at my college so no money spent on hosting. Taking small steps towards my goals and hopefully one day i’ll publish my setup1
-
Since it's a thing, top is my 40" uhd tv monitor with my model m keyboard on my HACKINTOSH. The other is my MacBook Pro with usb lights for late night remote sessions with some light.
-
So today my company was removing most workspaces with USB 2 connections, DP cables and magsafe 2 power cables. This means that my MBP mid 2014 can't connect to the keyboard and monitors anymore. It already struggled with 4K, so my 2K options were already limited, but now the last few spots are mostly gone. In short: I'm being forced to upgrade.
But tell you what: I don't want to. It feels like a waste to recycle my laptop (even if it's company paid and owned) while it's perfectly acceptably fine. And mind that I will get the latest and greatest i9 for free. Yes, that overheating, throttling failure of hardware design piece of shit. 2 coworkers already own the beast and confirm that it gets really hot really quickly. One of them even has daily crashes (the laptop just turns off) and random reboots. A total waste of money. And my future time. As if it's not enough work to migrate to a new laptop (even with Time Machine).
So, fellow ranters, what do I do? I hope I can leverage the second best MBP (CPU-wise) from this situation, unless there already is a bunch of i9s in the office ready to be used. I really, really don't want one. And I think my current computer is great for what it is, even if it's old. It's a really pro machine for my needs (I'm very efficient, except for Android Studio).
I even consider asking for a Linux machine, but then a whole new world opens to me that may be a step too big (since I barely have hands-down experience).
Enlighten me with your ideas, muggles!5 -
When using a laptop and coding, do you prefer to use the built-in keyboard or an alternative USB keyboard?7
-
My setup, seeing that people are posting theirs.
+ BenQ 22" monitor
+ Custom-built PC
+ Fried i7 motherboard :(
+ Working i3 motherboard
+ 2 Green fans (top, back)
+ 2 Red fans (front)
+ (not-working-well) CD/DVD disk
+ 2G WD hard drive (not SSD :( )
+ 4-port USB 3.0 hub
+ SD card reader (with 3 more storage devices it can read)
+ Webcam
+ HP DeskJet Ink Advantage
+ Horrible mechanical keyboard
+ Special keys (music player, play/pause, next/prev, etc.)
+ Mouse that doesn't stop glowing
+ Awesome speakers
+ 4 lights
+ Water jumps through the lights whenever audio rises
+ Xbox 360 S (2G internal storage: Ugh)
+ Speakers connected to Xbox 360
+ Desk Lamp
Software:
+ rEFInd
+ Arch Linux
+ Plymouth
+ Systemd
+ i3-gaps (Me)
+ GNOME (full) (for rest of family)
+ NeoVim
+ XTerm
+ Cmus4 -
Wanted to use my ps4 controller on my pc to play a game. There's a program called scp toolkit to install appropriate device drivers for those controllers. The program provides a list of available usb devices currently connected, for which to install the drivers. Unfortunately the devices listed by scp have slightly cryptic names, which means you have to find out, which one it is you're looking for. I chose a usb device for installation I was convinced was the controller. Little did I know that the following NullPointer error made my keyboard unusable. 🙃1
-
My main problem with programming on android phones(not for android) is it's keyboard, almost none of default layouts don't have the needed buttons(i.e. ; [ ] ( ) ...), I managed to find a good one "Hacker's Keyboard", 5 rows almost every button(even shift, ctrl and arrow keys). But here's the problem with this: it's buttons width is very low on portrait mode, on landscape, even if you're used to lanscape typing, you won't be able to see shit because it's covering most of screen.
"Hey, what about an external keyboard", well it's not totally a bad idea, but you would need a stand for your phone, and if it's connecting via usb and not bt, you have to buy a usb2[yourPort] convertion, besides I want to hold my phone while typing "How about you make you make your own bt/usb attachable mini keyboard for your phone.", Wow that's a very good idea, it would take maybe a year to make it, but maybe instead of making the whole thing myself I can buy a mini keyboard and make the attaching part myself, it can't be THAT hard, right? Need a 3D printer(√), need time(have alot of it), need to design it(no problem), now start... uhhh nevermind, who am I kiddin', I won't be able to make such a thing, just use that "Hacker's Keyboard".24 -
I need recommendations for a Bluetooth keyboard for my MBP 2018 15". Thanks! 🙂
My preference:
- compact and quiet (no numpad)
- soft to press
- chiclet type with normal travel
- OS X layout
- NOT a mechanical keyboard
- NO USB receiver
Nice to have/Bonus:
- good design for office work
- backlit functionality
- known brand
- rechargeable5 -
!long rant
Trying to work from home is always a pain, since we need to use company laptops (no ifs, ands or buts about it).
Yesterday I took the laptop in to check for updates that just wouldn't run while at home (my first mistake), and I couldn't get past the "Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to login" screen, laptop keyboard didn't seem to be registering clicks, and an external keyboard wasn't either (and I forgot about the on-screen keyboard). A couple of restarts later with no further changes to the situation, the laptop then didn't get past the BIOS screen.
So I called support (my second mistake) and logged an incident.
Couple of hours later someone comes to my desk and asks about the issue, so I describe it, show them (by now the laptop was once again getting past BIOS screen), and leave them to it. Since these laptops are just used as preconfigured VPN and RDP gateways, I said it would be okay if he just wanted to reinstall the OS (my third mistake).
Several hours later, after staying late last night waiting for it to finish, I loaded my profile, installed updates, shut down, grabbed my stuff and left, without checking VPN or RDP over WiFi (my fourth mistake).
Turns out that some of the buttons on the keyboard just no longer work, but now USB keyboards do work, and I can just use OSK to login while out. I figured this would be my only issue with things, and that it was acceptable.
This morning I attempt to use the laptop, and forgot about OSK and the faulty delete button, so spent a few minutes on that. Try to connect to WiFi and find it can't connect, because of course, it doesn't remember the WiFi password, so I root around for the code in some drawer, enter it, and it works. VPN tries to connect and... get told to insert my smart card, which is already inserted, because the driver is wrong!
So I'm sitting here writing a post, not quite believing that I'm considering cancelling my plans for the day to go into the office because of a bloody driver issue now...1 -
Fuck these braindead people who don't include OOB remote installation option or at least a virtual keyboard into installation CDs. What if I don't have one/the one I have is broken? (and no, I can't just go out and buy a new one, okay?)10
-
Surface3 and the single USB port does not work anymore... no mouse, no external keyboard useable. interesting :/
-
When I had to format my desktop it was not recognizing my USB keyboard before BIOS. It was saying:
Press F2 for setting(BIOS)...
if only if I don't have mine PS/2 keyboard I couldn't have finished my work next day.1 -
!dev
Hello! Do you have any idea how I change the connector of a ps/2 keyboard to USB? I've tried the following schematics that make sense but no success. When I plug in the keyboard the LEDs light up for about half a second and then turn off and the keyboard doesn't work.5 -
So I got the new macbook pro 15 with touchbar .... this is my first macbook that I have ‚issues‘ with.
* the new butterfly keaboard doesnt feel as good as the old one
* ... abd its friggin loud!
* the keyboard backlight just randomly drops out and forces me to cold reboot WTF??
* they bigger left/right cursor buttons make it so hard to feel where you are, that I constantly confuse up and down
* the touchbar is basically unusable for a keyboard centric person like me. It forces me too look down to the keys!
* I constantly hit the esc bc im used to have one finger there to hit it if needed, but now im forced to hover it bc otherwise it is pressed
* and why of fucking why did apple remove magsafe??? Now i dont even see anymore if is is being charged without turning the screen on
* i hate the usb ports too, why not even add a free usbc to usba port? (Well, i guess bc it would make the macbook even more expensive... free wouldnt be free anyway i guess)
It is way more powerful though, but the time i would buy a personal one is over and will probably never come back.
Im a happy hackintosh user btw 😅3 -
So while I was being bored af in my school I had a freaking cool idea. The previous day I had tried out this thing: https://parsecgaming.com
It was pretty cool, I used my gaming PC as the host machine, and my android as a client, but the touch screen, meh....
So I have bought a USBc to USB 3.0 on ebay. Is USB keyboard+mouse plug n play on android?
Anyways, I'm gonna fucking game PC games on my phone in school and Its gonna be fcking cool.4 -
!rant
My home pc has developed a sudden issue and wont boot up anymore.
Stays stuck on the POST phase and am unable to get into BIOS , just stuck with a big asus logo and a message to press
F2 or Delete to get into BIOS but the system seems frozen as the keyboard lights are on but unresponsive while the
Mobo reads an error code A2
( the manual claims that to be an IDE error although am using only SATA)
Unplugging all usb doesnt change anything.
Unplugging all other sata ssd ,hdd and disk drives except the os drive changes nothing.
Unplugging the os drive results in the system complaining about no bootmgr
(As expected), that allows me to at least look at the BIOS but there doesnt seem to be anything wrong or out of the ordinary..
Booting from a live cd works fine
Booted from a pc boot repair tool and plugged in the os drive into one of the hot swappable sata ports shows me the all the files still there and accessible , check disk revealed nothing wrong. Can't plug in the os drive pre boot as that locks everything up again)
Tried to boot with a windows cd then do a start up repair but plugging in the os drive into the hot swappable sata doesn't work since windows can't see the drive.
Tried to swap the os drive with another one of exact same model filled witb random files resulted in no boot mgr error as expected
Struggled a whole weekend to fix it but alas no progress
Ah and the OS drive's warranty ran out 2 weeks ago 😑
Mobo asus p9x79 deluxe
Os ssd samsung 840 250 gb
No changes in hardware for the last year
Or so
No BIOS changes in over a year
I did notice some odd files like 0002Found
On the os drive when i was using the boot repair live cd tool, will bring the drive to
The office where i can get my hands on an ssd sata to usb caddy and take a snapshot of The files there for you guys to see.
Any ideas ? 😞5 -
Disclaimer: I'm surprisingly bad with hardware.
Bonus will come in soon and its time for a new laptop. Had my xps13 since ~2016 and I absolutely loved it - the keyboard is amaaazing.. But the display is broken and as its a touch, its ridiculously expensive to replace so that's not an option..
Want to keep it around 1k$ and mostly care about the keyboard being nice, robust case (not plastic), size (no bigger than 13") and storage (at least 1TB SSD).
Ideally it would have an integrated SD slot and at least 1 USB-A...
Any suggestions? I'm gonna put Linux on it anyway so performance just has to be medium.
Thinking about getting another xps but they got a good bit more expensive and I know there's other devices our there nowadays that check the boxes, like thinkpad for example.
Just looking for some opinions, advice and suggestions.
Thanks in advance1 -
Anybody like to rip up CTF (or similar)? I've honestly never done a CTF before, I'd like to give jt a shot. I'll get my ass handed to me because I'm not back up to par on OpSec yet, but I adapt well and when I get into a nice groove I can make shit happen! (I like to think so, anyways haha!!)
I've been in full on dev mode lately and haven't had any time to Hulk Smash for a while... I went to fire up a new Kali live USB today and I couldn't run through the updates like I always have- they changed sooo much and I was pissed because I didn't have ethernet with me. That'll be another day for sure, but I still have my machine with Manjaro armed to the nutsack and back with the BlackArch rep. I def could use a break from the chaos, and getting my ass handed right to me sounds like an awesome time because learning is my favorite thing next to a possible chance at getting to destroy shit.
It's weird, because I'm sort of a n00b but also at the same time I've had computers ripped apart/jammed in my face since every day since I was 9 and Y2K was about to hit the fan lmao!! My hardware/network/layering knowledge is fuckin mint titties, I just can't code like a fuckin madman on the fly. I don't have a "primary" language, because I've been having to work with little bits of several languages for extended periods of time... I can at least find my way around all the dox without much of an issue and have no issue solving the probs I come across which is neat, but until the day comes where I can fuck a gaping hole through my keyboard on the fly like George Hotz during one of his lazy Sunday OpenCV SLAM/Python code streams all jacked up on Herba Mate hahahahaha!!!!
The dude uses fucking VIM and codes faster than anyone I've ever seen on levels of science/math so challenging I almost shit myself inside out when I catch one!!!! The level of respect I have for all my fellow red pills in here is as high as it gets, and that's one of the best parts about being a code junkie- sometimes ya get to cross paths with beastly, out of this world people that teach you so much without even having to explain shit.
If anyone's down, or maybe has some resources for me to check out so I can get my chops up let's make it happen