I did fall when walking the dog a couple of weeks ago. All the snow is now gone, unfortunately, and the forecast says we won't be having any before the year is out. Which means a muddy, rainy, soppy Christmas.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guyand I definitely hit the actual bookstore for them whenever at all possible

Huh. I had you pegged as more of a library guy.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

QuoteWhen it comes to Steam Deck support, they don't exactly say what they improved or added for the announcement. Big studios being as helpful as ever.

It means when you call them with a problem (yeah, right) they won't say "oh, we don't support that, please install Windows". They'll instead say "thank you for your report, we'll pass that on to the development team". Of course, the result will be the same.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

"Previously in Proton Hotfix: Fixed Baldur's Gate 3 not starting after a recent game update."

Now this worries me. It's been almost 2 years now and I don't see devs start caring about Steam Deck enough to even do a quick check to see whether an update breaks on it or not. A handful do, for sure, but generally they don't. They just ignore a bunch of their customers and leave it up to Valve to fix their mess.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Yeah, the crackling sound is annoying, but it happens fairly rarely. In some games more than others. More annoying is that some games will just crash (themselves or Steam) when waking up, but that's been happening less and less lately.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guythere are things that say they're pay-as-you-go, but then you look at them slightly more closely and it turns out the money expires after a year whether you've used it up or not,

I'm in Europe and that's actually a standard thing. They'll require you to top up after some time to unblock the unused money you have on there and keep making calls.

I buy iPhones because privacy (perceived or real, I don't really know) and they get updates for many years before Apple stops supporting them. My current phone is 6 yo, works fine and I'll only buy a new one once they stop putting out security updates which I hope is still a bit away. The iPhone 6 from 2014 I was using for work got its last security update early this year and shortly after that Signal stopped working on it, so I should be good for another 2 years or so with this one.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: BlackBloodRumRegarding e-waste, in my defence - my e-waste pile is in my own home. I quite literally have a computer in a cupboard behind me that has a Pentium II CPU in it that hasn't been powered on for years.

That makes me feel a lot better about myself. I took out a 486 in an AT case (no USB! Hard power switch!) the other day and unfortunately it refused to turn on. I'll take a look at it... before the turn of the century for sure.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: BlackBloodRumBut admittedly my current deck still sits in its case a lot.

It's the opposite for me. I play everything on the Steam Deck, including all my PS5 games with Chiaki. The console isn't even connected to the TV any more, I just turn it on with the SD and then put it back to sleep.

As for e-waste, yes, that's a very valid point. Luckily, I have a very good use for my current LCD Deck so I don't feel like I'm adding to the huge waste pile just yet.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: BlackBloodRumIt sounds good but.. replace my existing, fully working Steam Deck (LCD) good? I'm not convinced at this point.

I think I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2

Yeah, this was my take until some 10 minutes ago. But! And it's a big butt. Some of the games I play, there are just a few fps I'm missing. The new one fixes that. Then there's HDR and battery life and fan noise. It's just such a compelling upgrade.

It's absolutely right that SD should have been this way from the beginning, but ofc Valve were still testing the waters, never made this kind of hardware before, unsure of how it was going to sell, trying to keep costs to a minimum while still putting out a great product (and, let's face it, it was a great product already).

So yeah, it looks like they deserve all of my money.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I am quite excited for the developments that have been happening in Plasma and am really looking forward to trying out a Plasma 6 desktop on Wayland in the fairly near future.

That said, it may be quite some time before it trickles down to my Steam Deck. And I'm fine with that.

View this comment - View article - View full comments