One of my prior roles was moved from a proper office to an open office and one of the “selling” points was “you can work from anywhere in our cool new building!”. So, I spent most of my day anywhere but my desk. I got my work done and half my time was spent in meetings either way, but if I didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d be in the quietest spot I could find in the building (cafeteria mid-morning/afternoon, conference area when there were no meetings, outside, the lobby, etc.). I was regularly commended for adopting the new culture.

Mine has integrated graphics plus a dedicated card that it will switch to for higher demand applications. I was not aware of USB to HDMI, I’ll check that out. I don’t game when docked, so I only need the integrated graphics for that purpose. If that resolves my issue for now, I can put off a new purchase until I feel spendy enough to buy one of those Framework laptops!

I have one and it would probably work for my needs when docked, but I mainly use my laptop as a laptop. Its frustrating that such an inconsequential part (the HDMI port) is making me consider replacing an otherwise functioning laptop. Trying to get it repaired is probably the smarter option, its a shame laptops aren’t more user repairable. It definitely makes the Framework laptop that people are recommending appealing if I decide I’m willing to spend some money.

Switch game prices are ridiculous! I think my (teenage) kids have 4 games for their Switch because nobody wants to pay those prices. I don’t know how many 100s of dollars they’ve spent on Steam games over the years at $5-20 per game, but they’re never willing to spend $40-60 and they won’t even put Switch games on their wishlist at that price.

That Framework seems like overkill, but I really like the idea. Maybe I’ll hold out a little while until I see what my job situation is and if things go well I can reward myself! 😀

I actually have one, but I use my laptop as a laptop the majority of the time and the steam deck would not work well for that. I suppose an alternative to buying something new would be to properly setup cloud storage so I could more easily switch between laptop and desktop PCs rather than “docking” (aka KVM) my laptop when I want to use a proper setup at my desk. My poor desktop is essentially unused at this point other than occasionally streaming games to my laptop.

Wow, looking at some of the system specs I was thinking, “who even needs 64GB of RAM?” I don’t think I’ve ever had a system with more than 16GB. But I suppose there was a time when people thought the same about 512KB. I probably wouldn’t shop used, but maybe refurb. I never buy extended warranties, but I do like having the initial guarantee when I buy a new device.

Everything else you mentioned is way outside my knowledge; I could probably learn, but I would rather just have something that works. I used to love getting into the technical stuff, but now I just want to turn on my device and use it.

Lol, it’s a small thing, but I definitely wouldn’t mind having a different key for a non-Windows machine.

I’m okay with blank hardware, I’ve done all my desktop builds for more than 25 years (and recently did the SSD upgrade on a SteamDeck). I just never new there was anything similar available on the laptop market. My concern was more with paying for a Windows license or having hardware that was a subpar choice for linux drivers. I will definitely be learning more!

The only AMD model I’m seeing is the Pangolin with a AMD Radeon 680M. That wouldn’t be bad since it is roughly equivalent to the GTX 1650 I have now and probably way more efficient. Or do they have something newer that hasn’t released yet?

That’s great to hear, from what little I have picked up from this community, I was leaning towards POP for my first attempt.

A DIY laptop???!!! I had no idea such a thing existed, I will definitely be looking into this.

I’ve never cared about running high quality graphics, medium is fine for me. I’m more concerned with fan noise than graphics. My current system is fine for things like Skyrim and Sims 4, but for something like BG3 I’m streaming from my desktop.

Thanks! I notice that all of their gaming laptops have an NVIDIA GPU, but I see people complaining about NVIDIA drivers here regularly, is that an issue I should be concerned with? I would hope a system prebuilt for linux would have taken that into account, but I don’t know that much about the complaints.

Hey, I’ve been there! Related to Christmas, every year Nevada City has a Victorian Christmas celebration where they all dress fancy and neighboring Grass Valley has Cornish Christmas, that seems to celebrate the working class. Total speculation on my part, I’m guessing in the 1800s all the mine owners lived in Nevada City and all the miners lived in Grass Valley.

I pretty much only buy cables (of any kind) from Monoprice.

I also go back to Skyrim constantly; it is probably my most played game. I have a hard time making a definite suggestion because I sit here many nights and wonder which game I want to play and frequently find that I don’t want to play any of them (so I scroll Lemmy instead). That said, below are a few that might be possibilities and I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s suggestions so I can find my next game too!

You could check out the Dungeon Siege or Torchlight series. They’re both Diablo-style gameplay, but in a super generic RPG setting. They’re both older, cheaper, and okay game series.

The Overlord series is fun, its kind of a reverse RPG where you are the bad guy terrorizing the locals with your minions. The gameplay mainly revolves around directing your minions more than direct combat. It is a bit simplistic, but I really enjoyed it.

I’m not a fan of the Witcher series, but lots of people love it and it seems to check most of the boxes you’re looking for.

I agree with the Oblivion suggestion. I’m always conflicted on this one because I think it is a better game than Skyrim in terms of quests and interactions, but the gameplay is a bit dated and there were some questionable design decisions that resulted in some major overhaul mods being built to completely redesign the leveling system. I would love to have Oblivion, but with Skyrim graphics and mechanics (mostly).

Kingdoms of Amalur definitely seems like it hits everything on your list. I struggled to stay interested in it long enough to finish it (I think I finished it), but I’m not sure why since it has all the elements I enjoy from other games.

Similar to KoA, Dragon’s Dogma seems to have all the typical things I like in a game, but I’ve played it twice and not made it out of the starting region either time. I’m not sure what it is that causes me to lose interest so fast. There’s nothing I can point to and say I dislike.

Greedfall is super weird (to me) and not quite a fantasy RPG, more like medieval fantasy RPG. It is generally an open world game, but not as open as Skyrim (fewer side-quests, semi-linear main quest line). I thought it was an okay game, the main thing that frustrated me is that there were some areas of the game where you could make decisions with major story impacts and other areas where you were not given any choice in the narrative. As a result, I sometimes felt like my character was taking actions that were not in alignment with the narrative I had created for him. I appreciated that the game seemed unique and not just copying something else that was successful and I think I played it on GamePass at the time, so it was kind of like playing it for free. :)

I also use a double edge safety razor, but have an electric razor also for a quick morning shave. Other things I do:

• I cut my hair with clippers I bought 15+ years ago for the price of 1-2 haircuts. This probably only works for people with simple, short hair, but has saved me thousands of dollars compared to getting a monthly haircut at $20+

• We put a basket with cloth napkins next to the dining table and a basket with washcloths on the kitchen counter and have drastically reduced the quantity of paper towels that we use

I’ve thought about it, but right now everything works exactly the way I need it and the only complaint I have is the occasional pop-ups from MS trying to get me to upgrade to win11 or switch my browser. My main uses for my devices are games and I just started back to school, so MS Office is nice to have. So, it’s hard to justify putting in the effort to change things now, especially when I know how to use MS products very well, particularly modding games.

My desktop and laptop are both eligible to upgrade, but I keep declining and will likely switch to linux when win10 support ends.