My Elite Coffee Shop Battlestation

 

Getting things done, on a small scale. 

     About a month ago I had to attend a promo out of market, at a Publix Pours location in Wellington Florida, in West Palm. I'm from there, so signed up right away to visit my old stomping ground. After about a 4 hour drive, I arrived and found myself in quite the situation- I had to park about 2 miles away, and the place I was going, they don't exactly let people with backpacks with laptops in. I ended up in my car for about an hour with my laptop perched on the steering wheel, uncomfortable, power cables running all over the interior of my truck. It was a small stressor, but it had me thinking how I could get ahead of it.

It's as good as you think it is. 

    After getting home I found a very large 10,000mAh battery pack that is solar, waterproof, and has the ports I need on it, with a stand. Charge 3 devices at once! What a coincidence, I happen to daily two phones and a smart watch, so this comes in clutch. The second piece of kit I added is something I've seen on reddit- a foldable pocket keyboard and touchpad that syncs to bluetooth. Leather wrapped, thin and sleek with a surprisingly large keyboard with full Num-pad, this foldable was far better than it should be for the price, and I rarely charge it. The touchpad is large and works well, and there is nothing needed to install- the phone picks up on it right away and the cursor appears. I added this to my already bad-fucking-ass Z Fold 6 with it's screen with built in stand and stylus holder, and we're off to the races.

Power stack.

     I live in a major metropolitan area, where I often have to park my car, pay like $20-$50 to do so, and walk or take my electric scooter to my destination. Typically this is in downtown Tampa, Ybor City, or Clearwater Beach. Recently during game days, this has been pretty common in the St. Pete Area. I finally had a real world application where I would not be able to have my whole backpack of tech with me, and I had work to do in St. Pete two weeks ago. I put my stack of 3 devices in my left pocket, hopped on my scooter and took off down to Fergs when they were just opening about 5 blocks away. I had about two hours until my event started, so I used this chance to open my cool micro-battlestation and hammered out several emails, designed a facebook post, and edited several spreadsheets. After about 30 minutes, it felt like any other laptop, just small in stature. I got more than my share of strange looks, and even a waitress who asked me what that hell is going on and was very fascinated. All in all, I love my little cheap portable setup and will be using it several times a month to increase productivity going forward. 

Del XPS 15 9510 Laptop review - TLDR; I like it.

 

I'm not a laptop guy. Well, maybe I am now. 

     Recently I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Dell XPX 15, 9510. A 15 inch laptop with a 4k OLED screen, an i9 11900k, RTX 3060ti, 32gb of decent ram, and a 1tb hard drive complete with charger and docking system for the low low price of $225 from a place called OCM Recycling in Oldsmar Florida. I've always wanted one of these laptops after meeting with someone at a tradeshow who had one, and how well made it was. Literally a wolf in sleek sheep's clothing of business class PC's. How did I get such a good deal you ask? Keep reading.

This is how it was waiting for me. Dirty. Tempting.

     Short version, I know someone who works there and he gave me a deal. OCM Recycling has multiple warehouses full of decommissioned medical and office equipment, and I happen to be there on a day when they were processing 200 + laptops. The man that was going through them, said, "Can you believe someone would want to throw out an i9?!" I was like, how much that? Name your price. Out the door for $225. It came with a fresh install of Windows 11, a charger, and a WD19TBS Dell Performance Dock which adds a ton of functionality to the 3x thunderbolt 4 ports. The 3060ti on board is more than enough to push 4k out to the new 3 video ports added with the dock.

I've actually always wanted one of these. 

Initial thoughts:

• Build quality is amazing. Feels very very solid, has a good weight to it. Macbook feel is the best description I can come up with. 
• Touch pad is huge. Again, more like the size of the Macbook pro. Not finicky. Zero issues and I actually like using it. My daily driver work mouse is an MX Master 4, and I found myself not using it as much and enjoying the touchpad. 
• Keyboard is gently lighted from below, and has a really premium feel to it. Soft touch keys. I find myself altering my typing style over the right, which is mildly infuriating. The capslock key is huge for no reason, moving everything over to the right. I wrote this blog post on the laptop to just get acclimated to the new position of the keys, then emailed it to myself.
• The monitor is the best screen I've seen on a laptop. Refresh rate is low at 60fps, but for what I'm going to use this for, that's not a deal breaker. I'm using this for work.
• Audio is crazy. 4 Speakers total, two tweeters and two woofers give it a little thump and it's plenty loud. Speakers are on the sides of the keyboard. 
• Performance in desktop tasks is great, better than my other laptop with the same specs I've reviewed previously. That laptop went to my wife, and has been her daily driver for over 2 years without any issues. MSI makes a great quality product at the high end, but this is on a different level. The price for that aforementioned laptop was almost $3000 USD. 
• The only game I played was Overwatch, and It easily maxed everything out on Epic settings at 60hz, when hooked up to an external monitor 2k at 120hz was available at high settings, with everything turned up. Overall, color me impressed.
• Heat-wise, the thermals are.. meh. The dock is louder than the laptop with two fans in it, so that's positive. I never experienced thermal throttling, (close!) but the keyboard area warms up quite a bit. My hands are always cold, so maybe this is a blessing. The laptop does have some internal heat piping that is impressive, but a hot chip like the 11900k, there is only so much you can do to cool it off under load. 
• Charging is adequate, but you can't use a 90 watt charger to the thunderbolt port without warnings of slow charging. You need at least a 130 watt charger, or the dock to keep you topped off while working. I noticed if you plug the dock and the charger in at the same time, neither will charge, but you will have the functions of the laptop while it steadily decreases in power. I had no idea the dock charged the PC, so that's my fault, and I corrected that. I did order a new charger, as the one at the recycling center was 90 watt. It's worth mentioning the WD19tb docking station delivers over 200 watts of power delivery, so no extra charger needed. 
• Battery life is really good if you keep the settings optimized for longer use. I just attended a meeting where I was using a large screen as a second monitor to give a presentation for about 45 minutes, then a one hour zoom. Still had 2.5 hours of battery left. Not sure what all the reviews talking about terrible battery life were talking about.
• I had to disable the on-board Intel Iris graphics to get the RTX video card to stay on for Overwatch, then strangely, I had to enable it again when framerate dropped. When the onboard video is disabled in favor of the 3060ti, both disappear from the control panel as a selectable device. The sweet spot is to touch nothing and just hope for the best.

Look at this fucking thing. 

     I've only had this PC about a week, and I'm phasing out my old laptop currently, which an HP Walmart special with an 11th gen i7, on board graphics, and 16gb ram that has been sat on in key West, run over, and generally just treated like total shit for 4 years of loyal service. For a $500 laptop I could not really ask for more, except now I know I can definitely ask for more. Life is too short to not have a premium laptop that feels like oiled machinery when opening, has the durability of solid steel, and looks like a modern device from a sci-fi movie. As mentioned previously, this is my dream laptop. I don't want a 17 inch, I want this one specifically with these exact specs, and it does not hurt that it is like new and was so damn cheap. The dock was this insane added bonus that would normally be $179.99 at best buy, and I use multiple monitors at work, so this is perfect for me. Mileage may vary obviously. 

8.7/10

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - Full movie!

 

This movie is 100% 1980's rental store elite. Total nightmare fuel and flew under the radar with it's inclusion of strange violence, nudity, and Robin Williams in space. Must watch; no bullshit.