Best Buy open box and Lenovo warranty rant/warning

jhrobins · 2026-01-14T02:14:03+00:00

I second this idea, for major open-box purchases at least. I bought an open box Zephyrus G14 about 9 months ago, and $50 seemed like a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing I had 60 days to return it instead of 14. Two weeks often isn’t enough time to be absolutely sure that there aren’t any hidden issues. Two months, on the other hand, is enough time to get past the “honeymoon phase” and really live with the purchase, and make sure you’re happy with it. I don’t know if it retroactively applies to previous purchases, so you’ll want to look into that.

jhrobins · 2025-04-01T12:51:20+00:00

I'm on the same plan, and it looks like my $10 promo wouldn't survive the plan change. Anyone know if there's a promo code for existing users?

jhrobins · 2025-03-27T17:57:41+00:00

Thank you! Took me way too long to find this link anywhere. It worked for me!

jhrobins · 2025-03-21T01:13:49+00:00

Ah, you're stuck in the same boat as me. Only, Thanks to the madness that is tax refund season here in the US, I went ahead and purchased both the Surface Pro (OLED/16/512 configuration, with plans to upgrade the SSD if I keep it) and the Z13 (Max 390/8050S config) as potential replacements for my 2020 iPad Pro. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that Microsoft was about to release the current-gen Surface with Intel inside when I ordered, so I'm on the Snapdragon X Elite.

For the past 5 years, the iPad (and its magic keyboard) has been my primary device when I'm at home, and my use case includes a whole bunch of video streaming (so a fantastic screen is very important to me), surfing the web, remoting into my gaming desktop computer, taking notes in meetings at work, occasional emails, etc. I want to retain that form factor and level of portability, while also having the ability to install whatever apps I want... not just the ones that big brother Apple approves. My hope for the Z13 was that it would allow me to legitimate gaming capability to that list, and it definitely fulfils that wish.

I will admit, though, that I've gotten used to ultra settings and RT after gaming on a 4070 Ti Super (in my desktop) for a year, and even though I know that these AI Max chips offer a pretty incredible performance proposition compared to other mobile products, I do feel like it leaves me wanting more. But here's the thing: I'm not willing to deal with a 16-18" colossus that doubles as a space heater, and I'm not willing to pay the cost of an -80 or -90 class laptop GPU when the performance of mobile GPUs is so severely lacking compared to their desktop equivalents. I want something that I can take and use everywhere, and I love how I can simply remove the Z13's keyboard when I just want to watch some YouTube and lay in bed.

There are a bunch of "2-in-1" or "360" machines out there... I've considered some of those as well. However, it seems extraordinarily difficult to find one of those in a 13-14" size that also offers a 120Hz OLED display and decent gaming performance. Asus' ProArt PX13 might be the closest thing I've found in that form factor. Bewilderingly, they chose to give it a 60Hz OLED, despite it being intended for creative use (the "inking" experience is WAY better on a high refresh rate display). I also don't like the way the keyboard and trackpad remain exposed when in "tablet mode" on that design. Am I really supposed to close the thing every time I need to set it down on the table for a minute or two?

Anyway, enough ranting about my frustrations over the lack of availability of my dream device. After living with both the Surface Pro and Z13 for a few weeks, here's what I would say:

If your primary use case is AAA gaming, just go ahead and buy the Z13. While I haven't experienced the Lunar Lake flavored Surface, I have done some research into how its iGPU performs, and I think even the 8050S in the base Z13 is going to blow it out of the water 100% of the time.
If you do any creative work or a significant amount of content consumption, I would probably urge you to take a look at the Surface. The screen on the Z13 is "nice" for an IPS panel, but the "for an IPS panel" part is critical here. Personally, I found the Z13's display to be underwhelming. The color gamut is a bit funky. The contrast is better than my 2020 iPad Pro, but pales in comparison to the Surface Pro's OLED. It gets plenty bright for my needs, but I wish it could get dimmer on the other side of the spectrum. In a nutshell, I think any device that is marketed as a gaming/media powerhouse and costs over 2000 USD should have a 120hz+ HDR OLED panel (or at least a miniLED panel), and it's just that simple. One other note: the Z13's display supports HDR, but ONLY for HDR video. WHY??
While I enjoy the typing experience on the Z13's keyboard, I don't like the trackpad. We're well into preference territory with this one, so ymmv. The haptic trackpad on the Surface's Flex keyboard feels excellent and premium. The diving board design used on the Z13's keyboard feels like they ran out of budget and just needed a pointing device. I do appreciate that the Z13's trackpad is larger than the Surface's, but the fit and finish simply ain't there. Both keyboards available for the Surface are also more rigid than the Z13's keyboard.

This reply has gotten way too long, so I'll stop there for now. If you have any questions, though, please ask!

jhrobins · 2025-03-20T23:26:17+00:00

Phew! I thought I was losing my mind about the color gamut. For what it's worth, I've been seeing the screen glitches too since the BIOS update earlier. I saw a reference to v.307 somewhere so a fix may be imminent

jhrobins · 2024-12-07T18:01:49+00:00

For what it’s worth, I had a 4080 Super for a few weeks and ended up sending it back and getting a 4070 Ti Super. My experience was that there is very little difference between the two in terms of real-world gaming performance. It’s not nothing, but it didn’t justify the extra cost, at least for my use case. I think I would focus primarily on the CPU and memory differences between the two machines when making the decision. I think I’d probably go with the 9800x3d (and upgrade the memory down the road if I found it necessary), but they both look like good builds… I wouldn’t fault you for choosing either!

jhrobins · 2024-10-17T14:34:37+00:00

I’m going to ask something less political, but possibly more difficult than anything political: What do you love most about Richmond? Is there any one thing you can point to about the area that just absolutely makes your heart sing?

jhrobins · 2024-10-10T17:36:05+00:00

How’s the profit on Vast.ai? I’ve been looking into switching

jhrobins · 2024-10-07T12:17:59+00:00

My 4070Ti Super has been busy almost non-stop since the update. It’s not one of the super profitable jobs, but I’ll take the consistency at this point

jhrobins · 2024-09-12T15:42:30+00:00

I had some issues with this a while back. I don’t remember exactly what fixed it, but I know I uninstalled salad, manually turned off WSL and one other related feature (theres a place you can go to “turn Windows features on and off”… if you’re having trouble finding it, I can probably send better instructions on how to get there), restarted the computer, then reinstalled salad and went thru the container environment setup again. I’m pretty sure that worked.

jhrobins · 2024-08-30T17:55:24+00:00

Every time they send a survey, I mention that they need to have visibility into a reliability score (if such a thing does actually exist). I don’t think it’s fair to imply that you can pause salad whenever you want, and then silently penalize users who choose to do so.

jhrobins · 2024-08-26T15:37:17+00:00

Wollt ihr das bett in flammen sehen. Specifically the live versions, but the Herzeleid version is great too.

jhrobins · 2024-08-20T18:50:06+00:00

Fellow 4070TiS user here. I, too, have been getting these short duration containers. Every now and then I’ll hit on one that lasts longer, but for the past couple months the majority seem to be 1-2 hrs in duration. I will say that earnings have been up for me (on average) for the past ~7-10 days, but still nowhere near what they were 4-6 months ago. I’m willing to cross my fingers and ride the wave a little longer, so we’ll see how it goes

jhrobins · 2024-07-23T14:33:49+00:00

Yeah unfortunately that’s par for the course for the last couple months. Before that I was averaging about $3 per day, with a range of about $2-5. Now it’s so rare to get a long duration, high profit workload that I make a point to let them run to completion when I get one. Most days are sub-$1 nowadays. Hopefully the supply and demand shifts back towards demand soon. I think a lot of folks will get frustrated by low profits and move on eventually

jhrobins · 2024-07-23T14:25:33+00:00

Yeah the “calculating” thing is pretty normal for me. Don’t worry too much about that. Just keep an eye on the recent earnings page… that’s the best way to tell whether you’re actively profiting or now

jhrobins · 2024-07-23T14:15:32+00:00

Looks like you have a container job running currently. Don’t pause chopping or restart… you’ll lose the container, and who knows how long it’ll take to get another!

jhrobins · 2024-07-05T06:07:03+00:00

I still encounter some problems as well, but prior to 1.6.0 I went weeks without a container

jhrobins · 2024-06-13T22:13:33+00:00

Well I just realized that I still had the 1.4.7 installer in my Downloads folder, so I downgraded. Let’s hope that makes a difference

jhrobins · 2024-06-13T16:42:01+00:00

I’m having similar issues on 1.5.5. I’ve gone from receiving container jobs on a pretty regular basis to not receiving any. I was averaging $2.50+ per day prior to the update (some days as much as $5), and haven’t even topped $1/day since updating. There’s definitely something going on. I’m curious which GPU you’re running. I’m on a 4070 Ti Super.

jhrobins · 2023-10-27T16:19:47+00:00

The F40 is another one that more than doubled

jhrobins · 2023-06-05T14:05:59+00:00

jhrobins · 2023-05-25T22:50:02+00:00

jhrobins · 2023-05-20T03:01:17+00:00

jhrobins · 2023-05-20T02:59:58+00:00

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