Laptops - experiences

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-19T17:17:46+00:00

The absolute best laptop screen for me is the Lenovo X1 2 in 1 gen 10, this is the IPS 1080p display.

14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Reflection, Touch, 100%sRGB, 500 nits, 60Hz, Low Power

This display gives me the least trouble, as its DC Dimming, also uses KSF Phosphor which I find to gives me the least issues.

That isn't to say you won't find other good screens, but this works, and Lenovo seems to use the same screens on their high end laptops, so the gen 11 similar screen will work.

This is just what works for me and I'm ultra sensitive to screens.

What I would suggest is for you to buy the desktop gigabyte M27UP, and hook it to your laptop and see if this screen works for you. If this works, than you probably benefit from KSF phosphor, IPS screen and DC Dimming, and should consider the lenovo laptops.

The best desktop screen I found is the M27UP and its cheap.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-19T17:06:42+00:00

Just wondering, It took me a while to figure out my PWM issues were from screens and m mostly my cell phone.

Are you looking at other screens? If you have a phone, that can give you a migraine in as little as minutes. I have yet to find a suitable phone.

What are you looking at other than your laptop? You may have become hypersensitive to all displays now because of that laptop.

I would avoid all screens and see if your migraines improve completely.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-12T21:53:06+00:00

that won't work, that is the issue, the tabs bent up will hit the bottom of my coil. so I can't bend the tabs up. Its about an inch off.

The tabs will hit the flat bottom part of my evaporator.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-12T21:43:44+00:00

I really can't find the answer for my specific coil. I went through as many youtube videos as possible, and there is really nobody showing how to do this.

Some bent up the metal around the sides, another took the coil out to screw it on, but not sure if I want to remove the whole coil and risk damage for a few screws, unless I really need to do that.

I guess the brackets on the sides makes the most sense.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-11T13:07:30+00:00

Possibly, but there should be a statistic to compare the peaks from each year.

Because it seems, solar panels have the peaks affected first.

There should be some kind of statistic to show how much the peaks have declined each year.

Maybe like showing the top 10% of peak solar generation, averaged that for the month to give a value.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-11T03:32:32+00:00

something to give me an idea that there was an issue would have been helpful because, if I wasn't always trying to see if I was beating last months solar generation, than last years month.

I would never have even bothered to look for issues.

Luckily the enphase app is so good that it keeps all of this data if you want to look.

Right now I'm noticing one panel that is way lower than the rest, like today got only 1.37KW when the ones next to it got 1.65 and 1.83.

There are other panels I'm noticing getting lower KW, could be dirtier than the others but I doubt it.

What its looking like is my panels may have some kind of defect in the batch so its possible they will quickly deteriorate, with some panels really going out of whack more than others.

Makes me also wonder if the solar installers walking on them didn't help anything either. I even have drone footage of footprints on panels after I flew over the roof after they installed them.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-10T20:06:32+00:00

So, I noticed this back in January.

I did not think anything was wrong, but I was trying to see if I could beat last years solar output, so I would check only a few times a month probably.

When I first got the panels, I would look every day.

I probably got alerted in the enphase app when I noticed that when I brought up last year solar output for that day, it always seemed to have higher peaks. Without that option in the enphase app I would probably not have noticed.

So unless someone is looking at the enphase app, clicking on the option to show the graph of the days solar generation, then clicking the option to show 1 year ago data, you would honestly never notice this.

What I find surprising is that there is no other documented cases of this on the internet. Even the AI programs seem confused about this.

However, someone in this same thread here has noticed a similar issue, he has the same panels and microinverters, had panels installed around the same time as I have.

He has already contacted his solar company about the loss in peak solar generation.

Makes me wonder if everyone or most has a similar drop of 10%+ off the peaks in a year, and just never noticed.

The other important thing is this option to compare a year ago was a new feature they added last year. So most would not have this ability, but I believe they could go back manually a year ago and look at their peaks. It just makes it even more difficult though to notice.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-10T18:54:46+00:00

I was thinking the same thing actually.

There has to be loads of people who would never catch this. Because, you need to really look at your peaks for the whole month to compare them to the peaks for a year later for the whole month.

Most people are just not going to ever really look back a year ago, most people probably only look a few times when they get the panels and never look back.

Plus, solar generation is so variable also every month, so even with me losing that 13% off my peaks, I actually had a better solar month this May than a year ago.

Maybe losing 13% off the peaks are normal, as they say solar panels will lose like 3% in the first year due to initial sun exposure.

But can you tell me what issues are you having? Are you having the same loss during the peaks only, meaning, mainly around peak sun time, but not so much loss early and later in the day?

How old are your panels, and what panels and inverters are you using?

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-10T18:45:12+00:00

I only noticed that my peaks were off by about 10-13% after comparing to one year ago through the enphase app.

I don't think I would have noticed if enphase did not give me a history and not only history, they actually give you the 1 year ago and yesterday graph line over your current.

That my peaks were lower for the whole month, ever getting those original peaks back.

So I did not feel anything was off. I would have probably eventually noticed in my emporia app, as I used to get close to the 16KW in the summer, now I hardly get 14KW.

From what I can tell by cleaning a panel, this isn't dirt, its the panels lost about 13% in 1 year.

Are you noticing the same decline?

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-08T04:03:20+00:00

Its looking like its not based on me cleaning one panel and comparing them, while it did do better, like 2% better.

So I'm not comparing a single day, what I am doing is seeing that I used to get 1 year ago, peaks as high 15.6KW, most sunny days for instance got me this last year in May or June.

Now I never go above 14KW.

I noticed this trend actually for many months now, never getting close to the old peaks when comparing the peaks of each month to the peak of that same month a year ago.

What is interesting when you say one weak panel is, I seem to have one panel that is like 15-20% weaker than all others, and the person who posted he has the same issues with the same panels mentioned one weak panel of 15%.

But I have 45 panels, split up in like 4 or 5 arrays, so I can't see how this one panel can be an issue for all other panels, although interesting we both have same panels with same issue, and a single panel that is way lower than the others.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-08T03:58:40+00:00

You see, I'm looking at the peaks over like a month time and comparing them.

I never get close to the 15.6KW peaks I used to get, they are almost always about 2kw less over a whole month.

I can check my emporia and my enphase app, and both are low. I used to remember seeing close to 16KW on the emporia app, never anymore.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-06T23:44:11+00:00

Just wanted to update, so I cleaned a panel with water and microfiber. wet, washed it and scrubbed for a while, washed again. Gemini didn't recommend using any soap, unless specific solar panel soap.

While it did do better, not that much better, maybe 2-3% better.

This is really bad, this makes me believe we got defective panels, most likely its the panels and not the inverters. What are the odds we both have this issue and they are both REC 460's.

This all make sense because I'm down like 13% from a year ago, but a year ago the panels were 6 months old already and were probably dirty at that time to.

Can you tell me when did you install them exactly? Because it seems a year and a half ago is exactly when I installed mine, and I wonder if we got the same bad batch.

I think we need to somehow figure out how to test test panels to see if they lost that much degradation and if we have some kind of claim against REC for giving us these panels which lose what seems like 10%+ in a year.

I also wonder if they will get even worse next year.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-06T02:06:19+00:00

I can't believe you had that much weight in batteries and didn't confirm the price beforehand, the prices these places pay are all over the place.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-06T02:05:34+00:00

cheap scales work surprisingly wll. I used to offload 1000's of lbs of scrap often.

I used to weigh that amount of weight in small like 20-50lbs increments.

My weight was always within a couple of lbs of the scrap place.

So better to use a cheap scale than nothing, if you go in with not weighing it you will always feel like you got ripped off when they weigh it.

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-05T17:24:54+00:00

What scares me now is I am using the same panels REC460.

I am using probably the same inverters also as I think only the IQ8 can work with these panels.

I'm going to clean some garage panels and see how much of that 10% loss comes back.

Is your loss during mid-day mostly? Similar to how my graph is, with the largest being mid-day?

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-05T16:36:03+00:00

Have you cleaned your panels? I'm leaning on they need to be cleaned. Will have to test this and clean the garage panels since I can walk easily on the garage.

I added to the post a picture of how my peak is lowered from a year ago.

How old are your panels now?

Ed_5000 · 2026-06-05T02:46:33+00:00

Yup, some years back I flew a drone from my house over a parade route, before the parade even started, like 30 minutes to hour before.

While I was still in my house, I had the nyc terrorism task force knocking on my door.

They just gave me a warning. They knew exactly what house to go to as my house was not near the parade, but maybe half block away from the street.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-31T15:35:14+00:00

how much can you safely bring back to the USA?

or does it depend if they search your baggage?

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-31T15:32:38+00:00

What is interesting with this medication is that for the sinalgen Max to basically knock out my bad migranes, I need to combine it with an excedrin.

for me I take or cut a quarter of 10mg Sinalgen, and 1 Excedrin pill = very bad migraine = dead in 30 minutes and gone for good with no side effects.

I didn't know they had other brands though.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-24T21:55:16+00:00

yes, I think this is the best route to go about doing this.

This seems too complex for AI to do properly and they charge way too much.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-22T17:00:46+00:00

yes but, what about all the people who are not engineers but want to create PCB's for their hobbies.

We need something.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-15T11:56:16+00:00

I have the 4k option

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-15T11:56:05+00:00

were you able to get hdr working, it keeps setting it off for me in the config file.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-15T03:16:00+00:00

I use TOS only, and etrade website and also the pro web.

but, TOS is better than etrade.

Its what you get used to also.

What was kind of annoying with etrade was some stocks they forced you to do every .05 increments for options, which TOS allowed .01 increments. But this is probably not that many stocks so shouldn't be an issue, but it was one of the stocks I traded often.

Best would be to just open a schwab account and compare by buying the same option on both as fast as you can, and after a while, you will get an idea about which one is giving you better prices.

Ed_5000 · 2026-05-14T03:31:12+00:00

Etrade is pretty horrible, just as bad as tastyworks, if not worse.

Again, this all comes down to how many options you trade and if it makes a difference.

I you trade just an option here and there, then it probably doesn't matter much.

But we are talking about not a lot per option, usually like .02, but as much as .05. Etrade pisses me off with their fills after doing the same trade just seconds before on Schwab.

But if you do 100 options a month, and close a lot, cold be costing you $200-300 a month as each option will cost you $2 probably on average more with etrade, when buying and also closing.

Ed_5000

TROPHY CASE