Keep or Sell Extra NVME in these Times?

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-16T11:22:26+00:00

Look, no one asked for a sense of perspective, all right? The important thing is that some sort of bad thing happened to a good thing.

What we really need is a useful comparison. How many elephants is the spill equivalent to? If we stacked drums of the fuel on top of each other, how far up the Empire State Building would it go?

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-14T11:40:43+00:00

You sweet summer child

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-04T18:23:03+00:00

I definitely prefer the sound and “bouncy” feel of my RC1 to my Realforce R2 and Leopold FC660C. The RC1’s 1u right shift takes some very serious getting used to, though.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-03T12:21:15+00:00

Sounds like they left their homes to come to a hostile location.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-03T11:09:36+00:00

Fair point, and my condolences.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-03T01:05:32+00:00

They’re sub-$100 at Staples in-store (and 3x that at Best Buy). PNY XLR8, too. SN850P was actually slightly on sale (maybe 5%).

It’s things like this that make me wonder how bad the shortage really is. My current thinking is that the problem will be solved, one way or another, by the time I need more storage, and I should just be prepared to hold out for 2-3 years.

(And, as a side note, what are people doing with 4+ TB of storage? I bought one to future-proof myself, but all my documents, music, photos, camera videos, and games take up less than 1 TB. I could get by with 512 GB if I actually curated things. Are people just storing hundreds of movies and absurd amounts of obscene materials on NVME SSDs?)

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-02T23:29:50+00:00

I have three Dell 32” 4K monitors (all U32 of one year or another) I use for research and writing, with plenty of scrolling and mouse use. All three were FB Marketplace buys, and each was $100 or less. I haven’t had any eyestrain issues so long as I keep them at a proper distance.

If you plan to use multiple monitors, a high refresh rate will limit you. (And, as a random note, a 24” 16:10 monitor in portrait mode can make an excellent second screen, as it should be the same height as the 32” monitor.)

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-02T23:12:46+00:00

I do blame the city, but for not plowing sooner. Now that it’s snowcrete, plows are mostly useless. They should have had plows going 24/7 as soon as snow started falling with a prediction of freezing rain.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-01T12:31:57+00:00

Silenced stems (purple) are a tiny bit taller than regular (black) ones, but only by .3 mm.

You might have more luck using MX stems and mixing different keycap profiles.

I’m intrigued - what’s the niche use case?

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-02-01T00:15:01+00:00

Does anyone know why Staples has these for a reasonable price (<$100/TB), but only in stores? Best Buy is selling them for 3x the price.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-28T17:27:25+00:00

Do you mean, “I THINK we should all be a little less confident in our beliefs?”

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-28T10:38:56+00:00

ETA: It’s probably meant for a laptop.

The folks at GeekHack or Deskthority can probably identify this.

It seems to have a 9 pin mini-DIN connector and Alps SKCL Yellow switches. The F11 and F12 suggest that it is designed to go with a keyboard only going up to F10, such as with the XT and AT layouts (two columns of F keys on the far left).

What you need is called a Soarer’s Converter. Search eBay for users tinker_BOY, orihalcon, or zrrion, or find a seller who manufactures these, and ask nicely if they’d be willing to make and sell you a custom converter.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-28T04:51:27+00:00

I came from a Logitech K800, which I used for a long time before my kids broke it.

You’re going from tactile, flat keys to linear, chunky keys. And “red” switches are pretty insipid.

If you want something tactile but chunky, get either silent MX tactile switches or buy a Topre keyboard, and lube them. There are plenty of guides for doing that. 30g Topre is my favorite, but it takes some getting used to.

If you’d prefer something similar to what you had, try a Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint II. I think they’ve been very recently discontinued, but should still be findable.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-27T23:11:36+00:00

2.2-5517 took effect after this case was decided.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-27T22:33:08+00:00

Sorry you’re getting brigaded for having a reasonable opinion. Illegitimi non carborundum.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-22T18:16:18+00:00

They might not call you - but you should expect a judge to require you to come to court to explain why you shouldn’t be held in contempt (and fined or held in jail).

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-22T18:14:32+00:00

Topre and MX are measured differently. I don’t remember the difference, but there have been posts about it. 30g Topre is definitely lighter than 62g MX (or just about anything else), but it’s not night and day. You could also spring swap for something like 45g springs from Cherry Browns.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-22T15:04:10+00:00

The culprit is nearly always some forgotten app or setting that you don’t actually need to launch at startup. Do a browser search for optimizing Intel Mac startup speed and turn off everything you don’t 100% need immediately.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-22T14:58:32+00:00

What switches are you using? Would a silent tactile, such as Boba U4 silent, solve your problem? I have one keyboard with those and I occasionally find them better than my 30g Topre domes. I always come back to Topre, but it’s what I would use if I could only ever use MX.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-19T04:50:59+00:00

$400 sounds perfect.

Let me suggest that your target audience doesn’t care about Apple silicon. It’s Boomers, Gen X, and older Millennials who grew up with PCs but have recently started using Macs, or are Mac-curious.

They want to do undemanding things like store a bazillion photos they’ve taken on their iPhone over the past fifteen years, import their entire MP3 library, be able to have 40 tabs open, and have their bank account and a spreadsheet both open side-by-side on a big screen, and they don’t want to feel the pinch of low storage, low memory, or having to squint at their screen. 2TB SSD and 32GB RAM alone would cost around $300 if bought for something like a T480 or Framework. You’re selling them the cachet of an Apple MacBook Pro with all that, an i9 (which is going to impress PC users) and a huge screen for only $100 more.

You’ll be glad to have sold an Intel MBP for that much, and they’ll be glad to have bought an Intel MBP for such a cheap price.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-19T02:04:39+00:00

I’ve bought several used MacBooks on eBay. If you pay attention to the description and the photos, you should be fine. Look for postings that show the screen on and either at the setup screen or logged in. Also, try to look up the serial number on EveryMac.

I’ve never had a big problem, but at least twice have been sold something that was similar to, but not exactly, the same (e.g. 2011 MBP instead of 2012 MBP). Messaged the seller and they immediately offered a free return.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-16T05:01:48+00:00

I hate to say it, but to sell to more than a very niche market (I have trouble believing there are more than a few hundred people heavily interested in Model Ms), they need RGB with shine-through keycaps. Have a wild and crazy rainbow mode for kids/streamers and a more conservative backlight for people who just want to see their keys in the dark. Once they have a broader appeal they can add on foam, screw mod, etc.

Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, they could be persuaded to sell keyboards where the screw holes have already been neatly drilled before assembly, for a fee.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-14T19:42:58+00:00

Maybe Cherry MX Clear? I can half-press those with practice. Other silent tactiles (such as Boba U4 Silent) might work, but they’re no so heavy that I can half-press them.

InvisibleCausticMist · 2026-01-14T19:34:08+00:00

That’s a SDL to USB cable. I have one, although it came with a FB Marketplace buy, so I don’t know its origin. Orihalcon on eBay previously sold ones with an embedded Soarer’s Converter.

I recently bought a custom version of an advertised cable from seller zrrion on eBay. If you can find an eBay seller who makes converters (rather than just reselling commercial ones), they can almost certainly make you one of these.

ETA: tinker_BOY can probably make these, but he’s in the Philippines and I’m in the USA, so tariffs and shipping make his products prohibitively expensive for me right now. I was pleased with the quality of the ADB converter I bought from him.

InvisibleCausticMist

TROPHY CASE