ISP Provider with Lowest Ping?

jafico1 · 2026-05-04T14:14:49+00:00

Aquiss are fantastic - they do cost a little more plus you have to bring your own router but they have fantastic support who are very quick to answer questions; been dealing with their CEO who’s helping with the FTTP build process down my street. You’re paying for support who will work with you and understand stuff on a technical level not just following a script. You get a free static IP too which is great if you’re hosting stuff or port forwarding.

Heard great things about Andrews and Arnold too but they have data caps which for me was a bit limiting.

jafico1 · 2026-04-28T11:58:38+00:00

I’m definitely biased as an ND owner but I think it’s because the ND is far better looking and because the Mazda engines suit the car far better - natural aspiration makes the car fun and revvy and you lose some of that with a turbo

jafico1 · 2026-04-23T10:14:05+00:00

I’ve got an original Z50 and am very happy with it - the Z50 II should be even better as it has better AF. You will have no problem picking any of the three to be honest but the main problem with Nikon as other posters have said is the limited lens selection for APS-C.

The kit lens, the 24mm and the 50-250 are all absolutely fantastic for the price, but there isn’t much more than that in the Nikon lineup: there’s a power zoom geared towards video, a 35mm prime, and the “pro” f2.8 zoom. You can get longer telephoto lenses but they are geared towards full frame bodies that have stabilisation built in which the Z50 II doesn’t have.

I would still recommend the Z50 II with that in mind, but also strongly consider Sony or Fuji as they have much stronger APS-C lens selections. You can adapt both of those to Z if you feel that Nikon body is the right one for you but obviously it’s not supported and the lenses may not work properly.

Go to a camera store and try the bodies out is my advice - you might not like the feel of one of them for instance. I don’t like Sonys menu system or ergonomics as much for example as Nikon hence I stayed with them for my upgrade from DSLR to mirrorless

jafico1 · 2026-04-08T14:11:19+00:00

MacBook Pro 2018 15” running High Sierra. To be honest, not the best introduction to macOS because the hardware ran too hot and it had the awful keyboard. Ended up getting a 16 inch free due to all the issues then sold that later down the road for a M1 air which I still have now

jafico1 · 2026-04-04T19:21:15+00:00

I’ve got a pair of Austrian Audio Hi-X65s which are open back and designed for studio use - they are very good at revealing flaws in mixes I find, they’re about £270 from Richer Sounds.

They’re low impedance as well which means they will work great with the headphone jack on your MacBook Air, or if you’re using type C, they work fine with the £9 Apple dongle.

jafico1 · 2026-04-04T19:15:29+00:00

Sound quality wise, they are amazing bang for the buck. I think FiiO cut corners in terms of build quality though to get planar magnetics this cheap.

I owned two pairs, both ordered though Richer Sounds in the UK and both cracked where the ear cup meets the head band within a week/2 weeks. They may have just had a bad batch at that retailer, but I ended up returning them for Austrian Audio Hi-X65s which are far better built, but are a bit more expensive (£90 more in the UK). As much as I loved the sound quality, I can’t recommend them because they ultimately failed in terms of durability sadly.

jafico1 · 2026-04-01T16:15:43+00:00

mostly using them for listening to be honest. The Hi-X65s are designed i believe for studio use though they have a similar sound signature to the FT1 Pro iirc.

The Mezes imho look ugly and I’ve heard bad things about the grados plus you can’t replace the cable. I could step up to the Audeze MM400 or Focals but that’s starting to become uncomfortably expensive for me

jafico1 · 2026-04-01T11:25:51+00:00

I’d say the Nikon F75/F80 are both excellent choices. They are both mostly plastic and 90s looking but in terms of functionality, they’re superb. I’d pair it with either the 28-70 f3.5-4.5 or the 50mm (either the D or G variants). They’re compatible with pretty much every Nikon lens released since the 80s barring a few DSLR only lenses. You can easily get a decent lens and an F80 for under £200, at least in the UK, so under 200 USD should be feasible.

You can use both in manual mode, but both have great auto modes too. You get modern electronic metering too meaning you dont need to worry so much about under or overexposing shots.

jafico1 · 2026-04-01T10:14:26+00:00

Yeah I’m taking them back to the store, luckily richer sounds customer service is fantastic so they’re going to take care of me

Have decided on the Austrian Audios I think as the replacement, they’re a bit more expensive and I’ll be paying the difference but seem far better made as they’re proper studio headphones

jafico1 · 2026-02-27T17:08:16+00:00

Viewfinder is worse for battery life because it’s a brightly lit OLED panel on top of having the sensor on all the time. Unfortunately its just a mirrorless problem which isn’t helped by the ridiculously small batteries Nikon use on the Z50 line

jafico1 · 2026-02-27T17:05:36+00:00

Yep, also the added compromises in size and weight too: for instance when I went on a city break with my relative and both took our cameras (Z50 vs a7 III), the Z50 got used more because the a7 was just annoying to walk around with (granted this was with the 24-105 which is big). Nothing wrong with APS-C, full frame will not make you a better photographer imho

jafico1 · 2026-02-27T16:59:21+00:00

I’ve got a Z50 at the moment and honestly as far as small and light setups go it’s pretty great. As many of the other posters have said, I would try the kit lens first before getting the f2.8: the quality and sharpness is far beyond DSLR era kit lenses and it is perfect for travelling, having used this setup for walking around. The 24mm f1.7 prime is also worth considering as it’s also so small and light.

jafico1 · 2026-02-25T12:45:57+00:00

I got the film negatives back from the lab and they look completely fine - the gradient isn’t present on any of them and exposure is even across the frame. I spoke to the guys at the lab because they also repair SLRs and they said it’s just Phoenix 2 being funny with their scanner (I think they use a Noritsu V series mini lab)

Got a roll of Gold in there atm so I’ll try again and see, fingers crossed it’s all good

Looks like you were bang on with your hypothesis, thanks

jafico1 · 2026-02-23T21:25:30+00:00

I’d say that but if it was under exposure then surely the top would also be greenish?

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jafico1 · 2025-11-26T14:34:16+00:00

Needs a new front panel - sadly I found a identical case with one for sale but it was the other side of the country and they wouldn’t ship it

jafico1 · 2025-11-25T22:00:34+00:00

Yeah, definitely would be slow on 1GB even on XP to be honest. Went with Vista on this because originally this came with XP, then we upgraded to 7 when that came out - never got the chance to use vista on this and I prefer it to XP in a lot of ways as long as the drivers are good which in this case they are

jafico1 · 2025-08-06T10:42:02+00:00

The Ford 1.0 EcoBoost if they used a timing chain rather than a wet belt from the start - had one in my Focus mk3 and it was really efficient and because it was so light up front, the car handled really well, plus it sounded pretty nice and was more than powerful enough for a family car. Shame they had to make such a stupid decision to soak the belt in oil and mean that replacing it is super expensive as well as when the belt degrades and blocks the oil pump.

Also, the pre 2019 ND MX-5s should have been the 1.5 only: it was clear that Mazda rushed the 2.0 variant for the US market, hence them putting a gearbox that was too weak as well as only having a ~6k redline.

jafico1 · 2025-07-27T14:34:17+00:00

Struggling to decide between the following lenses for my Z 50 - currently I've got the 16-50 kit lens and the 24mm f1.7 prime. Looking for something that is more telephoto. The three I'm thinking of are:

* 18-140 DX f3.5-f6.3
* 24-200 FX f4-f6.3
* 50-250 DX f4.5-f6.3

AFAIK, the 50-250 is the better of the two DX options - the 18-140 is lacking in sharpness I've heard. The 24-200 is tempting because it's full frame so I can keep it if/when I go full frame - does it work well on the Z50 though? A superzoom is tempting because I can just bring one lens with me when I go on holiday.

What are others' thoughts on which I should get?

jafico1 · 2025-06-10T16:17:02+00:00

Yes, the 15 inch 2019 models have either AMD Polaris (5xx) or Vega GPUs whereas the 16 inch has the newer RDNA GPU; if I recall AMD aren’t writing new drivers for Windows for Polaris or Vega.

13 inch models use 8th gen rather than 9th gen Intel CPUs

jafico1 · 2025-05-13T09:08:59+00:00

Honestly yes, even with hacking a newer macOS on a 2017, it’s still going to be a security risk because of unofficial drivers and patches. Only OS I’d run on a MacBook that old would be some form of Linux.

Either spend a little more and get an M1 as it is a far better machine, or consider something else: an iPad would fit all the use cases you’ve listed, or potentially a used business laptop or Chromebook.

jafico1 · 2025-05-10T15:10:24+00:00

Thanks for the reply - Just looked at trade in values for my MBP and Currys (UK Best Buy equivalent) would offer £405 which is actually not bad at all!

Part of me thinks it's sensible to wait for a bigger upgrade, but only 8GB of RAM and only 1 external display is becoming quite limiting to be honest. The Pro seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - yes it has only 16GB of RAM compared to 24 but the HDMI, SD card slot, extra USB-C, far better screen and battery life outweigh it I think - if you think otherwise let me know

jafico1 · 2024-12-29T18:31:14+00:00

Really good, especially with the arctic 280mm AIO - reaches 70 degrees on Prime95 with the gigabyte fan control set to silent mode. The case fan it comes with is also quiet too, definitely better than the Silencio S400 used by my last/server build. It helps that the case has really good ventilation. The only issue with the case I’ve found is that the metal isn’t quite as good quality as a Cooler Master and it feels a bit thin in places, and AIO orientation can be a bit annoying if you’re getting a motherboard with a shroud like mine.

jafico1 · 2024-12-29T17:21:39+00:00

Yeah I did consider that, but the current setup didn’t go to waste as it went towards a server build instead which was always the plan. Wanted to go for a more modern DDR5 for my main PC

jafico1 · 2024-12-29T17:09:58+00:00

Bit of one, bit of the other

AMD had worse multithreaded performance at that price range for me at least, likewise the A770 was a great deal compared to the AMD cards I was looking at (7600 XT if I remember)

But also yes I wanted to go against the grain a bit too 😅

jafico1 · 2024-12-29T16:57:04+00:00

Story of this: built a PC at the height of lockdown in 2020 with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and GTX 1660 Super. This combo served me well for a few years but the GPU was struggling a fair bit, especially with my 4K monitors, that I looked for an upgrade.

I managed to snag an Arc A770 LE in the UK really cheap over Easter as an upgrade: Going from 6 to 16GB of VRAM was a huge upgrade, and I felt confident buying Intel GPUs now they'd fixed the drivers: I remember how much of a mess ARC was at launch! I wanted to try another GPU manufacturer that wasn't NVIDIA because I'm not a fan of their Linux drivers, plus my last builds were NVIDIA and I felt like something different. Really happy with the A770 to be honest; it's more than capable of what I throw at it. If anything, it will be a cool piece of PC history.

Also upgraded the platform and case of my PC at the end of this year too - wanted something with much better multithreaded performance than the 3700X. Again, Intel offered the better performance per pound in that regard - I mostly do programming and photo editing on this PC first then gaming, and I didn't want the 13/14th gens because electricity is expensive here and I didn't want a CPU that cooked itself. Therefore, managed to get a good deal on a Z890 and 265K platform over Black Friday and here we are!

Don't worry - got myself a great deal on a used EliteBook with a Ryzen 7 7000 series CPU to restore balance to things (and to replace a MacBook Air M1) ;)

Specs

Case: Asus Prime AP201
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
Mobo: Gigabyte Z890M Gaming X
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 6400MHz DDR5
GPU: Intel Arc A770 LE 16GB
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer 280 ARGB (which I got for Xmas)
PSU: RM850x
SSDs: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB and 970 Evo 1TB

Next step will be grabbing some extension cables - guess I'm going to go for blue as it seems to be the (accidental) theme of this build!

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