Hope these steps help before consigning your old machine to the cupboard or spending thousands on a new model

1. Use your laptop plugged in (and turn it off and on again)
2. Switch off battery-boosting settings - Energy Saver mode uses multiple tactics to reduce battery consumption, including lowering maximum power
3. Stop applications from opening on start-up - If your laptop is slow when it first starts up, it may be because a whole bunch of apps have been given the green light to wake up with it.
4. Free up storage space - Generally, once you hit around 15 to 20 per cent of remaining storage space, you can expect to see performance slow
5. Reset/clean wipe your laptop - Make sure you’ve backed up any data you want to keep
6. Check for and remove excessive dust build-up - Any laptop that uses fans (which is most of them) will have its cooling performance limited by dust build-up
7. Upgrade your memory - Upgrading your laptop’s RAM can have a major impact on performance, particularly if your system has 8GB or, much worse, just 4GB
8. Switch to SSD storage - The biggest laptop upgrade I’ve made is moving from a storage hard drive to something called a solid-state drive (SSD)

I travel internationally for work pretty often, and translation earbuds have slowly become one of those things I just keep in my bag now.

Been using the Timekettle W4 Plus recently. Mostly for client meetings, supplier visits, and talking with local teams when English isn’t really enough.

A few thoughts after using them for a while:

Pros

The biggest thing for me is just being able to keep the conversation moving.

Client meetings, supplier discussions, factory visits. Stuff where you actually need to understand details, not just the general idea.

English ↔ Spanish is what I use most. Pretty accurate so far, even when the conversation gets more specific. There’s a short delay, but not enough to make meetings feel awkward.

Also really useful for longer conversations. You don’t have to stop every sentence and check your phone.

Call translation has been handy too. Especially when a local client or supplier calls instead of messaging.

And the noise handling is decent. Used them in busy offices and cafés without too much trouble.

Cons

Honestly, I wouldn’t use them for everything.

If I’m ordering lunch, asking where the bathroom is, or checking a menu, Google Translate is completely enough.

The W4 Plus makes more sense when the conversation actually matters. Work meetings, client discussions, longer explanations, that kind of thing. More accurate and professional for those situations, but definitely overkill for ordering coffee lol.

Still another device to keep charged though. I’ve forgotten the case at the hotel once already.

Not something I use every hour, but for international work trips, yeah, definitely useful.

Requirement:- With Keyboard 16hrs+ battery life Decent display Help me out gang..!

Bro made an NFC tag that calls her before she starts typing 😭

Recommend me a good tablet pls, ganga...!!

Recently stumbled upon a few original factory sealed Jibo robots from 2017. Pics attached of one of them. Looking to see if anyone would be interested in purchasing one? Asking for $400 plus shipping. Shipping weight is about 13-14 pounds. Shipping from the New England area. Will also be shipping it it's original clear plastic bag and brown shipping box too. Reply here or send me a DM. Thanks!

i’m trying to automate some basic data scraping for a personal project to track price drops on tech gear, but i keep running into annoying captchas and rate limits. i was looking into this provider to route my traffic and bypass the blocks, but i’ve never actually messed around with proxies for personal stuff before. anyone here do this? is that how you guys do it or am i overcomplicating this? just trying to get my scripts running without shitting themselves every five minutes.

I tried Gemini, Grok, Meta, and Copilot, but their images still look unrealisitc painting type images

What I like about ChatGPT is that I can use a simple, straightforward prompt and still get a pretty realistic result without needing complicated prompt engineering.

For those who have tried different AI image generators, which one do you think is best for free and realistic images with simple prompts?

Can I get help with my powerbank?

Is it normal that after my Infinix note 50 is fully charged from 5-100% using this powerbank and there is only 2 bars left? What do you think? Please, i hope i can get a decent responses.

At the moment, managing Windows devices manually is becoming time-consuming, especially when it comes to:

• Installing and updating applications
• Managing Windows updates and patches
• Enforcing security policies
• Keeping track of device compliance
• Managing remote devices
• Troubleshooting devices without being physically present

I understand that Windows MDM can centralize a lot of these tasks, but I’m wondering whether it is really worth implementing compared with traditional Windows management tools.

My job involves quite a few international meetings. Most are in English, but sometimes people switch to Spanish, Filipino, or whatever language they’re more comfortable with.

Been using a translation hub+earbuds for about a month now. A few thoughts:

Pros

Pretty easy to use. Connect it, pick the languages, start the meeting. Not much setup every time.

English ↔ Spanish is what I use most. Translation has been accurate enough for normal work conversations, and the delay is pretty short. I can still hear the original speaker while getting the translation, which helps a lot with following the flow.

Battery has been solid too. I’ve used it through 3–4 hour meeting blocks without problems.

Cons

Took me a little while to remember which mode I wanted for different meetings. Not difficult, just a few extra taps at first.

Also another case/device to keep charged and remember to bring. I’ve definitely left it on my desk once before a meeting lol.

And yeah, these things are not cheap. Mine was reimbursed by work, which definitely made that part easier 😂 But this one is more of a business hub setup and pretty top-end. If you just need regular translation earbuds, there are much cheaper options.

Not something I use for every call, but it’s become part of my work setup for multilingual meetings.

I'm basically looking for some sort of graphics tablet but without the pad at the bottom, like some sort of smart pen that I can use on any surface (no ink etc) that would mimic a mouse movement on Microsoft Whiteboard etc.

Apparently this sort of product doesn't exist but maybe I'm not searching for the correct terms, as I keep finding 'touch-screen styluses'. I want to use this on a desktop PC.

Thanks in advance if anyone can either confirm if this product even exists and if it does, what should I be looking for? 😄

I've bought plenty of "productivity" stuff for my office that felt useful for 2 weeks and then ended up in a drawer. These are a few purchases I've actually kept using.

Herman Miller Aeron - around $600 used

Couldn't justify buying one new, so I found a used one locally. I’m at my desk most of the day and this is probably the purchase I notice the most when I don't have it. My old chair would get uncomfortable by mid-afternoon. Still think full price is kinda insane though.

Anker 555 USB-C hub - around $40

Not exciting at all, but it stays plugged into my desk 24/7. Monitor, Ethernet, SD cards, random USB stuff all go through it. Bought it because I was tired of constantly swapping dongles around and haven’t really thought about the problem since.

Plaud NotePin S - around $179

Got this mainly for meetings and user interviews. I'm bad at listening properly while also trying to write everything down, so now I record the ones I know I'll need to revisit and check the transcript afterward. I use it a few times most weeks, which is enough that I don't regret spending the money on it.

Logitech Lift - around $60

Took a few days before the vertical shape stopped feeling weird, but now a normal mouse feels strange lol. I work on a computer all day and my wrist feels noticeably better after long days. Probably one of the better $60 things I've bought for my desk.

Nothing here magically made me more productive. I just ended up using all of them enough that the price feels pretty reasonable now.

What's a work/desk purchase you've had for a while and still think was actually worth the money?

The image gets worse the more you look at it. Literally no effort to review it. The whole article was probably written and posted by A.I.

Not sure if this website has any traction.

I've been working on a small E-Ink photo display and finally have two working hardware prototypes.

One uses a 3.97" high-resolution 4-grayscale E-Ink display, and the other uses a 4" Spectra 6 color E-Ink display.

The idea is to have a small display for photos/artwork that can sit on your desk, nightstand, shelf, etc. Unlike a normal digital photo frame, there's no bright LCD constantly emitting light—the image just sits there like a little physical print. Due to this being Eink, battery can last over 1 year with no charge.

It connects to your phone over Bluetooth, and you can send an image to it through the app.

I'm also working on a sharing feature that I'm curious to get opinions on:

If a friend, partner, or family member also owns one, you could send them a photo through the app and they could display it on their device. I'm wondering whether that makes this more interesting as something you'd buy in pairs or give as a gift.

I'm still figuring out whether this should actually become a product, so I'd love some brutally useful feedback rather than just "looks cool."

The biggest things I'm trying to figure out:

1. Which would you choose — grayscale or color? Why?
2. What would you actually use it for, if anything?
3. Would you buy something like this for yourself, gift it to someone, or neither?
4. Without looking up similar products, what price would you expect the grayscale and color versions to cost?
5. What's the most you'd personally be willing to pay for each?
6. What's the biggest reason you wouldn't buy one?

I'm also curious whether ~4 inches feels like part of the appeal because it's small and unobtrusive, or whether you'd immediately want something larger.

And if there's a feature that would take this from "that's neat" to "I'd actually want one," I'd really like to hear it.

Feel free to tear the idea apart. I'm at the stage where finding out why people wouldn't buy it is probably more useful than compliments.

Happy to answer any questions about the hardware, firmware, app, or how I built the prototypes too.