Computers

Minisforum N5 Pro NAS

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The Minisforum N5 Pro NAS has specifications far more advanced than we’re used to see in a NAS.  It will feature AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 370 Strix Point processor, it can be equipped with up to 96GB of ECC RAM, a 10 GbE LAN port, and it has PCIe 4.0 x4 connections (internal and OCuLink port for external connections).  This could be not only your NAS but your home server as well.  It’s nice to have companies challenging QNAP and Synology as their products sometimes feel a bit overpriced.

However, competing with the likes of Synology on the software side is a whole other matter and no easy task.  Many of the less established NAS companies fall far short when trying to provide a total NAS experience because they don’t have the years of experience nor funding that the larger companies have.  And this truly matters in the NAS experience because if the software isn’t flawless it can create major problems including data loss.

We’re very happy to see the competition heating up.

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M4 Macbook Air

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We’re getting various reports about an imminent M4 Macbook Air launch.  We’re hearing anything from late January to March.  March seems more plausible as last March was the release of the M3 Macbook Air.

What should you expect to be different in this generation of the Macbook Air? The following is what we have gleaned so far (since the M4 chip is already out in other Apple products):

  • Around a 20%+ performance improvement
  • Better battery life (maybe an extra half-hour compared to the previous Macbook Air)
  • Same starting price
  • Same body

So not an exciting improvement, but for someone trying to decide whether or not they should wait the performance boost is not trivial and is likely worth waiting for if you don’t need a laptop today.

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New MacBook Air Laptops With M3 Chips

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We’re happy to see an update to the MacBook Air models:

13-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ 15-inch ‌MacBook Air‌
13.6-inch Liquid Retina display 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display
M2 or M3 chip M3 chip
Starts with 8-Core GPU 10-Core GPU
Four-speaker sound system Six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers
52.6-watt-hour battery 66.5-watt-hour battery
30W USB-C Power Adapter or 35W Dual Port Compact Power Adapter 35W Dual Port Compact Power Adapter
$1000 and up $1300 and up

Apple is saying these are 1.6X more powerful than the M1 versions which makes us think that this M3 version is not that much faster than than the M2 version but time will tell.

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