Great question, it really hits at the heart of my struggle. If you read between the lines of my post, it’s clear that I think more highly of the Sony. So why am I waffling? Why write a wall of text?

I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but I just don’t love the Sony. It’s a very technically capable camera, its ecosystem is great, and it does disappear pretty effectively when you’re using it. I don’t hesitate to bring it with my on a family outing. In fact, I use it way more often than I used any other prior camera.

Maybe it’s the ergonomics. The OM-1, and the Z6II for that matter, have a more comfortable grip and feel somewhat better in hand. They also have more accessible control surfaces that you can use without taking your eye off the EVF. An example includes the two buttons on the front of the body by the lens mount.

Maybe it’s the responsiveness of the camera. The Sony is certainly a fast camera, but the OM-1 always turns on immediately. It will also blaze away at taking photos and seems to do so just a touch faster, granted I’m using third party glass on the Sony.

All that said, the Sony is just so easy to get great results with. I was messing around with the OM-1 and A9II yesterday while my kids were building legos. My youngest held their creation up after they completed every step, often in front of their face, and the OM-1 would consistently choose to focus on the lego. The A9II on the other hand stayed laser focused on his face much more consistently with its tracking AF.

Although my heart isn’t really in camp Sony, at the end of the day it’s probably better to have a reliable dance partner that you work well with than a drop dead gorgeous dance partner that steps on your toes.

Find people who care about what they’re working on and they’ll go well beyond the extra mile. As an extra motivator, make it clear the company won’t be around if they don’t succeed. I’m sure these employees have shares, but tha only really matters if the company succeeds (extra motivation!). Unfortunately, there have been a ton of green/green-adjacent automotive “startups” that have struggled to gain a foothold. See also:

• Fisker
• Faraday future
• Detroit Electric
• Elio Motors

(I’m sure many others)

Digitally? Unless that’s off limits in this situation. I’m sure there are analog paths you could take too, I just don’t know what they would be

Disclaimer up front: I have very little background in any of this.

Why not do three exposures on three different prices of paper with a color filter in front of each? Green pigment gets the green filter, etc.

Turning leftovers into fried rice generally results in one of my favorite foods. That’s not to say I don’t like more upscale options too, but man.

Qualcomm’s stuff is within single-digit percentage points of the current-gen AMD and Intel chips both in power usage, performance, and battery life

Back in June, the new Snapdragon X processors were a lot more efficient than their x86 based counterparts. I can personally attest to much lower levels of heat generation.

The problem is that the current tradeoff is that huge amounts of the software you’ve been using just does not work, and a huge portion of it might NEVER work, because nobody is going to invest time in making it behave.

I agree with the sentiment, but IMO this is a PC and Windows problem. I would also extend this beyond pure comparability. I say this for a few reasons

• I lose about 5% charge/day with my laptop asleep. It does wake up very quickly, but 5%/day feels like a lot. At this point, I don’t think Microsoft has a strong incentive to really optimize the kernal for efficiency
• Historic massive variability in hardware across devices also makes it hard to optimize efficiency, although the current crop of snapdragon x laptops seem to have less variability
• One of the strengths of windows is that it can run applications written 20+ years ago fairly reliably. There’s a ton of software that’s still floating around that hasn’t been actively supported in years. I don’t see all of these software companies desiring to port their code over, especially without guarantees that the market will adopt ARM (the Apple approach) or until they see the ARM adoption rate go up (the current Windows approach)

All that said, I’ve had zero issues with emulation so far. I never personally used a M1 max when they launched, but from reports of that era the current Windows experience is at least as good as that.

I own a Lenovo Yoga slim 7x Gen 9, which is powered by a Snapdragon X. It certainly checks the “good enough” box. I use it primarily for photo culling/editing (I’m a holdout dedicated camera user). It is more than fit for purpose there, stays cool, is slim, and although I know the fan has come on a few times I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t on my lap. When I bought mine, it was also one of the better deals - you could upgrade to 32 GB of memory and a SSD for under $125 in total. The SSD also isn’t soldered, but the memory is. The 3k OLED display is amazing, but if you want the ultimate battery sipper it’s probably not the best choice. I still get tons of runtime per charge, but am somewhat sad that I lose about 5% charge per day thanks to the laptop not really being off while asleep.

The biggest downside is linxu support is very hit and miss depending on the laptop in question, which means you’re tied to windows 11. I don’t have the time to tinker with it, so I haven’t looked much further into it than this.

It’s not just the surface devices anymore. In June this year, a fresh wave of ARM powered laptops from a verity of different OEs launched. There are offerings from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Asus, etc.

No problem!

On Google maps, “CVS photo” will turn up if you search for it. I suspect staples can do photos too, I just haven’t used them.

As for Meijer vs Walmart, we haven’t set foot in a Walmart since we moved to the Midwest - not that we were doing that frequently before we moved here. I have no experience one way or the other with Walmart photo, but suspect most retail locations are probably fairly comparable. The market doesn’t seem that big anymore, so they might even be running similar equipment behind their branding.

Hi fellow photographers!

👋

Do you render your digital pictures on paper (print)?

Yes! We do the usual 4x6 stuff, make a yearly calendar that I think is 13"x13", and have a mix of larger prints (yearly family photo) and canvases (things that will be on the wall longer)

Do you use a printer in the home for it?

No, we use a mix of local brick and mortar, Shutterfly, and I think CanvasChamp

What printer do you use?

N/A, but if you’re looking to buy the thing to look for is a sublimation printer. This is what photo labs use. It will cost more than an inkjet up front, but will be much lower hassle with no no clogged nozzles.

It might be worth calculating the break even cost vs just using a lab though. I suspect a lab will be hard to beat unless you print a lot.

What printer would you recommend with cost vs quality in mind? (8.5 x 11 prints would be fine)

No idea, sorry :(

Do you send your pictures to a commercial printer?

Yes! See above.

Do you goto the nearest Staples or Walmart and use the printers there?

I have used both CVS and Meijer (Midwest not-walmart-walmart), but mostly for smaller batches where shipping doesn’t make sense. No real complaints, but their machines can be a bit fiddly.

Oh, sorry - it was the post title.

I still view it differently than being locked out of using actual OEM features of the car

Totally agree!

I do find this unsurprising though based on the metric fuckton of spam you get from SiriusXM after buying any new or used car from a legit dealer.

I’ve always wondered how much this costs relative to the number of takers they pull in.

The song in the meme is Ohio is for lovers by Hawthorne Heights.

And I can’t make it on my own (And I can’t make it on my own) Because my heart is in Ohio So cut my wrists and black my eyes (Cut my wrists and black my eyes) So I can fall asleep tonight, or die

Deep, I know.

Not to say that Dashboard Confessional doesn’t have similar lyrics, lol.

Teslas unlimited Internet package is also super cheap at $100/year the last time I checked. Competitors are multiple times more expensive.

SiriusXM does revenue share with auto companies.) Old article, but I’m too lazy to dig through a financial report or find something newer.

Both are windows 11. It wouldn’t surprise me if the older laptop doesn’t support the new sleep state. I would personally trade slower wakeup for less battery use while sleeping. I don’t use the laptop every day and it’s kind of a bummer when I turn it on and find out it lost 20% of its charge between uses.

Even when it’s “shutdown” the Lenovo 7x slim doesn’t appear to actually be off.

lol. Amusingly, my wife’s Dell Latitude 7400 with an i3 has much better stand by battery life than my 7x slim. The slim does wake up a ton faster - by the time the lid is open it’s already doing facial unlock and it it sees me it unlocks immediately and is “fully awake”, but I suspect this is achieved at the expense of more battery consumption while sleeping.

The 7x slim loses around 5% / day when asleep :(

Recall was the headline feature for Copilot+ PCs.

When a wave of ARM powered Windows laptops, and now a few desktops launched, they were all Copilot+ for whatever reason. They all marketed the NPU, but struggled to really say what the NPU unlocked that you couldn’t do with a CPU or GPU. Other marketing gimmicks were a better background blur and an AI drawing assistant in I think paint. I think you could also do “AI stuff” in photos, but don’t think that was local.

Honestly, I think everyone missed the punchline on ARM. The promise is lower heat and greater battery life. There was no need to bundle that with AI gimmicks. But clearly a PM thought so and now they’re trying to save face. Really taking advantage of ARM and pushing for battery life, by optimizing the kernal and changing what happens in standby, would probably be a bigger engineering lift.

/Thoughts from a rando who bought an ARM powered Windows laptop and generally likes it but has never touched the NPU enabled stuff

This photo was at an outdoor museum, but I imagine they still have bunnies. Between deer and rabbits we’re somewhat limited in regards to what we can grow. Thankfully they both leave our ecanacia alone.

They did see it coming, this was the goal.