In games that don’t have good auto-save (like Skyrim), I’ll map one of the back buttons to quick save.

Mine has integrated graphics plus a dedicated card that it will switch to for higher demand applications. I was not aware of USB to HDMI, I’ll check that out. I don’t game when docked, so I only need the integrated graphics for that purpose. If that resolves my issue for now, I can put off a new purchase until I feel spendy enough to buy one of those Framework laptops!

I think you might be right that FIRE, as a movement, has sort of crested that initial wave of public enthusiasm and is not the topic of conversation that it had been, but is still flowing quietly in the background for a large number of people.

I think what the Reddit sub had going was lots of new or curious people asking questions and people providing feedback. It seems like we only have a small group of people that are already on the path, so we don’t have much to talk about. If the back to basics approach drew in new people, that might help to get things started here. But I’ve always tended to be more of a lurker, so I don’t have many ideas about how to increase engagement.

I have one and it would probably work for my needs when docked, but I mainly use my laptop as a laptop. Its frustrating that such an inconsequential part (the HDMI port) is making me consider replacing an otherwise functioning laptop. Trying to get it repaired is probably the smarter option, its a shame laptops aren’t more user repairable. It definitely makes the Framework laptop that people are recommending appealing if I decide I’m willing to spend some money.

Switch game prices are ridiculous! I think my (teenage) kids have 4 games for their Switch because nobody wants to pay those prices. I don’t know how many 100s of dollars they’ve spent on Steam games over the years at $5-20 per game, but they’re never willing to spend $40-60 and they won’t even put Switch games on their wishlist at that price.

That Framework seems like overkill, but I really like the idea. Maybe I’ll hold out a little while until I see what my job situation is and if things go well I can reward myself! 😀

I actually have one, but I use my laptop as a laptop the majority of the time and the steam deck would not work well for that. I suppose an alternative to buying something new would be to properly setup cloud storage so I could more easily switch between laptop and desktop PCs rather than “docking” (aka KVM) my laptop when I want to use a proper setup at my desk. My poor desktop is essentially unused at this point other than occasionally streaming games to my laptop.

Wow, looking at some of the system specs I was thinking, “who even needs 64GB of RAM?” I don’t think I’ve ever had a system with more than 16GB. But I suppose there was a time when people thought the same about 512KB. I probably wouldn’t shop used, but maybe refurb. I never buy extended warranties, but I do like having the initial guarantee when I buy a new device.

Everything else you mentioned is way outside my knowledge; I could probably learn, but I would rather just have something that works. I used to love getting into the technical stuff, but now I just want to turn on my device and use it.

Lol, it’s a small thing, but I definitely wouldn’t mind having a different key for a non-Windows machine.

I’m okay with blank hardware, I’ve done all my desktop builds for more than 25 years (and recently did the SSD upgrade on a SteamDeck). I just never new there was anything similar available on the laptop market. My concern was more with paying for a Windows license or having hardware that was a subpar choice for linux drivers. I will definitely be learning more!

The only AMD model I’m seeing is the Pangolin with a AMD Radeon 680M. That wouldn’t be bad since it is roughly equivalent to the GTX 1650 I have now and probably way more efficient. Or do they have something newer that hasn’t released yet?

That’s great to hear, from what little I have picked up from this community, I was leaning towards POP for my first attempt.

A DIY laptop???!!! I had no idea such a thing existed, I will definitely be looking into this.

I’ve never cared about running high quality graphics, medium is fine for me. I’m more concerned with fan noise than graphics. My current system is fine for things like Skyrim and Sims 4, but for something like BG3 I’m streaming from my desktop.

Thanks! I notice that all of their gaming laptops have an NVIDIA GPU, but I see people complaining about NVIDIA drivers here regularly, is that an issue I should be concerned with? I would hope a system prebuilt for linux would have taken that into account, but I don’t know that much about the complaints.

I would definitely like to see this community grow, but agree with the others about the challenges of increasing engagement for a niche topic when there isn’t much action for each of us to take from day to day. Most of the active portion of FIRE seems to be at the start and end of each person’s journey, the part in between is just slowly moving forward. It might help if we had more highly upvoted posts to catch people’s attention on the main screen. Maybe we need to start cranking out FIRE memes like the Star Trek communities? 😄

My (soon to be ex) company gets around the rebuild step by doing annual layoffs.

When I look at what they’re creating, I can see that they are trying to protect a lot of the “in” leaders and so they’re laying off too many workers and keeping too many leaders. I have no doubt they’ll have to make leadership cuts next year since they are approaching this completely backwards, so I definitely don’t see staying as “safe”.

I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to find a job quickly enough that the severance is actually a bonus, but I haven’t looked for a job in a long, long time, so I might be deluding myself. I have enough connections in the company that I could probably land something else, but the idea of taking a little break sounds nice. We just had a major reorg last year (when they should have made this change) that has been brutal to implement. We are just now getting stable from that and this is going to hit my employees hard.

The headcount reduction was the major thing for me. We’re merging 3 teams, which I expected for a long time now, but I expected more leadership cuts and fewer worker cuts. If I stay, I will have to significantly reduce the quality of work or drive my employees to burn out. I’m not very interested in either option.

Here’s a what if for you all this week.

If you were given a choice to layoff 1/3 of your employees (with no reduction in workload) or take 9 months severance, which would you do?

I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to do, but will be waiting until the last possible moment to commit in case I change my mind. In my case, I could live 3-4 years on my savings (not counting the severance), but that would set back my retirement plans substantially. I’m not looking for advice, just thought this would be a good discussion topic and I’m curious how others would handle this in their own context (not in my shoes).