Intel recently released the AX200 series of Wi-Fi cards. A batch showed up on eBay too, and surprisingly cheap — pretty friendly compared to the old 7265 and friends, which used to run close to 200. And after the ThinkPad X250, ThinkPad products no longer have a whitelist. Still, even though by conventional wisdom Intel wireless cards and Linux get along just fine, I have to say this product is an exception.

I ordered a RhinoShield case on Black Friday when it was on sale, and then one thing led to another. After a bunch of tweaking, the phone feels pretty good to use now, basically satisfied, so I’ll sum it up here.

I bought a Retro Game handheld a while back and it felt pretty good, but something was always missing. Even after updating to the foreign custom firmware, plenty of rough edges remained — short standby time, an ugly look, that sort of thing. The guy behind that firmware has released a new build, possibly the true final version this time. Flashed it and it’s actually decent. Also took the chance to dress the thing up a bit, and I’m liking it more and more.

I have a Logitech T650 touchpad, but I bought it 4 years ago. Recently I dug it out on a whim. It still works fine, honestly — but that’s exactly when you get cocky and drop the thing…

I had a PSP 3000 lying around, and I did play some visual novels on it back in the day. A few days ago I dug it out and found the battery swollen, the paint flaking off, and the thing generally dead. Still, I’m attached to it, so let’s save it. I bought some parts on Taobao — pretty cheap, too — and figured I’d just refurbish it.

The LG Watch Sport officially doesn’t support swapping straps, since the antenna lives in the strap. But anything that comes apart can be replaced, as long as you can find the parts. There are two ways to buy a strap for the LG Watch Sport. One is to order from a Korean site, which comes to $58. https://www.tntkstore.com/product-page/lg-watch-sports-w281-band-international-edition-band-gray-color The other is to pick up a dead unit on Taobao. I went with the latter, because it’s cheap!

The Walkman ZX300A is probably one of the more honest players Sony has put out recently. First off, the chip. It uses Sony’s newly developed S-Master chip, which is a higher hardware revision than what’s in the Black Brick and Gold Brick, and it supports more features too. In theory the sound should be on par with those high-end models, and the price is still low — the Chinese domestic version seems to be under 3000, which is downright reasonable compared to the Black Brick, the Gold Brick, and the “Sony Sixty Thousand.” So anyway, I’m broke, I can’t afford a Black Brick, and this is all I can manage. It has every feature I need, and I’m pretty happy listening to it. Then comes the even better part: this thing keeps getting firmware updates, and the latest one is a bombshell.

I’ve had the LG Watch Sport for about a year, and a while back it started acting up. What kind of problem? See for yourself:

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 suddenly got hit with a recall notice. The reason given was “a screw inside the machine may come loose, pressing on the battery and causing it to explode.” Fine, loose screws inside a laptop aren’t exactly news. Even if it were loose I’d have opened it up and tightened it myself. The recall and the screw aren’t what matter to me. What matters is that I finally have an excuse to register IWS global warranty for the ThinkPad I bought from Japan. Delightful!

I’ve had the Moto 360 v2 for almost two years now, and Android Wear 2.0 has been out for nearly a year too, yet the update only showed up today. It’s not that I hadn’t thought about switching watches—there just wasn’t anything suitable. So since the update rolled out today, I might as well use it for now.