Hokie
Hokie's JournalMy review of the Beelink S13 Pro N150 Mini PC
I just purchased a new Beelink mini PC on Amazon for $180. I'll add a link below. It has an Intel Celeron N150 processor, 16 GB DDR4 Ram and a 500 GB M.2 SSD - more on the SSD later. I also have another brand N95 mini-PS for a couple of years.
I have it connected to a 65" Samsung TV and use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I mostly use it for watching YouTube videos, general browsing, office apps, and email. I am not a gamer nor to I need to do video processing. For what I do it works very well and is an improvement over the N95.
Pros:
-Small, lightweight and low power. It runs on a 25 watt power cube and runs cooler than my older mini PC.
- It has 4 USB 3 ports, 2 HDMI ports so you can run dual monitors, 1 GB Ethernet port WiFi 6 built in and Bluetooth 5.2
- The fan is very quiet. I have never noticed running
- The memory is up-gradable but you would have to remove the 16 GB DIMM
- Has a second M.2 NVME slot for adding another SSD
- Easy access through the bottom by removing 4 screws. You don't have to remove the feet or anything
- The bottom has heat sinks for the SSD's.
- Easy set up (well should have been) Comes with Windows 11 Home fully licensed
- Windows activated even though I replaced the SSD and did a completely fresh installation.
Cons:
- No USB-C port
- A 2.5 GB Ethernet port would be nice
- I tried to set it up connected to the Internet and by logging into to my Microsoft account. That was a mistake. It took forever and stuck in the final reboot after upgrading Windows. I made a Windows bootable USB stick with Rufus and configured it to boot into a local account. That worked.
- The supplied SSD is an M-2 2280 mm SATA. The slot will also handle an NVME PCI 3rd gen. The SATA supplied would only test at 500 MB sequential read, typical SATA speeds. The description on Amazon says that it includes an NVME PCI drive or an optional SATA drive. They shaved a few bucks off the cost I guess. I ordered a 500 GB NVME PCI 3rd gen drive and installed it in place of the SATA drive. My speeds on Crystal Diskmark went up 5 or 6 times on the sequential read test.
- The second SSD slot is PCI only so I cannot move the SATA drive that was supplied over as a second drive. It is single lane PCI so not very fast if I wanted to add another PCI drive.
General comments:
- I might regret later not spending a few more bucks and getting an AMD Ryzen processor. I think I might have shopped around and gotten something like a GMK in same price range but with a USB-C port and a PCI drive.
- My existing M95 mini has been a workhorse for two years. I moved it to another TV and it still works fine. I hope to get good performance and reliability from the Beelink mini.
- It is amazing you can get this kind of performance that you used to have to pay $800 or more for a desktop with this capability for not much more than the cost of a Windows license.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5QXTFHH?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
I tried Chrome OS Flex on an ancient laptop
I like to tinker with trying different OS's on my computers. I keep Windows on my main machines. I have an ancient Dell Studio dual core laptop that I used to test things. I have upgraded it over the years with a 500 GB WD SSD and a dual band WiFi card to replace the original 2.4 GHz only card.
I installed Linux Mint earlier this summer. That went OK. I have Linux on 2010 vintage desktop and two Raspberry Pi micro PC's so I was familiar with it. The install went OK but my WiFi did not work at first. I had to install a Realtek driver from the command line after connecting the PC to Ethernet to get it on the Internet. The machine performed OK, better than Windows 10 that I was running before, but I still thought it booted a little slow and was a bit slow overall.
I have been meaning to try Chrome OS Flex on this PC. I had held off last year because it was not listed in the list of compatible PC's.This week I decided I would try it anyway and downloaded the ISO file and used Rufus to create a bootable USB drive. I booted off the USB drive and used the "try it first" feature to run it off the USB stick. It was slow of course and I seemed to have trouble connecting with the internet although WiFi seemed to be connecting OK.
So I went ahead with the installation and it completed in about 10 minutes without a hitch. It found my WiFi card and connected to the internet. I have never owned a Chromebook so it took me a while to navigate around. The performance was impressive. I logged into my Google account and found my files on Google Drive. Chrome of course is the default browser. I found I could not connect to my network storage device that I plug into the USB port on my ASUS router. Chrome OS is supposed to support accessing network SMB drives but I guess the server has to be running SMB 3.0 or higher for Chrome OS to find it. I have not been able to connect to two other Windows PC's on the network either. You are supposed to be able to run Linux as a service from inside Chrome OS but that choice was grayed out on my PC.
Another negative is that it does not appear easy to access email accounts other than Gmail. The might be another email app I can download other than the built in Gmail but I have not had time to find one.
My initial impression is that Chrome OS Flex is a good choice for an older PC that cannot handle modern Windows and a good alternative for Linux if you do not need the power and versatility of Linux.
Really Microsoft? This is the best you can do with FTP servers in Windows?
Background:
When I went into the consulting business 15 years ago I registered a domain with a hosting company and purchased server space. The main purpose was to get my own email server. I chose Inmotionhosting. They have been fine. One of the things I get with my package is unlimited storage. I have pretty much retired now so I do not need anything but the email server any longer. I know I could swithc everything to Gmail and probably pay a small fee to Google but I have not been motivated to do that.
FTP Servier:
My Inmotion account includes FTP, Wordpress and a bunch of other things I do not use. I have used FTP a few times. I set up a subdomain with a weather page based on my Davis weather station and CumulusMX running on a Raspberry Pi. CumulusMX has a very good forum with people there who know Linux very well who will help. I used WinSCP and FTP to upload the weather page files to my server space. You can check it out: My Weather Page
I decided it might not be a bad idea to use my server space for an offsite backup for the several computers I have, especially my photo collection and business files. I wanted to be able to add the server space as a mapped drive or network location in Windows Explorer. I had done that before to share a 2 TB SSD attached to my Raspberry Pi running Samba. That's when I first began to really hate Windows. I could not get the shared resource to work. I could ping the RP but could not open the SSD folders. It turned out to be an obscure setting in group privileges that I had to change. Windows would work with Windows server but not a Linux server the way it was set in Windows 11.
I set up a network location for my FTP site. Windows even gives you the format when you tell it you want to set up an FTP server. The format is "FTP://mydomain.com". That worked after I figured out the Inmotion instructions forgot to tell you the server address has an ftp. in front of it.
I proceeded to upload a fairly large folder of photos using Windows Explorer and it worked very well. The trouble started when I decided to open some of the photos after the upload completed. When I clicked on any file Windows tried to open it up in MS Edge browser. Edge cannot do FTP so it just shows the startup page. I checked the file properties and Explorer recognized it was a .jpg file. I figured this must be an issue with the Default Apps setting. I made sure that .jpg files opened with the Photos app. I tired again and it still tried to use the useless MS Edge to open the file.
I went back to the default app settings and looked at the setting for FTP protocol. The only choices are MS Edge or my FTP software WinSCP. If I choose WinSCP all I can do when I click on a file is download it. Then I can navigate to the download folder and open it with Photos. What a PITA. Why can't Windows just open a file that it knows is a .jpg in Photos?
I decided to see how Linux handles FTP servers. I have an older PC that runs Linux Mint. As I guessed Linux Mint opened the server and let me save my user name and password. I made it a Favorite. I clicked on one of the photos and it opened right up. I tried other files and they opened in the default app too.
The lesson once again is that Windows works with Windows resources (maybe) but if you want to go outside of Windows you are on your own. I am sure there is some registry tweak or something I have missed but that's for another day. Maybe there is a way I can set up a server on my Inmotion server using something other than FTP that Windows works better with? If someone has experience in these things I am all ears.
My "atomic" wall clock jumped ahead by 20 minutes yesterday
When I got up yesterday I found my wall clock that is set by the WWVB time signal from Colorado had advanced by exactly 20 minutes. I had to manually reset it. Did anyone else experience this with one of these clocks? This clock has been the most reliable of any of these I have owned. Maybe I went through a time warp?
Installing WIndows 11 on Unsupported Hardware
There are several methods out there that are supposed to let you install Windows 11 on hardware that fails the Secure Boot/TPM and hardware requirements. I cannot seem to get them to work because MS seems to have blocked the downloading of Windows 11 Iso file. Could someone try to go to this site and see if they can get to the point of actually downloading the Iso file?
I am trying to download the English-US 64 bit version.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11
Here is the error I get:
We are unable to complete your request at this time. Some users, entities and locations are banned from using this service. For this reason, leveraging anonymous or location hiding technologies when connecting to this service is not generally allowed. If you believe that you encountered this problem in error, please try again. If the problem persists, you may contact Microsoft Support – Contact Us page for assistance. Refer to message code 715-123130 and 7377c0e0-d492-4026-aa5b-9f47808e0f25.
Did Yahoo remove my home page?
This morning when I opened my browser I noticed My Yahoo, my home page for over 30 years was gone. It instead it is redirecting to the generic Yahoo home page yahoo.com. Is this intentional or is something broken on Yahoo?
Congratulations to the DU team one and all!
At least for me the forum is performing very well tonight. Much better than '20 or '22. Of course I will never forget the hack in '16.
Medallion Signature Verification
I just went through two days of pure hell trying to find a bank to do a Medallion Signature Verification for a document I needed to send to Fidelity. I went to six bank branches (three of which I am a customer) and either they no longer provided the stamp or only did it for customers. I ended up driving three hours round trip to a Fidelity office in Naples where they accepted the form w/o the Medallion stamp since it was their document.
The form was a simple two page document to allow me to transfer money to my adult daughter's Fidelity account from time to time in excess of the default limit. On this particular form Fidelity requires a Medallion signature guaranty on a paper document. A simple notary is not acceptable.
The experience also taught me how hard it is to call a bank branch. On most of them I never was able to navigate voice automation hell and get to a real person.
Does anyone watch Peacock TV on the Samsung app?
I watch Peacock TV using the Samsung app on my 3 year old QLED TV's. Some channels have no sound. It started a couple of weeks ago. One channel in particular with no sound is the one that carries the Dan Patrick Show and Rich Eisen Show. The app works on Firestick and Chrome TV. I have tried a bunch of things like rebooting the TV and reinstalling the app.
Optum Rx Mail Order Pharmacy is terrible
I am on a Medicare Advantage plan offered by AARP/United Health Care. They use Optum Rx for mail order prescriptions. I changed from the UHC Medicare Supplemental plan to the Medicare Advantage plan at the beginning of 2021.
On the Supplemental plan CVS handled mail order prescriptions. I never had a single problem with them. When I switched over in January my first problem was that Optum RX said they could not port over my prescriptions that still had remaining refills from CVS. OK, no problem, I had my doctor write all new scripts to Optum. One of my prescriptions is for a combo high blood presure med. It is a generic for Exforge or Alodipine/Valsartan/Hydrochlorothiazide. I had never experienced any problem getting it from two other mail order pharmacies.
I waited for weeks on the BP medication and all Optum could tell me is that it was out of stock. No they did not know when it would be in stock. So finally when I got down to a week's worth of pills someone at Optum RX finally said they could fill it with individual prescriptions for the components. However my doctor would have to wrote new scripts. So that is how I proceeded. Now I had to take two extra pills every day.
Last month at my six month checkup I asked my doctor to try to see if I could get the combination drug again. So he apparently wrote the prescription for Exforge, which is the brand name. Optum RX first sent me an email saying order needed a clarification from the doctor. The next email said the order was cancelled. The third email said they were filling the Exforge order and the cost was $1450 for a 90 day supply! The cost of the generic I was supposed to be getting was $0.00. The fourth email said the prescription was under review.
This is a simple medication that I have taken for over 10 years and never had a problem getting. Now Optum Rx is wearing out my patience. I have checked the AARP forums and others have found them to be terrible as well.
Now I have no clue what is going on. Their customer service folks are polite but are all ESL clueless and spend the last 5 minutes on the phone trying to get you to say they have solved the issue (they never do) and making sure you give them a good rating.
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Member since: 2001Number of posts: 4,358