It is with great sadness that I must report my Alienware laptop sadly played it's last game last night. One minute I was catching Pals and then suddenly nothing :/
It's pretty clear that the voltage regulator on the motherboard is fucked beyond repair.
I was hoping to replace it soon anyway, but had hoped it would get in to next year at least. I really can't complain about getting 9 and a half years of gaming out of it though.
Time to find a new laptop, maybe an ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 with a 5080. The 5090 version isn't worth the extra £1.5K in my opinion. We'll see...
For some reason they had an Indycar race in Washington DC yesterday and this dumb old fuck got to wave the green flag to start the race. First he had to shown which end of the flag to wave and then he just move his arm up and down with dumb expression on his face! Race enjoyment ruined! XD
I finally decided it was time for an e-bike, and a normal one.
So I got this Giant AnyTour E+ 4 DD with a 625kW battery through a work lease plan. Which means I don't have to pay for it at all :D
And so far it's been great! I'm still sweating but that's mainly due to the weather. It has 7 levels of assist yet I only use the 2nd to lowest (Tour), although if you change it to a higher level just to scale a hill and set it back to a lower level it doesn't effect the battery much. Now it does have this annoying resistance at 26.2 km/h (cause government law) but with sheer leg power you can stomp past that. And downhill it easily goes 50 km/h :D
The current range is about 85 to 90 km or about 8 or 9 days before a recharge. And it's recharged in 4 hours or so.
I did have to get used to the weight, at ~27 kg it's a heavy beast but it does have an 85Nm motor for assist.
The GT Omega I had before was too difficult to add additional hardware. The new Sim-Lab GT1 Pro Sim Racing Cockpit uses 80x40 alu profiles. Now I can add my HOTAS to this rig, and later I'll use it with my VR headset.
