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Desert Bus posted:My laptop and my mom's laptop are both showing their age and slowing down no matter how much software management I do. I don't feel like going through the wipe/reinstall BS. Who makes a decent laptop these days? These are both Lenovo's and have served well. I don't follow hardware new at all anymore. A bunch of people make good consumer laptops these days, quality has really improved in the last 4 or 5 years. They have a general budget? I'd say you can get a very useful web browser/light productivity laptop for around $600+. If you want to do gaming, some really nice ones start around $800 with a big jump around the $1,100-$1,200 mark.
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Dec 22, 2022 20:47
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Lockback posted:A bunch of people make good consumer laptops these days, quality has really improved in the last 4 or 5 years. They have a general budget? I'd say you can get a very useful web browser/light productivity laptop for around $600+. If you want to do gaming, some really nice ones start around $800 with a big jump around the $1,100-$1,200 mark. I play Hearthstone and watch TV, my mom browses the internet. These don't need to be high end, just not lovely. The less time I have to spend cleaning up all the pre-installed gunk on them the better. I just need something that works.
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Dec 22, 2022 22:18
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I've been seriously eyeballing used/refurb Thinkpad t14 gen1's on ebay as a machine I can toss in a bag and have with me that's more powerful than my 14in Chromebook, but not as monstrous as my Asus gaming machine. Nice ones with either a quad core 10th gen Intel or 4000 series Ryzen (FHD displays) seem to be going for sub-$500, and they should be relatively tank like. I could probably stretch many more years out of a machine like that. Might be something to consider as well Desert Bus.
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Dec 22, 2022 23:14
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Desert Bus posted:I play Hearthstone and watch TV, my mom browses the internet. These don't need to be high end, just not lovely. The less time I have to spend cleaning up all the pre-installed gunk on them the better. I just need something that works. Honestly? You want a MacBook Air. You can get them for about 900, 12+ hour battery life, no fans. Will run hearthstone. It's the best fit. Otherwise I'd maybe look at the Asus ZenBook line or maybe HP. Avoid Dell at that price.
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Dec 23, 2022 00:31
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Mental Hospitality posted:I've been seriously eyeballing used/refurb Thinkpad t14 gen1's on ebay as a machine I can toss in a bag and have with me that's more powerful than my 14in Chromebook, but not as monstrous as my Asus gaming machine. Nice ones with either a quad core 10th gen Intel or 4000 series Ryzen (FHD displays) seem to be going for sub-$500, and they should be relatively tank like. I love the t14s. I dunno if i'd call them tanks but they've solid and would be a great "toss in my bag" laptop. Although, again, MacBook Air is another good option here.
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Dec 23, 2022 00:36
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Really the bar is pretty low for browsing internet and playing videos. I'm not going to recommend it to someone's mom but a $300 Chinese laptop with a new Celeron would do perfectly fine. They'll even have very good displays nowadays and non-useless amounts of RAM and an actual SSD. E: no fans on most of these either
mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 01:00
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Lockback posted:Honestly? You want a MacBook Air. You can get them for about 900, 12+ hour battery life, no fans. Will run hearthstone. It's the best fit. LOL if I go Apple based on a random rec, but you are not wrong? I seriously didn't even consider them. No fans is good. The fewer moving parts the better.
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Dec 23, 2022 01:44
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I used to spend months picking and choosing all the right pieces to make a nice computer and now I would rather cut my hands off than figure that all out. All the laptops look the same and I've got no clue who makes a solid machine that I can just unbox and move on with my life. I used to love computers but a couple decades of fixing them has made me never want to deal with them again.
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Dec 23, 2022 01:51
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Your mom would probably be perfectly happy with a Chromebook.
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Dec 23, 2022 01:53
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TITTIEKISSER69 posted:Your mom would probably be perfectly happy with a Chromebook. She has one as her secondary "craft" computer. I don't really ask questions as to why it can't be her primary laptop.
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Dec 23, 2022 02:08
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The new MacBook Airs really are incredible devices, so long as you're happy with the apple ecosystem more or less as-is. You can't customise it a whole lot.
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Dec 23, 2022 02:25
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Desert Bus posted:LOL if I go Apple based on a random rec, but you are not wrong? I seriously didn't even consider them. No fans is good. The fewer moving parts the better. I was an adamant anti apple guy for years and I maintain that was the right call until the M1s. They really are a game changer in terms of a CPU that is well engineered for what it should do. I still have a x86 gaming machine and gaming laptop, but I have no objections to suggesting an M1, especially as apple has priced the Air firmly at mid level. Walk through what it can do and honestly pick one up and if it's a bad fit return it. For a kitchen table laptop it really is in it's own class. I'm not sure the M2s are worth it yet, though I've seen sales recently that were compelling.
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Dec 23, 2022 05:31
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Desert Bus posted:LOL if I go Apple based on a random rec, but you are not wrong? I seriously didn't even consider them. No fans is good. The fewer moving parts the better. Hands down the new MacBook Airs are the best laptops on the market, if you're not married to windows and certain windows only video games that's what you should be buying Sometime next year I'll probably buy one because my Thinkpad struggles with rust plugins in vs code
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Dec 23, 2022 05:42
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My parents both recently got M1 MacBooks after being iPhone users for years and honestly if you're into that ecosystem and don't mind the price they're lovely machines and they've enjoyed them a hell of a lot more than the Windows laptops they've owned. I think the speed and efficiency of their new processors combined with the build quality are very enticing. I may be a sucker for high powered Windows gaming machines but I can certainly see the appeal of them, especially the Air's. Passive cooling, long battery life, and high performance are very rare things in the laptop space. My Kompanio 828 Chromebook is passively cooled, will run for over 12 hours on battery, but its ancient cell phone cores show themselves often. I'd love an M2 Air with 16GB of ram but every time I look at the price of one I cringe.
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Dec 23, 2022 06:39
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A lot of it is personal preference. My Boomer stepfather likes Macs, and has both an iMac and one of their laptops. My Boomer mom doesn't like using them and has a Windows laptop. Neither one of them are what I would call technologically proficient, but they still know what they like. They both use iPhones, though.
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Dec 23, 2022 07:19
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Yeah nothing against Macs but it's not exactly my cup of tea. And I'm finding having a touchscreen and stylus increasingly handy in smaller laptops especially, and Apple's answer there of course is to get an ipad, you loser. Seems like the 6800 Ryzens are pretty drat close to M1/M2s for most practical purposes too tbh so ehh.
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Dec 23, 2022 15:03
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Biggest problem with Windows laptops right now is modern standby. My M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14 hasn't been plugged in for two days. It responds instantly from sleep as soon as I touch the trackpad. I've been using it on and off and the battery is still at 58%. I prefer my XPS 13 Plus for most things because even after a year I find MacOS kinda annoying to use, but it will chew through like 10% of battery after going to sleep before it finally hibernates and that just is not conducive to on and off use. I can easily see an arm MacBook that sees about an hour or so use a day go a full week between charges.
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Dec 23, 2022 15:21
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mobby_6kl posted:Seems like the 6800 Ryzens are pretty drat close to M1/M2s for most practical purposes too tbh so ehh. If they had a passively cooled, 4 watt 6800HS I would agree but, uhh, they don't. Like I'm not saying MacBooks are superior across the board, but for their market space the MBA dominates their spot as a kitchen table/light productivity/ surprisingly decent gaming (though with lots of titles just not supported, though less of those than you'd think outside of AAA). The pros are a little tougher because as their cost really shoots up but that's what I use for work and it's a drat sweet machine. I probably wouldn't buy one for personal use though.
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Dec 23, 2022 15:21
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I don't know what the TDP is on those Ryzens but the Z13 for example can apparently last 15.5 hours of general productivity work on a 50Wh battery which is like 3W avg for the whole system (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/lenovo-thinkpad-z13-review-amds-ryzen-chips-are-the-best-part-of-an-oddball-laptop/). Sure even lower is better but at that point it seems pretty  For a kitchen table browsing an actual passively cooled 4-6W Jasper Lake Celeron is fine, as I mentioned, for much less money. bull3964 posted:Biggest problem with Windows laptops right now is modern standby.
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Dec 23, 2022 15:35
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mobby_6kl posted:I don't know what the TDP is on those Ryzens but the Z13 for example can apparently last 15.5 hours of general productivity work on a 50Wh battery which is like 3W avg for the whole system (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/lenovo-thinkpad-z13-review-amds-ryzen-chips-are-the-best-part-of-an-oddball-laptop/). Sure even lower is better but at that point it seems pretty Sure, but that's a $2k laptop and I'm talking about a MBA that you can get right now for $780 or a 16GB (which isn't as needed for general stuff on MacOS) for $1199. And a Celeron is cheaper but then you lose a lot of the performance boost. So yes, if you're willing to compromise on performance or spend 2x as much you can get laptops that compete. Also, the 15.5 hours of battery life is using a 200 nit screen and sitting in ms office. The MBA can get well over 20 with that test. The 12 is actual use. H2H Nanoreview had the M1 MBA as almost 33% longer battery than the Z13. https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/lenovo-thinkpad-z13-vs-apple-macbook-air-m1-2020 The Z13 is still an impressive machine, it can do stuff the MBA can't, but they are priced in two very different markets. edit: digging around more you can find that Z13 for $1,500, so I concede that is definitely a competitor for the MBP, especially if you want touch. The MBA still stands by itself. Lockback fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 15:51
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bull3964 posted:Biggest problem with Windows laptops right now is modern standby. I don’t think modern standby works at all on my 2022 Zephyrus G14. In fact, I don’t think sleep has ever worked on it. I have no clue how something so basic could get hosed up so bad. There’s a bios mod you can do to reenable S3 sleep and I’m tempted to do that because shutting down the laptop all the time is annoying.
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Dec 23, 2022 16:04
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I've tried re-enabling S3 on a few laptops in the past and it always seemed to make standby time even worse. Not that you can do it with a lot of the newer stuff. https://youtu.be/OHKKcd3sx2c Linus thinks that one of the bigger problems is that if you put the thing to sleep WHILE connected to power, it stays in network connected mode even after you yank the power while sleeping which allows it to do a lot more while in sleep.
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Dec 23, 2022 16:28
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Modern Standby (and the forced adoption of it) in laptops is one of the dumbest decisions in decades. It kind of makes sense for an always plugged in desktop to have a more active standby mode, but I basically can't trust a laptop now to throw it in a bag unless I hibernate or shut down completely. Resuming from S3 sleep was only a minor inconvenience with spinning disks, and the major battery life tradeoff just to have machine come back on a tiny bit faster is just totally boneheaded.
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Dec 23, 2022 18:05
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Yeah modern standby sucks but the way Lenovo handle it is an ok workaround. You basically set times that you'll use the device (or it can learn these over time based on battery use patterns) and it'll automatically go from hibernation to sleep or vv. So I've got mine set to hibernate after 9:30pm if it's been in sleep mode for more than 30 mins, then it automatically goes from hibernation back to active sleep mode at 8:30am. It doesn't stop the device losing 10% batter per day unnecessarily even if it's not in use, but it means I don't have to plug it in over night.
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Dec 23, 2022 18:15
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It is annoying to put my closed laptop in my bag, thinking it's asleep, commute to the office, open it up and find a Starbucks wifi login prompt.
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Dec 23, 2022 18:33
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bike tory posted:Yeah modern standby sucks but the way Lenovo handle it is an ok workaround. You basically set times that you'll use the device (or it can learn these over time based on battery use patterns) and it'll automatically go from hibernation to sleep or vv. So I've got mine set to hibernate after 9:30pm if it's been in sleep mode for more than 30 mins, then it automatically goes from hibernation back to active sleep mode at 8:30am.
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Dec 23, 2022 18:48
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I wanted a 2 in 1 and the MSI Summit Flip Evo with a 13 inch screen and a 1280p processor is 1099 CAD. That seems like a good deal, although people reported overheating problems with the original 1185 processor. Should I avoid it? Edit: this is the A12M model with a 1tb hard drive, 16gb of ram, fhd display. I guess I could buy it to test it out. redbrouw fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Dec 24, 2022 |
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Dec 24, 2022 12:08
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I just got a new laptop, and my dad also got a new laptop, only one of those being Christmas related. What's a good affordable wireless (or short-wired) mouse that I could get a pair of for myself and a present? Don't need anything fancy beyond two buttons and a wheel.
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Dec 24, 2022 15:42
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I just got a new laptop, and my dad also got a new laptop, only one of those being Christmas related. What's a good affordable wireless (or short-wired) mouse that I could get a pair of for myself and a present? Don't need anything fancy beyond two buttons and a wheel. I use these, but I consider them essentially disposable. But at ~ $10 a pop I don't really care what happens to it and replace them when they die (between 6mos and 18 mos, I'd be shocked if they last longer than that). USB receivers are better for windows, for Mac BT is fine. redbrouw posted:I wanted a 2 in 1 and the MSI Summit Flip Evo with a 13 inch screen and a 1280p processor is 1099 CAD. That seems like a good deal, although people reported overheating problems with the original 1185 processor. Should I avoid it? MSI in general doesn't invest heavily in cooling, though if they didn't screw anything up I'd expect the 1280p to be better heat management under low load.
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Dec 24, 2022 17:32
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Lockback posted:I use these, but I consider them essentially disposable. But at ~ $10 a pop I don't really care what happens to it and replace them when they die (between 6mos and 18 mos, I'd be shocked if they last longer than that). Did you mean a mouse in particular you forgot to link, or...?
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Dec 24, 2022 18:10
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redbrouw posted:I wanted a 2 in 1 and the MSI Summit Flip Evo with a 13 inch screen and a 1280p processor is 1099 CAD. That seems like a good deal, although people reported overheating problems with the original 1185 processor. Should I avoid it? Doubt it'll have heat problems but you'll get significantly less battery life with the 1280p than you would the 11th gen ones, if that's a consideration. It's got a big battery though so should be fine.
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Dec 24, 2022 20:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Did you mean a mouse in particular you forgot to link, or...? FINE https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B088NC5XLZ/?th=1
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Dec 24, 2022 20:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I just got a new laptop, and my dad also got a new laptop, only one of those being Christmas related. What's a good affordable wireless (or short-wired) mouse that I could get a pair of for myself and a present? Don't need anything fancy beyond two buttons and a wheel. I've grown really fond of the Logitech Triathlon mouse. Can pair to up 3 devices using either the included dongle or Bluetooth. The shape works well for my hand, too. https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m720-triathlon.910-004790.html
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Dec 24, 2022 22:47
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Microsoft mobile wireless mouse 4000 if you care about portability.
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Dec 26, 2022 03:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I just got a new laptop, and my dad also got a new laptop, only one of those being Christmas related. What's a good affordable wireless (or short-wired) mouse that I could get a pair of for myself and a present? Don't need anything fancy beyond two buttons and a wheel. The clicks are quiet, it uses a single AA battery so there's no "the battery will stop working properly after a while" issue like you often get with cheap built-in lithium, a single rechargeable AA battery lasts for like 8 months of frequent use on one charge which is loving crazy since a battery literally just sitting doing nothing also discharges in about that long (using the dongle, I expect bluetooth is less efficient), I've dropped it several times which makes the top pop off but then it just magnets right back on and everything is fine. It's quite small, so good for portability but maybe not good for someone with giant ham hands. Response time and precision are good, it works well on arbitrary surfaces, I have nothing bad to say about it. I liked it so much I bought a second one to use with my desktop. Edit for more meaningful context, I've had one for nearly three years and the other for a bit over a year, and no problems with either, except for a few minutes I thought one of them had stopped working because the battery died and when I put a fresh battery in I put it in the wrong way so it still didn't work. roomforthetuna fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 26, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 05:38
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I left my laptop charger at my family's & need to buy a new one. I'm using a lenovo yoga 7 but might get a new laptop within the next few years. Do I need to bother worrying about 65w vs 100w chargers or just go with the 65w?
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Dec 26, 2022 18:03
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My Yoga came with a 65W charger. You'll probably be fine it just might charge slower when running at full power. Mine will even charge from a 20W charger, just very slowly.
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Dec 26, 2022 18:25
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Thanks! Is "the laptop of tomorrow" going to need 100w?
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Dec 26, 2022 18:33
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Thanks! Is "the laptop of tomorrow" going to need 100w? Even if it doesn't need 100w, it might take advantage for fast charging... or it might not. Hard to say. I've been trying to minimize the power supplies for travel size but if that's not a huge concern than yeah vvv mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 26, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 18:37
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If your laptop can take 100w and you need to buy one anyway why cheap out? It can't be that much difference and the 100w will be backwards compatible.
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Dec 26, 2022 19:08
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