My thoughts – Paul's Tech Talk

So you want to upgrade your SSD on the Steam Deck, huh?

PaulOctober 12, 20222 Replies

Upgrading is Possible

I’m not going to say it won’t be easy to do. It just depends on how much of knowledge you have to do this. I bought the 64gb Model because well it was the cheaper of the 3. I figured it would be cheaper to do it myself than to pay them to do it. I am looking now and think I did a great job with this because I didn’t have to spend the 600 dollars for the 512gb model. In fact there are more bigger kinds of the SSD that I can install that will go beyond the 512gb that they are selling. If you want to do this, I really suggest checking out the Steam Deck Teardown that the IFIXIT guys did. I simply love the idea of tearing it down and being able to MOD it, if I so choice. I’m going to talk about the best choices you have to upgrade your storage in the Steam Deck. These are just my recommendations on which ones will help you and save you money in the process.

Buy NVME 2230 30 mm SSDs

So we start to talk about the kind of SSD’s you will need to buy in order to upgrade your Steam Deck. You will need to find SSDs that are one sided NVME. They can not have chips on both sides of the card, there would be no room for it. You’re going to look for the type you might want but here are some good options that I see on Amazon.

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SkHynix 256GB PCIe NVMe 2230 SSD for 31$

Here’s the first one that I recommend for anyone who might just want to upgrade to a little bit bigger size. This however will not give you as much room as you might want but it will give you enough room to start off with and then you can SD cards to do the rest. As you can see this one will be a good deal for you right now. You can quickly and easily upgrade your Steam Deck to a bigger storage. It however isn’t the only one I would recommend.

Micron SSD 512GB M.2 2230 30mm NVMe PCIe 4.0 for 99$

Now here’s a great deal going from jusst paying 399$ pluss tax to 499$ Plus tax. Saving you over 130$, if you just did it yourself. So this one should fit Steam Deck and I don’t see any problems with it. It is small enough and fast enough to use with the Steam Deck. You won’t see it slowing you down as you are gaming on the Steam Deck.

SN530 m.2 2230 SSD 1TB NVMe PCIe For 184$

This seems to be the best deal around because you can get almost a 1 tb for the best amount of money. The only problem with this one is you really only get 866gb of space and the rest is taken up by design of the chip. I don’t know if you want that or not but at least this one is available to you to buy. You might be able to find other 1tb that will get closer to the 1tb limit but not many and they start to get more expensive.

2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD Gen 4.0 for 539$

Finally we get to this bad boy, it is a bit expensive for my tastes but at least this is a Samsungs SSD. So it will be blazing fast but I don’t know if I would pay 500$ for a 2tb when you can easy get Micro SD’s for cheaper. I guess those who can afford to pay it will most likely. I am sure there will be other manufacturers who will come out with 2tb but for right now this one is the only one on Amazon and claims to be able to upgrade the Steam Deck. I suspect your will only get like 1.7tb of space off this SSD but it will be massive. If you have a lot of games, this would definately let you put them on the Steam Deck.

Installing the Steam OS

So you bought a bigger SSd and went to install it but you will need to install the Steam OS. You can follower the instructions on how to create a Steam OS recovery USB drive. I personally might go with my own and use CloneZilla and clone the hard drive and move it to the new one after you install the new SSD. Then grab something like Gparted and expand the disk to the size you need that would be my recommendations so you don’t loose any of you games or have to reinstall the games that you have already installed. You will need a USB stick that has the size you want to clone so if you have a 64gb then you will need one that is at least that big. You can use a dock or something like that, See my previous post about Docks. to use multiple USB sticks. Hope this helps. Did you find this informative, why not share it and let others know that it is possible to upgrade your Steam Deck.

Why I uninstalled Microsoft Windows 11 Preview build?

PaulAugust 17, 2021

I reinstalled Windows 10 and Deleted Windows 11!

I don’t know about everyone else but after my week long expedition into Windows 11, I just couldn’t handle the speed issues of the Windows 11 and the encryption. I know it isn’t worth my time after all that to down grade to Windows 10 but I I felt it wasn’t going to get any smoother than that. I also would of had to have deleted the partition anyways since it was locked to secure boot and UEFI. I really didn’t want to try to convert it back to MBR. I got my trust Windows 10 DVD and started it up and found the partitions I wanted to delete and then I reinstall Windows 10. I will say that after wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Windows 10, and turning off all the Encryption crap and just booting into Windows has seen my load times go back to normal.

Windows 11 Problems

First off the main problem I had with Windows was the need to encrypt the Hard drive and I was using a NVME which should of been way faster than a standard SSD or Hard drive to boot up. That wasn’t the case, I’d see the swirling load screen on my system for several seconds and then it would finally boot. Due to the encryption that Microsoft says is required to run Windows 11, it just doesn’t cut it for me. Even playing games like Minecraft was screwy and that isn’t even taking up that much memory at the most 2 GB or if you know how to do it 4 GB. I’d play with Minecraft and the system would take forever to load up the next part of the map or even play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and It wouldn’t be sluggish there also.

The Start Menu

This was something that was just annoying, I think Microsoft wanted to look like an Apple device and bring the apple guys over because of the look. I can’t understand why you would prevent people from reverting back to the old Windows 10 setup. I can only wonder what people will do to find out what they are running and if it will actually be a good idea to keep the start menu in the middle of the screen. Some people have these really long screens and it might help them. I personally would like to move the taskbar anywhere on the outside of the screen, top or maybe right or left of the screen. You wouldn’t be able to do that either. Which will make people really mad.

I can’t see this being all about security

It just can’t be about viruses and malware or even the recent months of ransomware attacks that have been happening in the past year, due to the Covid19 situation around the world. I have talked about how Windows will ultimately fail and we will see virus writers come up with some good viruses and malwares to compromise the Secure boot and even the TPM that is trying to be forced to be used by Windows. I am sure it isn’t over, and if Microsoft isn’t going to change, we’ll see people leaving left and right to go to operating system that are much less restrictive and more open such as Linux. In the end, I went back to Windows 10 because of the speed and performance, and I am not even thinking about Windows 11 until I find out what they will require when the system is finally released. This will be a big deal to some but me, I am not interested in the so called security features of Windows 11.

More advice for new computer technicians

PaulAugust 13, 2021

Job Searching is outdated!

In My previous post, Some advice for computer technicians, I did talk about what a technician usually has to do to fix or repair a system. He even has to deal with some very difficult customers.

Now with that said I wanted to change directions and talk about the job search area and what you should expect. Being a computer technician that has the educational background but not the experience of actually being a computer technician, can be quite frustrating sometimes when it comes to job searching. It can just make me scratch my head when they require a 1 to 2 or even 5 years of experience to even start doing the job we went to school to get the education to do the job. How is any employer going to over a entry-level job and still require some sort of experience that shouldn’t even be a requirement to get the job.

This just seems like someone is not understanding what the word entry-level means and why it shouldn’t require much to get that job or position.

Don’t Apply for every job

This one just seems like it needs to be said. Just because you have the education, don’t apply to all the jobs that you are interested in before doing a little research. Figure out what you want to do and how much you are worth. Use places like Glassdoor and indeed to make sure the company you are considering applying for has a good reputation or at least got some good reviews by previous employees. You know you will have to deal with bad bosses from time to time, so you can figure out if you want to apply for a job that has a bad boss or if you might just hold of on taking that job or applying for that job.

You are worth more

This one is even better because some people will take these low paying jobs because they want to get their foot in the door or get the experience. I say don’t do it, find an employer who will pay what you are worth. I could go down the street and get paid to bag groceries than maybe an employer who only wants to pay me 12 or 13 dollars to start off on. That just boggles me, that I went to get an education and still can get a job that pays more than what I got my education for. If we stopped allowing them to do this by not applying or accepting those jobs, the pay will eventually go up but we must be able to say no.

Don’t expect that Dream job

I say this with some trepidation that we shouldn’t expect to find that dream job right away. In fact, we will probably have to work at a dead end job for a year or two at the very least to be able to have the requirements to get that dream job. In truthfulness, you could easily find that dream job right after getting your education but the chances on that are slim to none, I’d say. This is something, I’ve seen time and time again that people loss hope right after getting their education to be stuck in a dead end job. This is the time to keep looking for a better job and create notifications to help keep you looking for a better job down the road.

Avoid Job text Bots

This one seems quite common. You get the text that says you’d be a great fit or something along the lines and you ask a question in text and it says “Perfect . . . .“. These are just bots that I have come across, this is how lazy recruiters are trying to recruit people for their job. If anything, his means the job might not be all that it is worth and they are having people quite left and right and this is the easiest way to try to find people to fill the job position. Seems kind of a catch 22 in my book, if they aren’t going to actually read my question and answer it then the job isn’t for me. I’ve turned them off by texting stop when I find out it was bot that answered me or when I get the perfect or some other way to say we want to talk to you before they even read your text.

These are just what I’ve seen in the job market as of late and thought I would talk about some of these and others ways to find a job in the computer repair or a technician jobs. You can even figure out how much a computer technician should make by using Glassdoor or even Indeed to find out the salary rages someone would be making in your area.

What are some things you’ve seen that makes you cringe when looking for a job as a computer technician? Have you seen some of this? Leave a comment below and tell me your experiences as a job seeker. If this post has helped you consider using my affiliate links to say thank you for this great post.

Writing for writing sake, is that doable?

PaulJune 24, 2021

Blogging for Fun

I love to teach. I am not sure if that is related to blogging but I have found the last few weeks while at school, I think that is where blogging has been my way to teach in my own way. I am currently blogging in my english comp classes. I don’t know why but I think my creative juices are better when I am allow myself to write this really informative and great essays for my classmates. That’s one thing that I’ve recently started to do in my college board. They have this board where you can discuss anything and everything you want. I’ve been blogging/discussing the tips and tricks to almost everything under the sun from writing a good essay outline to the fundamentals of writing an essay.

My Blog

Lately as you can tell, I’ve dragged over my essays and such to this blog because I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned or talked about. I really do love to share my knowledge and maybe show people that they can do the things like I am doing. You just have to step out of your comfort zone. I love to write and it just seems to be getting better and better with every time I blog. Lately I’ve seen how my blog has become more useful for others and even me. I’ve wrote some really good information about the IATA Travel Pass. There have been post in that are quite long but I think are really needed in the way they are using the app. I started putting what I wrote in my academic area onto my blog to see what people think. I started this almost 2 months ago, kept adding more and more each day every other day.

Education is Good

Not even me expected to love the academic of college life. I must say this has been a real pleasure to blog about this stuff and see what types of responses I get. I am sure I’ve lost people or I have gained people. I don’t know who is reading my blog or even saying much at all. I think that’s where it can be hard as a blogger to see the impact of your blog on your readers. It can be very difficult to know if people are coming back or if they are just searching for one thing and leaving. I am really curious as to know what people think or are they coming back to my blog.

Comments welcomed

I am curious to hear what people think about me posting my essays or my discussion on my blog. I have even more discussions I can share with you and others if people are really curious to see what teachers are trying to teach in this day and age. Why not leave a comment and tell me what you think? Do you like it or hate it? Do you want more or want more meat? As a writer I want to know what my readers are thinking and also what they want more of. So please leave a comment and tell me what you think.