Thanks, that’s a significant detail. It also seems like Bluetooth 5.4 adds nothing relevant to my expected use cases: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/nordic-blog/b/blog/posts/whats-new-in-bluetooth-v5-4-an-overview

Is there such a thing as a particularly good PCIE -> m.2 E key adapter or are they all pretty much equivalent? Specifically, are some antennae better than others or they’re pretty much simple enough devices that they’re going to be equivalent if they’re remotely aiming at the same spec?

Unfortunately, it seems like Intel may be a bad bet in terms of use as an AP:

Intel cards are only usable as access points either in the 2.4 GHz band or (very rarely) on channel 36. This hardware restriction is stemming from the fact that they don’t have the circuitry required for reacting to radar pulses, and therefore rely on the “proper” access point to tell them about radars.

Also it needs a USB header on my motherboard as apparently the BT aspect is based on that bus. So perhaps I’d be better off with a fully USB adapter, I wonder if there is a downside to that approach… Edit: PCIE is the way to go

One thing that would be useful to understand is the distinction between CMR and SMR

I got a nice deal on the x280 and am happy with it, was also looking at the various X1 carbon. Two criteria I had were I wanted USB-C charging (since I have those chargers around and they can handle these laptops) and a single battery (eg. the T470s I have from work is nice but it has two small capacity batteries that each cost the same to replace as the full size single ones in the carbon and x280). One thing to keep in mind is some of the earlier X1 carbon don’t support NVME SSD (I think it started with 5th gen?)

Edit: another thing to consider is soldered RAM. Part of why my x280 was cheap was it’s only 8gb and can’t be upgraded. Since you’re looking at lighter weight things and using FOSS (and perhaps open to tinkering with things like ZRAM) that might be a useful aspect to focus on because there is probably a glut of such machines given how memory inefficient things are lately with every trivial app running a whole browser engine. OTOH, depending how many tabs you tend to have open and how many electron apps you tend to keep floating around, 8gb might start to feel cramped. Especially if you think you might want some VMs around.

More detail / similar concepts if you’re not a video person: https://www.centerforbuilding.org/blog/we-we-cant-build-family-sized-apartments-in-north-america

Next time I look for a small laptop to have handy one thing I’m going to be sure to prioritise is: how much battery does it use while suspended? I’d really like to not need to have it switch to hibernate after 30m of sleep or w/e and ideally just plug it in overnight like a phone.

https://explainshell.com/

Good. This law is ridiculous and I’m glad it won’t give the result they intended. Being able to link to things freely is a very basic part of the web, we really shouldn’t mess with that. And Facebook is a ridiculous place to get news from so it may have ancillary benefits as well in terms of maybe slightly improving public discourse and encouraging people onto other platforms with more transparency around their content weighting and data use practices.