Michael Staake

In this article, I’m going to cover the basics of choosing the right laptop computer. I can’t cover everything, but I’ll discuss the basics of selecting a good computer that will deliver an enjoyable experience for years to come.

Can Qualcomm, Lenovo, and Microsoft come together to make a real Mac Mini competitor? The short version is that while it’s a good effort, it’s not quite there yet.

Someone who’s never owned or even driven an EV will find countless stories on social media about a 2012 Model S needing a $20K battery replacement or an older Nissan Leaf that’s down to 20 miles of range. But in the real world, replacing a traditional gas car with an electric one could save you […]

There are a hundred ways you can start selling online or taking orders, but my two favorite ones are Shopify and WooCommerce. While they’re both e-commerce platforms, and they’re both awesome in their own way, there are some key differences that you should be aware of. In this article, I’m going to give a brief […]

As much as I dislike Apple, I have to admit that Apple Silicon changed the world, for the better. Even M1 was truly impressive for its insane efficiency, and now we’re already at M5. Microsoft and Qualcomm have bet big on their own ARM-based personal computers. Let’s discuss if that is awesome, or awful.

When General Motors announced in late 2024 that it was shutting down the BrightDrop division, scattering the team, and letting their electric van program die on the vine, most observers called it a “portfolio simplification.” It wasn’t. It was one of the most self-sabotaging moves an American automaker has made in the EV era.

In 2025, a $35 second-hand laptop might sound like e-waste, but for many people it’s still surprisingly useful. Whether it’s retirees on a fixed income browsing the web and reading the news, field techs needing a cheap laptop for on-site work, or anyone looking for a ‘beater’ machine, an old, inexpensive computer often fits the […]

ChatGPT and Grok are super cool, but what if you want to run your AI stuff in your home, on your equipment, with full control over the privacy and security of your information? Well, it’s totally doable, completely free (assuming you already have the hardware or are willing to invest in a powerful enough system), […]

I recently set up an AI server in my home, based on a Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tower Gen 2 (Intel). It worked fine with a single GPU, but upon adding the second GPU, I was getting a bunch of “Error of this Agent is reported first” errors spammed across the screen. They’d show up upon […]

While you’d probably never use a laptop as a server in a production environment, for a homelab, laptops actually make great Proxmox hosts. They use little power, and the battery is basically a built in UPS. However, an issue you may run into is that the laptop’s display is always on. This is typically undesirable. […]