Windows 8 was actually a big cleanup over 7. We got a much improved task manager, Explorer got a ribbon, copy operations now showed a graph, and performance was very similar to Win7. It was just that Microsoft overshadowed these improvements with the UI disaster and telemetry.
Okay that’s not just me, thank god. I thought something was just wrong with the sound deadening on my Forester, especially because my 30 year old Mazda 323 is at least 50% quieter. Nope, its what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.
Am I safe in guessing Queensland?
anything decent with an RJ-45 port
Not sure if the current generation still has it, but work issued us techs with ThinkPad L14 Gen 3 laptops and I’ve been happy with it as a work device. It has an RJ-45 (was considered a requirement when they procured the laptops for techs) and mine has a Ryzen 5 Pro 5675U. Only complaints I would have for it is soldered USB-C connectors (which double as the only power source for the machine) and keyboard isn’t as nice as my personal T480 although definitely still fine.
I would caution against the 12th gen Intel i7 ThinkPads, we’ve had multiple internally have overheating issues or stuck in connected standby. My colleague wishes he never replaced his original work issue (same as mine).
“disable AI” checkbox
They’re not that nice, if they did it, it would just be “Reduce AI experiences”
Seconding LMDE, been on it for a year on my study laptop. Literally never ever had a problem so far, and being an “out of box” distro there’s minimal work needed to daily drive.
Working at a computer shop, Lenovo ThinkPads are usually pretty fine, but the main fault we’ve seen with them is lack or completely missing thermal compound. On one occasion I saw my colleague’s machine not post, and IIRC we had to reset the CMOS to get it back up.
Enshittification truly is a shame, because my old school GPS actually does this already (Turn left past the McDonald’s) and while I have no idea whether it’s paid promotion or not on my device, I like that feature. If that feature is equally applied to any known business as a landmark (heck, even other services like police stations, fire stations, etc.) it would be appreciated by users.
Instead, and here we are beating this drum again, capitalism gets its grubby fingers in this pie too and uses it for further advertising, turning a good feature into a bad one.
God the school’s response is so sleazy and unapologetic
So you can use KeePass + Syncthing to synchronize the database file across your devices. Keeps it distributed and I’ve heard a lot of recommendations for this, although I haven’t tried it.
If you don’t want to do that, Bitwarden is well regarded and probably would suit your needs based on what you’ve said.
For my threat model, I don’t trust any online password manager, so I host my own local Bitwarden server (Vaultwarden) and use Tailscale to securely access it from any device, and if the server goes down, the Bitwarden client keeps a cached copy on the device itself.
Been a moderate user of Excel but started a new budget in LibreOffice Calc recently and so far it seems 1:1, including using commands like VLOOKUP and SUMIF