Dell’s newly released Vostro 7510 laptop was built for business but has a versatile feature set that just about anyone will enjoy. It has a fast Intel Core i7 processor that can multitask with ease and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 to accelerate image editing work or for playing games, and best of all the system is all sell for just $1,149.00.
This high-end Vostro notebook was designed as a high quality work machine. It has powerful processing hardware including an octa-core processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. This hardware enables the system to quickly run multiple applications and render content with ease, and it can run games quite well too. The system is encased in a durable aluminum chassis and weighs just 4.1 pounds, which excellent for the amount of hardware contained inside. For a limited time you can get one of these systems from Dell marked down from $2,212.85 to just $1,249.00.
If you want a fast notebook with plenty of performance for running the latest games, you may want to consider Dell’s Alienware M15 R3. This system was literally built for gaming and it features a fast six-core processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU, and a high-quality 4K OLED display that has excellent color accuracy and Tobii eye-tracking technology built-in. The system also has two 256GB NVMe SSDs in RAID-0, which gives you plenty of space for everyday use and faster transfer speeds. You can get this system from Dell marked down from $2,279.99 to just $1,699.99.
This high-powered robot vacuum has 2,000Pa of suction power and it has a built-in mop function, which makes it a versatile cleaning tool for your home. The Roborock S6 was also built to be fairly quiet with an average cleaning volume of just 56dB. Currently, these robot vacs are selling on Amazon marked down from $649.99 to just $377.99.
Apple’s newest iPad is significantly faster than the older 7th Gen model. The new 8th Gen model comes equipped with the company’s A12 Bionic SoC that first appeared inside of the iPhone XS, and this chip far outstrips the A10 SoC in the older 7th Gen tablets. The 8th Gen tablet also has a slightly higher resolution screen and is in general an all-around enhanced version of its predecessor. Amazon is currently selling these new tablets marked down from $329.99 to just $299.00.
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Dell Vostro 7510 Intel Core i7-11800H 15.6-Inch 1080p Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD for $1,249.00 from Dell (List price $2,284.29)
Dell Alienware M15 R3 Intel Core i7-10750H 15.6-Inch 4K OLED Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 2x256GB M.2 PCI-E SSDs in RAID-0 for $1,699.99 from Dell (List price $2,279.99)
Hopefully, you haven’t needed a GPU in the last year because prices have been out of control. The combination of semiconductor shortages and pandemic-boosted gaming pushed prices up, but it was cryptocurrency that made graphics cards worth their weight in gold. Prices are finally starting to drop a bit, and you can buy used cards on the cheap in Asia. But should you get these former mining cards? GPU manufacturer Palit Microsystems says you’re taking a real risk with former mining hardware.
The price of GPUs started trending upward in early 2020 as the value of cryptocurrencies exploded. Mining cryptos like Etherium is too slow on a CPU, but GPUs can mine efficiently enough to turn a profit. So, mining operations use rack after rack of video cards, all wired in and running at full speed 24/7.
China started cracking down on crypto mining earlier this year, forcing many of these operations to close down. So, they’re selling the only resource they have left: GPUs. These used cards can get much cheaper than new ones, and it can be hard to tell which is which. A used card might come with original packaging and look physically pristine, but it’s been cranking away at full speed for months on end.
Large mining rigs can contain dozens of GPUs, and not one of them is being used for fragging noobs.
According to Palit, a GPU will lose about 10 percent of its total processing power for every year it’s used in a mining operation. Even if you get lucky and your second-hand GPU works, it might not be running at peak performance, and it could be closer to failing. Still, this might be a tempting option for people who are in desperate need of a GPU, as the prices for new cards are still much more expensive than they should be.
It is, of course, in Palit’s interest to have people buying new hardware, but it’s not like Palit or any other manufacturer is having trouble unloading GPUs. The company notes that if you are going to buy a former mining card, you should take a look at the cooler. Any card that has been disassembled and equipped with an aftermarket cooler is a big risk. That suggests it was kept in an especially hot environment and might have suffered a hardware failure in the past. That said, there are some miners who carefully monitor their rigs and undervolt GPUs for the best performance and longevity. There’s no guarantee you’ll get one of those, though. It’s all luck of the draw.
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Good luck buying a new GPU right now, but there are other ways to improve your computing experience. There’s an oft-forgotten upgrade that can change the experience drastically for the better: a mechanical keyboard. I make no secret of my obsession with mechanical keyboards as both a hobby and a tool of my profession. Naturally, I spend a lot of money on them. You don’t need to, though. Mechanical keyboards have never been cheaper or better, and it’s an upgrade you’ll benefit from greatly. But…which board should you get? And what’s all this about switches? Should you build a keyboard? We’re here to help.
What Makes a Keyboard Mechanical and Why You Should Have One
The keyboards that come with desktop computers are usually some version of the rubber dome design. You push the key all the way down, and the contact on the dome triggers a press. The downside is that the rubber membranes are mushy, inconsistent, and you have to push all the way down every time. Laptops aren’t much better with their scissor switches. They offer a little tactility, but the low travel and mushiness are still grating over time.
A mechanical keyboard can best be described as any board with switches that actuate before the point of bottoming out. For example, Cherry-style metal contact switches. When you press the key down, a stem moves into the housing and allows metal contacts to touch. This is what fires off each letter. Other types of switches are considered mechanical but have entirely different mechanisms. Topre switches are popular but rather expensive. These switches have a stiff rubber dome and a conical spring. Here, the actuation is triggered by a change in capacitance of the spring as you press, and the tactile bump comes from the dome collapsing. There are also Alps-style metal contacts, buckling springs, and Hall effect switches. These are all fairly uncommon in modern boards, though.
Using a mechanical keyboard can make you a much more effective typist thanks to the precise and consistent feel of the keys. Many switches also have high tactility that helps you estimate when a press will register, allowing you to release and move on to the next key without bottoming out. For gaming, you can use switches that are much smoother and faster to actuate than the keys on cheap membrane boards. The sound of a clicky switch can also be fun, provided you don’t have nearby coworkers to annoy.
Mechanical boards are also built to last. Each switch is good for millions of presses. Even with heavy use, a good mechanical keyboard can last many years. Enthusiasts actually harvest switches from decades-old keyboards with bad electronics to use in newly built custom boards.
Choosing a Form Factor
The first step in choosing the right keyboard is deciding what layout you want. The traditional full-size board is still the most common, but you might want to use your mechanical transition to change it up. A full-size board has all the keys you need to operate a computer without worrying about any function layers. There’s a full number pad as well. The main drawback of this size is that it’s rather large and inefficient. You have to move your hands rather far to reach everything and the number pad means your mouse will be pushed farther away from your main typing area. This is why I don’t like full-size boards personally.
The next step down is tenkeyless (TKL), sometimes known as 80 percent keyboards. These boards still don’t rely on function layers for basic features, but there’s no number pad. There’s still a number row, of course. If this sounds stressful to you, just give it some thought. How often do youreallyneed a dedicated number pad? Unless you’re doing data entry, you can probably do just fine without one. This makes the board much smaller and brings the mouse in closer.
The next step down in mainstream boards is 60 percent, which has become popular in the last few years. A 60 percent board just has the alphas, number row, and modifiers. There are no dedicated arrow keys, no F-row, and no number pad. All those features are there, but they’re in the function layer. So, you hold function and press a different key. For example, the arrows are usually Fn+WASD or Fn+JIKL. The main advantage of the 60 percent form factor is that it’s compact and efficient once you get used to the function layer.
If none of those do it for you, there are some more exotic layouts that are just catching on. The 65 percent size is smaller than a TKL, but you get arrow keys and a few more keys like delete, page up/down, and so on. This is a good middle ground that I’m personally very into. They don’t take up too much space, but they reduce your dependence on function layers. Add a function row to a 65, and you’ve got a 75 percent.
There’s also the super-small 40 percent category. These boards have just alpha keys and a few modifiers. They’re essentially pocket size and usually have at least two function-key layers to get all the basic keyboard commands covered. If you get good with a 40 percent board, you can be extremely efficient as everything is so close together.
Choosing a Switch
So, you know what size board you want, but what do you want typing tofeellike? Cherry’s main mechanical switch patents expired a few years ago, so there are a ton of clone switches that are Cherry-compatible. The vast majority of boards use Cherry and Cherry clone switches, so let’s go over those.
The first order of business should be to get a switch tester. You can get one for under $20 on Amazon that has all the major Cherry variants: blue, green, brown, clear, red, and black. These switches come in three different varieties: clicky (blue and green), tactile (brown and clear), and linear (black and red). Each of those categories is split into a heavier and lighter version. Here’s a chart with the weights of each. Note: the “color codes” of clone switches are usually the same for switches with the same properties.
I can’t tell you which switches you will prefer, but I’ll note that heavy typists tend to use tactile and clicky switches, but blacks are a common choice as well. Don’t make a final decision yet, though. Your goal should be to figure out how what general type of switch you like and what weight feels best. Cherry is not the only game in town anymore, so you might be able to mix and match some of these properties to find the perfect switch.
Some of the most popular Cherry-compatible switches come from Gateron and Kailh, but even smaller manufacturers have popped up doing innovative things lately. As long as the switches in question are being offered by a reputable retailer, you should be fine. Even cheap mechanical switches will work better than a crummy membrane keyboard.
Kailh x Novelkeys Box Pale Blue switch.
If you find you like tactile switches, you may consider trying a Topre board. There are very few switch testers with Topre domes, so you might need to jump in with a real keyboard like the HHKB2. Keep in mind, if you fall in love with Topre, that limits your choice of boards and keycaps. It also means you’ll spend a lot more on the keyboard.
Picking a Board
Now you know what pieces you want, so the challenge is finding the right board. I will say off the bat that I think you should steer clear of “gaming-oriented” boards. They try to lure you in with flashy lights and brands you know, but they require annoying, buggy desktop software and often use poorer quality components. Likewise, you can just search “mechanical keyboard” on Amazon and find plenty of cheap devices that will definitely input text. They just won’t sound or look very good while doing it. Presumably, if you’ve read a thousand words about keyboards to get to this point, you’re at least a little discerning. So, let’s talk about what you should consider buying.
A Drop Alt with Carbon SA keycaps.
A good starting point is Drop, formerly Massdrop. They offer an array of semi-custom keyboards like the 65 percent Alt and the tenkeyless Ctrl. Drop even has a little 60 percent board called the Carina. Unlike other high-end boards, you can usually just order one of these and have it on your doorstep a week later. These boards cost between $100 and $200 as a barebones kit, but there’s no soldering involved — they’re what’s known as hot swap. Drop will sell you switches that plug into the PCB, or you can get your own from other retailers.
GMMK is one of the more mainstream names in mechanical keyboards, but the company has moved away from its purely gaming roots to offer some surprisingly high-end features for mech enthusiasts. The GMMK Pro is a 75 percent keyboard with a rotary knob, gasket mounting, and hot swap support. If you want something pre-built for the minimum hassle, there are well-regarded options like the Anne Pro 2 and Das Keyboard 4.
Fancy custom switches known as Holy Pandas.
If you want your typing experience to be something special, there’s almost no limit to how far you can go — a popular Twitch streamer made news in 2020 by spending $3,500 on a custom build. But why would you want to build a keyboard? With a custom board, you can choose switches, materials, colors, and features along the way to create your ideal typing experience. Plus, most of the cool, innovative switches in the keyboard world aren’t used in retail keyboards.
The aforementioned Zealio switches are popular and come in many variants. There are also numerous Kailh switches that offer additional spring weights and click designs that don’t have a Cherry equivalent—check out the selection at retailers like NovelKeys. What about the parts and keyboard kits themselves? NovelKeys has a few of those, but there are many other reputable custom board retailers like Omnikey, CannonKeys, TheKeyCompany, and KBDfans. These sites all have a handful of things ready to ship but to get the best hardware, you’re going to have to get in line.
A custom-painted CA66 with DSA Galaxy Class.
Group buys are a necessary evil in the keyboard space. Because these are niche devices, it’s not viable to produce them constantly. A group buy is a bit like a pre-order where everyone pays in advance, and then the product is manufactured and sent out. The main difference is that the money you pay to the retailer actually goes to pay for production. It’s buyers (you) who take on the risk. If the people running the group buy screw up, you could be left with something that doesn’t work as you expected. Some of the best keyboards you can get are also what I’d consider fully custom. That means you need to know how to solder in order to assemble them. It’s not as hard as you’d think, but you will need to invest in some extra equipment and supplies.
If you do decide to build a custom board, be prepared to spend at least a few hundred dollars on the kit. These keyboards are in high enough demand to command high prices, but not enough to be in mass production. So, you can easily spend $500 or more before you even get to keycaps or switches. The Zephyr below was a $600 kit that included a PCB, plate, and case. A more modest custom kit might cost $250-300, and the wait on these is usually shorter. RAMA is another popular keyboard designer at the high-end. The RAMA M65-B is one of my favorite boards, but the only way to get one now is waiting for someone to sell theirs and paying a premium on top of the already high price. I’ve seen rare kits like the M65 go for over $1,000.
The Zeal Zephyr with GMK Nautilus keycaps.
If you don’t want to jump right into custom boards, you can still jazz up your mechanical keyboard with some custom keysets. Just make sure you get a board with a mostly standard layout. You can look at the bottom row to get a good idea of whether or not a board is standard. It should have 1.25-unit modifiers and a 6.25-unit space bar. Anything else and custom keysets get more expensive and rare.
Most keysets are sold in group buys (similar to high-end keyboards), which you have to join prior to production, then wait for the set to be produced. This can take many months and gets pretty confusing. The easiest way is to join buys organized by a retailer you know and trust. You can also buy some custom sets straight-up from companies like Pimp My Keyboard and Originative. Almost every custom keyset is MX-only. If you get a Topre (or the rarer Alps), you’re out of luck here.
Expect to pay at least $60-70 for a basic set and well over $100 for a high-end custom set. You get what you pay for, though. Keycaps made from PBT or thick double-shot ABS are more durable and pleasant to type on than the caps that come with keyboards. Even the nicer mechanical keyboards don’t go all out on the keycaps. I guess they assume you’ll buy something fancy if you care that much.
The KBDfans Maja uses a less common split layout (seen here with GMK Pulse caps).
I’m going to close by mentioning something that sounds absolutely bananas to people who aren’t into the hobby, but you’ll get a kick out of it, I assume. For additional customization, there are “artisan keycaps.” They’re hand-sculpted and cast single keycaps that are meant to be used as decoration on keyboards (see below). They are mostly made in small batches and sold in raffles, as well as the occasional group buy on Drop. They’reexpensive, and you’ll pay even more if you miss the sale and have to buy second-hand from someone in the community. Maybe this guide will be your first step along the way to that kind of incoherent madness. I’m sorry.
Check out our ExtremeTech Explains series for more in-depth coverage of today’s hottest tech topics.
Would you walk across a 3D-printed bridge?For folks in Amsterdam, the question now poses a real opportunity. Imperial College of London has spent the last four years working with Dutch companyMX3Dto develop a 3D-printed steel bridge that would serve as a “living laboratory.” Through a network of built-in sensors, researchers at Imperial College will be able to monitor the bridge’s performance as pedestrians use it daily. The bridge was unveiled this month by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.
At 12 meters long, the stainless steel pedestrian bridge stretches across Amsterdam’s old and beloved Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in the Red Light District. MX3D first kicked off its design in 2017, after which the company quickly won the EuropeanSTARTS prize, a 2018Dutch Design Award, and the3D Pioneers Challengefor the bridge’s innovative design. Its construction took six months and 4.9 tons of steel. In 2019, MX3D and Imperial College tested the bridge under a 20-ton load at the University of Twente, and earlier this year, the bridge was finally installed.
So why 3D-print a bridge instead of using older construction methods? MX3D said it wishes to see how the public interacts with 3D infrastructure. The bridge’ssensors(instrumented byAutodesk,The Adam Turing Institute, and theAmsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Studies) collect data related to strain, displacement, and vibration. They also “measure environmental factors such as air quality and temperature, enabling engineers to measure the bridge’s health in real time and monitor how it changes over its lifespan.” Researchers from Imperial College will then input that sensor data into the bridge’s “digital twin,” a dynamic computer model that will subsequently provide insights on how to design and construct similar 3D printed metal structures.
Imperial Collegereportsthat 3D-printed stainless steel was tested throughout conception via destructive tensile testing, which provides insight into the yield strength and ductility of a metallic material. Imperial’s Department of Materials conducted tests on both smooth and “as-built” materials to understand the metal’s load-bearing capacity. The bridge’s futuristic geometry was created using silicone casting and laser scanning.
Depending on the success of the bridge, MX3D may develop future 3D-printed infrastructure. Various companies are already working on scaling3D-printed housing, while others areresearchingthe time and cost advantages of using 3D printing technology over manual construction labor.
Sony has released details on how end-users should upgrade the storage on their PlayStation 5, as well as some important information on M.2 drive compatibility. There’s a bit of fine print to all this that could impact what kind of performance you see if you choose to upgrade your PlayStation 5.
Any SSD being used for PS5 storage needs to support PCI Express 4.0 x4. PCIe 3.0 drives and PCIe 4.0 drives with only an x2 interface are not supported. Supported capacities range from 250GB – 2TB and M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280, and 22110 are all supported. Most PCIe 4.0 drives ship with heatsinks, but if yours didn’t you’ll need a heatsink for the drive. Sony makes no recommendations beyond noting that one should be installed. Though this should go without saying, SATA drives that fit into M.2 slots are not supported.
At the very bottom of the page, at the end of the FAQ section, there’s a question PlayStation 5 customers will want to pay attention to:
Do PS5 consoles support Host Memory Buffer?
No. Additionally, M.2 SSD devices that support HMB (Host Memory Buffer) may see slower-than-expected performance because the PS5 does not support HMB.
Host Memory Buffer, or HMB, is part of the NVMe 1.2 standard. The highest-performing SSDs typically have a pool of DRAM onboard to store where logical block addresses are physically stored on the SSD. One way to reduce the cost of an SSD drive is to remove this cache and store the data in tables on the SSD itself, but this has a significant impact on performance. HMB offers an intermediate mode.
HMB support allows the SSD to store its memory table inside the system’s main DRAM. While this is not as fast as storing the LBA data in dedicated RAM inside the SSD, it’s still faster than storing them in NAND. There are plenty of PCIe 3.0 drives that use Host Memory Buffer, including Samsung’s 980. We didn’t find any PCIe 4.0 devices that also use HMB, but Phison’s E19 controller supports it (and it’s used, ironically, in the Xbox Series X).
Sony doesn’t say that HMB drives won’t work, but they’re definitely not the preferred option. It’s something to keep an eye on if you’re trying to source a PCIe 4.0 drive in the months to come. To the best of our knowledge, HMB and onboard DRAM are mutually exclusive — a drive with integrated RAM has no need for HMB. There may not be many HMB PCIe 4.0 devices out now, but they’ll appear in the future as more manufacturers migrate to the standard.
The rest of the upgrade process looks straightforward. Sony includes a guide with images for customers who are leery about opening their console and gives step-by-step instructions on its website. The upgrade is currently in beta testing and Sony notes that PS5 owners who aren’t part of its testing program won’t see any benefit from installing an M.2 drive right now.
The company also warns that it cannot guarantee identical performance between the secondary SSD and its own internal drive and that performance may not be as good on a user-added drive as on its own native hardware. Combined with the Host Memory Buffer issue, this looks more like Sony warning end-users that the price of broader compatibility is a wider range of potential performance.
AMD has finally announced the next RDNA2 GPU in its 2021 product stack. The Radeon RX 6600 XT is expected to slot in below the Radeon RX 6700 XT and to compete more effectively against cards like the RTX 3060. Right now, Nvidia offers ray tracing at lower price points than AMD has matched. The Radeon RX 6600 XT is intended to change that. As RDNA2 parts go, it’s one of the more interesting cards that AMD has fielded, though we aren’t entirely sure if that’s a good thing yet.
At $379, the Radeon 6600 XT comes in $100 cheaper than the Radeon 6700 XT, but that $100 difference results in a very different card. The table below summarizes AMD’s current product stack.
The Radeon 6600 XT costs about 25 percent less than the Radeon 6700 XT and it fields 25 percent fewer GPU cores, in line with expectations. The reduction in VRAM from 12GB to 8GB is not unexpected, but the dramatic reduction in L3 cache and memory bandwidth raises our eyebrows.
The 5600 XT and 6600 XT are quite different compared with the x700 cards above them in the stack. The 5700 XT and 6700 XT fielded the same number of cores, render output units, and texture multiplier units. The 6600 XT has 88 percent of the 5600 XT’s memory bandwidth and GPU cores. It compensates for this by hitting clock speeds that are 1.65x to 1.9x higher than the 5600 XT did. That kind of clock boost counts for a lot as far as keeping the GPU core fed, and the huge clock advantage the 6600 XT wields over its predecessor is more than large enough to compensate for the slightly narrower GPU core.
The memory bandwidth and L3 cuts are a topic we’ll be looking at very closely. Narrow memory buses are a hallmark of RDNA2 designs. When it launched RDNA2, AMD promised that the 128MB “Infinity Cache” on cards like the 6800 XT would fully compensate for this reduction. So far, it has. We compared IPC and memory bandwidth scaling between the 5700 XT and 6700 XT earlier this year and found no evidence of a bandwidth problem at any playable resolution. AMD prominently advertised the 6700 XT as a 1440p gaming solution, but the card is more than capable of playing in 4K if you aren’t trying to turn every single graphics option to maximum at the same time.
AMD has never disclosed how much cache it needed to effectively store data for any given resolution, so we can’t say for certain whether 32MB is enough to allow the 6600 XT to enjoy the same comfortable scaling as its bigger brothers. AMD is explicitly positioning the RX 6600 XT as a 1080p GPU option for gamers who are opting to buy high refresh rate 1080p displays. It’s also claiming that the RX 6600 XT will deliver significant performance advantages over the RTX 3060, but does not compare against the RTX 3060 Ti.
High Refresh 1080p Gaming at $379?
AMD acknowledged they were raising the price of the RX 6600 XT relative to its RDNA predecessor, but defended the decision on partly on the grounds that increasing its own prices would supposedly reduce the impact of the GPU silicon shortage. This is unlikely to be true. The mammoth markups on GPUs are being sustained by retailers and do not reflect the cost AMD or Nvidia charge the ODM. The company also noted that prices on certain components and materials have gone up, which is correct.
AMD compares against the RTX 3060, but at $379 the RX 6600 is much more accurately compared to the RTX 3060 Ti. At least it would be if MSRP’s mattered.
Still, the difference between AMD introducing a GPU at $280 versus $379 is not going to mean much when GPUs are regularly selling for a full 1.5x above MSRP. If $800 cards are flying off the shelves for $1,200, $379 GPUs will go just as fast at $569.
As ultra-high refresh rate monitors have proliferated, it makes sense that the gamers who buy them would want to also buy GPUs fast enough to drive those displays at the high frame rates they paid for, but not every high refresh rate monitor is a 1080p display. Newegg’s product list suggests there’s a 50/50 split between 1080p panels at 100Hz or above and 1440p+4K panels (764 1080p versus 685 4K + 1440p). AMD’s decision to position the 6600 XT as a high-end 1080p gaming card is not without merit, provided the card also sustains higher resolution play without its performance falling off a cliff.
The 6600 XT needs to offer excellent 1440p performance and reasonable 4K performance at reduced detail levels to be a decent purchase at $379. This is a thoroughly reasonable request and fully in line with the performance offered by the Radeon RX 5700 XT back in 2019. Our review of that GPU found it delivered playable performance in 4K ultra detail in 7 of the 10 titles we tested. The 6600 XT needs to do at least this well to illustrate any net value improvement relative to the 5700 XT.
Normally when Nvidia or AMD announces a new GPU, people question whether their published data sets are trustworthy. In this case, we’re far more curious about the performance data AMD didn’t show.
One more thing: Anyone shopping for a GPU today who also wants to use ray tracing in the future should be aware that GPU frame buffers are clearly taxed by ray tracing in a way they aren’t by rasterization. 8GB GPUs don’t always have enough VRAM to run high-end ray tracing at 4K. At 1080p, however, the 8GB VRAM buffer on the 6600 XT should be sufficient, assuming the rest of the card can handle the workload.
In the hunt for exoplanets, astronomers are only rarely able to look upon a world directly with even the most powerful telescopes. So, it’s always notable when we can actually see a new exoplanet. Scientists from the University of Hawaii report they have spotted a new exoplanet only 35 light-years away, and we can see this one because it’s enormous and very far from its host star. In fact, it might set the record for most distant.
The exoplanet was discovered as part of the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS (COCONUTS) program. As the name implies, this project seeks exoplanets with very wide orbits around very cool stars. Both of those properties should make them easier to spot, as was the case for COCONUTS-2b — yes, there is finally an exoplanet with a good name.
Usually, detecting exoplanets means inferring their location and properties without even laying mechanical eyes on them. The most popular way is the transit method, which NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope used to discover thousands of exoplanets during its mission. By tracking the luminance of stars, we can detect when an exoplanet passes in front of them. Of course, this only works for solar systems that are aligned just right with somewhat large planets relative to the star. The other method detects changes in radial velocity — small wobbles in the star caused by the gravity of orbiting planets. Again, this works best with large planets.
Imaging exoplanets directly is difficult because they’re so much smaller and dimmer compared with stars. That’s why the COCONUTS program looks for “COol” exoplanets on “Ultrawide orbiTS.” These worlds should be easier to see in telescopes like the 2.2-meter unit at the University of Hawaii, and indeed that seems to be the case with the discovery of COCONUTS-2b by grad student Zhoujian Zhang. It’s the small red dot indicated in the above image.
This exoplanet is about six times more massive than Jupiter, and it orbits its host star at a distance of 6,471 astronomical units — one AU is the distance between Earth and the sun. By comparison, NASA’s Voyager probes left the solar system within the last few years at a distance of about 120-125 AU. Clearly, COCONUTS-2b is on a staggeringly wide orbit. The team estimates that it will take 1.1 million years to complete a single pass around the star.
Even with all that going for us, COCONUTS-2b was a lucky detection. The solar system is still relatively young at roughly 800 million years. Because COCONUTS-2b is so huge, it has retained a lot of heat from its formation — astronomers estimate it has a temperature of 322 degrees Fahrenheit (161 degrees Celsius). That makes it glow faintly in infrared. Finding more planets like COCONUTS-2b could help us better understand planet formation. The upcoming James Webb telescope could be uniquely capable of helping here with its enhanced infrared sensitivity compared with other instruments.
One of the nice things about Amazon’s Kindle devices is they’re not the kind of device you need to replace every year or two. These e-readers change only slightly from one generation to the next, but that wasn’t the case in the early days. Because of Amazon’s design decisions, some older Kindles will lose internet connectivity later this year as carriers retire their aging 3G networks. Amazon is reaching out to affected users, offering a range of solutions up to and including a free Kindle.
The first Kindle launched in 2007, and it didn’t have Wi-Fi. In fact, Amazon didn’t release a Kindle with Wi-Fi until 2011 with the Kindle Keyboard. Those first few Kindles only connected to the internet over 3G, which was included with the device at no additional cost. That was a slick, almost magical way to access the Kindle Store back in the days before smartphones were universal. Today, though, it means some Kindles are about to go offline.
Carriers are moving full-speed ahead into the 5G era, and they’re even going so far as cannibalizing their 4G networks to do it. You can imagine how they feel about 3G — those networks are going away completely. Late this year, AT&T is going to start shutting down its 3G network, so those early Kindles that only had 3G connectivity will go offline with no Wi-Fi to us as a backup. Newer Kindles with both 3G and Wi-Fi will lose that always-on connection but will still be usable.
The Kindle Keyboard was the first to offer Wi-Fi.
Amazon has started reaching out to those still using 3G-enabled Kindles. The remunerations vary by device. Those with early 3G-only Kindles are hitting the jackpot. Amazon says anyone still using that 2007 Kindle can get a brand new Kindle Oasis (the high-end model) and a cover for free. Those with other 3G-only devices can get $70 off a Kindle of their choice and $25 in book credits.
Amazon still has 3G as an option in some of its latest hardware, but these devices all have Wi-Fi in addition. Still, the company is offering a pittance to compensate people for the 3G they will not be able to use in the coming months. They’ll get $50 off a new Kindle and $15 in book credits.
It’s not ideal for anyone to see a functional piece of technology retired due to events outside of their control, but those early Kindles have had a very long life. If only a smartphone could be reliable for a decade or more.
Apple’s MacBook Air laptops equipped with the company’s revolutionary M1 chip offer excellent performance for a wide range of tasks, and you can get one now with an $150 discount.
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Apple’s latest MacBook Air comes equipped with Apple’s new M1 SoC, which contains an 8-core processor that’s reportedly 3.5 times faster than the hardware inside of the preceding model. Apple said the system can also last for up to 18 hours on a single charge, giving you all the power you need to work from sunrise to sunset. Now for a limited time you can get one of these systems from Amazon marked down from $999.00 to just $849.00.
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AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X comes with eight SMT enabled CPU cores with a max clock speed of 4.4GHz. This gives you exceptional performance for multitasking and running power-hungry applications, which makes it ideal for everything from gaming to content creation. Currently, you can get it from Amazon marked down from $329.99 to $269.99.
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