New purchases thread!

I’ve got a Samsung smart lock currently, previously had the Lockwood one (and a different Samsung one) too. I love not needing keys for the front door letting me carry nothing but a single car key when I go out. I eyed off a more integrated smart lock in 2015 when we bought this place but the reviews of bluetooth and wifi enabled locks were pretty poor. These stand alone units just work, never had an issue over many years…

…that said I’ll be very interested to see how you go since I also like gadgets :stuck_out_tongue:

One of the key (ha! no pun intended) attractions for me of this type was that it doesn’t look any different from the outside - and to that end, it doesn’t operate any differently from outside for a visitor whom I would prefer to use a physical key. Upside of that is I still receive notifications if the key is used.

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Just ordered an ONA Prince Camera bag in Cognac
https://www.onabags.com/media/catalog/product/l/e/leatherprincestreet_antiquecognac_front_large.jpg

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So how’s that going now?

And I forgot to mention… new FetchTV Mighty (retail, not locked to a provider) and am enjoying the Variety package very much. I love Brit crime and theres a ton of it. I guess I’ll unsub once I have seen all the repeats. Syfy was the main attraction but apart from Dark Matter, not that impressed.

Made a few biggies lately:

Montblanc Starwalker Urbanspeed fountain pen

Apple Pencil

10.5" iPad Pro 64GB with cellular.

And a couple other things like a case for the iPad and some Rhodia notebooks :ok_hand:t2:

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My new iPhone 7 256Gb arrived :slight_smile:

Seems like a strange time to buy a brand new phone. Surely there will be a flood of second hand devices available soon… many of them here?

I don’t generally do second hand and I’ve been putting off buying a new phone for a few months now.

I was waiting to see deals for the 7 coming up before the release of the 8 (like there was for the 6S before the 7) but it never really happened. Not to anything like the same extent anyway.

And the 8 is going to be several hundred dollars more expensive, I can’t see a 256Gb iPhone 8 being much if any less than $1500.

I decided to get an iPad Mini 4. I’m not confident that there will be any more mini releases. Boy what a pain getting a cover for it, but, I landed a back shell from JB. Its not compatible with smart cover alas, but it only cost $11 - down from $25 - so no complaints, and its really quite nice, with a soft lining, and leather detail on its back. And today, a nice grey and red Cygnett case from Good Guys, and a couple of screen protectors.

Of course, I made a complete mess of the screen protector. Oh well.

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But surely the 7 will drop down to be “last year’s phone” at a lower price. The 8 will be around the same $$ as the 7 I reckon, and the 7 will be cheaper brand new? The iPhone X will be more expensive than the 7 for sure (I agree, around the $1500 at least).

Currency forecasts show the Australian dollar dropping in the medium term and I expect Apple to factor that into new pricing.

I don’t expect the 7 to drop much in the short term (if at all) and I expect the 256Gb iPhone 8 to be close to $1500 with the iPhone X to be closer to $1800.

Maybe I’m wrong… but it would match Apple price trends with the other hardware as well.

I bought an iPad Pro 10.5 about a month ago to semi retire my beloved and faithful iPad 2. I got the 256GB gold version and its brilliant, though the home button has started going clicky :open_mouth:

Besides that the screen is just brilliant, I think the size increase is great. I think its the screen that won me over. Its the perfect replacement for my iPad 2 as it is fairly future proof. Currently enjoying all the benefits from the last 6 or so generations of iPads (Retina display, thinner/lighter, Touch ID, better camera, lightning, handoff features from iOS 8, airdrop, split screen multitasking, iOS 10 etc).

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Thinking of doing the same here then our 7 year old daughter can take over the iPad (even though she pretty much has already anyway!)

Well the 8 is $1379 for the 256Gb model (with no 128Gb model available) which is about $100 less than I expected but it’s still several hundred dollars more than the cost for a 7 at the moment so I can’t see the 7 taking a sudden dive in price (although with time as it gets older there will be a gradual decrease).

At the moment I’m trying to figure how to fit a 10.5 inch iPad Pro 512Gb into my budget as there simply isn’t enough difference between my 128Gb iPad Mini 4 and an iPad 2017 128Gb to be justified changing (other than the fact that my reading vision is getting worse and the smaller screen is starting to give me issues). The new iPad Pro however is a significant step forward from earlier iPads IMO.

New SSDs all around, now running RAID 0 SSDs on the Mac Pro and the MacBook Pro. Mac Pro is bottlenecked until I spring for a PCI card, but the MacBook Pro:

Check out these sweet, sweet numbers from the MBP:

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Been a big month… new 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro (via work), and iPhone 8 today for my wife.

oh… and a HOUSE!!!

But yeah that MBP is pretty slick.

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Snuck that one in there! Nice work, enjoy the new place).

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How on earth are you getting that??? I thought the Mid 2012s were bottlenecked at around 500MB/s???

Maybe advertised. Apple likes to underreport things. Several people did this mod on YouTube that’s how I knew I could! And this is precisely what was expected.

My guess is he is running RAID through the DVD bay as well as he mentions running RAID 0. The limitation would have been SATA 3 on those with maxes out at 600MB/s.