This!
raker
It goes without saying that this would be mandatory: No koalas, without kiwis!
Do you even Arch?
The model itself is probably not censored. The censorship comes on top. Preliminary tests already show how this can be circumvented.
Last week at us.
First question I asked the evil twin was: "How can I deactivate Gemini and never hear from it again?" Support article poped up, where must opt out from some Labs setting or some bs, but only a workspace admin can do it.
Ended up with blocking that flare button with uBo. Problem solved.
Why is AI not making enough money? I specifically requested it.
Almost exact same timeline, prices and specs here. Just went with the RX6600 instead after hardware became somewhat affordable again after crypto hype and COVID. Always bought the mid-lowend stuff of the then actual hardware, if upgraded wanted/needed. It's good to read of non-highend stuff all the time though.
NVMe
This part was huge you for me. Almost same as from HDD to SSD.
If you want to stay with Windows for whatever reason, even 11, I can recommend Revision Playbook. It locks your installation and scrapes out the crap like unwanted updates and features like AI bullshit, Edge, Telemetry and whatnot. You can even manually install Apps from the Store without the Store if you like to. Security patches and selective updates come only via manual download from MS catalogue in my case, but you can automate this too with some tools.
This. My mobile is over 6 years old. Security updates till 2022, but I don't even mind sec updates. What concerns me more is buy-a-new-phone-every-year-because-reasons, because buy new shit and spybloatware. Skynet is the virus. My old one runs perfectly fine and I buy a new one if it is broken. Even critical apps like banking doing fine. It's not like the whole architecture of the OS changes yearly, right?
It just emphasizes what's already there.