8G of RAM is rough but at least you should be able to upgrade it to 16 or 32. Not bad.

IMO these would be an OK deal, but not a good deal.

In theory, you'd need to have at least an 8th gen iCore CPU to support Windows 11. There are workarounds for it, and these tiny PCs have obviously been installed with Windows 11. A potential problem is -- the newer Windows 11 updates may not automatically install on a PC that lacks the TPM 2.0. There are supposedly unofficial patches that can bypass the TPM check. But online forums seem to have suggested that at least some of the bypasses no longer works. I'm going to guess that the situation is probably a little like a cat-and-mouse game, where Microsoft might do stuff in a subsequent patch to block out the TPM bypass that has been developed, and later on the online community comes up with another workaround to have the patch installed.

For me, at least, this would have been fine if I were still in my ugrad to early 20's years when I had gobs of free time on my hands. At this point in time though, I don't exactly have that luxury nor the interest to fiddle around with stuff like that.

And then you are looking at RAM + HD space. 8GB RAM is unbearable even in Windows 10. My pos work laptop only has 16GB RAM, and I'd say it is really only adequate for basic web serving and office work. A 16GB SODIMM is ~$70, or a 32GB for $90+. Add another $50+ for a 500-ish GB SSD at a minimum, and all of a sudden you're looking at $350-ish.

I agree - 8GB RAM is unbearable on Windows 11. I mean, it works, but once you start doing heavy workloads or do heavy multi-tasking and run CPU-intensive apps, you are in for a bad experience. For Windows 11, I would say 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is the minimum required...especially if its for your wife. :pokerface:

My Surface Pro 6 is running Windows 11 on 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It "works" but when you load Teams, Zoom, multiple Excel spreadsheets, Word, PowerPoint, and a bunch of Google Chrome tabs, it's gg from there.

The Lenovo units whitev70r posted are good for the casual user. Not recommended for work. You guys are probably running 3D Printers and all sorts of bullshit SAP jobs and Oracle database bullshit. Get out of here you nerds!

Only one I'd recommend from that list is this config.

i5-8th Gen 8G RAM 256GB SSD Windows 11

Should be a Thinkcenter Mini M720Q, natively supports Windows 11 and you can buy a riser card off Aliexpress for $15 that allows you to plug in an extra PCI card.

Can ask for barebones to see if you can bring the cost down since I have a bunch of spare DDR4 SODIMM and a 2.5" SSD I can give you if you're on a budget.

If buying brand new, I'd probably just get a M4 Mac Mini. Been using the base model as my daily driver for the past year. I don't play any games on it, I switch to my PC for that.

I've had some fun modding my ThinkCenter and turned it into a dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Mint machine. I thought about the riser card but then I was like, this is going to become a rabbit hole. Let's stop while we're ahead. :D

Built my first ground up new machine in a LONG time, to replace my old i5-2500k connected to my TV, since it couldn't take Win 11 (No TPM). A real shame, it still works.

https://i.imgur.com/KS2SFnS.jpeg

Case: Fractal North Charcoal with the Mesh side
Mobo: MSI PRO B850-P WIFI (Needed a board with SPDIF out for my receiver)
CPU: Ryzen 7 7600X
Cooler: Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5
RAM: 32GB Corsair D5 6400 32CL
SSD: 2TB Samsung 990EVO NVMe
GPU: Gigabyte RTX 5060Ti
PS: Corsair HX1000i

A couple of firsts for me, my very first ever AMD CPU (Always been an Intel guy), and my first NVidia GPU since the Riva TNT2 days.

I am curious how the new AMD Ryzen processors are compared to Intel? Is there still a strong Intel vs. AMD camp out there? I've always been impartial. It's always been "Whatever works and is cheap" (I've also learned you get what you pay for.) :D

Mac - I grew up on Macs. Both my elementary and high school had Mac, so I have a soft spot for their computers. But the apps I need to use require Windows, so I had to rule out the Mac Mini, sadly.

I was tempted to go full retard and pick up a Surface or Dell XPS 13 with Snapdragon ARM processor. :pokerface: I'm glad roastpuff posted in this thread about Bauer Systems. :D

Everything I read says AMD is leading Intel these days, especially for gaming.

I finally caved and updated the main PC to W11. I hate it but at least I can tweak it to be slightly less hideous.

The other media player PCs mostly don't fully support 11, except the really shitty ones that don't have enough space on their drives to actually handle the install lol. I've signed those up for the extended security updates, which I think gets at least basic security updates for a year? I'm a little fuzzy on how that all works. I might just swap them to Linux but that seems like a pain in the butt for 3 computers that just run XBMC.

bit the bullet and updated to windows 11 last week and tweaked it alot to make the experience a lot more friendly like windows 10

just create a usb stick with the windows 11 ISO using rufus to bypass all the windows 11 checkers.

Rufus, eh? I've been using Ventoy.

Update #2: Picked up my laptop and dock from Bauer Systems. Originally, I saw a bunch of scuff marks and I was like aww man....then after some bitching, complaining, and whining to roastpuff, I discovered they were just smudge marks from the charger cable. I wiped it off with a towel and it was perfect, like new. :D

I am a satisfied customer. :)

I did the offline upgrade with the command line to ignore the checkers.

What tweaks are you using? I added Open Shell after using Classic Shell for years, then the usual taskbar changes to make it look normal instead of the stupid single icon for each program with a list for all the windows (who the fuck designed that?) but the dynamic taskbar item widths and the taskbar being stuck twice as tall as it needs to be still annoy me.

first thing i tweak was with the right click menu, then the start menu and then some tinkering of the control panel settings screens.