Obsidian

Hardware collection

5 min read

Looking back I realized that I do buy a lot of hardware “just to try out” some things. For student projects I got bot Android and iOS phones. For mobile working I got a few iPads and tablets. And for working with crypto and LLMs I got a few PCs with more cores, more RAM, more GPUs. From time to time I want to simplify my life, and then just access the current state and take a picture (15. July 2020):

5.5 years later the iPad 10.5 is given away, the X230 is broken, all others are given away except the zBook 15 G3.

Laptop collection

The picture from 2020 shows:

2026

Currently only 3 Laptops are still in use. The zBook 15 mentioned above. With its i7-6820HQ CPU it does not officially support Windows 11, but runs just fine if you ignore the CPU family. The TPU was 1.2 but could easily be upgraded to 2.0 via software. Currently no issues.

Additionally I have 2 more laptops in use. One workhorse and one testbench:

  • MacBook Air M1 2020 16 GB 512 SSD test notebookcheck
  • Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga X370 test notebookcheck 2017

The ThinkPad was purchased during my third sabbatical as developer machine. Upgraded to 16 GB RAM and with a new 512 WD Black SSD this machine worked great! The i5-7200U is just one generation shy of the Windows 11 requirements. Skipping this test it works fine in 2026. Wi-Fi was upgraded to WIFI 6e, just don’t have a router yet in Vietnam that supports the 6 GHz band.

Desktop PCs

In Germany I had already moved to Laptop with a docking station in 2011. A colleague hat a ThinkPad T61 with fingerprint sensor, and I was intrigued! My X40 was still working fine, but a larger screen looked promising. And with a docking station I could connect a larger 24” Full HD monitor to work on my desk. Most workloads don’t require the power of a full PC. They go fast to suspend, and wake up fast when I need them. That’s what I upgraded to and used in 2011.

2013 I got my first MacBook Air. With the new Haswell platform the battery lasted 6 to 10 hours, while keeping the machine also quiet. It became my workhorse for the next years until 2017. Then I upgraded to a MacBook Pro with larger 15” retina display.

One year later I learned about used workstations and the low price. Searching Saigon I found an offer for an HP Z600 Workstation with Dual Xeon and 24 GB of RAM. What a great machine, build with durability and also working quiet! For 7501 for a “whopping 12 GB” RAM ($450 to double to my 24GB - see Slashgear 2012) just 6 years earlier. Another review: CGchannel 2009.

List 2026

I currently have:

And there are some mini machines too:

Phone collection

Here is an old picture of 2008. A lot has happened since.

2014 Smartphones

6 years later and I have 5 smartphones. Have a look:

Why so many? They operate on 4 different operating systems:

  • Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with Symbian OS v9.4, S60 5th edition user interface
  • Sony Xperia with Android
  • Apple iPhone 4S white with iOS
  • Nokia Lumia 620 with Windows Phone 8.1
  • Nexus 4 with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop in May 2015

In 2026 two of the phones above are still alive.

And in 2026 I’m on my 4th Apple watch. The first Apple Watch series 2 from 2016 was given away 2022, the second series 5 got a water damage in February 2025 during Tet, replaced by a series 6 that did not survive the water test either in August 2025. Again replaced by a series 6 LTE this one did not survive the drop test in Sapa in October 2025. But I could repair the display, and it’s still alive!

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