Newegg price changes: You have 7 days

 You have 7 days for a price match with Newegg.

A little over a week ago,  I bought a gaming laptop for US$1579.  Today, they are selling it for US$1469.

I went through their chatbot and  was passed to a person.  I was told that because it was more than 7 days, I could request a return, but they would not give me any sort of refund or store credit.

I asked if they intentionally changed the price to promote good will.  I believe that it was a fair question.

I then mentioned that the link to the 007 First Light game promotion didn't work and the the help link in the game e-mail pointed to Pragmata.  I suggested that they should at least fix the problem for future customers.

 Zero satisfaction is what I got.  No apologies were even considered.  I didn't not use any bad language and I didn't think that it would make a difference. 

Therefore, beware of pricing changes! 

MSI Crosshair A16 HX is on the way. It's here!

 My ASUS ZenBook Pro Creator's machine seems ready to eat itself.  Overheating, especially in 100 degrees F heat, is a problem.

 For the last three years, it's been used more for gaming than for creating.  I did some programming, edited some photos, and created documents, but most of that, I left to my Mac.

 I've played a lot of games.  I mentioned that I had damaged two or three mice and in the last year, I've been using a damaged WASD area (and the space bar) of the keyboard.  It wasn't meant for heavy gaming or aggressive players.  I checked with a reliable repair business and got a quick quote of US$150 for a replacement keyboard.  That's a lot but perhaps, someone else will want to buy such an otherwise good machine (aside from the heat during gaming) and I'll pay for the keyboard to be replaced.

 

The MSI Crosshair A16 HX has an AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX in contrast to my Ryzen 7 5800H.  The Nvidia RTX 5060 is only two generations newer than the RTX 3050 Ti, and at about the same level in the lineup.  IIRC, the 3050 Ti was a 3060 with 4 GB of GDRAM, instead of 8 GB.

MSI Crosshair A16 

I'll still only have a 1 TB drive, but it's PCIe gen4 instead of gen-3.  There is also another slot, which seems to be gen-5.  32 GB of RAM will be helpful, as Windows 11 Pro keeps taking as much as possible, and having Steam and another game launcher, plus a web browser and Malwarebytes, keeps RAM busy when running a game or creative software.

 The multi-zone keyboard is a SteelSeries designed product.  That gives me hope, since my current mouse is a SteelSeries Aerox 5, which has been amazingly reliable.

I found one warning in my research: Do not let the MSI helper software attempt to install BIOS updates.  Download them to a thumb drive and install it through the BIOS controls.  No one wants a computer-shaped brick.

I'd been looking at MSI for a while, but most of their laptop computers had VA panels.  I didn't think that those were still being used.  The last time I considered something other than IPS was in the 1990s.  Actually, I believe I bought my first LCD in 2000. Then again, my ASUS laptop has an OLED panel.  The documentation actually has "IPS-level panel", whatever that means.  I'm glad that the panel is level.  (Check your sarcasm detector for good batteries.)

The resolution on the Crosshair is 2560x1440, which is a bit more than the 1920x1080 that I have but those rich blacks and whites will be different somehow.  Supposedly, it has DCI-p3 100% compliance but I'm skeptical.  The RTX 5060 will be using a MUX  design, so graphics won't be routed through the integrated GPU on the AMD APU, more like what happens on a desktop machine in the old days.  That will improve data throughput and make it more efficient. 

The Ryzen 9 8940HX has 16 cores, twice as many as the Ryzen 7 5800H.  It might be slightly better.  Did your sarcasm detector alert you?  Even the internal GPU should be years ahead.  I remember trying to run Unreal Tournament 2004 through the AMD 5800H iGPU and it was not as fast as what I had in 2004.  I remember reading about the iGPU in the 8945HX and that was a 780M, I believe.  This one has a 610M, which may be good.

It all sounds good, right?  My one regret is that I had intended to buy a new M5 MacBook Air.  Tuesday can't come soon enough.  Should I have paid almost US$60 for Saturday delivery?

Update 2026.05.18: It's here!

UPS is not my favorite delivery company.  I had some equipment just not arrive and the store who sent it sent a second product for me.  UPS was caught selling merchandise because of a guitar with a serial number.  In this case, they did better and it arrived a day early.

Of course, updates took a while and not everything goes as planned.  There is a BIOS update and I'm trying to understand how to take care of it.  They showed something like 14 or 15 steps.

 

It works well.  It worked with my mouse from the beginning and gaming half-keyboard, as well.  Windows 11 had been making some sort of backup (to what extent, I don't know) and that sped things along somewhat.

Getting the Netmarble game launcher downloaded was the weirdest.   The company really needs to work on their user friendliness.  Steam, Mozilla, Google, and Malwarebytes wanted me to prove myself.  All of that is fine now.

At one point, while I was in a game, it powered off.  When I powered on again, it didn't explain why there was a problem, or even that there was a problem.  While I'm writing this, it just paused suddenly.  I'm a bit nervous.

The keyboard lighting is good, just like the images on their website.  The feel of the keyboard is excellent.  Steelseries did their part of the project.  I'm not sure why they had to stuff a numeric keypad into it, but the alpha keyboard isn't crowded.

Sound is excellent in contrast to my ASUS creator's machine that was weak.  That machine has speakers at the bottom.  It also has an OLED display, which I found amazing.  This IPS-level display is better.  The color settings may be set to be more vivid, but the blacks and the whites look great.

The stickers on the palm rest are big and don't provide any useful function, but I doubt that I can remove them.

Having more processing power shows up in games with much more detail.  Grass and rain are more impressive with the 5060 versus the 3050 Ti.  Older games seem okay and there is a glitch now and then, but I'm not sure whether it's Windows or the machine.  It could be the MUX design, bypassing the APU's iGPU.  One kind of glitch was that SteelSeries GG was recording clips automatically.  It took me a while to get things under control on the last two machines.  It might take a while this time.

SSD speed is fine, although I can't tell that it's faster than the PCIe 3rd gen in the previous machine.

Being that this laptop computer is 16 versus 15.6, it's difficult to notice the difference. The only difference I can notice is the smooth plastic, rather than the aluminum of the ASUS.

In any case, I'm happy. 

Update 2026.05.20: There is a little light bleed at the bottom of the LCD.  While playing Where Winds Meet, there was too much frame rate drop, something that never seemed to happen with the older machine.  Turned the graphics setting to Performance.  I guess pushing all those extra pixels made a difference, since the 5060 and the 3050 Ti are in the same category, just a difference of graphics RAM.

Maybe, Windows is taking advantage of the AI capabilities, even though they're supposedly disabled.  When has Microsoft ever been truthful or straightforward?

Other aspects of the machine are good.  The fans run a fair amount of time but they seem to be around 3600 rpm, not 6000 as the other machine was doing.

I should probably disconnect the power and run it on battery for web browsing and videos, just to drain the battery and see how it performs.  This APU has a 55 to 75 W TDP, which isn't horrible, but it won't last long on battery at 55 Watts. 

Update 2026.05.21: The frame rate drop in Where Winds Meet still happens occasionally.  There is an option to use DirectX 12.  I'm not sure whether it will become better or worse, but I should give it a try. 

 Update 2026.05.24: I tried some system updates through MSI Center and it sent me to Windows Update, which handled the drivers but not the BIOS update.

Got part way through the BIOS update but it couldn't show me where the update was and I didn't want to cause a problem, so I stopped.

Also, I tried the Where Winds Meet DirectX 12 option and it's very slow to start, plus it has occasional glitches.

It's strange that occasionally, this machine is not as fast as the older machine.

Update 2026.05.27: Got an idea to go back to 1987 ways and installed the BIOS/UEFI update.  I got an older USB type A thumb drive with only 8 GB of storage.  Formatted it and only added the firmware update.  I removed all other USB devices, and charged the battery to 99%.  It was complaining that 74% might not be enough.  It would have been interesting to do that with floppy disks.  I thought about it.  I also considered that we sometimes used a debugger to go into RAM to change certain sequences and then, commit the changes to disk or diskette back then.  Remembering my Atari ST around 1989, a BIOS-level update required a new set of (E)PROMs.  I had some Russian (in Queens borough, NYC) making a physical change to the motherboard to allow 18 pin DIP RAM instead of 16 pin, and he decided to make some money and duplicate my PROMs and gave me a set of EPROMs instead.  Everything worked fine but it was shady.

Then, I got a screen about Bitlocker.  I can't say that I ever enabled Bitlocker, but when I was allowed into the recovery information, the previous computer also had Bitlocker enabled.  Microsoft needs to stop making decisions for me.  They're like the ransom bandits.

 Thankfully, I was able to jump through all of the hoops and now, the machine seems much more stable. 

Oh, here's something fun.  I checked e-mail and found that Newegg reduced the computer price another US$110 since I bought it a little over a week ago.  Of course, they won't even think of splitting the difference to give you a partial credit past 7 days.

 Besides that, the promotional 007 First Light game e-mail did not have the correct information. 

Machine and games are running much better since the update. 

Update 2026.05.29: Where Winds Meet went through a large update and it's working okay, and certainly better than the game was before the BIOS/UEFI update.  I'm not really noticing too many problems overall.  There are some audio glitches, but I'm sure that's a Microsoft problem since the recent updates.  If Microsoft is trying to push everyone to Linux, they should just go out of business. 

Gaming on the Cheap, part 3

 A few years have passed since I wrote one of these.  I was probably playing Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact and Seven Knights back then.  Now, it's Solo Leveling: Arise, Where Winds Meet, Wuthering Waves, and Tower of God: New World.

I've spent some money on each, not a lot, but something.

Too often games become like work and I don't want to feel that way about games.  I don't want to put money into something that isn't enjoyable because I'll probably abandon it at some point.  After all, in Honkai: Star Rail, I had maximum level characters and wasn't enjoying it.

I've been playing Solo Leveling: Arise for two years and it takes some work but it's still quick-and-dirty for me.  I can pick it up, play a little, and put it down.

Where Winds Meet is overwhelming.  I'm paying for the minor Battle Pass upgrade, which is helpful.  I wasted way too much time not collecting skills and just wandering.  My character level is 93 (out of 95) right now and I'm three months behind on skills. There is so much going on in the game, and if you don't look at the Improvement Guide under Develop, you'll be like I am.

 Wuthering Waves definitely seems a pay-to-win game.  I've got a few 5-star characters that I can't upgrade past the low levels.  I mess with the game but I'm not sure I want to commit any real money to achieve better results.

Tower of God: New World follows the anime and is an idle, handheld game that requires too much attention.  Then again, I'm playing on Android AND iOS.  I started the iOS version about 1 year after I started the Android version and I'm within just a few floors.  There are so many characters and things to do that it's becoming work.  It's often something I would play while waiting for another game update to finish.  Now, this game's updates are taking hours to finish.

 There are so many gacha games out there now, especially from Chinese publishers that you can play without paying.  When you use up all of the game's energy for the day, switch to another game.

I'm looking forward to Limit Zero Breakers and Ananta when they're released.  However, I've seen a few in preview, and they don't really turn out all that great. 

Update 2026.05.18: Now that I bought a new Windows machine, I'm definitely on the cheap side.  Thankfully, it wasn't too expensive but everything else seems to be much more expensive these days.

Solo Leveling: Arise Two Years Anniversary

 Today marks two years since the game went live for everyone.

 

 I didn't pay quite as much attention to the Live Stream because I was playing Tower of God: New World and the original host still can pronounce "Jinwoo" correctly, which is annoying.  He went to Korea for the competition last year and probably annoyed a lot of Koreans there.  Oops.

The character level is now a maximum of 150.  It seems as though I get close and they move it.

 Naturally, there are new characters and a beast of a big boss, plus a new chapter.  Hopefully, that will take more than 15 minutes to complete.

On the Windows version, they've finally been cleaning up bugs from months ago.  Hopefully, they clean up some that happened right after they first released the game, also. 

Update 2026.05.07: What were they thinking?  What was I thinking not paying close attention to the Live Stream?

It feels so different, although some parts are the same.  Something I tried was new and yet, had bugs in it as though it had been planned 1 year ago.  I appreciate that they wanted to refresh it. 

 

I'm up one job category and took a third job change but failed.  I'm not sure why giving me the track suit is a good thing.  In Korea, that's considered a middle-age thing to wear.

I was looking at the Monarch's icon in the lobby.  It shows me to equip 8 artifacts.  I thought "I don't want to find new artifacts." and then, I thought, "What if I disable and enable the same artifacts?"  That worked and I got a load of Hunters and their weapons, along with runes and Sung Jinwoo weapons through 29 different selections. 

 

Update 2026.05.08:  The blue wheel of progress, that we haven't seen since the first year, has returned.

Update 2026.05.10: I have so many level 100 artifacts that I'm re-equipping a bunch of Hunters.  Too many still have level 78 or level 73 equipment and the newer characters have mismatched equipment.  Hopefully, this will help with times in the new gates. 

Update 2026.05.13: They fixed the blue wheel of progress!  Someone must have remembered the solution from two years ago.

I noticed that they still have bugs on Windows, such as using the original Ultimate skill for Sung Jinwoo, regardless of what is configured.  That's been a problem since the alternative Ultimate skills have been available.  I suspect that testing is very minimal or their testing methodology is weak.  As well, the configurable QTE skills don't work the same in every game mode.

That said, there are level 120 artifacts, along with the level 100 they introduced last week.  My Character level seems to go up every 1.5 days (or 2 levels in 3 days, if that makes more sense).   Keeping the Hunters updated has been interesting, especially since Gina, Seorin, and the American Football star have been added.

Update 2026.05.18: I just changed machines today.  I have a much more powerful laptop computer than the one from 2022.  However, suddenly, I'm not able to finish gates with Sung Jinwoo.  They're all taking longer because of the forced difficulty but it's odd that those gates where the main character is involved, they're all failing today.

Solo Leveling: Arise Only one month until two years have passed

 It's odd that May 3, 2026 will be two years since I started playing Solo Leveling: Arise.

It feels as though there hasn't been that much time, but they have advanced the game and still not fixed some bugs.

 Elena Renault will be added and I'm just glad that she wasn't Elena Citroen or Elena Peugeot.  Maybe, later she could be Elena Renault Fuego.

 Of course, there were codes.  I hope that I remember to use them.

 

I've been so busy playing Where Winds Meet that I've not been paying too much attention.  I must be poor.

I also didn't pay much attention to the drivel from the community managers.  Hope things are still good.

 

Update 2026.04.10: Finished the new chapters in Normal mode.  Also, got Sung Jinwoo through one job change that's been waiting a while.  Still need to do the second one, as it was available right away. 

A few other things happened about the same time. 

Update 2026.05.02: I got the D-5 at login yesterday.  We're almost to the two years' mark, even though I thought we started on 3 May.

They already gave me Gina and Seorin and their weapons.  That's amazing since other games can be so cheap.  For all the money Hoyoverse collected, Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact weren't generous games.  Then again, I didn't spend any money on those and I spent a little money on SLA. 

Solo Leveing Arise: Two Months until Two Years

 Actually, it will be around the 3rd of May when the first open day of play happened.  It's difficult to believe that it has been two years.

  

I play too many games and it's always good to have an alternative while servers are down.  I was playing Tower of God: New World while the livestream was going.  It's a handheld Netmarble game.  I'm also playing Where Winds Meet, Wuthering Waves, and a bunch of old games, and a few racing games.

 There is a little bit new with Solo Leveling: Arise.  If you didn't read previously, there is a US$40 version on Steam.  I haven't spent much money but I've probably spent more than that in two years.  I'd rather have the PC version, although a Mac/iPad version would be really good now.

 I still haven't tried to play Cyberpunk 2077 on my Mac, but I play Wuthering Waves on it.  Now, that my M1 MacBook Air was released in 2020, I'm surprised that it does so well.  My ASUS ZenBook Pro running Win11 Pro with a Ryzen 7 5800H and NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti seem strained on SLA while other games seem fine.  Where Winds Meet doesn't complain. 

I'm currently at Character Level 130 and have more than 40 Hunters.  Still don't have weapons or skills finalized but I'm doing well enough.  I won't be going to South Korea to compete.

Is the MacBook Neo shaking up the computer industry?

 I've seen a few reports about the MacBook Neo coming as a shock to computer makers.

Is it because it's only a little more expensive than the rest of the industry charges for mediocre laptop computers? 

The MacBook Neo is a decent entry level laptop computer.  There are a lot of savings leading to compromises versus typical MacBook Air or MacBook Pro computers.

Are there people who want e-mail and web browsing machines that don't do much else because of hardware limitations?  I remember thinking that was why there were Linux distributions, and 20 years later, I'm still wondering why Linux hasn't taken that place.

 When I see Google Chromebooks, I see Intel Pentium-related processors.  It's surprising how they're still "alive".  Weren't Chromebooks supposed to go away, replaced with Android for the desktop?

Windows 11 is so fat that they need a slimmed-down version to fit on low-end machines.  My ASUS machine has a Ryzen 7 5800H and Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti (notebook edition), and with every Windows 11 Pro update, it seems to become more feeble.

The MacBook Neo benchmarks seem quite good, faster than my M1 MacBook Air in some cases. 

 With the MacBook Neo, will Apple somehow dominate in the low-end market for laptop computers, especially using a System-on-a-Chip (A18 Pro) that comes from a phone? 

Update 2026.03.14: I watched a video comparing a Microsoft Surface laptop computer using a mobile SoC and a Neo and the real problem was that Microsoft put little effort into making Windows on ARM great.  It couldn't run a lot of applications, including games, which is a point Microsoft always made against Macs.

 Since macOS has components for running iPadOS-modified games seamlessly, it goes a long way toward showing developers that their games can run on a Mac. 

Update 2026.03.23: I was at Target and got to see the Neo.  It feels much more expensive than anything that has Windows running on it for a similar price.  While the SoC is from a phone, it's quite powerful, exceeding my M1.  I was recently trying to help a friend find a powerful but economical laptop computer for university and they were close to the prices for the Neo.  Would you buy plastic or aluminium? 

Update 2026.05.07: Apparently, sales are great.  They need more A18 Pro SoCs to keep up with demand and to keep the A17 Pro and Pro Max going. 

They might ditch the lower model.  It didn't make sense to me to offer it.  They're talking about adding more colors.  They've noticed that certain colors have better demand than others from the Orange that was selling on the phones.