I’ve got the 11th gen i5 and could get Doom 2016 running decently enough to play the single player campaign at native resolution, although the fan was running full blast the whole time and more than half of the graphics were down to medium. I’d love to hear what the AMD system can do.

As a point of reference, for me, Terraria runs great. Portal runs great. In Vampire Survivors, don’t pick Sammy and attempt an endless run, but otherwise it runs pretty well.

I’ve noticed something similar, but from a different angle.

I’ve been sorting though and tagging 15 years worth of photography ever since getting my NAS, and I’m noticing so many instances when I first started where I was so excited that I got something tricky in-focus, I didn’t notice the composition was awful, the lighting was bland, the image told no stories, etc. I was just happy to have a picture of a thing.

I also had cheaper gear, but I wanted sharper, clearer pictures so I over-sharpened the crap out of everything and abused that clarity slider.

At the time, I honestly didn’t see it and thought I was doing good work, but now it’s all I can notice when I see those old images.

I’ve read a few posts from people saying after upgrading to the AMD motherboard, the speakers got louder.

The weak speakers is the biggest thing I’ve noticed. They just aren’t loud enough if you want to cue up a video and show it to a few people. They can’t cut though the background noise.

Sometimes if I bump it really hard, the trackpad registers a false click.

There are cheaper ways to get a laptop with the same specs as a framework, but the thing to consider is not just the upfront cost, but the long term cost of ownership. If something breaks or you want to upgrade, you can swap out the components instead of replacing the whole thing.
eg. instead of spending $1500 every 2 years on a new laptop, you can spend $2000 now, then $1000 every 2 years on upgrades.

I’d be happy to have a dual usb-c expansion port without thunderbolt 4 / display port alt mode / power delivery standard.

Sometimes, I just want to charge my mouse and headphones at the same time without unplugging my laptop, and they are happy with the old 5v 500mA USB standard and don’t need USB4 speeds.

Expecting full Thunderbolt 4 functionality from a dual expansion card would be unreasonable. I’m thinking something like a dual C ports with USB 2.0 specs.

From the photographer’s point of view, we’ve all had that client from hell that demands endless changes and revisions. But we’ve also had times where we’ve just had an off day, or we’ve mis-read what the client asked for, or the printers made an error. It happens.

I usually have a ‘3 edits’ clause in a contract. If you’re not happy with the images and want changes made, I’ll do that for you, twice. After that, there is an additional cost for further edits.

I have that in my contract because the photographer I was assisting for when I started had the same clause in her contracts, and she was way better at the business side than I.

I found a lot of the early drill assignments in my high school photography class were really effective. I still find myself coming back to some of those lessons.

1. Lock yourself in the bathroom with a 50mm and don’t leave until you’ve taken 100 shots. - teaching how to work the scene, find something interesting in the mundane and the everyday.

2. Photograph the alphabet. - learn to see how things can look like other things, shooting with intention, learning about observing the world for how it can be made to look, not for how it is.

3. Photograph a series of symmetrical shots, asymmetrical shots, pure texture shots, silhouette shots. - learn to make your photo about one primary element. Is it about shape? light? subject? texture? pick only one and run with it.

4. Tell a story with a photo. - I always sucked at this one. But this makes a picture worth looking at instead of being some stock photo.

number 5 probably doesn’t matter so much any more, but: Push your T-max 400 to 1600 to open up a new world of low-light shooting.

$100/hour was the bare minimum I’d charge for just a shoot, no edits, no prints, and that was 15 years ago before inflation got crazy.

Eg. 8 hour event, charge $800, shoot 800 photos, deliver 80 files. Light edits (lightroom/capture one) cost extra. Heavy edits (photoshop) cost a lot extra. Prints cost extra. Anything more than 3 revisions costs extra.

Just the cost of printing + album would cost about what this job is paying. Don’t walk, run from this one.