It’s been years since my last totally new build, and wanted to share what I learned about making my new PC into a spectacular neon rainbow over the last month. My kids thought my old computer was "so boring" compared to my sister's so I knew I had to bring my A+ game with a rainbow explosion :)
I’ll start out by saying that figuring all this out has been by far the most confusing and frustrating part of my new build. Every time I thought I understood everything, there was always yet another exception to the rule. So don't feel bad if you feel like this is all super complicated and confusing, because it is! There's a TLDR is at the bottom.

The difference between RGB vs ARGB

The first and most crucial piece of information is that there are two types of “RGB” for PCs:

RGB = 4-pin 12V header = Every LED on the device must be the same color
ARGB = Addressable RGB = 3-pin 5V header = You can control the color of each individual LED on the device

ARGB (also sometimes known as digital RGB) is far more flexible, can create way cooler effects, and it’s what most modern LED devices use. It's also a newer technology, so a lot of older "How to do RGB" posts/articles just assume you're using the 12V kind. Also you should never plug an ARGB 5V device into a RGB 12V header. Each type of device should be kept to its own type. Some photos comparing ARGB vs RGB headers can be found here.
What makes it very confusing is a lot of product listings and articles (like my post title!) just say "RGB" without specifying which type they're referring to until you dig deeper into the specs.

The different ARGB connector types

Adding to this cluster-mess is that most 5V 3-pin ARGB devices use a 4-pin footprint which have one of the pins left off so there's only 3 physical metal pins. But because nothing involving RGB is straightforward, there are also some ARGB devices that use a 3-pin footprint instead (JST-SM 3 pin). This image shows the two different ARGB connector types.
Because of this, some ARGB devices include a cable compatible with both types of ARGB headers. But other ARGB devices only provide one option and you'd need an adapter if it's the wrong type of your setup. This very important detail isn't always listed in the product description either because it’ll just say “3-pin Addressable RGB” without specifying which types of headers are supported, making it extremely frustrating and confusing. In an attempt to keep it clear in this document I’ll use the following abbreviations which I’ve made up just now (if there are better ones, let me know and I'll update):

3P3F - 3-pin Addressable RGB header with a 3-pin JST-SM footprint. Sometimes also called a DGV connector (Data, Ground, Voltage).
3P4F - 3 pin Addressable RGB header with a 4-pin footprint: 3 physical metal pins as one pin is left off so the signals look like this: (+5, Data, NC, GND) - used by most ARGB devices and motherboards. NC stands for "No Connect" because it's blank.

How do I control all these lights?

Modern motherboards usually include both 5V ARGB and 12V RGB headers which can be used to control your lights via their respective motherboard utility software (MSI Dragon Center Mystic Light/ASUS Aura Sync/etc). These motherboard headers can be named a variety of things depending on the manufacturer. On my MSI board the 5V ARGB header is called JRAINBOW while the 12V RGB header is called JRGB. You can use both types of headers at the same time as long as you make sure to connect the correct type of (5V ARGB or 12V RGB) devices to their respective headers.
For ARGB, most motherboards (Asus/MSI/ASRock) use the 3P4F header for ARGB, but other motherboards (Gigabyte) use the 3P3F header for ARGB. However based on comments it looks like newer Gigabyte boards have moved to the "standard" 3P4F ARGB header which is good news. So check your mobo manual to confirm what it has. Yes, it’s a confusing mess.
Older motherboards might only have a 12V 4-pin RGB header or even more horrifying, no RGB header at all!!! We’ll cover what to do in that case a bit further down.
Making things even more complicated, some manufacturers created proprietary headers/protocols that plug into their own proprietary light controllers which are then controlled via USB. Corsair is the most famous example of this as their fans/lights will only work with Corsair's proprietary hubs which then talk to your PC via an internal USB header. Though as some comments have pointed out, you can buy adapters to get around this.
Corsair isn't the only one either, other "addressable RGB" manufacturers (NZXT for example) have decided to do their own thing with a proprietary connector and/or protocol that doesn't work well with anything generic, and it's often not obvious that's the case until you buy it and it doesn't work with the other stuff. If you keep to the same ecosystem it'll (usually) "just work" all together, but you'll limit yourself to a specific brand.
If you want LED devices that have more flexibility across brands to mix and match, look for the device product description to say "Compatible with MSI Mystic Light and Asus Aura Sync" which typically means it uses a generic 3P4F ARGB header. But there may be exceptions, so I can't 100% guarantee it'll work with your other devices and this is a huge reason why RGB can be such a headache.
Finally some fans or light strips or cases have no external connections - they can only be controlled by an included remote. The product descriptions sometimes aren't clear when this is the case, so you have to read the specs very carefully and read the reviews. Some devices provide both a remote and ARGB header connection and you hold down a button on the remote to switch between the two options.

How do RGB fans work?

The fans typically come with two cables connected to them: one for controlling the fan speed (like any other fan) and the other for controlling the LEDs. However some fans have a 3P4F header while other fans have a 3P3F header, and some fans provide both types of connectors. Also remember that double the cables, double the cable management!
There’s also some fan “kits” that come with an ARGB hub that all the fans ARGB cables plug into and then you can control the LEDs with a wired remote. This is more common if you buy a 2, 3, or 4 pack of ARGB fans together as one package. Also some fan kits have the ARGB cables plug into their specific proprietary hub, and then the hub has a single cable that plugs into the standard ARGB header for your motherboard.

I have 20 ARGB fans for my case and only 1 ARGB header, what do I do?

Most motherboards only come with one or two ARGB headers. You have a few options

Use a simple splitter - Straight forward and cheap. You connect it to your motherboard's ARGB header. However whatever colopattern is used on the longest device will be the colopattern used for all the other devices connected to the splitter. So if you set a 12-LED pattern (like a rainbow) with three devices connected to the splitter - a 12 LED strip shows all 12, a 6 LED fan shows the first 6 of the pattern, and a 3 LED fan shows just the first 3 of the pattern. So all devices connected to the splitter will be mirrored. This may or may not matter to you based on how you want to light your system. Also each ARGB device has an amount of max current it could use, so you want to make sure the sum of all those devices hanging off the splitter is less than what your motherboard supports (usually around 3A).
Some devices allow you to daisy-chain them together so you only need one motherboard header to connect multiple LED strips/fans (think of how your Christmas lights chain together). You'd have to determine if your particular device can do this as some devices have a connector to support this and some don't. It often has the same limitations as using a splitter with the mirroring. However as a commenter pointed out, that's not always the case depending on the device.
Use a hub - Typically an ARGB hub works just like a splitter and is connected to your motherboard's ARGB header, but also includes a connection for power (usually provided by a SATA power connector from your PSU), so you can power more LEDs/devices than a splitter. But it still has the same mirror coloring limitation, which may or may not be important to you. Some fan kits (especially if you buy a 2 or 3 pack) come with a hub included.
Use an ARGB controller - The most flexible option because each device you connect to the controller can have unique colors/patterns and won't have to be mirrored. It’s typically controlled via an internal USB header on your motherboard and does not use the ARGB header on the motherboard at all. It also allows you to control the lights without having to use the motherboard software. I went this route and *highly\* recommend it.

Keep in mind that there are also power limitations to consider. Some LED devices have their own SATA power connector to get around this limitation, while others just use the ARGB header 5V power which will then have a limit on how many fans/strips you can daisy chain or split off. That particular limit will be motherboard dependent (usually around 3A but you have to check your mobo manual for your specific board) and also dependent on the power draw of the LED devices. But the end result is that you can’t actually control 20 ARGB devices off a single ARGB header because the LEDs would get way too dim.

I don’t have a RGB or ARGB header on my motherboard, how can I turn my PC into a rainbow wonderland?

There’s two options:

Make sure the LED device you’re interested in comes with its own remote. The drawback for a physical remote is that it might be complicated to get that remote outside your case if it’s a wired remote, so anytime you want to change the colors/patterns you would need to pop open your case. This may or may not be a big deal for you. There are some remote-only LED kits that use a wireless remote though, so you could search for those too.
Buy specific hardware to control the LEDs like the Razer Addressable RGB controller I mentioned above which connects to your PC via an internal USB connector that almost all motherboards have.

My experiences with different devices:

Razer Addressable RGB Controller: By far the best purchase I made in my technicolor rainbow journey, this lets you connect 6 different ARGB devices and give them each unique colors/patterns. It works with ARGB devices that use the 3P4F header (3 physical pins in the 4-pin footprint). You use Razer’s Synapse3 software to design the lighting schemes. This software does have a bit of a learning curve, but is quite powerful as you can layer different effects. I’m a huge fan of this controller and since it was only released in Nov 2020 I don’t see it mentioned much yet, but I consider it a must-have for anyone who wants to seriously light up their PC. Especially because it seems to be the only universal controller like this that exists at the moment. You can split/daisy chain on each of the ports too, for a maximum of 80 LEDs per port, or 240 LEDs in total. The fans I bought have 12 LEDs each so there’s quite a lot of headroom for daisy changing. It’s compatible with just about any ARGB device that uses the standard WS2812b LEDs that almost all ARGB devices use. It connects to the internal USB header on your motherboard so it's also compatible with just about every PC. You could also use a standard micro-B USB cable and connect it to an external USB port, so you could use it with desktop 5V ARGB light strips too. It also comes with tape to stick it to your PC or alternatively it has screw holes compatible with SSD mounting in your case (which is what I did). The one odd thing with this is it uses an old-school Molex connector for its power source instead of the “standard” SATA power connector which is a bit annoying to attach another cable to the PSU. There are SATA to Molex power adapters available, but I didn’t try it so perhaps someone wants to be a guinea pig let us know how it goes.

G.Skill Neo Z RGB RAM: You control the RAM RGB using the RAM manufacturer’s software running on your PC. The G.Skill software is fairly configurable, I had no issues and I really like these RAM sticks in particular because they diffuse the light really smoothly.

Asus 3080 Video card: You use the video card manufacturer software to control the LEDs on your video card. So DragonCenter for MSI cards, Aura Sync for Asus cards, etc. The Asus 3080 I managed to snag just has a small logo LED so I turned it off because I already had so many LEDs going on in my system.

MSI X570 Tomahawk: You control motherboard RGB via the manufacturer's respective motherboard utility software. For MSI specifically their RGB software used to be available as a standalone program called MysticLight, but now their RGB software is only available bundled as part of their DragonCenter software package. For older MSI boards you can still install and use the older standalone version to control the LEDs, but unfortunately newer MSI boards (like mine) you have to use the bundled version. My board has only a few LEDs on the back so I just turned them all off.

Lian Li Strimer Plus Power Cables: I blew $100 on these but they were so worth it! These are extensions so they’ll work with any power supply. The 24-pin Motherboard one comes with a controller, and you plug in both the motherboard and GPU extensions in that controller. You can use the controller as a physical remote, or alternatively you can connect the controller to a 3P4F ARGB header on your motherboard. You long press on the “mode” button to switch between the options.Make sure you get the “Plus” version which is newer and looks much better than the original version. It uses a SATA power connector and can get *super* bright. The normal GPU extension has a 6+2 and 6+2 connection, and there’s now also a new 8+8+8 GPU extension available for the RTX 3080/3090 cards that require it. The GPU extension comes with the option to drive it off a 3P4F ARGB header, so you don’t have to buy the 24-pin extension in order to get the controller if you don’t want to. But I’d highly recommend getting both. These are my favorite RGB devices in my build. Finally, these Strimer Plus light strips have too many LEDs for the Razer ARGB controller, so if you try connecting it to the Razer controller, you’ll get an error and it’ll refuse to recognize it. I have them connected to my motherboard ARGB header directly.

DeepCool Castle EX 240mm AIO: IMHO this is one of the best looking AIOs out there because you can remove the logo entirely or replace it with your own custom one. It includes a connection for both the 3P3F and 3P4F ARGB footprints so that’s a huge bonus too. Default fans were a bit loud though at 100% and replaced them with ARGB ones that are quieter.

DeepCool CF120 fans: Nice and cool 12 LED ARGB PWM fans. The stand-alone CF120 come with adapters so it works with both the 3P3F and 3P4F ARGB headers. Sadly the CF140 wasn’t available standalone, so I had to buy a 2-fan kit. The kit includes both a fan controllesplitter and an ARGB hub/splitter. Unfortunately the ARGB hub that came in the kit only includes one ARGB header adapter and I don't’ see anywhere that sells the adapter by itself. So both fans would have to be the same colopattern, unless you buy another CF120 just to get an adapter. Which I did. RGB is a slippery slope!

Be Quiet 500DX case: Has the standard 3P4F ARGB connection and hooked it up to the Razer controller and works and looks great. There’s a button on the front to control the LEDs by cycling through the options on each press if you don’t have a ARGB header. You hold down the button for 3 seconds to toggle between using the button or using the ARGB controller to controller the LEDs. Also the front panel strip and the interior top strip are mirrored, so you can’t make them unique colors from each other. It uses a SATA connector for power. Case is great too!

Razer BlackWidow Keyboard: Standard RGB mechanical keyboard, RGB is controlled via Razer’s Synapse3. You can do some cool effects triggered by specific keys you specify. It’s really nice to have both this keyboard and my ARGB controller controlled by the same software. The only disappointment is the lighting scheme isn’t saved to the keyboard memory, so if you use Linux or plug it anywhere else, it just defaults to a rainbow color.

Phantek Digital Halos: I originally was going to go with these because they allow you to add LEDs to *any* case fan and can be cheaper than buying a ARGB fan if you already have boring non light up fans. So you can light up your Noctua NF-A12x25’s if you wanted and they look really good.

There are 2 different main lines:

Halos RGB - 12V RGB with 18 LEDs (120mm) or 21 LEDs (140mm)
Halos Digital - 5V ARGB with 30 LEDs for both sizes. Looks much better than the RGB version.

And then each line has two different versions:

Normal (non-Lux): Plastic frame, plain cable
Lux: Aluminum frame, braided cable, and crucially, includes a 3P4F ARGB adapter.

I originally bought these not realizing that the normal non-Lux version only has a connection for a 3P3F header, which is not compatible with my motherboard or the Razer controller. You can buy the adapter separately for $5 a pop, so I bought that, but all 4 adapters were *super* loose on the ARGB header and would fall out of both the Razer controller and motherboard headers. I really wanted to like these, but I had to return them because it just didn’t work well at all. I was also super annoyed I had to buy an adapter and wait a week to ship because Phantek’s product description doesn’t make it clear at all that it’s not compatible with the standard 3P4F ARGB header.

Some last notes:

Razer’s Synapse3 software theoretically has hooks to also control the RGB RAM and the MSI Mystic Light from inside the Synapse3 studio, but I found it to be very buggy and didn’t work well. Also while my RGB RAM has 8 LEDs, I could only control 4 of them with Synapse3. So that level of integration doesn't seem quite there yet. In the end I had to use 4 different Windows programs to control all the various devices (Synapse3, MSI DragonCenter, GSkill, and Asus Aura for the video card)
For Linux users (as 99% of RGB software is Windows only) or for people who don't want to use their motherboard's software because they hate it, or for anyone who wants to script their lights, there is an open source project called OpenRGB for controlling select LED devices. But device support is limited and I haven't used it myself so YMMV.
There’s a subreddit dedicated to custom Razer profiles that you can download and use.
I did not explore any of the Crucial RGB fans/controllers because they’re so expensive. I believe they use a proprietary connection though. I’m sure someone in the comments can provide more information on that ecosystem. (Edit: And here's some very useful information on that ecosystem)
Crucial isn't the only one to create their own proprietary ecosystem as some other fan/case/LED strip manufacturers also decided to do something proprietary, and it's often really difficult to figure out what kind of connecter or protocol a particular device uses without having to buy it first and see for yourself. It's by far the most frustrating thing about planning an RGB system. But these closed ecosystems are becoming less common and typically if the LED device you're buying says "Compatible with MSI Mystic Light and Asus Aura Sync" then it uses a generic 3P4F ARGB header.
RGB=Red, Green, Blue. Each color is made up of 8 bits to give 256 (2^8) possible values for each color, and then all combined give the 256x256x256=16.7 million possible unique colors you see in marketing all the time.
For anyone looking for the technical details, 12V RGB devices work by dedicating one line for Red, one for Green, and one for Blue and adjusting the voltages to adjust the colors. ARGB is more complex and details can be found here.

This is everything I wish I’d known when I started this whole process, so hopefully it can help someone else out too. I’ve always thought being a concert lighting engineer would be a fun job and this is the closest I’ll probably ever get. So while RGB isn’t for everyone (and just like Crossfitters and people who don't use Facebook, you don’t have to ask someone if they don't like RGB, they’ll make sure to tell you), I’m extremely happy I went all out on the RGB!

TLDR: Buy 5V Addressable RGB (ARGB) devices that use the standard 3-pin ARGB header in a 4-pin footprint (3 physical metal pins as one pin is left off) and get a Razer Addressable RGB Controller which connects to your motherboard’s internal USB header. Now you’ve got something that’ll work with almost any PC and almost all standard generic ARGB devices.

I am a 33 years old, live in Baltimore MD, work as a Systems Engineer and make $101K (196K Combined) a year.

I am 33 years old make $101,975, live in Baltimore, MD and work as a Systems Engineer. My husband is an Electronics Engineer, he earns $94,200 a year. Combined salary - $196,175
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance: ~85K combined for me. My employer contributes 10%, I contribute 8%. I also put 50$ in a Roth IRA every paycheck. Husband (P) has ~75K total. His employer ended their 8% contribution thanks to COVID Edit - He just received an email this week that it will be resuming in March, yaaaay! He also contributes $100 a month to an IRA. So ~160K Total.
Equity: We have ~45K in home equity. We bought our house about 4 years ago, and thanks to grants we were able to afford the down payment of the house (we got about $17K in grants)
Savings account balance: We have $40K saved. We are saving up for our next house, so we are trying to build our cash savings.
Checking account balance: I try to keep at least $500 in my account just in case
Credit card debt: None:. I use a CC for most of my purchases but pay off the balance every month. P does the same.
Student loan debt: I graduated with about 33K in student debt. I paid this off somewhat aggressively, then was able to pay off the final lump sum with money I received when my grandmother passed away. P also graduated with around 30K in loans, and paid it off before we were dating.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: Both my husband and I both only very recently started making as much as we do now. My first salary out of college was 30K as a software tester, and P's salary was $29K. We changed jobs and even moved across the country twice growing our career. When we moved to Baltimore a little over 5 years ago, I was making 49K and P was an hourly employee with no benefits, but earned around 52K a year. I was able to switch from a software tester to a systems engineer a couple of years ago, and that is when my salary began to really increase. I received a 10% raise this year and a promotion, which bumped me over the 100K mark. P's salary increased a bit when he became a full time employee with benefits. His job here in Baltimore was a really challenging transition for him, but he really stepped up and his hard work definitely payed off.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: I get paid biweekly, each paycheck is 2257.20, my monthly is usually 4514,40, except for the two months where I get an extra paycheck. P's monthly take home is 5400. Our combined monthly take home is usually 9,914
Section Three: Expenses
Mortgage: $2240 P pays this.
Daycare: $2200 I pay this!
Donations: Monthly $10 to local NPR. We donate randomly to other organizations throughout the year.
Electric: Usually ~200 in winter, closer to 100 in summer. I pay this.
Wifi/Cable: $120 P pays this.
Cellphone: $128 P Pays this.
Subscriptions Netflix - 12 Hulu - 12 Baltimore Sun - 14 Neighborhood association - 23 (P and I split these)
Pet expenses: We just had to put down one of our cats, who did have considerable expenses at the end of her life, including medication that cost $50 a month, and special medicated food. We still have two cats, but they are all healthy and have no extra expenses for now.
Car insurance: $250
workout classes: I take aerial silks and trapeze, the cost works out to be ~120 a month. It's an expensive hobby but it gives me so much joy.
Section 4: Money Diary
Day 1 - Tuesday
5:30 am - I have a 16 month old (T) who wakes me up at 5:30am. We got a bit of snow on Sunday, and expect his daycare to have a late start today, but T has a runny nose so I have a sneaking suspicion he will be home with us all day today. I give him milk and play with him until it's time to wake up my husband (P). We take turns waking up with T because we both hate mornings.
7 am - P is up, and we give T some sort of food
8:30 am - we agree T cannot go to daycare, so we decide to split the day watching T so we can both work some. I work in the morning, so I bring my laptop downstairs so I can check my email while we get the real breakfast ready. P makes pancakes for himself and T, and he also makes tea for me and coffee for himself. I have a piece of toast with my tea.
9 am - I go upstairs to our spare bedroom which we have converted to be an office thanks to COVID. I try my best to focus on work in the morning. I work on some reports and get some files organized and ready for analysis. At some point in the middle of this I get dressed, wash my face and brush my teeth. Days with T home can get chaotic and my self care often gets dropped.
12:30 pm - P and T ran out and picked up lunch while I was working - we all feast on tacos (T eats an entire chicken taco). $28.14 We normally cook lunch but thanks to the snow and having T home we are mostly out of food.
1 pm - P leaves for work (he cannot do most of his work remotely so he has to go in). T goes down for a nap, and I try to make the house less chaotic, also get a little more work down. T wakes up around 3 and we play for the rest of the afternoon.
5 pm - P is home, we make flatbread pizza with red peppers for T. T has gotten super picky and pizza is one of the few ways he eats any veggies these days, so it's a common offering. P and I have instant ramen for ourselves, with lots of veggies added in from the fridge (we really need groceries).
8 pm - T is asleep, P and I clean up a little, then I video chat some friends of mine for an hour. I remember to order bread, which is delivered on Fridays to the liquor store a couple of blocks from my house. Suddenly it's 10pm and bedtime. $9
Daily Total: 31.14
Day 2 - Wednesday
7:10 am - I am woken up by T running into the bedroom. It was my turn to sleep in a little, never thought how much I would appreciate an after 7am wakeup. P and I discuss T's runny nose. T has no fever or other symptoms, but we play it safe and decide to keep him home one more day. Ugh. T gets as breakfast bar for his first breakfast today.
8:30 am - I make T eggs for 2nd breakfast, get ready for another half day of work (I am working in the morning again).
10 am - I am trying to pay attention to meetings but it is hard. T is clearly fussy and tired of being stuck in the house. He has been cold and miserable when he is brought outside though. Everyone is frustrated and grumpy.
12 pm - I give up on work early, heat up Trader Joe's chicken tikka for lunch. P also heats up a frozen Trader Joe's meal. We heat up some leftover flatbread pizza for T, but he refuses it. He eats yogurt and all of the chicken from my meal. Thanks kid. I start putting together an order from the grocery store (we only do curbside pickup because of COVID). It's going to be a larger order because it's been longer than usual since we have gotten groceries.
5 pm - P gets home with takeout. P gets a veggie burger, I get meatballs, we get spaghetti for T. We offer T some of our meals, he refuses everything except the spaghetti. $47.53
7:45 pm - T is in bed, I log back into work. A coworker send me some documentation to review, I do that and also start going through files and gathering data. While I work P makes pumpkin bread!!
9:15 pm - I log off for the night. I play Just Dance on the switch and dance around alone in my living room for a half hour to get some sort of exercise in.
Daily Total: 47.53
Day 3 - Thursday
6:10 am - Woken up by T. It's after 6 - yay! I watch T closely, we are hoping to take him to daycare today. His runny nose is still around but seems better.
7 am - T gets some of P's pumpkin bread for breakfast. P is up and we decide to take T to daycare today. We run around throwing everting T needs in a bag, de-ice our 2nd car as P has a dentist appointment at 8 and we haven't used that car since the snow storm.
7:45 am- the whole family somehow makes it out the door. T gets very excited to see he is going back to daycare. He was definitely tired of staying home too. I drop off T and and head back home for an actual full day of work
8:15 am - check email from my kitchen while I make tea. P stops back home after the dentist, makes coffee to bring to work and feeds the cats.
11:45 am - I make the last hello fresh meal I have that has been sitting in the back of the fridge getting sad. It's grilling cheese with veggies and couscous. P shows up around 12:15 and we eat together (he eats the other portion). I started getting hello fresh irregularly in November, to help with my sanity thanks to COVID. [Note - P works just a few minutes from our house, so he has been coming home for lunch every day during COVID times]
1 pm - P heads back to work, I go back upstairs to my "office". The rest of my work day is filled with meetings, screensharing covid life, and writing some code.
4:45 pm - I wrap up work and head out to pick up T. His face lights up when he sees me.
5:15 pm - P makes bean and cheese quesadillas for T and himself. I have half of a Trader Joe's frozen beef and broccoli. T gives up on the quesadillas after a few bites, but accepts some applesauce.
7:45 - T is in bed. P runs out to pick up some beer and tonic for me. I prepare a grilled cheese with some pesto and spinach snuck in for T's lunch tomorrow while P is out. $16.53
8 pm - P is back, I make a gin and tonic and hop on a virtual game night with some of my coworkers. P watches hockey and has some beer.
10pm - go upstairs for bed. Brush teeth, wash face, moisturize, bedtime!
Daily Total: 16.53
Day 4 - Friday
7:10 am - Woken up by T who is trying to climb in the bed to wake me up. P takes him down to have breakfast (pumpkin bread and some oatmeal), while I wake up and brush my teeth. I help get T out the door, then I take a much needed long shower. My showers are either 2 minutes or 20 minutes these days, there is no in between.
8:10 am - P asks if I want anything from the bakery by the daycare. I decline, as we need to finish up the bread we have. He gets himself a raspberry danish and a coffee $7.16
8:20 am- P makes me toast and tea as I empty the dishwasher. Then we eat breakfast together and answer our morning work emails. P is out the door by 9 to go into work, I head upstairs.
12:10 pm - P stopped by the grocery to pick up our order $89.30, and also picked up Chipotle for lunch $13.77. He gets a burrito, I get a bowl. We both add queso to our meals for the first time, because fuck it. The queso makes the meal so decadent and I only want to sleep now. After we finish eating we put away the groceries - they were out of a lot of things we requested. Blah. I can't make much of what I was planning to cook, and continue to feel frustrated with COVID.
1 pm - P heads back to work, I go back upstairs despite the meows from my cat who wants me to stay downstairs on the couch. I wish cat. I eat 2 squares of chocolate to get me through the Friday afternoon (yes, I am the person who eats dark chocolate one square at a time. It can take me a month to get through a bar sometimes. I am a monster)
4 pm- I stop working a little early and jump on a zoom call with a couple of friends. We catch up for a little as I start making veggie fritters in hopes to get T to eat any vegetable.
5 pm - P arrives home with T. I offer T the fritters I made and he eats a few bites. I'll take it. I also quickly cook some pasta and steam some broccoli. I mix in some pesto and call that dinner for P and I. P gets T to eat some applesauce as well.
6:15 pm - I go to my aerial silks class. I have been doing aerial since I moved to Baltimore and I love it! Class is an hour long, after it I stop by the liquor store where the bread I ordered earlier in the week is dropped off. I also pick up a bottle of wine while I am there. $16.34
8 pm - I get home and T is asleep. P and I have a couple of drinks (beer for him, wine for me) and we watch RuPaul's Drag Race. We have watched this show for years and had kinda stopped watching it, but picked it back up in the pandemic times and it's exactly the energy we need.
10:30pm - Head up to bed a little later than we should. Lazy face washing and teeth brushing, then sweet sweet bedtime.
Daily Total: 112.80
Day 5 - Saturday
6:45 am - I wake on my own and T is still asleep!!!! I actually get to wake up for a few minutes on my own before I see that T is up. This is the latest he has ever slept and I am overjoyed. I give T milk and we play and look at every book he owns. At 7:45 we wake up P and we both marvel at how well T slept.
8 am - P starts making breakfast for T and himself. I just have toast and tea as usual.
10 am - Another aerial class for me this morning - this time dance trapeze, my favorite! This class is so challenging but I love it. I come home bruised and worn out. It's not ideal for me to take the two classes so close together, but that is just how the schedule worked out. While I am at class, P takes T to the playground to get some energy out.
12 pm - I try to get T to eat more veggie fritters for lunch, but no luck. He "eats" an apple for awhile, and has his trusty yogurt. I honestly don't remember what P and I eat for lunch.
1pm - T naps. P and I chill on the couch and do as little as possible. I order a pair of leggings off of amazon, as I have only worn leggings this winter and it shows. $25.44
3:30 pm - T is up, and we all get dressed to go to the bookstore near our house, which allows you to shop by appointment only - we have one for 4pm. I am just so excited to go somewhere. We browse for a bit and get 3 books for T, P gets a random book, and I randomly buy an expensive but beautiful cookbook - it's all about lunch bowls, and everything in it looks delicious. We spend a lot, but we never go shopping these days and are glad to support a local business. $70.98
5 pm - Dinner time! I heat up some chicken, which T eats most of. I am able to add a few pieces to some instant ramen I made. I also add spinach, green onion, and corn to my ramen. P makes a burrito for himself (P is vegetarian, which is why we eat completely different meals sometimes. He had no interest in any chicken). After dinner we video chat the grandparents, then it's T's bedtime routine.
7:45 pm - T is asleep. I decide it is time for me to make a chocolate torte. I haven't had a true dessert in awhile and I am craving something, and this is what we have the ingredients for. While I am baking, P runs to a grocery near our house. We don't like going inside a grocery these days, but we really need some of the items that were missing in our last pickup. He comes home with way more than what was on our initial list, but we will use everything $71.71 The cake is out the oven, I make a ganache for the first time ever to top the cake and P is in love. He has a much bigger sweet tooth than me, so he is very supportive of my random baking. We end the night eating cake, having some wine, and just chatting and catching up until we head to bed at too late of an hour.
Daily Total: 161.13
Day 6 - Sunday
7 am - Woken up by P & T. I take T and we play downstairs while P gets as little extra rest. It's snowing/raining outside and it just looks awful. Around 8 P comes downstairs and we agree to order breakfast for delivery since no one wants to do breakfast or anything at all in this weather. I ordered homefries and turkey sausage (something other than toast!!) and P gets an egg and cheese sandwich, and also orders pancakes to share with T. We put something on the TV, which we rarely do with T around, but if there was a day to be lazy this is it. Our food comes quickly and we eat it up! $19.51
10 am - we put T in his high chair and let him go wild with paint. This is fav indoor activity for rainy days. Once he is sufficiently messy, P takes T upstairs to wash off, and I pick up downstairs.
12 pm - P makes mac and cheese for T, which he eats up! Both P and I eat some of the boxed mac and cheese, and never get around to eating anymore.
1 pm - T is down for his nap. I play stardew valley on my PS4, while P plays something on his Switch until T is up. We eat some of the chocolate torte.
3:30 pm - It stopped raining and the sun is out! Once T is up, we all get dressed and walk to the park near our house. T finds lots of good sticks and watches lots of good dogs.
5 pm - I make a chicken noodle soup, P makes a flatbread with pesto and red bell peppers. T eats some chicken from my soup and some of the flatbread.
8 pm - T is down, P runs by walgreens to get diaper cream for daycare, since both groceries were out of it. $15.49 We watch another episode of RuPaul and go to bed around 10pm.
Daily Total: $35
Day 7 - Monday
6:15 am - wakeup by T. Play with all the cars until we wake up P at 7. T gets the last piece of pumpkin bread for breakfast.
7:45 am - Drop of T at daycare. Head back home, P makes me tea and makes himself coffee. We both have toast. As usual, we check email and have breakfast together, then he heads into work at 9.
9 am - I start working on some very exciting reports. Yay Monday. Daycare calls and says T hasn't been eating lunch and asks for advice. They commiserate with me on how tricky he is with food and we come up with a few ideas.
12 pm - I heat up some leftover soup for lunch, P comes home and heats up a burrito. We are both busy with work so todays lunch is a quick one and we don't talk much.
1 pm - I am back to work, back to reports.
4:30 pm - I stop working and get some food ready for T. I make some spaghetti and also some bread with peanut butter on it. P arrives home with T, and T runs into the kitchen asking for food. I give him the plate and he throws everything on the ground. I try not to let his eating (or lack thereof) get to me but it's been hard yall. P can tell I am frustrated and takes T upstairs so I can chill out. I say fuck it and heat up this frozen flatbread thing from trader joe's that we have had in the freezer for awhile for P and I. T decides he will eat that. Whatever kid.
8 pm - T is asleep, P runs out and gets a taco for from the place near our house. I had told daycare how T always eats tacos for us when we get them, so we are going to see if he will eat them at daycare. P also gets a taco for himself, since the flatbread wasn't much food. $7.86
9:30 pm - I eat my feelings in chocolate torte. I also decide I need to do something productive to feel better and that we are going to finally order the next size up carseat for T instead of looking online and getting overwhelmed and never buying something. We decide on using the same brand his current carseat is (Britax) and get a midrange model $201.39. This devolves into watching dumb videos on the internet until it's time for bed.
Daily Total: $209.25
Section 5: TOTALS
Total Expenses - $640.15
Food + Drink - $326.85
Home + Health - $15.49
Clothes + Beauty - $25.44
Transport - $0
Other - $272.37
Section 6: REFLECTION
This was honestly a stressful week for me. The snow days hit a bad time with work for P and I, so we spent more on takeout because of that. We also spend more on groceries than normal, but that was because we had spent much less the previous week and were out of many staples. The carseat was as bigger purchase, but I feel like there is always a bigger purchase around the corner these days, which has been making it harder for us to save as much as we would like.

I am 25 years old make $75,000, live in Northern Virginia and work as a Senior Advisory Specialist

I live with my boyfriend, W., but we do not combine finances. Additionally, I would like to put a content warning here at the top: I discuss tracking food and weight loss throughout this money diary.
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance - $19,195 in two 401ks (current and former company) and $18,478 in a Roth IRA (my grandparents set this up and matched the money I made working in high school/college - I'm very grateful that they set this up for me!)
Equity - no equity currently, I rent and do not own a car
Checking account balance - currently ~$5,000 (I try to keep it around this amount)
Credit card debt - $0 (I pay it off every month)
Student loan debt - $9,500 remaining to pay off the loans for my BA in political science (here's hoping I finish it off this year!)
Stocks - $1,190 in stocks from my former company. I also have some miscellaneous other stocks that I was gifted when I was younger and I'm unclear on the value of them (my dad manages them for me)
Savings - $1,500 (it took a big hit while I was unemployed this past summer)
Section Two: Income
Income Progression:
High school (2012-2013) - I worked at a local office supply store making $7.50/hour. I did this for fun spending money a few days a week after school.
College (2014-2017) - I worked two on-campus jobs. The first was as a front desk person at the fitness center beginning at the end of my freshman year; I typically did ten hours a week at this job. The second was as an assistant in our career center, and I did this for the entirety of my senior year; I typically did five hours a week at this job. Both paid $8.50/hour.
Internship (2015-2017) - I studied abroad off-cycle from July to December in Australia, and was offered an internship doing recruitment and operations work at my mom's company after randomly meeting the COO in an elevator and impressing him in a brief conversation. What originally was going to be a five week internship went on to be part-time remote when I was at school, and full-time when I was home for the summer and on breaks. It paid $12/hour and introduced me to human resources and strategy & operations.
Company #1, Job #1 (2017-2018) - After graduating college, I moved to begin working in Washington DC as an associate at a healthcare firm making $40,000/year. I really enjoyed this work and my team, even though there were some times I had to work long hours. I was promoted to a senior associate role after my first six months, which came with a 10% raise.
Company #1, Job #2 (2018-2020) - I decided that, while I liked my role within the company, I wanted to gain client-facing experience. I applied for and moved into a analyst role in a different department at $52,000/year. I was excited about this role because I got to travel and train clients onsite one to three times a month and build up a lot of important business skills. About halfway through 2019, I was told that they wanted to pay me more because they felt my effort outpaced my seniority and was out of the blue bumped up to making $70,000/year. During this role, I was also eligible for up to a 10% bonus based on how my team did.
Unemployment (2020) - Due to COVID-19, my company took a big hit being in the healthcare space. The vast majority of my team was made redundant in June 2020. While a super stressful time, I did get some severance and used it as an opportunity to assess what I really wanted in my next role; I knew I liked being client-facing, but realized I wanted to get back to human resources in some way.
Company #2 (2020-present) - I took my current role as a senior advisory specialist in the fall. I was able to negotiate a $75,000/year salary and a 5% bonus. The work I do is very energizing and rewarding, and I'm hopeful I can stay here for a while and move up the ladder because I like what I do a lot!
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
I make $4380.90 each month after deductions. I get paid twice a month.
Deductions (per paycheck)
· Medical insurance: $29.50
· Dental insurance: $7.50
· Eye insurance: $2.75
· 401k contribution: $156.25 (I plan on increasing this after my student loans are paid off) + 4% company match
Side Gig Monthly Take Home:
I run a book blog on the side, and while I currently don't make any money off of it, publishers often send me advanced reader copies of books! I save a lot of money that way, because I am buying books constantly.
Section Three: Expenses
· Rent: $975 for my portion of the one bedroom apartment that I share with W. I pay slightly more than half because I make more money than he does. All utilities are included.
· Student loans: $500 is the minimum I pay per month because I want them paid off as soon as possible (the minimum monthly payment is about half that). I usually throw extra money towards them when I have a low spend month.
· WiFi and cable: $140.06, which is absolutely ridiculous and I keep saying I'm going to call Comcast and negotiate this down but get lazy and don't. Yell at me in the comments to do this!
· Netflix: $14.88 (I also let my best friend use this)
· Spotify: $9.99
· Hulu with live sports, HBO, Starz, and Showtime add-ons: W. pays
· Amazon Prime: W. pays
· Nail salon subscription: $40 (this is cheaper than the cost of a gel manicure and includes a free gel mani every month plus extra bonuses, which makes this very worth it despite sounding extravagant!)
· Care/of vitamin subscription: $70
· Boxing membership: $179 for unlimited classes
· WW: $15.11 (I'm on a six month deal currently)
· Fitbit Premium: $9.99
· iPhone payment plan: $31.20 (this will end in November for my iPhone 11. I am still on my parents' unlimited data phone plan and have been told I never have to leave, which is a total blessing!)
· Google storage: $2.12
· iCloud storage: $2.99
Additionally, I have an annual payment of approximately $2,750 for my life insurance policy; I have a blend of whole and term life. I am currently not making these payments, as my grandparents created a fund to pay the first several years of premiums as they felt it was important for me to get life insurance at a young age so it could start gaining cash value. I am incredibly grateful for this!
Day One - Tuesday 1/19
7am: My alarm goes off and I am still tired. W. and I cuddle for ten minutes or so before he gets up to make us coffee. We drink our coffee in bed while watching a few YouTube videos from our favorite content creators; the two of us are very into a video game that we play together and consume a lot of content around it.
8:30am: Time to get back into work! We both work from home right now, so we move into the living room together. My inbox is surprisingly empty after a long weekend, so I dive back in to a client request that I didn't finish before closing my laptop on Friday.
9:00am: I have a few morning meetings, so I take a few minutes to get ready. I throw in my contacts and brush my teeth, then get dressed from the waist up in a comfy gray Fortune Ivy sweater and hoop earrings. I make another cup of coffee to keep my energy up.
9:25am: I move into the bedroom to take my meetings. I have a bed tray for my laptop, which makes it feel more desk-like on my bed. I first have a meeting with another member of my team to discuss how we're dividing up a project that we're working on together, followed by two town hall meetings. At some point during my meetings, W. texts me that he ordered an energy drink powder that we've been meaning to try and Venmo requests me for my half ($23). I munch on the last four donut holes we have left over from the weekend for a snack during my meetings and make sure to log what I eat in my WW app.
1:00pm: Out of meetings and in need of a break. W. comes into the bedroom and asks me if I want to go out on a quick walk, which I happily agree to. I throw on Girlfriend Collective leggings, my lucky Rangers sweatshirt, ballet flats, and a freshly washed mask and we head out. After a good 20 minute walk, W. offers to pay for McDonald's for lunch, which is great but definitely not WW friendly. I get a 10 piece nuggets and large fries, and W. gets himself a few burgers. He pays and we take it home to eat on the couch and chat for a few minutes before I have to get on more work calls.
2:00pm: Time for more meetings and project work! I return to the bedroom and call into meetings for an hour, including a weekly meeting I facilitate, and then put my 800th rewatch of Grey's Anatomy on the TV in background while I work.
5:30pm: I log off of my laptop right on time for a Facetime date with my DC best friend, A. We met at my first job and have been close since the minute we met. She just moved into a new apartment and got a new job, so she gives me a tour of the new place and we catch up for about half an hour. After we hang up, I say hi to W. for a few minutes and then go hop in the shower. I do my usual skincare routine (a bevy of Ole Henriksen products, I swear by them) before throwing on comfy clothes and joining W. in the living room.
7:00pm: I throw the Rangers-Devils game on my iPad (I'm a diehard New York sports fan except for basketball) and text my hometown best friend, B., about absolutely nothing while W. plays a video game for a while. I'm not super hungry, so W. heats up leftover tuna casserole for dinner while I just cut up an orange. At some point we mute the hockey game to watch a few episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, our first forray into the Housewives franchise which we've quickly become addicted to. We brush our teeth and make it to bed around 10:30pm.
Total: $23
Day Two - Wednesday, 1/20
7:00am: Usual morning routine: wake up, cuddle, coffee, and videos. I get out of bed to make the coffee this morning.
8:15am: I join W. for a quick morning shower before work starts for the day. I also do my weekly weigh in and I'm down almost another pound! The progress is slow, but that is also the healthy way to lose weight. I mark it down and log my coffee.
9:00am: I text with my mom about today's inauguration while I work. She wants to know if I can hear anything from my place, but besides the occasional sirens, there is no big fanfare yet. I set a reminder on my phone to turn on the news in a bit to listen.
10:45am: I finish up a difficult client request and send it off to their account team. W. gets me a lemon Pellegrino from the fridge for me to enjoy during my 11:00 meeting.
12:30pm: Out of my meetings and we have a new president!!! W. gives me a recap of Biden's speech and I find myself getting emotional after watching the video of Kamala getting sworn in. After wiping away the tears, I throw some chicken, buffalo sauce, and seasonings into our pressure cooker so we can have easy lunches: chicken sandwich and salad for W., chicken quesadilla for me so I can easily measure out how much of each food item I'm using. I log my food and we eat together during a quick fifteen minute break.
2:00pm: After changing out my water bottles (I like to drink out of reusable water bottles over drinking glasses, not really sure why) I remember why I don't like to use this one. I log on to the Hydroflask website and order a 21oz bottle with the sports cap lid ($28.58). I pick a color that's on sale because it's cheaper, find a coupon code for free shipping, and go through Rakuten so I can get 2% cash back. I also figure now is as good a time as any to get dressed since I have to be on camera for my afternoon meetings, so I throw on a camel and black polka dot Papermoon blouse and black Beyond Yoga leggings.
3:45pm: Weekly check in with my manager while I snack on a sliced cucumber. He and I discuss my 2020 review, which he literally had to do for me when I was less than a month in the role, and what my goals for 2021 are. I am setting my intentions on Friday, and I am very excited to think through what I want to accomplish this year. We discuss a few other projects and end a little earlier than expected. A friend of mine is streaming on Twitch, so I put his stream up on the TV while I work on a data project and gift a sub to a fellow viewer ($5.99). I see that someone has put a 4:30-5pm meeting on my calendar for tomorrow, so I have to cancel out of my 4:45 boxing class. Sigh.
5:45pm: I wrap up my work and head out to chat with W. for a bit. We decide to play our favorite video game for a while, so we log in and start playing in duos. We get a win in our very first game! After a while, our good friend N. joins us, so we switch to trios. At some point during what becomes a marathon gaming session, W. makes himself a frozen pizza and I drink the last two Stella Cidres we have in the fridge. Brush our teeth and head to bed around 11pm.
Total: $34.57
Day Three - Thursday 1/21
3:57am: I wake up for absolutely no reason. I hate when this happens. It takes me over an hour to fall back asleep.
7:00am: Usual morning routine, cut a little short for me to get ready for an 8:30 meeting.
10:00am: In desperate need of a break from my work, I log onto Etsy to pick out some cute candles for A. as a little housewarming gift. I have to text her for her new address, which kind of ruins the surprise, but I know how much she loves candles so I do it anyway ($32.86).
1:00pm: I get off of a client call that I shadowed with a member of my team. I have just decided on my focus area, hence why I am trying to get more exposure to the client work here. My teammate and I debrief and agree that I'll continue to shadow the calls that she does with this client so I can see the whole process through.
3:00pm: Out of another team meeting and exhausted from work. My 4:30 meeting cancels, and I'm bummed for a few minutes because I cancelled my boxing class to be in that meeting. But my mood turns around almost instantly - I got off the waitlist for the 6pm class! I text W. so he knows, and he asks if I can make him dinner before I go because he doesn't want to wait until I get back to eat. Fair enough. I agree and get back to work on my data project.
3:30pm: I get an email with the return label for my Fitbit. I've had it for a year and it randomly started giving me a rash on my wrist, so Fitbit is reimbursing me the total amount I paid for it. Customer service at its finest! I send the label to my Fedex store for pickup tomorrow, since I don't have a printer ($0.52).
5:30pm: I wrap up my work for the day and throw on Old Navy active leggings and a tank, tie back my hair, mask up, and head out the door to the boxing studio. It's endurance day and we do eight minute blocks instead of six, so I am dying by the time class is done. After class, I go to Target to pick up a few miscellaneous items we need: half & half, white vinegar, and chocolate peppermint stick Luna bars ($10.64). I mobile order and stop by Chipotle on the way home to grab a dinner of crispy chicken tacos and chips and guac ($16.23).
7:30pm: I stop by the concierge desk on my way back into the building to grab packages I have waiting and to catch up with my favorite concierge. She is a delight to talk to, but busy tonight, so I don't stay too long. Once home, I devour my tacos in about four minutes and then shower before putting on the Laker-Bucks on the iPad while W. plays video games. We migrate to the bedroom after halftime to finish it and are both exhausted that we fall asleep immediately after.
Total: $60.25
Day Four - Friday 1/22
7am: Usual morning routine. After watching two videos, W. announces that he isn't feeling well and is taking a day of PTO. I get him tucked comfy into bed with a movie and start my work day early. I put Grey's Anatomy on the TV while I work.
11am: I am hungry after powering through work all morning, so I place an order for a cheese pizza from Wiseguys ($21.99). A nice quick walk will feel good.
11:30am: I mask up and head out to pick up the pizza, stopping by CVS on the way to get a Red Bull for W., a Diet Coke for myself, and a bottle of Benadryl because I ran out ($27.27). I eat a slice of pizza while watching a bit of a Twitch stream before getting back to work. I also spend some time texting with B., as well as my older sister, C.
1:30pm: Back to back calls. When they're over, I check in on W., who unfortunately only feels worse. He decides to try and nap, and also informs me that he wanted to watch a Marvel movie so he added Disney+ to our Hulu subscription. He pays for that, but I'm happy we'll finally be able to watch those shows we've been missing out on!
4:30pm: Done with my projects and decide to call it a little early today. I appreciate that my manager doesn't particularly care if we stop early when all of our work is done, and I need to go to the Fedex store. I listen to one of my curated Spotify playlists (a lot of Halsey, Taylor Swift, Joan, and Flor are on this one) while I walk there to pick up the label I had printed. As I walk out of the store, several of my music friends start texting me - Halsey cancelled her summer tour. I am bummed because I was supposed to travel and go to several shows with friends. I make a mental note to start cancelling hotel reservations and request my Ticketmaster refunds tomorrow.
5:30pm: Manicure time! I've started doing gel manicures every other week because I have a horrible nail biting habit and this is the only way I can stop myself. I catch up with my favorite nail tech and the salon owners over a glass of sparkling rose. Today we do a nude-pink polish with black and white polka dots. When that's done, I also poke around at the beautiful jewelry they sell and pick out a pair or multicolored acrylic bow earrings. My subscription covers the manicure, so I only have to pay my tip (25% of the service cost) and for the earrings ($24.87). I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home and he asks if I can pick up NyQuil for him. I pop into CVS on the way home to get it ($16.94).
7:30pm: W. and I have a quiet evening, bouncing between a few TV shows and basketball games. We call it an early night and go to bed before 10. Wild Friday!
Total: $91.07
Day Five - Saturday, 1/23
8:30am: I wake up feeling pretty well rested. W. is still sleeping, so I get out of bed quietly and head out to the living room. I answer a few work emails that came in last evening, including a stretch project to present some webinars later in the year! I used to facilitate webinars in an old role of mine, so I'm looking forward to flexing that muscle again. I also submit my Ticketmaster refund requests, cancel some hotel reservations, and peruse my favorite auction website. I spy my dream Louis Vuitton bag (Speedy 40 in canvas and leather) at what could be a steal. I do some mental math at what would be the max I would splurge on it and set a max bid. I'm currently winning and text B. with excitement.
9:45am: W. texts me that he's awake but still not feeling well. I crawl back into bed for some snuggles and ask him what he needs. He wants bagels, so I agree to go out to pick them up if he pays for them. He orders a BEC on an everything bagel for himself and a multigrain bagel with butter for me. I throw on black Girlfriend Collective leggings, a Halsey tee, and my Adidas superstars, grab my mask and jacket, and head out the door. It's a little chilly, but it feels good. It's a quick turnaround to get back with the bagels. W. and I eat them in bed while watching some Real Housewives.
12:00pm: We're still in bed. Oops. We transition into watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and W. orders us some Popeye's to eat throughout the day: 12 piece spicy chicken, biscuits, fries, mashed potatoes, and a large Diet Coke to split. We will heat up leftover Popeye's for lunch someday this week. I embrace the fact that this is not going to be a good WW week for me, and remind myself it's okay to be human and have some indulgent weekends. Progress, not perfection!
5:00pm: W. dials into his weekly virtual D&D session and I decide to solo queue my video game for the evening. I debate having some wine, but decide the fast food was probably enough for my stomach and that I don't need to add alcohol into the mix. W.'s session wraps up around 9:30, so we chat while I clean the apartment a bit before taking a quick shower. I towel dry my hair, toss on some weekly skincare (eye cream and a fancy serum that I'm not really sure what it does, it just makes my skin glowy) before settling into bed.
Total: $0
Day Six - Sunday 1/24
3:00am: I wake up congested as can be. I get two Benadryl and a Zicam from the bathroom, lay back down, and pray for sleep to come.
9:10am: Well, I guess sleep came. I missed the start of the booking window for upcoming boxing classes, but luckily there are still openings in all the classes I wanted. I'm trying to up my workouts, so I decide to try the Wednesday morning class as well. Maybe I'll like being a morning workout person?
11:00am: W. and I both decide to call our respective moms. My mom and I try to talk at least once a week on the phone (we also text every day, I just haven't mentioned it, whoops) and we catch up on random bits of each other's lives for about 45 minutes or so. I tell her about Halsey cancelling tour and we're a bit worried, as we're supposed to see Maroon 5 together later in the year after it got rescheduled from 2020. Hopefully by the fall we'll have herd immunity, though I'm not super positive that concerts will happen. I miss concerts :(
12:00pm: I do a bit of apartment maintenance: taking out the trash, breaking down boxes and taking them to recycling, wiping down the countertops, etc. W. comes out to the living room when his phone call ends and we try to decide what we want to do. W. is still not feeling great, which is worrying, but he has no COVID symptoms. He gets a quick telehealth appointment and is assured that he most likely has the cold/head flu thing that is going around and should stay home to not burden the healthcare system. The doctor assures him that me coming/going from the apartment shouldn't transmit whatever W. has and that while he should stay home until he is feeling better, as long as I'm sanitizing and showering often, I can leave. I'm guessing a lot of people are asking that question since the doctor told him that unprompted, and I'm relieved to know that I won't be unknowingly getting someone else sick.
1:00pm: W. and I decide to order Vocelli's for a late lunch/early dinner: bacon and cheddar pizza rolls and a build-your-own stromboli with bacon, spinach, and extra cheese. I have a GrubHub gift card from Christmas so we don't have to pay out of pocket for this meal. We play some video games together until the food gets here, then pause to eat and watch an episode of Shark Tank. When we finish eating, we go back to gaming because there isn't much else to do while W. is sick.
7:00pm: I move into the bedroom so we can watch the Rangers-Penguins game on my iPad while he plays a different video game and I scroll on my phone. My dad randomly calls me, and I'm worried something happened to my grandpa (he's my last living grandparent and lives alone). Luckily, Grandpa is fine and my dad was just jealous that I talked to my mom this morning while he was out running errands. He's adorable. We catch up for about ten minutes before he has to go. When 8:00 rolls around, we switch over to the Wizards-Spurs game since they're finally playing again and mute the hockey game. Both teams lose and I'm a sad sports fan. We brush our teeth and throw on some Futurama to fall asleep to.
Total: $0
Day Seven - Monday, 1/25
7:00am: Usual weekday wakeup routine. When it's time to get to work, W. decides he'll work from the bedroom so he can continue to rest. We order Starbucks (peppermint mochas for both of us, turkey and pesto panini for him, sprouted grain vegan bagel for me) on UberEats and split the cost because we wouldn't normally have it delivered ($14.87). I listen to calls while I work and get dressed in a bright color Girlfriend Collective set and black Forever 21 active tank to try and offset the dreary weather.
10:00am: Out of my first set of meetings and I run the laundry down to the laundry room ($3.25). I listen to a Twitch stream while I work and continuously check on the Louis Vuitton I'm bidding on. The auction ends tonight at 8pm and I'm still winning!
1:00pm: Still working through projects. I have been outbid past the maximum I set for myself on the Louis Vuitton, which is disappointing but I'm sure I'll get one eventually. I can still dream about it in the meanwhile :)
2:15pm: I take a quick break to package up my old Fitbit and place an order for a replacement. It ends up being free because of my full refund; the only cost is not having a tracker for a week or so. Could be worse! I make myself an energy drink using the powder that we ordered earlier this week to fuel my afternoon meetings with some non-coffee energy.
4:30pm: I throw on my sneakers and mask, grab my gym bag, and head off to boxing. After a few tough client requests today, throwing some punches feels amazing!
5:30pm: Out of class and off to Safeway and Target for some filler groceries. I did a big food shopping last Monday and we ended up doing a lot of takeout, so we don't need much. I get milk, yogurt, frozen berries, ciabatta rolls, frozen popcorn chicken, peanut butter pretzels, and two types of cereal. I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home ($23.70 for my half) and despite the drizzle, it is a refreshing walk.
6:30pm: Freshly showered and time to decide what to do for the evening. I find a movie, Collateral, by doing a reference search for a movie vibe that I loved (Inside Man, if you're curious) but am disappointed to find out it's not available on any streaming service. W. saves the day by telling me we actually own it on DVD but have never watched it, and lo and behold, it's buried in our giant plastic tub of DVDs. Movie night saved! We curl up on the couch and watch the movie with leftover Popeye's.
8:45pm: The movie is done and I'd give it a solid 4/5 stars. While discussing our favorite parts of the movie, we get into a random fight. I find myself getting heated for no reason, take a deep breath, and ask him to explain his side. W. has severe anxiety, and it turns out he had a few anxiety attacks during the movie so he wasn't articulating himself properly. We talk it out and he apologizes; he's made a lot of progress on dealing with his anxiety, but he has a long way to go. Not wanting to end the night on a bad note, we decide to stay up a little later than usual so we can watch some more Real Housewives and feel better by the time we go to bed. Asleep by 11:30.
Total: $41.82
Weekly Expenses:
Food + Drink: $118.71
Fun / Entertainment: $5.99
Home + Health: $68.06
Clothes + Beauty: $24.87
Transport: $0
Other: $33.38
Lastly, reflect on your diary!
This diary was very typical in some ways, and atypical in others. I normally cook a lot more, but with W. being sick I definitely used that as an excuse for takeout, hence why I'm following WW to try and lose weight! I think if I continue to be careful with my spending I can pay off my student loans this year and build my emergency fund back up, so I'm definitely buying less "fun" things in 2021… but if another Louis Vuitton comes around I'll probably bid on it :)

NYC budget and frugality tips

I am looking to start streaming on Twitch!

First 24 hours with Starlink, impressions and thoughts

Forced switch to iPhone thoughts

Unfortunately, I had an accident with my Pixel that forced me to use my work iPhone. This is an iPhone 12 Pro Max so top of the heap in the iPhone world. These are some thoughts I have while using it. I have been using it for about three months now regularly as my daily driver. I will toss out the first month as my angst with the phone gave me a negative view on everything about it.
First up look and feel
I love a big phone but the 12 pro max is just way too much. The design makes it completely aggravating to use. While it is a stunning phone to look at the niceties end there. It has sharp sides all around with zero decent ways position to hold it. This thing hurts to hold. It's also super slick. While again feels nice touch wise it won't stay in hand for anything. A lot of this is negated by a case but being an already massive phone a case just makes it so much worse. I am a fairly large person and it feels like a three hand phone. It feels like it needs some sort of stand or grip at all times. People will say that's an easy fix just get a smaller iPhone. Wrong! While most of the features and internals are there in all iPhones the max stands heads and shoulders above all other iPhones. First, a much bigger battery. I have a friend with the smaller pro that gets less than a day battery wise. Mine will chug along all day and into the next. Second, much bigger camera sensors and a little more camera tech. It has a higher aperture on telephoto, more zoom on all settings, and sensor-shift stabilization. For me, Apple should have put the same stuff sans battery size in the smaller pro.
Useability
This is probably the biggest flaw when it comes to using an iPhone. I am leaving notifications out because that is a whole rage I will get into next. As far as simplicity goes if you were just making calls and text it's easy as every other phone out there and before it. for anything else, things get a little muddy. First, the biggest thing I notice is everything seems to take an extra swipe or click to finish. Simple stuff like switching Wifi or Bluetooth just feels like it takes so much more work than when I was using my Pixel. Other stuff like customization is non-existent. While yes there are widgets everything is still locked into a grid pattern. Folders help a bit but you quickly run out of room to play in the locked grid. Even with the widgets, it feels boring. Widgets while they look good are very limited. You cant resize or shape them and I miss having more than just one feature on some like my Google calendar or Google drive. They are just so basic right now. I still can't do things in apps without going into the app as my Pixel can. One I use all the time is the Gmail app icon swiping away notifications without leaving the home screen. Like I said just more input to do basic stuff.
Notifications
These just suck. There is no getting around how bad notifications suck on an iPhone. Now I know why people who have iPhones either never respond or find me in person to comment. There are two flavors of notification issues to me. First is the non-existent so subtle ones I don't notice them till it's too late. second are the one's I see but don't respond because I have to work too hard to. I want my important to be up top. Apple just files them in one on top of the other so it becomes daunting going through them. Second I one them to be sorted accordingly. For some dumb reason, it sorts them how it wants. For example, messages are not with all the other messages. Read the first to message notifications better keep going down it likes to tuck another down below one of the game's notifications. Want to go nuts with a false notification bubble even on core apps like settings? iOS loves that also. Oh, BTW you can not clear notifications from the app icon. Why is there no clear all for all my notifications? No idea there just isn't.
Camera
Okay, Apple you finally beat the Pixel here, or did you? so yes the iPhone camera is quite simply amazing in most situations and oust my Pixel in a lot of areas. If you widdle it down though you soon realize how insane Google has become when it comes to the camera software. Yes, the iPhone does better but I really think it is because of a brute force attack on Apple's part. It has better newer sensors and more of them. Of course, it should be better but here is the jaw-dropping point. I have gone back to exact spots and taking close photos with the iPhone and shown them side by side and the average person notices nothing and sometimes gravitates to the Pixel because the color looks more natural. We are talking a two-year-old plane jane one sensor phone versus the best of the best tech-wise and Google is still right there. Now for the parts, Apple has a Pixel beat. The number of sensors, no matter how much wizardry Google comes up with they just can not simulate the other sensors with software. Zoom same thing they just can't match what Apple is doing with actual zoom on the iPhone at this point. One thing Google does seem to stomp Apple on consistently is portrait shoots. No matter how simple the image Apple just can not seem to get the blur to work well on the Pro. There are artifacts in just about every photo on both but Apple has the more glaring artifacts in this case. The other thing I notice is while Apple does take in more light the night images typically look overprocessed on the iPhone. It is like they have the exposure turned up to 11 in most cases and in light-dark situations, it can't really make up its mind. Now in all dark or lit night scenes, the iPhone just has bigger better sensors so most of the image data is real not processed like the Google phones. This makes night sight iPhone images better in many cases especially the focus on back and foreground objects. You just have to tone the pictures down after the fact a little bit.
Apps
Everyone knows about iMessage. Personally, I don't use it. I do too much switching and don't want to be trapped in message pergatory. It got turned off at set up. I wish Google could get their messaging on iPhones because personally, I was starting to like it a lot. I never had any issues with sending and receiving anything with people on iPhones other than when they send me iMessage native stickers and likes. As far as other apps are concerned everything I had on Android is on iPhone and vice versa. I will say that it is weird that some Google apps seem to work a little better and others don't. The biggest issue I have is Drive. I use the scan feature a lot and it is not available on the iOS version. App integration is lacking on iOS as certain links ect. don't work the same as with Android. I am sure if I used the Apple native apps this would not be the case. The worst showing Google has is the Home app. Home on iOS works so much better than on Android. All my devices show and statuses show as well. On the Pixel, speakers would be playing but home would show nothing in the app until you went to the device. On iOS, speakers and TV show playing all the time.
Connected devices
All devices I had on Android work the same on iPhone. No difference here. The only issue is switching Bluetooth devices takes a little extra step to me on the Pro. I don't know how to explain it just takes a little more finagling.
Battery
The iPhone is better but why wouldn't be. It has a bigger battery so it lasts longer. Not some unworldly amount of battery life but good. Usually a full day or more with heavy use. Pixel was a full day most days except for when gaming. The iPhone seems to kill things more often. Stuff like google photos won't upload at all unless you are in the app. The weather widget doesn't update in real-time. so it seems to be fairly aggressive on what it kills to save juice.
Glitches and other wonkiness
To say the iPhone is perfect is living in a dream world. It has its fair share of glitches. Before the last update it would lock on certain apps and you would have to lock unlock and close it to get out. Another issue was random resets mainly in games. Both of those have gone away but there are other weird items. swipe down for notifications does not react to you sometimes only dragging down a millimeter and going back up. The double-tap on the back still has random activations. Native mail app just don't download something else. Wireless animation is funky sometimes. Notification sound does not play at times or cuts halfway. Some photos have a weird yellow tint so you have to take multiples. Notification dots won't go away even if cleared. This happens on their settings icon of all things. Gestures don't react according to what you want at times.
Thing's I miss sorely
Notification functions. Media functions on the lock screen. Full assistant Siri is still trash. Copy-paste from the app in card view. App integration. Swipe back gesture. App drawer. Apples it is not a drawer if I have to swipe four screens to get to it. Customization of colors, font, icons, and home screens. Speed of sharing anything from photos to files.

Stupidly long and detailed XPS 17 9700 post (lemon checklist, 1h/1d/1w/1m reviews, full teardown w/thoughts, benchmarks, battery life tests, clean W10 install driver ‘kit’, AMA).

Part 1 of 6

Hi everyone,
This is my first post so bear with me. I’ve been stalking this sub since the release of the 9x00 series and it has helped me so I figured I’d return the favour. As the title says, this will be a pretty in-depth post of my experience with my XPS 17 9700 (hopefully it doesn’t get detected as spam or something). I’ll try to condense my findings as best I can. If anyone wants the full-fat version, check out the thread I have on my site. I’m happy to try and answer any questions.
https://robert-m-personal-projects.shivtr.com/forum_threads/3269521?post=14450772#forum_post_14450772
I came from an XPS 15 9560 (i5 7300HQ / 1050 / 32GB RAM / 2x 960GB SSDs / Intel AC 9260/ FHD / 56Wh), so I will be drawing comparisons to it throughout the post.
____________________

Post contents:

Specs
Lemon Checklist
1 hour, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month reviews
Benchmarking, gaming, battery testing and repate results [In parts 2, 3 and 4]
Teardown with thoughts and trackpad rant [In part 5]
Driver ‘kit’ for doing a clean W10 install [In part 5]
Final thoughts [In part 6]
TL;DR [In part 6]

____________________

Specs:

i9 10885H
RTX 2060 Max Q
Kingston HyperX Impact, 2933MHz, CL17, 64GB [Originally SKHynix 16GB CL22]
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (x2) [Originally Kioxia KXG60ZNV1T02 1TB]
Sharp SHP14D6 3840 x 2400, 60Hz, 35ms, UHD+ touchscreen
Killer AX500 DBS
97Wh battery
130W charger
Windows 10 Pro

I went for the cheapest config I could with an i9 and 2060. Got in touch with Dell to see if they can sell me one without SSDs, RAM or an OS, they said no. Ordered it from their enterprise site when they had it on discount. The stock setup with 3 years of premium support (they had it on discount and it was only about £50 more than 1 year) cost me about £2954. A stupid amount, I know, but compared to other machines close to this (of which there are maybe 3), this looks like a bargain.
I’d also like to say that I don’t know why reviewers keep saying that the WiFi card is Intel-based. The AX500 is a Qualcomm heap of junk, device manager detects it as Qualcomm, command prompt detects it as Qualcomm, all the drivers are Qualcomm and it even has Qualcomm LASER ETCHED into the physical component! Yes, the Precision 5750 (which is nearly identical to the XPS 17 9700) uses an Intel AX201 and is branded as such, but the XPS doesn’t. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a pic of it without the antenna bracket, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
____________________

Lemon checklist:

I’ve compiled this from my stalking of the internet and reading about the blood bath of XPS issues. The bits in the square brackets are how mine fared with each issue.

Trackpad wobble / pre-click - [Semi-Pass]
Can't click trackpad while holding laptop in the air by its corner / Trackpad clicks itself when held in the same way - [Pass]
Weird dead zone on edges of trackpad (not palm rejection), that Dell claim is normal - [Pass]
Early units would not draw the full 130W from their chargers under full load - [Pass]
Backlight bleed - [Pass]
Dead pixels - [Pass]
Lid not closing properly and opening slightly when laptop is being carried sideways - [Pass]
Bent screen / not flush with the body when closed (along the short side) - [Pass]
Inductor / coil whine - [Semi-Pass]
Missing or stripped external screws - [Pass]
Missing or stripped internal screws - [Pass]
Scratches and dents on the panels, especially the bottom - [Pass]
Speaker / TRRS crackle - [Pass]
Dead ports - [Pass]
Overheating - [Pass]
DPC latency - [Pass]
Hot while sleeping / draining battery while sleeping - [Fail]

The trackpad came fine but it developed the issue after some time. See my teardown and subsequent rant further down. The trackpad design is utterly abysmal, and it is only a matter of time before it develops a wobble. The laptop came with a little bit of coil whine that would be drowned out in a room with normal ambient noise, but weirdly, swapping the RAM seemed to eliminate it completely. I don’t know if the sleep heat is a Dell or Windows issue, but it is unacceptable. My 9560 suffered from battery drain during sleep, but not heat. I use hibernate on the 17 to get around this.
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Reviews:

This section might read a little weirdly compared to the rest of the post because I’ve lifted most of it straight from my site.

1-hour review:

The moment I took it out of the box I was surprised at the size of it, it's not much bigger than my XPS 15 9560. All the reviewers keep saying it's super heavy and it puts them off from using it. It's only about 500g heavier than any of the XPS 15s since the 9550 from 2015, that's a small bottle of water. Picking it up for the first time, it was definitely heavier than I thought it'd be, but it's also nowhere near as bad as the reviewers made it out to be. You feel the weight difference in your hand, but when it's in your bag, you really won't feel the difference, especially if you have a good bag or are used to having a reasonably heavy one any way. On the topic of bags, my Wenger easily swallowed this thing.
While I was looking it over for any defects, I couldn't help but notice just how well it's built. This thing is like a brick, you could probably kill someone with it. I mean, I'm used to the top notch build of my 9560, but this seems even more sturdy. Opening the lid of my 9560 required the jaws of life, which I loved, because it meant that the screen would not wobble about when it's open. The 17 is really perplexing in that respect. You still need to be the Hulk to open it, but you can now open it with 1 hand as well. I think that's some pretty clever hinge design. The screen is still very sturdy when open. Not quite as good as my 9560, but that's because that has a much smaller and lighter screen. A quick word on the I/O: it's atrocious, completely unacceptable. Dell have followed Apple's nonsense and turned this into another dongle-book. Considering this laptop is a couple of mm thicker than the 9560 (not counting the rubber feet on both), Dell have no excuse to not put in a couple of USB-As and an HDMI. At least the SD reader is still there. You do get given a small USB-C to A and HDMI adapter, but it shouldn't be necessary. RIP I/O, you will be dearly missed.
Now, upon powering up my old 9560, the first thing to greet me was a BSOD, not even a POST screen, just a straight blue screen error. Luckily this wasn't the case this time. As an XPS owner of 3 years, I wasn't really as blown away by the crazy bezels on the display as others (I was still impressed), but I am very happy to see that they ditched the chin and moved the camera up top. What did blow me away was the tiny (regardless of how mediocre it actually is) web cam they managed to cram in the top bezel. I also didn't realise just how bright 500 Nits is on a display like this, it's eye searing. I'm used to the supposedly-400 nits of my 9560 and the 250 nits of my external displays (they seem a lot brighter). In terms of colour accuracy, I'm yet to test it with real photos from my dad's DSLR, but I did change the profile from Dell's 'full vivid' one to Adobe RGB. Also, the W10 HDR feature appears to be partially bricked and drops the panel brightness significantly while also enabling adaptive brightness which I can't find a way to turn off, so I'm running it in non-HDR mode, which isn't really a problem for me.
While I was doing the initial Windows setup, I noticed the fans spiking to quite a high RPM for a couple of mins and then they died down and turned off altogether. While they were blasting, they weren't that annoying. The fans didn't scrape anything, the bearings sounded fine (no whining or squeaking) and the overall rush of air was very low frequency so it wasn't as disturbing as a high pitch fan system. Compared to the 9560 (which wasn't that disturbing either), the overall frequency is lower and slightly less disturbing. The amplitude is actually lower from what I can make out unless the fans really spin up.
The last things I want to touch on in this section are the trackpad and keyboard. The trackpad is massive, and on my unit, all good. No wobble or pre-click or air click. Compared to my 9560, the click is more subtle and muted. It's not as harsh or loud a click noise. I think they've done something to damp the sound or used a better-quality button, but I like it a lot. The keyboard is excellent. I really liked the 9560, this is even better. The keys are slightly bigger, so that's something to get used to, but I got used to it very quickly. The caps also have a satin or matte finish to them which makes them feel better to the skin in my opinion, but I don't see that having a performance impact. As for the switches, they still have 1.3mm travel. Compared to the 9560, they have a lower actuation force (which I really like) and appear to be snappier in their response. Like the 9560, this is also a very quiet keyboard. The only thing I don't like is that Dell removed the Next and Previous media keys, there's only a Play button now. Not too big an issue for me as I have those functions mapped to mouse macros.

1-day review:

About a day later and everything is still good, apart from the wretched audio drivers that Dell keeps using. Realtek audio drivers and Waves audio are a steaming heap of garbage. I spent a large majority of my day trying to get around Waves with EqualiserAPO like I did on the 9560, but I had no luck, the current audio quality is awful. I'm hoping things will be better when I do a clean install of W10 after the SSD swap in the next couple of days.
Another thing I noticed was with my multi-display setup. The BIOS on this has the option to bypass the integrated graphics and run all the displays straight off the 2060 which is great. The problem is, that although my 2060 clearly shows the ability to support 4 displays in the Nvidia control panel (and Nvidia told me as much when I contracted them a few months ago), it will only detect 2 of my 3 external displays. The spec sheet of my thunderbolt dock clearly states that it can support 3 displays (top of P22 https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_docking_stations/dell-thunderbolt-dock-tb16_concept_guide_en-us.pdf ). I suspect that my HDMI to mini DP cable is dead though. I tried plugging one of the displays in over Thunderbolt instead, but it doesn't get detected unless I unplug one of the other ones. Though with that being said the TB16 spec sheet says nothing about running a display off the TB3 port.
[Retroactive insert for Reddit: It ended up being a dead cable, all is good.]
Other than the above, the laptop has been great so far. I'm really loving the keyboard, I've typed this entire post on it. Temps have really been behaving themselves, idle and light use temps are sitting in the 39-42 range for both the CPU and GPU on max power settings both in in Dell's software and in W10. I've also told it to only use the 2060 as opposed to switching between the iGPU and dGPU. The fans barely run at these temps. I'm also really not used to seeing 2% CPU utilisation. I'm used to seeing my old i5 7300HQ constantly sweating at 20% and over for even the most menial tasks. Opening a single new Chrome tab would spike it to 100% for a few seconds, now it reaches 20% for less than a second on the i9. The only odd thing I'm noticing is that in task manager, the boost clock is all over the place, the i5 would hold a steady 3.2 GHz, this is going anywhere from 2.8 to 4.5 GHz in a matter of a few readout refreshes, despite temps being fine and no load being applied. I'll keep an eye on this, but it doesn't seem to be impacting performance...for now.

Developments between 1d and 1w reviews:

I noticed some odd banding of colours in a couple of youtube videos. Did some digging and found that you have to uninstall Dell's colour software and restore the original colours in Intel's software. I did that and my screen turned black. My external screens were working and showed that the content was still there on the laptop screen, but it was stuck on black. So I updated the graphics drivers and nothing happened. Tried disabling and then enabling the screen in device manager, nothing. Uninstalling and reinstalling it in device manager, nothing. The screen itself is perfectly fine because I can see the POST screen just fine and fiddle around in the BIOS all on the native screen, so it's not a dead panel. I ended up having to reinstall W10 and then nuke all the Dell and Intel display nonsense until I was running the stock W10 profile. It was just fine after that.
I also ran DPC latency tests and they all came back good, it was in the low end of the green on LatencyMon apart from one very short and high spike I saw (but didn’t hear as a distortion). I ran the test twice for about 3 mins (one song) both on the Thunderbolt channel and on the native speakers. There was also no speaker crackling or TRRS crackling. I managed to get the audio to work, but I could not circumvent the Waves Maxxaudio spam. I managed to get a flat response, but EqualiserAPO does not work. In my case, a flat response is what I was looking for, because I have a real external EQ as part of my Hi-Fi, but for normal people, they have no choice but to stick to the Waves nonsense. I’ll keep trying to chip away at the issue when I move to the Samsung SSDs, but for now I’ve got it useable on the Thunderbolt channel which is what I need.
While upgrading the SSDs I managed to somehow bring out the trackpad wobble. See the teardown lower down for an explanation. At this point I botched it with 4 layers of Kapton tape beneath the ‘hooks’ at the front of the trackpad. I ended up losing the war with Waves. I turned it off as much as I could, but it is leeched into everything.
I noticed is that the battery drained with the sustained load despite drawing the full 130W from the charger (one of the big issues with some 17s was that they didn't draw full power from the charger). This is a deliberate design choice. I blame Apple for it.
I blame Apple, because they went all TB3 / USB-C and everyone started to follow. That means that the 17 can only have a USB-C charger. The official USB-C spec says that the max power delivery it supports is 100W. Dell have managed to push it to 130W. 130 is still not enough to feed all the components when they are on full blast, so it has to tap into the battery to make up for it. If they had a traditional barrel jack charger, they could have spec'd any wattage they wanted. They could have gone for 180 or even 240.
An observation my friends made was that the mics are trash. It was to be expected, but they said they were much worse than the 9560. I don't use a dedicated mic, because I don't really need one, nor do I own one. The mics on the 9560 are on the leading edge of the laptop, under the trackpad. On the 9700 they are on the top of the screen pointing up (so the same leading edge, but when the laptop is closed). The added distance between the mics and my head apparently makes a huge difference.
Windows adaptive brightness is a plague. My old HP suffered from it, my 9560 suffered from it and now so does the 9700. I never managed to solve it on the HP, I solved it on the 9560, but can’t remember how. I think I solved it on the 9700, but I’ll see if it stays that way over the next couple of days.
I used the below Github page and files to work around it. Apparently all the fixes online are for older version of W10 that don’t apply to the new one on the 9700...oh, joy. I suspect it was one of those that allowed me to fix it on the 9560.
https://github.com/orev/dpst-control
Other than that, the only thing I wanted to mention was the for some reason when Geekbench finishes a test run and auto-opens Chrome, 3 and 4 finger touchpad gestures get disabled for some reason. Closing and opening Chrome fixes it. I thought it might be a trackpad driver issue, but the 9560 does the same. I don’t know if it’s a Windows, Chrome or Geekbench issue (or a bit of all), but I can’t seem to replicate it with anything else.

1-week review:

I know I’ve had the laptop for way more than a week, but I’ve been able to properly use it for a week at this point. This review won’t be a traditional review as I got through most of that sort of content in the first-look and in subsequent update posts. This will instead be looking at how the laptop is in general, if any of the initial issues I had are still there or have gotten worse and if anything else has come up.
I’m still very happy with it. I don’t think I gave a full update on the multi-screen setup. I said that the new cable worked but didn’t say if all was well past that. All is indeed well, all three external displays are now comfortably running off the 2060. On the topic of the display, the native one has broken me. The quality is miles beyond that of the external ones and the one on the 9560, every time I look away from it and at the external ones, I feel like they’re either broken or something has gone wrong with their settings. Going from the 9560 to the 9700 doesn’t seem like that big a change. But after having spent a week on the 9700 and then having to go back to the 9560 last night, the difference is definitely noticeable.
I’m now used to seeing the taskbar looking like it’s sitting on the keyboard deck. On the 9560 I look down and where I expect to see the taskbar, I see the chin bezel. I know it’s a first world problem, but I’m just bringing it up to make a point. Swapping between the machines in one direction is definitely more apparent than in the other.
Quickly going back to the GPU, now that the 2060 is being used at all times, the laptop does idle a little warmer than it did initially. Temps have gone from the low to mid 40s to the mid 40s to low 50s. I suspect the undoubtedly terrible thermal paste Dell use is also partly to blame. I’ve also started to notice the fans spooling up more often, especially during YouTube videos. Temps don’t actually rise that much, but the fans come on. That might be a side effect of me running it on the maximum power profile that Dell have in the BIOS. I’m yet to experiment with other profiles like the optimised and quiet ones.
I mentioned that during gaming, surface temps got warm, but not uncomfortable. I found that during really long sessions (3h+) with intensive games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the area around the exhaust reached the high 50s at points. The very centre of the keyboard got into the high 40s which is where it starts to get uncomfortable. The area around WASD where your hand usually stays was mostly fine though. To be honest, I expected it to get much hotter and much sooner too. So I’m not disappointed in it, it’s just a point I felt needed bringing up. And of course, the laptop still taps into the battery despite drawing full power from the charger. Again, this is a stupid design choice by Dell and not a defect.
One thing that kept bothering me consistently that I didn’t think would was the lack of next and previous media keys. I have macros bound to my mouse, but I found myself going for the keyboard buttons more often. I eventually got fed up and remapped F8 and F9 as the next and prev keys. F8 comes natively mapped as Windows + P (Project screen), so I just remapped Win + P to be previous. F9 was a blank key and didn’t have anything assigned to it. It also meant that when I went to remap it as a shortcut, it remapped F9 both with and without Fn Lock. I did a bit of digging and couldn’t find F9 serving any major purpose in W10 or commonly used software, so I don’t think it’ll impact my usage.
The latest build of W10 seems to have copied MacOS in that now Alt + Space brings up a search bar (no idea what was wrong with Win + S, which still works). This can be very annoying in games where I have to use Alt + Space only to have it kick me and bring up the search. So I remapped that shortcut such that left Alt + Space = right Alt + Space. Directly disabling left Alt + Space disables all functionality of the press combination, not just the search shortcut, but right Alt doesn’t seem to trigger the shortcut.
I used Microsoft PowerToys to remap the keys. It has a bunch of other features as well and is free. For some reason the 0.27.0 release kept crashing when I tried to remap shortcuts, so I installed the 0.25.0 release and it worked. It ended up asking to be updated to 0.27.0 a couple of days after, but it still works just fine.
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.25.0
I managed to get some very basic video editing done, I can’t fully speak to the laptop’s performance in editing as I want to give it a real load, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s much better than the 9560. What I will say though, is that I’m currently limited by RAM. Adobe Premiere Pro was easily eating through 13-16GB RAM on the 9560. I’ve still only got 16GB on this and I saw it limiting itself to no more than 9GB. So I want to see how it’ll perform when it has more RAM. I wanted to pick up some RAM, but for some reason, the kit I wanted went from about £230 to £490 overnight and it’s suddenly out of stock everywhere. My hope is that the price drops as more stock eventually comes in. I’ll wait as long as it takes, because I’m not paying that stupid amount for it. It’s the only CL17 kit I could find, all the other kits are CL22 hence why I don’t just buy something else.
I haven’t done any CAD work on it yet, but I have high hopes for it. I did however run some MATLAB simulations earlier today. I won’t get into the details of the sim because they’re long and boring, but it’s a model of a fibre-optic transmitter and receiver system. It was part of an assignment I did for comms in my MSc. I distinctly remember the PC in uni taking 10-15 mins to complete the stock sim before any parameter changes. If I remember off the top of my head, the PCs had 4th gen i7s, 16GB DDR3 RAM if you were lucky (8GB if you weren’t), some old dinky AMD GPU and HDDs. I remember my 9560 getting through the same simulations in a fraction of the time.
Of course, anecdotal evidence is useless, so I re-ran the sim on the 9560, unfortunately I didn’t time the uni PCs at the time because I was busy doing my assignment and I’m not about to travel back to campus to run an experiment, so you’ll have take my word on the uni PCs. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Below are the results for the 9560 and 9700. The 9700 was significantly faster than the 9560, especially in the latter tests.
Something to note in the results is the ‘run time’ value and the ‘run’ value. The run time is how long the test would last for if there was a physical system to be tested. The times for runs 1, 2 and 3 are how long the laptop took to complete the simulation. The 50μs run is stock.

https://preview.redd.it/9es710xaxoe61.png?width=517&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf76a81972da405a7303121397a7fff9144a6ac2

https://preview.redd.it/dgs6dkjfxoe61.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae592a46c0cc3094c8c30a0f5d4fef5c55d511fc

1-month review:

Here it is, the 1-month review, I don’t expect this one to be that long as not much has changed. In the 1 week-review, I said that I hadn’t given it a proper video editing load. Well, if you’ve followed the thread, you’d know that I gave it one the other day. In case you missed it, it’s good news. The 9700 shreds the 9560. The 9560 was heavily CPU bottlenecked. The RAM upgrade also made a difference during editing. During rendering, the larger amount of RAM made a difference at higher render resolution (and more complicated projects I’m guessing). I’m still yet to give it a CAD load, but given that it was fine with video editing, I’m expecting it to go through CAD like it’s nothing. The RAM swap also somehow managed to eliminate the coil whine, so that’s also a plus.
I’m still loving typing on this keyboard. I’ve been setting up the 9560 as the new family computer and I’ve had to use the keyboard, going between the 9700 and the 9560 is very noticeable. I loved the 9560 keyboard but compared to the 9700 it feels totally mushy. The keyboard deck also doesn’t pick up skin oil and other junk as easily as it did on the 9560. Otherwise, in general, nothing has really changed, and no significant problems have arisen.
Now, the bad stuff. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting weird Bluetooth freezes. I’d be using my mouse and then the cursor would freeze for 3-5 secs. This happens randomly and I can’t predict it. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s not frequent enough (maybe a couple of times a day every other day or so) to make me want to smash the laptop to pieces. I suspect it’s the infamously terrible Killer WiFi card. I’ve tried fiddling with the settings and drivers, but nothing has changed. It’s not the mouse because it works just fine on the 9560.
The other thing I can’t get over is the apocalyptically abysmal trackpad design. I’ve botched it on mine, but I can’t help but feel that over time it’ll start again as the pads start to get compressed. I’m seriously considering locking the cantilever completely with a pair of thermal pads and eliminating the physical button click.
____________________

PC-Setup for 3000$ what would you recommend me

Windows Provisioning Packages + Powershell: Who wants an alternative to imaging computers or setting them up manually?

I hate images.
When I was first introduced to imaging as a young tech, I thought it was the best thing in the world. You take hundreds of computers that are fresh out of the box and you get them all to the same needed configuration en mass, with rare discrepancies. There are plenty of ways to deploy an image, with hard drives, thumb drives, boot to network, etc. A lot of thought and effort has gone into the imaging market, and I've used many of the products. Then I advanced enough in my career that I started being the guy making the images. Seems simple enough, but it turns out there's a lot of gotchas.

Whether I was deploying images or creating them, I started seeing things that just bugged me. This department wants a different image from that department. The image you just made doesn't have the drivers needed for the new chipset that just came out. That program has a severe security vulnerability and needs to be removed from every computer on the network (but it's on the image). What's that? The image is 6 months old and now spends hours installing updates before it can be deployed? The list goes on. It seems the answer to every issue was, create a new image FROM SCRATCH! I tried to mitigate the worst offenses by scripting updates and changes that needed to be done post imaging which resolved much of my frustration, and then I started scripting the image creation process. Then it hit me, if I'm scripting the image creation process and the updates to apply to a machine after, why do I need an image? Why not just script the entire computer setup process?
After years of developing and refinement, my machine set up process is this.

New machine comes in and needs to be setup.
I copy an appropriate config file to a prepare usb flash drive.
I connect ethernet to the new computer and boot to the flash drive.
I come back a couple hours later, do some basic quality checks, and hand the computer to the customer.

It makes my heart swell with pride when I see a computer install the latest version of Window 10, name itself, create accounts, install programs, configure settings, join a customers vpn if needed, join the domain, install our remote management tool, all that and more, then play a happy little tune at the end when it's done to alert me of it's victory. It's at the point where I've taken entry level techs and after giving them 5 minutes of instructions, they're able to prepare new machines for all of our clients. If a client get's a new machine at a remote site, all I need from them is a flash drive and a few minutes of their time, and they've initiated the prep process themselves. It's done using free reputable tools and self built powershell functions. If something needs to change, I take seconds to update a powershell file instead of taking hours to build a new image.
My question is this. Does anyone else see the value in this enough for me to attempt to document how to recreate the process outside of my environment? There's quite a few parts to make it all come together if starting from scratch, but if you're fed up with images or want something better then setting up machines from scratch, it might just be worth the effort.

################ Response

Well this is surprising. When I posted, I was 90% sure that I've been missing something all these years and I'd be torn apart. This has given me the feedback I was looking for that validates I might be on to something. A few of you are basically doing the same thing. A few of you are wondering why not use packaging from the manufacturer, or some other hands off approach. My main answer to that is I want to see the process in action, and I want to keep the process in-house. If something breaks due to a change, or is no longer applicable, I want to see it before the customer does. With this process, the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation process is almost instant. We also keep machines in stock that our clients buy, we don't know always know were a machine is destine for when the order is placed. All of that being said, I've seen a few of you post a few things I need to learn from, and will be doing so soon. For now, I'll share what I have as I try to strip out my companies proprietary knowledge. I'll edit this comment with more. My process is just thorough (and complex) enough that a dedicated blog might be a better format, but I'll do my best.
Creating the basic documentation now, will update soon. Just know this it's time to brush up on you powershell skills.

Outline of the process in action

Boot to the USB (Human interaction needed)
The USB is a Windows 10 installer with an autounattend.xml which automatically installs the OS fresh with Microsoft's vanilla windows.
- A fresh install removes the complexity and potential security vulnerabilities that OEMs introduce.
- USB is made using the Windows Media Creation tool at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Once install is complete and Windows boots to the OOBE, it detects a PPKG file we've put on the root of the USB and begins automatically applying it.
- The PPKG file (Provisioning Package) is created with Windows Configuration Designer (WCD)
- WCD comes as apart of Windows ADK (assessment and deployment kit) but I just download it separately from the Windows App Store.
  - Link: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH4TX22
  - Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provisioning-packages/provisioning-packages
- Provisioning packages offer a lot of potential, but break if you try to do too much. Keeping it simple keeps it working.
The provisioning package completes the following steps:
- Creates a local admin account.
- Names the machine.
- Makes a working directory on the OS drive.
- Installs network and chipset drivers from the USB if no network is detected.
  - Packaged and run using Snappy Driver Installer
- Optionally connects to wifi.
  - Careful with this, if no wifi adapter is detected, the package will just fail outright. Only use this if ethernet or using an ethernet to usb adapter isn't an option.
- Downloads a password protected self-extracting file containing powershell scripts and any configuration files needed.
- Runs a short powershell script which:
  - Sets needed automatic logon registry keys
  - Sets Numlock as default on keyboard
  - Ensures the Machine OOBE, User OOBE, and Privacy Experience are all disabled.
  - Sets initial payload powershell script to on initial logon.
- Reboots the computer.
Windows boots into the local admin account automatically and launces the first main powershell script.
- At this point the USB drive a can be removed and used on another computer.
- Imports a maintained list of powershell functions.
- Starts a Transcript Log file for QA and troubleshooting purposes.
- Sets timezone and updates the clock.
- Installs Chocolatey (It's like apt-get for Windows).
- Installs Powershell Core (or whatever it's called now).
- Uses Chocolatey and NinitePro to install all needed free programs.
- Installs custom software such as VPN client.
- Runs Windows 10 Decrapifier to clean up games from work computers and more.
- Installs Office 365 (or 2016, etc) with site specific configuration file.
- Add needed web shortcuts.
- Add needed network shortcuts
- Disable Fast Startup (cause when I tell my computer to shut down, I don't mean hibernate!!!)
- Set a daily reboot scheduled task for 3am if the computer is idle. (No more tickets of "My computer is acting slow and weird", due to 180 day+ uptimes. Encourages people to save their work once in a while).
- Install Windows Updates (We keep the USB drives up to date with lastest build number).
- Installs Windows Apps updates.
- Install Dell updates (Can HP/Lenovo/ other update utilities be fully scripted?)
- Sets Ninite (or chocolatey) to update all possible apps at every computer boot (3am in the morning with scheduled restart).
- Further rename the computer if manual input is needed, some sites are picky.
- Set autologon for next cycle.
- Set next script to run.
- Reboot the computer.
Next script runs as a follow up script.
- Imports a maintained list of powershell functions.
- Starts a Transcript Log file for QA and troubleshooting purposes.
- Installs default app settings. Changing PDF to open in Adobe, etc.
- Second round of Windows, Apps, Driver updates, as there's always something.
- Import the site's wifi profile if a wifi adapter is detected.
- Detect if the site's DC is pingable, connect to site's VPN if not.
- Join the site's domain.
- Set autologon for next cycle.
- Set next script to run.
- Reboot the computer.
Final script runs.
- It basically just installs our RMM agent which takes a while and is finicky. A fresh reboot beforehand helps.
- Plays a little audible tune to alert any nearby technicians that it's done.
- Cleans up the scripts folder, which may contain licensing info and sensitive passwords for joining VPN and the domain.
Technician review
- Check logs for errors.
- Checks site baseline needs are actually configure (trust, but verify).
- Checks if the specific user had any specific program requests above site baseline.
- Ensures the computer is showing up in our Remote Monitoring & Management software.
- Deploy to the user!

**I'll work on details steps this weekend.**Please be patient though. Work is busy. I'm also a husband, father to a baby, dog walker, handy man and college student even though I'm in my 30's. So many things I haven't figured out how to automate!

Infrastructure Setup, Step 1: Prepare your External Site Specific Code Repository

We use an ftp server that is publicly available, but you could use samba or other types as well.When I refer to a "Site", this just means a set of customizations. It could refer to a client, department, or anything that differentiates one setup from another.

Keep it consistent as the main folder containing the sites folders will be launch point for everything, with each site being a variable that is used to pull down specific information.
This Repository must be accessible with minimal effort from anywhere you plan on prepping a machine. If you have remote sites that aren't on the LAN, plan for it!
If it will be accessible to the internet, encrypt EVERYTHING you upload (I'll cover that later).
Create the folder structure in the style of
Keep the site codes short if possible, with no spaces.
The base of this folder structure will be referred to as $ExternalSitesPath

Infrastructure Setup, Step 2: Prepare your Internal Site Code Workspace

This is where we build the code, review it, update it, etc. This is where the code can live free with sensitive information, so make sure it's secured. We keep ours on a SharePoint site synced to our computers, so we can work freely with it.

Setup a mirrored folder structure to the External Site
Create an additional template folder, where you maintain the "Ideal state of code".
When setting up a new site, copy that template folder to begin your setup, then customize as needed.
The base of this folder structure will be referred to as $InternalSitesPath

Infrastructure Setup, Step 3: Set up a Chocolatey Proxy/Repo

Please note, Chocolatey is AWESOME but they aren't set up to support hundreds of thousands of machines. Get to know it, they have awesome documentation. You can play around with it by installing it on your machine here. https://chocolatey.org/install#individual
Beyond that, if you start installing it on a bunch of machines, they'll block you. If you open a ticket about it, they'll send you a nice little email explaining what's up ( https://chocolatey.org/docs/community-packages-disclaimer#rate-limiting ) and how to set up a proxy (https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/features/host-packages).As for me, I took the Nexus repository route. I set it up on a linux VM. Everything is free and I love it.
Last but not least, when you do this, you'll want your own version of the chocolatey install script that set's it up from your server. Fortunately, since I learned the hard way how to do this, they've made it super simple. https://chocolatey.org/install#organization

Infrastructure Setup, Step 4: Prepare your Functions

Modularize your powershell functions! Automation needs maintanence, as the things we're automating change over time. How we install a program today might be different from how we install it tomorrow if the program installer changes. If you have 30+ sites and need to update the code to do something, you don't want to have to go and update all 30 site's code (TRUST ME). Instead, have them all import your functions. Then you update just one file, and they all benefit from it instantly.Some firewalls will block ps1 files and psm files, so I store everything needed as txt files and let powershell just use the content. Here is the boot strapper I use to to enable SSL and import the functions from an https github repo. I keep this on a http server as a text file and I have a tinyurl linking to it. I call it with:iwr -usebasicparsing | iex

Write-Host -NoNewLine "`n - Retrieving IT's Functions -"
$greenCheck = @{
Object = [Char]8730
ForegroundColor = 'Green'
NoNewLine = $true
}
$progressPreference = 'silentlyContinue'
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072
$Destination = $Env:temp + "\ATGPS.psm1"
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
(Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing).Content | Out-File -FilePath $Destination
Import-Module $Destination -Global -Force
If (Get-Module -Name ATGPS -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue){
Write-Host u/greenCheck;Write-Host -NoNewLine " Functions successfully loaded ";Write-Host u/greenCheck;Write-Host "-`n - Get-ITFunctions will give a list of custom functions -`n"
} Else {
Write-Host "Functions were not successfully loaded. "
}

A list of functions will be available at the bottom.

Site Setup, Step 1: Prepare your first Site file structure

Navigate to $InternalSitesPath
If the site you are looking to create a package for doesn't exist, create a folder for it. Then create the following folder structure

\PPKG\_Powershell\Exclude
\PPKG\WCD
Create a strong random password (I use dinopass as humans suck at randomness). Create a txt file under the Exclude folder called SFX Password.txt. Paste the random password into this file.

Site Setup, Step 2: Prepare the Provisioning Package File

Download and install "Windows Configuration Designer" available on the Windows App Store https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH4TX22
Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provisioning-packages/provisioning-packages
Note: You'll see a lot of awesome options in here. Keep it as simple as possible as things can easily go wrong with this. We can set those options later and more reliably in powershell.

Open Windows Configuration Designer and select "Provision Desktop Devices"
Name the project with the site code.
Set the project folder to $InternalSitesPath\\PPKG\WCD
Step: Set up Device
- Device Name: -%SERIAL%
- Product Key: Enter a Windows Volume License if they have one
- Configure devices for shared use: No
- Remove pre-installed software: No
Step: Set up network
- Select No
Step: Account Management
- Select "Local Admin"
- User name: Local
- Password:
  - Note, when dealing with multiple sites it's easier to use a common or almost common local admin password. For security, I HIGHLY advise using your RMM to deploy a much more secure password to all machines post deployment, or use that here.
Step: Add applications
- Skip this
Step: Add certificates
- Skip this
Step: Finish
- Click "Switch to advanced editor" in the bottom left.

After creating a basic provisioning package and getting into the Advanced View, navigate on the left to
Runtime settings > ProvisioningCommands > PrimaryContext > Command.
Create these basic commands. Do them in order, as reordering them later can corrupt the package. These do not handle change well without corrupting, we we set up some basic commands to download powershell scripts and let those do the brunt of the work. To create a command, put your cursor in the "Name:" field, type in the command name, then click the "Add" button" in the bottom right. We can customize the commands after they're added.
These are the basic provisioning commands meant to make way for the powershell scripts. Make sure to customize each url and filepath according to the site.
**HINT: Copy everything below into a notepad program, and use CTRL+H to replace with your site's shortcode, then copy from there into Window's Config Designer. Also replace with the strong password created earlier.--Just realized images aren't allow in /MSP, so sad--
Commands to create (no spaces allowed here)

MakeDir
InstallDrivers
DownloadScripts
ExtractScripts
PowershellPass1

You'll notice that these commands are highlighted in red on the left. We need to give more information for each. Also note that

#0 Creates the folders to download to
- [Name] MakeDir
- [ComandLine] cmd /C "mkdir C:\IT\PPKG"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#1 Install needed Ethernet, Chipset, and USB drivers if needed
- [Name] InstallDrivers
- [ComandLine] PowerShell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "(Get-Volume).DriveLetter | ForEach-Object {If (Test-Path -Path ($_ + ':\InstallNetwork.ps1')) {Set-Location ($_ + ':\') ; & .\InstallNetwork.ps1}}"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] True
#2 Downloads the powershell scripts self extracting executable. Swap out
with your site.
- [Name] DownloadScripts
- [CommandLine] PowerShell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072;(New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('$ExternalSitesPath//_Powershell.exe', 'C:\IT\PPKG\_Powershell.exe')"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#3 Extracts the files from the self-extracting executable. Replace
with the password generated earlier.
- [Name] ExtractScripts
- [CommandLine] C:\IT\PPKG\_Powershell.exe -p -oC:\IT\PPKG -y
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#4 Run the main pass1 powershell script. Swap out
with your site.
- [Name] PowershellPass1
- [CommandLine] PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File - C:\IT\PPKG\_Pass1.ps1
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] True

That's it for the provisioning package configuration! Now we just need to export the file to a ppkg package file.

Save the package from File > Save. Click OK to the "Keep your info secure" dialogue.
Click "Export" > "Provisioning Package"
Change Owner to IT Admin and click Next\.
Don't encrypt or sign the package (Unless you're really ambitious). Click Next.
Click Next after reviewing the save location.
Click Build, and then Finish.

Please check the comments for more.

Never thought I'd create a "This field must be less than 40000 characters long" message.
Comment Links:

Functions - https://ambitions.sharefile.com/d-s0995d289621e41039ed2e6d059d98f41
Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Start) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfazg0b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
- Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Continued) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/ggjnus2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Still Continued) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfazhns?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Packaging and Uploading the files - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfejlay?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Preparing the usb stick & Deploying the package - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfeualo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

best switch games that don't need wifi video

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15 Best Nintendo Switch Games That Don't Require An ...

best switch games that don't need wifi

best switch games that don't need wifi - win

A Beginner's Guide to RGB in 2021