I’m sure that many (if any) of you have noticed that I’ve been away from blogging for a few weeks. I’ll confess that this is entirely my own fault and maybe just a little bit of my own stupidity and over ambition.

I used to use a very nice and well specked Dell laptop for all of my IT needs. However, it was starting to get a little well worn and some of the keys were starting to stick just a little bit. So I thought it would be a good ideal to pop a key off and clean it. BIG mistake!!

The popping off of the key didn’t go well so I then thought that I would try stripping the entire laptop down and sticking a new keyboard in.

4 hours later my laptop was pronounced dead beyond recovery.

OK, so I only gave myself a less that 50% chance of pulling off the strip down and rebuild so I wasn’t that disappointed. And another way of looking at it is it gave me a good opportunity to update my IT “system”.

I very quickly ruled out another Dell laptop simply to avoid a repeat of having to replace everything just for a sticking keyboard. I ruled out a desktop simply because I don’t have the space and I really don’t want to have an all in one system on my desk.

So the only option was a mini PC, also known as a NUC. After much research I decided to order a Geekom GT1 Mega Mini PC. A wonderfully small form factor PC with VERY high performance figures, good build quality and excellent reviewers from just about everyone.

It arrived a few days ago and I have spent 3 or 4 days flattening the SSD, reinstalling a clean copy Windows 11 with no bloatware running in the background and then installing software and getting all the applications talking to each other and finally, setting up all the connections to my radios, monitors and networks.

Then a day or so just fine tuning everything so it’s running like a “Swiss Watch” as they say.

First impression are very good. IT’s extremely fast, looks great tucked away next to my radio and I’m sure it’s going to be a good addition to my office/sack/home.