Gadgetory

and theoretically we should be live now so this is Wow this is a first also those headphones are making the sound of my voice so we're gonna put those away guess who is co-hosting the when show today well you don't have to guess who's right here so we are going to have a pretty different LAN show today for a couple of reasons number one is that we have actually covered the vast majority of the tech hardware news that has gone on this week over on tech linked or online as tech tips or just on you know Twitter or YouTube stories because really it's been all about CES but something that we haven't touched on is something that you guys have been asking for a lot and an up it's an update on secret shopper so as a lot of you will remember it ended up being an incredibly popular series for us with each episode getting well over a million views agent Janice who is that's okay and you're gonna have to help the audience out here is that your real name absolutely are you actually from accounting yeah it's not a joke so you do you know that that's a meme I do what a real Janice from accounting yes there's the real Janice from accounting so so Janice for those of you who didn't see it Secret shopped six different system integrators as someone who's not necessarily you know a hardcore gamer or hardcore tech enthusiast and honestly got either treated really well or treated downright rudely so you guys have kind of asked for an opportunity to talk to her about how the whole thing went so we're gonna talk about that I'm gonna go through some random floatplane stuff because Luke's not here to do it and you guys you know you're not gonna get through an entire way and show without some flow playing stuff and then I might actually bring Dennis on to talk about some highlights from CES cuz we were down there together and he's the only other one who for whatever reason I don't know why either of us are here who decided to come in to work today so let's go ahead and roll the intro and let's get right into it all right so so first of all this is your first time on land show you know everything is live I'm edited uncensored so I just want to make sure that I lay down some ground rules here I need you to keep your extremely foul potty mouth off of the land show do you think you could handle that I'm just giving Janice a hard time she's like if anything very very sort of like yeah so first of all I want you to kind of I want you to kind of share with the audience what was your initial thought when you were told okay you're gonna be are you're gonna be our secret shopper you're gonna go buy what was it I think it was thousand-dollar thousand US dollar right the difference between our two answers accounting so fifteen hundred US dollars per system and you were told okay go buy six gaming systems yeah I was very intimidated because I know nothing next to nothing about computers let alone gaming rigs and talking on the phone is not my favorite thing to do so a live show where you talk about the experience is even better right absolutely yeah at least those videos yeah I don't know I I was willing to help willing to give it a try I thought it was a cool concept and the feedback we got actually proved that more so than I was even a anticipating so cool so that honestly is all of that is actually exactly why we went with Janice for this project because Janice isn't stupid she just doesn't know anything about pcs and I honestly think as people who are immersed in this tech like everyday it's so easy to forget that oh wait hold on a second so it's so easy for us to forget how overwhelming all the like speeds and feeds and spans numbers letters and how if you're coming in as someone who actually doesn't have a lot of context for this stuff honestly in a lot of cases it's not even as simple as like well higher number better higher model number better because you might get told something like oh okay well this processor is five gigahertz with six cores and this one is 4.6 gigahertz with 8 cores and you'd go what would be your reaction to that exactly and so the the thing is is that like Ivan and I will hear something like it's $1,500 and it comes with a core i3 and maybe like and that's not funny that's not funny joke to anyone who hasn't spent literally years keeping up with this stuff so that was actually exactly why we chose Janus for this because do you feel like you learned a lot I probably have forgotten some of this stuff but what that first time I was ordering the actual computers by the by the last one I felt like okay I would know like the very basics of what I'm actually looking for for a gaming PC yeah I guess we've got bes n here saying Janus played her part very well that's exactly because I have to play a part so okay now not everything made it into the finished videos did you end up watching them by the way yeah you did watch the finish videos okay was there this is just before we kind of get into some of the specific experiences but was there anything that you felt like the finished videos didn't capture about your experience and you can feel free to pick on individual brands like part of this whole thing has been about making it a really open experience for everyone watching right well to be honest that was an entire day on the phone and by the end Ivan would tell me something about one of the brands that we had called and I'd be like which one was that the one with this or that I had no idea he had it all in the spreadsheet to keep track but after you spend an hour plus on the phone for each brand it's just kind of blurred together and also I knew I didn't have to keep track of it so okay like let that slide fair enough I mean I guess that's the only way you can survive spending like four hours on the bump of tech support in one day well yeah the other thing yeah I just I didn't keep track of those things but the videos certainly didn't show how tedious right you just be like I don't know I think it was HP for tech support I was just sitting there with like are they still there I don't know went and go check my phone 50 minutes later oh yeah they're still there okay and Dell okay so we made fun of it a lot in the videos but the thing with Dell where they would just stop talking yeah you don't know if they're checking something or like how hard is it and the thing that was craziest about that to me was because for me I was going okay their call center could be overseas or there could be a bad connection or something there could be some explanation for why it's taking them a very long time to reply but then when you were like going back and forth having a conversation there didn't appear to be any delay on the line yeah no there is I think the only technical problems we had I think it showed in the first video is one of the brands couldn't hear me properly but I'm not even sure I believe that cuz I just wanted to send an email instead I've talked to me on the phone okay give me a give me a highlight for the best experience that you had in the pre-sales side do you remember that sort of well enough the highlight I remember I just remember being is the end of the day the last one we called was main gear yeah and the sales person just went through everything step by step they had it visually on their website so I could like read it as well as hear it I need to see something in order to remember it or process it and he was just very patient and I just remember getting off that call it wasn't 45 to an hour long minutes long and it's like oh okay I'm done and I actually learned something about computers and I ordered it and under 15 minutes it was very relieving so now tell me what was the worst experience that you had during the ordering process I know whom I I know who my pick is but I really would like you to go first here I think the one that stands out is cyber power just because I felt like I was just dismiss and kind of like well you have to at least know what you're looking for to buy something like well that's why I'm calling asking so not just because we didn't end up with anything but just like emotionally it felt like it was just very dismissive yeah no that was really rude I actually wasn't gonna pick them because with cyber power like their policy is whatever and that's a stupid policy and that's really rude but the one that doesn't didn't work out or something but the one that I really didn't like though was the way that Dell kept like not listening to you how many how many times you thank you how many times did you tell them you wanted a desktop and here's the craziest thing about it like you guys didn't really get to experience some aspects of this because you were watching the heavily edited down version of this like you guys watched an eighteen or twenty five minute video or something like that but Janis is called with Alienware alone was 45 minutes an hour something like that so you guys are watching this like heavily condensed version of it and so it's hard to get a feel for the time spans that existed between the events that took place and the crazy thing about I'm looking for a gaming desktop hmm okay so would you like a laptop no no a desktop right okay here's the laptop I've selected for you that whole exchange happened within a very short span of time did it not I think so it's just one part of the conversation so they were basically just not listening at all and then and then - like you could go okay well like that the rep just you know wasn't paying attention but if I recall correctly weren't you talking to someone else when they were when they kept hearing you say I would not like an extended warranty and they kept asking you if you wanted one I think I talked I don't know how many different people it was but I got switched back a couple times about the extended warranty and then back to the same person or I don't know who it was but asked multiple multiple times that yeah that's true that was frustrating all right so let's move on to tech support what was your what was your highlight for tech support blur together a little bit and also I was on the first call I was super nervous because I've never touched the inside of a computer and so I was just nervous like I'm gonna be filmed doing this brand new thing that I don't know how to do guided by this company that I don't know that I trust and people are just gonna watch so well when you put it that way so highlight for that to be honest really well besides the end of the day it's like okay we're done okay what about a low-light um tech support so this is when you're trying to swap the RAM and you get everything from them having sort of a pre-canned video to them giving you kind of timestamps to them having like sort of a really unprofessional video and then to just being told if you don't know how to do it then you should probably get like you know maybe a man is there a man in the house to do it for you listen to the vibe I got from that one but I don't know maybe you felt really differently about it to be honest at the time that one didn't bother me in the moment really like looking back on it I realized wow that was incredibly rude okay in the moment I was just I don't know I just thought it was kind of funny probably because I wasn't an actual customer wanting actual support right which makes a huge difference if you're like you're you're wasting your time you're right you know trying really hard to get them to help you right because like in the in the context of a real world situation you've probably already burned like an hour or two hours of your time googling it or or asking a friend or whatever else so finally you've given up and you've gone fine and they basically tell you go google it or ask a friend you're like yeah no one likes an endless loop when they're trying to get help with something no and that's I think the other low light besides realizing how much of a low light that was I think it's HP at the that was the last one we called and it was just like this forever never-ending loop of transferred or being on hold for like 15 minutes well someone goes and researches something and it was just it took way too long the craziest thing about that is that wouldn't have had to take so long if we had just let them do their solution so it already would have taken a long time it would have taken like 45 minutes if we had just let them send you RAM but then that was such a stupid solution we kind of wanted to give them a chance to like they were just gonna ship you on fire with the other they're just gonna ship for a stick of RAM without ever making any attempt to diagnose that after spending 45 minutes kicking her between us support Canadian sales no Canadian support appears to exist so whenever we tried to get transferred though that we ended up on US support again I think we talked to us sales at some point or another I'm pretty sure if there are four different departments I think so and so we had to kind of like prompt them well hey you know what if they're like oh yeah that's pretty common that's the other thing is okay I got this stick of RAM in the mail what do I do if I have to call them again and go through the whole thing again like I wouldn't know how to put it in anyway okay so one of the toughest questions guys we're gonna we're gonna queue up a little bit of Q&A here so floatplane viewers go ahead and drop that in the chat I'm not sure how long stuff stays it might kick it away so maybe don't please try not to spam it too hard but we want to I want to do a little bit of Q&A with Janice but first I just have like kind of a huge question for you so we're working on a new merch item what do you think of these boxers really important question let's see they're pretty cool have you tried them 10 out of 10 would wear 4 out of 10 personally would not wear I want to know your opinion I actually I actually quite I actually quite liked them I think we might make the the design print it a little bit bigger like a little more coarse so that the LT tees are bigger the lines are bigger and there's fuel and I think it's a little bit busy right now ya wouldn't notice the ltte actually yeah just at first glance but the - tech tips on the top is nice yep and so there you go there you go where uh anyway that's not actually what I wanted to ask you yeah I'm just I'm just promoting our merch no the real thing I wanted to ask you was knowing this knowing that the top-performing systems the ones from iBUYPOWER and the ones from and from HP so those two were the highest performance so knowing that they outperform the main gear by a significant margin like double digits they're not twice as fast but I think they're about 20 to 30 percent faster in in games okay so knowing that what would you go back and buy like honest-to-goodness as as a customer who cares about the entire experience because that's the thing as a customer you will have more than just the experience of owning the final product do you do you value do you value those other things or do you just want the best thing for your dollar and you put up with potentially a couple hours on the phone with tech support to resolve it hmm so I guess I feel like vetoing HP just because but like I said I don't like making phone calls and when you expect to spend an hour on the phone every time you have to phone them that would deter me greatly however if it's my computer or if I'm giving it away hold that thought for one second so it's interesting that you said that so would you veto HP over Alienware because Alienware took a long time to solve your problem but they just took a long time to solve your problem you didn't get bounced around the same way so I think HP only ended up taking about another 15 minutes so it was like an hour versus an hour 15 or something like that don't don't quote me on the exact numbers but did Alienware stand out in your mind far less just because you didn't have this this endless loop of frustration and transfers apparently yeah I'm not sure how it all plays into what I would actually purchase yeah well why don't we why don't we say this then so I'll give you two scenarios scenario number one our our mock sort of premise is real so scenario number one is you're buying a system for your brother you're a super nice sister who has 1500 US dollars to spend on a brother for some reason Wow good on you by the way heck yeah which one do you buy okay making decisions with so many things to consider yeah okay so first for my brother I would definitely apparently he's an avid gamer not for real but we're pretending yeah sure so I think in the end because it's a gift I would just like well I went through the hard stuff for him now I can give him this really good computer so I would probably go for like best bang for your buck really so you'd go iBUYPOWER because okay the the research the pre research essentially that you have to do in order to get the best thing and the but remembering though that i buy power i think did reasonably well on pre-sales and they only really screwed things up on tech support so if i'm giving this to my brother who is an avid gamer you know so you I see so you would just go the best hardware that fits inside the box that it fits in for the money that you have and if the RAM is broken or whatever you just go well you know what I've kind of done most of my job here here's a free thing don't complain too hard if you have to invest a couple hours into making it work right to be honest I would give it to him having no idea that anything was wrong because I would not think to start up the computer be fortunate interesting nor would I know how to check those things Ivan told me how to check that okay I like that okay okay so then question number two now it's for you actually no no I have a new question question number two it's for your parents so they are I'm making assumptions here I'm making assumptions forgive me I'm assuming they are less tech-savvy than you is that fair I would say nowadays they are my dad used to be all up on computers in the 90s while ago he didn't keep up so anyway yes as of now they would probably greatly value tech support although my dad hates being on the phone even more than I do so let's see I would swallow the buy like presale phone support just kind of like hey this is what I'm doing to get something for my parents so it come down to tech support and I guess like longevity sure just because then I don't have to do this all kind of thing right so that doesn't really help because we tested them they're gaming PCs and they're yes and we tested them for gaming so I'm not sure which brand would be the best for this scenario so I mean we can kind of draw parallels between in general we can draw parallels between the gaming performance of the system and its performance across a pretty wide range of tasks actually so you know if it's 20 to 30 percent faster for gaming to get the iBUYPOWER or the HP compared to the main gear then you can kind of assume it'll be that similar let's just let's just say that for the sake of argument okay and is that the same for like how long something lasts or we will continue to be faster none of them really none of them really stood out as using very shoddy components it's a little bit complicated so I would say origin actually probably had I'm just trying to remember who everyone even was I think Origen probably had the highest tier motherboard and power supply which is generally something that affects the longevity of a system more than other things but origins spec was much lower than both alien wares and main gears so you kind of had those three performance tiers you had iBUYPOWER and HP and then way down from there for gaming anyway you had your Alienware and your main gear and then down from there you had origin okay so taking everything into consideration I did appreciate main years tech support as well as pre-sales and I it did feel like they just cared enough about you to like not even have any ounce of like you don't feel I disqualified because you don't know much about computers or I don't know what you're talking about cool so yeah so probably then and then would you do the same thing for yourself or would you have other considerations I'm just I'm curious that's my last clip last question for now I'm just gonna go with probably the same kind of like a bit of bang for your buck but I want it to last long and then not knowing much or since I work here I would probably rely on some people around here to help me out with tech support but if I was completely on my own sure tech support would be important for sure okay so here come the questions from our floatplane peeps here's here's one I just this one isn't first but I just thought this was really good a question for Janice after this experience if you had to buy a computer in real life and let's assume you didn't work here like just normal vanilla Janice not lmg equipped Janice if you had to go buy a computer if you had to buy a computer in real life would you shop online again or would you go to a store oh well as I was saying to eivin before we started all the first phone calls yeah I felt really nervous going in because I when I did buy my laptop in 2008 my previous laptop yeah we've upgraded her find everyone I did all my research I actually knew a fair bit about computers by the time I was finished like hey what do I need and how much does it cost for this thing and like interesting it upgraded whatever as I as you notice 10 years has done something to my memory but so I would yeah personally I would be online odd research about computers in general and then I would research about prices and where to get things and how much shipping costs included in that because obviously that's a factor in the final price if you're having to pay for shipping as well so I probably wouldn't call people if I don't have to it'd be like an online experience got it okay now that's really interesting because I didn't even really think to include as a separate section of this sort of trying to shop on their sites before resorting to a phone call as part of the pre shopping experience is that something that you did poke around at on your own but that we just didn't include in the video or did you have any thoughts there I didn't have time nor was allowed to see that before the video just to make it fair across the board sure so no that was not part of this whole experience at all it was just like make a cold call and ask for a gaming PC for my brother with a budget so that was yeah I've done that personally but it was not part of this experience interesting all right see if I can get yeah I've got we've got a lot of people actually talking about getting phone anxiety and feeling exactly the same way as you where they wouldn't actually leave they wouldn't actually want to call into anywhere no in order to buy something I would go into a store if I had just like a really confusing question that I couldn't find out online by myself then I would probably just go into a store and ask a salesperson pretend I'm looking at something to buy oh this is a really great question from Anthony J Campo over on Flo plain um okay so after this experience knowing how difficult it is because I mean if you were buying a computer for yourself another sort of something you brought up is that it wouldn't necessarily be a gaming computer right so this this question is great knowing how difficult it was to extract useful information from PC manufacturers be it through their websites or be it through talking to them directly on the phone would you just say you know what forget it I'm gonna buy Mac an answer honestly like it's fine no one's gonna judge you because even whatever you say I kind of have a spiel that I'm gonna go into here for a little while anyway so that was the actual question that was the question it's just go and buy Mac would you it okay I'll read you the exact word okay Janice if you had to buy a new computer would you consider buying an Apple product because of the post purchase support or would you rather buy a more wallet-friendly device with equivalent specs that has worse support and I'm buy support I'm talking both pre and post-sales because okay I am kind of a cheap person so I would probably go with the price the price point that's my final answer okay um so the spiel that I was gonna go into was it's actually a really great question because a lot of people in our community sort of marvel that cuz I mean okay cuz counterpoint to what you just said you did already acknowledge that you'd probably go with main gear even though that wasn't strictly speaking the best price to performance now Apple does take that difference to another level in some cases so so you're willing to compromise a little but with the perception then that Apple is a tier above in terms of the price and then a tear or two below in terms of the performance you kind of go oh well that's my line is that kind of yeah kind of taking an average of sure but a lot of people in our community sort of marvel exactly the same way that Anthony here did not our Anthony the Anthony who posed this question marvel that people buy Apple computers at all don't they see that it's poor i-5 instead of an i7 price how could they buy that the OS isn't even that great but the thing to forget that the thing that people forget the thing that you have to remember is that what Apple does so well and you can you can crap on them for you know it's all marketing all you want but at the end of the day marketing is just another word for communicating proactively with your potential customers and now if you think about it that way that is a form of support it is a pre-sales support now deceptive marketing is bad but when Apple says okay this thing is really light and has lots of battery life if you carry it and use it a lot between charges you should buy it that's not necessarily deceptive now they're not saying well okay in some cases they do make performance claims that I kind of go really you guys but you know they're not saying that this thing is gonna edit 8k video or whatever like they're not getting specific like that so there are many cases where Apple does market their products in a way that I wouldn't consider deceptive and so I guess I'm just trying to point out that that is something that is an actual value to an Apple product now for my for my own part I don't buy a lot of Apple products because I don't need someone to hold my hand and make a flashy commercial about like that that sort of shows the kinds of users and the kinds of lifestyles that people have who should you know want this product that doesn't mean anything to me like I actually do want to know the specs and then I want to know the price and the pros and cons and all that nitty-gritty stuff but that's basically your answer is in just the same way that Janus was like yeah I'd probably go main here knowing that there's that there's this I mean would you say there's a certain degree of trust yeah trusting that you're gonna get good information on the front end and that you're gonna get good help on the back end yeah I'm willing to compromise some raw performance in order to sort of have that that certain degree of trust and even though Apple has made a ton of mistakes over the years the reality of it is that many of their customers don't keep the products long enough to experience these kinds of longer-term failures or they just simply aren't affected by them in the way that power users who make a lot of noise online are so Apple still manages to hold on to this high degree of trust with its users and it's something that I think a lot of people find baffling but here we are so I just I thought that was a really interesting question let me have a look here okay okay actually there's yeah there's not that many uh there's not that many questions here so that's pretty cool I can actually have a look and see if anyone left a super chat as well uh okay there's a bunch of stuff here are you an Android or iOS user and why I think I know the answer to this but go ahead - knows because I am an Android user only because the phone came from LNG well not only because but that is why I am right now we'll go with that I don't think were you wanting iPhone before no I've never owned a an iPod Touch many moons ago that's my only awful product so so so full context here Janis only has a modern smartphone because back when she was still doing babysitting for us her Christmas bonus was a new phone because I couldn't watch her use the things she had I was just like this is terrible this is like small though I'll give it that okay all right that's wonderful solid solid benefit I think oh wow there's actually a lot more um okay actually one last question for you and then I'll probably have Dennis come in and talk about some of the stuff we saw at CES this is from re SC wood agent Janice ever consider going undercover in person how's your in-person anxiety compared to your phone anxiety like running around and like secret shopping best buy memory express what are your thoughts hmm I would say okay I have two points one is that sometimes in person is easier than the phone as far as like anxiety and that kind of stuff goes really it's a little less unknown you can read someone you can not kind of thing interesting that's that okay so that's kind of leaning towards in person but the other part was that Ivan was actually with me on the calls or in the same room while I was calling and to kind of navigate some of this stuff and provide reactions that was very helpful there are a few times where I just be like what do I need to do right now what if we just had like like actually like agent Janice like the little squiggly thing behind the ear and you had like the earpiece and just put your hair down you know but that probably make me nervous because I'd be like they can see what I'm doing whereas the phone would obviously hide more so I don't know pros and cons and remember with the phone when because the thing about in-person is that and this this is I'll speak to my own experience first and you can tell me if you feel the same way but in person I find one of the most difficult things about it is that it tends to be a really high pressure sales scenario because everyone knows if you're in sales you've been trained on this I guarantee it everyone knows that once the customer walks out the door your chances of making the sale drop precipitously like when they're still in the door and you're still having a conversation you are deep into double digits chance of making a sale when they walk out the door it falls too low single digits if it's even all the way to one percent when someone leaves you're basically done because they're going to walk into the door somewhere else and that person will be a better sales rep than you apparently and will not let them out the door without setting you up with the right deal so knowing that you would have to like decline people in person potentially I mean I guess you're buying a system every time if I do that's fine so anyway then okay so it's like a lot less pressure however if I was shopping personally for my own computer or whatever device that I don't know anything about then yes there'd be a lot more pressure and I don't know yeah in some ways the phone you can hide behind it and in other ways it it's still kind of a anxiety-producing type of thing yeah I get more anxiety in person and over the for sure but I mean it's all down to down to the individual which is why you know we actually had a lot of people comment on the videos I saw a handful of these where people were like why are you calling them anyway who does that and but that's the thing it's like that's why company not everyone's the same as you sorry and that's that's why companies are supposed to have chat email phone possibilities because that's how you provide a good customer experience you have to you have to allow for someone to prefer talking on the phone to someone like I actually strongly prefer when I especially when I really don't understand something very well I strongly prefer to talk to someone on the phone because then I get a chance to explain what it is that I want rather than just hoping that the information is there and available for me to glean from their website or whatever the case may be also when you talk on the phone or when you talk in person there is the potential to negotiate a zone okay I think that's pretty much it there's one last question here that they just they just added Casey asks would you ever be on camera again I am right now okay I guess what I guess what okay I'm gonna put my own spin on the question then would you consider doing a secret shopper again uh yeah I just don't know what it would be for because agent Janice her cover's blown yeah I guess that's uh that's kind of a fair point actually isn't it although I guess that kind of goes I don't like Best Buy and places like that Oh Matthew Swanger says Janice was awesome on the series sent five dollars and said this is for her not you so there you go thanks Matthew thanks by the way that's not the way super chats normally work I just thought it was really funny that it was specifically not for me you guys don't send super chats that are like this is for Dennis this is for Nick and this is for Luke we move know that we don't audit them that way but but they he go Matt Matt Matthew hooked you up so get a coffee and thank you very much I know that this is not necessarily your comfort zone really appreciate it honestly I felt like what we what we did as a team and you were an integral part of it was a huge community service for the gaming community not necessarily the technology community as much because I think those guys and gals are like comfortable just ordering parts off Newegg and assembling it themselves for the most part but for the people who aren't happy doing that yeah our audience is the techy people but they don't want to build everyone in their families computers so this way they can have the confidence to recommend and experience that those people are gonna be happy with in the longer term I actually have no idea how oh no I'm not letting you go yet right I had a whole other thing I wanted to talk to you about so I actually have no idea how sorry how this has affected the sales of those companies but I do know that policies are already changing so for one thing I spoke with Dell back at CES or not back at all I was literally midnight yeah so I actually spoke with Dell two days ago and they said they have already made changes to their policies based on watching these videos these videos are now mandatory viewing for all of their support centers which is Wow pretty cool you actually made a difference so one of the biggest problems they said was that instead of talking to their gaming team because we were in Canada you were forwarded to like a generic sales team that doesn't know anything specialized especially about the gaming hardware and so that doesn't excuse how bad their script was to be very clear delay lien weird people who are watching this show but that was a difference that was made there how did you feel about the responses that you got from the companies you heard from that was the last thing I wanted to ask you okay funny story so I actually I got the email from a personal email from I bye power apologizing for the technical support experience that I received and assuring me that you know things were gonna change and thanks for the feedback kind of thing at the time I had not watched that video yet and so I was a little bit confused because I thought he was referring to the first video experience which was not that I actually rewashed it and thought I don't know what he's talking about anyway all that aside so that was a personal email i received from high power they also publicly acknowledge that they screwed up they were they were like sitting there on their f5 buttons like waiting for that video to drop on youtube so they could have the first comment on it saying like okay we done goofed like we're working on this sorry Dennis so I thought that was a really that was a really cool way that they owned it yeah I don't believe we've gotten any response from HP whatsoever so I haven't heard anything their main gear put out a press release I have basically stroking their own stroking their own egos Oh main gear you're so great I love myself so much right now so I mean in fairness to them they actually did to me well they did do a pretty good job they declared victory in their press release if I recall correctly so they said despite the conclusion that we came to despite the conclusion we came to where we said well we did say it's a gaming computer but then they were like well they also record and Verizon was good for CPU encoding so okay you can kind of you can slice that pie either way I'm just trying to think who else who else was involved I don't know if CyberPower responded at all about their completing up yeah maybe I haven't received as many responses about it as I thought so you had your Dell who did respond well to you and they actually yeah that's interesting too so Dell reached out to me partway through the series but specifically said I'm not gonna say anything because I don't want to affect the rest of the outcome and it wouldn't have anyway but you know thank you we are watching this very closely HP didn't say anything and then we had main gear and who was our other boutique origin yet I don't think we heard from I think we really heard from origin about although they did want to meet with me at CES and I really wanted to meet with the CEO and I unfortunately wasn't able to make it over there so I guess we don't have their response but that's because I wasn't able to get there okay so yeah I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on do you feel better now that iBUYPOWER apologized or well you forgive them forgive them took me a while but no it wasn't as I was saying to Linus I did this for this purpose it wasn't like I was actually purchasing the computer and so right some some parts I just kind of laughed it off it I didn't feel personally attacked or anything right yes looking back to the video yeah that's not a way to treat a customer so well so it's not a way to treat anybody sure you know person yeah that's true okay all right so I'll stop lying to you about actually being allowed to go now really though thank you for coming on I just I felt like this was such a cool and important thing we did and I'd love to do more of it agent Genesis cover is kind of blown because I'm pretty sure she is mega famous now within the system integrator space because don't kid yourself main gear origin ibuypower cyber power HP and delay Lee and where are not the only ones who are aware of this series I had more than one system builder kind of go and not because they don't like try to do a very good job but just because the thing with a secret shopper setup is one bad rep can make your whole company look really bad so it's it's a it's a high risk reward and remember we were down in Vegas everybody's gambling but that is a well high risk reward kind of proposition there um do you mind grabbing Dennis on your way on your way over here and don't don't forget your five bucks from Matt yeah Matthew swagger this is look this is like this was awesome on the series this is for her not you - all caps you'll just drop it anyways so there you go alright and we don't normally do that but Janice deserves if nothing else like a coffee break on account of what she went through for that thing yeah she was awesome Ivan was awesome Pella deserves mad props because those videos were not easy to edit you know taking three hours of like phone calls like he probably had to sit on the phone longer than Janice did that's oh that's actually an interesting way of thinking about it all right while I'm waiting for Dennis and we'll talk about some CES recap stuff and we'll go ahead and Dennis why would you run right in front of the camera dude you're killing me here I was gonna do sponsors before you got here there was no there's no particular hurry house Romney I can't believe I used all my energy so yes so no more walking running this year for me this year yes you know it's like okay why are you even at work today cuz I'm editing I have one more see if you're at work you're doing work yeah oh but like this one more C's CS video I had to finish okay alright so I got to do our sponsors first so you're just in time to hear about fresh books fresh books is the super simple to use accounting solution for small business owners and freelancers that helps you create and send 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it's affordable and it helps support Linus tech tips alright just we've we're like really late in the show to do sponsors so I want to I want to get through these and I want to save oh man I have a very tricky yeah so yeah you get the ghost pepper you ready wait wait wait wait oh it's my crown my waters this is really hot I try to savage turkey their goal is to make a delicious snack without nitrates or preservatives that's full of flavor but not bad for you and they don't just sell jerky oh man my mouths watering they've got hot sauces like the Moho jalapeno right there they've got spice rubs so this sauce here contains a blend of jalapeno garlic lime and cilantro oh that provides an amazing zip at the right amount of heat do you may deep this man I was barky no no no most people do not dip their jerky and hot sauce no the jerky is an independent product oh okay hold on hold on wait wait wait wait for wait wait to eat that this is this is the hottest one with it goes no that's not the hottest one I believe the Carolina Reaper is the hottest one I remember when I was dying last time I can't promise Caterpie again but wait I don't deep on you okay I haven't actually tried this one before oh that's actually really nice okay I have a little bit yeah what what I want to try it why would you do that why would you dip jerky and hot sauce yeah go ahead but like that's stupid who does that that's like freak show it's why you know why did that insult go away that used to be an insult your freak show maybe it's not really correct I don't know anyway check out savage jerky use offer code LTZ to save 10% and savage jerky calm ah they've got something for everyone squid oh we got a new ship in a maple buffalo bacon I am so happy right now Oh this isn't this is not as hot as the one I tried last time no pepper one is really hot it takes a little while to kick in there all right let's talk see yes what was your highlight from the show to be honest this year is kinda like a blur to me I have been just walking around we haven't like to find stuff but I found there a lot of like affordable displays everywhere mm-hmm I saw a display photo book purse that was cool yeah so like we tweeted about it earlier this week but like the top of the purse had a curved display so you could like you could open it and close it right and what was I in touch it what we're going on the display it's just some text and some text I think like they'll be cool you could come change the texture of your purse or you can put on your phone info so do you like foldable displays as like a fashion accessory yeah if you could wear a bracelet that's like like not just you know like I'll cuz obviously the idea of decorating yourself with like glowing stuff is not you know I like those ones like you know they use those paper what's that called like pink pink yeah that kind of material no look cool cuz it's not like too shiny but would you like like the next level where it's actually brightened like high resolution like a screen yeah yeah but I don't wear anything don't laugh you know be cool okay cool oh like glasses if or the size like that you can change different things I could have given him the maple buffalo bacon can I have one maple you can you probably won't even be able to like taste it though oh this is good this is a to spicing about that was really good so okay what did you think of the foldable TV or the rolling rollerball TV I didn't actually get to stop there to see Bob did you watch the video but I saw you pull some stuff I didn't see it well dang it Dennis all right tell you what this is pretty cool alright I'm which video all right the one where it rolls up so I'm just gonna yeah I know that I have didn't bring it up alright how does the rollable TV work try let's play it okay so this is one of our this is one of our videos from the show here there's our epic chilling 4d brand all right oh so here's how it works so you got this like speaker base here okay and it's about kind of yay big bye yay big so maybe like a foot by a foot maybe a little more maybe like 18 inches 16 inches something along those lines so you press one button and boom it opens up at the back and the screen just raises out of it how thin this this mmm I don't know like less than a centimeter for sure like it's quite thin this is it like wobbly or is nope so there's these two arms at the back that kind of like come down like this and like they support it at the back okay now I had I saw one viewer mention that there was a little bit of like kind of rip leanness to the screen honestly seeing it in person I think the camera picks that up more than your eyes do to me from anything but a very X in anything but a very extreme situation where I have like a hard light and I'm looking directly at the angle of incidence I think it's called I don't remember anyway the angle of reflection like if I'm looking directly out of hard light using the the TV as a mirror it's noticeable but in person looking at actual content it is not know they say it'll do it 50,000 times up and down oh but it's only 65 inches and if previous pricing of Signature Series models is anything to go on I would expect it to cost anywhere in the neighborhood of 15 to $15,000 you that's OLED right you betcha there I felt this oh I think that's like it just says this the one we saw in in Korea right one of those yeah yeah oh that's really cool so that was one of the big highlights for me I just okay this is the every year I see it's that computer stuff yeah you know those things that you step on it and those thing that yeah thing just move along like a pad thing yeah every year it's just there and like a bunch of people I'm not to try that okay what okay okay why don't we talk about some of the other seemingly off-topic stuff Joris how many massage chairs there I know and that's all good thing I was going to say that there's so many so many of them who is buying these my parent they did they buy one 20 years okay your parents also owned this weird leg okay yes they they body like 25 years ago and never use it it's just like a giant garbage they're sitting there it's just so big and you don't really sit on that thing but the one I saw it a CSI cement bigger but it looks really comfy but I kind of I want to try it but I wouldn't buy it remember I did try and compute X the foot massage one mm-hmm it was so tight it's like freaking my my legs but but I don't know it's like everywhere what did you think of the AI laptop demo um cuz you edited that one right I did showed off they've partnered with Microsoft and they're using a zero like like as your cloud AI something-or-other and the idea is that they've got a laptop that uses AI technology to intelligently manage its power distribution between the CPU and the GPU in order to optimize certain workloads and they claim that they can get measurable performance gains out of it but when we went to the booth their demo was awful so their gaming demo had to video playback side by side with an FPS counter on it instead of actually having the game running and I asked why and they said oh well it's because the RT X performance embargo hasn't lifted yet ok fine and then on the other side they had Adobe Premiere cs5 yeah I don't yeah that's like the first day I saw they used a really OH premiere version do you know why I think they used it why I bet it's pirated I bet the demo team just didn't have a CC license but why cs5 I have a pirated copy of cs6 at the very least I'm pretty sure it's still on the server somewhere like to be clear we pay for Adobe Premiere a lot of money to Adobe but like I will confess that in our very early days when we had no money we had a pirated copy of cs6 I never use it well no I don't think I don't think you'd ever used it we were Creative Cloud by the time you do yeah yeah we always have the latest version no but yeah I don't know I don't get it yeah and they stand for the demo we finish the rendering I think that one without a I finished earlier like like a fraction of a second or something like like everything marginally and like to be clear this was like a five or ten minute render or something like that wasn't it uh I don't really remember have to see that rice was it was a little bit I don't know they asked me to come back and run it again and I was like guys I'm like I've moved on I've moved the world has moved on but they are so confident that their AI technology is gonna work and I'm like I'm like I'm kind of baffled here I don't really understand how like the cloud is gonna help with power state switching on micro processors which happens on like a microsecond scale like I don't really understand how it's gonna help with that but they insist that their AI tech a eye technology works and we're gonna do a review of that laptop it's the arrow 15 and we're gonna see how that goes stay tuned for the video we go through the arrow 15 in a little bit more detail so funny so the fact that the computer fell apart when I picked it up that is not staged that was it which is nice guru yeah oh it just it was just on the show floor just sitting there with no screws in it whatsoever and it just I picked it up and it just came apart and I checked the other ones and they were all fine they were all put together it just happened to be that the one that I had them unlock so I could hold it up while I was talking about it just completely fell apart in my hands oh that's hilarious so yeah maybe they just they're damn or just not not good okay I want to go through one more thing that I thought was really cool okay so OLED you've seen OLED screens before oh yeah yay or nay the darkness like the truth dark and like it's really thin yeah okay what if I said that you can have the benefits of LCD so that's very high brightness but you can get very near to the true darkness and then OLED has with an LCD yeah did I lunchtime oh okay well then I guess I imagine I haven't told you that before I'm gonna talk to the viewers okay okay so okay would you think that there's a way for LCD to achieve that level of darkness without compromising its brightness because that's the problem for LCD all you have to do to get brighter is crank the back leg yeah but then your blacks become Gray's anything it doesn't look good now you can turn the backlight way down but then let's do white is great yeah there's really no way around it unfortunately and there's there's mitigation strategies so you can have TVs that have zones that can be individually brightened or dimmed so if you have like a highly reflective white spacecraft flying by on this side and then you've got you know like the the pitch blackness of space behind it over here though these zones can be brighter and these zones can be darker but you get this ugly like stare Casey looking in some cases like halo effect around the bright objects because those zones are square okay and there's nothing that you can really do to make them perfectly aligned with the shape of the object because they're just sort of modules of LEDs at the back that can be individually adjusted all right so Hisense do you ever have you ever heard of hi-c and the funny thing about Hisense is for so many years every year I've gone to CES every year they've had the booth right across from Intel and I've always been like who exactly are these guys why are they right across from into the giant booth like primo space so we're talking center hall right at the entrance you got Intel Hisense walk writing like what what even are these guys doing here because their booth was just always maybe I missed a couple things here and there but I didn't think so their booth seemed to be always kind of dead with them like trying kind of desperation tactics to get people to come in and look at it like having a little like like shouders be like oh come in and see Hisense and then like very mediocre displays like super mediocre like a gen or two behind or like showing the latest cool thing like 4k like it looked bad you know so so high sense of all people and I thought well maybe they're just like huge in like Asia or something but like none of your friends had a high sense TV like I probably I need to know what that was calling Chinese oh okay well we can probably do that I'm sure I say this from China right I believe so they apparently have a u.s. site um Hisense here we go their native name no I don't know never heard of that no so they've been up they were founded in 1969 like they're a 50 year old company 15 billion dollars of revenue in 2013 so they probably grown since then they're also an OEM so they sell to other manufacturers oh they have several brand names combined Keylong Ron Shen does that sound familiar no no okay so anyway I'm just like who are these guys um but James said okay Linus you got to go look at this they've got an LCD that achieves near-perfect black without that halo effect of a full array local dimming backlight and so what they've done is basically they've got a normal backlight yeah fullback Lane then they've taken two LCD modules and they were very clear that it is two modules not two panels because if you put two panels together you end up with all kinds of weird artifacting in fact I remember using a display that had two LCD panels one on top of the other one probably around eight or nine years ago it was from a company called Oh what were they called ah stereo 3d monitor it was it so anyway the idea was that it was for man stereo display I feel like it had like an accident or something like that yeah it was a stereo display and so they were polarized vertically and horizontally and then you wore polarized glasses so it was passive instead of using active shutter glasses like invidious tech and it was supposed to be for gaming but it like barely worked and that thing looked like garbage when you weren't looking at 3d content actually kind of looked like garbage when you were looking at 3d content anyway they said that having two panels next to each other would introduce all kinds of visual anomalies and I believed them but having two modules and sharing some of the components that would make up a full panel assembly between them things like light filters or polarization filters they could work with so what they've done is they've taken a full backlight we're gonna have a video on this that's quite a bit more detailed as part of our CES coverage that's gonna roll out over the rest of tonight and then I believe tomorrow and then regularly scheduled content is coming back on and I believe Sunday but they've got this light and they've taken a first panel and it's grayscale so it's black and white well not black and white because that wouldn't work very well but grayscale so you actually see an image of the of the of like there demo has like a soccer player have you seen the demo no okay unfortunately it's in YouTube stories that I did the thing and there's absolutely no way to access stories I just like I don't get the whole like the whole thing you know how Instagram it's like you can't post from not your phone or at least for a long time no couldn't and for a long time you couldn't even like browse it from not your phone like it would just tell you to load it up and mobile that was a long time ago but I just hate I just hate like intentionally locking things down so oh okay yeah so that's normal multi zone and then this is what high sense is doing oh you can actually make out so the first clip was the IOC the regular display regular like multi zone backlighting okay that was like local dimming change oh sorry so that's that's the first that's local dimming so you see there's not much granularity to it and then when we move over to the other side this is what high sense is doing so this is an LCD panel with a backlight behind it that is grayscale so what happens is you've got bright Werther's yeah are the images bright yeah and then you've got dark where it's dark but there's still quite a lot of bleed from those bright areas to the dark areas but get this in front of that module is an additional module that is 4k color so what happens is in those areas in those halos around here the first one is letting light through you get to apply on another darkening layer on it that second module can go full black as well so you have you end up with knocking those bleeding your your your blocking out the bleeding with an additional layer so you end up with a multiplier effect so the way that it stacks together is if you could block out one thousandth let's say that's like a typical contrast native contrast ratio at least a couple years ago so if you could block one thousandth of the light that comes through or sorry ninety nine thousandths if it was one thousandth the level yeah then instead of it being half of one thousandth for having two you can block ninety nine thousand again so you end up with like point zero zero zero three nits of brightness on the black like I took my hands and I cup them on the screen and like tried to see the backlight through it and it was really impressive really cool and no one else is showing anything like this and the whole thing is being in my opinion grossly under reported like I haven't seen any major publications like like beating the drum about this because it's really cool and so there's a cost benefit to because instead of using expensive OLED panels it uses two cheaper LCD modules yeah to make a single panel and it's very mature technology the hard part was the algorithmic splitting of the incoming image into monochrome or excuse me grayscale and full color and then recombining it together but maintaining the color tonality which I mean I've only seen demo content on it so far but it looked pretty darn good how thick is the display ah you know what I didn't even think to check I mean tell me this okay you've asked me this now twice why do you care how thick a TV is I don't know like cuz I don't I in the living room you don't - like a toothache TV I don't know for me like thickness is really important for me and one one other reason is like to show off I cares I cares about the thickness of the TV okay like you don't care about thickness I mean it's easy for me to say cuz I have like a w7m yeah but like before that no my TV at home right now is like this thick yeah it's probably cuz you didn't steal one from the office yet not yet but yeah I bought this like use use second hand sake yeah I don't 55-inch I think it's LCD as well I don't remember it probably really old probably yes alright well I think that's pretty much it for Montreux today we've actually kind of run over time so thank you Dennis Thank You Janice ended up lasting a lot longer than I thought and thanks to you guys for watching we will see you again next week same bat-time same bat-channel oh wait hold on I haven't done any Super chats Mikkel says how hey Linus I just want to say your coffee came in yesterday I might do a video of me drinking it and to let you know how it tastes I have to find a small grinder somewhere other than that I managed to get two gtx 1080 eyes for 550 bucks how's that for a price that's actually really good that's awesome elliot any micro LED TVs demoed at CES actually there were micro LED demos but I didn't end up getting a close look at any of them so I'll have to get back to you on that one Harris says Linus you don't understand machine learning a zero slash AWS uses tons of data to make predictions the vendor probably didn't have large data set to Train right but how do you make a prediction about like the GPU rendering frames in pub G I just yeah I'm ready to be proven wrong but they're saying that it's to its power allocation but the issue that I have with this is that a well-designed laptop already like today doesn't power throttle when gaming so if we're not throttling if everything's going full full couch as Jake would say then why do we need ái power distribution and reallocation so I mean hey I'm ready to be wrong here but their demo didn't work either so I also have the only evidence that I have yet to observe with my own eyes backing me up on this but we shall see Kyle says did you get the gift my fiance sent you you bought your sandals needed extra style you got a new one doing Christmas new socks you are you can get a new you said no I'm assuming it's the like the unicorn socks that arrived today I was kind of wondering what was up with that Robert Ron says there's no wrong way to eat hot sauce no yes there is the way don't know no you put you put hustla and the thing alder mir says just received my first addition to LTT cable ties on the East Coast whoo happy to hear that oh yeah I guess I should probably uh should probably like pimp the store oh I also count to see the unboxer can I see that oh yeah and oh yeah Luke is hiring so I have a couple of details about that as well so guys check out the store it's actually doing really well I'm kind of impressed so there's cable ties there's a couple shirt designs we're gonna have new shirt designs hopefully fairly soon and then the stuff that like the reason we have a full time person because I'm sure anyone looking at sort of like nine months of work and going okay so you've got what like two new shirt designs and like a velcro tie would probably go that person really doesn't do a lot do they but no we're actually hard at work on much more custom stuff because honestly for my own part I'm really not as into the stuff that like anyone can do like shirts are great and people love wearing shirts and like you know repping us and helping support us and all that stuff but I want to also do highly customized stuff like what we did with the land hoodie but like more modern design obviously like we're not just gonna reprint when hoodie and like stuff that's really good like this this bus is really the nice material yeah you're we're not cheaping out on any more is I got I got two and really nice yeah yeah so I was I mean I guess I don't really talked about this on LAN show I'm gonna do Luke's thing first and then I can kind of talk about why we revamped the why we revamped the the merge store so Luke is hiring I'm gonna link this in the chat here over on YouTube because that's where the vast majority of you are watching there we go oh we had a big drop-off UPS right bang keyboard we had a big drop-off when I said this show was over and then now it's like picking up again because people realize that I'm not actually done so we're hiring we're searching for a developer that has a strong aptitudes that has strong aptitudes in linux our hell experience with orchestration tools like ansible chef puppet team for excuse me terraform sorry this text is really small terraform hubert at ease and has an understanding of virtualization and networking I put a link in the video description actually there's a link in the description as well on all platforms as far as I know there's a blurb there I'll be posting the in for position and with more okay we're also reposting our infrastructure position with more clarification of what we're looking for and also just a reminder about the migration if you are still paying for flow plane through the LTTE forum that is not going to be a thing anymore check out the sticky on the forum for details on how to move over to flow plane calm we know flow plane comm doesn't really have a homepage chill we're working on it but the the payment system works ok so now we can go through the merch store so basically the idea was that we were selling shirts that were like printed to order so they were like direct-to-garment printing and i just really wasn't happy people would walk up to me at a show and I would like part of me was like I know that they bought this to like support us at least partially but like I look at the quality of the printing on it and I'd be really unhappy because I want everyone who buys stuff from us to feel like they got her they had a really great experience and I want like anything with our brand on it to be really nice and what kept happening was we would get with merge companies and initially the quality would be great and then it wouldn't be until some of our samples are all great and then it wouldn't be until I run into someone at a trade show and you'd be like okay it might be a ripoff one there actually can buy ripoff filters yeah somewhere stupid anyway it might be a ripoff but I know there were at least a couple of them that were real and we're just a representative of the degrading quality of both we've seen shirts swapped on us after the fact we've seen printing processes swapped on us after the fact I just wasn't happy with it so we've taken complete control back in-house of all of our March and so we're only using American Apparel shirts we're only using a nice high quality printing process so you can see like this shirt is really vibrant that's that's all we'll accept now this is probably not gonna be quite so vibrant because this sample has a white inside which we realized is probably not a great idea for underwear so we're gonna do a black inside and then we're gonna do a screen printed thing on it but we're working on water bottles we're working on some really cool custom hoodies we did we pulled a couple of the designs in the past and people seemed pretty amped on them and the boxers so these so right so not cheeping out on materials these use this like for sport like exercising no they just kind of feel like it because this material is like super like it's kind of stretchy and it's super soft I forget what it's called Lloyd would be able to tell me but like what do you think it's really nice like I liked it I think this is like for if you go exercising will be no those eyelet they not just like cotton cotton ones this is more stretchy and more air can go through this yeah I forget I think I forget what the materials cost no tag it's a sample yeah this is just like a pre-production sample of it the stitching looks nice like you know I think this is the third company that we've had samples arrived from but yeah we've got a lot more work to do Oh madad o that's what the material is called Oh who's watching Nick yeah huh so yeah we were did we just want to we want to like take it up to a completely new level and the stuffs not gonna be super cheap and we are still it's gonna take a long time for us to figure out International shipping because we're sort of new at this being an e Taylor thing but stay tuned guys because we've been hard at work on a lot of iterations of things in order to finally reach final product stage and we want everything that we sell through the store from now on to be really really good so that's at you guys we will see you again for real this time next week same bat-time same bat-channel they're still watching you what