LAMBORGHINI
kle to Lamborghini owners. Like, you know, crushed diamonds in the paint job.
It was impossible to walk past Cathy Durante and Debbie Scott’s Lamborghinis without staring.
Scott met Durante while shopping for Lamborghinis at Prestige Imports Miami in 2020. “She was looking for a black one and I said, ‘No, get the yellow,’ ”
Scott said, as people moved in to take pictures of her car.
Durante’s canary yellow 2019 Hurácan, which she drove to the show, has a listed top speed of 212 mph, although she uses it as her daily vehicle and respects the speed limit.
DIAMOND FINISH
Next to it was Scott’s dandelion yellow 2014 Aventador Anniversario edition. As one of 100 cars like it worldwide, that’s the one with diamond crumbs in the paint — she swears it to be true — which make the car look like it is sparkling when you get close.
Lamborghini ownership can be practical, too, Scott said. She also drives a URUS, the new Lamborghini SUV, which she left at home. She loves that she can drive around in a Lamborghini with space for her groceries and more than the typical two seats in many models of the car.
And that SUV, starting price $225,501, is meant to be the attainable Lamborghini, a lure for those not quite ready to drop half a million dollars on a new Aventador.
Also in store, for the populist appeal: the company’s first hybrid version of its Aventador model. The first in what the company hopes will be an extensive line of hybrid alternatives. Winkelmann said the company will eventually fully hybridize the lineup and reduce emissions from Lamborghinis — especially beloved for the engine and exhaust roar — by 50% starting in 2025. For Lamborghini, there is a sheen of social responsibility after burning 13 miles to the gallon for 60 years.
“It’s very important to be sustainable for a company like ours,” he said. “This is the promise we are giving to our customers, not only that we are reducing emissions, but that new cars will be more performing than the ones before.”
GENERATIONAL SHIFT
The brand, founded by Ferruccio Lamborghini 60 years ago, has always had to try harder to compete with its Italian arch-rival. Unlike Ferrari, it tried but never managed to compete on the professional race circuit. Always a bit more outrageous, Lamborghini has positioned itself as a car fit for a superhero like Batman, like the 2007 Murcielago
Bruce Wayne drove in 2008’s “The Dark
Knight.”
There has been a generational shift in South Florida from Ferraris to Lamborghinis. The 1980s television show Miami Vice made the city famous to a wide audience and its two main characters regularly drove Ferraris. Lamborghinis were barely shown in a few episodes of the show’s 113-episode run.
Nearly 30 years later,
Most of us are familiar with computers being either desktops or laptops. Desktops being any one of several tower configurations.
The advancement in laptop components has helped pave the way for smaller form factors, using laptop components in tiny computers that have no built-in screen.
I’m reviewing one of those tiny PCs, the Geekom Mini IT 11. The 11 in the name stands for the CPU, which is an 11th generation Intel i7 processor.
Any review of a mini PC is going to be about tradeoffs of size versus performance. Let’s take a look.
SPECS
This PC is really small. I’ve owned several Apple Macintosh Mini computers, and the IT 11 is much smaller. It measures 4.6 inches by 4.4 inches by 1.79 inches.
I’m really surprised at how much technology Geekom has packed into such a small case.
Let’s start with the processor. I reviewed a version with the Intel 11th Generation Core i7 – 1195G7, which has four processing cores. It comes with 16 gigabytes of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of solidstate storage, and it retails for $769.
You can buy configurations of the IT 11 with i5 processors starting at $619, and with different RAM and storage amounts. Look for sales at geekompc.com.
The IT 11 utilizes all four sides of the case. There is no wasted space.
On the front you’ll find the power button, along with the headphone/microphone jack, a USB 3.2 port and a USB 4 Thunderbolt port.
Around back, you’ll find one more USB 4 Thunderbolt port, an HDMI 2.0 port, two more USB 3.2 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, one Mini DisplayPort and the power input.
The Thunderbolt ports are a very nice inclusion. Those ports look like USB-C ports, and they can be used to connect USB peripherals, but they can also be used with adapters as network ports or to connect another monitor. Many Thunderboltequipped computers can use that port to power the system, but the IT 11 doesn’t have that ability.
The power supply for the IT 11 is an external one, so there is a small black brick on the power cable.
The right side of the case has an SD card reader, and the right side has a Kensington lock slot.
The IT 11 ships with Windows 11 Pro.
My review PC includes Intel Iris Xe graphics, capable of running up to four displays, including multiple 8K UHD displays.
It has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless connections to your home network or peripherals like Bluetooth keyboards or mice.
The inner frame is metal. There are vents on all sides but the front, and the fan is quiet.
The case is small enough to be mounted to the back of many monitors drive their cars at top speeds on the track.
Since the pandemic emerged in March 2020, JC Carr has noticed the soaring number of these fine cars on the South Florida roads, and he’s reaped the benefit. A student at University of Alabama, he runs a business called WhipsMiami, a car brokerage that specializes in luxury vehicles. Carr, 20, finds cars out of state and has them shipped to Miami. As the member of a 200-person Lamborghini groupchat, he’s noticed “a large explosion” of Lamborghini owners since the beginning of the pandemic. He sold 27 URUS vehicles in 2022 alone, for example.
If you can’t afford to buy one, but lust after a Lamborghini, you can always rent for the day thanks to companies like Diamond Exotic Rentals.
But for Wendelin, who awaits the arrival of her third Lamborghini and is a member of a global community of like-minded car lovers, owning one is priceless.
Michael Butler: @mikeviimusic with an included VESA mounting plate and screws.
EXPANDABLE
One of the best things about the IT 11 is the ability for users to upgrade the RAM or storage.
There are four screws on the bottom that cover two RAM slots and the M.2 SSD. The RAM can be upgraded to 64GB and the M.2 SSD can be swapped out (up to a maximum of two teraybytes).
There is also a 2.5” drive slot built into the bottom of the case, which can hold another two terabytes of storage.
All of these upgrades are easy to do, only require a screwdriver and can be completed in less than five minutes.
IN USE
The IT 11 was easy to set up and configure. Windows 11 Pro is pre-installed, but you can opt to load Linux, if you like.
I plugged in a wireless keyboard and mouse and used HDMI to connect it to my monitor.
The Wi-Fi connection was solid and fast. I tested with two monitors, and it worked flawlessly. I don’t have any 8K displays to test, but 4K YouTube videos looked beautiful and played back smoothly.
Note, there is no speaker on the IT 11, so you’ll have to add your own to hear any sound.
I loaded up Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop and had no problems with any of my daily work activities.
Surfing the internet, sending email and opening and editing Office apps were quick and easy.
The Geekom IT 11, with its 11th generation Intel CPU, and upgradeable RAM and storage should keep this machine viable for a long time.
Q: You have written about noise-canceling headphones for flying before and I hope you can help me with a recommendation. I am interested in headphones with good sound but most importantly, very effective noise cancellation that makes the sound of the airplane engines as unobtrusive as possible. My budget is up to $200, maybe $250 if it makes a big difference. A:
One of my top recommendations for great noise cancellation is the aptly named Soundcore Space Q45 headphones, which reduce noise by up to 98% with their adaptive three-stage noise cancellation system. I was not aware of the rated effectiveness the first time I tried them, but it seems accurate as the utter silence is akin to what you might expect deep space to be like.
The audio quality rates highly in their price class and high resolution audio is supported. Playtime per charge is 50 hours with noise cancellation and 65 hours without. The Soundcore Space Q4 headphones currently sell for $149.99 and they should easily satisfy your desire for very quiet headphones.
soundcore.com