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@dirka

Yeah that would be great, I use a Toshiba app (ConfigFree) on my laptop just to hover the system tray icon and see the IPs, it would be nice to save that extra bit of resources if it was in-built to windows.

An expansion of your idea would be to show the IPs for each network adapter, ie Wi-Fi, LAN &/or Modem.

Maybe this has been said before, but I would love if you hover over the network icon in the taskbar for it to display my internal and external IP address

68929921.png

This doesn't really tell me anything.

There is a gadget that does this. Not necessarily on the taskbar, but it does the job. =) Most people would have no idea what those numbers meant if that popped up while hovering...

One thing that bother me, if go explore (Open Windows Explorer), is that everything is under Desktop. That does not make sense in my opinion, everything should go under My Computer, not desktop. Favorites are not bad being the first item - I like that, but other things need to reorganized in my opinion. Another thing is if I expand or collapse something, it should remember it when I open up explorer once again.

Also, I do not understand why some pictures thumbnails are bigger than others - I think this is bug.

I think that search should show all options when opened or have an option to show all options when opened. It just does not have any options when envoked, I think that is bad decision. Ofcource, not to confuse "Joe the Plumber" these options should be hidden by default, but available to be easily enabled for long time computer users.

Defragmenter has always been a piece of trash, or just absent, in Windows. A good one would indeed be a positive change.

Also, the whole comment about Firefox and other stuff. I think there should be advanced installation options where you can have the choice not to install Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Games, Networking Components, etc. I think though, this will be left to 7lite though - m$ has deadlines to meet.

Windows Uninstaller should be useful, I should not need a 3rd party program to make sure that the program is actually removed.

Ability to rename things in the Control Panel. Why not or maybe take that concept even further?

Useful descriptions of Windows Services, something written like simple.wikipidia.org and actually listing some of the things that will not work if you disable that service. Is that really too much to ask for?

To disagree with many others in this thread: There is no need for more eyecandy, please Microsoft focus on performance and functionality now. The only thing that might need more work is consistency.

A SMALLER windows size, honestly - 11GB is not small. If anything why can't M$ just NTFS compress all the backup files (WFP backups, installer files, other backups, etc) and maybe help as well. Maybe, advanced installer options would help with this problem.

I managed to make Windows 7 unbootable, by simple disabling a driver, upon restart after a failed boot - it asked me whether or not I want to just start normally or let it attempt to fix it for me. So I was like ok, fix it, but it failed. My suggestion is to vastly improve that functionality and upon an unsuccessful boot give the user a choice of safe mode and last known good configuration as well - so I would not need to press F8 - some people would not know that anyway.

Config Settings Bundles - I do not know how to explain this, but maybe M$ should inquire on what things Power Users Change in their settings and make an option to apply all those settings at the same time, or what settings Administrators prefer and make a bundle of those settings so one could apply them with ease. Maybe it is just a stupid idea though.

Is it me or does side scrolling do nothing even though mouse settings acknowledge its presence?

One odd thing is that when I disabled Page File, it DID NOT warn me that if I exceed my memory limit it will just kill that application - I think this is kinda worthy or telling the user, no?

Can new Firefox versions support the whole see multiple tabs preview feature that Internet Explorer has? If not, wtf mate? If yes, ignore this.

Fix the bug where multiple wallpapers setting goes back to one wallpaper.

Is there any way to rename sleep to stand by? I mean, I hate that. Sleep is not a proper term.

How do I remove users from Windows Task Manager?

CPU Speed (Like Notebook Hardware Control) Options for Battery Mode.

Does the Aero / Glass UI use RAM or VRAM? If it is VRAM, then ignore this, otherwise wtf?

Edited by Udedenkz
5. Rip off the Apple's Mac OS X .app approach to installing (and more importantly uninstalling) programs. It is brilliant. Installers are evil and shouldn't be needed. Uninstallers rarely fully remove a program...traces of everything are left behind when they shouldn't.

would be nice, but this step may require deeply changes in OS architecture imo; if were talking about .app concept, we also need something that may be a counterpart of Apple Disk Image (dmg) files - which Virtual Hard Disk (vhd) is closest thing. anyway, installers arent evil - OS X uses them for installing packages (pckg).

  • 3 weeks later...

Here's another idea:

Networking: Including an iSCSI server function

Vista came with the iSCSI initiator which allows a CD/DVD/etc ROM that is shared on a host computer (by means of iSCSI server software) to be detected by the client system as the respective CD/DVD/etc ROM. Adding iSCSI server would allow a user on a PC-1 to setup, eg their DVD-ROM, to be shared, and a DVD Movie could be then inserted in this DVD-ROM and played by a PC-2 connected via network as though the DVD-ROM is on PC-2.

Still hoping they finally give WMP the Space Bar pause/play thing... that's my biggest gripe/want ever with respect to Windows Media Player. Every other media player out there does it, honors the Space Bar as Pause/Play but WMP doesn't, at least not 100% of the time. There are moments when, if the control bar in the app has focus, the Space Bar will actually pause playback, but more often than not it: a) is so irregular as to be totally useless, and b) pressing it again doesn't actually cause it to play, go figure. So it's lopsided at best.

"There's a 50-50 chance the Space Bar won't pause playback, and a 10 percent chance that if it does it won't play the file when you press it again..." to paraphrase a line from "Naked Gun." ;)

Sure would be nice if Microsoft actually gave WMP that one feature, finally. It really would.

Yeah, I requested that in the very 1st post.

It's working on and off for you because when you select the button, which normally happens when you'd mouse click the play/pause button, the spacebar performs the action of pressing a button. Once the play/pause button is deselected, pressing spacebar won't work. The spacebar works the same for any selected button in Windows: if you press the tab button until a button/control is selected in the focused window, then spacebar performs the action of clicking it.

  • 2 weeks later...
I demand ful performance!!

For better gaming experience PLEASE

I asked for that too in the post #52 of this thread.

Here's a another idea:

File Transfer: Pause/Resume & Speed-Control Function for Copying or Moving

Adding a button on the Moving and Copying dialog boxes, that allows a user to pause or resume a move/copy operation, would improve functionality in case the user needs to temporarily use another intensive operation urgently, etc. Adding a control to the Moving and Copying dialog boxes for controlling rate of transfer, would allow a user to decrease the resource use of the transfer operation, allowing the system to be more responsive to operations the user may need to perform urgently, etc.

Have you guys got any feedback on these sugestions? :huh:

If you like them, please copy and paste them into the Windows 7 Feedback window and send it to Microsoft, to let Microsoft know that many people want the particular feature. ;)

Since Windows is a popular platform for games, i wish there was a Game Mode built into Windows similar to Guest Mode(earlier called as PC safeguard) where i could get full performance out of my machine for games which demand a lot. There should be only a few services,fully tweaked etc in this mode so that i can juice out the max.

Also, WMP should support more filetypes natively mainly such as FLAC (which is only reason i use winamp). I know that it can be still used to play but there is no proper seek bar etc during playback

@rakeshishere: Yeah, check the post #52 and see if you approve of that game idea.

@shakey_snake: you reminded me of this idea:

Media Playback: WMP id3 ratings support

Currently, setting ratings within WMP to an mp3 file does not change the actual rating within the id3 tag of the file. Giving full integration, where adding rating would act permanently in the file, even if played in another system, (until altered) would be a much appreciated function. This would preserve ratings a user applied to a file even if they're forced to re-install the operating system in the event of a such occurrence.

Have you guys got any feedback on these sugestions? :huh:

If you like them, please copy and paste them into the Windows 7 Feedback window and send it to Microsoft, to let Microsoft know that many people want the particular feature. ;)

For it to be free and open source, like linux

I can understand people wanting it to be free (I presume you meant "gratis" on that).

But why would you want it to be Open Source? Did you want to change some of the code? :ermm:

I like to have the guest mode feature back in Windows 7.

According to Paul, the Guest Mode feature of Windows 7 was removed permenantly.

Well if it's really true, I would like to see it back in Windows 7. I think it's a great feature for those who wanna share their computer with other people and preventing them from making unneccesary changes to the system.

Shouldn't there be a "What You Would Like To See in Windows 8" thread. Because Windows 7 is done. No new features and such are going to be added at this late date with RC in the making as we speak.

Seems like a thread with no purpose anymore.

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Processor E-cores L3-cache Turbo clock GPU GPU-clock TDP Intel N355 8 6 MB 3.9 GHz 32 EUs 1.35 GHz 9 W Intel Core 3 N350 3.9 GHz 1.35 GHz 7 W Intel Core i3-N305 3.8 GHz 1.25 GHz 9 W Intel Core i3-N300 3.8 GHz 1.25 GHz Intel N250 4 3.8 GHz 1.25 GHz 6 W Intel Processor N200 3.7 GHz 0.75 GHz Intel N150 3.6 GHz 24 EUs 1 GHz Intel N97 1.2 GHz 12 W Intel Processor N100 3.4 GHz 0.75 GHz 6 W The CPU is part of the Alder Lake-N series that sits just below the top N355 offering, albeit with an impressive TDP (less than the N355 and N305) for the features it offers. It is designed for low- powered systems and entry-level laptops. As before, we are seeing another NAS with an acceptable, if not great, amount of RAM. It should be noted that the F4-425 Pro only has one SODIMM slot, so if you are planning to upgrade the already 16GB included in this NAS, it will have to be on one module of Single Rank DDR5. 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In the box F4-425 Pro TNAS device Power adapter LAN cable (CAT 6) Quick guide [full online guide] Limited warranty notice Screws (for HDD bays) Stickers 2x rubber feet (spares) Design As has become kind of common with TerraMaster, certainly in the last three years, the 2025 F2- and F4-series have received a makeover that really adds to the premium feel of the NAS. Gone are the plastic shells, now replaced with an aluminum outer shell, with the front and back retaining the textured black plastic we saw on the 2024 models. Some key differences from the 2024 series include placing the power button back on the front, along with the addition of a Type A USB port. It's not much bigger or heavier either; in fact, it weighs 500 grams less than the F4-424 Pro. It's slightly shorter in height and depth (length), but only by a few millimeters. The front and back do retain a similar style to the 2024 series. On the front, you just have your four bays along with LED indicators for the HDDs and power. The welcomed change is having a USB port on the front for quick access, should you need to back up a USB drive, for example. Around the back, from top to bottom, you have a reset pin hole, an HDMI port, two 5 GbE Ethernet ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type A ports with a Type-C port below them, and a connector for the barrel port power source. Again, there's no Kensington Security Slot present, which is a bit of a shame considering it's a data storage device. Left side Right side On the left and right of the F4-425 Plus, it is completely smooth aluminum with a TERRAMASTER logo printed on both sides. On the bottom, there are some holes to assist ventilation. Unlike with the F4-425 Plus, the rubber feet did come unstuck during the teardown, which was also an issue on the 2023 series. It seems like other customers have lodged complaints about them, as TerraMaster now includes two spare rubber feet in the box, in case any of the preinstalled ones are lost; however, this seems more like a papering over the cracks solution rather than actually fixing the issue with better quality rubber stand-offs. There are also four screws that must be removed in order to access the internals. Teardown Upon removing the four screws, you can slide the device out of its shell to reveal the three NVMe M.2 slots (PCIe 3.0 X1) and single SODIMM slot connector, which is populated with a single 16GB DDR5 4800MT/s module. I added a couple of MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs (2 x 4TB) that can be availed on Amazon for $492.99 that TEAMGROUP supplied us with, along with a 250GB 970 Evo Plus that my colleague Chris White sent me by accident and let me keep a few years ago. As I have said in previous reviews, TerraMaster support staff actually encourage installing whatever you want on their devices, and happily, the USB port for the bootloader is now easily accessible should you want to use it for your own flavor of NAS OS, such as TrueNAS, Unraid, or maybe Xpenology. Yes, because TerraMaster has now switched to a 256 GB NAND Flash card (3rd photo above) for the TOS bootloader. This is also replaceable, but you can also simply add a USB bootloader, access the BIOS, and tell the F4-425 Pro to boot from that instead of the Flash card. Unlike earlier iterations of TerraMaster NAS, you don't have to tear this down any further than the four screws on the outer shell in order to be able to access and manage the memory, NVMe slots, and USB bootloader. However, if you need to access the NAND Flash card or CMOS battery, then eight more screws (four on each side) need to be removed in order to take off the rear panel with the 120mm fan, and then the motherboard can be lifted off and removed from the SATA connector PCB. There's also no risk of threading the screw holes, because the four that hold the shell in place are metal on metal, while the screws that hold the rear panel on do screw into plastic. Either way, like last time when I reviewed the F4-425 plus, I was just happier to see larger screws being used. Overall, it follows some great improvements in build quality from the 2024 series and earlier. Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to a "Start panel", initially I didn't see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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