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My Desk Top is an HP Wide Screen all in one that is at least 6 years old. As insurance I am thinking about a new Laptop but I need lots of USB ports and slots. I have several SSD drives plugged in. I think the built in mechanical drive is at least a gig. I have a DVD drive that I used to use a lot but lately YouTube has so much that it seems obsolete. Just looking around, it seems that there are so many tiny laptops with little keyboards. Ick.
I don't do Apple, and I run windows. I am no computer geek. I'm a writer and do not do games so no special video drive needed.
Any suggestions for a Lap Top?
Gwen
Comments
laptops?
Big thing to remember when buying any PC or laptop is knowing exactly what you really need before you spend the money.
I just bought the daughter a HP laptop for Christmas that only around $250. It has nothing to brag about in features or hardware, but great for web surfing, typing, etc. The games she plays that do require better hardware/ video etc she plays on the desktop I built for her, so the laptop is perfect for everything else.
My desktop, when I built it, was bleeding edge technology, over clocked CPU, WTF do you need that much RAM for, quad SLI video cards, etc. Although I do a bit more than web surfing and typing on it at times.
My laptop is getting a bit long in the tooth, its a Lenovo but like the new HP I got the daughter, it does everything I need when using it. The only upgrade I did to it was purchased a larger extended life battery.
My work laptop is also a Lenovo.
I'm the only one at work that services our laptops (over 800) at work and we have gone through many different brands of them over the years. Some have been much more reliable than others and some brands have turned out to be very robust. That is the main reason I have a Lenovo as a personal laptop, as they seem to hold up better than most to the accidental abuse laptops tend to receive.
But as I stated, figure out what you need. If you are not going to be doing anything with heavy graphics, you don't need a cutting edge video card or the latest fastest and most expensive I9 CPU or 64 GB of RAM so why waste the money on all the bells and whistles?
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
A new thing to remember
is that Microsoft has decreed that in order to run Windows 11, your machine will need an appropriate TPM chip. That has made a whole load of very decent CPU's effectively obsolete. Be sure to see it in writing that it will run W11. Do not believe any sales droids/snake oil sellers flim-flam. Get it in writing.
Samantha
Minor clarification
The specification is for a "TPM chip" or equivalent.
Most manufacturers have their own idea of what a TPM chip ought to look like and so, to quote Randall Munroe, there are many standards, just pick one. Good luck finding the chip - actually a plug-in board containing at least one chip - anywhere in reality.
These days most modern CPUs have the "TPM chip" functions built in. What it requires from the owner is to puzzle their way through the BIOS settings to find the thing, bearing in mind it may be named a number of different ways, and turn it on.
No need to try and find a separate "TPM chip", unless your board+CPU is more than six years old. Alternatively, don't bother with Windows 11.
Penny
My desktop
My desktop, when I built it, was not-yet-coagulating edge technology, over clocked CPU, WTF do you need that much RAM for (32 gb), one gaming quality video card, etc. I got an awful lot of awesome Black Friday deals in November, 2012. The video card has been replaced twice and an SSD drive added.
Thanks to lousy finances I've held off on replacing it. I find it hard to believe that could play Elder Scrolls Online reasonably well up until a year or two ago on such an old machine. I'm finally in the process of replacing it. Last week I bought an almost new high end Del Alienware gaming machine with the graphics card removed. It turns out that thanks to the shortage of graphics cards there are a lot of people that are buying the Del gaming machines, pulling out the video card and then selling off the rest of the system at a fairly low price. We tried moving my video card and two drives over a few days ago and, alas, it didn't work. We got the seller to demo the system working using one of his graphics cards so we know we weren't sold a broken computer. So I'm back to using my old computer while we figure out what to do next.
It will be nice to be working on a fast powerful system again.
Drop me a PM with the Dell
Drop me a PM with the Dell model and the model of the graphics card you're trying to use.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Welcome to Dell hell,
I've been in computers, in all sorts of ways including building systems galore, and I despise Dell. I've had trouble with the few that I have had to repair, I won't ever buy one. They design them in such a way as to make them almost as hard to repair as an Apple product, that way you have to go to them and pay them to fix their piece of garbage. I really hated it when they bought out Alienware.
Eh. It depends on what you
Eh. It depends on what you buy. The bulk of Dell tower computers are commodity systems. Standard power supplies, standard motherboard, standard connectors, other than the customized front panel connector. The special form factors, on the other hand, can be a lot more specialized. Even then, the power supplies are much more standard than they were 14 years ago, where you required a special adapter to use a standard ATX power supply - and had to use a 'nibbler' to cut enough metal out of the way to install the new PS (upside down).
_All_ of the companies make customized garbage. At this point, even off the shelf is getting to be a pain, thanks to the whole Microsoft/Intel pressure on UEFI/Secure Boot/GPT.
There's a good chance what's happening with the video card is the various PCI-E video standards becoming whacked.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Well, I have to confess
that I am talking about at least 7 or 8 years ago and more. I've retired and I haven't seen any of the newer systems. I do remember, painfully, those different setups and how impossible it was to use standard parts to try and fix them.
A couple of things.
A couple of things.
1) You can install Windows 11 without a TPM chip. People have done it. Not likely to be necessary, as most machines made since 2012 have had TPM.
2) Most systems don't have very many USB ports. Don't get fussed about it. Get a laptop with a USB-C port, then purchase a USB-C port replicator, preferably one through which you can feed power. they're often erroneously called "docking stations", despite not being docking stations in any way. You plug in your USB devices, your external monitor, network cable, etc, to the port replicator. Then you just plug the port replicator in when you sit down.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Thanks to those who responded.
Your advice has been quite helpful. I'll use this machine until It stops and then likely try to purchase another wide screen desk top because my vision is in decline.
Thank you so much.
Gwen
anotehr option to consider...
Is buying an Intel NUC and mounting it on the back of whatever size monitor (or TV) you wish to use.
A NUC is a micro form PC about 5 inches square and 3 inches thick. Price range that I seen, depending on ram, CPU etc. was between $200-700 US. I set up around 3 dozen of these on 19 inch monitors as visitor check in Kiosks for each of our buildings and they have been quite robust and trouble free.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
That is worth study
Provided that I can find a monitor cheap, that may be a good option. I think that my mouse runs off my keyboard, and right now my keyboard runs off my PC.
NUC's work, but their cases
NUC's work, but their cases and specifications are all over the place. There are other mini systems as well - it may be that she prefers portability more than power.
In any case, there's going to be a choke on the wafer pipeline going through 2025, it looks like. Not to mention WD and associated folks just had between 6 and 16 exabytes of NAND be declared garbage due to contaminated materials.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.