OT. Computer Purchase Advice

[micky]

YOu can get a laptop with both an SSD and an HDD?

[micky]

When I travel, the only time I use the laptop, I take a mouse and a full-size Dell keyboard**, even though the keyboard won't fit in the computer bag.

Also, a set of USB speakers that clip to the screen, although mine would stand on the desk by themselves. Logitech, I forget the model. Sufficiently loud -- no louder than I would want, and not as loud as a concert or rock band, but as loud as I needed to hear really well, and I thought that was amazing.

My landlady 3 years ago had a monitor sitting around, and it worked with the laptop some of the time. I could never figure out why only some of the time. But that laptop hd XP, so one with win10 would probably work much better. But I'm not staying with her again, and the laptop is really good enough.

But I don't like touchpads, laptop keyboards don't have indentations to center your fingers, and laptop sound ime is way too low.

The XP computer was an Acer Netbook. Really nice and small.

Then next one had a bigger screen and I did like it better. It weighed maybe a pound more than the netbook, but since I also bring the mouse, power supply, auto power supply, speakers, and a few little things, the bag weighs quite a bit, more than I'd like, and the extra pound from the computer itself doesn't seem important. -- I need some sort of bone graft on the edge of my shoulder so the strap doesn't keep sliding off my shoulder. Whee would I get that?

[micky]

It must have been the feel of the keys. It wasn't any other reaosn mentioned here.

I also insist on the same key arrangement. The G810 I looked at after I read about it here and the F keys are smaller so by number 9 or 10, it's a full keywidth to the left of where it is on my keyboard** and the 3 keys in the upper right over the num pad were moved to over Insert, Home, Page Up. I can't handle that.

**For travel I use a Dell, the one with the smallest border around the keys. And I use it at home too.

[Dean Hoffman]

Exactly. I sit in my lazychair with my Mac on my lap. My tv is on sometimes. Coffee is within arm's reach. I read the news and type a letter sometimes. I live next to a town of maybe 9,000. Most of the people I know are farmers or work in farm related businesses. News includes reading the obituaries. I used to think someone who died at 70 had a nice long run. Now I wonder why he died so young.

[Dean Hoffman]

The lady said no to Macs. She didn't want an iPhone, either. The $600 point would be nice but not a high priority. There are so many choices that it doesn't take long to be overwhelmed.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Goes back to what you are doing at the time. The speakers on my laptop are fine for watching a 1 minute YouTube for some fun stuff but for more serious I cast it to the 55"tv and sound system.

[invalid unparseable]

Depends on her needs and what she is going to mainly use it for. With my old eyes I have a 8 gb Windows laptop with a 17 inch screen but I do not carry it outside the house. I had bought it as a backup machine for my desktop and seldom use it. With camera and microphone which desktop lacks it is convenient for Zoom and the like use. I think all new laptops and tablets come with camera, microphone and Bluetooth.

What I prefer to carry outside my house is my 10 inch Samsung Galaxy A Android tablet. Not as convenient to type on with things like email but voice recognition is much better today and sometimes I use it to write. If the redhead has a good smart phone she can already do this.

So, it is all personal needs.

[TimR]

When I travel for work (not that I do much recently with all the restrictions) I really hate dragging anything bigger than a 13 inch.

But it depends a lot on your vision and how close you're going to be to your screen - if you have it on a table and never move it, like most people, maybe go 15.

Now if you're really never going to move it, you might consider a desktop. I bought a Dell Optiplex from their refurb program at Goodwill for $100. That's their business class model and it's built like a tank. No WiFi on a desktop, though, you have to buy a little USB dongle, but I did that and it works fine.

Performance: Nobody in my family does anything beyond Facebook, email, Youtube videos, photo storage. The kids haven't even done Powerpoint since graduating. The cheapest processor seems to do fine. But our older XP model can't handle Win10 so obsolescence could be a long term issue. I solved that by switching to Linux Mint.

If you have an artist or musician in the family, you might need an i5. I do some 3D CAD on an older i3, it works fine, but I'm not doing large models.

Storage? For what? Photos is the only thing I can think of, and I bet most of ours are on phones anyway.

[trader_4]

I was thinking similar about the recommendation that 100gb is enough. I have an old XP notebook with a 65GB disk and that's just about full, without using compression. Desktop, I think Win10 takes about that much just by itself. So, I'd want 256GB min. My HP desktop, a couple years agot the 1TB HD was failing, I was about to buy a new one for $60. But then I got thinking that going to a SSD for the main drive would be a lot faster and more reliable. So, that's what I did. For about $80 I got a SSD drive. Very happy. It boots in about 30 secs, less than half the time. Software updates go fast. And later I got a great deal on a 2TB HD on Ebay and put that in. So now I have a backup drive, essentially unlimited storage.

Speaking of software, another big consideration when buying a PC is what extra software comes with it. A big one is Microsoft Office. IDK what's going on these days, but last time I bought a PC, HP offered MSFT Office Starter Edition for $100 with a new PC. If you want that, to get outside an offer like that, when I was looking it would cost 3X or more that price. Some were bundling in anti-virus, though you can usually find many options on Ebay for that for less than $10.

[AJL]

Better quality hardware. Faster than the cheap models. Because they can.

Yes. Mine runs most Android apps just like my phone. The only drawback I've found is that some Android apps will only run in portrait mode since they're designed for a phone screen and don't run in landscape mode so they give me black sides on the wide Chromebook screen.

[Peter]

[Snipped for brevity]

And the cheapest option (free) is to use Libre Office unless there is a highly specialized feature of Office that you need. Using Libre Office, I've been able to open, read, edit, and save MS Office generated files in formats that are then readable by others who are using MS Office.

[trader_4]

It's really another separate issue, but MSFT pisses me off with all the features and added complexity that they have piled on to Word and Excel. It's to the point that they are almost unusable for me. Like on Word, how the hell do you single space three short lines, one after the other? It wants you to just type and then it wraps the sentences around and it turns out single spaced. which is fine if you're writing full sentences. But if you want to type:

This is a list:

One thing Two things Three things,

It turns it into:

One thing

Two things

Three things

Because it treats them as new paragraphs. And this isn't some simple setting you can change either. It looks like it's part of the style imposed on the page and there is no other style I see that handles this. So, you have to go figure out how to make style templates to fix it. And of course this kind of thing happens when you want to do something simple and don't have two hours to screw around.

I'm sure some of the new things they've added over the years are really useful for the customers that are power users, using it for editing, etc. But for the rest of us, the features, the menus have become so complex it's almost unrecognizable. They should offer a feature switch to enable basic mode, make it more like it was 20 years ago for basic usage like I'd bet

90% of us do.

[micky]

Yes, I had a phone where, using the included text app, I could only type texts in portrait mode and for landscape, I can't remember but either the app would not rotate or the heading obscured what I was typing. Maybe I had a second app that gave the second problem.

Chromebook screen? But I was asking if one could run the apps from the play store on a windows laptop?

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Sometimes I make the mistake of saying 8KB, which at one time was a lot of RAM.

My current laptop has a lighted keyboard (Fn-SPACE to activate), and that has been a very useful feature.

I don't use Windows much, mostly to make sure my website works on M$ browsers. I have only one physical machine (desktop) with Windows. Otherwise it's just virtual machines.

[Dean Hoffman]

A bunch cut.

Have you looked at Open Office? I had it on my Mac but the latest update made it unusable.

[AJL]

Yes you can run Android apps from the Play Store on a Windows laptop. Google for "Windows Android emulators". There are a bunch to choose from. I use BlueStacks. It's made for Android gaming but works fine for my regular Android app news stuff (like SmartNews). It has the same problem with landscape mode on some apps,but not all (SmartNews runs full screen just fine). Also it takes considerably more computer power and guzzles RAM to run, so it doesn't work real well on the cheapie Windows laptops.

[Jim Joyce]

The last time I shopped for a laptop just about all except the low end were capable of handling two or three drives. Usually two 2.5" drives, either spinners or SSD, or some with multiple m.2 slots.

Even laptops that only have a single HDD bay can usually take a second drive by replacing the obsolete optical drive. Adapters are inexpensive.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Hit Shift and Enter and it single spaces.

Or, when starting a document look at the menu and the second choice is No Space. Start with that and you are good for that document.

Best. Select No Space. Then select Normal and from the dropdown you can modify it by right click and Modify to match selection. Then you are good forever.

[AJL]

I forgot to mention there's also another way where Windows connects with your phone and runs the Android apps there but you're using your laptop screen instead of the phone. You would need your phone to be nearby. I've not tried it yet but perhaps someone else here has.

[trader_4]

No, I probably should. But I rarely need to use Word or Excel at all. And the times I do, I just want to get whatever I need done, so I don't feel like figuring something else that's new out. It's a kind of a bad cycle.