Finding a desktop PC with minimum bloatware

Some resale of some "used" licences is now lawful. But that doesn't mean the sales by an alleged German company which doesn't bother to comply with distance selling legislation are lawful. Compare eg this company which at least gives the impression of knowing the law - on software licensing and on online trading.

Let's just say that those £19.99 licences can be had for nothing online, equally as legit (well, NOT).

That's OK then, M$ can cancel all the uk licenses after brexit. 8-)

John made an argument that I should know the licence were not lawful because the licence was a volume licence and that it is not legal to resell volume licences.

I showed this argument is not correct.

Now you pipe in with a strawman and an unsupported immaterial allegation.

Yes, I can't be certain the licences are legal. A fact that is true for most of the goods I buy. The point is that no one has given me a reasonable argument to cause me to believe they are not legal. I was even diligent enough to check here when it was suggested to me that they were illegal.

I'm not clear what you mean with regards to distance selling or why you think it is relevant. It is an unfortunate fact that many companies do not appear to understand the Consumer Contracts Regulations or at least they do not acknowledge them in their T&C.

of course they work - they are real MS volume license keys. Don't confuse working with properly licensed.

Much the same as if you buy a "grey" or "parallel" import license - its a real thing made by MS, but intended for sale into a different market.

That's because many are designed to be pre-activated by the OEM - so they disable the normal activation route.

I don't really care one way or the other.

Do as you wish. However readers should at least be aware that as far as MS are concerned they are not being used in accordance with the terms of the license agreement that goes with them. They may or may not choose to pull the plug on them at some point in the future, or perhaps they consider in a "diminishing PC world" its a way of making sure enough people have Win 10 so they can them be sold something to use with it later - preferably "as a service", so they generate ongoing revenue.

That is a slightly different scenario where they are reselling existing licences that have been previously bought and paid for, and the owner the sought to liquidate some of them (or the owner was itself liquidated!) The comment from MS is also telling!

The link you cite makes no pretence at arguing they are reselling previously purchased volume license keys.

It has been a long while BUT AFAICR these OEM keys were sold to PC builders to use on preinstalled hardware. They were sold cheap because they were not boxed sets wwith DVD or CD or diks or or anything: The PC builder installed the code via whatever route was appropriate - often a disk clone off the network, and then enabled the installation with an MS key.

My local builder would not sell me these keys. His license agreement forbade him from anything other than selling them on the hardware he put together.

This was in Win98/2000 sort of era.

Then where are they, few, if anyone has seen a Mac virus in recent years.

Because they aren't worth as much, and people think secondhand Macs are worth more than secondhand PCs, the market shows that.

All Macs have a microphone if not two microphones for stereo . Last week I was using skype to a friend in AUS, trouble is he was using a PC laptop and I could hardly hear him because his internal mic was to close to the fan and that's what I could hear. We had to go back to typing in the end. Pictuer quality was fine so it wasnlt a netweork problem he could hear me clearly but of course I was on a iMac.

Its still much the same now. OEM keys are designed to be pre loaded by the system builder, and are then tied to the hardware by product activation. They are supposed to live and die with the machine, you have no transfer rights to re-install them on another machine.

Retail keys or Product Key Card versions are transferable.

OEM versions can be bought with or without physical media, or you can buy them through a volume license deal.

The OEM keys are cheaper - but still not as cheap as the bargain deals on ebay etc.

(Currently Win 10 Pro, is about £192 retail, and OEM about £129)

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, whisky-dave snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

I have had a machine where the mic was mounted close to the fan and the HD and, yes, it was hopeless. Yesterday I did a Facebook video linkup, where I used this laptop in that way for the first time. I specifically asked about audio and video quality from my end, and was told all was fine.

You are just restating the obvious. Macs combine hardware and software in a fairly strict manner. Windows machines vary wildly and some can be very good and some very bad. But I am not convinced that any sort of Mac is as good for me as a reasonably carefully chosen Windows laptop or a decent Windows desktop. It's all about horses for courses. If you spend a lot of time travelling, something light like an Air or a Surface might be suitable, If you use masses of permanent interfaces eg for audio recording, a decent Windows desktop is cheaper and more flexible than a Mac. I'm somewhere in the middle with my small Lenovo laptop/tablets, that will hook up to the cars' computer, record music, do accounts, draw with the pen, edit video and audio etc. etc., all at about half the price of a similar Mac.

Grandson (1yo) has just been sick all over son's MacBook Air, I'm told. I wonder what that will take or cost to rescue?

No they don't. None of the Minis here has a mic. They all have a line-in socket, however.

I'm betting it's down to certain computers being better than others, or lets say better engineering principles.

He;s has been fine in the past but perhaps because it was summer in Australia and he was sitting in his sun drenched kitchen extention. Years ago a simalar thing happened to another friend in Australia in summer, she was on skype and it kept breaking up until eventually disconnecting. Then I got a phone call from her.

She said her PC stopped working, I asked what she meant, and she said the fan was really spinning fast I could here it, so I wrapped a towel around the case to keep it quite. She asked if a Mac would work better I said No, best for her not to get any sort of computer, but stick to wrting letters and sending photographs.

You are just restating the obvious ;-) But the vast number of PCs sold aren't top end not even middle end they are bottom end.

Probabbly not but perhaps you'll never know.

and both are a simialr price I doubt a PC world specail from X maker at £295 including carry case will be as good as a surface or an air. But because they have the same size screen, same speed processor memeory a SSD some do think they are getting an incredably bargin and everyone else is an idiot for paying more.

But I also prefer Mac OS to MS OS and I've used both for years. I prefer word and excel to pages and numbers, so I'm not against MS.

So why do most musicains prefer macs, and I know quite a few.

Even Brian Eno who wrote the MS windows startup chime on a Mac.

But is it worth it, I've a PC laptop here where the battery charger port is faulty, academic can't get his work off until it's fixed.

Why has he got a macbook air when he could have a PC laptop have you thought to ask or arks anyone why they buy a Mac.

Perhaps yuo should ask car drivers why they choose their car as aren't the all the same pretty much anyway.

Do you know or could you tell aTK max suite from an armarni or a burberry I doubt I could unless I got to see the price tag.

Some can tell the differnce between cheap chocalate and expensive others can't.

The biggest fact is that pelole are prepared to pay more for a Mac computer than a PC as can be seen on ebay and in any secondhand computershop and there are reasons for that even if you don't understand them.

I don't need a virus checker either.

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, whisky-dave snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

We must know different musicians.

The musicians I know use recording features, rather than synthesis. One could dispute whether that old startup sound actually amounted to music.

I've asked him. It's because he travels a lot in the UK and internationally and it is light and does what he wants. Also he can afford it. I couldn't, but I want my laptop to do more than his can do, rather than being thin and pretty. His MacBook Air seems to have survived the vomit, so that's one up to that, but he was worried about the cost of a replacement keyboard.

I gave him a lift to the station just now in the 15yo Rangie, which I got for towing the 3 ton boat. He thinks he wants the equivalent 4x4 Porsche for about the same price. He started, after I said it might be today that my gearbox dies, telling me about how Porsche engines just go bang (he knows several Porsche owners) when the coating on the pistons dies. He has no material need for a big 4x4.

I thought most knew the name brian Eno, as most know then name Mozart

He was asked to compose the startup sound because the original 3.1 sound was crap which no one really liked.

SO yes it was a musical sound before he had to restrict it to what PCs could produce. The startup sound did change and improve with later versions of the OS, but Brian Eno used a Mac on the original

Educate yourself for once

So he clould find a PC laptop that did exactly the same ? Why was that ?

That's yuor problem and that is the key here given the choice Macs do get chosen in general.

So what can you're laptop do that he's air can't.

When people have things that are woirth mor ethen they tend to worry more do you not understand that ? Perhaps you don't give a s*it about your laptop because for the price of a few cups of coffee and a cake you can get a brand new PC laptop.

My friend was very worried about his Mac book pro in thialand when it fell off the rickshaw and got runn over by the motorized richshaw directly behind, it buckled the aluminium case leavign a sharp edge but it still worked, I doubt some plastic s*it would have survived.

they are cheap are they there are plenty of cars that can do 70 and above that are far better value.

Few want to do that.

I didn't think porsche made tow trucks.

Few do, but whay are those chelsea tractors so popular when so few need them ?

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, whisky-dave snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

I haven't snipped and tucked, because I think it's time to bring this small and OT chat to a close, but to answer your points:

PC's pre W95 could be set up to produce full range and quality sound. The limitation then was the cost of hard drives rather than the OS.

The musicians I know are live musicians from all sort of genres.

I have heard of Brian Eno and Mozart. I prefer Beethoven and Chuck Berry.

I still think it's arguable whether the Windows 95 sound is music. The story you pointed to said little about how he produced the sound - it sounds synthesised, which is probably the on stage technology you refer to with Macs. I was referring to audio mixing and recording. I suspect most of that is now dedicated units with embedded Linux.

Not sure what his MacBook Air will do. My Lenovo laptop has 500gb ssd +

Son has more money than me, so he has iPhone, iPad and Air. I am happy with my Aldi Android and my Lenovo lappie. He does use small Windows office based machines for his work. I do have a Windows 8 tablet, but the less said about that the better, and hardly ever use it.

The big Porsche 4x4's will tow 3 tons, but I've never seen one doing that. I don't know why people buy big 4x4's if they have no practical reason. I did have a reason, but the boat is now with other son, so considering my options. The space inside, the heated seats and wheel are nice, though. Shame the inbuilt TV is pre digital, so just receives hash.

The first Macintosh didn't need a HD for the sounds. The startup sounds. Go find them if you don't believe me or watch the unvieling of the first macintosh.

But niether of them used a PC or a Mac did they.

It started as music but too complex and long to be a startup sound. It's quite well documented.

I've even watch Brian Eno talk about it in an interview some 12 years ago .

He was asked to create music not a series of bleeps.

?We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,? this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ?and it must be 3.25 seconds long.?

Of course it's from a compter.

Depends who you are, and how much money you have to throw at such things. MS didn't ask the London or new york Symphony orchestras . Brian Eno was asked and he used a Mac. There were and are plenty of other musicians out there but for whatever reason they asked Eno.

you can do all that on an ipad pro too.

That was your choice as is everyones perhaps MS couldn't afford the London or new york Symphony orchestras or employ John williams to write the startup sound. So being on atight budget asked Eno with his Mac. Surely there must have been musicans using PCs at the time and being 'better value'; there in theory should be many more of them.

Don't we all, I think that is because I sinned in a previous life or perhaps I will sin in my next life, I'm a technicain not a temporal mechanic.

I've a PC laptop, I tried using it a few times. It;s now used to prop up my bottom shelf in a wardrobe.

Receives hash, so a drug dealers car ;-)

So your 4x4 is a 16 according to T i m. ;-)