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I didn't want to intrude again on EOF's discussion. I don't understand how my computer keeps running. It is at least 8 years old and is a very linty environment since I live just across the hall from the laundry room. Despite their best efforts to exhaust all the lint from the building, it still seems to get into my apartment.
My Computer is a 34" curved screen all in one with external power supply around 20 VDC. I have not had it open but I never hear any sort of fans. I do hear the HD chirping away at times. Periodically there are boot times around an hour, and when Microsoft do their updates, who know what molestation they are doing. Much of the time I just lay on my back and think of England. It has a core i5 intel chip inside. I have never found any lint on the ventilation grilles. Maybe it cools by radiation? Nothing has ever felt hot. So far so good...
I've been saving money as fast as I can, hoping that it runs at least until June 2024. I got it from Best Buy. I have no car and the only sane way I know of to get to one of their stores is to ride Light Rail to one of theirs about an hour away, and hopefully find the a new Computer that is updated with the core i7 Chip and more robust memory. I'll keep using Win 11 or whatever there is, and office home, though I really only use Word. I use Chrome to access the Internet and spend lots of time on YouTube. Mail is Gmail. It is not fancy but it meets my needs. I suppose there are those on the site that know I am an idiot. I have issues that limit what I can do.
Peace
Gwen
Comments
don't berate yourself Gwen
Your skill levels are on a par with the vast majority of people our age.
I'd leave the beast well alone while it is working and hope that it does last long enough for you to get a replacement. Perhaps next time, you won't get an All-in-one? A system the size of an Intel NUC would meet your demands perfectly. Add a half decent screen and you are all set (use your existing KB + Mouse or get new ones and keep the existing ones as spares).
Samantha
Perhaps Health Won't Last.
Well I'll continue if I can.
Gwen
All computers are magic.
Black magic, in my opinion. But magic nonetheless.
Emma
Technology is magic
Any technology sufficiently advanced is akin to magic!
I would recommend not
I would recommend not replacing it with another all-in-one. An all-in-one is basically a very large laptop without a built-in mouse and keyboard. unless you use the touch screen features on an all-in-one, they are generally not worth the money as when they break they cost more to repair and they are not upgradeable as easy.
Now here is what my company recommends for minimums for a new computer, now these are minimums, bigger and more is always better.
CPU: Intel i5 12th Gen or better, or AMD Ryzen 5 6000 series or better.
RAM: 16 GB of RAM or more
SSD: 512 GB or more.
Optional: A second normal spinning disk hard drive is always nice, and they normally are at 1TB or larger, they can be used as a backup and data storage drive.
That's it, those are the three main components that we generally give out to anyone who comes into our shop looking for a new computer. If they are not playing video games and are just using the PC for work, browsing the internet, etc.
As for where to buy a PC, there are better places than Best Buy unless you have to buy from a brick-and-mortar store. If you have a Costco Membership Costco is a great place to get PCs. If you don't mind buying online, Newegg.com has some good deals, just make sure you are buying from Newegg and not a third party. Amazon is also good, but make sure it is shipped and sold by Amazon. You can also buy directly from Dell or HP from their websites.
Brand wise my shop generally recommends HP or Dell we have seen that they tend to last a bit longer than some other brands.
A word of warning with SSD hard drives, first don't fill them up, at above 70% full, they tend to really slow down as they need swap space to work properly. Also unlike a standard hard drive when an SSD fails, it just fails without warning, so having good backups is key, or plan to swap out the SSD about 3 to 4 years, to keep them healthy. SSDs have a lifespan they are generally rated in the mid to high hundreds of terabytes written to the petabytes written but they have a finite life.
Now the advantage of an SSD hard drive is very quick response times, an SSD can make a slow computer feel new and keep feeling new and fast. There are no moving parts so in laptops the system becomes a bit more rugged.
I'm Waiting Until June...
I have to wait to see if the Doctor says I have MS.
This computer is still running OK, but not fast. My eyes are good now after surgery to fix them. I like half inch font size, so a big screen is good.
I could do a large monitor, with a stand alone tower?
Buying from Amazon might work as I am very familiar with them. I want the Computer loaded with Windows 11 or ??? Office Home with just Word is fine. I don't game. I just read, with online browsing, and my writing. I do my financials online. So far so good.
I used to do my own hardware repairs like power supplies and fans. The rest are out of my league. I'd try to buy it with more memory than I need. A few TB of memory is fine. I think ??? I have onboard Solid state, and mechanical drives now. Don't know.
20+ years ago, I could do some of my own software work, but now days, not so much. If I ever had a car again, I'd want a pre-computer one, with a Carburetor and points. I'm thinking pre 1970's. Right now I either use the train, or bus or taxi. I think I have MS, so no bicycle any more. Hoping I just drop dead if they start talking nursing home. I'm 77.
Thanks for the counsel.
Gwen
I would recommend a tower and
I would recommend a tower and a large monitor. Depending on how large of a monitor you want, you could also go with a TV. A TV is generally cheaper when going big. I actually use an 85" 4K TV as my computer monitor for my gaming computer (I do have to sit about 10 feet away). Since nowadays almost everything hooks up by HDMI swapping out a TV for a monitor is quite easy plus you then have built-in speakers, or could easily add a soundbar. The display becomes much more multi-function when you use a TV.
You do want Windows 11, on the new computer as Windows 10 is going bye-bye very soon.
Buy from you?
Does your company sell computers?
I'm in Portland, Oregon.
Gwen
We do, but the computers tend
We do, but the computers tend to be more expensive as we are a small shop, and we build our computers geared towards business. For most people, we tend to just give them a set of specifications, such as what CPU, RAM, and Hard drive size to look for. The computers we sell, we have to order and we tend to buy through Dell. We do not keep any hardware in stock mainly because we can't sell it fast enough before it ages out. While we are Dell partners, it really does not help us get a much better deal. Honestly, Dell does not do its partners any favors and you as a normal customer can get almost as good of a deal on a computer as we can.
Know your priorities
With a separate box PC as opposed to an all-in-one system, you can customize the system to your specific needs. And you can make trade-offs based on those needs.
Unless you are a hardcore movie aficionado with an extensive Blu-Ray collection, a 4K monitor is mostly overkill. For most basic computer usage a resolution of 1920x1200 is more than good enough. For my particular work-flow and browsing habits I find a setup with dual 22" monitors at 1920x1200 resolution each to give me the most bang for the buck.
Effectively I have an ultra-wide screen and the ability to have several document open side by side. And at the time I was shopping for my system the price difference was staggering. A single 42" ultra-wide 3840x1200 resolution monitor was priced at 300% of a single 22" 1920x1200 resolution monitor. So opting for a dual monitor setup I payed only about 2/3 of what the single curved monitor would have cost, for effectively the same screen real-estate. Granted you have that small dark frame in the middle of your “screen”, and it is difficult to align multiple monitors for a seamless single screen experience. But then again with my workflow that is not really an issue.
Another benefit of the dual monitor setup for me, is the fact that with KDE (my user interface preference) when I maximize a window it only maximizes within the physical screen. In other words it only covers half of my desktop, which is very convenient when working with only two windows side-by-side. On a single ultra-wide monitor I would have to manually fiddle with window sizes to tile them for best use.
Actually - TVs I have seen
Actually - TVs I have seen have worse image quality than monitors.
And introduce more eye strain (speaking from experience here - after I moved - I used big screen TV in place of a monitor for few months, before I got a new one. That was... 'interesting' experience. Not the one I want to repeat).
Also - some of the cheaper TVs can lie about their supported resolutions and your image gets all blurry, unless you setup them right.
But in general - 'if it has HDMI - in can be connected to a PC' those days.
Computer specs
Unless you are into hardcore gaming, heavy photo manipulation, audio mixing or video editing, a budget processor has more than enough processing power for basic text processing and web browsing. Going at least three or four generations back and quad core should give you a decent computer at a very affordable price.
Having 16GB of RAM is plenty for basic computing. I do have 32GB in my workstation, but I rarely see my memory usage rise above 16GB. It mostly hovers around the 10-12GB range.
Regarding storage devices, I would strongly encourage separating the operating system and user software on a separate device from the user data. Use a SSD for the system software, since that is mostly read-only. And use a traditional mechanical hard drive for user data.
I am using Debian Linux and my installed system consumes about 36GB. So a 128GB SSD is more than enough as a system drive. I even have the swap and temporary partitions on this devices for faster response time. Even with all that overhead, I still have 32GB un-allocated.
Depending on your use case: Are you collecting video files? Do you have an extensive audio collection? Do you take a lot of pictures? Unless you answer in the affirmative to any of the previous questions a 256GB hard-drive might be more than enough space for your needs. Even for an audio library or a moderate photographer 256-512GB can be enough. Though if you are into collecting video files, even a 2TB drive can fill up surprisingly fast.
Something worth considering is mirroring your data drive by installing two identical drives and linking them together such that your data is written to both at the same time. It is an easy way to protect your data against primary loss.
Now to the somewhat prickly part, and not wanting to start any flame wars, I am not sure how to say this delicately without causing offense. I have found that Linux (and most Unix derivative operating systems for that matter) make a very clear distinction and separation between “system software and settings” and “user settings and data”. They almost force you to separate them into different parts of the directory structure or even into separate partitions that can then be located on separate storage devices.
In my experience with Microsoft, starting all the way back with Win98, but especially since WinXP, they started hiding user settings and even user data deep in the operating system directory. And it became virtually impossible to cleanly separate the user data from the system software. How do you make a backup of your data if it is hidden all over your system directory structure?
Data Management
I'm a real slob that way. I'm retired, old, and ignored by those I used to care about. Lately, Word seems to want to store what I write in One Drive and while I know doing that is unwise. As if I see any professional writer as my peer. BCTS has what I have finished and published. Any work in progress is on my computer and sort of 'mirrored' on One Drive.
Right now I am increasingly ill and looking at the end of it all. If Trump gets elected his mob of haters will likely murder people like me, or I live on a fourth floor balcony...
Re: Data Management / Suicide
I can empathize with your apparent feeling of worthlessness and the desire to exit this world. I have struggled with suicidal ideas for most of my life. But then again, the sanctity of life has been an intrinsic and fundamental part of my personal world-view. And for many years I had the following quote pinned above my computer to help me through life's struggles:
I hope you can find some encouragement as well.
What you mention regarding the data management of Microsoft software, was one of the big reasons why I divorced and shunned Microsoft. The other factor was their pricing policy. In early 2001 the Visual Basic 5 Personal Edition was priced at USD650 in Paraguay, while the Visual Studio Professional Edition with Visual Basic 6 was priced at only USD120 in Canada. Talk about price gouging and the complaining about software piracy in third world countries. If I remember correctly, the minimum wage in Paraguay at that time was around USD150 per month or 75 cents per hour.
In the 1990s I worked in user support and software development on the Win95/Win98 platform in a corporate environment. And the data management and file protection was a big issue. And as the Y2K rolled around, M$ started to make it harder and more difficult to separate system and data. From my perspective this “integration” was fueled by the GUI war with Apple and the apparent seamless integrated user experience imposed by the monopoly of the MacOS. (Another price gouging dinosaur of that era, that made it impossible to make programs for that platform.) And by the time Office 2K rolled out, I pulled the plug and switched to OpenOffice. This open source software really impressed me with a very compact footprint and impressive multi-lingual support right out of the box, since we had to process documents in multiple languages. (MS Office required a DVD for installation, while OpenOffice fit on a CD with room to spare.)
One of the fundamental philosophies of the Unix/Linux world is that each program one task only! But that you can use the output of one program as the input for the next program. Thus you can build data processing chains of almost arbitrary lengths.