…… Computers: what to buy

Sozo said:

Seriously?

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Yes. I've been in this business a VERY long time.

Sozo said:

I have a 512 for my main drive & a 256 I only use for backup.

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And? What's your point? A backup drive normally doesn't contain the operating system.

Sozo said:

I have all sorts of books, video's, music, pictures, photo & video editing software, 2 office suites, everything I could possibly need and I'm not even using 120Gb.

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Good for you. You're ONE person. There are 200 million other computer users in this country. You're saying in effect, "Because I have a white car, white cars are good enough for everyone." Bullshit.

Sozo said:

I could stand to do a cleanup and free up some space, but I'll never use a full 256Gb drive.

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That's YOU. And yes, one day you will.

Win10 uses a significant amount of hard drive space. One must take that into account. One needs to "save" about 50 GB for it (allowing for update files to be saved.)

Linux

.......................cuz Ransomware ............................

Dennis Olson said:

Yes. I've been in this business a VERY long time.


And? What's your point? A backup drive normally doesn't contain the operating system.


Good for you. You're ONE person. There are 200 million other computer users in this country. You're saying in effect, "Because I have a white car, white cars are good enough for everyone." Bullshit.


That's YOU. And yes, one day you will.

Win10 uses a significant amount of hard drive space. One must take that into account. One needs to "save" about 50 GB for it (allowing for update files to be saved.)

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That's a very good point. Thank you for reminding me of that.

bw said:

I encourage you to take a long look at your backup discipline. I back up EVERYTHING to thumb drives, and I have four sets of them that I use in rotation, one every two weeks. So in addition to the PC, I have four complete copies going back two months, and backups are stored in the fireproof safe.

Been a programmer since the 70's, and regular backups are a religious observance. I suggest you get your backups organized so that if any computer goes toes-up you can be entirely complacent about your data security.

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So, another question....are you saying this on top of an external hard drive, or in place of?

If in place of, would the quality of pictures suffer at all? I know tech is vastly better each year. If I use flash drives for backup, I want to make sure those pictures stay good.

Hunybee, those are DIGITAL files, meaning no matter how many times you copy them, they stay the same. It's not a cassette tape that gets worse with every copy.

Tex88 said:

Hunybee, those are DIGITAL files, meaning no matter how many times you copy them, they stay the same. It's not a cassette tape that gets worse with every copy.

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Ok, awesome!

Dennis Olson said:

A 256 GB HD (regardless of what technology it employs) is ENTIRELY inadequate for today's computers. ABSOLUTE MINIMUM would be 512 GB. Nothing less should be seriously considered.

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The unstated 'why' of your comment may be enlightening to those less technically inclined...

hunybee said:

So, another question....are you saying this on top of an external hard drive, or in place of?

If in place of, would the quality of pictures suffer at all? I know tech is vastly better each year. If I use flash drives for backup, I want to make sure those pictures stay good.

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Well, I told you only part of the picture. First, as Tex said, there's no quality loss at any time. Once you're digital, you're good unless your files get corrupted.

Second, I'm maxing out my 2TB hard drive, so all my TB2k films and a bunch of other stuff goes on an external 2TB hard drive. I back that up to a second 2TB drive once a month, and that goes in the safe too. That drive is for low-urgency stuff that doesn't change a lot, so I don't need it every two weeks. The largest part is my 450+ film collection.

Third, when I work on projects I do interim backups by renaming the file. I'm an old programmer, I do lots of scripting, and I do lots of CGI and other graphics work. If I create a project called "Proj", every time I do significant work on it I copy it to something called "Proj_001", 002, 003 etc., in the same folder. By "significant work" I mean every half hour or less. So I'll have perhaps a hundred of the most recent versions of each thing I'm working on, and can recover as of this morning, or yesterday, etc. All of those versions are included in my thumb drive backups.

Like I said, backups are a religious thing. There's nothing like losing a month's worth of work, while you're on deadline and half the company is watching, to teach you the importance of backups.

Tristan said:

The unstated 'why' of your comment may be enlightening to those less technically inclined...

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Short version: Because I’m dad. You’ll thank me later

Longer version: Because software gets ever-larger as new versions are released. Files get larger. Saved movies (for those that save them) take a great deal of space)

Final version: It’s beyond the scope of my duties on TB to make others computer experts.

I got that dell from Costco, it was $300 off at the time. So far its been good, but I'm just using it for standard home stuff.

If I were doing pics or work I'd have a full tower and raid 10 configuration on 4 hdd's

OS would be on an m.2

Games on SSD

bw said:

Well, I told you only part of the picture. First, as Tex said, there's no quality loss at any time. Once you're digital, you're good unless your files get corrupted.

Second, I'm maxing out my 2TB hard drive, so all my TB2k films and a bunch of other stuff goes on an external 2TB hard drive. I back that up to a second 2TB drive once a month, and that goes in the safe too. That drive is for low-urgency stuff that doesn't change a lot, so I don't need it every two weeks. The largest part is my 450+ film collection.

Third, when I work on projects I do interim backups by renaming the file. I'm an old programmer, I do lots of scripting, and I do lots of CGI and other graphics work. If I create a project called "Proj", every time I do significant work on it I copy it to something called "Proj_001", 002, 003 etc., in the same folder. By "significant work" I mean every half hour or less. So I'll have perhaps a hundred of the most recent versions of each thing I'm working on, and can recover as of this morning, or yesterday, etc. All of those versions are included in my thumb drive backups.

Like I said, backups are a religious thing. There's nothing like losing a month's worth of work, while you're on deadline and half the company is watching, to teach you the importance of backups.

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Got it! Thank you!

Really guys, thank you all so much. I am learning a lot.

Just piping up to say that I learned a long time ago that very few people actually back up regularly (or at all)...including me.
So I went to Carbonite online backup. Have had to use it to set up new computers and recover everything when they died.

It's nice. And it backs up every night without me even thinking about it.

I would go with a Laptop easy to grab if you are worried about GTFO sorts of things. I would also get a USB external hard drive that is powered off the USB just for simplistic sake. Since I am running a Mac it already has backup system built in so I don't know what is best for Win10

I have the 2020 model of this same Dell AIO (All-in-One) desktop. There are pros and cons to AIO computers but for MY purposes and space usage (lack of a lot of wires showing) this has been superb. All it requires is a single power cord. I have wireless keyboard and mouse and WiFi so no other wires required other than the single power cord. It has the 512GB SSD and a 1 TB standard hard drive. 16GB of memory and 11th gen i7 processor.

Ok, got it, 'Dad'.

Actually, one good technical reason to get as large a SSD as possible is due to the SSD's built in wear-leveling algorithims, having a SSD twice as big as a person (or organization's) largest projected storage generally speaking increases is lifespan.

Another is the general rule that larger SSDs are more recent technology, and therefore potentially have better built in algos for wear-leveling, and better (?) technology for the onboard controller. This isn't a hard and fast rule, however, and in your case you are getting what you get from Dell.

However, there is no one, pat answer for any individual - it depends on their use profile.

It is correct that M$ continues to cram more and more sh**, er, 'stuff' on to your storage medium, whether you want it or not, so that's a given.

Then indeed more is better.

Do you want to download lot's of movies? Do you keep them after watching? If not, then there's not as large an impact on space. Got the technical skill (copy -n- paste) and an external hard drive? Then you don't need as much local storage...

Movies are a relatively static storage issue, but if you have a lot of files which are updated often, they begin to impact storage due to the wear-leveling algorithm in addition to their actual size. Probably safe to assume your needs may be more oriented to storing movies and pics vs. Oracle Databases, though...

I'm getting by fine with a 240gb SSD, plenty-o storage for my needs, but I've known folks that had network attached arrays of many terabytes, and weren't satisfied. It helps that I don't suffer the M$ 100gb 'hit', though.

One possible downside to larger and larger storage is the potential for a catastrophic failure of the device to cost you your records, your memories (pics and movies), etc., if it's a single point of failure.

As others have indicated on this thread and in many others, it's an excellent idea to have a backup plan and stick to it.

Perhaps a good non-technical reason to get as large a SSD as is affordable is the potential for economic and international commerce issues (price increases/lack of availability) in the future. Better to have and not need, than to need and not have... I've got a couple spares for this very reason. Only you can weigh the cost vs. benefits of this issue.

Regarding RAM, the general rule is to absolutely get what you can afford, and hopefully get a machine that is able to double that amount in the future as well. There is one very good reason for this: M$.

Good luck getting your gear, hunybee.

Alright, I have another question.

What about the processors? What are the good, better, best?

i5’s are the lower end, i7’s are midrange, and now i9’s are out, representing the cutting edge.

Any CPU over about 2.50 GHz will be adequate for what you need. I warn you though - getting into the different CPUs is a descent into geekland, and I promise you won’t understand it.

Ryzen isn't as dependent on ram

If you insist, here’s a link to the various intel CPU families. Knock yourself out:


But it’s a virtual certainty that no one here can satisfy your quest, because there are simply too many options.

hunybee said:

Alright, I have another question.

What about the processors? What are the good, better, best?

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Dennis Olson said:

i5’s are the lower end, i7’s ie midrange, and now i9’s are out, representing the cutting edge.

Any CPU over about 2.50 GHz will be adequate for what you need. I warn you though - getting into the different CPUs is a descent into geekland, and I promise you won’t understand it.

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I run AMD CPUs on most of my systems, mostly due to personal preference (I like the underdog). The AMD Ryzen series is good, and of course Intel is good.

I recommend going with a mid-range (performance) CPU; i5 or i7 are both good choices. I recently purchased a desktop (HP) from Costco ($525) with a Ryzen CPU; I'm very happy with it.

You might want to make sure the system comes with a PCI-e expansion card interface, just in case you'd want to plug in a (much faster) graphics card for online gaming, etc.

Hacker said:

You might want to make sure the system comes with a PCI-e expansion card interface, just in case you'd want to plug in a (much faster) graphics card for online gaming, etc.

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Note that this is not an option for laptops.

Honestly, if you’re looking to become even moderately “well-versed” in current computer technology, that quest could take months/years.

My big question on this is: why ONLY Dell?

That constraint makes no sense to me. (sigh)

Hacker said:

My big question on this is: why ONLY Dell?

That constraint makes no sense to me. (sigh)

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Ours is not to reason why; ...

It's her req.

Life's full of choices.

hunybee said:

Alright, I have another question.

What about the processors? What are the good, better, best?

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If you're buying new from Dell, then let price and your budget be your guide. There is almost always a correlation between price and CPU horsepower.

In laptops the tradeoff is often between how much power is *necessary* and how much Battery life is important, within the rubric of budget; this is because, generally speaking, faster/higher end processors use more 'juice'. It does get more complex if you're comparing processors from different *generations* within a product line, or between different manufacturers lines...

In desktops, it's more a matter of how fast do you want to go and how much do you want to spend? Watching movies? mid-line proc; video editing? as fast as you can afford. And, do you need a fast Graphics processor add-on card for some purpose?

As with RAM, M$ in particular and software in general is getting larger and more complex; which is why you can't run Win10 and Photoshop on a 20 year old laptop...

So the core question is, how long do you want your system to last, and are you planning on staying with Windows for the foreseeable future? If you want it to last for many years, get the best, most upgrade-able system you can afford, if planning on replacing it in 3 years and your overall needs are average then it's possible that better technology will be available at lower cost by then, assuming the price/performance curve continues in it's historic fashion.

Dennis Olson said:

Note that this is not an option for laptops.

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About that...

Honestly, if you’re looking to become even moderately “well-versed” in current computer technology, that quest could take months/years.

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If everybody was moderately well versed in computer technology, I'd be shoveling pig shit for a living

I looked up the error and it sounds like your hdd bit the dust. Worth looking into just replacing the drive if the pc isn't too old. With the right disk software you may be able to recover the drive, but you need to know what you are doing.

I don’t buy “dangly things” for my notebooks. Gotta all be internal. I do have a USB DVD drive that gets shared amongst various computers as needed, but I haven’t used it in years. everything is downloaded these days. I haven’t had to install from spinning media in at least a decade.

Just took a look at comprenewonline on ebay and they have some great systems for cheap. they have I5 systems for about$320 and I7 laptops for $550. This company is local to me and are great to work with. They recycle stuff from the local fortune 500's.

Just as a personal reference, Lenovo brand laptops have done us pretty good.

The old Intel I3 core is a decent cpu, but the higher the better, if you want some horsepower.

But I prefer reliability over power.

Alaskan_Leatherhead said:

Another vote for Lenovo laptops. There are owned by the same company that makes thinkpad laptops which are known for there durability.

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our old Lenovo laptop got a nice speed boost from an SSD drive.

Linux and windows boots in about 5 seconds.

I hope this discussion helps you, Huny! It's not like you can learn this stuff once and quickly review it by scanning a short article with bullet points. The technology is constantly changing.

Also, you may or may not be able to keep the same PC tower going for 10 years. I had one that old, but it wouldn't run today's programs without a lot of modifications. It turned out to be cheaper for me to buy a new PC tower. Disclaimer: I'm mandated to run MS Office products: that's what my employers require. If I were retired, I'd take the time to learn one of the Linux operating systems and Open Office, which doesn't require a license or costly updates.

You might be tempted to go the Linux route, too, but if you have children using the PC for homework, don't, without checking with what the school is using. Upload homework done in Open Office to Canvas (distance learning program used by many schools) and the teacher won't be able to open the file. So keep that in mind, too. (Fortunately, Google Pages works and it's still free.)

So, these are some other issues to keep in mind. If I had youngsters doing online work (and the school didn't provide the computers), I would talk with the school about organizing a bulk buy and give the kids their own machines with several mandates:

1) Keep the software updates current
2) Use the machines for schoolwork and approved activities only (put a parental ap on there for monitoring them and block Facebook and other sites if you want)
3) Make sure they understand that using the computer is a responsibility. They can endanger themselves and the family if they don't observe your rules and good cybersecurity practices.
4) Make sure there are blocks of time away from screens. Do things as a family like gardening or ______.

This is where being friends with some of the other parents can help.

And if you're still homeschooling, all this is even easier.

Knighttemplar said:

Just took a look at comprenewonline on ebay and they have some great systems for cheap. they have I5 systems for about$320 and I7 laptops for $550. This company is local to me and are great to work with. They recycle stuff from the local fortune 500's.

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This is important to note:

There are companies/vendors selling refurbished equipment. The CPUs in those systems are usually earlier generations. For example, the i5 and i7 are earlier (and slower) versions of the latest tech. This is a big part of why they'll sell 'em cheaper than new systems.

Mind you, these refurbished systems are not necessarily bad; but be aware that you may not be getting everything you (think you) bargained for.

Hacker said:

This is important to note:

There are companies/vendors selling refurbished equipment. The CPUs in those systems are usually earlier generations. For example, the i5 and i7 are earlier (and slower) versions of the latest tech. This is a big part of why they'll sell 'em cheaper than new systems.

Mind you, these refurbished systems are not necessarily bad; but be aware that you may not be getting everything you (think you) bargained for.

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This is an important point that Hacker is making about Processors.

Let me put it another way: An i5 is not necessarily equal to another i5; same for i7's, etc.

The reason is there have been multiple generations, and even a split between "Desktop" and "Laptop" models carrying the same basic name.

I have (iirc) a system with a 'Mobile' i7 which is a dual-core instead of a quad-core, for example.

Generally speaking, the later the Gen, the more capable the Proc, and the more you'll pay for it.

I might buy refurbished if I were retired and mostly just surfing and doing some email. I don't buy them anymore, unless I know who did the refurbishing and can get my money back if it's a wonky machine, and I've run into my share of those!

I don't have time to mess around with half-functioning equipment. Or -- worse -- it works just fine for awhile and then dies without warning. This is why I have a second PC tower with all of the software I need pre-loaded, and I plug it in and boot it periodically so the updates are current. The idea is that if the first machine dies, I can hot swap it and be working again within minutes.

Yes, that's saved my behind twice, now. No more refurbished stuff for me these days.

What about the amd ryzens?

Oh yes also, we have a monitor from dell they is about 4 years old. Would we be able to use this with a new tower?

Tristan said:

This is an important point that Hacker is making about Processors.

Let me put it another way: An i5 is not necessarily equal to another i5; same for i7's, etc.

The reason is there have been multiple generations, and even a split between "Desktop" and "Laptop" models carrying the same basic name.

I have (iirc) a system with a 'Mobile' i7 which is a dual-core instead of a quad-core, for example.

Generally speaking, the later the Gen, the more capable the Proc, and the more you'll pay for it.

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All this is why I put the link to the Intel CPU page fir review.

Look, now you’re getting into the weeds, where non-computer experts will be lost. I tried to keep my advice relatively generic. You however, seem to be doing the opposite. Why?

hunybee said:

What about the amd ryzens?

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Let me ask you something hunybee. What, exactly, is your goal here with this thread? To get some general recommendations to aid you in shopping, or to become well trained in computer architecture?

hunybee said:

Oh yes also, we have a monitor from dell they is about 4 years old. Would we be able to use this with a new tower?

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Yes