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Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?



 
 
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  #61  
Old December 20th 16, 08:57 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Johnny B Good
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Posts: 273
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 09:58:22 -0800, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.


What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Quite obviously (I'm surprised you had to ask), you'll either have to
accept a compromise (2TB HDD specced laptop) or else shell out the extra
cash (either a laptop with a 500GB SSD plus an additional external 2.5
inch pocketable HDD or else a 1TB SSD specced laptop if you want to avoid
the additional baggage of an external drive).

Quite frankly, anyone who feels they could make effective use of a 1TB
drive in a laptop, has an exceptional outlying usage case to satisfy and
would normally know the answer to that question from previous experience
(basically, the need to spend rather more than the average punter on
their laptop upgrades).

--
Johnny B Good
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  #62  
Old December 20th 16, 09:27 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:25:41 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-12-19 12:58, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.
What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

External drive. Which one should have in any case IMO.



As far as I'm concerned, the value of a laptop as opposed to a desktop
is only in the laptop's portability. It's good to take with you when
you are traveling.

But also carrying an external drive makes no sense. It's heavy and
bulky.


You can get SSD drives with a microUSB on the edge of them.
Using a short cable, you can connect such drives for
external backup if needed. As long as you remove the cable
when packing the item up, the SSD is shock resistant.

Such a drive is not cheap, but it does answer the question of
whether you can pack such a solution or not. The nearest
competition on the rotating drive front, would be one of
the 15mm 2.5" hard drives (at least 2TB available at the moment).
The SSD isn't likely to be available at quite that size. But
you only want room for a small backup - the OS portion
doesn't have to be that big. Many of my OS portions here
are 20-30GB, and so even a small drive would work.

You can get Sandisk Extreme USB3 sticks with pretty decent
write speeds. Those would make a good backup solution.

Many older laptops would lack USB3, or even an ExpressCard
slot for that matter. The network is the only half-decent
solution for those. Having a USB3 on your laptop makes a world
of difference.

I have a 128GB USB3, but it was an early one, and relatively
slow. Slow enough to discourage usage for backups. And backups
are practically the only thing I keep on that one. Collections
of smaller random files, tend to go on the other USB sticks.
The 128GB one is reserved for situations where my network
is partitioned on purpose. And the 128GB stick is "sneakernet".

Paul
  #63  
Old December 20th 16, 09:35 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

Johnny B Good wrote:
On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 09:58:22 -0800, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.

What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Quite obviously (I'm surprised you had to ask), you'll either have to
accept a compromise (2TB HDD specced laptop) or else shell out the extra
cash (either a laptop with a 500GB SSD plus an additional external 2.5
inch pocketable HDD or else a 1TB SSD specced laptop if you want to avoid
the additional baggage of an external drive).

Quite frankly, anyone who feels they could make effective use of a 1TB
drive in a laptop, has an exceptional outlying usage case to satisfy and
would normally know the answer to that question from previous experience
(basically, the need to spend rather more than the average punter on
their laptop upgrades).


There are some laptops, ones with a hard drive bay and
a DVD bay, where the DVD drive can be removed and an
adapter holds a second hard drive. This is not likely
to happen on some of the smaller thinner models. You'd
need a conventional laptop to do that.

It's not the size I'm arguing for there, just the
separation.

There are some 15mm high mechanical drives, but at the
moment they're reserved for external USB enclosure usage.
As 15mm is way too tall for a 9.5mm hard drive bay.
If you wanted to buy those as a raw drive mechanism,
they're hard to find at retail (as the companies that
made those, wanted those to only go into USB enclosures).

At the other extreme, I understand one of the hard drive
makers has managed to make a 7mm high hard drive for laptops.
With the usual one-platter limit on capacity. The 15mm drives
have multiple platters.

Paul
  #64  
Old December 20th 16, 10:16 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Johnny B Good
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Posts: 273
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 10:03:51 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

A laptop relying on a HDD is basically "an accident waiting to happen".
[]
Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.


On my primary laptop, I replaced the single HDD with a cloned SSD. Once
I was satisfied that the SSD was working properly, I replaced the
optical drive with the HDD. It was a win-win, since the additional
storage was needed for VM images, and it had been years since I had used
the optical drive. I popped a music CD in when the laptop was new, just
to make sure it worked, and that was the last time. Optical drives just
aren't very useful anymore.

As for the improved performance due to the SSD, the wow factor only
lasted a few seconds, just as it always has for me before, such as when
making a major CPU or RAM upgrade. It's rather amazing how quickly I
(we?) simply become adjusted to the performance upgrade and start taking
it for granted.


I think you speak for us all in regard of "The Upgrade Experience". :-)

Back in the previous millennium, I tended to notice the improvement of a
MoBo/CPU/RAM upgrade more from when I used the older kit that had been
used as 'hand me downs' to my children a week or so after getting used
the new hardware.

I put this effect down to the new kit "merely meeting expectations"
which took some of the edge off the upgrade effect. Going back to a setup
which my rose tinted vision had 'bigged up' of my fond memories of its
performance was all it took to shatter the illusion (and allow me to
better appreciate my lavish upgrade expenditure).

Also, it was the main reason why I slowed the upgrade cycle down to
twice every decade, approximating to a quadrupling of overall system
performance per major upgrade cycle - why spend all that money if you
weren't going to be suitably impressed by the end result? :-)

The longer you can go between major upgrades, the bigger the bang for
your buck (and the less likely you'll land up feeling cheated[1] by a
premature upgrade that just missed out on the "latest must have
technology update").

[1] A feeling that'll always be present to a greater or lesser degree
depending on how well you managed to time your last upgrade to avoid that
feeling of operating in a SATA3 world with SATA1 kit. :-(

--
Johnny B Good
  #65  
Old December 20th 16, 11:39 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Johnny B Good
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Posts: 273
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 11:30:13 -0500, Paul wrote:

Johnny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 17:31:15 +0000, Hazuki Nakamura wrote:

Gene Wirchenko said:

Why do you need an internal hard drive? What about an SSD?
SSD is fine as long as it's internal.
Who wants to carry around a USB drive everywhere they go?


Replacing the HDD in a laptop (notebook) computer with an SSD is a
'No-
Brainer' choice. Your mass storage device goes from being the "first
casualty" of a 'handling mishap' to most likely being the *only*
surviving component of one that's suffered the misfortune of being
involved in a high speed car crash into a concrete bridge support
whilst being carried in the boot (trunk) of said passenger vehicle.


One comment here. If your laptop has a 9.5mm bay, and the SSD is 7mm
thick, don't forget to install the 2.5mm mounting ring correctly.

That prevents the SATA connector from receiving stress if the laptop is
dropped. My damn boxed SSD, the ring was missing...

If you drop a laptop, there is still a high risk of the panel getting
cracked. The advantage of the SSD is no data loss on a drop. An SSD
could take up to a 1000G shock, but considering the layers of packaging,
it will not normally ever get to that G-level, and the uneven support
underneath the PCB ensures it's G-level resistance is always
compromised. If you took a device with a 1000G rating and actually
applied 1000G to it, it would crack or be ruined. The 1000G only applies
if the PCB is rigidly supported, so that no incidental stress is caused.


Just to put that 1000G figure into perspective, it's worth noting that
the peak acceleration of a vinyl record pickup stylus tip could
experience this level and more when playing back the more highly
modulated disk pressings.

Otoh, the shock waves caused by trimming transistor lead out wires with
a pair of side cutters could easily exceed 1000g due to the hardened
steel lead wires used by some transistor manufacturers. The advice to
guard against this possible source of damage to the transistor itself was
to clamp the lead out wires with a pair of needle nose pliers between the
body of the transistor and the trimming point.


That's why I comment about the mounting ring missing on mine. The tray
in my laptop is secured by a couple screws on one end, but the
end-opposite-the-connector is flapping in the breeze. And can move 2.5mm
in the event of a drop incident. Using the ring when installing is good
(it helps protect the connector), but is not perfect... It's not an
air-bag.


True enough. However, the idea of tightly clamping the drive to the
mounting is to prevent it flapping against something that could transform
an otherwise modest 10ms 300G transient applied to the laptop as the
result of a drop event into say a more extreme 1ms 2000G transient
applied to the SSD.

--
Johnny B Good
  #66  
Old December 21st 16, 12:31 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Gene Wirchenko[_2_]
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Posts: 496
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 19:57:42 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 09:58:22 -0800, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.


What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Quite obviously (I'm surprised you had to ask), you'll either have to
accept a compromise (2TB HDD specced laptop) or else shell out the extra
cash (either a laptop with a 500GB SSD plus an additional external 2.5
inch pocketable HDD or else a 1TB SSD specced laptop if you want to avoid
the additional baggage of an external drive).


IOW, the 500GB SSD option does not win hands down every time.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
  #67  
Old December 21st 16, 05:36 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Nomen Nescio
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Posts: 825
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a colege kid?

In article
Gene Wirchenko wrote:

IOW, the 500GB SSD option does not win hands down every time.



What is "win hands down"? Is this poker term?

  #68  
Old December 21st 16, 07:42 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Mike S[_4_]
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Posts: 496
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a colege kid?

On 12/20/2016 8:36 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Gene Wirchenko wrote:

IOW, the 500GB SSD option does not win hands down every time.


What is "win hands down"? Is this poker term?


found this...

The true source, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is horse
racing. The earliest examples of the phrase come from 19th century
sporting papers where horses win races “hands down,” meaning that
victory is so secure that the jockey can relax and drop the reins before
crossing the finish line.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/63235...ands-down-come

  #69  
Old December 21st 16, 03:58 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

"Nomen Nescio" wrote

| So, despite their becoming more popular as a basic computer for many
| people, I personally think they are a very poor choice. I think a
| laptop should only be for traveling.

| Basically this thread comes down to the fact that you can't teach
| new tricks to an old dog.
|

He's learned to use a cellphone to check email
when he travels. So where's the resistance to new
tricks? He just doesn't find that he needs to carry
a laptop.

Just because marketing-fueled news tells you
the latest fad that doesn't mean you need to
buy all of those latest gadgets. Does it really make
sense to catalogue how many steps you take in a
day with a $300 watch? Why? Do you really need to
check Facebook while crossing city streets? Why?
Is it hip to walk into trees or get run over while
tech-diddling?

There's nothing clever or cutting edge about the
general trend toward people never being where
they are. It's nothing more or less than a widespread
addiction to high-tech pacifiers, for people too
embarassed to twiddle their thumbs and too restless
to sit still. Ditto for college students writing papers
on dorm room sofas or in Starbucks. They don't do
that because it's a good way to work. They're simply
restless.


  #70  
Old December 21st 16, 04:13 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 15:27:12 -0500, Paul
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:25:41 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-12-19 12:58, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.
What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
External drive. Which one should have in any case IMO.



As far as I'm concerned, the value of a laptop as opposed to a desktop
is only in the laptop's portability. It's good to take with you when
you are traveling.

But also carrying an external drive makes no sense. It's heavy and
bulky.


You can get SSD drives with a microUSB on the edge of them.



Yes, and that could be fine. I was referring to an external hard
drive.
  #71  
Old December 21st 16, 04:37 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:21:28 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-12-21 10:13, Ken Blake wrote:
On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 15:27:12 -0500, Paul
wrote:

[...]
You can get SSD drives with a microUSB on the edge of them.



Yes, and that could be fine. I was referring to an external hard
drive.


My most recent external HDD purchase is a 1TB WD portable, USB
connected, the size of a smartphone.

BTW, the smallest HDDs available now seem to be 500GB, and those are
being sold off at inventory-clearing prices.

In case you wonder: our external drives are to back up pictures, videos,
and documents.




Same here, but I only do that at home, not when I travel.

  #72  
Old December 21st 16, 05:01 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Ed Mullen[_2_]
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Posts: 295
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On 12/20/2016 at 9:41 AM, Ken Blake's prodigious digits fired off:
On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:25:41 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-12-19 12:58, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 15:35:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

[snip]

Given the choice between a laptop sporting a 2TB HDD and one sporting a
'mere 500GB' of SSD storage, the SSD option wins hands down every time.

What about the case where you need 1 TB of storage?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko


External drive. Which one should have in any case IMO.



As far as I'm concerned, the value of a laptop as opposed to a desktop
is only in the laptop's portability. It's good to take with you when
you are traveling.

But also carrying an external drive makes no sense. It's heavy and
bulky.


I have two external hard drives that fit in my pocket. Not heavy or
bulky. You can get a 1.5 Tb USB drive for about $80.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/
"Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto." - Lope de Vega
  #73  
Old December 21st 16, 07:24 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Gene Wirchenko[_2_]
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Posts: 496
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 09:58:51 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Nomen Nescio" wrote

| So, despite their becoming more popular as a basic computer for many
| people, I personally think they are a very poor choice. I think a
| laptop should only be for traveling.

| Basically this thread comes down to the fact that you can't teach
| new tricks to an old dog.
|

He's learned to use a cellphone to check email
when he travels. So where's the resistance to new
tricks? He just doesn't find that he needs to carry
a laptop.

Just because marketing-fueled news tells you
the latest fad that doesn't mean you need to
buy all of those latest gadgets. Does it really make
sense to catalogue how many steps you take in a
day with a $300 watch? Why? Do you really need to
check Facebook while crossing city streets? Why?
Is it hip to walk into trees or get run over while
tech-diddling?

There's nothing clever or cutting edge about the
general trend toward people never being where
they are. It's nothing more or less than a widespread
addiction to high-tech pacifiers, for people too
embarassed to twiddle their thumbs and too restless
to sit still. Ditto for college students writing papers
on dorm room sofas or in Starbucks. They don't do
that because it's a good way to work. They're simply
restless.


Beautifully stated. May I quote you in my blog? (If no, I will
do my own treatment. If yes, do you want to be credited? If so, what
form?)

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
  #74  
Old December 21st 16, 09:16 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Rene Lamontagne
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Posts: 2,549
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

On 12/21/2016 1:55 PM, Wolf K wrote:
"Nomen Nescio" wrote

| So, despite their becoming more popular as a basic computer for many
| people, I personally think they are a very poor choice. I think a
| laptop should only be for traveling.

| Basically this thread comes down to the fact that you can't teach
| new tricks to an old dog.


Actually, you can. If you can't, you don't know how to train a dog.


Of course you can! I'm 82 and learning new tricks every day.
And for you young Guys and Gals....Backup, backup, backup.

Rene
  #75  
Old December 21st 16, 09:51 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Nomen Nescio
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Posts: 825
Default Recommendation for an xmas present PC for a college kid?

In article
Wolf K wrote:

"Nomen Nescio" wrote

| So, despite their becoming more popular as a basic computer for many
| people, I personally think they are a very poor choice. I think a
| laptop should only be for traveling.

| Basically this thread comes down to the fact that you can't teach
| new tricks to an old dog.


Actually, you can. If you can't, you don't know how to train a dog.


Sure. You can intimidate and beat them bloody. Maybe that works for
you, but it's a line I won't cross.

 




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