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#31
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laptops
On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:01:41 -0500, Big Al wrote:
On 1/10/19 11:23 AM, Ken Blake wrote: I know that a lot of people are like J. P. Gilliver, and use a laptop in place of a desktop at home. But I can never understand why. I dropped the desktop for a laptop when laptops became more powerful, quite a few years ago. I have beside me a 4GB, and 2 2GB 2.5" USB power HDs. That's enough storage for anything I need. It would be enough storage for me too. But the amount of storage or memory or CPU speed aren't the only differences between laptops and desktops to me. There's also monitor size, keyboard, touchpad vs mouse, etc. Those are the important things to me. But we're all different, and have different needs, different likes and dislikes. I won't try to talk you into changing your mind. I'm also in my 70's and have back issues, I'm 81 and also have back problems. But fortunately I don't have them when sitting. I only get pain if I walk more than 15-20 minutes. don't play power games. I don't play an games on the computer, except for Chess and solitaire, both only very occasionally. Sitting at the desktop was not enjoyable anymore. Damn 'golden years' my foot! It's better than the alternative. Needing a quick lookup on Google was inconvenient on the desktop while my laptop just stands up beside my chair in sleep mode and is ready in seconds. I'm not sure why you find that more convenient on a laptop. I can do it on my desktop very quickly and easily, probably just as quickly and easily as you can on your laptop. |
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#32
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Ping: PAUL (was - Win XP to Win 10??
On 10/01/2019 09:12, David B. wrote:
On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote: [....] I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns.Â* :-) As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for that. I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the time. And just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one with Windows 7), which I rarely use.. If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the latter two. I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited work use, I mean). What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and detachable keyboard. After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it like a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been in touch regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of charge! ;-) If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask for a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands! You might enjoy watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8 = Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-( I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update of my Windows 10 laptop) Now I'm getting: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution? Any thoughts, Paul? -- David B. |
#33
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Win XP to Win 10?
Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote: Bill in Co wrote: I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one with Windows 7), which I rarely use.. So the Win7 one would be your "trial candidate" for Windows 10. If it's Win7 SP1 x64 Home Premium, try installing Windows 10 x64 Home over it. If it's Win7 SP1 x86 Professional, try installing Windows 10 x86 Pro over it. For a "free" upgrade, the "class" of the install has to match. It's still possible for a CPU on a Win7 box, to not be sufficient for Windows 10, but that's the most likely limiting factor. Both Win7 and Win10 work with 1GB of RAM. The "kernel portion" of the OS (i.e. squeeze out all the fat) is about 350MB or so. Using 1GB of RAM leaves room to work. In terms of "comfort" 1) Single core computer "works", but many common activities might seem slow. Firefox with five processes running, railed while it loads Yahoo News, is going to be slightly worse than it is on Windows 7. This is because Windows 10 has little maintenance things it will be doing in the background. 2) Graphics drivers for Windows 10 are limited by the hardware companies. An FX5200 for example, would be running the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. My HD6450 PCIe video card got one driver of merit and support has stopped. The card runs at native resolution. When the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter runs the show, you get 1024x768 (even on a 16:9 display). 3) A "best config" would be a quad core processor, to give some bandwidth for the background stuff, and leave a bit for you. You have the materials to test, but it'll be your Win7 laptop as a (possible) candidate with no guarantees. The screen will likely run at 1024x768. ******* On a laptop, when it gets super-thin, there's no cooling fan. The CPU/GPU heat is dumped into the base. The processor then has two limits. It has a "power limiter" that throttles if the electrical demands of the processor are too high. It also has the usual "thermal throttles". It will allow "bursts", so on a single threaded task (with no OS background activity), it might seem fast. But as soon as there is background activity, it's going to disable turbo. There is at least one enthusiast class processor, where the turbo is set up for two cores, which allows some amount of annoying Windows 10 activity, while you "bench" on the other core. With the thermal limiter, you could start a movie transcode, and be doing 60FPS processing for the first 15 seconds, and then the frames per second processed gradually drop to a lower number. The cooler you keep the base, the more the speed can rise again. If the laptop is thicker and has tradition "air cooling", you might have more headroom. Air cooling also allows cheaper competitor CPU choices which happen to not be as efficient. Air cooling should allow a cheaper "performant" laptop to be built. Thin devices used eMMC Flash storage. A device with 32GB of disk space, stores things in a single flash chip. If the flash chip fails, nobody is going to offer you a repair strategy (chip must be un-soldered to replace). A wiser purchase is a machine with at least one bay for a 2.5" drive. Which can take a SATA SSD. And be replaced if there is an issue. HTH, Paul Thanks. I will keep this in mind as an idea, but I'm a bit hesitant to bite the bullet and mess with the Win 7 laptop (plus downloading a 3.5 GB file is another issue over here). But at least as you've said, it is an option. And you brought up something there that never occured to me, and that is, that while it seems fine and dandy to have that SSD internal drive, if it fails, you're screwed, since it's soldered in place (at least for the thin laptops, from what you said). I wonder if there are any laptops that have their SSD socketed, and if so, how would one ever know before purchasing? And then of course, the concerns over the reliability and the failure mode of an SSD vs a normal HDD. Sometimes for that reason alone I think it might be safer to stick with the regular HDD laptops, but then have to put up with the much slower boot and program load times. But perhaps I'm being too conservative here, because the SSD stuff sure is attractive, otherwise. I have an SSD in my "Win7 laptop converted to Win10" and it's fine. It's in a 2.5" bay. One thing that's interesting, is if you unplug the network cable, Win10 uses less electricity than Win7. But as soon as you plug in the cable, things like Windows-Update-Checking and AV-Definitions-loading, help double the power consumption, and push it past the Win7 value. And the single core processor in the laptop is rather limiting. There's supposed to be a dual core and a quad core that fit the same socket, but I've hesitated to consider those. Back when I got the laptop, I think a used dual was around $50, but those have all disappeared. With regard to the eMMC, one thing I don't know is how the wear leveling works on the Flash, and whether it's as good as a regular SSD, or more similar to a USB flash stick. You can never tell with these things, what you're getting inside them. So in addition to "it's TLC", you also have the unknown of how good the treatment of the TLC is. Paul |
#34
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laptops
On 1/10/19 2:34 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:01:41 -0500, Big Al wrote: On 1/10/19 11:23 AM, Ken Blake wrote: I know that a lot of people are like J. P. Gilliver, and use a laptop in place of a desktop at home. But I can never understand why. I dropped the desktop for a laptop when laptops became more powerful, quite a few years ago. I have beside me a 4GB, and 2 2GB 2.5" USB power HDs. That's enough storage for anything I need. It would be enough storage for me too. But the amount of storage or memory or CPU speed aren't the only differences between laptops and desktops to me. There's also monitor size, keyboard, touchpad vs mouse, etc. Those are the important things to me. But we're all different, and have different needs, different likes and dislikes. I won't try to talk you into changing your mind. I'm also in my 70's and have back issues, I'm 81 and also have back problems. But fortunately I don't have them when sitting. I only get pain if I walk more than 15-20 minutes. don't play power games. I don't play an games on the computer, except for Chess and solitaire, both only very occasionally. Sitting at the desktop was not enjoyable anymore. Damn 'golden years' my foot! It's better than the alternative. Needing a quick lookup on Google was inconvenient on the desktop while my laptop just stands up beside my chair in sleep mode and is ready in seconds. I'm not sure why you find that more convenient on a laptop. I can do it on my desktop very quickly and easily, probably just as quickly and easily as you can on your laptop. At the time I dropped the desktop it was down a level in the rec room. Inconvenient. Now it would be 20 ft away, but oh well, times do change. I do have to admit, I do remember the 21" tv screen. And now even bigger. |
#35
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Win XP to Win 10?
David B. wrote:
On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote: [....] I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns. :-) As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for that. I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the time. And just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one with Windows 7), which I rarely use.. If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the latter two. I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited work use, I mean). What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and detachable keyboard. After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it like a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been in touch regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of charge! ;-) If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask for a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands! You might enjoy watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8 = Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-( I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update of my Windows 10 laptop) Now I'm getting: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution? You've got the discussion thread to work with. A classical repair involves the three line stanza before this, plus this command. That's called "chroot from a LiveCD", and is a way to fool the software processes that follow it, into thinking they are running "native" on the hard drive OS. So while the DVD-sourced OS is what boots the machine, once you change the root of the file system from / to /media/ubuntu, then you can issue commands as if you were issuing them from a properly running Ubuntu HDD OS. sudo chroot /media/ubuntu/ sudo grub-install /dev/sdx But in that discussion thread, I don't see any signs that anyone bothered to "survey" the disk setup and figure out what's wrong with it. The poster in that thread seems to still have trouble after a proposed fix, and that suggests there's something we cannot see which is actively interfering with things. A typical situation would be, a user has more than one hard drive, and has inadvertently installed some boot materials (a GRUB stage), onto the wrong hard drive. And then, by following these simplified instructions that assume a single disk drive, the solution doesn't seem to work. So first you have to take a look at the disk setup (in the equivalent of Disk Management), and make sure you know exactly what the nature of the problem is, before just dumping a canonical solution on it. The "Boot Repair" CD is fine, but what we don't know is how many variations of repair are programmed into that tool. I wasn't convinced it knew how to fix a GPT setup for example. Especially one where perhaps the BIOS was partly responsible for breakage. So the first step is understanding the setup, then you run off and try and find a matching solution. The askubuntu thread you picked isn't bad, and suggests several common ways of fixing it. But what of the original setup ? Kosher or what ? I can't tell from here. And the thing is, characterization from Ubuntu takes multiple tools. I can't just give you gnome-disks or sudo fdisk or sudo gdisk or sudo gparted and develop a complete picture that way. I believe there is a tool which "visualizes" the various boot stages of Linux, and can tell if something there matches an expected pattern or is broken. Now, what keyword is going to tell me the name of that program :-/ This is the part I hate, remembering there's a capability but not remembering the name :-/ It's possible Boot-Repair uses that utility. I only got the Boot-Repair CD about a month ago. It seems the utility is called "Boot-Info". https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info In this example, Debian has two partitions. sda1 is the slash. sda2 is a declaration of an Extended, and sda5 is swap being stored in the Extended area as a Logical. So that's an example of a pretty simple setup, something that Boot-Repair should not have a problem with. https://i.postimg.cc/3wBFwHzd/bootinfo.gif If you have more than one disk, the report should reference sda and sdb if there were two disks. The text file can be uploaded to pastebin but I don't recommend doing that without cleaning the file first. Maybe Boot-Repair supports Windows File Sharing, but I didn't test. It's also possible you could store the text file on a USB stick as an intermediary. Paul |
#36
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Win XP to Win 10?
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote: Paul wrote: Bill in Co wrote: I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one with Windows 7), which I rarely use.. So the Win7 one would be your "trial candidate" for Windows 10. If it's Win7 SP1 x64 Home Premium, try installing Windows 10 x64 Home over it. If it's Win7 SP1 x86 Professional, try installing Windows 10 x86 Pro over it. For a "free" upgrade, the "class" of the install has to match. It's still possible for a CPU on a Win7 box, to not be sufficient for Windows 10, but that's the most likely limiting factor. Both Win7 and Win10 work with 1GB of RAM. The "kernel portion" of the OS (i.e. squeeze out all the fat) is about 350MB or so. Using 1GB of RAM leaves room to work. In terms of "comfort" 1) Single core computer "works", but many common activities might seem slow. Firefox with five processes running, railed while it loads Yahoo News, is going to be slightly worse than it is on Windows 7. This is because Windows 10 has little maintenance things it will be doing in the background. 2) Graphics drivers for Windows 10 are limited by the hardware companies. An FX5200 for example, would be running the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. My HD6450 PCIe video card got one driver of merit and support has stopped. The card runs at native resolution. When the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter runs the show, you get 1024x768 (even on a 16:9 display). 3) A "best config" would be a quad core processor, to give some bandwidth for the background stuff, and leave a bit for you. You have the materials to test, but it'll be your Win7 laptop as a (possible) candidate with no guarantees. The screen will likely run at 1024x768. ******* On a laptop, when it gets super-thin, there's no cooling fan. The CPU/GPU heat is dumped into the base. The processor then has two limits. It has a "power limiter" that throttles if the electrical demands of the processor are too high. It also has the usual "thermal throttles". It will allow "bursts", so on a single threaded task (with no OS background activity), it might seem fast. But as soon as there is background activity, it's going to disable turbo. There is at least one enthusiast class processor, where the turbo is set up for two cores, which allows some amount of annoying Windows 10 activity, while you "bench" on the other core. With the thermal limiter, you could start a movie transcode, and be doing 60FPS processing for the first 15 seconds, and then the frames per second processed gradually drop to a lower number. The cooler you keep the base, the more the speed can rise again. If the laptop is thicker and has tradition "air cooling", you might have more headroom. Air cooling also allows cheaper competitor CPU choices which happen to not be as efficient. Air cooling should allow a cheaper "performant" laptop to be built. Thin devices used eMMC Flash storage. A device with 32GB of disk space, stores things in a single flash chip. If the flash chip fails, nobody is going to offer you a repair strategy (chip must be un-soldered to replace). A wiser purchase is a machine with at least one bay for a 2.5" drive. Which can take a SATA SSD. And be replaced if there is an issue. HTH, Paul Thanks. I will keep this in mind as an idea, but I'm a bit hesitant to bite the bullet and mess with the Win 7 laptop (plus downloading a 3.5 GB file is another issue over here). But at least as you've said, it is an option. And you brought up something there that never occured to me, and that is, that while it seems fine and dandy to have that SSD internal drive, if it fails, you're screwed, since it's soldered in place (at least for the thin laptops, from what you said). I wonder if there are any laptops that have their SSD socketed, and if so, how would one ever know before purchasing? And then of course, the concerns over the reliability and the failure mode of an SSD vs a normal HDD. Sometimes for that reason alone I think it might be safer to stick with the regular HDD laptops, but then have to put up with the much slower boot and program load times. But perhaps I'm being too conservative here, because the SSD stuff sure is attractive, otherwise. I have an SSD in my "Win7 laptop converted to Win10" and it's fine. It's in a 2.5" bay. One thing that's interesting, is if you unplug the network cable, Win10 uses less electricity than Win7. But as soon as you plug in the cable, things like Windows-Update-Checking and AV-Definitions-loading, help double the power consumption, and push it past the Win7 value. And the single core processor in the laptop is rather limiting. There's supposed to be a dual core and a quad core that fit the same socket, but I've hesitated to consider those. Back when I got the laptop, I think a used dual was around $50, but those have all disappeared. With regard to the eMMC, one thing I don't know is how the wear leveling works on the Flash, and whether it's as good as a regular SSD, or more similar to a USB flash stick. You can never tell with these things, what you're getting inside them. So in addition to "it's TLC", you also have the unknown of how good the treatment of the TLC is. Paul A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10? Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)? So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the only time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and that the thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or HDD). Does that sound about right? |
#37
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laptops
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Ken Blake wrote: [...] Not to mention that it's very difficult to travel with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. WIMP! In the late 60's, early 70's, I traveled with a - core-memory - computer and a ASR-33 Teletype! :-) HP 2114 Computer: http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=97 ASR-33: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33 The car (similar to this one): https://www.classic-trader.com/uk/cars/listing/simca/1000/1000-special/1969/86746 And back then (when dinosaurs still roamed the planet, like your gear) the airlines weren't charging by the bag and for carry-on luggage, the seats were wider, they served meals, and a reservation was as good as a booking where you weren't vulnerable to getting booted due to overbooking. Back then, cars were made to survive crashes (but the occupants were considered expendable). Now the occupants survive and it's the car that doesn't. Yeah, they don't make them like they used to ... thank God! |
#38
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Win XP to Win 10?
Bill in Co wrote:
A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10? Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)? So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the only time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and that the thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or HDD). Does that sound about right? The conversion isn't permanent. I have a Win7 drive and a Win10 drive. The Win10 drive is sitting in it currently. The drive bay concept "fits my lifestyle". You won't catch me using a device with eMMC on it, as how would I swap stuff and have fun ??? ******* You can get sockets for BGA chips, but sometimes those solutions (used for lab prototypes) are taller than an SSD would be, so nobody would do that. If they wanted to, the industry could have come up with a better solution. Soldering them down is just planned obsolescence. Paul |
#39
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Win XP to Win 10?
On 10/01/2019 23:16, Paul wrote:
David B. wrote: On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote: [....] I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns.Â* :-) As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for that. I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the time. And just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one with Windows 7), which I rarely use.. If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the latter two. I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited work use, I mean). What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and detachable keyboard. After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it like a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been in touch regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of charge! ;-) If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask for a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands! You might enjoy watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8 = Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-( I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update of my Windows 10 laptop) Now I'm getting: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution? You've got the discussion thread to work with. A classical repair involves the three line stanza before this, plus this command. That's called "chroot from a LiveCD", and is a way to fool the software processes that follow it, into thinking they are running "native" on the hard drive OS. So while the DVD-sourced OS is what boots the machine, once you change the root of the file system from / to /media/ubuntu, then you can issue commands as if you were issuing them from a properly running Ubuntu HDD OS. Â*Â* sudo chroot /media/ubuntu/ Â*Â* sudo grub-install /dev/sdx But in that discussion thread, I don't see any signs that anyone bothered to "survey" the disk setup and figure out what's wrong with it. The poster in that thread seems to still have trouble after a proposed fix, and that suggests there's something we cannot see which is actively interfering with things. A typical situation would be, a user has more than one hard drive, and has inadvertently installed some boot materials (a GRUB stage), onto the wrong hard drive. And then, by following these simplified instructions that assume a single disk drive, the solution doesn't seem to work. So first you have to take a look at the disk setup (in the equivalent of Disk Management), and make sure you know exactly what the nature of the problem is, before just dumping a canonical solution on it. The "Boot Repair" CD is fine, but what we don't know is how many variations of repair are programmed into that tool. I wasn't convinced it knew how to fix a GPT setup for example. Especially one where perhaps the BIOS was partly responsible for breakage. So the first step is understanding the setup, then you run off and try and find a matching solution. The askubuntu thread you picked isn't bad, and suggests several common ways of fixing it. But what of the original setup ? Kosher or what ? I can't tell from here. And the thing is, characterization from Ubuntu takes multiple tools. I can't just give you gnome-disks or sudo fdisk or sudo gdisk or sudo gparted and develop a complete picture that way. I believe there is a tool which "visualizes" the various boot stages of Linux, and can tell if something there matches an expected pattern or is broken. Now, what keyword is going to tell me the name of that program :-/ This is the part I hate, remembering there's a capability but not remembering the name :-/ It's possible Boot-Repair uses that utility. I only got the Boot-Repair CD about a month ago. It seems the utility is called "Boot-Info". https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info In this example, Debian has two partitions. sda1 is the slash. sda2 is a declaration of an Extended, and sda5 is swap being stored in the Extended area as a Logical. So that's an example of a pretty simple setup, something that Boot-Repair should not have a problem with. https://i.postimg.cc/3wBFwHzd/bootinfo.gif If you have more than one disk, the report should reference sda and sdb if there were two disks. The text file can be uploaded to pastebin but I don't recommend doing that without cleaning the file first. Maybe Boot-Repair supports Windows File Sharing, but I didn't test. It's also possible you could store the text file on a USB stick as an intermediary. Â*Â* Paul THANK YOU, Paul! :-) I'm just off to bed. I'll follow-up your comments tomorrow. -- David B. |
#40
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Win XP to Win 10?
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote: A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10? Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)? So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the only time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and that the thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or HDD). Does that sound about right? The conversion isn't permanent. I have a Win7 drive and a Win10 drive. The Win10 drive is sitting in it currently. So I presume you did that just to see what Win 10 was like then, not that you really needed it for anything. I wonder which one will get more use. :-) BTW, I have heard there are at least some fixes out there (programs) that can block some, if not all, of the forced MS updates in Windows 10. Are you familiar with such? The drive bay concept "fits my lifestyle". You won't catch me using a device with eMMC on it, as how would I swap stuff and have fun ??? ******* You can get sockets for BGA chips, but sometimes those solutions (used for lab prototypes) are taller than an SSD would be, so nobody would do that. If they wanted to, the industry could have come up with a better solution. Soldering them down is just planned obsolescence. Paul So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that has an SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply soldered in? If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might prevent me from buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high stakes gamble, that option is. |
#41
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Win XP to Win 10?
Bill in Co wrote:
So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that has an SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply soldered in? If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might prevent me from buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high stakes gamble, that option is. The machines that are thick enough to have a fan, are thick enough to have an SSD drive bay. When the machines get really thin, there's no room for a 7mm SSD plus plastic covering on both sides. The thinnest you can make a device, is two plastic surfaces and a printed circuit board of some sort. And the eMMC storage is just another chip soldered to the board. A BGA with a relatively small ball count. A PCH (Southbridge) could have a thousand balls, while an eMMC flash drive might have 48 or 64, somewhere in that ballpark. The eMMC drive isn't particularly demanding, and it probably could have been put in a TSOP instead of a BGA. Again, it's almost like the BGA was chosen purely to make it harder to remove. (Yes, BGAs have a smaller footprint, but repair-ability matters too.) Due to the multi-layer nature of commodity flash now (96L came out a few days ago), you can actually put much more storage than 32GB in one "chip". The "chip" is a stack of thinned wafers of "stuff", joined somehow vertically. They could probably do more than 128GB in a single chip now. But you'll continue to see stupid designs with only 32GB being the "median" offering. 32GB, once you consider the "overheads", doesn't give a lot of room. The "OS people" could easily benefit from having their "own drive" and a second chip should really be there for users. A "hard partition" to prevent the OS from doing stupid stuff. For example, a new feature introduced a few days ago, mentions the OS is going to "reserve" somehow, around 7GB of space, so it can download a new version of Windows 10 and be guaranteed of being able to store it. With that sort of notion, it would be better if the hardware just gave them their own chip to use. In any case, I hope that gives you some "danger signs" to look for in adverts. Paul |
#42
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laptops (was: Win XP to Win 10?)
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Bill in Co writes: [] If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the latter two. I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited work use, I mean). I bought my first laptop (W9x era), intending to use it only when travelling or in other situations where my tower machine couldn't be taken. (I also didn't think I'd get on with a trackpad.) It became my main machine - I was going to say rapidly, but it might have been gradually. I have since used laptops for all my computing needs - my desktop machines going initially weeks then months between being turned on, and I think it might be over a year now. (And I have got very used to a trackpad: I have a mouse, but rarely plug it in - of late, mainly for when the trackpad [driver] misbehaves rather than needing the differences.) I'd say my main initial concerns re laptops fell into three areas: limited keyboard, all-in-one-ness, and (in practice) no slots. Limited keyboard - I was fortunate in that my first laptop still had the sixpack; I _did_ find the second laptop irritating in having home and end combined with something else and needing the Fn key. (Fortunately this one has brought them back.) Also the lack of a numeric keypad (you get one on _most_ 15" or more laptops anyway these days) meant I couldn't use the Alt-numpad codes I'd memorised for things like the +/- symbol, but in practice I've found a little utility called AllChars actually easier (the sequences are easier to remember!). All-in-one-ness - i. e. if one part fails, you have to junk the lot. This hasn't been as much of a problem as I thought: things that have failed - disc drive was easy to replace; a screen wasn't _too_ hard; and a wireless card, I just used an external one. (That was on someone else's machine that had lots of USB and she didn't use them anyway; had it been me, I might have replaced the card - fiddly, but not difficult.) The one case that _is_ irritating is where - I think - the internal power supply (that takes the 19V or battery and gives the internal supplies) has failed and thus rendered the laptop dead, whereas I think most of it is actually alive. No slots (I say in practice because, although in theory laptops can have them, [a] many don't [b] the standards for laptop expansion slots change with bewildering rapidity) - I think I was fortunate in that my transition to laptops coincided with a large move of peripherals that had previously used cards, to USB. This has continued, accompanied by changes in desktop slot standards, from PCI (IDE was already dead) to PCI-E and later, as well as graphic card slots. These changes in both laptop and desktop slot standards have mostly _not_ been backward-compatible, unlike USB. My transition has probably also, if I'm honest, accompanied my changing outlook with ageing: I have less _desire_ to use things that need plug-in cards (and aren't available via USB). Another advantage of laptops is that they have a poor man's UPS: brief power outages don't crash them, even if the battery's in a poor state, and can move from room to room without shutting down. I can see that a proper desktop, with a big keyboard and monitor, still holds its attraction for those with a settled lifestyle, _or_ who are willing to switch between devices when they travel or visit. Also, for those needing special machines - number-crunching, gaming, and so on. For me, the ability to now take this my main computer wherever I go (not relying on syncing services) means I can't see me ever going back to a desktop as my main machine: in fact other than lethargy and nostalgia I'm not sure why I keep my desktop. But - this is just me; YMMV, and I'm certainly not saying anyone _should_ change. I just thought I'd answer Bill-in-Co's question from my own experience. Thanks, John. Good to hear all that, too. Two of the three concerns you mentioned aren't of much significant concern for me. But I do have to say I still feel more comfortable sitting down at the computer desk with the desktop and its larger monitor and keyboard. I don't travel much, so portability is not an issue for me. (And I also have the (larger) monitor for the desktop further away from me than you can get with a laptop, obviously). The thing that got me interested in laptops here was just recently seeing those nice, thin, svelte laptops on display in a local store here, and kind of "drooling" at them. But drooling at something that looks cool is one thing, and actually using the thing, day in and day out, is another. But as you said, each of us has their own likes and dislikes and preferences, as is evident by the length of this thread. I guess the biggest deciding factor is portability for most people, and how important that capability is to you. |
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Win XP to Win 10?
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote: So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that has an SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply soldered in? If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might prevent me from buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high stakes gamble, that option is. The machines that are thick enough to have a fan, are thick enough to have an SSD drive bay. When the machines get really thin, there's no room for a 7mm SSD plus plastic covering on both sides. The thinnest you can make a device, is two plastic surfaces and a printed circuit board of some sort. And the eMMC storage is just another chip soldered to the board. A BGA with a relatively small ball count. A PCH (Southbridge) could have a thousand balls, while an eMMC flash drive might have 48 or 64, somewhere in that ballpark. The eMMC drive isn't particularly demanding, and it probably could have been put in a TSOP instead of a BGA. Again, it's almost like the BGA was chosen purely to make it harder to remove. (Yes, BGAs have a smaller footprint, but repair-ability matters too.) Due to the multi-layer nature of commodity flash now (96L came out a few days ago), you can actually put much more storage than 32GB in one "chip". The "chip" is a stack of thinned wafers of "stuff", joined somehow vertically. They could probably do more than 128GB in a single chip now. But you'll continue to see stupid designs with only 32GB being the "median" offering. 32GB, once you consider the "overheads", doesn't give a lot of room. The "OS people" could easily benefit from having their "own drive" and a second chip should really be there for users. A "hard partition" to prevent the OS from doing stupid stuff. For example, a new feature introduced a few days ago, mentions the OS is going to "reserve" somehow, around 7GB of space, so it can download a new version of Windows 10 and be guaranteed of being able to store it. With that sort of notion, it would be better if the hardware just gave them their own chip to use. In any case, I hope that gives you some "danger signs" to look for in adverts. Paul Thanks. Definitely something to keep track of. I'm thinking those 32 GB SSD laptops must not have a ton of room left over,too. OK, I just looked this up, and one site says for system requirements 16 GB for 32 bit, 20 GB for 64 bit. I didn't even know there was a 32 bit option for Windows 10, but I guess that was for folks doing upgrades from an older 32 bit OS, as I can't see any other reason for it, except, perhaps, for backwards compatibility with some older 32 bit programs. I almost forgot about that one. But wow, about 20 GB already used, leaving you only 12 GB for everything else? Wow. That will be a "little bit" tight if you have any decent collection of programs. |
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Win XP to Win 10?
Bill in Co wrote:
Thanks. Definitely something to keep track of. I'm thinking those 32 GB SSD laptops must not have a ton of room left over,too. OK, I just looked this up, and one site says for system requirements 16 GB for 32 bit, 20 GB for 64 bit. I didn't even know there was a 32 bit option for Windows 10, but I guess that was for folks doing upgrades from an older 32 bit OS, as I can't see any other reason for it, except, perhaps, for backwards compatibility with some older 32 bit programs. I almost forgot about that one. But wow, about 20 GB already used, leaving you only 12 GB for everything else? Wow. That will be a "little bit" tight if you have any decent collection of programs. A 32 bit OS can run 16 bit programs. That helps if you have a collection of ancient games. A 64 bit OS helps if the machine happens to have a lot of RAM. For example, if you had "the cheapest machine possible", with only 1GB of RAM, then 64 bit wouldn't be absolutely necessary for that. But 64 bit is here to stay. You could find that 32 bit drivers for graphics, new versions aren't being made any more. Adobe uses only 64 bit for its software. And some time this year or next, traditional BIOS may disappear, so only UEFI boot is offered in new hardware. That's the way Intel wants it for some reason. I don't see a reason for Intel to care one way or another. I'm glad the box I've got here supports UEFI+CSM (where CSM is the compatibility module for legacy BIOS booting purposes) Paul |
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laptops (was: Win XP to Win 10?)
In message , Bill in Co
writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , Bill in Co writes: [] I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited work use, I mean). [] I'd say my main initial concerns re laptops fell into three areas: limited keyboard, all-in-one-ness, and (in practice) no slots. [] Thanks, John. Good to hear all that, too. You're welcome; it was interesting to ask myself the question(s). Two of the three concerns you mentioned aren't of much significant concern for me. But I do have to say I still feel more comfortable sitting down at the computer desk with the desktop and its larger monitor and keyboard. I don't travel much, so portability is not an issue for me. (And I also have the (larger) monitor for the desktop further away from me than you can get with a laptop, obviously). Having it closer means it doesn't have to be so big, of course - so it's only resolution that's different. I find the 1366 × 768 of this one more than adequate for my needs now - and I think some modern laptops better that. (I think even some _'phones_ do") But then, I never had huge resolutions when I was using desktop machines. Not to say I probably wouldn't use if available - to some extent; at work, I used a 17" 4:3 - some colleagues had bigger (such as 16:9 or dual; I never really felt the need. The thing that got me interested in laptops here was just recently seeing those nice, thin, svelte laptops on display in a local store here, and kind of "drooling" at them. But drooling at something that looks cool is one thing, and actually using the thing, day in and day out, is another. But as you said, each of us has their own likes and dislikes and preferences, as is evident by the length of this thread. I guess the biggest deciding factor is portability for most people, and how important that capability is to you. And, as also evident from this thread, the amount of portability required varies considerably; some use them on battery quite a lot, some like me hardly at all. For me it's the switching machines I don't like. Like you, I don't travel much - I haven't taken a holiday as most would see one for years; my holiday is usually visiting friends. I do like to use a - my - computer when staying with them though, so like to take this machine with me. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Of course, this show - like every other cop show on earth - massively overstates the prevalence of violent crime: last year, in the whole of the UK, police fired their weapons just three times. And there were precisely zero fatalities. - Vincent Graff in RT, 2014/11/8-14 |
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