Buying a new PC

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

On 6/19/20 6:44 AM, this is what micky wrote:
Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

My only comments are that any SSD is going to make a lot of difference and would be faster than a spinner, no moving parts. I took some
effort to compare read/write times advertised on drives before buying my last NVMe drive but seriously I don't see that much diff over my
SATA ssd. It does measure faster for sure, but in practice it's not that noticeable. Now I changed my wife's HD to SSD and that made a
diff on her old i3 sluggish laptop.

Both Thunderbird and Firefox use a profile folder ini file. And it's simple to relocate the profile itself to some other place if you feel
necessary. So don't worry about where mozilla data is.

And lastly you could build your own if you can. But that's takes a level of expertise to do.

Al.

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:16:38 -0400, Big Al wrote:

On 6/19/20 6:44 AM, this is what micky wrote:
Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

My only comments are that any SSD is going to make a lot of difference and would be faster than a spinner, no moving parts. I took some
effort to compare read/write times advertised on drives before buying my last NVMe drive but seriously I don't see that much diff over my
SATA ssd. It does measure faster for sure, but in practice it's not that noticeable. Now I changed my wife's HD to SSD and that made a
diff on her old i3 sluggish laptop.

Both Thunderbird and Firefox use a profile folder ini file. And it's simple to relocate the profile itself to some other place if you feel
necessary. So don't worry about where mozilla data is.

And lastly you could build your own if you can. But that's takes a level of expertise to do.

Al.

Or get someone you trust or have recommended to build it to your wishes.
That works out cheaper generally.
--
Jim S

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:44:47 -0400
micky wrote:

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many
FF tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more
RAM make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference,
because once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally
don't use it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for
me? Is the previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest
design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

I recommend this one:

https://www.newegg.com/hp-prodesk-60...scrollFullInfo


I have never understood why someone would open so many tabs that it
would cause Firefox to stop. Use bookmarks, open everything in a new
window. I don't think I have ever had more than three tabs open.

On 6/19/20 6:44 AM, micky wrote:
Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

If you buy one that prevents you from posting on usenet anymore, I bet a
number of the folks in the news groups you regularly pollute would
gladly help pay for it ;-)

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:53:06 -0500, Johnny wrote:

I have never understood why someone would open so many tabs that it
would cause Firefox to stop. Use bookmarks, open everything in a new
window. I don't think I have ever had more than three tabs open.

To me, it makes much more sense to open related sites as tabs within the
same window rather than have a ton of windows open. It's nice that we have
the flexibility to do it either way.

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:10:12 -0500
Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:53:06 -0500, Johnny wrote:

I have never understood why someone would open so many tabs that it
would cause Firefox to stop. Use bookmarks, open everything in a new
window. I don't think I have ever had more than three tabs open.

To me, it makes much more sense to open related sites as tabs within
the same window rather than have a ton of windows open. It's nice
that we have the flexibility to do it either way.


I don't have a ton of windows open.

All my bookmarks are on my desktop as icons. I click on one, when
finished, I close it,and open another one.

Only one window open at a time. If I click on a link in the open
window it opens in a new tab.

On 19 Jun 2020, micky wrote
(in ):

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

8 GB is the realistic minimum. 16 or more gives room for later growth, such
as new applications/new versions of the OS which need more RAM. I personally
would get less than 16 GB on a laptop or desktop.


The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?

More RAM plus faster secondary storage (that is, a SSD instead of a HDD)
would speed that up.


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

Get a good SSD and have done. SSD prices have finally fallen low enough that
getting even a 1 TB SSD won’t hurt your wallet too badly. Reliability is
up, a good SSD still doesn’t have the life of a good HDD, but it’s
getting close.


So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.

Getting a large (4 TB plus) HHD for storage will help lengthen the life of
your SSD. The machine I’m using right now has a 1 TB SSD and a 1 TB HDD
internally (the HDD shipped with it in 2012 and is approaching EoL, I’ll be
replacing it with a 2 TB SSD and keep this machine going for another few
years) and a 8 TB USB3 external HDD. As it's a Mac and it (usually, some
badly written apps can be annoying) doesn’t matter where apps are located,
most apps and heavy data (music, movies, ebooks, word processing,
spreadsheets, etc.) are on the 8 TB drive. There’s two 10 TB drives which
rotate as backups for everything, plus some older 2, 3, and 4 TB drives which
used to be data drives and are now emergency boot drives (Macs, unlike
Windows, have no problems booting from external drives) and are additional
backup for important files. You can never have too much backup. (Warning:
external USB HDDs die a whole lot faster than internal HDDs, or at least than
Apple internal HDDs. There’s a reason I don’t usually keep older drives
connected and running 24/7.)

Firefox and most proper mail clients will let you store mail, config files,
etc., where you want those files to be stored. A sign of a bad browser or
email client (MSIE, MS Mail) is that they demand to store things in specific
locations. Avoid them.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

Stay far away from HP. They were good, they’re now mostly garbage. Dell was
never good, but they’re about the same level as they always were, so now
they’re better than HPs. Lenovo and other mainland Chinese units tend to
have little add-ins you may not want; fixable, but why go to the trouble if
you don’t need to? Taiwanese and South Korean units tend to be less
problematic in that way, but some Taiwanese units offer warranty service only
if you ship the machine back to Taiwan. If warranty service is important to
you, pick carefully. Apple is, as usual, a special case. Doing a hand-build
will usually get you better value for money. Warning: assembling a desktop
machine from parts would take under 20 minutes; sourcing the motherboard,
RAM, CPU, storage, case, power supply, video, monitor, keyboard and
mouse/whatever pointing device you want, and then verifying that they all
work together (yes, I have encountered times where keyboards were allergic to
certain motherboards, and that’s by no means the strangest problems seem
with hand-builds) will take substantial time and effort. The machine next to
this one is a hand-built tower running Windows Server 2012R2 (started out
running 2008 R2, which shows how old it is) and which is violently allergic
to Server 2016 despite 16 GB of RAM, 10 TB of HDD (one 1 TB, three 2 TB, and
a 3 TB) and a 3.4 GHz quad core i5. I suspect it won’t like Server 2019
either. I want Active Directory at home, because I can, so when it dies
I’ll build a new machine which can run Server 2016 or 2019.


I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

leave the XP machine. The Win 7 machine might still have life left.

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:44:47 -0400, micky
wrote:

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?

On my last build, I went from 16GB, where I had the problem with Firefox
that you're describing, to 64GB, where I haven't yet had that problem. So I
would say yes, more RAM will help Firefox behave.

I'm not saying you need 64GB, of course. I only have that much because I
need to run multiple VMs simultaneously.

On 19 Jun 2020, Johnny wrote
(in article 20200619075306.2eac1be6@mx):

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:44:47 -0400
micky wrote:

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many
FF tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more
RAM make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference,
because once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally
don't use it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for
me? Is the previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest
design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

I recommend this one:

https://www.newegg.com/hp-prodesk-60...9SIAK3JBJR8256
&Description=HP%20ProDesk%20600%20G2%20SFF&SortFie ld=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=
10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&cm_re=HP_ProDesk_600_G2_SF F-_-83-997-
746-_-Product&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

I have never understood why someone would open so many tabs that it
would cause Firefox to stop. Use bookmarks, open everything in a new
window. I don't think I have ever had more than three tabs open.

I regularly have 56 tabs open first thing in the morning; I have a set of
tabs which I open up automatically to check Very Important Stuff, mostly at
Go Comics and other purveyors of fine webcomics. It used to be 63, but I
stopped reading certain comics. Both Firefox and Safari om Mac warn me that I
may slow the machine down, but let me open the tabs; one reason to avoid Edge
on Windows is that it really hates opening a lot of tabs. Well, one reason
why _I_ avoid it, anyway. Firefox and Chrome on Windows also give warnings,
but carry on; I usually stay way from Chrome, though.

In article s.com,
Wolffan wrote:

Reliability is
up, a good SSD still doesn¹t have the life of a good HDD, but it¹s
getting close.

ssds have significantly *longer* life than a hard drive, which is one
reason why warranties for ssds are as long as 10 years, versus 1-2
years typically for a hard drive, *maybe* 5 for an enterprise drive
(which ain't cheap).

On 2020-06-19 7:53 a.m., Johnny wrote:
On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:44:47 -0400
micky wrote:

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many
FF tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more
RAM make that take a lot longer to happen?


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference,
because once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally
don't use it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for
me? Is the previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest
design?

I have to post this before the computer freezes.

I have an XP laptop and a win7 laptop. I'll unbury one of them if need
be.

I recommend this one:

https://www.newegg.com/hp-prodesk-60...scrollFullInfo


I have never understood why someone would open so many tabs that it
would cause Firefox to stop. Use bookmarks, open everything in a new
window. I don't think I have ever had more than three tabs open.



Having dozens and hundreds of tabs open will only lead to big trouble,
And it proves that in Micky's case.

Rene

"Wade Garrett" wrote

| If you buy one that prevents you from posting on usenet anymore, I bet a
| number of the folks in the news groups you regularly pollute would
| gladly help pay for it ;-)

I'm guessing they won't have to. Micky seems to
be more than happy to pay for an expensive gaming
PC if that might make it easier for him to avoid paying
attention to what he's doing.

On 2020-06-19 13:19:28 +0000, Wolffan said:

On 19 Jun 2020, micky wrote
(in ):

Well, the computer has continued to crash, mostly with the same 4
problems. Other times, it's frozen.

So I need a new one. I haven't had a new one since the PCJr.

1) This time I want 16 gigs of RAM, or do I want even more?????

8 GB is the realistic minimum. 16 or more gives room for later growth, such
as new applications/new versions of the OS which need more RAM. I personally
would get less than 16 GB on a laptop or desktop.

Check the prices. Some vendors have jacked up prices due to shortages
caused by COVID. If you can it may be better to buy 8GB now and another
8GB later when prices drop again.



The reason for more than 8 gigs is that I tend to open way too many FF
tabs and the computer slows and eventually FF stops. Won't more RAM
make that take a lot longer to happen?

More RAM plus faster secondary storage (that is, a SSD instead of a HDD)
would speed that up.


2) And maybe I should get a SSD for the PC??? One page said that
READing the drive over and over won't wear it out, only writing to it.
Right?

Get a good SSD and have done. SSD prices have finally fallen low enough that
getting even a 1 TB SSD won’t hurt your wallet too badly.

This. SSD is a must nowdays using anything else feels horribly slow.

Unless you store movies or huge amounts (multiple terabytes) of other
media files don't bother with a HDD. SSDs are just as reliable - if not
more so - than HDDs. There is no "wearing out" of SSDs in a domestic
scenario.


Reliability is
up, a good SSD still doesn’t have the life of a good HDD, but it’s
getting close.


So if I had another harddrive for data, that would solve the wearing
out, except I've separated the email data and the Usenet data from the
programs, but isn't it much harder to separate the Firefox data? And
that gets rewritten all the time.

Absolutely no problem with any of that. Ignore and use as you see fit.


3) Brand. I suppose if I get a name brand, I'll get the latest
technology on the SSD, but a) aren't lesser brands a lot cheaper. b)
don't they use the older technology where there is a difference, because
once better is invented, the name brands like Dell generally don't use
it anymore. In practice does this make a difference for me? Is the
previous design of SSDs so much not as good as the latest design?

Stay far away from HP.

Agree.

The OP doesn't specify whether he wants a desktop or laptop so the
choices vary. He also doesn't mention budget.

Desktops can be built to order by several OEMs and unless you want to
build it yourself that's what I'd go for. You don't really gain
anything from named brands unless you want to buy on-site support.

For laptops I would say away from no-name models and preferentially
choose Lenovo, Dell, Acer/Asus. if the usage is standard home/office
usage a chromebook may also be an option.

On 6/19/20 8:53 AM, this is what Johnny wrote:
I recommend this one:

https://www.newegg.com/hp-prodesk-60...scrollFullInfo

It just doesn't say what USB type they are. 2/3/3.1/3c ??
Nor is there a SD card reader.