Posted on 03/19/2013 8:39:54 AM PDT by saminfl
I need some computer advice. I have 4 computers at home. Two laptops and two desktops. One laptop has Windows 7 and is used by my wife for genealogy research and net surfing. The others are mine and they have XP (desktop currently needs new MB) Windows 7 (desktop) and Vista (laptop used in my traveling and some of my work. I absolutely hate the Vista machine. It is slow and even slower when running multiple pages. I have run every correction and restoration program available on it and I still hate using it.
When I use it at work, I use Excel to analyze some telemetry data. I also play video from a weapon system. After XP, the media players sucked. With XP I could pause, copy a video frame and post it in my report. Can't do that with media player after XP.
I want to buy a new computer. I absolutely hate the look of Windows 8 and refuse to buy it. Windows 7 works on my desktop for surfing, email, etc, but I really don't like it.
I refuse to buy a MAC as I can afford 3 or 4 PCs for the price of one MAC. I am not fond of Apple as I think they are an arrogant company. You have to buy their 2 year warranty program to speak to them after 90 days from purchase. I have an IPAD and an IPhone and neither thrills me. My wife loves the IPAD. I have used computers since my TRS-80.
The advice I would like is: Can I use linux on a computer as my primary OS? Will it run Office? Will it play .avi videos? Would I buy a new laptop with Windows 8, remove that OS and use linux? How hard would that be? Is Linux hard to use?
“I refuse to buy a MAC as I can afford 3 or 4 PCs for the price of one MAC. I am not fond of Apple as I think they are an arrogant company. You have to buy their 2 year warranty program to speak to them after 90 days from purchase. I have an IPAD and an IPhone and neither thrills me. My wife loves the IPAD.”
Think just a bit about what you wrote above.
You already have an iPad that the wife “loves”. Ask her what she loves about it. Listen closely. Ask her next if she would like a computer that works similarly. What is her reply?
You may not be “thrilled” by the iPad or iPhone, but do they work reliably?
By contrast, you wrote above that “I absolutely hate the Vista machine. It is slow and even slower when running multiple pages. I have run every correction and restoration program available on it and I still hate using it.”
STOP regarding Apple as “an arrogant company”. We all know that they are. One can be a conservative, and be philosophically opposed to “Apple corporate policies”, but the proof is in the pudding, or more correctly, the product. The Mac is quite a nice machine — just ignore the poltiics, and you’ll be fine. Even Mr. Limbaugh does that.
You don’t have to buy a “2 year warranty” from Apple. You get a 1-year warranty with a new (or refurbished) Apple product, and you can add an additional two years of AppleCare if you wish. I have never bought AppleCare, and I’ve been a Mac user since 1987 and have done just fine.
A new Mac need not cost the price of “3 or 4 PCs”. I would suggest you investigate the Mac “Mini” line, with an eye on the 2.6ghz i7 model. You can get this for about $755 if you shop in the right places (I know where those places are). I have one myself and it replaced a 9-year-old PowerMac g4 “tower” and runs quieter, faster, more reliably. The Mini has been one of Apple’s most reliable products, it would probably be a waste of $$$ to get AppleCare for it.
If you got a Mac Mini, you can continue to use your existing monitor (don’t have to buy another unless you wish to). You can also use your USB mouse and USB keyboard if you wish — no need to buy Apple products. In fact I recommend that you DO NOT buy either an Apple keyboard or mouse (or the Thunderbolt display, FAR too much $$$). Apple hasn’t made a good mouse or keyboard since the introduction of USB — buy those elsewhere.
Also — DO NOT pay Apple’s price for additional RAM — buy and add it yourself. Your best bet is to get the “base configuration”. (1tb hdd and 4gb RAM). You could always add an external bootable SSD later on, using an external USB3 enclosure (VERY fast on the Mac if you know what to buy).
You mentioned Linux. Is this not a variant of UNIX? You should understand that what “Mac OS X” -is-, is essentially UNIX with a “Mac face overlaid on it”. In fact, if the command line is your preference, you can still open Terminal and type in UNIX commands. But normally, you don’t have to do this — the Mac OS takes care of all this for you.
If you’re that frustrated by the variations of Windows, I suggest you “put the politics into the pocket”, and perhaps give the Mac a try. Again, I suggest you look carefully at the Mac Mini line. You can get the i5 Mini for a couple of hundred less, but I suggest you spend $200 more and get the i7 version.
For a source, consider “portableone.com” (if you’re outside of California). Fast free shipping, no tax levied. I ordered on Wednesday (from other side of country), shipped Thursday, out for delivery on Friday….
Windows 8 will require some relearning, since its the convergence of laptop and tablet compuing. 1 issue to consider, if your planning on buying a laptop or ultra portable, the intel chipsets are not full w8 compatible yet. A new CPU family is being release mid to late june which will give tablet like battery life with laptop functionality. Another thing to note is XP support is ending late 1stQ 2014, so no more updates.
Yes, but it will still work.
If you are used to XP or Windows 7 you will hate the Windows 8 interface. It SUCKS!
Really? It’s too much work to buy it directly at a Microsoft store? or run a utility? If that’s the case you may not want to buy any computer.
ping
If that's all you want to do, maybe you should get an external terabyte (or 2 or 3) hard drive to connect to your wireless router, and then get a tablet like an Ipad or Nexus 10?
-PJ
You might want to look into some task killers to close unecessary background tasks, such as Iobit's Advanced System Care turboboost feature.
Also, you may have accumulated too many temporary files in your IE or other system folders. Just having a lot of junk files in a folder will slow down system processes, and bring your browser to a crawl while it has to navigate through them all, all the time.
Look into doing some basic junk file clean-up, Internet Explorer file clean-up, etc.
-PJ
No nearby Microsoft Stores. In fact, there aren’t that many Microsoft stores at all - less than 100 I think...
As for running a utility - been working with computers since 1984. MS Certified Network Admin (at one time). Still say it is STUPID that you have to un-cripple a computer for standard performance.
BTW - Mac Mini’s start at $599. One is running as my business server right now.
2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
4GB memory
Two 1TB hard drives
Intel HD Graphics 4000
OS X Mountain Lion
OS X Server
$999...with UNLIMITED users.
I compared prices of what I wanted in a PC and then compared it to MAC. They were close enough that I went back on my statment and bought a MACBook Pro. I am apprehensive.
Add in the cost of windows on that mac.
Funny my windows never crashes. What are you doing if windows is crashing so much for you?
Or surface.
I've heard those old saws bandied about since I had the paper version of the Wall Street Journal delivered to my house (it looks so much better on an iPad these days).
Fact is the Apple Macs are actually priced very low when you consider the utility of them. For example, the average lifespan of a MacBook Pro is 5-7 years. During those years, you have a solid system with a rock-stable OS that runs just as fast five years later as almost anything else out there.
Macs come with zero bloatware. Zero. You get a pristine OS out of the box and whatever apps you add are entirely up to you. And if you no longer want that particular app, you send it to the trash can and it vaporizes without a trace. No hunting down remnants of the old app in Registry files and temp folders and still not being able to erase it completely. Everytime you add an app to a Windows system, you permanently make the system a little bit slower and sluggish.
As for technical support, as another poster here mentioned, their technical support and customer satisfaction is consistently rated the best in the industry. Nobody else comes close.
Yes, you do have to pay for technical support past the first 90 days in most cases, but that is what makes the technical support so good. Apple can afford to offer first-rate technical support because they have revenue supporting it. They don't have to outsource technical support to some boiler room in India where people are paid fifty cents a day and they read off to you canned solutions off index cards in broken English.
I do have some beefs with how Apple attempts to lock you into their ecosystem but they really do have great hardware and a nearly bulletproof OS.
Doing what?
What you really want Linux for ....is trouble free surfing on the World Wide Danger Zone..
Windows is OK till it encounters the Web and the Virus and Trojans....
I have a Lenova with AMD Trinity Laptop with Windows 7 I purchased some months ago....but I don't use it much....and I don't use it on the Web.
If Linux were hard, I wouldn't be able to use it. But I've been using it for quite a while now. Admittedly, the first distros I tried gave me some of the troubles you mentioned above. But there are other distros -- PCLinuxOS for one -- with which I encountered none of the difficulties you listed there. None.
I even installed PCLinuxOS on my wife's laptop. She knows even less about computers than I do, and the times she's needed to ask me how to do something on that computer I can count on one hand.
Did you have some way to turn it off it it didn't?
Nice tutorial.
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