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Windows 10


Eli

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so I updated my 2013 vintage windows laptop, core i7 2.7ghz processor, 8 gig of ram to windows 10 today from Win7 Pro.

 

 

went pretty well, my legacy Cisco vpn client software bit the dust and I had to replace that but otherwise it was pretty painless.

 

 

any gotchas I should anticipate?

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Seems to be fairly dependable OS, I'm in the insider program so I've lived with it for a while.

The issues with explorer from it's early days seem to be all gone. Apart from the photo app that seldom glitches out on me (might be local issue) and the office 365 ads in the action centre I do quite like it. Also the new settings centre might take some getting used to, but I feel like it's the right step forward.

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Lol

I find it more intuitive. Of course, I only use it for the Internet and writing. So not very intensive.

I always call them Granny computers. I guess if you learned the nuances of them, just for Internet and writing they'd probably be equal to, or likely superior to Linux. Windows is always superior though.

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though I'm a long time holder of their stock I only use iPhone of the product and that's a recent development, I detest their nanny mentality.

 

 

I know what I want to do.

 

 

Laptop I use Windows, the few servers I run personally any longer are all centos, I work mainly from terminal programs operating various linux boxes

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Prices are unreasonably high for Apple products in the US as well, because they're simply unreasonable. You can get a windows (you can also run linux if you prefer) laptop that does everything a Macbook Pro does, but for less than half the price. An HP Pavillion has twice the RAM, more storage, a comparable processor, hell they both even have the same crummy Intel HD 4000 GPU, and will save you a few hundred bucks.

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Prices are unreasonably high for Apple products in the US as well, because they're simply unreasonable. You can get a windows (you can also run linux if you prefer) laptop that does everything a Macbook Pro does, but for less than half the price. An HP Pavillion has twice the RAM, more storage, a comparable processor, hell they both even have the same crummy Intel HD 4000 GPU, and will save you a few hundred bucks.

 

From what I can find the Pavilion only has one model with 16GB of RAM (which is equivalent to the MBP 15") - most are 4 or 8.  

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Looks like Macbook specs have changed since I last looked into laptops, my bad.

For the exact specs of the $2000 15" Macbook Pro you can get a Lenovo with the exact same specs from $1000 to $1800.



Depending on what you actually use your laptop for, 16gb RAM is going to be excessive for most people and you can save money going for 8 instead. Additionally, the difference in performance between Intel i5 and i7 processors is beyond negligible unless you overclock, which again most people won't need to do and is a good area to save a few bucks.

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Windows 8 was better in my opinion. :P

 

! Run, it's infected someone!

 

Underneath it's all the same hardware these days, so when you buy an Apple you're paying for the design and name as well.  Personally I am still a Windows guy for my workstations/laptops, but most of my servers when I have a choice are Linux (usually Ubuntu Server these days).

If you're going for an HP, I would have a look at their Business lineup rather than their consumer if you can...the HP ProBooks (yeah, I know, basically rifting off the Mac Book name) are quite good...we brought in about 400 of them last year at my office and I've only had to do warranty on maybe 4 of them...  and so far only one kid has managed to actually damage the case so bad that we had to order new parts, so they seem fairly durable.  And they're light weight.

 

Personally I'm a sucker for the Dell XPS 15 that they showed off this year, but I'm not in the market for a new laptop for a while...plus I don't think the School Board is going to buy me a top end model like that without some questions....... lol

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Underneath it's all the same hardware these days, so when you buy an Apple you're paying for the design and name as well.  Personally I am still a Windows guy for my workstations/laptops, but most of my servers when I have a choice are Linux (usually Ubuntu Server these days).

If you're going for an HP, I would have a look at their Business lineup rather than their consumer if you can...the HP ProBooks (yeah, I know, basically rifting off the Mac Book name) are quite good...we brought in about 400 of them last year at my office and I've only had to do warranty on maybe 4 of them...  and so far only one kid has managed to actually damage the case so bad that we had to order new parts, so they seem fairly durable.  And they're light weight.

As an HP employee, this. Hardware is just the same recycled components over and over again, hell, Apple and Dell and Lenovo use the same manufacturer consortium for their PCs and Laptops, and we (HP) use the same as ACER and others do. Chinese conglomerates with a 100 different "legal" names that sell the same stuff to the different companies... So yeah, HW is all the same.

And indeed our BUsiness lineup is far better than our consumer line up. I like the EliteBooks more than the ProBooks (and EliteBooks is what we are actually given internally to work, so yeah, make a guess at why :D ) I'm partial to the 840 G3 (I own a G2, and looking forward to change), it can go up to 32GB Ram and is light enough. Battery on the G2 model is also good enough, G3 is improved. I'm not a fan of Windows 8 or 10 tho, so I am indeed looking for something that stays in Win 7 and works :P

Winni,

If you have actually had to call to the Business Support line of HP... then you've probably talk to people in the same floor I work here at HP Costa Rica :P We have the Customer Support and Tech Support floors here :P

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I have not as of yet... I let the guys at my purchasing consortium do that since they offer it as a service, I just drop the laptop off and they get it fixed.  I do deal with Dell's Warranty once in a while, but usually server stuff.  Although I don't think I've had to call that in like a year now either...why can I not find some real wood to knock on when i say stuff like that.

 

I do remember when I worked for Convergys we did have a centre in....Edmonton I think that was working an HP Customer Support contract, but I'm pretty sure it was consumer level hardware support rather than Buisness.

 

I do not miss that company at all (Converygs).  Much better just working for the local School Division.

 

I miss Windows 7 at times...but we're moving most of the district to Windows 10 this summer.  Save some of the older hardware.  Windows 10 refuses to install on our Optiplex 760's...I can't see any reason it wouldn't work aside from maybe a BIOS needing to upgade thing but whatever, I needed an Excuse to leave those ones alone.  They're old but still work.

 

I do like the EliteBooks, but they're a bit out of our budget range here.  We have to make our dollars (Canadian ones at that) strech.  The ones we brought in were the ProBook 430 G2.  I've been pretty happy with them.  Batteries are easy to replace and so on, so none of that having to completely disassemble the whole thing like the Toshiba's we brought in the year before just to change the bloody battery.

 

At home I build my own Desktop...I just can't bring myself to buy anything pre-assembled.  Plus I love my Lian Li cases.

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I totally understand what you say regarding the EliteBooks.

Convergys is now also here in CR. They have like 1500 employees doing support.

The Canadian market up-mark is huge, so I know what you mean about the money.

And at home, I use my work laptop so yeah :P

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If you have actually had to call to the Business Support line of HP... then you've probably talk to people in the same floor I work here at HP Costa Rica  :P We have the Customer Support and Tech Support floors here  :P

 

 

I was doing this (calling business support) about ten years ago.  I kept getting a guy named Jesus.  And he pronounced it the English way.  It was a little odd.  I was general manager for a local computer company.  When the owners hired me, they bragged about having all these HP certifications and being a dealer, etc.  Then they complained and wanted me to find out why they weren't getting paid for the warranty they were doing.  When I checked, they had no certifications at all.  They lied to me (as with a lot of other things...thus I left after six months).  My service manager claimed to have server certifications, but refused to attach them to the company.  That place was a mess.

 

They were also selling consumer machines to their business clients, mostly refurbs, to make the sale over the rest of the local market.  All for a measly 2 - 3 % profit margin.

 

In my own business after that, I was an ACER dealer, but was certified with HP and Dell as well.  Although I was doing more printers/copiers than computers.  Also had to pass Homeland Security and FBI clearances twice, so I could work on equipment in some government offices.  Replaced firewalls for HUD, repairs for FBI.  Most secure place I've been in:  The Federal Reserve.  Guys with the loaded machine guys follow you around and watch you work.  But I repaired some HP laptops for them.  Even though their security is tight, they're nice about it.  The security at the Federal Courthouse are rude jerks.  And I know someone that was able to get a gun past them (former cop, the US Marshals service asked me to let him test them....they gave me a little US Marshals badge lapel pin as their thanks, heh). Army base security are hire-a-cops without guns.  You'd think they'd have soldiers manning the gates.  

 

I hated working on Dell laptops, the design was so convoluted to get to anything.  Just to replace the battery on the board would be a two hour complete disassembly.

 

Running Windows 10 on my main PC here, but Windows 7 still on the others.  Tried to upgrade another to 10, but on it's first reboot it freezes up and goes no further.  I've probably tried about ten times.  I'm pretty sure it's something in the BIOS that 10 isn't playing well with, but it's got the latest available for it.  But it is an old PC.

 

I've never liked MACs.  Simply due to that proprietary approach that lets them get away with ridiculous mark up prices. I don't know why people want to give away their hard earned money that way.  Yes, generally it's been better for graphics in the past, but that's not really the case anymore.  I used to work on MACs in the early 90's.  A $50 new floppy drive for a PC would cost $300 for a refurb for a MAC.  Insane.  Nothing but price gouging by Apple. 

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Apple's whole market strategy is to over price their stuff based on concepts of uniqueness and design. And that is now, honestly they weren't SO much like that by the early 90s. But hell, they are nasty buggers.

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The first time I had to use a MAC was in 1990 when I was working in the Remote Sensing Applications Lab at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  Mostly I used Pixar workstations there running on Unix. I loved those workstations, they were awesome for their time.  I still miss them. But you accessed the mainframe via the little MAC, and it also served as our access to the Internet.  I was doing Climate studies (Southern Oscillation, Glacial Advance and Retreat) with Landsat and SPOT satellite imagery at the time, working on my Masters degree.  (In the process, I discovered a lot of unknown faults along the Rocky Mountain upthrust thanks to a filter another grad student created and we tested on the imagery data - the Latimer filter).  All the data was on magnetic tape, like the big old reel-to-reel machines you see in the movies.  We had a wall filled with several of those in a separate climate controlled clean room.

 

At home I had an 8088 PC with CGA graphics (three color graphics, wow!) and connected to the University via a 300 baud modem.  Watching the document download word-by-word slowly was painful.

 

Heh....in Graduate Statistics class, we were still programming with punched cards.

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I learned Remote Sensing using LANDSAT and SPOT imagery when I was studying for my physics major with a minor in meteorology. At the Meteorology lab they still have some of those old magentics saves as a memento, but all their info was already ported to CDs and DVSs (a few years ago, I hope they have now moved to other storage options, lol).

I had to learn to create filters, and to interpret land and meteorological findings under different filters, heh.

What did you majored / mastered in, Winni?

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