PC Tech Thread

Maybe DiskSpaceMonitor
https://www.diskspacemonitor.com/
$20, trial version available

Or IPSentry
https://secure.rgeinc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=330&idcategory=
$30 for Lite version

Just going through some old phone photos and found this pic of an SSD that I took in a meeting with Huawei in 2015. Was a pre-release prototype at the time.

Can consumers buy 32TB SSDs yet? Makes me wonder if it was dummy/fake.

1 Attachment

What happens when you scan the QR code?

Not much.

Just confirmed that they are real, just enterprise only.

You could probably get an off-the-shelf Samsung 16TB drive for your data centre at that time.

SAS like the one you show.

Advice needed please:

Mrs sacred has a laptop, 6 yr old toshiba satelite c660-10d

It was a budget buy, £350.

Has been fine but now very slow, friezes for ages when updating.

Its running windows 10.

I was going to get an ssd installed by a forumer a while back and never followed it up.

Her requirements for a laptop are:
Decent size screen (for a laptop)
Proper keyboard
Ability to run microsoft office/ word as she mostly does work stuff on it, writing reports and such
Bit of internet
Watch films

Am i best off sorting out the ssd or selling the old one for a couple of quid and buying a new budget laptop.
If the latter what are some decent options.

Im fed up with seeing her frustrated when it friezes and delays her work.

Neither of us is computer savvy particularly. I can find my way around android and mac but i find windows baffling.

Thanks!

6 years for a budget laptop is probably not worth doing up.

I’d look for Dell official refurbished laptops. They have an outlet on eBay. I don’t personally have experience with them but apparently their after sale service is the same as their brand new units.

By the way, slightly off topic? Does she have to pay for MS office? If so, stop now! I haven’t had to use MS Office for years and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me! I don’t even have to save my stuff anymore by using Google Doc, Google Sheet and export my files as whatever I need - .docx, .pdf etc etc.

Just continue to use the old laptop by putting Linux on it--LibreOffice will cater for all her MS Office compatibility needs. There are plenty of very lightweight Linux versions that will run on very old hardware and that will allow her to do everything in your list. It's really not too hard to do it yourself, but if you'd be happy to pay a small fee I know someone who specialises in that sort of thing and it would be a small job for him to sort it out. /spam

Dell outlet

https://m.dell.com/h5/m/uk/r/outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh&brandid=7&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7UddRxCw%2fuCspIZygVoNi4nRu793KkBdlU%2fQN5QScuPpZFhXMVns5tzW5FxRigSAc64WxH27C%2fkJtqLjKj47lgIuUjOHQKWH7jbdurLxfTTWkxCvcD2YsDaAsTXUZ5Y2c1gOfDf5fnmUp9%2bMf%2bkOtnnlAyljdMZ1RcQ1DwWtKD843c%2bKwhomDUIU3x6gQ67r0zbQTFkjPeLYHDx2W%2bpEIQrDPzd6mxt4dFuCREediYb4x10rzrRpN109D9DCdI7Z2yqX%2b7Da41Fc38OUZ5jwncwvI%3d

Get an SSD to start with.
https://www.mymemory.co.uk/crucial-240gb-bx500-internal-2-5-sata-ssd-drive-540mb-s.html
with code MM16

£24 for 240GB is worth taking a punt to see if it fixes things.

Then, if that doesn't work either get something from Dell Outlet (I've bought from there before, they're great. The 'Scratch and Dent' stuff you'd be hard pressed to find the scratch)

Or just get an iPad with a keyboard. It does all the things you need and you can get the prev gen ones for about £220 which will be more than fast enough.

Fuck that's cheap. I paid a similar amount for 120gb not all that long ago.

@sacredhart - personally I'd go with duncs SSD suggestion - even if it doesn't reconcile it, the cost is low enough to make it worth trying and you can use it as a external HD for backups.

On the Linux suggestion... my 2p if this is her laptop then you'd be surprised by how well it runs on a semi-light Linux OS. However, if work is the main function then LibreOffice may not be great. Excel for e.g. is superior to Calc, and although it only matters if you're using it to an advanced level (you can still do things like pivots and link to online data, etc.) collaborative stuff with a lot of formatting often doesn't play well. Personally I found Writer (Word equivalent) the biggest issue. If you're writing a doc for yourself that you'll print or print to PDF, it's fine. But collaborative stuff with formatting when others are using MS Word doesn't seem to work that well.

All that said, the great thing is you can try it easily for free by using a live version. This will also tell you whether the laptop is totally fucked and whether Linux would help. So I would really recommend at least trying a live version.

Personally, contrary to most of the advice on here, I'd probably give up on it.

I've got a few old laptops running linux and they're fine but not great. Reasonable enough for web browsing and the like but often have a few annoying issues (some software/website that's required doesn't work, some missing driver, etc). I'd keep it if it was just a for a bit of light web browsing but not for work as well.

On top of that, MS Office is still by far the industry leader. I'd only contemplate using google docs, Libre Office, etc if the only documents I'm working on were entirely mine from start to finish. Attempting to use MS Office files nearly always throws up some formatting issues, formula incompatibilities, macro issues, etc. If you're using it for work then life is just too short for pissing around like that.

The Dell Outlet store is good (there's often discounts on there too) but personally, unless battery life was important, I'd look at something second hand. Something like this
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-X250-Core-i5-5200U-8GB-Ram-240GB-SSD-Windows-10-Webcam-Laptop/233240665373 or this
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-Yoga-12-Core-i5-5300U-8GB-Ram-180GB-SSD-Touchscreen-Laptop/323833487962 would outperform a budget laptop twice the price. I've used that ebay seller a fair few times and they're reliable.

On top of that, MS Office is still by far the industry leader

I read an article recently that said that Google Apps had twice the market share of Microsoft Office.

Google Apps

A lot of the startups we've shared work with seem to almost exclusively use Google Apps. But outside that Office does seem to dominate.

Im fed up with seeing her frustrated when it friezes and delays her work.

Neither of us is computer savvy particularly. I can find my way around android and mac but i find windows baffling.

A Chromebook would be a good option here too. More versatile than an iPod with a laptop.

Absolutely agree with @ExTra on MS Office - Google Apps will do everything she needs.

I've got an interview on Thursday with a household name institution you'd probably think would be quite fuddy duddy: they use Google Apps.

I had to do some fancy data visualization stuff with Illustrator a while back and I actually found Google Sheet much better than Excel. It did take me a little while to get used to where the options are and I had to Google it, but it was much better.

I was going to suggest a Chromebook too, but I have found the cheap Chromebooks are just cheap and if you are going for a top end one, isn't it better to go for a budget laptop? (My experience with Chromebooks is very limited)

I'm surprised by that. I go to a lot of different companies and I've never come across anyone not using MS Office.

I guess I'm mainly dealing with finance people though, there could be hundreds of other employees without the same requirements using Google Apps.

Or I wonder if they're counting the free version of google docs. I imagine a lot of people have used that, particularly as it comes pre-installed on Android, but not necessarily for much.

A cheap Chromebook is definitely better than a cheap Windows 10 laptop in terms of speed and longevity.

You do need to consider what version of office you need though.

Or I wonder if they're counting the free version of google docs.

Maybe. But I wouldn't be surprised if its not, as the Google business package is extremely competitive - especially as there's a good chance you're already going to be using a Google account for the email and web.

SSD and see what the ram is.

I'd also reinstall the software as win10, like any win set up gets quite slow over time.

I think it’s because MS Office comes free with Outlook 365, we have it and we can have free copies for our own computers too...

It doesn't normally, other than the web apps, but academic versions may well be different.

Probably, our students can also have 3 copies each for as long as they are with us. It’s a shame Adobe doesn’t offer something similar to our students...