New Laptop

[Storeman]

Not going there. I still find new things on OSX and I've got the whole new experience with W10 to 'look forward to' in the next few weeks.

Recently started using windows 10 Enterprise. Nothing too nasty, once I'd tinkered under the hood to reign in MS spying telemetry. It's running on a core i7 9700f with 16GB ram and a GTX 1060 6Gb graphics card. It's not bad really. Once you tame the telemetry, although you cant turn it off altogether.

 

[Cowabunga]

Recently started using windows 10 Enterprise. Nothing too nasty, once I'd tinkered under the hood to reign in MS spying telemetry. It's running on a core i7 9700f with 16GB ram and a GTX 1060 6Gb graphics card. It's not bad really. Once you tame the telemetry, although you cant turn it off altogether.

Telemetry? WTF is that about? Sounds like something Google has or Apple for 'find my friends' type of thing. I found this kind of thing quite useful on my phone when travelling to new areas in the car in a loose convoy with others. If I stopped at a pub for a break, the following cars could simply navigate, using their phones, to the same place. Obviously this is not switched on by default.


I've specified W10 Pro as a second operating system on the new desktop computer. May decide to have it in its own partition or in a virtual machine so that I can use it from within OSX.
Which do you or anyone else favour and why? This machine I'm on now, a 2011 iMac 21", has W7 in its own partition, called Bootcamp, which requires a computer re-start to access it or toggle back and forth to OSX, which can be a nuisance.

I've specified the new machine with Core i9 that turbo-boosts to 5GHz and has 8 cores with multithreading, with 64Gb RAM. 2TB of SSD storage plus I've already got a Thunderbolt3 external 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe M.2 drive for transfers and eventually backups. This is all to make sure that it remains relevant for the next ten years, hopefully.
Since I have never dabbled in gaming, I've choses the base GPU for this model computer of AMD Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB not the £450 extra Vega 48. The 580X is just about exactly comparable to the GeForce GTX 1060 I believe.

By my side here I have my old Compaq Presario P-something laptop which has 2GB RAM in all. It works but its dreadfully slow. Every important document and file on it was copied to this iMac back in 2012, but this Mac is still current, still reasonably fast and seldom has a hickup now that I've installed 12GB RAM to it. Although it hasn't the latest Catalina operating system, I'm still getting security updates now and again for the installed High Sierra OS, which is the latest compatible and I've never found it wanting.

I have a good reason to upgrade though. The new machine is not only more powerful with more storage that this one, but it has a 27" 5K screen that will all make use of the new 4G broadband facility that will arrive just after it and will be about 25 times faster than my current copper wire BT broadband.

Besides which I'm pee'd off with the lockdown now and need some new distraction, especially since the car has gone and there's no place to go with the remaining car. My wife is also now getting cabin-fever but she is into the flowers around the house now [cheaper than technology!]

 

[fermerboy]

Telemetry? WTF is that about? Sounds like something Google has or Apple for 'find my friends' type of thing. I found this kind of thing quite useful on my phone when travelling to new areas in the car in a loose convoy with others. If I stopped at a pub for a break, the following cars could simply navigate, using their phones, to the same place. Obviously this is not switched on by default.


I've specified W10 Pro as a second operating system. May decide to have it in its own partition or in a virtual machine so that I can use it from within OSX.
Which do you or anyone else favour and why? This machine I'm on now has W7 in its own partition, called Bootcamp, which requires a computer re-start to access it or toggle back and forth to OSX, which can be a nuisance.

I've specified the new machine with Core i9 that turbo-boosts to 5GHz and has 8 cores with multithreading, with 64Gb RAM. 2TB of SSD storage plus I've already got a Thunderbolt3 external 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe M.2 drive for transfers and eventually backups. This is all to make sure that it remains relevant for the next ten years, hopefully.
Since I have never dabbled in gaming, I've choses the base GPU of AMD Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB not the £450 extra Vega 48.

By my side here I have my old Compaq Presario P-something laptop which has 2GB RAM in all. It works but its dreadfully slow. Every important document and file on it was copied to this iMac back in 2012, but this Mac is still current, still reasonably fast and seldom fails not that I've installed 12GB RAM to it. Although it hasn't the latest Catalina operating system, I'm still getting security updates now and again for the installed High Sierra OS, which is the latest compatible and I've never found it wanting.

I have a good reason to upgrade though. The new machine is not only more powerful with more storage that this one, but it has a 27" 5K screen that will all make use of the new 4G broadband facility that will arrive just after it and will be about 25 times faster than my current copper wire BT broadband.

Besides which I'm pee'd off with the lockdown now and need some new distraction, especially since the car has gone and there's no place to go with the remaining car. My wife is also now getting cabin-fever but she is into the flowers around the house now [cheaper than technology!]

Thats a serious specced up machine there, should be good for a long time. I don't think computers are moving forward so fast nowadays either which helps.

I was a longtime fan of WinXP it worked and did me well until recently when I upgraded to a new desktop, I have also had a lot of time on Win 7 and really liked it, worked well. I bought the new PC with no operating system and purchased a key for Win 10 pro off Ebay for £5, one download later, install and it works perfect. I actually like Win 10 now that I have had it for a few months, seriously different to start with but I've come to like it, its been bang on reliable, don't think this PC has been off for 3-4 months now. Think I will up the ram to 16gb, I have a drone and it would help the video editing a bit.

I just don't see the advantage of OSX if you have to have Windows for a particular job/product, and switch back and fore. If you can get OSX to do everything then fair enough.
I've almost no experiance of Apple computers, but plenty sorting out Ipads and Iphones for others and I just can't get on with IOS, it drives me nuts, nothing is logical to my brain, and the Apple restrictions on stuff are just a pain. As a product they are nice, tactile and give the user a nice experiance which is why they do so well, though I do think they have lost the edge in recent years.

Quite possibly I've had Android phones and pads too long and am too old to adapt. It wouldn't be the end of the world to me to have a Iphone but most definitely not by choice.

I purchased the new PC with a 27" iiyama Gaming spec monitor and its fantastic, I have the old 19" plugged in too, purely because I had it, and its soon to be replaced with another 27" to make a pair. Would seriously recommend getting two monitors, transforms computing!

As for your broadband I was on 0.48mbps down the copper wire, then I got 4G EE mobile broadband that averages between 25-35mpbs, if you get anything over 10mbps boy are you in for a treat!!!!! The BT guy got it up to near 5 but it varies terribly depending if all the kids in the exchange area are on youtube/iplayer/tiktok/snapchat/facetime/etc. The 4g drops sometimes but I suspect the router. Vodafone are on 4g here now too, so they might be an option at renewal.

The new laptop has been purchased, so will see what its like when it arrives, hopefully Tues or Wed. Report back then.

Which car has gone??

 

[Cowabunga]

Thats a serious specced up machine there, should be good for a long time. I don't think computers are moving forward so fast nowadays either which helps.

I was a longtime fan of WinXP it worked and did me well until recently when I upgraded to a new desktop, I have also had a lot of time on Win 7 and really liked it, worked well. I bought the new PC with no operating system and purchased a key for Win 10 pro off Ebay for £5, one download later, install and it works perfect. I actually like Win 10 now that I have had it for a few months, seriously different to start with but I've come to like it, its been bang on reliable, don't think this PC has been off for 3-4 months now. Think I will up the ram to 16gb, I have a drone and it would help the video editing a bit.

I just don't see the advantage of OSX if you have to have Windows for a particular job/product, and switch back and fore. If you can get OSX to do everything then fair enough.
I've almost no experiance of Apple computers, but plenty sorting out Ipads and Iphones for others and I just can't get on with IOS, it drives me nuts, nothing is logical to my brain, and the Apple restrictions on stuff are just a pain. As a product they are nice, tactile and give the user a nice experiance which is why they do so well, though I do think they have lost the edge in recent years.

Quite possibly I've had Android phones and pads too long and am too old to adapt. It wouldn't be the end of the world to me to have a Iphone but most definitely not by choice.

I purchased the new PC with a 27" iiyama Gaming spec monitor and its fantastic, I have the old 19" plugged in too, purely because I had it, and its soon to be replaced with another 27" to make a pair. Would seriously recommend getting two monitors, transforms computing!

As for your broadband I was on 0.48mbps down the copper wire, then I got 4G EE mobile broadband that averages between 25-35mpbs, if you get anything over 10mbps boy are you in for a treat!!!!! The BT guy got it up to near 5 but it varies terribly depending if all the kids in the exchange area are on youtube/iplayer/tiktok/snapchat/facetime/etc. The 4g drops sometimes but I suspect the router. Vodafone are on 4g here now too, so they might be an option at renewal.

The new laptop has been purchased, so will see what its like when it arrives, hopefully Tues or Wed. Report back then.

Which car has gone??

I'm looking forward to both the new 'puter and the broadband 4G to go with it. One thing that has just occurred to me from reading your post, is that the best signal I get currently is from the New Quay mast, and NQ is currently almost deserted of the many thousands of tourists and mobile home owners that might be using the bandwidth if things were normal. I wonder whether I would be better pointing the aerial at another mast out in the countryside which is likely to be more consistent but only gives 35Mbps compared to 55Mbps from NQ?

I hardly ever use Windows these days but it will be there for whatever I might need it for and I like keeping abreast of as much of the latest technology as is practical, just for the heck of it.

My daughter has two monitors at her work but her mother will not stand it here, unless I use the utmost stealth. I could use this current iMac as a second monitor and will indeed have both side by side until a full migration is completed. It could well be that this will take MUCH longer than my initial estimate ?

The Volvo XC90 had gone. End of lease and I had intended changing it for a new Defender, but decided against that and to buy the Volvo out. Then came the virus and I decided just before the end of March that £28k to buy the Volvo out and with nowhere to go, was really neither sensible or affordable in the current climate. So away it went and it probably will not be replaced until at least this time next year. More likely to change the C-RV at that time perhaps; we'll see how we get on with one car less over the next 12 months. Since my wife has retired from her job which had a 40 mile round trip commute every day, I think it will be perfectly fine and maybe, when we all retire fully, another nice new car may be warranted as a swansong.

 

[Storeman]

Telemetry? WTF is that about? Sounds like something Google has or Apple for 'find my friends' type of thing. I found this kind of thing quite useful on my phone when travelling to new areas in the car in a loose convoy with others. If I stopped at a pub for a break, the following cars could simply navigate, using their phones, to the same place. Obviously this is not switched on by default.


I've specified W10 Pro as a second operating system on the new desktop computer. May decide to have it in its own partition or in a virtual machine so that I can use it from within OSX.
Which do you or anyone else favour and why? This machine I'm on now, a 2011 iMac 21", has W7 in its own partition, called Bootcamp, which requires a computer re-start to access it or toggle back and forth to OSX, which can be a nuisance.

I've specified the new machine with Core i9 that turbo-boosts to 5GHz and has 8 cores with multithreading, with 64Gb RAM. 2TB of SSD storage plus I've already got a Thunderbolt3 external 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe M.2 drive for transfers and eventually backups. This is all to make sure that it remains relevant for the next ten years, hopefully.
Since I have never dabbled in gaming, I've choses the base GPU for this model computer of AMD Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB not the £450 extra Vega 48. The 580X is just about exactly comparable to the GeForce GTX 1060 I believe.

By my side here I have my old Compaq Presario P-something laptop which has 2GB RAM in all. It works but its dreadfully slow. Every important document and file on it was copied to this iMac back in 2012, but this Mac is still current, still reasonably fast and seldom has a hickup now that I've installed 12GB RAM to it. Although it hasn't the latest Catalina operating system, I'm still getting security updates now and again for the installed High Sierra OS, which is the latest compatible and I've never found it wanting.

I have a good reason to upgrade though. The new machine is not only more powerful with more storage that this one, but it has a 27" 5K screen that will all make use of the new 4G broadband facility that will arrive just after it and will be about 25 times faster than my current copper wire BT broadband.

Besides which I'm pee'd off with the lockdown now and need some new distraction, especially since the car has gone and there's no place to go with the remaining car. My wife is also now getting cabin-fever but she is into the flowers around the house now [cheaper than technology!]

That's a very nice spec machine. Should certainly be capable for many years to come.
The windows 10 telemetry is something that put me off 10 for a while. I discovered the only version that you can all but stop it is the Enterprise version, so I went for that. The telemetry sends back to Microsoft everything you do. Every document or photo or piece of music, every website you visit and everything you type, Microsoft gets a copy and stores it.
I've set my Win 10 enterprise to only report back system diagnostics and it only does that when I say.
Health to enjoy your new set up.

 

[fermerboy]

I'm looking forward to both the new 'puter and the broadband 4G to go with it. One thing that has just occurred to me from reading your post, is that the best signal I get currently is from the New Quay mast, and NQ is currently almost deserted of the many thousands of tourists and mobile home owners that might be using the bandwidth if things were normal. I wonder whether I would be better pointing the aerial at another mast out in the countryside which is likely to be more consistent but only gives 35Mbps compared to 55Mbps from NQ?

I hardly ever use Windows these days but it will be there for whatever I might need it for and I like keeping abreast of as much of the latest technology as is practical, just for the heck of it.

My daughter has two monitors at her work but her mother will not stand it here, unless I use the utmost stealth. I could use this current iMac as a second monitor and will indeed have both side by side until a full migration is completed. It could well be that this will take MUCH longer than my initial estimate ?

The Volvo XC90 had gone. End of lease and I had intended changing it for a new Defender, but decided against that and to buy the Volvo out. Then came the virus and I decided just before the end of March that £28k to buy the Volvo out and with nowhere to go, was really neither sensible or affordable in the current climate. So away it went and it probably will not be replaced until at least this time next year. More likely to change the C-RV at that time perhaps; we'll see how we get on with one car less over the next 12 months. Since my wife has retired from her job which had a 40 mile round trip commute every day, I think it will be perfectly fine and maybe, when we all retire fully, another nice new car may be warranted as a swansong.

I do find that the 4g broadband fluctuates in speed quite a bit, we are 3miles from a 4000 population town and on the side of a main road so there is quite a demand at times. I have done tests from over 60mbps down to under 10, but cant say if its signal or demand that affects it.
I have a Vodafone mast in my yard which is now 4g and gives me over 70mbps on my phone, it wasn't enabled when I took out the contract with EE but looks to be the best option now.
In your case 53 or35 is no hardship either way, you can always turn the antenna round later if its a problem.

 

[___\0/___]

Do you have children that will be going back to school too? My wifes a primary school teacher.

Not sure what we are going to do if the days our children are at school doesn't match the days she is teaching. We are normally at harvest in August when they go back so I won't manage.

Just thought I would update after we had been told hubs would be available for teachers children letters out today say this is no longer available. We find out next week when the kids are in but we are basically now in the same situation as you.

 

[fermerboy]

Just thought I would update after we had been told hubs would be available for teachers children letters out today say this is no longer available. We find out next week when the kids are in but we are basically now in the same situation as you.

Do you have any other options for childcare?
Are yours getting in next week? Nothing happening in school for children till 12th Aug here.

We are in a different council from Chae 1 in that we are in Moray, and so far teachers children are getting hub access if the spouse is also a key worker, plenty seem to be taking the pee already from what I hear though.

We have no idea what days our two are going to be in yet, or how many days and even how long days. My wife works in a different school and she doesn't know what days she is going to have to work yet either.
It honestly is a massive shambles round here.
She says I will have to take them if need be but its not that simple sometimes. HSE will likely be down on you like a ton of bricks if I'm seen with a 9yr old in a tractor.

 

[fermerboy]

On topic for a moment, quick update on this,

I bought her this new laptop from here,

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/len...inch-windows-10-laptop-20sm002puk/version.asp

Arrived 2 days later, when they said and so far I'm pleased with it.

Could have got a cheaper one but reviews kept saying plasticky etc, this ones got a aluminium skin so feels better.
I haven't really used it but Mrs Fb says its got a very nice to use keyboard, and very good speakers, with a good clear screen.
Wasnt too bad for junk, uninstalled a few things, straight away when I set it up.
Seems fast, just beat my well spaced I5 desktop in a boot race from cold(I know, very sad) which given the spec it should do.
Fingers crossed it stands up to "family life" !!

 

[___\0/___]

Do you have any other options for childcare?
Are yours getting in next week? Nothing happening in school for children till 12th Aug here.

We are in a different council from Chae 1 in that we are in Moray, and so far teachers children are getting hub access if the spouse is also a key worker, plenty seem to be taking the pee already from what I hear though.

We have no idea what days our two are going to be in yet, or how many days and even how long days. My wife works in a different school and she doesn't know what days she is going to have to work yet either.
It honestly is a massive shambles round here.
She says I will have to take them if need be but its not that simple sometimes. HSE will likely be down on you like a ton of bricks if I'm seen with a 9yr old in a tractor.

Short term I could manage but definitely not long term solution. Not getting kids in till August aswell but everyone either found out today or will the beginning of next week what days they will be in. Not sure what happened about hubs teachers have access at the moment and up until yesterday had access when they went back but that has now been pulled.

Nice laptop ?

 

[Cowabunga]

On topic for a moment, quick update on this,

I bought her this new laptop from here,

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/len...inch-windows-10-laptop-20sm002puk/version.asp

Arrived 2 days later, when they said and so far I'm pleased with it.

Could have got a cheaper one but reviews kept saying plasticky etc, this ones got a aluminium skin so feels better.
I haven't really used it but Mrs Fb says its got a very nice to use keyboard, and very good speakers, with a good clear screen.
Wasnt too bad for junk, uninstalled a few things, straight away when I set it up.
Seems fast, just beat my well spaced I5 desktop in a boot race from cold(I know, very sad) which given the spec it should do.
Fingers crossed it stands up to "family life" !!

That is what is called an Ultrabook. Light and thin and using the very latest tenth generation four core processor with hyperthreading. Only thing I’d improve on it is to add another 8GB ram which will cost about £25 if it has an empty slot, or about £45 if not. Two minutes to slot it in the back of the machine. This will do the rest of it justice, because it is a very fast and capable unit.
Google ‘ddr4 2666’ for prices and there is usually a door in the back of the unit to check if you have a spare slot and do the business.

 

[fermerboy]

That is what is called an Ultrabook. Light and thin and using the very latest tenth generation four core processor with hyperthreading. Only thing I’d improve on it is to add another 8GB ram which will cost about £25 if it has an empty slot, or about £45 if not. Two minutes to slot it in the back of the machine. This will do the rest of it justice, because it is a very fast and capable unit.
Google ‘ddr4 2666’ for prices and there is usually a door in the back of the unit to check if you have a spare slot and do the business.

Did consider adding more Ram but to be honest its overkill for the job its doing as is, most machines here end up getting an ram upgrade eventually.

My desktop is the same spec with an I5 9th gen chip and I work it a lot harder no real problems, but it sometimes could benefit from more ram.
Her old laptop is an I3 with 4gb I think, and will be getting a restore to factory spec, more ram and a new keyboard, after I get everything off of it. So might buy for the 3 of them at the same time.
Have to wait till after we get silage done though.
You got your new computer yet?

 

[Cowabunga]

You got your new computer yet?

Ha! To cut a long story short my order went in to Apple three days too late for current production. So it looks like I'll be getting one of the new iMac's to be launched on Monday evening. It means a bit more delay but it will probably be worth it, although I did order specifically to get the current [2019] model, because I like it and the design is rather iconic, having looked the same for a good decade now.