Th3 Core
Why We Are Here => Hardware & Technology => Topic started by: Brad on August 24, 2018, 02:53:23 PM
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Because, my Linux laptop locked me out suddenly and went command line. Support and I are sudo-ing trying to get it back running. My Macbook has become a prima donna about charging. I suspect it is the magnetic coupling on the charger which will be way overpriced to replace.
In the meantime I need a reliable laptop. I can no longer ignore the fact that I can buy two Windows laptops for the price of one Macbook or built for Linux machine, so I'm trying WIndows 10.
The last time I seriously used Windows was WinME (which turned me into a Mac user) so any advise or tips for a Win10 newbie would be welcome.
I'm already planning on uninstalling bloatware as much as I can.
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I'm not having any problems with Windows. I use win 7 and 10.
Just get as much RAM as the device can use and you're good to go.
Oh and get a Targus replacement cord. They come extra long. I buy one for every laptop in the house. Really useful for when the plug is far away or in the next café table over.
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Thanks MB.
I'm hoping 8 GB is enough RAM.
Heh, Rooftop told me to "kill Cortana as quickly as you can" ;D
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I'm not having any trouble with W10, either. But I spent time killing everything "MS warm & fuzzy" --particularly Cortana.
One minor nuisance, though, is how Win updates hog bandwidth. You can change the allocation in settings. Most of my other tweaks were just finding old stand-bys like Control Panel and putting tiles for them on the Start Page.
Oh yeah, kill all those cute 'active' tiles. Also, you don't have to boot to the start page, you can change that to boot to desktop. Finally, right click the Win Icon in the tray and get familiar with that --almost everything you need.
>ram
I'm running 4gb on the Lenovo U310. It's OK. 8gb should be fine.
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Thanks RC.
My plan:
1. Kill Cortana.
2. Unistall whatever anti virus trial they have.
3. Install my own anti virus. Install free anti-ransomware.
4. Uninstall all the "MS warm & fuzzy" stuff plus Chrome if there.
5. Install my browsers.
6. Figure out what works for email.
7. Rest of RC's list
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In the mean time you could just install a new version of Linux on your current laptop. I've liked Lubuntu, it runs well on Laptops and is easy on ram.
https://lubuntu.net/
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MAX OUT your RAM
>>Figure out what works for email.
I'm using MailBird after many issues with Outlook
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>>new version
Thanks LM. Yeah that is my backup plan. And that may happen even if support and I get it running again. I'm not real happy with System 76's Pop OS.
>>Mailbird
Thank you Mr. Mackin! You saved me time this morning, since I was going to research free email programs for Win. I had caught wind that people were having issues with Outlook.
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I'm seeing daylight.
Got rid of most bloatware. Trying to decide what to do with MS Office.
CHrome gone.
Tiles gone.
Cortana shut up.
AVG free installed.
Cyberreason (anti ransomware free) installed.
Mailbird installed.
Vivaldi installed. (Can't uninstall Edge and it didn't like not being the default browser.)
SO far Win10 isn't half bad. Laptop is okay too. Nice screen.
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MAX OUT your RAM
My laptop is now maybe seven years old, running Windows 8.4. I was about to get a new one, because it was bogging down a lot and getting frustrating to use. Then bumped from 8GB of RAM to 16GB and now sunbeams and flowers and stars and unicorns dance around my computer. Well, it's fast anyway. I like to have a lot of apps open and a lot of browser tabs. Right now, I'm using 53% of memory - so more than the 8GB I used to have. It looks like Chrome is responsible for almost 2GB of that all by itself. Firefox is closed right now, but it's not better. Add in Photoshop, Slack (currently sucking up half a GB and doing nothing) and other memory hogs and that 8GB is gone fast and Windows virtual memory seems crazy slow. Everything grinds to a halt.
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Got it. Good advice. I'm sure I'll need more memory at some point. Vivaldi uses Chromium so it will be a hog. Since I can't uninstall Edge I'll use it as my backup browser for now, should I need it. My experience has been that both Norton and McAfee were resource hogs so uninstalling McAfee trial was good. Hopefully AVG free is leaner.
My day to day use is generally browser and email so I'm hoping to get by.
It's probably good that I have a Win computer. There are some small specialized programs I could use that only come in Win so now I can get them.
Thanks!
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Turn on Widows Defender if it didn't come on as default. It's very good.
>Office
I'm using LibreOffice.
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>Defender
I like the way they set up Defender: It gets out of the way if you have a third party AV, but it automatically activates if your AV is disabled or removed. Slick.
I installed AVG free anti-virus. Also installed Cyberreason Anti Ransomware. I know nothing about it except PC Mag recommended it and it's free. It was their second choice on antiransomware but the #1 has switched from free to pay so I went with #2.
>Office
I found out the MS Office was a trial so uninstalled. WPS office free also came installed, which I think I have on my phone so I'll try that.
This morning I discovered Candy Crush was being reinstalled after I nuked it yesterday. The sneaks. What's the point of uninstalling something and then have them slip it back on? I turned off automatic updates from the MS Store. The rats.
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Turn on Widows Defender
Yes, the widows and orphans need defenders. Couldn't resist.
More seriously, yes, AV software was a major pain point for me. I switched to Windows Defender many years ago. I don't surf porn and gambling sites and am (usually) smart enough to not open attachments I'm not expecting, but I'm otherwise a pretty careless web user (sorry Bill). And in all the years of using Windows Defender, nothing has gotten through and my machine runs well.
It may be that the others have solved some of the resource issues, but they have lost me forever.
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>Turn on Widows Defender if it didn't come on as default. It's very good.
I cannot stand something that just runs when it wants to. Any time I am in dire need of CPU cycles, right now, and it ain't happening, that #(%^&(*#&$ing thing is hogging everything and there is no stopping it.
I get along with win10 as long as I remember to turn that and auto updates off, plus ofc cortana.
For a nice, new and inexpensive linux book, check out a chromebook pro which has intel cpu so you can load linux. I just recently bought the plus which is basically the same except for cpu and love it for general usage though the keyboard is a bit cramped.
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>cortana
Cortana is Clippy the MSWord paperclip's lovechild. 8)
AVG (free) is working for me and not taking up too much RAM.
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>AVG
Do a search on AVG. I *vaguely* recall some sort of security or tracking problem with them a couple of years ago.
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I nam sure this was an RC recommendation:
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10/update
I use it on every new win 10 computer.
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On all Win10 machines I've always put Malwarebytes on them. Works really well and the machines are still nippy running it.
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Update:
While it was running okay on 8GB RAM, I took Mr. Mackin's advice and added more for a total of 16GB. Slight increase in speed but you would barely notice, but everything is now somehow smoother which I like.
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What browser did you end up using? Does it support *Monkey-flavored userscripts?
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>browser
Vivaldi for daily stuff. But I have a bunch of others installed including FF and Seamonkey (because it still has a free version of Netscape Composer!).
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Put Greasemonkey on FF and we'll see if it'll run my filter script on NewsNow
<added>
Caution! Rabbit hole. hhh
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Put Greasemonkey on FF and we'll see if it'll run my filter script on NewsNow
<added>
Caution! Rabbit hole. hhh
Done. Greasemonkey installed.
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Jabbarnet has crept into W10, maybe earlier versions. You can now dictate into a text field. Put cursor in field, Win key + H. Worked on my crap laptop just now with a better-than-expected accuracy.
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I'm not sure if this applies to dictation but when I was setting up this Win 10 laptop for the first time, Windows was prompting me to download the Windows Launcher for Android so I could seamlessly share files, calendar and Cortana more between my Android phone and my laptop.
They didn't say that the Win Launcher would change the entire look and feel of Android, so someone with less knowledge would get a shock when they find their phone transformed. MS is trying to backdoor it's way onto Android.
I played with the MS Launcher about a year ago. It actually is not half bad and I might be tempted if I was a businessman. But Cortana is limited compared to Google Assistant.
I have both turned off.
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if I was a businessman.
:-)
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MAX OUT your RAM
>>Figure out what works for email.
I'm using MailBird after many issues with Outlook
I'm so sick of Outlook, will try Mailbird, still to try pegasus and eudora which were two favourites of mine back in the 90s.
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>mailbird
Is this better than thunderbird?
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>mailbird
Is this better than thunderbird?
The paid version is great, if you want to pay. The free version only lets you have one account.
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Mailbird installer froze and crashed on first install.
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It didn't crash, it just took about 7 minutes to end the install, while giving me a 'continue' button that ignored me.
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>mailbird
Is this better than thunderbird?
The paid version is great, if you want to pay. The free version only lets you have one account.
Well that's kind of ridiculous. I don't mind paying, but trying it out will require usage of more than one account.
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>mailbird
Is this better than thunderbird?
The paid version is great, if you want to pay. The free version only lets you have one account.
The trial allows use of multiple accounts i think, not tried it yet but the intro screen implied that.
Well that's kind of ridiculous. I don't mind paying, but trying it out will require usage of more than one account.
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The trial is for multiple accounts and it worked fine for me. Much better than Thunderbird or Mail did.
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Cool, I'll check it out. tbird gets flakey with a few accounts with lots of mail.
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Just went to set it up and it tells my my trial license has expired, i installed it yesterday!
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I bought it, only a tenner for a year.
Fast interface, would be good if you could choose which accounts were included in the unified inbox. Has the basic functionality i need.
Doesn't take 2 minutes to mark an email as read when you click on it like Outlook 2016 does (even when Outlook is set to mark as read within 2 seconds).
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You can choose which accounts are included in unified.
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It's having trouble with SMTP, hanging on sending with no error.