Buying a new computer

[AndrueC]

I have a love/hate relationship with Apple. Their hardware is good and most of what I've used over the years from a technical perspective has been well written and well documented. For the most part I'd say they are well run and very effective company.

 

But..

 

Their stuff is expensive and you're always playing in a walled garden. Try and step outside of it woe-betide you.

 

What really irks me is that I think it's their walled garden approach that - through allowing high pricing - makes their ecosystem work. In the Windows ecosystem everyone has to struggle to persuade users to part with cash and fight other companies even to get a look-in. It makes for cheaper hard- and soft- ware but the quality is lower.

 

So I think my view is that I hate Apple because they are doing what has to be done to succeed :)

 

Also I loathe and detest iTunes with a passion that exceeds my ability to adequately express.

Edited February 3, 2023 by AndrueC

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Chris116 said:

Does anyone who uses both systems give me any guidance? Thanks in advance.

 

At home I have a Macbook Air. I used to keep a Windows machine for gaming but I gave that away.

At work I write stuff for Windows & Unix.

 

Which is best?

Who cares? They're all much of a muchness and all the vein throbbing histrionics in thread about this, that or the other is silly. Pick the one you like.

 

Personally I find the Apple M-based machines technically better than anything that comes with Windows on it right now.

 

The only thing I really hate is AIX because it should be dead and buried but customers still use it.

[MJI]

If you are not tied to Windows and can find the software you want to run I would recommend Linux Mint.

 

For gaming I use something else, various forks of BSD on dedicated hardware.

[Hroth]

55 minutes ago, Chris116 said:

Then again how easy is it going to be learning Windows 11?

 

The main problem with Win 11 is that Microsoft have tried to make how you access settings look the same as if you're using an Android phone/tablet, down to clicking on a stupid cog icon. If you're happy with settings under Win 10, then you won't feel too lost.

 

The main thing is you have to spend time telling things like Edge, OneDrive and Office 365 to go away, or at least stop bothering you.  🤪

 

[Trevellan]

1 hour ago, Chris116 said:

Does anyone who uses both systems give me any guidance? Thanks in advance.

 

I  have an all-in-one Windows desktop PC which I use for most daily purposes. It runs Windows 10, which in my experience is by far the worst iteration to date. I've lost hours of productivity through failed updates and other frustrations. It's bloated and greedy for system resources. In fact, it's rather like having a colleague who is constantly attention-seeking.

 

In addition I produce a quarterly magazine on a 20-year-old Mac G5, which easily out-performs the much newer Windows PC. However, that is likely to be replaced by a refurbished iMac at some point this year. My laptop is also a Mac.

 

Some people try to view Mac vs Windows in the same vein as Betamax vs VHS, but it's not that simple. I can do almost everything on my MacBook that I can on the Windows PC, with some notable exceptions. Ultimately, it's down to your particular needs and what system suits them best. Good luck!

[tigerburnie]

I've never used Apple products, I have plenty of the frustrations with MS that some have declared, it's a case of "better the devil you know" with me, though I am yet to cross swords with Windows 11....................................

[MJI]

30 minutes ago, Trevellan said:

 

Some people try to view Mac vs Windows in the same vein as Betamax vs VHS, but it's not that simple. I can do almost everything on my MacBook that I can on the Windows PC, with some notable exceptions. Ultimately, it's down to your particular needs and what system suits them best. Good luck!

 

No that was easy, Betamax was much better.

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, RFS said:

 

When it asks for your MS account, just enter it as "fake@fake.com" with password "fake".  The process will just respond "oops" and ask you to set up a local account instead. 

That's Donald Trump's Id & Password!

[Torper]

1 hour ago, Trevellan said:

......It runs Windows 10, which in my experience is by far the worst iteration to date. I've lost hours of productivity through failed updates and other frustrations. It's bloated and greedy for system resources. In fact, it's rather like having a colleague who is constantly attention-seeking.......

 

So what are you doing wrong?  My PC runs Windows 10 which I fresh installed on a machine I built myself, thus avoiding any of the bloatware that PC manufacturers like to put on their PCs.  So far as I am aware I haven't had a failed update and the updates I get run happlily in the background.  It's given no frustrations that I can think of and it runs fast and stable on my AMD powered machine.  Frankly it's prety good which is one reason why I have no great desire to move on to 11.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Torper

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, MJI said:

 

No that was easy, Betamax was much better.

And V2000 beat them both into a cocked hat.

Greater resolution and no tracking problems.

i.e. it would run 7x Forward & 5x Reverse with no loss of picture quality, no tracking control to fiddle with.

It did 8 hours on a standard cassette.

It had a real time clock for amount of tape used, which was accurate, unlike the one on my JVC S-VHS deck.

It also didn't get much into the rental market so was ultimately a failure, although for one short period it was top of the UK sales market, which however was fraction of the rental market.

Edited February 3, 2023 by melmerby

[AndrueC]

3 hours ago, 30801 said:

The only thing I really hate is AIX because it should be dead and buried but customers still use it.

AIX still exists? Wow. I did a bit of programming for that back in the late 80s. We used curses and I called it 'AIX and Panes' :)

[Trevellan]

1 hour ago, Torper said:

 

So what are you doing wrong?

 

I have no idea, but the failed update was widely reported, so not just me. I've used Windows from 3.1 forwards and I don't think any version has beaten 98SE for reliability IMHO.

 

If W10 is working well for you, be grateful. I certainly have no intention of "upgrading" to W11.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

AIX still exists? Wow. I did a bit of programming for that back in the late 80s. We used curses and I called it 'AIX and Panes' :)

 

Yes. It's super fun. You develop something on Linux and then spend longer than that trying to somehow make it work on AIX.

[MJI]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

And V2000 beat them both into a cocked hat.

Greater resolution and no tracking problems.

i.e. it would run 7x Forward & 5x Reverse with no loss of picture quality, no tracking control to fiddle with.

It did 8 hours on a standard cassette.

It had a real time clock for amount of tape used, which was accurate, unlike the one on my JVC S-VHS deck.

It also didn't get much into the rental market so was ultimately a failure, although for one short period it was top of the UK sales market, which however was fraction of the rental market.

Not my 950, even showed up my dads svhs deck.

[melmerby]

6 hours ago, AndrueC said:

It makes for cheaper hard- and soft- ware but the quality is lower.

Only if you buy the cheap stuff.

 

 

[melmerby]

37 minutes ago, MJI said:

Not my 950, even showed up my dads svhs deck.

Wouldn't beat the jvc hr-s 5500 series,

 

[melmerby]

You can make Win 10 look and run a lot like Win 7 You can make Win 11 run and look a lot like Win 10.

It's all in the settings.

 

If you are having trouble with Win 10 being very slow it is because the machine is either not set up properly  or there is bloatware or other software hogging resources.

Win 10 should use less resources than Win 7.

I found McAfee troublesome on my B-i-Ls PC, making it as slow as a geriatric snail, after I removed it and replaced it with a different anti-virus, rthe machine was transformed..

 

Sometimes programs get activated that operate in the background and can be sapping resources, without any indication they are acxtually running.

I routinely remove anything that has been installed that I don't use. That applies to things MS dumps on you during updates.

 

Go through the app menu, and delete (if you can) any you don't want those that MS wont let you uninstall from the desktop can often be removed by other means.

[tigerburnie]

Ok so I have ordered my 'puter, it doesnae have a DVD R/W in it, I shall be buying an external one as I have tons of stuff on cd's and will also be watching old movies on dvd's, are there any machines to avoid and who do you think makes the better ones, is there a better spec one, I really have no knowledge on these things.

[Oldddudders]

5 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

Ok so I have ordered my 'puter, it doesnae have a DVD R/W in it, I shall be buying an external one as I have tons of stuff on cd's and will also be watching old movies on dvd's, are there any machines to avoid and who do you think makes the better ones, is there a better spec one, I really have no knowledge on these things.

Playing CDs/DVDs is one thing - but do you really have a need to record onto either medium in the future? I have a cheap Amazon-sourced player, while any data recording is done to Samsung T5 and T7 SSDs, via USB-C. These are marvellously small and infinitely portable if that matters.   

[tigerburnie]

25 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Playing CDs/DVDs is one thing - but do you really have a need to record onto either medium in the future? I have a cheap Amazon-sourced player, while any data recording is done to Samsung T5 and T7 SSDs, via USB-C. These are marvellously small and infinitely portable if that matters.   

I doubt I will be doing any writing to disc, I already have a Seagate 1Tb external hard drive for saving images and may well get another for my video editing as a back up drive. I may just burn the odd disc to send to someone, so I thought having the option of writing might be an asset worth having. If it is better to just get a separate machine for read only, then that is ok.

[Tony_S]

I bought a Pioneer cd/dvd/Blu-ray/uhd reader/writer from Amazon. There are cheaper ones but I have had Pioneer drives before and been quite happy. It is powered through a usb c connection. You can’t plonk anything on top of it as it has a flip up lid. 
I did buy the Cyberlink player software to play BluRays but I don’t think you need it for DVDs and CDs. 

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I did buy the Cyberlink player software to play BluRays but I don’t think you need it for DVDs and CDs. 

 

IIRC you have to pay to play DVDs on Windows as MS no longer include the licence.

[Tony_S]

12 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

IIRC you have to pay to play DVDs on Windows as MS no longer include the licence.

That would seem to be correct. My previous Windows 10 PC was one that had been upgraded from Win 7 or 8 to Windows 10. The Media Player with DVD codecs was included with that free upgrade. I didn’t notice the lack of a built in DVD player codec with my present PC which was Windows 10 updated to Win 11. I didn’t notice as I had ordered it pre installed with the Cyberlink applications. Is the paid for Windows MediaPlayer DVD extension any good? I know it won’t play Blu rays. 
I had to install the VLC app on my iPad recently so I  could send a video from my security camera to someone. It would play in the security app but not on anything else on the iPad until I used the VLC app. Fortunately round here the security system is only triggered by foxes and cats so not a lot of need for sending video footage. 

[melmerby]

5 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Ok so I have ordered my 'puter, it doesnae have a DVD R/W in it, I shall be buying an external one as I have tons of stuff on cd's and will also be watching old movies on dvd's, are there any machines to avoid and who do you think makes the better ones, is there a better spec one, I really have no knowledge on these things.

Most PCs have a slot inside the case

suitable for fitting an internal DVD recorder in.

Modern ones are sata so just connect a hdd lead & power to them.

 

3 hours ago, 30801 said:

 

IIRC you have to pay to play DVDs on Windows as MS no longer include the licence.

 

It seems it is just Media Player that has been hobbled. The codecs seem to be there (?)* but media player wont recognise DVDs

My Win 11 machine was upgraded from a new full Win 10 license bought just before 11 came out and will play DVDs if you have a suitable program e.g. Videolan (VLC) as mentioned by Tony_s above.

My Win 10 machine will play DVDs through Media Player.

It applies to both commercial and home made DVDs

 

* or maybe not. You can get a suitable codec that will allow you to play DVDs

Edited February 4, 2023 by melmerby

[tigerburnie]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

Most PCs have a slot inside the case

suitable for fitting an internal DVD recorder in.

Modern ones are sata so just connect a hdd lead & power to them.

 

 

It seems it is just Media Player that has been hobbled. The codecs seem to be there (?)* but media player wont recognise DVDs

My Win 11 machine was upgraded from a new full Win 10 license bought just before 11 came out and will play DVDs if you have a suitable program e.g. Videolan (VLC) as mentioned by Tony_s above.

My Win 10 machine will play DVDs through Media Player.

It applies to both commercial and home made DVDs

 

* or maybe not. You can get a suitable codec that will allow you to play DVDs

I didn't buy a pc I bought an all in one which is being used as I write, took a fair bit of getting on line and I still haven't got the mouse or keyboard working yet seems to be a blue tooth thing