Not sure how to act

[papaof2]

For the first time in maybe 15 years,I'm using a laptop that's less than 6 years old. It's only five and a half ;-)

Dell Precision 3510, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD (that I just copied from my old laptop), i7 quad core (8 threads) CPU, AMD FirePro W5130M GPU (not that I'm doing anything that needs that level of graphics), QualComm 144mbs wifi, and 7 missing Microsoft security fixes.

Belarc Advisor (the free version) can tell you just about everything about a Windows PC - even the keys for most of the installed software.

The one thing I would change if I could: go to a keyboard without the numeric keypad. It seems cramped with the useful part of the keyboard shifted left by almost 3 inches and it doesn't "feel" right :-(

However, I think they call that progress...


The 3510 has options to use standard 2.5 inch SATA SSD/HDD or NVMe (the card's about the width of two fingers). Using either requires having the Dell bracket to hold the device in place. It came with a fast 512GB NVMe card but I spent $7 for a used cable that connects the 2TB SSD to the motherboard. However, I balked at buying a bracket for the SSD - I have two 1 inch pieces of double-stick tape on the bottom of the laptop chassis in the place the SSD goes and that works just fine ;-)

Nice to have tools such as DiskGenius (free) that can clone a 1TB drive to a 2TB drive and be told to use the entire space on the new drive with just a couple of clicks - and 7 hours later there's a fresh copy of that 1TB drive on the new 2TB drive and it's ready to be installed and run. Did need to update a bunch of the Dell drivers but on a machine this new the Dell "assistant" software can detect, download and install any needed drivers with a couple of clicks. It does take a while to download something over 1GB of new drivers and get them installed - but I wasn't needed again until it finished and the laptop needed to be rebooted.

What will I do with the old laptop? Maybe replace the very old Win 7 laptop that monitors the solar backup system. It's getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r as it ages :-(

[techsar]

What will I do with the old laptop? Maybe replace the very old Win 7 laptop that monitors the solar backup system. It's getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r as it ages :-(

A fresh install oftentimes will return a "sluggish" computer back to its former glory...plus Win7 seems to be more accommodating to DOS based programs than later flavors.

Hmmm...I wonder if I could get a fresh install...I seem to be getting slower also

[feralferret]

Mar 29, 2024 21:27:00 GMT -6 techsar said:

What will I do with the old laptop? Maybe replace the very old Win 7 laptop that monitors the solar backup system. It's getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r as it ages :-(

A fresh install oftentimes will return a "sluggish" computer back to its former glory...plus Win7 seems to be more accommodating to DOS based programs than later flavors.

Hmmm...I wonder if I could get a fresh install...I seem to be getting slower also

Maybe rrun Linux onit.  That would speed it up consideraby.

[papaof2]

I think a "fresh install" in human maintenance is a body transplant (perhaps more correctly a brain transplant with your brain in a new body).

There's a spy story where a young CIA agent's contribution to a case is his body because his boss - "best of the best" at the spy game - is considered the best agent for the mission but he's too old to do the job. One concession is that the old brain kept its original eyes because the transplant docs didn't know how well (maybe IF?) the old brain could adapt to new eyes. I would wonder how well the old brain would adapt to the younger ears and their motion/position sensors - and then determining where your hands and feet are in space (Is kinesthesia the right word for that?). That last thing would be critical in a fight or an escape/evade - if you're in a hurry and/or your life is at risk, you need VERY good coordination.

I've been asking the various doctors (spine surgeon, pain doctor) when they plan to give up on the ever-increasing narcotic pain relievers and go with a body transplant - but no answer yet...

Depending on the age of the PC, going to an SSD can make a world of difference from even a "fast" HDD. Anything using rotary motion to find a byte of data will be appreciable slower than even a mediocre SSD ;-)

For me, buying a laptop that was 6 years newer than the one I had been using was a real speedup ;-)

For some PCs, a version of Linux might be the cheapest speedup - you can't beat free ;-)

I haven't (yet?) reached the number of W 10 installs that would have me doing them without thinking about what comes next - just relying on "muscle memory". I reached that point with XP because I did dozens (hundreds?) of XP loads when I was the "computer depot" for an international consulting company. Clean (some collected lint and hair in the fan), wipe and load a laptop for the specific user and his part of project: Full Office or just Word & Excel? Visio? PowerPoint? HP software? Big database software? Etc? Etc?
There was a spreadsheet of software, their keys and the number of licenses for each thing. They had a site license for Office 2003 and XP Pro. When the company folded (too many people left to join a company they had been a consultant at), I wound up with XP Pro and Office 2003 CDs and the site licenses. The electronic shares of the stock I'd been given along the way weren't worth the electrons they'd annoyed during the birth and death of those certificates... Now I wish I'd kept the drive recovery package on a thumb drive (something like $2000 in 2004 or so). It was sector-by-sector recovery of just about any type of disk. I think I was the only person who ever used that particular piece of software...