Advise on buying new laptop

[Bigun]

I had a MacBook Pro once, and I liked it.  However, Apple also practices Bloatware, so it became useless after a few years just like a Windows box.  Snow Leopard killed my machine dead.

Planned Obsolescence is alive and well at Apple.

Their marketing scheme SUCKS.  I'm not playing their games.

[roamer_1]

I had a MacBook Pro once, and I liked it.  However, Apple also practices Bloatware, so it became useless after a few years just like a Windows box.  Snow Leopard killed my machine dead.

Planned Obsolescence is alive and well at Apple.

The thing I don't like is that they guard their service. Open that box without the codes to reset the security and new boxes will brick... And they are among the worst for having unrepairable components and no thought toward expansion.

Almost every new PC box has BOTH m.2 (or NVMe) AND SATA ports - so adding a drive is nothing.
Adding RAM is a piece of cake... Not so easy in MAC.

My sis is into Apple Phones. She is forever dogged by not enough room on that phone, and no way to expand it... First thing I did on my droid was to install another 128g flash card into it... I don't ever worry about storage onboard. With somewhere around 180g, I have my entire music library right onboard.

Yeah. No Macs for me. But different strokes... 

[sneakypete]

Ok guys,my refubrished Dell 16 inch laptop came in yesterday.

Looks to be perfect in every way.

Have it working properly now,downloaded my anti-virus software and loaded it,and am now trying to access my emails on microsoft mail on this computer,and can't even get the sign-in page to open.

Trying to avoid getting emails on my new used computer at the moment because due to my chemo brain,that would make me even more confused.

Is it me,or are there some problems now with the Microsoft mail system?

Ok,guys,girls,undecideds,been having trouble with the  "new/reconditioned computer" that I bought maybe a year ago this week,and I just don't have the mental facilities or the patience to try to fix it thanks to chemo brain,so I just ordered a 15.6 reconditioned Dell from Amazon for $268 that comes with a fresh reload of Win10 Pro. Given how little 268 bucks buys these days,that's a bargain just because I don't have to figure out how to fix corrupted software.

Plus,it will be screaming fast compared to my old one.
 
Dell Latitude E6540 15.6in Laptop, Core i7-4600M 2.9GHz, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, DVDRW, Windows 10 Pro 64bit (Renewed)

LOT of computer for 268 bucks.

[corbe]

   That is a lot of laptop for $268 @sneakypete

[sneakypete]

   That is a lot of laptop for $268 @sneakypete

@corbe

That was my thinking,also.

Plus,I get to start off with a clean software reinstall instead of having to use my chemo brain to get everything working with the new software.

IF I am lucky,the first thing I will do after booting it up is to take a thumb drive and download all the software programs,if I can figure out the logical way to do it.

I am VERY open to suggestions on this. I would really love to have a pristine software install on reserve for when I screw it up and need to reload Win 10 pro.

[corbe]

   Win10 and Win11 (all flavors) have an easy and great Restore/Reset feature in the Settings.  Open a Microsoft and gmail account to take care of everything except your personal data (docs, pics etc..) you'll have to figure that out and put it on an inexpensive thumb drive, would be my suggestion.

[sneakypete]

   Win10 and Win11 (all flavors) have an easy and great Restore/Reset feature in the Settings.  Open a Microsoft and gmail account to take care of everything except your personal data (docs, pics etc..) you'll have to figure that out and put it on an inexpensive thumb drive, would be my suggestion.

@corbe

Thank you!

What would be wrong about putting the new operating system on a thumbdrive?

[corbe]

   Sure, you can download it from Microsoft and make a bootable USB drive.

[corbe]

Create Windows 10 installation media


To get started, you will first need to have a license to install Windows 10. You can then download and run the media creation tool. For more information on how to use the tool, see the instructions below.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

[Bigun]

Ok,guys,girls,undecideds,been having trouble with the  "new/reconditioned computer" that I bought maybe a year ago this week,and I just don't have the mental facilities or the patience to try to fix it thanks to chemo brain,so I just ordered a 15.6 reconditioned Dell from Amazon for $268 that comes with a fresh reload of Win10 Pro. Given how little 268 bucks buys these days,that's a bargain just because I don't have to figure out how to fix corrupted software.

Plus,it will be screaming fast compared to my old one.
 
Dell Latitude E6540 15.6in Laptop, Core i7-4600M 2.9GHz, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, DVDRW, Windows 10 Pro 64bit (Renewed)

LOT of computer for 268 bucks.

 

[DB]

Ok,guys,girls,undecideds,been having trouble with the  "new/reconditioned computer" that I bought maybe a year ago this week,and I just don't have the mental facilities or the patience to try to fix it thanks to chemo brain,so I just ordered a 15.6 reconditioned Dell from Amazon for $268 that comes with a fresh reload of Win10 Pro. Given how little 268 bucks buys these days,that's a bargain just because I don't have to figure out how to fix corrupted software.

Plus,it will be screaming fast compared to my old one.
 
Dell Latitude E6540 15.6in Laptop, Core i7-4600M 2.9GHz, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, DVDRW, Windows 10 Pro 64bit (Renewed)

LOT of computer for 268 bucks.

All of that sounds pretty good for $268. An i7 and SSD will help quite a bit to make it a fast machine. Having someone upgrade the memory to 16 GB would be a plus and shouldn't be expensive.

[DB]

That's why I don't like Apple... Their phones are a perfect example... No auxiliary drive bay. Spend STUPID money, and wind up stuck without enough storage. I paid 150 bucks for my Samsung A-50 and stuffed a big flash card in it the next day. Heck I don't even know how big it is anymore... But I will never worry about it.

For all the money paid for that dang Apple phone, you'd think they could add a mini flash port. Makes me mad.

Their pooters... same thing. They run great, no doubt, but crazy expensive bang-for-buck, and no where near as easy to upgrade. And hardware externals and software too... Just all the way around.

I like the vast and distributed Windows marketplace. Especially when you are talking used. A three year old WinPC can be found for a song. A five year old Apple is still big bread. There is an argument there about retaining value, but the freewheeling market on the Windows side makes that really negligible.

Apple demands total control of what goes in their stuff. A micro SD card slot would make it more susceptible to water damage since they make access to the inside difficult.

[roamer_1]

Apple demands total control of what goes in their stuff. A micro SD card slot would make it more susceptible to water damage since they make access to the inside difficult.

 

So make do with 32 or 64g?

Absolutely not. Not for that kind of money... 

Nope. I will stick with Droid and as much storage as I can stand, for a quarter of the cost. It ain't no damn piano. It will be junk in another year or so when I go to upgrade again. So why spend big money to put up with it? Makes no sense to me at all.

[DB]

So make do with 32 or 64g?

Absolutely not. Not for that kind of money... 

Nope. I will stick with Droid and as much storage as I can stand, for a quarter of the cost. It ain't no damn piano. It will be junk in another year or so when I go to upgrade again. So why spend big money to put up with it? Makes no sense to me at all.

I was agreeing with you... Just adding to it...

[Hoodat]

Just bought a new laptop several weeks back (discussed on another thread).  For email, I installed Thunderbird to manage my gmail account, and I am very happy with it.  Microsoft can kiss my ass with their monthly charge for Outlook.  Thanks again, @roamer_1

Now I am looking for a pdf reader program that can combine pdf files into a single file.  That's basically all I need with pdfs.  A permanent license from adobe is around $350.  Would really like to avoid paying that.

[Elderberry]

Just bought a new laptop several weeks back (discussed on another thread).  For email, I installed Thunderbird to manage my gmail account, and I am very happy with it.  Microsoft can kiss my ass with their monthly charge for Outlook.  Thanks again, @roamer_1

Now I am looking for a pdf reader program that can combine pdf files into a single file.  That's basically all I need with pdfs.  A permanent license from adobe is around $350.  Would really like to avoid paying that.

I've been using PDF Studio Pro for a lotta years now, but never needed to combine pdfs with it. I looked, an it has that capability.

[roamer_1]

Just bought a new laptop several weeks back (discussed on another thread).  For email, I installed Thunderbird to manage my gmail account, and I am very happy with it.  Microsoft can kiss my ass with their monthly charge for Outlook.  Thanks again, @roamer_1

Very happy to have been of service @Hoodat   

Now I am looking for a pdf reader program that can combine pdf files into a single file.  That's basically all I need with pdfs.  A permanent license from adobe is around $350.  Would really like to avoid paying that.

It's a kludge, but you can do that printing to pdf with the common printer available in windows since Win6.

Now, it is a careful thing without much for options, but you can (or could) select several files (in file manager, throw a rope or ctrl-select for example)... RClick should make 'print...' available. From there select 'Print to PDF' and away you go.

Now, it is a kludge as I said, because the only control you have is order according to your selection, as you select it - There was something weird in that, like the order being opposite of expectation or something like that... But it worked.

Sorry if that is vague. I have not done it in a long, long time, and I only used it that way for a while when my Umax flatbed quit speaking to it's software after an OS upgrade. Too kludgy for me, and I went to an HP all-in-wonder to make it a fix.

Tangentially, you can probably bring up multiple docs in a scanner software, combine and sort them, and then print to pdf... But that would depend upon your scanner software.

I have nothing more, unless you want to play with OpenOffice or LibreOffice, whose inbuilt ability in their word processor should function - Again, open multiple, read and edit/upmark/order in oOo, and then print to pdf.

But I am no longer in that kind of work, for a long time, so I got nothing, really. 

[Hoodat]

Any time I want to convert a scan to PDF, I use the 'Microsoft print to pdf' option, even on pooters that have Adobe.  But lets say I'm doing an expense report and I have to scan receipts for each expense.  Once completed, I want to take all those pdf files and combine them into one multi-page pdf file.  Acrobat has an option for combining pdf files.  I want to know if there is a competitor that offers the same thing.

[roamer_1]

Any time I want to convert a scan to PDF, I use the 'Microsoft print to pdf' option, even on pooters that have Adobe.  But lets say I'm doing an expense report and I have to scan receipts for each expense.  Once completed, I want to take all those pdf files and combine them into one multi-page pdf file.  Acrobat has an option for combining pdf files.  I want to know if there is a competitor that offers the same thing.

That can be done inside the scanner software, part and parcel with the scanning... That's how I did it back when I did it for real. But, like I said, that depends highly upon your scanner software - Which sometimes resides on the DVD and is not installed unless you go looking for it. But scanner workshop software used to be provided. If all you've done is install the drivers, I would go looking on the DVD or scanner site.

But like I said, it's been a long time... maybe that ain't so anymore. That's why I stayed in Umax scanners as long as I did... because their scanner desktop software really worked well for the organization you are looking for.

[Bigun]

Any time I want to convert a scan to PDF, I use the 'Microsoft print to pdf' option, even on pooters that have Adobe.  But lets say I'm doing an expense report and I have to scan receipts for each expense.  Once completed, I want to take all those pdf files and combine them into one multi-page pdf file.  Acrobat has an option for combining pdf files.  I want to know if there is a competitor that offers the same thing.

@ Hoodat Take a look at https://dochub.com/

[Hoodat]

Thank you, sir.

[Bigun]

Thank you, sir.

I don't have much need for it now, but it worked for me in the past.

[sneakypete]

Just bought a new laptop several weeks back (discussed on another thread).  For email, I installed Thunderbird to manage my gmail account, and I am very happy with it.  Microsoft can kiss my ass with their monthly charge for Outlook. Thanks again, @roamer_1

@Hoodat

Huh? I have been using MS Outlook for a couple of years,and have yet to get a bill or pay a dime.