SSD or HDD?

[wiskerke]

12 hours ago, MDM said:

 

MacPros are made in Texas. The latest ones are unbelievably expensive. 

 

(not mine:)

 

Not the ones we get in Europe. They're from China.

The ones for the US are not made in Austin either: they're being assembled there. Which btw is quite normal: most systems are build to order, certainly high end systems.

A look inside a US one: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+2019+Teardown/128922

No mentioning of any of the dozens of components made by American companies. Which technically could still be manufactured in China of course. The press release is a very clever bit of obfuscation in that department.

 

wim

[Phil]

10 hours ago, sb photos said:

 

Been a Mac user since around 1991, I have a bootcamp partition running W10, also used for amateur radio, SDR transceiver control, a USB oscilloscope, logging and a few other uses. Re photography, all my applications run under macOS. It is also useful keeping familiar with Windows. My last Windows box was an old Dell tower running XP, dumped some time back, now the same is starting to happen with W7 PC's

 

I have a mid-2011 vintage iMac that was purchased new. I used it for quite a while to run native MacOS ham radio applications - but gave up due to issues with the s/w and unavailability of the ham radio applications that I wanted to use in my station.  W10 simply has a wider and deeper selection of applications available.   I continue to use it for image processing however and hopefully will continue for some time - but I hold my breath as it crashes often whereas the little Dell W10 box never bombs.  My wife has had 2 iMacs and both have eaten their cheap hard drives prematurely. We have or had numerous other Apple products including iPhones, Apple TV , etc. but they're slowly being retired.  I seriously doubt there will be any new Apple computers in our future due to their premium cost that did not provide us a better system life,  lack of newer MacOS versions support for important legacy applications, and the closed Apple ecosystem.   YMMV  🙂

 

73 de NA4M Phil

Edited December 25, 2019 by Phil

[Johnnie5]

One option that hasn't been mentioned is to have a computer custom rebuilt.  I recently checked and it seems you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free which will save money.  You can then transfer your operating system to an ssd. which is fine with Microsoft.  If you already have a tower case you can have the motherboard, cpu. memory replaced with modern componets,  Then have a new 4 terabyte hard drive installed and move all your files to that drive.   You can then keep the old drive as a backup and work off the new drive.  The only thing you need to keep is the original Windows registration number which should be on the case or a disc.  I recently did this for a family member with no problems except to realize that I needed to enter the original registration number to keep Windows 10 eligible for updates.  I am not sure if upgrading to 10 would be better before or after the hardware changes.  I would suggest at least a 256 gb SSD but 500gb would be better.  Windows can take up a lot of room and it helps to put Lightroom and Photoshop on the SSD,  you can use the SSD for your scratch disk and cache . 

 

You could do the hardware changes without updating to Windows 10 right now and see how that works out.  The architecture of tower computers hasn't changed  over the years so all new components should fit.

[AlexH]

I know it won't be an option for many wedded to LR etc, but worth mentioning as an option for those running Windows 7 facing the need to go to 10 is the idea of using Linux as your OS. 

 

There are many very user friendly distributions now and these will bring older Win7 era hardware that will struggle to run Windows 10 back to life as they're much less demanding operating systems. Equally a refurb spec that will just run Win10 adequately will be a speedy machine running something like Linux Mint.

 

[Harry Harrison]

12 hours ago, Johnnie5 said:

I recently checked and it seems you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free which will save money.

Thanks for that, I hadn't known about this potential option but I've got a laptop I can experiment on first. This UK consumer magazine site describes it, and they are very conservative (with a small 'c') so it doesn't seem to be too radical:

 

https://computing.which.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/360009159719-How-to-upgrade-from-Windows-7-to-Windows-10-for-free

 

[John Mitchell]

19 hours ago, Johnnie5 said:

One option that hasn't been mentioned is to have a computer custom rebuilt.  I recently checked and it seems you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free which will save money.  You can then transfer your operating system to an ssd. which is fine with Microsoft.  If you already have a tower case you can have the motherboard, cpu. memory replaced with modern componets,  Then have a new 4 terabyte hard drive installed and move all your files to that drive.   You can then keep the old drive as a backup and work off the new drive.  The only thing you need to keep is the original Windows registration number which should be on the case or a disc.  I recently did this for a family member with no problems except to realize that I needed to enter the original registration number to keep Windows 10 eligible for updates.  I am not sure if upgrading to 10 would be better before or after the hardware changes.  I would suggest at least a 256 gb SSD but 500gb would be better.  Windows can take up a lot of room and it helps to put Lightroom and Photoshop on the SSD,  you can use the SSD for your scratch disk and cache . 

 

You could do the hardware changes without updating to Windows 10 right now and see how that works out.  The architecture of tower computers hasn't changed  over the years so all new components should fit.

 

Good suggestions. I've done a bit of minor poking around inside PC's -- adding RAM, installing drives, etc. However, this sounds above my pay grade, so I'm going to go the lazy man's route and get a newer machine. Shall keep my old PC running as a backup (unconnected to the Web of course), though, as I always do. That's useful info about SSD size. Thanks.

 

Edited December 26, 2019 by John Mitchell

[John Mitchell]

7 hours ago, AlexH said:

I know it won't be an option for many wedded to LR etc, but worth mentioning as an option for those running Windows 7 facing the need to go to 10 is the idea of using Linux as your OS. 

 

There are many very user friendly distributions now and these will bring older Win7 era hardware that will struggle to run Windows 10 back to life as they're much less demanding operating systems. Equally a refurb spec that will just run Win10 adequately will be a speedy machine running something like Linux Mint.

 

 

I have a Netbook running Windows 7 Starter that I intend to switch to some flavour of Linux if I can figure out how to do it. Linux Mint looks like a possibility.

[John Mitchell]

This has been discussed before, but I thought I would check again. Is it worth shelling out a bit more for Windows 10 Pro, or is Windows 10 Home adequate? Thanks.

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

Is it worth shelling out a bit more for Windows 10 Pro, or is Windows 10 Home adequate?

Good question, I've always had W7 Pro so I don't know what I might have missed if I'd had W7 Home but this Microsoft page lists the differences as I'm sure you know:

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/compare-windows-10-home-vs-pro

 

Now for me, I don't actually recognize what any of the unticked options in the Windows Home column are, so Bitlocker Device Encryption, Windows Information Protection and all of the 'Business Management & Deployment' section mean nothing to me so I'm hoping Home would be OK. On the other hand I don't mind delving into the Control Panel to get to Disk Management or Network problems and I often use Task Manager  to see what's going on so I'm hoping they're still there in W10 Home and it doesn't try and 'protect' me from doing what I want to do.

 

Edit:

Actually it looks as if the Control Panel and its options is still there but hidden away slightly, easy to make it more accessible with a shortcut or there is also something called the Settings app which duplicates some of the functions.

 

One thing I've noticed:

Need to connect to a corporate or school network?

Get Windows 10 Pro.

Edited December 27, 2019 by Harry Harrison

[AlexH]

18 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I have a Netbook running Windows 7 Starter that I intend to switch to some flavour of Linux if I can figure out how to do it. Linux Mint looks like a possibility.

John Mint is a good option, very user friendly for anyone switching from Windows. There is also I believe a lightweight version which is ideal if your netbook specs are on the lowside. Lightweight Linux distros really breath new life into old machines that are effectively obsolete if you trying running Win10 on them.

[John Mitchell]

10 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Good question, I've always had W7 Pro so I don't know what I might have missed if I'd had W7 Home but this Microsoft page lists the differences as I'm sure you know:

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/compare-windows-10-home-vs-pro

 

Now for me, I don't actually recognize what any of the unticked options in the Windows Home column are, so Bitlocker Device Encryption, Windows Information Protection and all of the 'Business Management & Deployment' section mean nothing to me so I'm hoping Home would be OK. On the other hand I don't mind delving into the Control Panel to get to Disk Management or Network problems and I often use Task Manager  to see what's going on so I'm hoping they're still there in W10 Home and it doesn't try and 'protect' me from doing what I want to do.

 

Edit:

Actually it looks as if the Control Panel and its options is still there but hidden away slightly, easy to make it more accessible with a shortcut or there is also something called the Settings app which duplicates some of the functions.

 

One thing I've noticed:

Need to connect to a corporate or school network?

Get Windows 10 Pro.

 

Yes, it looks as if the difference between Windows 10 Pro and Home aren't all that significant, unlike with Windows 7 and 8. I too don't know what use the added options in Pro 10 would be to me. Also, I don't have any need to connect to a network. So it looks as if Home would be fine.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, AlexH said:

John Mint is a good option, very user friendly for anyone switching from Windows. There is also I believe a lightweight version which is ideal if your netbook specs are on the lowside. Lightweight Linux distros really breath new life into old machines that are effectively obsolete if you trying running Win10 on them.

 

Thanks, I'm going to try Linux on my Netbook. Mint sounds like a food flavour. I'll look into it. I would probably need the light version. I also have an old laptop gathering dust in a cupboard. I might experiment with it first. It's running Vista (ugh).

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

So it looks as if Home would be fine

Somewhere in a very extensive previous thread I read that Pro gives you more control over the handling of automatic updates but I don't know if that is still true. I'm amazed to see that W10 has been around for over 4 years, it must be fantastic by now....

[MizBrown]

13 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

This has been discussed before, but I thought I would check again. Is it worth shelling out a bit more for Windows 10 Pro, or is Windows 10 Home adequate? Thanks.

 

My computer came with Windows 10 Home in Spanish.  I updated to Windows Pro which allows changing languages.  If you buy in an English speaking country, I think Windows 10 Home would be adequate.

 

[John Mitchell]

3 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Somewhere in a very extensive previous thread I read that Pro gives you more control over the handling of automatic updates but I don't know if that is still true. I'm amazed to see that W10 has been around for over 4 years, it must be fantastic by now....

 

I had an interesting conversation at the feet of my computer guru today. He claims that running Windows 7 after the support ends doesn't present much of a security risk as long as browsers such as Chrome and Firefox don't end support for Windows 7 in the near future, which makes sense when you consider that your browser is the only thing connected to the Web. He also told me to stay away from hybrid drives with PC's, saying that it's much better to get a Windows 10 machine with an SSD and then add a separate HDD for storage. Mac's "Fusion Drive" is a different animal apparently. Thought I'd pass along his wisdom...

[Harry Harrison]

9 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

Thought I'd pass along his wisdom...

Thank you, wisdom gratefully received, good to hear there is life in Windows 7 yet. A 500GB  SSD does seem to be the way to go for the operating system and programs etc. 

[Inchiquin]

14 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

 

Somewhere in a very extensive previous thread I read that Pro gives you more control over the handling of automatic updates but I don't know if that is still true.

 

 

Yes it is. This is one of the main reasons why I use Pro, because I have metered bandwidth during daytime hours and a big W10 update could wipe out a significant chunk of my monthly limit. So I do updates after 6 or at weekends. I also wait a few months before applying every major update to allow any nasties to be ironed out. I have two computers running W10 so I can stagger the upgrades and make sure everything is OK on one before committing the other.

 

I also have a laptop that a friend gave me (never look a gift horse in the mouth!) which runs Home and I can only use that out of hours because it's forever downloading updates.

 

Alan

[Harry Harrison]

10 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

also have a laptop that a friend gave me (never look a gift horse in the mouth!) which runs Home and I can only use that out of hours because it's forever downloading updates.

Thanks, that's a shame, I can see that could be tiresome.

[Harry Harrison]

24 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

also have a laptop that a friend gave me (never look a gift horse in the mouth!) which runs Home and I can only use that out of hours because it's forever downloading updates.

Actually it looks like they may have changed this from the May 2019 1903 update:

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/410183/microsoft-abandons-windows-10s-forced-updates/

[Phil]

7 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

 

 

I also have a laptop that a friend gave me (never look a gift horse in the mouth!) which runs Home and I can only use that out of hours because it's forever downloading updates.

 

Alan

 

W10 Home updating frequency can be changed to pause updating for up to 35 days to eliminate the continuous updates.  I pause my W10 system updates in this way  and it works fine. 

Edited December 28, 2019 by Phil

[M.Chapman]

9 minutes ago, Phil said:

 

W10 Home updating frequency can be changed to pause updating for up to 35 days to eliminate the continuous updates.  I pause my W10 system updates in this way  and it works fine. 

 

But after 35 days it appears the update is still forced on you? It's better than it was, but still not a complete solution IMHO. I own my computer and I want to decide if and when the OS gets updated, not Microsoft.

 

Mark

[Phil]

37 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

But after 35 days it appears the update is still forced on you? It's better than it was, but still not a complete solution IMHO. I own my computer and I want to decide if and when the OS gets updated, not Microsoft.

 

Mark

 

The update pause can't be extended past 35 days until after any pending updates are installed is my understanding.  The update pause gives a substantial degree of control over how often updates are installed as does specifying the time of day etc. that updates are installed.   

 

Not sure but perhaps updates could be turned off/on manually - but IMO thats shooting oneself in the foot when it comes to system improvements and more importantly security.

 

The MS post linked to above by Harry sez the folowing:

 

"Starting with the May 2019 Update (previously called the April 2019 Update), you will see a notification that the update is available when Microsoft thinks it’s ready for your PC. However, it’s your choice when—and whether—to install it. Windows 10 won’t just start downloading and installing it without your say-so. You’ll have to click “Download and install now.”

 

Edited December 28, 2019 by Phil

[John Mitchell]

10 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thank you, wisdom gratefully received, good to hear there is life in Windows 7 yet. A 500GB  SSD does seem to be the way to go for the operating system and programs etc. 

 

Machines with 500GB SSD's are still hard to find. Ones with 128GB--256GB SSD's seem much more common, at least when it comes to refurbished PC's. I've found one at a good price with a 480GB SSD, but it's an SSF (small form factor) Dell, and I'd rather have a tower. Not sure if I should be overly concerned, though. I've read that SSF models are more susceptible to overheating and parts can be more expensive than towers, which are also easier to work on. However, SSF's appear to be very popular. Any opinions out there on SFF computers vs. towers?

Edited December 28, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Harry Harrison]

28 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Any opinions out there on SFF computers vs. towers

For me I'd rather have the computer on the floor than on the desk, though I suppose the SFF desktop could also go on the floor. If the SFF desktop has everything you want and you're never going to want to add extra expansion cards then it could be fine. I wanted to be able to add a decent graphics card and I've got USB3 (though you'll have that anyway), & Firewire and there were 3 different types of expansion slots in my tower which was handy, there isn't a lot of room for that in the SFF. I'm not sure about overheating though you may find the fan comes on more often, it's hopefully designed not to overheat.

 

In theory I think it is possible to get a machine with a normal HDD and then clone the drive to an SSD that you've purchased yourself using a dual slot docking station, I have an Inatech but Orico is another brand. I've never tried this myself though!

[John Mitchell]

1 minute ago, Harry Harrison said:

For me I'd rather have the computer on the floor than on the desk, though I suppose the SFF desktop could also go on the floor. If the SFF desktop has everything you want and you're never going to want to add extra expansion cards then it could be fine. I wanted to be able to add a decent graphics card and I've got USB3 (though you'll have that anyway), & Firewire and there were 3 different types of expansion slots in my tower which was handy, there isn't a lot of room for that in the SFF. I'm not sure about overheating though you may find the fan comes on more often, it's hopefully designed not to overheat.

 

In theory I think it is possible to get a machine with a normal HDD and then clone the drive to an SSD that you've purchased yourself using a dual slot docking station, I have an Inatech but Orico is another brand. I've never tried this myself though!

 

Thanks. I have a Firewire card that I use with my scanner (when it works). I suppose there could be a problem fitting it into an SFF. Not sure that I would want to get into the cloning thing, but it sounds interesting. I keep my current tower on my desk. I found that the innards got too dusty when it lived on the floor.  You must dust more than I do. My aforementioned computer guru also recommends towers, so I'll probably continue my search. I guess the SFF's are best suited to business use, where limited desk space can be an issue. Probably most of  the refurbished PC's that I've been looking at are USB 2, which is all I currently have. Hadn't thought of that.