PC Advice

[Ronald_55]

office depot black friday ad got posted. In case you could wait. At least as a comparison.

https://www.bfads.net/stores/office-depot/ads/black-friday/page-1

 

[deadeye111]

4 hours ago, DaveTN said:

SSD drive prices are dropping a eventually they will be he norm. Right now you have to make a choice, size and speed vs. cost. 

To change that drive from a 1TB SATA to a 512 SSD is $147 to a 1TB SDD is $343. An XPS with a SATA hard drive is going to start fast. A SSD might start a few seconds faster. Other than startup; you aren’t doing anything that can take advantage of the speed of a SSD.

 

My thoughts are not a fair comparison for the OP but I would probably buy the computer you recommended or one similar and use the 1T SSD hard drive that I already purchased from Newegg on sale to install windows 10 and use the hard drive that came with computer for storage if configuration permits. 

I installed a fast SSD hard drive on older toshiba laptop that hasn’t seen a lot of use and it runs better now than new. 

[jgradyc]

hipower, BestBuy is a good place to compare computers. The staff is not on commission so there is no high pressure sales tactics. They are knowledgeable and very helpful. 

Data storage and backup is a personal choice. I have a 256GB SSD drive on my Samsung laptop and a 128GB SSD on my wife's HP laptop. To backup files and provide additional storage, we share a Dropbox Pro account with 1TB of storage. When I save a file on my laptop, it automatically saves in the cloud in my Dropbox account and then syncs to my wife's laptop... all in less than 3 seconds. It also backs up my phone's photos. I can access any of my files (or my wife's files) from my phone using the Dropbox app. Dropbox Pro is $99/year.

[Ski]

12 hours ago, DaveTN said:

I wouldn’t buy an all in one. The laptop is a good idea if you travel and want to take it with you, if you don’t; stick with a desktop. The desktop gives you the most ability and serviceability. If a component goes out, or you need to change something; it’s very easy to do so.

I'll reiterate what Dave said, and I'll add that in my experience desktops seem to perform acceptably longer than laptops.  I am pretty sure there are some high-end All-In-One models, but the ones I have experience with have had slow processors.

Dell is a safe bet.  I don't trust Lenovo and do not have direct experience with them.

[jgradyc]

6 hours ago, hipower said:

Thanks to all. I think I'll go out this afternoon and look at several units. Not sure exactly what I'll do, but the desktop is definitely leading. So I'll be pretty much comfy with it.

DaveTn, thanks for the advice. I like the looks and specks of that linked Lenovo. Very good price. Don't like the wired keyboard, but can live with it. I'm assuming Optical refers to wireless mouse, so it might be leading at the moment.

Now, my thanks for all the advice and comments. Hughd, btq96r, jGrady, 10_Ring, deadeye111, peejayman, No_one, Trekbike, and Jamie Jackson, I appreciate your coming to my aid.

I won't say I understood it all, lol, but I gathered some info that will get me to where I want/need to be.

Thanks.

By the way, you can buy a wireless keyboard and mouse combo kit for $30 at Walmart. It comes with a tiny USB wireless receiver that you just plug into one of your USB ports. It's plug and play. No set up required. 

[hipower]

2 hours ago, jgradyc said:

By the way, you can buy a wireless keyboard and mouse combo kit for $30 at Walmart. It comes with a tiny USB wireless receiver that you just plug into one of your USB ports. It's plug and play. No set up required. 

Thanks. I didn't think of checking WW.

[jgradyc]

11 hours ago, hipower said:

Thanks. I didn't think of checking WW.

Walmart has 3-4 Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo kits from $19 to $29. It's a decent brand. Some of these might not be at your local Walmart, but you can order them on Walmart's website to be delivered to you at home or to pick up at your local Walmart. I like Walmart because returns are no-questions-asked. 

You just plug in the tiny USB receiver into an empty USB port and both the mouse and keyboard connect automatically. 

[hipower]

2 hours ago, jgradyc said:

Walmart has 3-4 Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo kits from $19 to $29. It's a decent brand. Some of these might not be at your local Walmart, but you can order them on Walmart's website to be delivered to you at home or to pick up at your local Walmart. I like Walmart because returns are no-questions-asked. 

You just plug in the tiny USB receiver into an empty USB port and both the mouse and keyboard connect automatically. 

Automatic. That's my style. No muss...no fuss, or work, installation. lol

[hipower]

On 11/4/2019 at 2:29 PM, Ronald_55 said:

office depot black friday ad got posted. In case you could wait. At least as a comparison.

https://www.bfads.net/stores/office-depot/ads/black-friday/page-1

 

Been looking at the ad. The Lenovo model is one I've been considering. Probably will order it.

Thanks for the info!

[DaveTN]

8 hours ago, hipower said:

The Lenovo model is one I've been considering. Probably will order it.

There are several, a laptop or a desktop?

I’d jump on that LG 32” Monitor (32MP58HQP) for $129. That’s the one I paid $169 for on sale, and I’m really happy with it.

Edited November 6, 2019 by DaveTN

[jgradyc]

The lenovo 310s ideacenter is $329 now, but the sneak peek of their black friday sale shows it dropping to $209. The ad shows it at $209, but it's still $329 on the Lenovo website. I don't know when the price drops take effect.

Note that it does not include a monitor, keyboard or mouse, but that's pretty common for desktops.

https://www.bfads.net/stores/lenovo/ads/black-friday/page-18

Edited November 6, 2019 by jgradyc
Fix typo

[jgradyc]

Just now, jgradyc said:

The lenovo 310s ideacenter is $329 now, but the sneak peak of their black friday sale shows it dropping to $209. The ad shows it at $209, but it's still $329 on the website. I don't know when the price drops take effect.

Note that it does not include a monitor, keyboard or mouse, but that's pretty common for desktops.

https://www.bfads.net/stores/lenovo/ads/black-friday/page-18

By the way, the Black Friday Ads website is pretty cool. It has sneak peeks of quite a few Black Friday ads.

https://www.bfads.net/

[TomInMN]

43 minutes ago, jgradyc said:

 

Note that it does not include a monitor, keyboard or mouse, but that's pretty common for desktops.

And the monitor, keyboard, and mouse you already have could likely be used with a new desktop if you wish to do so.

Edited November 6, 2019 by TomInMN
Autocorrected.

[DaveTN]

A couple of other things you might want to keep in mind.

That Lenovo 310s has an AMD Processor and only 4GB of ram. Unless you absolutely have to be down in the $200 range; neither of those things are something you will want.

Hard drive size/type?? What do you need? Some of those laptops you are looking at only have a 128GB. Do you take pictures? have music? use Office and keep documents? Keep gun documentation and PDF’s?

128GB isn’t much with Windows 10 and its updates. Size really does matter. (Even a 256GB is small)

Do you need a CD/DVD Drive? Are you going to install any software on CD/DVD? Play/make music CD’s? Put pics on CD?

Quote

 

Question: Is 128 GB SSD with installed windows 10 enough? And how much GB windows 10 OS is in order to find out my real free space on the SSD?

Answer: A 120/128 is marginal.

Yes, you can make it work, but you'll spend a lot of time massaging the space on it.

The base install of Win 10 will be around 20GB. And then you run all the current and future updates.

An SSD needs 15-20% free space, so for a 128GB drive, you really only have 85GB space you can actually use.

And if you try to keep it "windows only" you're throwing away 1/2 the functionality of the SSD. You want your applications on it, to benefit from that same speed boost.

All those utilities and stuff.

Finally, the price v size ratio favors a 250GB over a 128GB.

 

 

[Ronald_55]

1 hour ago, jgradyc said:

By the way, the Black Friday Ads website is pretty cool. It has sneak peeks of quite a few Black Friday ads.

https://www.bfads.net/

It will have more soon. It is how I prep for the few things (gifts mostly) that I am looking to buy

[jgradyc]

2 hours ago, DaveTN said:

There are several, a laptop or a desktop?

I’d jump on that LG 32” Monitor (32MP58HQP) for $129. That’s the one I paid $169 for on sale, and I’m really happy with it.

I'm curious. How far away do you sit when you use this monitor? I've thought about adding a 24" monitor to my laptop, but I've used a laptop for the past 10 years and I'm not sure I'd like a bigger, more distance monitor than my current laptop screen.

[DaveTN]

14 minutes ago, jgradyc said:

I'm curious. How far away do you sit when you use this monitor? I've thought about adding a 24" monitor to my laptop, but I've used a laptop for the past 10 years and I'm not sure I'd like a bigger, more distance monitor than my current laptop screen.

I run a 24”,27” and the 32”. I’m about 30” from them.

I ran a 42” TV for my programming monitor for a while. But I had to get farther away from it. I replaced it with this 32.  

[hipower]

3 hours ago, DaveTN said:

There are several, a laptop or a desktop?

I’d jump on that LG 32” Monitor (32MP58HQP) for $129. That’s the one I paid $169 for on sale, and I’m really happy with it.

LOL! My wife wants the 32" as well. So she will most likely win out on this.

[DaveTN]

On 11/4/2019 at 5:11 PM, jgradyc said:

Dropbox Pro is $99/year.

Or…for $99 a year you can get Office 365 which allows 6 users to have 5 devices EACH and each user has 1TB of Cloud storage for a total of 6TB.

When I started looking at updating my Microsoft Office and looking at cloud storage; that was a no brainer.

[peejman]

As I'm PC shopping too, I appreciate all the info here, this is very helpful.

Anyone mind if I pile on and ask about tablets too?  My wife has decided our 1st gen iPad is no longer adequate....    Another iPad, windows tablet, ...?

[DaveTN]

3 hours ago, peejman said:

As I'm PC shopping too, I appreciate all the info here, this is very helpful.

Anyone mind if I pile on and ask about tablets too?  My wife has decided our 1st gen iPad is no longer adequate....    Another iPad, windows tablet, ...?

Is just being able to get on the net and get email OK? Or do you want to do other stuff?

My tablet had to be a Windows OS, I had/have a Dell. My sister sent me her 1st gen surface to upgrade so I could use it on a trip I was going on. I didn’t want to carry my 17” laptop around NY City. But wanted something more than my phone. Both were 32GB and that just won’t do anymore.

I looked at tablets, but for the money I went with a Dell Inspiron 11” 2-in-1 Touchscreen laptop with a 500GB hard drive. It’s no bigger than most tablets, but it’s a full Windows 10 OS. I got it on sale at Office Depot, It was around $200. But it can do anything, including being a portable hard drive for storing all your digital stuff while traveling.

I had to laugh today, I got an email today about the new Pixelbook Go. The 64GB is $650 and the 256GB “coming soon” is $1400. These are web interfaces that can’t run a Windows program, who are they selling these to?

I sure Apple has something to offer to take your money. But I have no idea what it would be. 

[jgradyc]

6 hours ago, DaveTN said:

Or…for $99 a year you can get Office 365 which allows 6 users to have 5 devices EACH and each user has 1TB of Cloud storage for a total of 6TB.

When I started looking at updating my Microsoft Office and looking at cloud storage; that was a no brainer.

This is a much better deal. I'll consider switching over since I already have Office 365. I've used Dropbox for... not sure... many many years. 

[peejman]

1 hour ago, DaveTN said:

Is just being able to get on the net and get email OK? Or do you want to do other stuff?

People do other things with tablets?

 

1 hour ago, DaveTN said:

I looked at tablets, but for the money I went with a Dell Inspiron 11” 2-in-1 Touchscreen laptop with a 500GB hard drive. It’s no bigger than most tablets, but it’s a full Windows 10 OS. I got it on sale at Office Depot, It was around $200. But it can do anything, including being a portable hard drive for storing all your digital stuff while traveling.

She's said she wants a laptop, but my assumption is that between her and the kids it would get broken in short order.  Perhaps they're more durable than they used to be.

 

1 hour ago, DaveTN said:

I sure Apple has something to offer to take your money. But I have no idea what it would be. 

I'm sure. I haven't looked either. 

[jgradyc]

My experience with entry level laptops, mostly Dell, but also HP, is that they have a life expectancy of about 2 years. 

Of course, when you only pay $250 or so, it's not a bad deal. 

Although I'm currently using Dropbox, I really like the idea of Office 365 plus the storage. When I actively used a laptop for business, my biggest fear was loss of files. With cloud storage and synced files across a couple of laptops/computers, a catastrophic loss of files is nearly impossible. 

[DaveTN]

41 minutes ago, jgradyc said:

My experience with entry level laptops, mostly Dell, but also HP, is that they have a life expectancy of about 2 years. 

Of course, when you only pay $250 or so, it's not a bad deal. 

Although I'm currently using Dropbox, I really like the idea of Office 365 plus the storage. When I actively used a laptop for business, my biggest fear was loss of files. With cloud storage and synced files across a couple of laptops/computers, a catastrophic loss of files is nearly impossible. 

Also the cost of quality portable hard drives is low; $50 or less will get you a quality portable hard drive, Best Buy even has a Western Digital 5TB on sale for $90. I use the 1TB or 2TB because I create an Acronis Survival kit for each PC I have; that requires a dedicated portable drive for that PC. I can’t say enough good about Acronis back-up software. You can buy cheaper, but you can’t buy better. It has saved me a few times and also quickly got me going again when a hard drive failed. A hard drive failure is rare, but it does happen. And when it does; you have what you had on your last backup, and that’s it. You also have to decide if it does happen, do you want to reinstall and re-setup everything, or do you want to simply reinstall from an image and roll on.