New PC Questions

July 29, 2022, 04:43 PM

konata88

New PC Questions

Lot's of good info above. I learned a thing or two.

Just a few comments:
1. Lenovo biz class laptop is a quality laptop being generally designed, I believe, in Japan. BUT, Lenovo is a prc company and as such I would lean toward a Dell biz class laptop.

2. I have 3 Dell 27" UltraSharps (QHD level); horizontally aligned with the left and right monitors angled toward me. Left monitor is the primary for one laptop. Right monitor is the primary for my second laptop. The center monitor right in front of me is shared via the HDMI output of a receiver. I can have it be the secondary display for either laptop one or two. The reason it's the secondary display is because, via the receiver, it's also my monitor for an Apple TV (with mini LCR speakers mounted above the monitor, sub on the floor). This set up generally works BUT it is not ideal. Depending on how the center monitor is being used, if I want to use either laptop concurrently, I have to turn at least my head, if not my body, to work on the left or right monitors. I find this to result in some neck stiffness / pain. So, I'm looking to change from this configuration. I'm just not sure what to change to, but a widescreen, dual display monitor is one consideration - not sure if it will help or not.

My general need is: need to be able have at least one active display for each laptop at the same time with an extended display for one of them depending on which I'm actually working on. And be able to watch stuff via Apple TV with at least one active display for each laptop; when I'm watching Apple TV content, want that display front and center (I don't want to be turning my head for the length of a movie; besides, the speakers are front and center).

July 31, 2022, 05:27 PM

Delmag Tech

Well, due to all the great advice, I'm typing this on my 2015 HP that is now more responsive than any PC I've ever used! It does a full restart now in about 40 seconds

After a few minutes on Youtube yesterday, I went up to Best Buy and picked a 1TB SSD to replace the old HDD.

I threw all the documents we had saved on a thumb drive, and Windows recovery files on another. Then I swapped drives, booted from the USB and everything went smooth as silk.

Further, I found that this PC does have an HDMI input (I've long thought that it did not). So we plugged her work laptop and she loves it with the single 34" wide screen once I showed her how to snap windows into split screen.

There were a few things that were frustrating though. MS Setup forced me to enter a MS email address, which I really didn't want to do. I did it, and later came back to settings later and changed the log on to a local username and password. I thought I would be back to a machine that was all local except for brower use.

I was wrong. I was adding DuckDuckGo to MS Edge when I was informed that my OneNote storage was full. I didn't know I had a personal OneNote account. I dug in and found a bunch of video that I downloaded from a drone SD card that I never intended to leave this PC. So I guess the browser is still logged on to MS somehow. Lots of other oddities, like my saved websites from the past are still there too. Earlier this morning, I wondered if some of that was saved in the BIOS, but now I guess it's the browser. I'm going to keep messing with the browser settings to see if I can disconnect completely. For now, I guess its not all bad that my 'cloud' storage is full of video I could care less about losing or sharing.

Anyway, I'm pretty stoked! The motorcycle budget just went way up

August 01, 2022, 10:54 AM

snidera

quote:
Originally posted by Delmag Tech:
Well, due to all the great advice, I'm typing this on my 2015 HP that is now more responsive than any PC I've ever used! It does a full restart now in about 40 seconds After a few minutes on Youtube yesterday, I went up to Best Buy and picked a 1TB SSD to replace the old HDD.

I threw all the documents we had saved on a thumb drive, and Windows recovery files on another. Then I swapped drives, booted from the USB and everything went smooth as silk.

Further, I found that this PC does have an HDMI input (I've long thought that it did not). So we plugged her work laptop and she loves it with the single 34" wide screen once I showed her how to snap windows into split screen.

There were a few things that were frustrating though. MS Setup forced me to enter a MS email address, which I really didn't want to do. I did it, and later came back to settings later and changed the log on to a local username and password. I thought I would be back to a machine that was all local except for brower use.

I was wrong. I was adding DuckDuckGo to MS Edge when I was informed that my OneNote storage was full. I didn't know I had a personal OneNote account. I dug in and found a bunch of video that I downloaded from a drone SD card that I never intended to leave this PC. So I guess the browser is still logged on to MS somehow. Lots of other oddities, like my saved websites from the past are still there too. Earlier this morning, I wondered if some of that was saved in the BIOS, but now I guess it's the browser. I'm going to keep messing with the browser settings to see if I can disconnect completely. For now, I guess its not all bad that my 'cloud' storage is full of video I could care less about losing or sharing.

Anyway, I'm pretty stoked! The motorcycle budget just went way up

MS has snuck the BS 'sign-in-with-ms-account' into every goddamn update recently. There's usually a small print non-button statement on the bottom-left of the screen where you can bypass & use local accounts. user beware.