It seems about as thick and light as Mom's, although it is shallower--there is less space between the keyboard and the hinge, with smaller top and bottom bezels.
It has a lit keyboard! Yay!
However, it was much more expensive than either of the others, with the FHD it was $175 more than Mom's and $190 more than the last one that I bought. At that price point I felt that it made more sense to go for the extended warranty, especially since HP claimed they would refund it in full if I never used it, but I didn't get that in writing, so I am not counting on it.
The Ryzen 7 should definitely be faster than both $300 laptops. Hers came with 4 GB of RAM and somehow that seems adequate, although it got slower and slower the more that I used it while waiting for my previous one to arrive. Both of mine came with 8 and that often seemed inadequate, even though I never did as much as I would on more robust systems.
I ordered 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD at the same time and they arrived 5 weeks ago. Installation was easy, but I couldn't figure out how to image the old drive onto the new one. I found instructions and used Acronis to image the original drive onto an external, but only got errors when I tried to image it onto the new one. I ended up using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to put Win10 on a flash drive and installing it that way.
Am I missing out on any factory apps?
It is so clean!
I downloaded the two utilities that I found on HP.com.
I don't remember how I migrated everything to my newer $300 laptop. Looking at my post I had a crisis over the ethernet cable because I needed to think about whether I am creating an office in the shed or my bedroom--or all over the house like Dad did.
The shed is about where I need it, but I need to replace a 4x4 underneath, and that was on hold so that I could do all of my paperwork and keep my job. Of course, my supervisor keeps rejecting my reports, and refuses to tell me why.
That is part of why I am up right now instead of my usual tossing and turning. I kept trying to think of the different way this would work out and how I should handle it. That and the new neighbor's dog kept barking.
So, I spent over $90 for a gaming camcorder so that I can use my desktop. The only way that I can use my laptop is to put it in front of my television, but then it blocks part of it, and there were always things that I needed to use behind the laptop.
Also, my entire reason for replacing that laptop was that it periodically froze, and I didn’t want to deal with that while working.
I was having connection problems one day, ran out, grabbed my ethernet cable, and ran it through the house. The Internet works fine now. Curiously, I have problems with GIFs on Imgur, but YouTube and Zoom work fine!
Zoom!
I have not gone through my programs on my other laptop yet, but I downloaded that one.
Annoying, there isn’t a big download button. You need to click on Resources to go to the downloads page, but while they have 10 different versions, none are for Windows. There are versions for Outlook, browsers, Skype(!), mobile, etc., but I didn’t see anything standalone for Windows. I needed to find a link from a reputable third party.
I talked about setting up a desk in my room and moving my laptop back and forth to my shed office, but I don’t want a loft bed again, in case I throw out my back again. I want to build a Murphy bed under the loft, which I will use for storage, and put a fold-out table on the bed, but I cannot figure out how to make that work with a desktop. I could build a frame to hold it on the loft and buy longer cables, but I cannot figure out where to put the television, so it might make more sense to build a nice padded bench onto the bottom of my bed and keep my desktop where it is, but I cannot access the computer itself easily where it is, and my television is in the middle of the room.
I would feel much more comfortable with the television up against a wall! My spider-sense tingles whenever I think about trying to use the space behind it!
So, it seems to make more sense to put a real door and lock on the shed, and keep my desktop and beloved television out there.
As for that ethernet cable running through the house, I need to bury one going to the shed, and then I guess run another through the attic. If I use the external ethernet connection I just need a cable, but if I am not video conferencing then the main wifi should be adequate.
I talked about replacing my router and purchasing an access point. I did and the router works great. I haven’t used the access point. Whenever I need to use another laptop or a faster connection on my phone I use my laptop as a hotspot.
Curious, I had just submitted progress reports. At least this time I remembered to write progress reports for teleclients that will never sign signature sheets.
Maybe Acronis would have work if I paid for it, although I don’t like the idea of paying for something that I only expect to use once if there are alternatives.
Most of the directions that I found on-line started “Connect your new SSD with a USB adapter.”
I haven’t found any cables like the SATA adapters that I have. I have found enclosures and one card that looks a great deal like what I used to put an M.2 drive into my desktop, but instead of connecting to my motherboard it has a USB port.
I am considering buying an NVMe enclosure so that I can use my original SSD as an external hard drive. It took forever to copy things to and from my current one!
I looked at dozens of instructions for using an external hard drive and Acronis to clone an SSD, but they still said to connect the SSD to my USB port. I asked in a huge subreddit and one person answered, but did not respond to my reply. I thought that Kevin’s fanbase was active enough that someone useful might try to help me.
Kevin tried to sell me BitCoin.
One of the problems that I had trying to put my image on the new hard drive was that it said that I had a problem with my license and each time it asked for my 48-digit BitLocker code--twice.
Sure, let me just pull that up on my phone. E-mail. Password. Don’t ask for 30 days. Phone number. Wait for a code. Copy and paste the code. Wait. Got it!
I really wish that “Don’t ask for 30 days” part worked! Apparently Windows decided to encrypt my hard drive and I needed to log into my phone, request a code, wait, and put in a 48-digit code each time that I booted, and with a new computer, it needs to reboot often.
I turned off encryption.
When I looked up the easiest way to migrate my stuff everything said to use the cloud. First of all, I am transferring more than the 5-10GB they offer for free. Second, I feel confident that my external hard drive is faster than my Internet connection, which may be metered. Like I did with cloning my SSD I added “with external hard drive” to my search and I found results saying “You could use an external hard drive, but just use the cloud!”
No.
Finally I found something saying to use File History, so I did.
Do you ever go to tap on something on your phone, but it hasn’t fully loaded, and between when you decide to tap and when you actually tap something else loaded and you hit the wrong button? Something like that happened and all of a sudden the option to load my backup was gone. I couldn’t figure out how to bring it back, but the backup wasn’t encrypted, so I just copied the folders to my new hard drive.
I copied World of Warcraft to the external and then the new hard drive.
I still have 352 GB free.
The subreddit where I asked for help with my computer had a Discord server and I felt that would be the fastest way to get help. Weirdly, all that loaded were rules. I couldn’t find any other channels, but I finally wondered what would happen if I gave the rules a thumbs-up. For some reason thousands of other people had.
Apparently you need to do that in order to actually do anything.
So, I got in and asked my question.
“Did you read the rules?”
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, but did you read the rules?”
I finally got the Rule Police to move on.
“Yeah, don’t clone an HDD onto an SSD, that always fails.”
“Who said anything about an HDD?! I am cloning an SSD!”
“Yeah, don’t do that, it will fail!”
“You are wasting my time. Goodbye.”
He responded, but I had already left.
I cloned my desktop HDD onto an SSD a year ago. I haven’t had a problem!
I joined the Linus Tech Tips Discord, but they were too busy sharing memes. I didn’t know what to do besides ask in Kevin’s Discord and hope that someone happened to know computers and like real estate (or whatever Kevin is currently peddling) and someone did try to help me, but that was when I decided to install the HP utilities and move on.
Well, I am going to see what programs I have on my other laptop that I want to install here and then look for the box in which that one came.
I need to send it back!