Can I save my laptop?

[Xist]

The square traitors just told me to call in [and waste tons more time]. I did not feel that I had the time and energy to kick the pricks until this morning. I spent 35.5 minutes repeatedly repeating the same information and the guy said "This is a hardware problem. I am e-mailing you an RMA right now.

So, I need to back up what little I have put on the laptop in the last couple of weeks, and order some screws.

Do your laptops slowly lose screws?

Do I have any reason to believe the laptop will be stable for the forseeable future? People keep telling me to buy a new computer, but whenever I have a problem with anything people tell me to replace it.

"I am going to change my oil today."
"Just get a new car!"

I have been watching for cars for a year or two and tried to buy a few, but laptops? Weird. Costco doesn't have anything that I like! All of their laptops under $1,000 have cheap graphics!

Digital Trends says the Dell G5 SE is clearly the best gaming laptop under $1,000. The best all-around one was the Asus ZenBook 14 UX425, but it has a 14" screen. The next laptop that it mentions is their choice for the best gaming laptop.

One thing that I do not like is that it has two USB-A 2.0, one USB-A 3.2, and one USB-C ports.

I guess that I need to get a USB-C hub.

The only problem is that it comes with 8 GB. I have not worked with that little RAM in years. Could I even use Chrome?! Crucial sells the CT18665652 16 GB module for $58, although I would then have 20 GB, and an extra 4 GB module.

Since I need a stable laptop for work I would deduct this from my taxes [and play games on my desktop]. I would also sell my current laptop once it comes back [and checks out] on eBay.

Eleven sold in the last 2 weeks for $350 - $1,010. I don't know if, since this is an auction site, prices are all over. Rick talks about that on "Pawn Stars," but that is when he is trying to buy something for less than the seller wants. Seven sold between $480 and $750 with 1 or 2 GB SSDs, but the $1,010 one didn't, and it was used.

I do not have any idea why someone paid over a thousand dollars, more than I paid Costco. Is it because the seller said that it was only used 6-7 times for Oculus Rift: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Legi...sAAOSwoB1fYaik

Crucial has a 2 TB SSD for $340. If that got me $700 for my laptop instead of $350 with the on-board 256 GB...

Yeah...

This Western Digital 1 TB hard drive is $105, although it is out of stock for a week.
This Crucial SSD is $104, although it claims slower speeds.
Tom's Hardware recommends this Adata SSD, which NewEgg ships for $105.

If I make $350 selling my laptop, deduct $111 from my taxes (12% rate), and get $18.50 back with my credit card (2%), this will end up costing me $445.50, although I really wish that I could get Costco's standard 2-year warranty. I could still SquareTrade for $100, but I haven't enjoyed dealing with them.

[freebeard]

The square traitors just told me to call in [and waste tons more time].
[snip]
I could still SquareTrade for $100, but I haven't enjoyed dealing with them.

Life's too short to deal with squares ....man.

You keep talking about Windows laptops. Keep trying the same thing over and over and ...may the force be with you.

In the last decade, I've bought mainly Mac Mini and laptops when I see them in the $75 100 price range, on sight. The last one I spilt something on the day before my son visited and he treated me to a $500 mid-2012 Macbook at Nextstep Recycling (my old employer). There are similar organizations in Portland and Seattle. DDG suggests:

Arizona Computer Recycling
Arizona Computer Recycling will take care of all of your Computer Recycling needs. We will take your computer hardware and take care of it responsibly and we donate a portion of functional computers to charity. If you are in the Phoenix Area then call us today, 602-579-4919. We are a part of the Eme...

Address: 7642 W Vogel Ave, Unit 3, Peoria, AZ 85345, United States

Phone: +1 602 579 4919

[redpoint5]

...and I have great success with various Windows laptops. They'll go 6 years or more, but then again I buy entry level business class, not gaming or consumer grade. I also never get discrete graphics since if I wanted to play games, I'd have build a desktop. Laptops are the wrong platform for gaming unless one must be highly portable and game in remote locations.

If my sister doesn't use the Dell USB-C dock I gave her, I can send it your way. It will only support 2 displays though. You need Thunderbolt 3 to support multiple 4k or 3+ displays on both the laptop and the docking station. I found that out after hours of troubleshooting new equipment. My company saved $10 on the non-Thunderbolt docking station only to have me spend half a day on the problem and $170 on another docking station.

[Xist]

That would be awesome!

I have difficulty using one 4k screen fully. Progress report season opened today, so I will have everything that I need to write those spread across my screen, but with space to spare.

I think that I will bring it out here.

The thing is, my laptop is faster, or at least the graphics are significantly better.

Look! A rabbit hole!

My GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design has an average G3D Mark score of 7,939, whatever that means. PassMark Software's Videocard Benchmark says that the GeForce GTX 1650 Super is the best value with 9,835 for $160. The non-super 1650 is 4th, but 7,847 for $140, so for $140 I should be able to upgrade my desktop to compare with my laptop.

Food for thought.

That did not even count as a rabbit hole!

My laptop uses have varied greatly, just like my driving habits, but I am sure those will largely return to normal eventually. I used to visit my sister once every month or two and there were always times when my family was busy and I had an hour to play World of Warcraft.

The same was true when I traveled to go on a date.

The Digital Trends article that I shared before said that "an excellent business laptop isn’t so different from any other laptop. That’s why the updated Inspiron 15 7000 is such a perfect fit — it’s simply a great 15.6-inch laptop with ideal specs for all kinds of business purposes." It has a 9th-generation i5, and on-board graphics. "It won’t be good for gaming, but that’s not why you buy this laptop."

The gaming laptop is less than $100 more and comes with a 10th-gen i7, competitive graphics, and heat issues. I already have a laptop cooler, but that is like telling a Phoenician to turn on a fan when their air conditioning goes out.

Every review that I read said that the G5 was extremely fast for its price, but sacrificed in many other areas. With an older and slower processor and only on-board video, there was a great deal of room to make a better all-around laptop for less.

Will it last less?

Remember those heat problems?

First of all, there isn't a video card to die, nor one to cause other components to overheat.

I don't know, if I am spending good money on a slower laptop that I cannot use for games I do not see the point in spending $800 or more. Yes, hopefully it should last for a long time, but if I am going to buy something exclusively for work, I would rather buy something like the Acer that I bought for Mom back in February. It is lighter, thinner, has far trimmer bezels, and the screen opens much further. There are times that I wish that my laptop opened more and hers does over 180°!

It turns out that her laptop was released last September. Is there a newer model?

I guess.

I tried to find something and just found the older one until I went to Acer's site. Almost the last laptop was this: Acer Aspire 5: $400. I cannot find it for sale anywhere else, nor are there any reviews of it. It appears to have an updated processor and graphics and allows for faster RAM, but does it use it? We paid $313.68 for hers, although it is now $350. I cannot find it cheaper anywhere.

It is a year old, replaced, and the price went up 12%?

Aside from a black square on the touchpad, it looks the same. This indicates the processor is about 30% faster. I cannot find much information about the on-board graphics, this just says that the newer one has a higher frequency, but one less execution units and slightly fewer shaders (the old one had 20% more of each).

Is the new one 14.28% better?

All right:

1. Order $400 laptop (and upgrade the RAM).
2. Upgrade the graphics in my desktop.
3. Try to find a deal for Microsoft Office.

Plenty of people try to force free office suites on others, but that is like people saying "You have problems with Windows? Just use Linux!"

I would happily pay a small fee to use a ten-year-old version of Office. Who brags about having the latest word processor? I am not subscribing and I do not see any reason to spend a surprising amount of money for one computer when I have two that I use daily.

Office on-line isn't a solution, its a nuisance!

I am pretty sure that Google Documents is actually worse.

I have been using WPS Office for a while now and I like it more than the other free options that I have tried, but you know how Word is notorious for messing up everything when you try to adjust one image?

WPS Office is much worse.

[freebeard]

At this time in this location we have:

Eugene, Springfield Used Computers | Rebuilt Computers ...
goodwill-oregon.org/GoodwillComputerStore/
GOODWILL COMPUTER STORE AND RECYCLING CENTER 1010 Green Acres Road, Eugene, OR 97408 . In partnership with United Recycling Technologies (URT), Goodwill offers consumers a FREE, convenient and responsible way to recycle used computers, monitors, printers, scanners, hard drives, keyboards, mice, speakers, cords, cables and software.

I got Photoshop Elements there for $4.

[Xist]

It is quite complicated, but to the best of my knowledge Microsoft licenses are non-transferrable.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

It is quite complicated, but to the best of my knowledge Microsoft licenses are non-transferrable.

Sure they are transferable. A license allows an instance of their software to be utilized by whoever is utilizing it. There are resellers of licenses online.

Good luck finding non-cloud versions though. I had to buy Office 2016 on the grey market because Microsoft has no channels to buy it through them. They told me to just install 360, and I got to explain to them half a dozen times that it hadn't been validated on an FDA medical device, and in fact doesn't work on it.

[Fat Charlie]

Fixing laptops is easy, if you can already do it.

We've got a mess of throwaway HP laptops from a company my wife used to work for. They were literal trash that eventually followed her home. New hard drives later, they're not top of the line by any stretch of the imagination, but the price was right and they work just fine. My daughter's broke right before a Zoom meeting last week. My wife diaged it as the keyboard and swapped in a replacement from another computer in time for the kid to join her meeting only a couple minutes late.

But it's not worth spending the time to learn that just to fix your own laptop. Unless you've already been forced to build that skillset for other reasons, just replace it. Seriously.

[redpoint5]

Well, it is a gaming laptop, so it presumably has more valuable than a basic laptop assuming a fix is reasonably easy... plus it was under warranty. It should have been sent in. It requires another skill set; being comfortable insisting your way when support tries to shirk responsibility. Sometimes I begin the conversation telling them what they will do, and then tell them it's up to them how much time they want to waste until I get my way.

Anyhow, I agree with your general concept that there's a reason our advanced society is specialized and hardly anyone does anything besides the thing they are specialized in. There's an infinite amount to learn, and becoming proficient in even a small fraction of it is untenable.

That said, when I was single I had nothing but time to become proficient at things. As a married father, I have time to be a mediocre employee, spouse, and parent. The sprinkler project I started in March is ongoing...

[Xist]

I think that I will switch Mom from Firefox to Brave. I thought that ads would go away as soon as I logged in. I think that there are fewer, but I saw eight ads between the last post and the reply box, and a few were "Best swimsuits for big busts."

I just started using this. I think that all that Mom does is grab it every week for teletherapy for my brother and then she puts it to sleep.

Why did I get ads like this?

Anyway, I have been trying to finish up paperwork on Mom's laptop, but I keep needing to look up passwords and stuff. However, I ran a download test and Mom got 75.1 megabits per second.

My laptop, a few feet further from the router, got .46, 1/163rd as fast.