New computer

Not sure If recommend it, but I ran my last laptop for 7 trouble free years without any anti virus software installed.

 

aaah.. but I should imagine that:
i) you didn't buy the cheapest doorstop available on a whim whilst doing your weekly shop
ii) you didn't literally use it as a laptop/tv-tray... on a fluffy cushion whilst placed on yer lap and tipping McFlurry over it
iii) you didn't actually believe that you had won a 'special prize'* for being the 1,000th visitor that day when something popped up on screen


*your 'special prize' is a virus

 

Well, my refurbished PC arrived, well at the post office, so will be interesting to see if that all works out OK.
£425 for a 4th gen i4, 2Gb hdd, 16Gb ram, GTC 1650 4Gb graphicsm Win10. Looks good on paper ...

 

If you mean 2TB HDD and an i5. Otherwise you might well have won that free gift mentioned earlier.

 

lol, yeah, that's what I meant!

 

Was gonna say, there was an i4??

 

4th Gen.. aren't they on Gen 9 by now? 4th Gen being 2013 Vintage

 

If the board is capable of 16Gb RAM then chances are that whatever else is on that board (CPU, GFX) it is STILL way more than capable than average user will throw at it.

Vendors are selling stuff on the back of how big the HDD is.... the processor and RAM is far more important.
The analogy I give people is that it's no good having a warehouse the size of a football stadium if you've only got:
i) a 4 drawer filing cabinet with some odds'n'sods in it
ii) one guy with a hand-pump pallet truck working in the place.

The hype/bs surrounding the latest 'shiney' is why sooo many get ripped off.
Best buy is stuff that commanded a good price a few years ago... then feel free to refresh the operating system...
Either with Linux (recommend Zorin-Lite-v12 [but not 15],.. or MXLinux latest... both have a very familiar Win7 'feel'), or, with a little bit of 'savvy'... Win10 Enterprise LTSC..

Average user : internet, download watch/steam Netflix or whatever, simple doc/spreadsheets, store photos (mebe some minor editing.. we're not talking full on Photoshop), some games....
Advanced User: All the above and much more... they would also be posting to full-on TechNerdGeek forums of which there are many and completely unfathomable to most.*

*I'm a bit of a TNG myself.. I often read said forums to find out how much I don't know.. which seems to be rather a lot...

 

Windows Defender on W10 is actually very good indeed and is always being updated.

SSD's have made the biggest impact on the speed of laptops for me, wouldn't be without one now.

Picked up an HP with 4gig ram, 120gb ssd, i5 processor and Windows 10 for £80 off ebay a while back, use it for car related diagnostics etc and it flys!.

 

Apparently its better to go for an NVME/M2 drive for your OS than an SSD as its several times faster.
Thats the little one on a card that plugs into the motherboard between the video card slots etc.

 

This!!
But only several times faster if:
The files to be transferred are large (the benchmarking software typically will use small (<4K bytes) and large files to read and write as there are orders of magnitude difference in the speed)
The heat can be kept low - the nVME drives will throttle back the speed after ~10 seconds at full speed... but after those 10 seconds has elapsed most of the file is already transferred. Real-life impact therefore is minimal

Nozzle

 

True,true & true. Though I've never gone for state of the art kit as it's too pricey, and not really needed for my usage these days.

In days of yore, I couldn't have a work laptop, as they weren't powerful enough (software developer)

 

Some SSDs are much faster than others, this is true. But all SSDs are thousands of times faster than spinning disks. If you go for a slightly dated laptop or desktop that can't take an M2 drive but can take standard 2.5" drives, they will still be massively faster with a SSD.

My favourite source for computers is the Dell outlet. Latitude laptops in particular. Tough, reliable and well made. I'm just going to scratch them anyway so I'm happy to save a few hundred quid to have one that's already got one or two.

I work in the cloud these days, but for a while I needed my 32GB of RAM for my VMs.

 

OH Im not knocking SSD drives, I have 3 in my PC
I just mentioned something I have seen mentioned on youtube while researching parts for my new PC, Ill checkup about what Nozzle has said.