Why you need at least two computers

[Brian Roth]

Here I am bitching again....lol

/Rant

Yesterday when I started my lil' Win10 HP laptop (maybe 2-3 yrs old and connected to my external keyboard and mouse and large LCD monitor as always) I was FORCED into a HP BIOS "update".

Restarted...and my Win10 login....Credentials?...had been lost. So I clicked around and my only choice was to have Microsloth EMAIL me a passcode. Hmmmm.....computer locked down....how to get that magic number without email access?

Dig in closet....find my ancient Win7 Compaq....pray. Poor old machine took one or three attempts to take me to that old familiar desktop.....after many minutes of booting. Had to spend much more time doing a Firefox upgrade to FINALLY access my email via incredibly slow webmail alternative.

I am sure all the young/smarter/hot-shots here are laughing at me!

1.Why not use your "IPhone" for connection? Screw those....still wish I had a landline...and I have a simple fliphone instead. I will NEVER have one of those "dumbass" phones that constantly break down and are impossible to read and type with 70-year-old eyeballs and fingers!

2. "Ohhhhh....Windows....you need a Mac!" Screw Macs. I worked for many years for an ad agency that was infested with Macs. Thank God I was not on the IT side of that. They ended up having to hire 3 or 4 guys who worked their ass off 60-80 hours per week to keep that fleet of turds working.... more than a few dozen art designers, video producers, and audio producers.

3. "Wow Brian...you need Linux!" OK....by the time I can figure that out, my body will have assumed room temperature. I've fiddled with it and don't like the concept of having to buy YET another computer to avoid screwing up my main computer trying to install all kinds of NEW crapola. Song posted earlier:

https://groupdiy.com/threads/post-music-here.69213/post-1113309
/Rant Off

Gawd I'm glad to be semi-retired! lol All I have to fuss with any more are 10 Ampex ATR-100s and a vinyl cutting lathe system.

Bri

 

[ruffrecords]

Brian,

I have a singer/songwriter friend who is nearly 10 years older than me - he is 83. We first met over 20 years ago when we were both newly retired. We started recording his songs and over time issued quite a few CDs. When he turned 70 he decided he would like to be able to design his own CD labels but he had never used a computer in his life. Fortunately some kind soul ran a computers for old folk course at the village hall. He took the course and has never looked back. I would not call him computer savvy but he is able to work out most things on his own. When he gets stuck he asks his 10 year old grandson to help out.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Brian Roth]

Ian,

I've owned a "real computer" *** since 1983???? Original Compaq Portable with 2 floppies. Many machines since then. I even had a "cottage industry" biz selling my own software/hardware solutions to Pawnshops....mid 80's to mid 90's.....DOS based. My Pawnshop app code was written with Clipper, a compiled dBase work-alike. I had 10+ (20?) pawnshop clients.

I was SOOO Cool carrying around my luggable Compaq. lol

Anyway, in much more recent times, a PC for me is an appliance...like a toaster oven. Check email. Look at websites to read news, etc. Check bank account. Watch videos/listen to music. Read GroupDIY of course!

I really admire the "new kids" who can fly around with ProFools. They call me when they need me to help them figure out how to get audio from a mic into their speakers. <G!> OTOH....they are amazed to watch me edit analog tape....

I was once VERY savvy with DOS, but nowadays I don't have any interest in hacking around inside the crazy guts of Windoze with a text editor.


Bri Olde Phart


*** My first computer was a Sinclair/Timex that I connected to the Zenith TV set in my living room. I was thrilled to write simple BASIC programs that filled the screen with 4-letter words. <g> 1981???

10 Print "Fu*k You"
20 Goto 10

<g>

 

[nielsk]

As there are constantly forced "upgrades" that make essential things like being able to view a PDF no longer work, I find it necessary to keep my old computers going (and never the internet to touch!) just so I can access my old files. I have a KVM switch so I can run them all from the same workstation.
The only thing I use a current computer for is accessing the internet.
Funny thing is as long as you don't "upgrade" them, the old computers just seem to keep on working... Worst case replace the power supply, which one can do on a PC!
As to Apple products, I am proud to have never given that company a penny of my money. I hold them partially responsible for the demise of the commercial studio business, as well as being a pretty horrible company in many respects (like making non serviceable products). The business model of "force them to buy new products they don't need and throw away perfectly good devices by out-dating them" is not sustainable.
I have bought used ones when the situation demanded it, and my own system of personal justification can live with that.

 

[KA-Electonics.com]

Brian - Buy an Amazon Fire tablet and pay the extra $15 (or whatever it is now) to not have it ad-supported. I have them all over the house. I think my Fire 8s cost around $70 at the time. You can use it for email or web-browsing though the Silk browser leaves a lot to be desired and IFAIK doesn't have an ad-blocker plugin.

I also use an old retired Samsung Galaxy S4 without a carrier in airplane mode as a hand-held tablet. With the S4 connected to Wifi I can do email web etc and sometimes use it out in the backyard woods as GPS and compass. Maps require Wifi but as long as I have a good signal from the house I get maps.

Micro Center has very inexpensive refurbed Dell Win 10 machines that make good spares.

I do have a Smart Phone but almost never carry it. 98% of the time it sits on the charger cradle and only when I leave the house do I take it with me. When I exit the car the phone stays in the console. I don't want it on my body tracking every move.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I do have a Smart Phone but almost never carry it. 98% of the time it sits on the charger cradle and only when I leave the house do I take it with me. When I exit the car the phone stays in the console. I don't want it on my body tracking every move.

I carry my smart phone with me on shopping trips but keep it turned off.... If it need it I can turn it on.

JR

 

[sodderboy]

the dual floppy Compaq! Check!
I am continuously pulled between “the cloud” (someone else’s computer!) and carrying bootable SSD’s for anything non web/email related.
Mac Time Machine likes to drop files, especially music, so it IS good to have my 15 year old Mac on a stored ssd.
I have been dual boot Mac/pc since it started. For self-prepared taxes it is magic.
I like the fire tablets around the home vibe. . .
NO electronics for at least 2 hours before bed for me.
Mike

 

[Brian Roth]

I have a mortuary <g> of laptops here. The antique that gets some use is a Dell XP that was gifted to me. I bought a HP flatbed scanner 20+ years ago that always does great looking scans. But, HP abandoned support after XP. That VERY thick (compared to newer machines) Dell boots very quickly. It is NOT connected to my home network. I don't think it even has wifi connectivity.....just a RJ-45 and a RJ-11 for the internal modem. After doing scans every once in awhile, I use a USB thumb drive for sneaket-netting to my main computer.

Wayne, I'll check into the Fire tablet, because you piqued my interest!

Bri

 

[crazydoc]

Why you need at least two computers​

Because I can be pretty sure that at any given time one of them will be vexatious and need troubleshooting, just when I'm under time constraints.

 

[Matador]

3. "Wow Brian...you need Linux!" OK....by the time I can figure that out, my body will have assumed room temperature. I've fiddled with it and don't like the concept of having to buy YET another computer to avoid screwing up my main computer trying to install all kinds of NEW crapola.

Linux really is the answer to your original problem, in that you can essentially freeze it forever once it's running the way you like it, especially if you stick with the tried and true distributions.

Linux nowadays is pretty plug and play, and even quite Windows-like. It's trivial to boot linux from a separate partition without even impacting your normal Windows installation (especially if you have an EFI capable BIOS).

 

[totoxraymond]

Also, linux is very good at running old computers.

I have a 2011 MBpro that was not capable of browsing the internet anymore thanks to apple updates. Replaced the OS with Ubuntu and it was suddenly as good as new (maybe even better).
Thinking about it now, I was accepting that my computer was not as fast as before like if it was an old car with a dirty engine. But that shouldn't be the case, transistors don't get dirty and clocks will run at the same speed until they don't.

Also I keep an old motherboard on hand that has almost all connectors embedded (both usb 3.0 and floppy, vga and hdmi, PCI and PCIex SATA and ATA...) for moments when i need to access old tech. I recently brought a FatFrog dmx controller back to life). For this, i don't even have to keep a system disk, just burn a live usb and run ubuntu from it, done.

Regarding the concept of lots of tablets i'm the kind of guy who can't stand using a tablet, file browsing is just too bad. Also, you will depend on the manufacturer to make updates available for your model which is rarely the case.
But i have 7 or 8 raspberry pis all over my house. I use them as media centers, bureautic computers, touchscreen midi controller, anything that comes to mind.

I do agree that you always need at least 2 computers. Maybe even ten, or 20?

Thomas

 

[cyrano]

I'm keeping to my mid 2012 MB Pro's as I need Firewire for my RME audio interfaces and don't feel like using three dongles to do that on a newer one. I have three of those: main, backup and experimental.

It's plenty fast for internet access, as long as you use the right browser (Brave).

I've had newer ones from work and no way I'm buying one of those for private use. Repair and upgrade are just impossible and there are way too many problems, like the screen coating spontaneously developing spots and the keyboard failing prematurely. You can remove that screen coating easily, but why bother if you can stay away from it?

I'll get an M1 or M2 when it's time. It will be time when the 2012s all die.

Of course, I have a few PCs around too, but these get barely any use. VM (virtual machines) are way easier. I just recycled the G5, had a faulty PSU. I also still have a G4, setup with a bunch of SCSI cards, in case I need to access faulty raid arrays. That hasn't happened in over ten years, but you never know.

There's also a G4 powerbook around. Only reason: to watch DVDs in bed, when sick. All the more recent ones have failed optical drives. Every time I use it, I'm amazed at the speed it boots. Occasionally, I'll run some old software on it, like the database for my CD/DVD archive. Like once every three years or so.

I used to have half a museum of old computers. Sold these to a collector some years ago.

In case of need, I have a friend on the other side of the country that has every Mac ever made, usually multiple ones. All working, or being repaired.

His wife made him choose: either she left, or he got rid of the thousands of Macs in their house. She left...

 

[Matador]

Brian, if you want to give it a go, you can install Linux Mint (and most other distributions) on a bootable USB stick, and not even worry about touching your Windows installations. Check out:

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
It boots to a full Linux environment, and you can play around to your hearts content. The new(est) distributions based on Linux 5 kernel also have pretty good support for NTFS partitions, so you can read/write files to your Windows partitions pretty easily.

 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

I'll add my voice to recommend giving Linux (Ubuntu) a try. You have an engineer's brain, you'll figure it out. As Matador said, it mostly just works these days, and, although updates are frequent, paradigm shifts are not, and it's perfectly possible to keep an old machine running on an old version. There's a lot less change for the sake of change / selling a new version, and it's the only OS left that isn't cloud-dependent. You control your computer, you decide when / whether to upgrade. You can treat it like an appliance if you like, but it is also fixable and tinkerable if you can't help yourself.
Try it as a second / backup machine, so you don't get locked out of your e-mail again, Firefox/Thunderbird should be familiar to you already. Set it up once, use it when you need a backup system, and the next time your main computer dies, consider sticking with it.

 

[Tubetec]

We had a serious storm and flooding in town a few weeks back .
A locally based charity Im involved with had a bunch of brand new laptops which ended up submerged in flood water .
I took charge of the situation , made sure the computers were placed for a few days in a room with a dehumidifier ,
I then dismantled each one for cleaning , very little of the silt had made it inside due to the things being still boxed and wrapped in plastic .
To my surprise ,after carefull drying out and cleaning ,everyone of them powered up ,
On one the screen was completely gone , of the other machines the screens were damaged to varying degrees , mostly usable , or at worst the HDMI connectors could provide an alternative video output ,
Keyboards worked perfectly , mousepad good on them all too .

Apart from the screen damage the only other issue was the memory back up battery terminals corroded where they met the mother board , the back up cells might need to be replaced .

I had never touched a win 10 pc before ,
But the sheer amount of personal data input required just to make them work , including connection to a network , email address and a whole load of other data that they siphon off once you start using it ,
I actually consider these machines unfit for use the way they came from the supplier , not to mention all the other spyware ,voice and facial recognition tech built in , the main purpose of which is targeted marketing , and they have you firmly their sights .

Ive been with Windows all along , and it not hard to see whats really going on , the complexity of the software has kept pace with the hardware , eating up more and more processing doing the 'house keeping' , and keeping you waiting just the same as you always did.
I have versions of XP running on more modern hardware with SSD drives and it just does what you tell it to do , on one unit with a conventional spinning hard drive , the drive spins down after a few minutes idle time , the cooling fan also never comes on unless theres heavy processing happeneing.
Exact same machine with Win 7 , writes every few seconds to the HD , and the cooling fan runs continuously even when the machine idles . Win 8 and 10 is even worse in this regard , its busy speading your shit up the walls and selling on your personal data to the highest bidder while your trying to get on with your work .
I hold Gates personally responsible for the biggest waste of resources the planet has ever seen , and all the quiet wars that were waged to get them out of the ground , but dont forget even Hitler once made the front cover of Time magazine .

 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

Amen to that. We are well off-topic here ... or maybe we aren't, since the original post was basically just an excuse to bitch (and I don't mean to denigrate Brian by saying that ... he says as much in the first sentence).
In any case, XP is the last version of Windows I used regularly before I switched to Linux. I still think it's a great OS, and would continue to use it if it were secure. I maintained an XP VM for software compatibility until the CA certificates expired and it was no longer possible to use Firefox or Thunderbird safely. I'm inclined to agree that the modern versions have become too close to spyware. These days, Linux is the closest thing to an XP experience that is safe to use online.
My one point of disagreement is holding Gates personally responsible; most of the bloatware and the changes that violate privacy have come since he left Microsoft. Gates has many sins, but spyware-as-a-business-model, and the attendant resource waste, belongs to Sergei Brin & the don't-be-evil Google gang, not to Gates.

 

[Brian Roth]

XP was once MY Fave. I locked it down as best as I could so I could use the Net.

Since it's been mentioned several times in this thread, I'll take a look at Linux again on one of my antiques here. I looked at it several (more?) years ago and threw up my hands because of the apparent complex steps to do a dual boot setup. Using a USB drive to boot Linux seems intriguing but:

I did NOT want to break my "daily ride" LOL.

My DOS skills haven't translated to Windoze...or MacIncrap...or Linux.

Bri (aka grumpy old man)

 

[cyrano]

Well, Friday my MB Pro died. It grinded to a halt. Later, it wouldn't boot at all.

No worries, as a I always have a backup. Only, my son had borrowed the backup...

So maybe you need at least three computers?

 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

The USB drive is basically "emergency" Linux. It provides a bootable OS without any kind of installation, and it's intended for temporary use. That means its safe to use on your daily ride in case of emergency, since it won't write anything to your drive or change anything else about the Windows installation (unless you do so deliberately). It also means it usually doesn't save any changes between uses ... every time you boot, you'll get the same default setup. While it's probably possible to use it as a permanent installation, I doubt that's a recommended scenario for any "normal" situation (it might have uses for things like Raspberry Pi / appliance situations). The only thing that can change your Windows installation is if you explicitly run the installer and tell it that you want to install Linux permanently.

 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

If you choose to try Ubuntu, start with the latest LTS (Long-Term Support) version (22.04 at the time of writing), and don't upgrade to non-LTS versions. This will keep quirks to a minimum and give you the best set-and-forget experience.
Ubuntu releases new versions every 6 months, and new LTS versions every two years. The LTS versions are supported for 5 years (meaning, they receive security updates, and, if you pay for support, they'll offer troubleshooting / setup assistance). The non-LTS versions are only supported for *9 months*, and they are generally more likely to see newer, less-tested software versions. So, if you care most about stability and don't want to spend time tinkering, it's better to skip the non-LTS releases.
As with Mac & Windows, the first LTS release always has a chance of bugs, so it's advisable to wait 3-6 months to do the upgrade.
In all honesty, the desktop version changes very little between LTS releases these days. Software gets updated, a few features get added, compatibility with new hardware and software gets better, but the overall experienced doesn't change very much.
I've been running a version of Ubuntu on my laptop since 2012. This has been through 5 LTS versions, and quite a few "regular" releases, and it runs as smoothly as ever; it's not like Windows where piling upgrade on upgrade eventually bogs things down and starts to break. It also doesn't suffer from registry bloat, where old software versions leave crap behind in a way that slows the computer down.
It's been years since I installed a dual-boot Ubuntu from scratch, so I can't comment on the current state of things, but I know Ubuntu has put a lot of effort into making the installation process seamless. I've never had a problem on the two dual-booting systems that I maintain. Do some research if you like, but I would guess it will happily live on a drive beside Windows, and install a bootloader (GRUB) to enable dual booting