I read that each new version of windows has more sophisticated spyware to track your every move. I'm not comfortable with that but if I buy a new laptop I don't have any choice other than the latest version.
That's true. Microsoft is getting more and more data from their users all the time. Same is true with Google and Android, and with Apple products and everything else. That said, it's still a good idea to have most up-to-date software to prevent other more malicious entities from also being able to track you and do goodness knows what else. Oh and never install Flash on your PC. The number one software for being exploited and opening backdoors onto your computer.
They do. Dont know how technical to get with you lol. But you can install programs that stop programs automatically installing stuff or modifying your registry etc without you giving permission first. A lot of it is general stuff that happens when installing new apps or updating etc. Can get annoying but is a good learning curve to see what can happen behind your back as windows just lets the ****e happen on default setting. You can change the settings in windows somewhere so it alerts you to every little thing, but at work on phone and off top of my head no idea where it is. Windows basic firewall is ****e though as you need more control over what apps do Esp apps phoning home.
On my old laptop I only downloaded Firefox as an alternative browser and AVG when McAfee ran out. I'm generally download averse. The only app I've ever got on my phone is WhatsApp - I have no trust in any of it because they're far smarter than me and I don't know what I'm doing
Just heard about this Liverpool band 'Hers' being killed in a car crash in the US, very sad indeed. Anyone know anything about them?
it's just big data... they are all watching our every move. I can look at Amazon on my phone and my laptop 2 mins later will have an ad on Google for similar or same brand stuff. basically I sold my soul to Google and have become a.google bot being tracked like if a beekeeper tagged his bees to see where they go. we are all their drones now. I agree on flash. it's the no 1 illegal streamer choice for a reason
For those of you in the know which is better HDD or SSD and what's the difference between LED and LCD screen?
hhd is a traditional hard drive with moving parts SSD is a solid state hard drive. no moving parts LED is light emitting diode - less power used. lasts longer LCD is liquid crystal display - The SSD drive will be faster but theres probably less storage on the thing. To get high storgae in ssd currently you pay more SSD also uses less power So you need to decide how much storage you want on your laptop... remembering that all these companies want you to use their cloud service now so limit the SSD a bit. If you want masses go for HHD. otherwise i would say ssd 90% of time to people Now the screen stuff... so bascially some LED screeds are LCD with LED back lights so you really just want to know does it use a lot of power and what resolution is it. Theres no point talking OLED or AMOLED or whatever here. Just figure out if its a hd screen thats LED and go for that. less power and less delicate.
To go into ssd and hdd a bit more, ssd is more expensive than hdd but when you load windows it is significantly faster (i have read twice as fast) Not sure if you are getting a laptop but typically if you dont want to pay the cost of a ssd, people normally get 2 hard drives. The ssd so start windows and a hdd to store all their data. Windows 10 takes about 20 gig so if you get an 128 gig ssd, as long as you arent planning on installing a load of games, using as a photo storage dump (use googlephotos) or downloading movies it should suffice.
Its even faster than that. With windows 10 its virtually instant. You are right some laptops on higher end are coming with two hard drives. Especially for heavy grpahics users like art processing etc.
The other disadvantage to SSD vs HDD is lifespan. SDD can only write over data so many times before it stops working... ... Now that number is on average 100,000 times or so (per bit)... Some bits go faster and some last longer... But still, it's not ideal for anything that might have recurring processes running like if you're recording constantly changing logs or video streams the overwrite on a loop, etc. Too much writing and deleting over time reduces the usable size of the drive. For most practical uses you would probably be fine with an SSD... Just keep in mind if you do run anything that has an unusually high rewrite frequency. I think two drives. SSD for your OS and HDD for everything else is a good compromise for price performance for most people.
Thanks both of you for that. The laptops I'm considering are either 1TB hdd or 256GB ssd. I don't download much at all and use Google to store my photos so I don't need a lot of storage. My biggest bugbear is speed as my last laptop was very slow. It was i3 processor so I'm looking to go for an i5 and that's about as far as I've got in the filters. The next step was which drive and then which screen, so you've both helped me massively on that
Theres a limiting factor on processor, ram once the pc is on. When it starts up though its generally all about the ssd. From above you deffo should pick ssd. After a couple of year if your pc is really slow you should probably reformat it so it clears out all the crap you have accumulated and runs faster
I'm a novice at all of this so I don't understand the first and last paragraphs, so I will go with the middle one
Thanks for the info, most of which I understand. I've spotted a laptop with 2 drives which looks ideal but is about £80 more than same model with one drive.
I think he means processors have a limit on RAM. For example, one might have a limit of 1gb but you've got 4gb installed, the processor would only use the first 1gb, the remaining three would be redundant. PS... I'm a novice too
