Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Yuck...

tmehrkam Loc: Houston,Tx

Current Dell laptop purchased year and half ago has touch pad problems. They worked on it four times. No joy!

Purchased a wireless mouse. Abandoned the touchpad!!!

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus! NFG

I worked as a EE in the Seismic industry. Shipped 100s of Dell systems.

Buyer be ware.

Purchased from Costco.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

As a Mac user my only suggestion is this: Do Do NOT store your Lightroom (I presume Lightroom Classic) Catalogs on the Internal HD. I would always use an external HD.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

I have an old floppy drive somewhere, but I haven't tried to use it since I switched from a desktop/deskside Mac to a MacBook, but I still have a CD/DVD reader/burner as part of my setup.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Could you expand on your advice with reasons?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Good point! $10/100 GB disc is a little steep, but the longevity seems worth it. I do worry about availability of a mechanism and driver software to read the stored files a generation or two down the road, though.

bob fleer Loc: Annapolis, MD

my older laptop became a very slow machine over the last 1.5 years. took forever to do downloads and updates. I was upgraded several times from windows 8 to finally windows 10. Processor and graphics card could not handle some of my photo work anymore.
Went to Best Buys and did some searching. Since the salespeople do not get commissions and are very knowledgeable I tend to trust them more.
Anyway dropped the hammer and purchased a new ACER Nitro 5 gaming computer, I am not a gamer, It was about 1K but but I love it. It is fast and has saved me a lot of time and energy, TOTALY PLEASED.

If using Best Buy would suggest joining Geek Squad for the $200. extra the did the transfer of the system from old computer to the new one, took a day in their shop which it would have cost the same if not geek squad member. This allows you to bring any similar equipment in with problems at no additional cost except for parts if needed for 2 years. They also did my wifes tablet N/C at the same time.

jcboy3

What PC are you interested in?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I'll offer:

> If you use a laptop, and it is lost, stolen, or destroyed in a fire, flood, or accident, and you don't have a current backup... OUCH. BACK UP YOUR DATA.

> If the internal SSD fails, and you don't have a current backup, data recovery is either very expensive or impossible. OUCH. BACK UP YOUR DATA.

> Apple Silicon Mac SSDs are either keyed to the System on a Chip (if removable, as in the Mac Studio), or they are soldered in place, and generally cannot be replaced without special tools and assistance from Apple. It's the price you pay for speed, low power consumption, low heat output, and exceptional system responsiveness. BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Back up your *internal* SSD drive to a conventional spinning hard drive Time Machine volume that is at least two to four times larger than your internal drive.

Back up your *external* working SSD to an identical SSD. Using a disk-mirroring RAID 1 array is a great way to do that. When one drive fails, replacing it with a new identical drive will rebuild the backup. Back this pair up to a spinning hard drive on a regular basis.

Put long term storage on a large, conventional drive and on a cloud server.

It's a little expensive to protect your data, but worth it. ALL drives fail at some point. Don't get caught without a recovery option.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, that’s always an issue - not the media, but the mechanism to read it. One needs to plan to migrate to a different media every 15-20 years or so (or sometimes sooner).

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Windows... Been using Windows since it came out. (DOS way before that.)

Brands?
1)Toshiba (but no longer available);
2)HP;
3a)maybe Lenovo (used to be IBM);
3b)possibly Dell.

Currently my laptop is an HP (8 mos. - it replaced a 10 year old Toshiba); desktop is a 10 year old HP (Win 7); wife's laptop is a Dell - maybe a year old, Win 11.
The OTS HP laptop from Costco runs lickety-split (Win 11).

I/we don't need a super-zoomers or fantasmical graphics.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

The old methods fade away.....
I did, MANY, many years ago, have a micro-cartridge tape drive.

jcboy3

Windows is software, not a PC.

Your number one pick is no longer available?

delder Loc: Maryland

I do recomend Dell. They do have some factory support.
My spec is 16 to 32 gb RAM, an I7 or better processor, Seperate Video Card [GPU] with at least 6 GB memory.
Your GPU is used for a lot of processing in photo applications.

DON'T get rid of your old computer just yet. If the computer still boots up, chances are your photos are still there.
You just have to look for them on the hard drive. Your Photo program only manipulates and indexes the images.
Good Luck!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

You are absolutely correct. But how many people refer to a "Windows PC" vs. a MAC PC?
That's why I gave both answers, an attempt to eliminate any ambiguity...


Correct. Over the years, both my and my wife's prior PCs were Toshibas.
I would buy another Toshiba in a heartbeat if they were still manufactured.
Not sure why they got out of the personal computer business.