jdmiles Loc: Texas

The fix for the scanner might be a copy of Silverfast. Silverfast saved my scanner.

Old Dutch

Buy a brand new, modern machine with all the gee-whiz gizmos; a top drawer processor (The AMD Ryzen, IMHO) loaded up with RAM At least 32gb, 64 is better, and a top drawer graphics card. But NO HDD or OS. If you are the least bit adventurous you can build your own; It is not difficult to install a new motherboard and a few peripherals in a new case, with a new hot dog processor and RAM pack. So you will know, I am partial to MSIi boards (5 year warranty) and AMD processors for their stability and reliability. It is shockingly easy, in fact. and you will have an extremely durable, cutting edge high performance machine for about the same you will pay for a middle of the road machine from Best Buy or Costco. You can buy all of these things from Best Buy, Micro Center or Tiger Direct, online and drop-shipped to your door. If you own a teen-ager, they will help you and think you are pretty cool to boot. Maybe, even, they will stop smirking at you when you try to find Tik-Tok.

Remove your existing HDD, then reinstall it in the new computer. It takes about 10 minutes and is as easy as falling off of a log. Touch the power button and have at it with your brand new rocket ship. If you want to keep the old machine, buy a new HDD (about $40.00 for a new WD "Blue" 1TB) or about $10.00 for a "refurbished" one from Micro Center, install a new version of windows 10 (about $40.00 from Uniq, an authorized reseller of Microsoft) and use it for what you want to use it. Or, pitch it.
The HDD IS the OS and ALL your existing apps. You are in business. Good luck.

And so you will know, I have done this more than once. I compose this on a home-built little rocket ship, assembled and up and running between lunch and supper.

PS; ALL the teen agers I own are grand kids. An older grand child made me a great grand father awhile back. I add this so you will not think I am some snotty kid. I am, in fact in my 8th decade. Computers are mechanical systems, and are pretty easy to assemble. And to me, "IT" spells "It". You can do this, and have it up and running before you complete the instructions for PC Mover. And with what you save, you can spring for a brand new UHD 4K 32" monitor.

OleMe Loc: Montgomery Co., MD

IF you go new, I second Gene's recommendation to reinstall. This helps get rid of "cruft" and gives you a clean system. If do it yourself, get an OEM version of Win-10 to avoid crapware. If you have faculty or student status, get Win free! They validate based on an email address ending in .edu. And thise also have minimal crapware. Take a look at my build.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I'm still running Win7 on an 11 yr old desktop, though I'm almost done migrating my "stuff" to a new Win10 laptop. I can't run the latest versions of some software - Photoshop, DXO PhotoLab, etc - otherwise it has been my daily machine. in the next few weeks I'll switch once I clean up my MS Outlook stuff. Expecting software written for XP to work on Win 7 and higher would be a stretch, unless it was XP Pro 64 bit.

jrchip01

Old Dutch,
Many thanks for your detailed recommendations. One question: if I transfer my old boot drive to the new machine, won't Windows complain about the new mother board?

roadsideron Loc: Apache Junction, AZ

It may not even boot up. If it does it's working with setup drivers tied to your old board and it will probably give you fits.

Old Dutch

No. The actual computer that we see on the monitor is on the HDD. The rest of it only processes the information presented by the OS and software. New MOB's are compatible with 10. I might add that a new build will allow you to install a brand new hDD as a "back-up" system. Free software available will allow you to "clone" the old drive, then will back-up new files on the new drive on a schedule you designate. I have a lot of photos and to lose them would be a huge loss, so they back-up once a week, automatically to a second, identical drive dedicated to that purpose. Easy to install, just plug it in and the system will find it. Windows has come a VERY long way since earlier versions like 98 or XP.

I meant to tell you that places like Micro Center (recommended) or Tiger Direct frequently offer "bundled" motherboards and Processors that work well together, and you need to match the MOB and the processor. A MOB made for an Intel processor will not work with an AMD processor and vice versa. It is not difficult or daunting, just a detail to be aware of. And the Architecture of any given processor is designed to be maximized with a specific architecture of MOB. Again, all this information is available at the Point of Sale or the web site of the MOB manufacturer. Electronics change so rapidly it is easy to get into "latest and greatest" mind-set but usually not really necessary unless you are a "gamer". And applications of any given processor are usually generalized to work with various boards from various manufacturers made for that brand of processor, AMD or Intel. Windows 10 is Windows 10, with the only difference being one for a PC, or a version for MAC, or a version for Linux. Your existing version, presumably on a PC will work just fine with a new MOB/Processor. Just much faster

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

When you buy computers from manufacturers that have more or less fixed configurations, you are stuck with what you get. I built a desktop in 2010 which I still use -

http://pixeldiarist.blogspot.com/2012/01/

I've since upgraded graphics (for greater bit depth, the 512gb ram was more than enough to run dual HD displays), ram to 32 gb, an SSD SATA boot drive, and an 8 TB internal RAID1+0. The Intel i7-2600K is overclocked to around 4.5 gHz and liquid cooled, and the case has 6 fans on it. Despite it's age, it is still quite snappy and I've had no issues working with huge panorama images of 1 gb and larger.

The laptop I purchased last summer has an i7-10875H, NVidia RTX2060 32 gb ram and (2) 2 TB NVMe PCIe m.2 drives. It is a faster, snappier machine on most tasks, especially rendering previews in Lightroom, merging panos, HDR and focus stacks, and doing gaussian blur and content aware operations in Photoshop - but I was surprised to see that the old machine was not all that slow by comparison.

If you want to build something it isn't that hard. But if you want to merely spec something and have it built - you can go to a MicroCenter if you have one nearby, or try www.xoticpc.com - where you can customize a graphics workstation any way you like.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

"Several years old" is being kind to your current machine. So you can ignore the suggestions on how to upgrade this box. I also agree with those who say that doing clean installs of software is better where possible. Your registry will thank you for not porting over possible unknown issues gathered over years (maybe 10 for this model which was introduced, I think, in 2009-2010)

jrchip01

Yes, upgrade an ancient machine and you still have an ancient machine. I probably will end up getting a pre-built pc with enough memory, CPU and graphic processing power to handle the likes of the Topaz suite. I realize I will pay a premium vs. building my own, but at my age (77), I would rather not deal with that process.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

In 2010 I replaced an ancient Dell (it came with Windows ME - affectionately known at the time as Windows Why Me - but ran XP for most of its life) with a box I built from parts selected at Micro Center with one of their "experts" walking around and putting all the bits in my cart. Everything did go together easily, but when fired up it only gave a black screen. Took it back to Micro Center and their service folks took a week to decide the video card they chose for me was incompatible with the motherboard they chose. Since they were the ones that chose the incompatible parts, they swapped the video card for one that worked with the MB, at no charge, and the box worked fine for 10 years.

But when it was time for a new one in 2020 I just bought one of the MicroCenter i7 PowerSpec models. I wouldn't have minded putting one together from parts again, but if the guys in the store don't know what works with what, how am I supposed to figure that out?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I agree with suggestions to upgrade your current computer, if possible, rather than replace it.

If your computer was running Windows 10 when you bought it, it's not that old. A newer computer will also be running Windows 10 and won't be all that much faster, unless it's higher specification in a number of ways. You could instead simply improve the specs of your current computer... if it's possible to do so.

1. Add RAM, if needed. You really don't need much more than 16GB for photo editing. Video work might need more (I don't do video, so don't really know what's recommended).

2. Add or improve graphics card, as noted by earlier responses.

3. If needed, install a faster and/or larger boot drive. If your C: drive is a hard disk, upgrade it to an SSD for noticeably faster performance.

4. Adding another drive may help, too. I don't know about Topaz, specifically, but Photoshop likes to have a "swap file" to significantly improve performance. It's best if that's a separate drive entirely (today I'd install a small SSD... say 100 to 200GB is sufficient... for best performance). If you don't have room to add another drive, perhaps have multiple drives in your computer already, it's possible to create a partition on an existing drive to act as a "swap file" for Photoshop. This means having a large enough drive to set aside 100GB to 200GB for Photoshop's exclusive use, but as far as the software is concerned it's the same as having a separate drive of its own to use. But, again, it may not be helpful with Topaz.

5. You also might add a fast drive (SSD) exclusively for photos (and videos?). This will give faster access when working with the images. Depending upon how many images you take or videos you make, this drive may need to be fairly large. Up to 2TB SSD aren't too expensive. Larger than that are available, but are very, very expensive. If you do this, it can also make backups easier. Simply get an external drive of any type that's the same size as your photo/video drive and install software that will maintain that as an exact copy of the photo/video drive. Ideally, get two of those external drives and keep one copy off site or in other extra safe (fireproof, waterproof, theft, etc.) Swap the backup drives every week or two. That way the most you'd lose in the worst kind of catastrophe is a week or two worth of work.

If you do decide to update computer or replace it and need to copy a drive for any reason, I have a suggestion. It's always difficult to clone a boot drive while it's in the computer. I don't trust the "free software" methods. Instead, I suggest to use a drive duplicator.

I recently upgraded a boot disk on a hard drive to an SSD for better performance (and to increase size... when a boot drive gets close to full... say 90% or more of its space is allocated... the entire system will slow down considerably).

Instead of relying upon a software, I bought a disk cloning device or duplicator from B&H Photo. It's a "Startech" brand "USB 3.0 SATA HDD/SSD Dock - 1:1 Duplicator", part #SATDOCK2REU3 and only cost between $50 and $60. There are fancier, faster "commercial" grade duplicators, but they cost a lot more. I used this as a stand-alone duplicator, sitting on my kitchen counter, to make an exact copy of my computer's boot drive... going from HDD to SSD. It really couldn't be simpler. Remove the old boot drive from the computer, fit it into one of the slots in the duplicator. Put the new drive in the other slot (2nd slot accommodates both sized of drives), press a button an let it do its thing. It took hours (copying a nearly full 1TB drive to a 2TB drive), but when done I installed the new drive in the computer and it started right up.

While the duplicate was being made, I also had to configure the slot in the computer for an SSD, which has a smaller form factor than the original drive. Adapters for this purpose are widely available and cheap.

This duplicator also can serve as an external dock for data storage or to make backup drives of either type, by remaining connected to the computer via a USB 3 connection. I'm not using it that way because my computer is so old it doesn't support USB 3 (my computer does have Firewire and e-SATA connectivity, but those don't work with the duplicator, only USB does, but USB 2.x is nowhere near fast enough to handle the data load efficiently).

If instead you buy a newer computer, but want to transfer the entire old boot drive data to it, the duplicator can serve for that purpose, too.

If you're concerned about doing computer upgrades yourself, there's likely a shop in your area that can help. Ask around. The shop will probably be able to advise you the best approach with your particular computer... whether to upgrade it or buy new. They will probably have a means of duplicating a drive or other method of reliably transferring your old data. (What I hate about buying a computer off a store shelf is all the crap they load onto it that I'll never used. For that reason alone, I will probably build my own computer next time around. There are sites online with all sorts of performance and compatibility data.)

OleMe Loc: Montgomery Co., MD

A senior moment turns into a senior hour:

I know the feeling as a fellow 77 y.o. My home build this summer was complicated by tight spaces, declining eyesight, and crappy instructions, including small fonts done in gray on a light gray background.

Best part: A Senior Moment. I purchased parts from my local Microcenter. Took days to put it together. It would not boot. A little idiot light on the MB signaled trouble. Unable to diagnose it, I decided to haul it back to Microcenter. I had read that they had an early doors-open for seniors from 8 - 10 a.m. So, I trotted off and arrived there at 8:55 a.m. sharp. Problem was that the special for seniors was only on [i[Tuesday[/i]! My moment turned into a Senior Hour.

Luckily for me, a senior tech took a look inside and found the problem - a jumper on the wrong plug! He fixed it on the spot. That was good because they had stacks and stacks of PCs and laptops waiting for repair, with a three-week backlog.

My wife kept quiet but I know that, secretly, she was laughing inside.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

Get a SSD. Awesome improvement.

1 tb about $100.

And if you do upgrade computer you can move it.

jrchip01

I am hugely grateful for the time and effort all of you put in to advise me on how I should proceed. Many thanks for all the helpful comments. I have decided to bite the bullet and get a new pre-built system. It is a Dell XPS 8940 Tower - 10th Gen Intel Core i7. Graphics card is GeForce GTX 1660Ti. It has 32gig of memory, a 1TB HDD, and a 512GB SSD. It should arrive Monday, February 15. I will keep the UHH community informed after I get it set up.