Computer Related > new laptop experience and palaver Computing Issues
Thread Author: martin aston Replies: 4

 new laptop experience and palaver - martin aston
My old laptop had a broken hinge that finally gave up the ghost this weekend when the casing and screen also decided to part company. Still works but the sight of exposed wiring etc its a bit alarming and at nearly 5 years old not worth repairing.

So I bought a new HP with SS (solid state, no hard drive), No touchscreen anymore as they seem to remain only on more expensive machines, if at all. I'll get used to it.

Anyway even though we are on fast-ish broadband its taken 24 hours to get set-up. First it needed to download some hefty Windows updates that took the best part of yesterday to load up. Not untypical according to Google. Then my old emails wouldnt open so I had to go in and change the settings. Even then its taken an age to update - its 24 hours since Ifirst turned the machine on and the last few have only now staggered in. I dont have that many so I assume it does them in small batches.

My Office licences have expired and still work on my old machine but not the new one so no attachments would open. I make very limited use so I dont want to shell out and have loaded LibreOffice which seems to have done the trick.

I am struggling to defeature the MS Edge browser which gathers far too much info for my liking but is, so far, very quick.

I still need to transfer my C drive and calendar data over. There doesn't seem to be an automatic way to update calendar and the little bit I have on the C drive will probably be put on a memory stick and downloaded to the new machine. Unless anyone here has any suggestions?

Overall I am amazed how clunky the overall process has proved to be. My last laptop was set up and running very quickly. My SMART TV and my iPad worked pretty much out of the box. Was I unlucky this week or are PCs and laptops getting harder to set-up? Mine seems to require a lot of time and a bit of understanding to get it running which is out of step with the plug and play world.

 new laptop experience and palaver - Falkirk Bairn
My 3 sons clubbed together & bought me an HP laptop 20 months ago.
I spent the best part of 2/3 days trying to set it up - getting rid of "trial software", downloading windows updates took many hours, MS Office, HP updates to their set-up etc etc.

Since then it has run well - at 6/7 mths old it decided to download a Wndows update that took ages, crashed MS Edge permanently.......... 10 months later next Windows 10 update resurrected Edge but caused grief in other areas.

Overall happy with machine if you forget the 4/5 days of grief in the 20 months.

New Ipad & new iphone setup was easy & took under an hour.
 new laptop experience and palaver - Zero
I have set up two new laptops, one new phone and one new Desktop in the last 12 months.

All went fairly quickly and painlessly, mostly because I decided years ago to dump an ISP email address for a google one. Thats takes care of Mail and calendar, and seamlessly synchs across any device or os you care to use or implement. The laptops were easy to transfer being Mac to Mac.

The desktop is windows based and subsequently a PITA. Its takes planning, preparation and planning to migrate your windows experience, specially across versions. And time. Its not a quick thing for the home user. Specially with windows 10 if you dont want to become trapped into the MS world.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 13 Mar 18 at 12:11
 new laptop experience and palaver - MD
So glad it’s not just me then a right royal pita.
 new laptop experience and palaver - Dulwich Estate II
You could buy a refurbished machine from Morgan Computers ( you'd never guess I was a big fan). The last PC I bought had no bloatware at all and was up and running in 10 minutes.

Mind you, it took me a couple of months to fit an extra hard drive, but that's another story . . . . . .
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