[FRIAM] Advice on configuring computers

[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, everybody.  

In my world, hyperspeed is not a big deal.  The big deal for this 80 year old is cognitive burden.  So a this point I have stuff on the hard drive, stuff on  a 1t drive  and stuff on Carbonite, and this, for me, is a ticket for disaster.  So also is a system in which every where I go, I have to carry not only the laptop but a hard drive as well.  The one thing eighty-year-olds don't need (as you will soon find out) is another thing to lose.  SO, the obvious solution is to spring for a a machine with a huge SSD drive, on the theory that it is the last machine I will ever buy so what the hell.  

Is there some reason why that ISN'T the obvious solution?  Is it just COST that has driven you all to have little boxes and wires sticking out of your laptops, or am I missing something here?  

I HATE to spend more than 1K for a computer.  It seems a mortal injustice, an assault upon my mongrel puritan soul.  But perhaps it's time to suck it up?  

The other kind of "suck it up" message you all might give me is to rationalize my digital storage so I don't need so much.  But for the above mentioned reasons, I will need help to do that, in which case, members of the Local Church might suggest a Digital Storage Rationalization Consultant to help me straighten out the mess I have made. 

Nick





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 9:33 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Advice on configuring computers

You may already know this ...  Because you're probably using that *thing* called Windows, in order to do this effectively, you have to pay attention to where programs are installed.  Windows installers will try to put everything on your "C" drive.  But they usually give you the option of installing it somewhere else.  Given Windows' massive disk space requirements for Updates, I tend to keep only Windows (and the virtual memory page file) on the 1st drive and put everything else on the secondary drive(s).

On 10/10/18 8:25 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
> My guess is that your 460 GB drive is a spinning hard drive, and that the new computer has a solid state drive (SSD). This is a /good/ thing since the SSD drives are much faster. The prices on Amazon for 1TB drives are around $50 and the 2TB drives are close. My suggestion is to get the new computer, add a relatively humongous hard drive with a USB 3 connection, and make some decisions about what you want almost instantly available, and what is merely almost instantly available.
> 
> Better yet, buy two hard drives and start backing up regularly (there are programs to make that automatic).
> 
> --Barry
> 
> On 10 Oct 2018, at 2:25, Nick Thompson wrote:
> 
>     I was about to give up on my  460 Gig hd HP because [it was old 
> and] I was running out of disk space, only to discover that the standard machine offered by my university to replace it has LESS disk space.  Wondering how people are storing stuff.  Are the days of buying larger and larger hard disks and never making any decisions over?  [sigh} Note that cloud storage is not an option to me for half the year.  Are people buying terabyte sized USB drives and running software from them or telling some software to store to them?  How’s that work?
> 
>      
> 
>     Sorry to bother you with this.  I know the rest of you have real 
> work.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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