[FRIAM] Advice on configuring computers

Wed Oct 10 23:43:37 EDT 2018

Nick these all sound like pretty good ideas.  To me it seems like their's
always some need to get a pretty good sized hard drive. FWIW I didn't guess
right for my computer. I thought 1 terabyte would be plenty. I am wrong.
As to the cloud. Yeah I don't know. For back up? It's pretty good. I just
think it's about the right thing for the job.
I don't know if anyone else has suggested this: ram; Windows eats
surprisling large amount.

Question: do you particularly need or really want to stay with a laptop?
HP isn't all that good of a computer company. Just my experience it hasn't
been all that good since...forever at least the 90's and really since the
80's I'd say.

My brother (Tim) a while back got a think pad. At the time seemed to like
it. I don't know  what their like now.  Anyone have some opinions their
anygood still?  I thought his wife

The reason I suggest thinking about a desktop. Is it might be a lot less
hastle to get a good hard drive and ram.  Plus installing them is not at
all straitforward even at a shop with a ton of equipment. experience. I
have done it with a hand me down from owen(dad). But let me tell you on the
apple it was not that straitward and seriusly had a few moments: Oh fuck
please tell me that dropped screw didn't hork something up.

I totally agree with the SSD(their really big thumb drives basically)..and
I didn't know that a 500 gig  one is about 90.. that's awesome !
.

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 12:01 PM Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:

> I think getting the largest SSD you can afford is a good idea, 500G SSD
> internal drives are around $90, a terabyte is less than twice that.  Get a
> laptop with a small SSD in the best technology and have someone swap in a
> bigger and badder drive.
>
> Just don't lose the laptop.  My dad spilled orange juice into his laptop
> case once on a visit, never did find out why he was travelling with it.  Or
> maybe you should just do that first and solve all your data storage
> problems up front?
>
> Micro SD cards are great, but I can't find any of mine other than the one
> that's plugged into my laptop.  And the slots tend to be all connected with
> USB 2.0 buses last time I checked.  Which I had to do by bench marking the
> same card in a USB 3.0 adapter vs the builtin reader slot, because no one
> specifies how the built ion SD card interface is provisioned.
>
> -- rec --
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 1:42 PM Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <
> alfredo at covaleda.co> wrote:
>
>> Marcus idea is good. During years I have been using a cheap Chinese SD
>> card as main drive using LINUX OS running on an old tiny laptop which lack
>> of a mechanical hard drive. I have just updated to a newer Linux
>> distribution and I also installed Dropbox there, so I always bring my
>> important files. These days you could buy 1024 GB SD for less than 50 US
>> dollars.
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 11:59 AM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> If the issue is bulk, most laptops will accept these cards:
>>> https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16820173374
>>>
>>> Marcus
>>>
>>> On 10/10/18, 11:31 AM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     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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>>
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>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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