Did I Make A Good Choice With This New LAPTOP Purchase?

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Mark,

Buy a little wireless (Bluetooth if the 'top has it) mouse for the times you need more accuracy pointing. Touchpads always annoyed me. I did LOVE the TrackPoint nipple pointer in the ThinkPad machines, but even that is still not nearly as accurate as a mouse if you are trying to play Minesweeper ;)

The funny thing is once I bought an Apple I fell in LOVE with their touchpads. I now use their touchpad exclusively on both the desktop and laptop. I have yet to use any touchpad on a Windows machine that is half as usable. (Well excepting when I run Windows on my MacPro that is!).

Glad the new toy appears to be hauling the mail for you!
 
Mark,

I have a 3 year old ASUS and it is running great. Just as fast as when I purchased it.  Started out with windows 7 and now it's running windows 10 without any glitches.

 

Enjoy your ASUS. you did just fine.

 
 
Thanks everyone

but can someone help me understand something. The processor in this computer is a Core I7-4720HQ with 2.60 ghz and 16 gig of RAM..

I googled that processor and I came up with a page of ratings of processors. While this one is not rated horribly, a couple of I5 processors are ahead of mine on the list. I was under the impression that anything I7 would be better than I5

shows how much I know. But I'm happy with it.

as far as the touchpad, it's not that bad. But I play this typeracer game online and I have a devil of a time typing there without the me accidentally making the touchpad active while typing. I found this free small program that runs in the taskbar called touchfreeze. It auto disables touchpad while you type. As soon as you're done typing, it is back on.

I adjusted the sensitivity to the touchpad and it's much better. There is a program on here for touchpad accuracy. I had to mess around with that.

I can't get over how much CHEAPER my old laptop is compared to this. This thing is heavier, but that's fine. I might try to the bluetooth mouse but so far I'm ok with it.
 
You did fine....

 

<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve been in IT before it was called IT…</span>

 

<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was in IT before Windows even existed…</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was in IT when Floppy drives were larger than 5.25 inches and 330K was considered HUGE!!</span></span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have a staff now of 20 somethings who barely know what a DOS prompt is but that’s OK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That’s what I’m for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>LOL!!</span></span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The one thing that has never changed is that we buy computers TODAY for what are needs are TODAY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Both will change quickly we just hope they stay in SYNC for some reasonable amount of time.</span></span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Based on what you’ve said it sounds like you did a fine job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You may have even bought much more computer than you need right now and maybe because of that this one will meet your needs for a very long time.  Good luck to you with your new purchase.</span></span>

 
 
Question:

I noticed something on this new laptop vs my older laptop and desktop. The OS Drive and then it looks like there is a separate drive called D: (data), what is this and why is it separate from the main OS drive? Just wondering? My desktop just has ONE huge drive like the older laptop.

mark_wpduet++3-11-2016-15-22-9.jpg
 
Initially I thought it was a back up of the operating system, many computers install a copy on the D drive to facilitate restoring the computer if something happens.  But looking at your screen shot it appears to be empty.

 

Actually I do this when I set up my computers, and find it useful.  I create a Data drive and put stuff there that is valuable, documents, pictures music whatever I do not want to loose.  Tat way if you ever have to reinstall the operating system it is not all wiped out.  When I used windows a year or two in I would invariably have to reinstall windows because it became too bloated, something did not install correctly or one of a dozen reasons.  Having the stuff that I wanted to save in a separate location was a time saver.
 
Partitioined Drive

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">It looks like they partitioned it into two drives.  My guess is the OS is on C:, they set up D: to store data and the additional 200 or so GB is probably reserved for recovery files.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">That's actually not a bad set up because you'd only have to back up the D: drive to get all your data files saved and C: (the O/S files that don't change much) could probably be recovered from the Recovery partition if needed.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">I have always set up one folder called DATA and then made separate folders off of that one this way when I need to back up the drive I just back up the DATA folder and sub folders.  Makes backup and restore pretty easy.</span>
 
Partitioned drives on gaming computers

<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">This had me a little curious so I asked one of my guys who is really into gaming.  A couple of things he told me:</span>

<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">He has an ASUS computer that is considered a gaming computer and is very happy with it and this is a guy that buys a computer, keeps it for a few days and then if he doesn't like the slightest thing he sends them back.  I have seen a few Dell desktop computers come and go pretty quickly.  He suspects you'll be happy with that laptop.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">About the partitioned drive - he said it's very common for gamers to want to keep all of the normal windows programs separate from all of their gaming stuff which is likely why the two partitions on the drive.  He said if you're not going to be gaming or if you prefer everything on one there is no reason why you couldn't redo the drive in one partition.  However, if you're not that familiar with the process, it's like more trouble that in it's worth for you.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">He suspects your computer may even have another bay for a second drive if you find you need one.  He'd have to see the specs on it to be sure but he says many of the laptops configured for "gaming" typical have the second bay.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">Sounds like you made a good purchase and got a good price on it.</span>
 
Thanks!

Yes, I've been messing around with a few things. For example. Asus has a touchpad program called smart gesture. I opened that program and unchecked EVERYTHING. Now the touchpad is much more precise than it was, and with the touchfreeze program, it keeps the touchpad from going crazy while I type. Another thing I notice is this laptop stays really cool, and I keep it plugged in all the time because I usually use it on one place, and the charger says "plugged in, not charging" so I guess it understands that keeping it plugged in constantly can cause battery issues, so it keeps this from happening? That's my guess.

I did a malwarebytes scan on this computer, it took 5 min's. On my old laptop, it took 45 minutes. I did a windows defender full scan, that took 52 min's. On my old laptop, it took over 90 min's. Keep in mind, I moved everything on my old laptop to this laptop, so it has pretty much the same amount of storage so far.

Multitasking doesn't seem to be an issue. I tested by ripping a dvd to my drive, converting in to an mp4 using handbrake, which is very CPU intensive. While it was converting, I opened a browser and did a bunch of stuff, which I could not DREAM of doing on my old laptop. If I was converting something, it took all that laptops power and then some. You couldn't really do ANYTHING. But everything flowed smoothly while it was converting. I didn't even notice it.

It has a back lit keyboard which is cool.

One small problem I ran into was the volume icon in the task bar. When you mouse over it and left click, it brings up a small window showing the volume slider. It went into sleep mode and when you moused over the volume, the slider didn't appear, no matter what you did, until I rebooted. It hasn't happened since, but I suspect it has something to do with going into sleep. I forgot to disable that in the power plan so I did that...

One thing is kind of weird though. The boot up time on this laptop is a little longer (not much) than my older laptop that has 8.1. I would think it would be much faster, but it's not. But once it's booted up, everything is blazing fast.

but yea, so far this is the best laptop I have EVER had. I haven't ran into anything I don't like about it (once I changed the settings in some things that were annoying me)
 
I was also in IT before Windows arrived, although I fortunately missed the eight inch floppy era.

 

My rule of thumb for home computers has been: don't be on the bleeding edge. You'll pay significantly more for the latest and greatest processor and OS, whereas if you wait a year of so, the price will come down dramatically. Although that does seem to be changing... got a nice Dell i7 6th gen XPS 8900 a couple months ago for work, and the price was, for a high power desktop, reasonable ($800). 16 GB of ram and a 4 GB Nvidia/GEForce graphics card. Windows 10, unfortunately but that's hard to escape these days. It's not too bad if you turn off all the ads and stuff. And it does stuff that the existing Celeron XP desktop still at work fails to do... and not just 64 bit high end software. Even email attachments and web browsing go better with the XPS8900.

 

Personally I'd avoid computers with Celeron processors. These have the math unit disabled; they are sort of brain dead Pentiums. Not good for advanced calculations/software. Probably one of the reasons why the work desktop unit tends to suck at certain things... it was there when I got there....

 

 
 
Yea

celerons are OK for people who just want to web surf, and you can do video editing, but it's just so much slower, so in the past, I always used my Lenovo desktop for that. I think the processor in that is an AMD A-10 with 8 gigs memory. It's a great desktop for me, but I like using a laptop better.

I found this REALLY cool tool online called SD Anti Beacon. It's free and it disables any privacy issues in windows 10 (which this new laptop has) including telemetry. Did you know that windows 10 can use your bandwidth to send windows updates you have already downloaded to other people on the internet! You can turn it off though. It's in PC settings. Go there and choose "update & security/windows update/advanced options/choose how updates are delivered/and turn that setting to off!

I chose express settings when I loaded everything up on this laptop and I spent a while going through and disabling a lot of the things that default to ON like Microsoft logging keystrokes, cortana. It wasn't until after I spent all that time that I found this utility that does it all for you. I like it because it's reversible, you simply hit immunize and it fixes the privacy issues, but if you need to undo anything, you can easily reverse it to off.
 
Option to Share Updates

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">That was actually introduced with Windows 8 and you're right, it's something you want to turn off ASAP.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">I wanted to comment on what Rich said about being an early adopter.  I am also one who waits and does not jump on the bandwagon the second something is introduced.  If one wants to do that it's OK but there really is a cost to it.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">My sister bought a Surface Pro 3 i7 processor, 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.  Basically top of the line at the time and she paid about $2,100 for it.  I bought an identical one when the Surface Pro 4 was released and paid about $800 for it.  So if you can wait a little bit you can save some $$.  It's perfect for my personal computing needs.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">Of course for work that's a different story.  Part of what we do is try to stay ahead of the curve so we're prepared when the calls come in.  I have a Surface Book coming fully loaded and I can't wait to get my hands on that.  Let work pay for it, right??</span>
 
Ya

I'm sure this laptop would have been well on 1000 dollars with these specs first were introduced.

Another thing - this has touch screen, but I don't use the touch screen. But the display is awesome

I had NO idea windows 8 and 8.1 also sent other people on the internet your updates.
 
Sudsmaster, backlit keyboard is a great feature. The keys are still identifiable after a few months. With my wife and her nails it only takes a couple of months and the keys are blank. With backlit there is nothing to chip off. Believe me we have many keyboards and laptops with no e,i,l,s etc. lol

Jon
 

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