[Hidden-tech] So maybe I'll buy a PC and not a Mac—advice, please

[Don Lesser]

Welcome to the dark side.

 

I like Dell, which is controversial according to some. Not sure of their corporate behavior.

 

I’ve had Lattitudes  for 10 years now and like them. I have a docking station with keyboard, mouse, monitor attached so it is easy to plug in at the office and have them and pop the laptop and run it as a laptop on the go. I am no longer interested in having the hottest, fastest, coolest machine so I tend to go with a medium price point. As much memory as you can, as powerful a processor as you can, and solid state hard drives seem the next thing. You know the laptop tradeoffs—weight/size vs. portability. Others who follow the hardware better can give you more suggestions as to which laptop.

 

Windows 10 is kind of annoying about making you sign in with a Windows account. Don’t do it. Get Windows Professional rather than Home in my opinion as it is better suited for networks, etc. Others may disagree and the Home edition is probably better for media. Ask an expert (not me) on that. I connect to networks so I like Professional. Enterprise is overkill.

 

Windows 10 comes with Snip-It which lets you capture a portion of your screen and save/insert it. Otherwise, PrtScreen to copy the whole screen and ALT+PrtScreen for the current window. (You may need to hold down the FN button as well on some laptops.) Word can save as PDFs. I think Paint can also and Edge is a PDF viewer.

 

Right-button click gives a QuickMenu, which varies based on context. Invaluable and I don’t see how Mac users live without one finger access. Also, extra functionality. For example, left drag a file to move (on the same drive) or copy (to a different drive). Right-drag and when you let go, you get a quick menu that lets you copy, move, or create a shortcut. Invaluable. There are tons of speed keys for everything, and as an old Command Line Interface guy, I use a lot of them.

 

Good anti virus. Suite 3 (formerly IBS) recommended ESET which I use and like a lot. Windows comes with a virus checker but depending on the speaker, you will hear it is good enough or crap.

 

Mannie knows more about the video stuff. I’ll ask him to send you info.

 

VBA, a version of Visual Basic is included with MS Office. It is a full-featured, object oriented programming language that uses the objects in Word, Excel, etc. to create macros and full applications. Batch files are the old way to automate Windows tasks and there is a new full featured language that you can use (Powershell) for shell programming. I love VBA and have worked with it for 10 years + and developed a lot of applications for clients with it. It was not available on some versions of Mac MS Office, which was a major pain. I believe it is currently available.

 

Personally, I have only used PCs since 1982. (I bought my first PC the day Apple announced the Mac.) My clients all use PCs and Steve Jobs’ attitude ensured that the Mac would never be a dominant office machine (no clones, high price, didn’t want to connect to “brain dead” networks, i.e. Netware or Windows Network or “any office network”). Without sparking any PC-Mac religious issues (probably too late), I think of the Mac as a toaster—take it out of the box, make toast, every now and then you burn some bread which you toss and try again. A PC reminds me more of a lathe—tie back your hair, watch your sleeves, and don’t stick your fingers into the machine. I have an iPhone and an iPad, but for computers, I like PCs. They are more techie and Microsoft’s attempts at user friendliness are incredibly lame, but they are a tool which I use daily and accomplish my work. Plus, all my clients use PCs so when I looked into buying a mac laptop, it seemed I would buy the laptop, boot it into Windows and rarely use the Mac OS so it made no sense to spend the money on a Mac. I’ve used UNIX/Linux systems and they can be even more techie, but since I don’t manage servers, I haven’t spent any time with them. MS Office on the Mac is different from Office on the PC and frankly, Microsoft puts its computing power in the PC version. (No VBA or other features in some Mac versions of Office). 

 

So, to recap, I am a PC partisan, and I like Dell. Hence my recommendations. Someone else will give you a different view, but make sure to understand the recommender’s prejudices. 

 

Don Lesser

Pioneer Training, Inc.

139B Damon Road, Ste 8

Northampton, MA 01060

(413) 387-1040

 <mailto:dlesser at ptraining.com> dlesser at ptraining.com

 <http://www.ptraining.com/> www.ptraining.com

 

From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Shel Horowitz
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 3:46 PM
To: Hidden-Tech Tech <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>
Subject: [Hidden-tech] So maybe I'll buy a PC and not a Mac—advice, please

 

Thanks to all of you who responded to my query last week about which Mac to buy. It seems that neither of the Macs I asked about will really work for me, and the one that would is going to be about $2000.

 

Meanwhile, Dell happened to mail me a flier today. For $600 plus $150 for MS Office—I've tried some of the freebie Office clones and NOT been happy—I can get an 8GB laptop with the Intel 7th Generation chip. I don't know yet about what ports it has, which was a major problem with the Mac. I figure at minimum, I need a power port plus two USBs, plus an SD reader. And a DVD ROM drive would be highly desirable, especially as our video player stopped talking to our TV.

 

I've tested Gmail, Twitter, PowerPoint and Word on my wife's older PC laptop and it seems the adjustment between operating systems is much smoother than in the past. The last PC machine I owned was a NEC laptop running Windows 3.1.

 

So anyway, I'd love advice on:

1.	Good, reliable, fast machines to buy, preferably from socially/environmentally responsible companies and under $1000
2.	Anything I should be wary of in switching operating systems
3.	A cheat-sheet on keyboard commands for things like taking screenshots and making PDFs (both VERY easy to do on Mac)
4.	What does that right button actually do?
5.	With PCs known for far greater virus issues than Mac, what precautions will I need to take?
6.	Is there easy built-in software or freeware for making videos? Making text or menu macros?

Thanks, as always.


Shel Horowitz - "The Transformpreneur"(sm)

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