Windows & Office

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I’m looking for a new laptop and currently comparing options. The last time I bought a laptop, windows 10 was fairly new and people seemed to be reporting a lot of problems with it.

Iirc the small place where I purchased my last laptop loaded a ‘skin’ for me (don’t know if that’s the right term) that enabled a more familiar windows 7 look even thought the functionality was version 10. I have no idea whether any of that makes sense.

I opted to purchase a laptop from a local dealer, obtain a service for pre-loading the system and software I needed and using them for queries, repairs etc - although the need for that was zero to nil and I moved to the other side of the country anyway so had no reason to use them.

So any advice on which windows version would be best? I want something that’s reasonably familiar to me in look and feel, to avoid having to relearn all the navigation around my files and folders I’ve become fairly used to. But if there’s something I need to avoid, simply for the sake of that familiarity I want to know about it.

I use Outlook for email, Explorer for surfing, online shopping etc. I do internet banking, use Word for (creative) writing, iTunes for music, ( I enjoy ‘owning’ the actual music files and creating playlists - plus I tend to enjoy sorting and cataloguing the files etc using iTunes to access them. I’m sad like that. Calibre used for cataloguing ebooks etc. The basic Microsoft image fiddling stuff for editing photos, I tend to do a bit of sorting files and folders and saving music, films, books etc. I always used a lot of PowerPoint for work but anticipate I’ll use less if they at home now I’m retiring - shame coz I got pretty good with it. Same with Excel. Same with pdf editing software.

I’m kind of enjoying getting used to One Note at work atm. But I don’t think I’ll necessarily use it as much on my personal laptop when I retire.

I use malwarebytes for virus protection but I’m not even sure I need that.

I don’t do gaming and I tend not to stream stuff on the laptop. I do my telly watching on the telly. Never really had any success with streaming or mirroring laptop to tv monitor so I don’t do it.

So any advice of best Office software for me too.

I’ve been prevaricating about the best laptop for me for ages so it’s enabled me to save a few quid to get the right one. I still haven’t decided. I want to get this right and not regret buying the wrong stuff out of ignorance. I might also buy a tablet too - probably an iPad coz I’m familiar with the iPhone. But the laptop is the priority.

Sorry for waffling. It’s nearly 4am and I couldn’t sleep 😅🤪
 


I have always Windows at work and on home PCs. I use it in the same way as you and Windows 10 works for me. The O365 functionality at work has been a godsend for us at work these last 2 months. I am no expert but would recommend it.

not sure about the photo editing though, as I don’t really do that.
 
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Windows 7 is end of life and won’t get updates, so your only option is Windows 10 really. Its been problem free for me at home & work. I wouldn't worry too much about getting used to it, after a few weeks you’ll forget about how Win7 worked tbh.

office 365 if you are happy to pay for it, Its the cloud version of office and you can get free cloud storage with it too for backups etc.

malwarebytes is personal decision, some say Windows defender which comes in windows 10 is good enough, some say use something like malwarebytes as well.

photos i’d just try the stuff in Windows 10 first, you can always download stuff later if you find that isn’t good enough
 
I’d echo the two post above re. Win 10 and Office 365, both just work and it will not take long to get used to them as they are quite intuitive. In fact, you say you sort files, the Win 10 file explorer has more features to assist this.

In terms of a laptop, I would recommend Lenovo. They are very good solid bits of kit. That said, if you are considering a tablet as well, maybe look at a MS surface pro as it is both?
 
Just get windows 10 and office 365

saves messing about and it works.

anythingabout £400 notes will do. Make sure it has a ssd and your good to go.

You can pay £1500 and it will look nicer but unless your a power user you won’t notice much difference.
 
Just get windows 10 and office 365

saves messing about and it works.

anythingabout £400 notes will do. Make sure it has a ssd and your good to go.

You can pay £1500 and it will look nicer but unless your a power user you won’t notice much difference.

SSD you say?

I didn’t know much about that so googled and although ssd sounds attractive - and I can afford it - I do use a fair amount of storage. Would you say that the combination of W10, O365, SSD plus an external hard drive to store my hardly ever accessed work files (I’m gonna hang on to stuff in case I need to go back into consultancy after retirement) and back up music and photo files, is a good option. Or am I missing some obvious technical detail that makes that suggestion an embarrassing nonsense? :)
 
SSD you say?

I didn’t know much about that so googled and although ssd sounds attractive - and I can afford it - I do use a fair amount of storage. Would you say that the combination of W10, O365, SSD plus an external hard drive to store my hardly ever accessed work files (I’m gonna hang on to stuff in case I need to go back into consultancy after retirement) and back up music and photo files, is a good option. Or am I missing some obvious technical detail that makes that suggestion an embarrassing nonsense? :)
Yes, you also get one drive cloud storage with win 10. I think the first 1tb is free then you can pay for more if you need it.
 
SSD you say?

I didn’t know much about that so googled and although ssd sounds attractive - and I can afford it - I do use a fair amount of storage. Would you say that the combination of W10, O365, SSD plus an external hard drive to store my hardly ever accessed work files (I’m gonna hang on to stuff in case I need to go back into consultancy after retirement) and back up music and photo files, is a good option. Or am I missing some obvious technical detail that makes that suggestion an embarrassing nonsense? :)

That set up is more than reasonable. The only thing I’d suggest is to look into cloud storage instead of an external drive. No upfront cost and you have access the same as if it’s a physical drive on your laptop as long as you have access to the internet. Less chance of loosing the data too as the service provider will ensure data security.
Actually, I think One Drive is bundled in with O365 packages anyway
 
Do you really need Office? Google offer basic equivalents and you can save documents online and therefore pick them up from other devices?

I use Gmail email account so just use their online tool (no need for Outlook now) + everything is backed up on cloud and makes changing devices free of hassle.

Lots of free bespoke writing applications which may be better for formatting documents etc.

My set up is an SSD laptop training Windows 10. I have a local network drive (MyCloud Mirror) sitting elsewhere in the house for storing most of the important/larger stuff. This also backs up from one drive to another.

Did go down route of cloud storage using Amazon and Google drive but wasn't cost effective at time. Might look again as prices have dropped a lot since then.

I've bought a monitor for sitting at desk but still not set the thing up yet!
 
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That set up is more than reasonable. The only thing I’d suggest is to look into cloud storage instead of an external drive. No upfront cost and you have access the same as if it’s a physical drive on your laptop as long as you have access to the internet. Less chance of loosing the data too as the service provider will ensure data security.
Actually, I think One Drive is bundled in with O365 packages anyway

Ta. That’s what I thought regarding One Drive.

I think I’m gonna do it.

Yes I’m gonna go for it.

Definitely

Although.

I might think a little bit more about it.


🙂
 
You get 1tb with O365 - five accounts and can be installed across multiple devices. It makes my work and personal life so much easy. I can log in and it syncs with all my phone ipad and laptop. I can save documents at work straight into my one drive and visa versa.

That and a scanner means I don’t keep any paper records anymore and I don’t worry about a hard drive or external drive failure and when I need to replace my equipment, I don’t need to worry about transferring any of it.
 
Forget any desire to cling to Win7. Win10 is the only MS operating system in the game now - embrace it and move on.

Inbuild malware protection is suficient for most people (inc me) so don't worry about that either.
As for office apps, both MS and Google do them in a web browser, and you save to their cloud - so you don't even need storage. They're both perfectly good enough for most things. Totally free.

You really don't need a high end machine. Just get a full HD screen (1080p), 8Gb ram and an SSD - no graphics needed & tbh, any Ryzen or Intel core i-x processor will be fine.
 
I’m looking for a new laptop and currently comparing options. The last time I bought a laptop, windows 10 was fairly new and people seemed to be reporting a lot of problems with it.

Iirc the small place where I purchased my last laptop loaded a ‘skin’ for me (don’t know if that’s the right term) that enabled a more familiar windows 7 look even thought the functionality was version 10. I have no idea whether any of that makes sense.

I opted to purchase a laptop from a local dealer, obtain a service for pre-loading the system and software I needed and using them for queries, repairs etc - although the need for that was zero to nil and I moved to the other side of the country anyway so had no reason to use them.

So any advice on which windows version would be best? I want something that’s reasonably familiar to me in look and feel, to avoid having to relearn all the navigation around my files and folders I’ve become fairly used to. But if there’s something I need to avoid, simply for the sake of that familiarity I want to know about it.

I use Outlook for email, Explorer for surfing, online shopping etc. I do internet banking, use Word for (creative) writing, iTunes for music, ( I enjoy ‘owning’ the actual music files and creating playlists - plus I tend to enjoy sorting and cataloguing the files etc using iTunes to access them. I’m sad like that. Calibre used for cataloguing ebooks etc. The basic Microsoft image fiddling stuff for editing photos, I tend to do a bit of sorting files and folders and saving music, films, books etc. I always used a lot of PowerPoint for work but anticipate I’ll use less if they at home now I’m retiring - shame coz I got pretty good with it. Same with Excel. Same with pdf editing software.

I’m kind of enjoying getting used to One Note at work atm. But I don’t think I’ll necessarily use it as much on my personal laptop when I retire.

I use malwarebytes for virus protection but I’m not even sure I need that.

I don’t do gaming and I tend not to stream stuff on the laptop. I do my telly watching on the telly. Never really had any success with streaming or mirroring laptop to tv monitor so I don’t do it.

So any advice of best Office software for me too.

I’ve been prevaricating about the best laptop for me for ages so it’s enabled me to save a few quid to get the right one. I still haven’t decided. I want to get this right and not regret buying the wrong stuff out of ignorance. I might also buy a tablet too - probably an iPad coz I’m familiar with the iPhone. But the laptop is the priority.

Sorry for waffling. It’s nearly 4am and I couldn’t sleep 😅🤪
Got bored and read war and peace... It was quicker..
 
SSD you say?

I didn’t know much about that so googled and although ssd sounds attractive - and I can afford it - I do use a fair amount of storage. Would you say that the combination of W10, O365, SSD plus an external hard drive to store my hardly ever accessed work files (I’m gonna hang on to stuff in case I need to go back into consultancy after retirement) and back up music and photo files, is a good option. Or am I missing some obvious technical detail that makes that suggestion an embarrassing nonsense? :)
I've been looking at this. They do the same minus the touch screen for about 100quid less.
 
Touchscreen is a gimmic imo, but up to you

I agree. I got a laptop quite a few years ago with Windows 8 on it when everything Microsoft seemed to be heading down the touchscreen route and I was beginning to think the touchscreen was essential.

Skip forward to today and I still have the laptop, now running Windows 10, but I very rarely use the touchscreen at all, in fact I would say its a disadvantage as that generally means you have a glossy reflective screen.

A good and large touchpad is much more important.
 
I agree. I got a laptop quite a few years ago with Windows 8 on it when everything Microsoft seemed to be heading down the touchscreen route and I was beginning to think the touchscreen was essential.

Skip forward to today and I still have the laptop, now running Windows 10, but I very rarely use the touchscreen at all, in fact I would say its a disadvantage as that generally means you have a glossy reflective screen.

A good and large touchpad is much more important.
I agree, although mine is closed, stood upright on a stand and connected to a ultrawide monitor, keyboard and mouse :lol:

Bought this for the caravan. Which got sold when we had the twins. I could have had a monster desktop for the money. Balls.
 

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