What Computer(s) & Operating System(s) Do You Have? Pros and Cons?

Recently cancelled by failing to renew my Microsoft 365 subscription. Now I'm getting messages when I open Excel or Word that access will be lost of such-and-such a date. Not a surprise as I was aware some features would be lost. But to lose access to MY personal files on a system I paid for when I purchased my desktop is a non-starter with me.

Far as I'm concerned, MicroSoft can suck eggs. Day comes no access is the day I unplug the desktop. Heck, I grew up and got my education using a #2 yellow pencil and notebook paper. I can sure as heck do that again. I'm tired of being held up for a subscription I feel I paid for in my initial purchase.
 

ArnoldC said:
Recently cancelled by failing to renew my Microsoft 365 subscription. Now I'm getting messages when I open Excel or Word that access will be lost of such-and-such a date. Not a surprise as I was aware some features would be lost. But to lose access to MY personal files on a system I paid for when I purchased my desktop is a non-starter with me.

Far as I'm concerned, MicroSoft can suck eggs. Day comes no access is the day I unplug the desktop. Heck, I grew up and got my education using a #2 yellow pencil and notebook paper. I can sure as heck do that again. I'm tired of being held up for a subscription I feel I paid for in my initial purchase.
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Interesting. When we ordered our computers, we elected (paid for) Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint to be installed on them. We do not pay for ongoing updates for these and are not prompted to do so, nor do we get warnings that our access to our files created from these will be lost.

They were NOT, however, Microsoft 365. Perhaps that's the issue?
 
Yeah, I don't know, Devi. Confused here and guess I'm a technological dinosaur. I'm at the point of just giving up and letting whatever will be will be.

Sharon advises me to talk with my local computer store on what to do. But at $60/hr, heck I be at their mercy as well. Any way I turn short of just pulling the plug on the whole darned thing is gonna cost me and the heck of it is I don't know what I'm buying or paying for will help.
 

ArnoldC said:
Recently cancelled by failing to renew my Microsoft 365 subscription. Now I'm getting messages when I open Excel or Word that access will be lost of such-and-such a date. Not a surprise as I was aware some features would be lost. But to lose access to MY personal files on a system I paid for when I purchased my desktop is a non-starter with me.

Far as I'm concerned, MicroSoft can suck eggs. Day comes no access is the day I unplug the desktop. Heck, I grew up and got my education using a #2 yellow pencil and notebook paper. I can sure as heck do that again. I'm tired of being held up for a subscription I feel I paid for in my initial purchase.
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If you had a subscription they may block you from using the program(s), you shouldn't lose access to your personal files. There is free office software available.
 
Grampa Don said:
Linux has bit me again. Over the years, I've tried a variety of Linux distributions and always ran into problems. This time, my son gave me his Dell laptop to play with because he was upgrading to something newer. It had Windows 10 on it and still ran fine. But, I figured why not install Linux on it and see how it works.

I put Linux Mint on a usb stick and did a full install, wiping out Windows. The installation went smoothly and everything looked fine and I shut it down. The next time I turned it on, the Mint symbol came up and then the mouse pointer. And then the monitor scrambled and went to a blue screen that never went away. I tried it several times and it was always the same.

I thought maybe I could just reload Mint from the usb stick. Nope. I get a message of no bootable media found. So, at this point I have a dead laptop. I'll do some research and hopefully find a fix, but I'm not optimistic.
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You may need to disable the Secure Boot feature in the BIOS. Consult your Dell Laptop's documentation on how to enter the BIOS and disable the Secure Boot / TPM features, may have to enable the "boot legacy" as well.
 
Grampa Don said:
I wish now I had made a backup of Windows. That was dumb.
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Backups are good but there may be hope yet.
I have an HP Stream 11 that came with Windows 11.
At one point messing around with the laptop, I slicked the drive on it.
That meant no reinstalling Windows from a laptop partition.

SOoooo ... I downloaded a Windows 11 ISO here ... Download Windows 11
THEN, during the install login, it asked for my Microsoft account login.
AND, lo and behold my Microsoft account profile associated a Windows 11 license with my HP Stream 11 laptop.
When I previously created the Microsoft account from within Windows on the Stream laptop, Microsoft automatically retrieved and stored the Windows 11 license for my laptop.

Once booted up, I found Microsoft had automatically activated the license it had associated and stored for my hardware.
 
papa tiger said:
If you didn't run the reset everything else is total B.S.
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What are you talking about?

If it's a response to my post I should have included a quote of Grampa Don's entire post.
He had slicked his Windows drive to install Linux and wished he'd made a back up of Windows first.

I simply explained what I ran into and was concerned that I may have to buy another Windows 11 license.

Turns out I didn't need to because establishing a Microsoft account prompted Microsoft to record my hardware configuration and license.
Therefore when I reinstall Windows 11 from another source and logged into my Microsoft account during installation, Microsoft recognized the validity of running Windows 11 on my laptop and automatically activated the license.

If that's not what you were referring to, please ignore my B.S. :ROFLMAO:
 
ArnoldC said:
Recently cancelled by failing to renew my Microsoft 365 subscription. Now I'm getting messages when I open Excel or Word that access will be lost of such-and-such a date. Not a surprise as I was aware some features would be lost. But to lose access to MY personal files on a system I paid for when I purchased my desktop is a non-starter with me.

Far as I'm concerned, MicroSoft can suck eggs. Day comes no access is the day I unplug the desktop. Heck, I grew up and got my education using a #2 yellow pencil and notebook paper. I can sure as heck do that again. I'm tired of being held up for a subscription I feel I paid for in my initial purchase.
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I avoided all the Microsoft BS and just downloaded the FREE Libra Office 7.6 software package. Works well for all my needs. I mostly use their Document Writer (Word) & Calc (Excel) programs but there's others included too like Impress Presentation (Power Point) and a few others. Like I said; works well for me and it's FREE!
 
Nathan said:
You may need to disable the Secure Boot feature in the BIOS. Consult your Dell Laptop's documentation on how to enter the BIOS and disable the Secure Boot / TPM features, may have to enable the "boot legacy" as well.
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That's what I did and I was able to re-install Mint. I found that Mint runs fine and restarts OK until I use the update manager. Something in the updates causes the initialization to crash. I guess if it is working well, I don't need the updates. I'll use it a while and see how it goes.

Thanks for the tip.
 
I would love to hear what you guys think is the best Linux distro nowadays. It's been a couple of years but I used to run Gentoo and was very happy with it until they finally did an upgrade that incorporated two different user driver schemes that don't coexist with each other that well, and the upgrade permanently killed my computer. I've still got the hard disk so at least I can salvage the data, but now I'm not sure I want to deal with it until I get a good replacement. I've also run Redhat, Debian, Slackware, and Ubuntu distributions. I'd be up for Linux Mint, but not so up for Ubuntu.

Big thing I don't like about Ubuntu is that anytime any program or driver is updated, Ubuntu insists on rebooting and restarting the whole machine. I remember that one of the major points of Linux was that Linux didn't need to be rebooted or restarted just because you upgrade a part of the software not related to the kernel.

So what do you guys think?
 
I've been running Linux Mint since about 2009 and don't even remember ever having to reboot unless it was a kernel update.

I like the stability of Debian ... put a desktop of choice on top of it. Debian, Linux Mint's choice of default software and extra multimedia codecs are a win for me, so I'm happy with Linux Mint LMDE 6. Has everything I need. Although I mostly ran a Mate desktop for years, Cinnamon seems to be working fine with LMDE 6.

But it's possible depending on skill level, to download and install pure Debian and install whatever desktop you like and default software from the command line until you start getting GUI's up and going. I did try doing that one afternoon but ending up deciding it was a waste of time. Seems I was pretty much apparently trying to reinvent Linux Mint :ROFLMAO: ... so just installed Linux Mint LMDE 6 and called it a day.

And the thing about LMDE 6 is that while all the other Linux Mint distros are based on Ubuntu, LMDE 6 is just Debian, a Cinnamon desktop and Mint selection of default programs, not based at all on Ubuntu. Works a charm. No hiccups, glitches or showstoppers so far.

There is no be all end all distro or there wouldn't be so many choices. Most distros can be run live if you download the ISO and write it to a thumbdrive for instance. That way you can check out various distros and see what you might find appealing. Of course keep in mind that booting and running live from a USB will be much slower than if actually installed of course.
 
Thanks iksentrik and Naturally. I'll look them up. I'm looking forward to getting Linux back on my laptop and not have to put up with Windows.
 
Naturally said:
... just to add, my desktop computer is fanless Mint Box 2 with Intel Core i5 and 16GB ram and 250GB SSD memory, that I've used for several years now. It is totally and completely silent ... not a sound at all ... no fans. And the footprint is very small. It did have a conventional hard drive and only 4GB ram (maybe 8) when purchased years ago, that I upgraded to current configuration.

It feels like I may never have to buy another desktop unless it's just for grins and giggles or this one breaks ... which isn't likely.
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It seems that the Mint Box 2 is a Linux only system, is that correct? I'm intrigued by the fanless/silent design, I detest PCs and Laptops that have fans howling all the time.
 
Rich said:
It seems that the Mint Box 2 is a Linux only system, is that correct? I'm intrigued by the fanless/silent design, I detest PCs and Laptops that have fans howling all the time.
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Rich, it came with Linux Mint installed but could run whatever you have.
There are many fanless computers out there and most don't come with an operating system.
So you get all the hardware you pay for and then have to install an OS. Linux is free.
Amazon search shows lots of "fanless computer" choices but careful, many are under-powered.

My modem, computer, router ... totally silent

WAegRtG.jpeg
 
I noticed the other day that Microsoft intends to do 24.2 upgrade to 11pro. That probably means at least a year or 2 before 12 pro appears.
Microsoft wants people to migrate from 10 pro to 11 first.
 
papa tiger said:
I noticed the other day that Microsoft intends to do 24.2 upgrade to 11pro. That probably means at least a year or 2 before 12 pro appears.
Microsoft wants people to migrate from 10 pro to 11 first.
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I looked at the statistics for Steam (game distribution company) last night, 51% of users are still using Windows 10. WIndows 11 share is 44%.

Curious, is that because most people are running older hardware, that doesn't support Window 11?
 
Naturally said:
Rich, it came with Linux Mint installed but could run whatever you have.
There are many fanless computers out there and most don't come with an operating system.
So you get all the hardware you pay for and then have to install an OS. Linux is free.
Amazon search shows lots of "fanless computer" choices but careful, many are under-powered.

My modem, computer, router ... totally silent
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Nice. My current system is fairly quiet. It's a custom order and I wanted something powerful and quiet. You know, the strong silent type šŸ˜‚.
Fanless is intriguing, I'm off to google what's out there! I appreciate your response and information.
 
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@Rich ... generally the fanless computers won't have a separate (PCI) graphics card.
Most common is onboard graphics integrated with the CPU.
So fanless may not be acceptable to some gamers for example.

I'm not heavy into games so the fanless computer I have is fine.
I've had it several years and not even close to thinking of replacing or upgrading.
I use it for Internet surfing, email, office documents and photo and video editing mostly.
 
Naturally said:
@Rich ... generally the fanless computers won't have a separate (PCI) graphics card.
Most common is onboard graphics integrated with the CPU.
So fanless may not be acceptable to some gamers for example.
I'm not heavy into games so the fanless computer I have is fine.
I've had it several years and not even close to thinking of replacing or upgrading.
I use it for Internet surfing, email, office documents and photo and video editing mostly.
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I'm not a gamer, I tinker a bit with Photoshop elements, that's why I wanted something with some horsepower. I suppose this system has a few years left in it, it's a little over 4 years old. I also have a much older Toshiba Z40 laptop (~2015) that I upgraded to 16gb ram and an SSD drive but when I use the laptop the lesser speed is really noticeable. The desktop sort of spoiled me but I suppose I would get used just about anything. You are correct about the fanless systems, they all seem to have compromises of some sort. Still something to look at when the time is right.
 
Back up on Windows Home 11 desktop again. Wearied of the constant battery charging on the notepad. Battery offered good life in the beginning but then quickly began to degrade. That offset the convenience of roaming about the house. Google OS was O.K., I guess. Kind of off-putting trying to move between two systems. Dunno. Probably opt back into the MS cloud again. [shrug]. $500 dollar lesson learned the hard way.
 
Well, I've been using my new Dell computer for about a month now. I've had to get used to:
~Features being accessed in a different way, including bookmarks and private windows. I finally researched how to turn this thing off.
~Smaller fonts and icons on OS apps and programs, which I still haven't figured out how to change. Can't seem to find anything in settings.
~How to navigate the window positions using the options offered
~Using their "Paint" function to change internet photos to JPEG; haven't used it for anything else yet.,

I'm still learning this Windows thing but it's wonderful having the computer start up the second I turn it on, having the operations run smoothly, quickly and not seeing that "spinning beachball of death" that I endured at almost every operation on the Mac.
 

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