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Is April Fools Day a good day to think about buying a new computer? Actually, the thinking came some weeks before the first of April. My primary computer was nearly seven years old and won’t run Windows 11. My wife’s computer was five years old, underpowered, and won’t run Windows 11. The keyboard on hers was failing. It was time to replace both systems.
Most companies replace computers assigned to employees every three to five years, so the timing was right.
This article is about computers that run Windows. MacOS users have limited choices for hardware, so Macs aren’t included. Nor are Chromebooks and computers that run Linux. Because Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system for home and office computers, that’s the only focus.
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This account is highly subjective, exploring how my wife an I selected our computers. Our choices are far less important than the process.
Spoiler: Both of our new computers are from Lenovo. No company is inherently better than any of the others. They all make powerful, high-end computers, and most also manufacture limited, low-end computers so it’s important to look beyond the brand.
There are a dozen or so big manufacturers and hundreds of smaller shops that build custom desktop machines. Notebook computers are more common now, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be limited to fewer than a dozen manufacturers such as Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Toshiba.
Phyllis now has a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 and I have a Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 Mobile Workstation. Maybe you’re wondering why both computers are from Lenovo and why we didn’t choose the same model. It comes down to how we use the computers.
Why Lenovo? Over the past thirty years, we have owned computers from Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, and others. We have both had acceptable experiences with Lenovo and the company offers decent support most of the time. I have an antique Toshiba computer that continues to run after nearly 15 years, but Phyllis had a bad experience with a Toshiba computer. I like the idea of using the same vendor for both of our computers, so Lenovo was the choice, and it was totally subjective.
The components that make up the computer should be matched to the user’s needs.
Phyllis’s computer (left) has an Intel Core i7 CPU and mine has an Intel Core i9 CPU. Her primary uses are email, web browsing, and games. My computer (right) includes those uses, but also extends to photo and video editing, website design, and audio production.
The use cases are also reflected in the memory installed on the computers: Mine has 32GB of RAM, half of what my previous computer had, and Phyllis’s has 8GB of RAM, the same as her previous computer. If either computer needs additional RAM, more can be installed easily.
CPUs for both computers were substantial upgrades. Phyllis’s previous computer had an Intel Core i5 CPU and mine had an Intel Core i7 CPU. Low-priced processors such as AMD’s Athlon and Intel’s Celeron are generally best avoided unless you’re on a strict budget or have limited needs.
Virtually all computers include integrated graphics on the motherboard, but many also include a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU). If you do a lot of photo editing or video editing, the GPU is important. These are typically made either by Nvidia or AMD.
Phyllis’s computer came with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU with 4GB of RAM, which more than sufficient for games and basic photo editing.
The GPU in my computer is an Nvidia RTX A3000 device with 6GB of RAM intended for high-end photo and video editing.
Is either of these options right for you? Maybe, but the decision must depend on your needs.
Neither of our computers has a touch screen. Neither has a fold-back keyboard that converts the notebook computer to a tablet. Both have fingerprint readers that make logging on easy.
Phyllis’s computer has a 512GB disk drive and mine has a 1TB disk drive. If her computer needs more storage, adding a second M.2 drive is relatively easy. Mine already has five external drives.
Both of our computers have Thunderbolt connectors, which is something I’d recommend for any computer because they provide fast data transfer rates and can also be used with a dock to power multiple monitors and connect to other devices.
Phyllis’s previous computer had an optical drive, but her new computer had no option to add one. We added an external USB optical drive even though optical disks are becoming passé. Because I work with video files, my computer has an external Blu-ray writer that can also handle standard DVDs and CDs.
Pay attention to the computer’s built-in monitor specifications if you plan to use the computer without a separate monitor.
A computer with a 15-inch monitor will be lighter and more portable, but the extra weight of a computer with a 17-inch monitor may be an acceptable trade-off for improved legibility.
The screen resolution is also important. Higher resolution will produce sharper images but smaller text. If you plan to use one or more external monitors, the built-in screen is less important. The way I use a computer differs considerably from how Phyllis uses a computer: She holds the computer in her lap and uses the built-in monitor while I attach two 27-inch monitors and use the computer as I would a desktop system.
Any notebook computer will have a Wi-Fi adapter and may have an Ethernet connector. The Wi-Fi adapter should support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and comply with at least Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n specifications. For best possible performance, look for a Wi-Fi adapter that complies with IEEE 802.11ax specifications, which as also known as Wi-Fi 6.
The final consideration is Windows. Even if you prefer to stick with Windows 10 for now, make sure that the new computer will support Windows 11.
Microsoft will support Windows 10 only until mid-October 2025. The computer will continue to work after that date and probably will receive security updates, but maintaining an up-to-date system is wise.
There’s no shortage of options. Desktop systems are still being made for those who need the most power and no portability. Notebook systems have screens ranging in size from less than 12 inches to nearly 20 inches. There’s a wide choice of CPUs and GPUs. Memory ranges from 4 to 128 gigabytes and storage from as little at 32GB to 2TB.
If you know that you’ll never take the computer with you on a business trip or vacation and there’s room on your desk for a standard desktop computer, you can save money by not ignoring that option. Also, if you need the absolute best video performance, you’ll need a desktop computer that has room for a $1500 (or more) video subsystem. In that case, you won’t save money, but you will get performance that’s not available with a notebook computer.
This all goes back to an earlier recommendation to select the hardware and software that’s right for you.
Happy shopping!
Perhaps you've participated in an on-line survey or some form of research that promised your privacy is safe because they "anonymize" all personal information.
Although it's true that the organization you're dealing with will remove or otherwise obscure your information, your privacy isn't as complete as you might think. Anonymized data is typically combined with anonymized data from other participants and the combined data is used by the organization that collected it. But they may also share the information with other organizations.
No problem, right? After all your data is just part of a data gumbo with information from hundreds or thousands of other users, and your personal information has been removed.
In fact, the anonymized data gumbo can be picked apart and often there's enough information in the mix that information can be tracked back to you.
Nearly 90% of Americans can be uniquely identified with no more information than their gender, date of birth, and five-digit postal code. And this information isn't new. A research paper called "Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely" by Latanya Sweeney at Carnegie Mellon University documented the capability in 2000 — 22 years ago.
If you're interested in reading the full report, which is both long had data heavy, you'll find it on the Data Privacy Lab website.
This is something to consider the next time you encounter a request from a company for your data. The company may well have valid reasons for requesting your information and may sincerely make an effort to keep your data private, but anything you reveal "in private" may turn out to be not so private.
And keep in mind that security and privacy are two different things. Keeping bad actors off your computer is a good thing, and it can be accomplished by enabling an antivirus application, a firewall, spam filters, anti-phishing protections, a VPN, and such. So the computer is secure, but there may be portholes that allow people to learn about you.
Some computer security firms sell information about you. AVG Antivirus, owned by Avast, can sell search and browser history data to advertisers in order to monetize its free antivirus software. It's not a secret. AVG puts the information in its privacy policy statement: "To be able to offer our products and services for free, we serve third-party ads of advertising companies in our products for mobile devices. To enable the ad, we embed a software development kit (SDK) provided by an advertising company into the product, which then collects Personal Data in order to personalize ads for you."
And, of course, there's Google's ad network. Connections are encrypted, but that means little because Google's trackers are on three quarters of the most popular websites. These allow Google to track users across the web and serve targeted ads. Secure? Yes. Private? Absolutely not.
Usually I'm a nonviolent person, but sometimes bad design becomes sufficiently annoying that a violent act seems the only solution. This is about bad design of an electronic device.
By "violence", I don't mean an unthinking act like throwing the device out a second-story window. The manager of a computer repair shop once told me about the man who brought his badly damaged computer in for repair. Eventually, he admitted that he had literally thrown the computer out a window. Percussive maintenance rarely works and extreme percussive maintenance never does. And why does it always seem that it's a man who tries something this stupid?
I claim that I'm not a violent person. For example, one of our cats cornered a mouse sometime in the 1990s. I captured the mouse and showed it out of the house. We've had two bats take up residence in the house over the years and I've used a gloved hand to capture them when they were sleeping and returned them to the outside. A few weeks ago, a worm was trying to make its way across the driveway and clearly wasn't going to succeed, so I moved it to the grass. So — nonviolent. But there are exceptions.
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A old Samsung disc player that's attached to the television has some built-in smart features, but a lot of dumb design. If I want to watch something on Netflix, I can accomplish that with the television itself or with a Roku streaming device. But the Samsung remote control has a big Netflix button that's the exact size and shape as the play button, and it's located directly below the play button. Remote controls should generally be operable by touch, and it's all too easy to tap the Netflix button instead of the play button.
After fast-forwarding through a scene or the opening credits, pressing Netflix instead of Play switches from the disc to the disc player's Netflix connection. That would be annoying if I could switch back to the disc by simply pressing the Play button. Occasionally that works, but usually I have to turn the the player off and restart it, which means that I have to watch the unskippable sections of the disc again and then find my way back to where I was.
I had tried using super glue (1) to cement the button in place, but the button is made from a material that doesn't work with super glue. The residue from the glue is still on the case, but pressing the button was as easy as ever.
After one particularly annoying event, I decided to use an X-Acto knife to cut away the surface of the Netflix button. Although that worked, I inadvertently trimmed off a bit of the (2) Home button. And then I wondered if I might be able to simply remove the Netflix button entirely. Using a small, thin-blade screwdriver as a spudger, I (3) levered the button out and tossed it into the trash.
Problem solved.
Do you still have any VHS tapes lying around the house? If so, do you have a device that will play them? We still have a few tapes even though the last VHS tape player in the house expired years ago. In 2002, the writing was on the wall and on the TechByter website:
Maybe not. VHS is not dead according to VDDA. The format remains dominant in video rentals and will co-exist with DVD for years to come.
DVDs are popular, no question, but the VHS format continues to be the rental choice of consumers by a margin of almost three-to-one, and will continue to co-exist with DVD in American households for years to come, according to Bo Andersen, president of the home video and entertainment industry's international trade group -- the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA).
"VHS is by no means dead and it is not dying. While DVD is a phenomenal gift -- to both consumers and the home video entertainment industry -- VHS and VCRs are not going to disappear," said Andersen. Andersen noted that DVD is increasing its share of the home video market, but that the market is growing overall. "Currently the industry is gaining three DVD rentals for each lost VHS rental."
"The VHS format will decline naturally with the growth of DVD, but it is far too soon to write its obituary," added Andersen.
According to VSDA's VidTrac program -- the video industry's most accurate video rental point-of-sale tracking technology for measuring national consumer video rental spending, based on actual rental transactions -- the 2001 year-end rental revenue market share for VHS was 83.4% while DVD accounted for 16.6%. This variance shows that VHS rental spending outpaced DVDs by $5.6 billion.
The 2002 year-to-date video rental market (eleven-week period: weeks ending 6 January - 17 March) demonstrates a significant gain for the DVD rental revenue market-share, rising 12 percentage points to 28.9%. The 2002 year-to-date numbers show consumers have spent $542 million renting DVDs (172 million rentals) and $1.32 billion on VHS (500 million rentals).
"The excitement for DVD product continues to grow at a rapid pace, and there is a natural transference of VHS turns toward DVD. However the VHS format still remains strong in both rental turns and revenues," said VSDA's Director of Research, Brad Hackley.
Looking at new release video rental spending (from VidTrac's weekly top 200 titles), consumers spent $920.6 million renting 282 million new-release VHS titles at an average cost of $3.27 per tape (2002 year-to-date). Consumers spent $432.8 million renting 128 million new-release DVD titles at an average cost of $3.39 per disc.
The one area where DVD is the leading format is in video sales, but not by much. Looking at national video purchasing in 2001, consumers spent $5.4 billion purchasing DVDs (52%) and $4.9 billion on VHS cassettes (48%), according to Adams Media Research.
Another positive indicator for the future of VHS is the VCR sales market. According to Jerilyn Kessel of Centris, a leading consumer research firm, "VCR units continue to sell well. While dropping from 26 million units in 2000, the nearly 16 million hardware units sold in 2001 indicate that people still want their VCRs -- most likely for recordability, but also to use with their collection of video tapes from the past 15 years. These purchases are either replacing older VCRs or being added to new TVs and other rooms in the household. In fact 48 million households have more than one VCR; 12 million have three. It is expected that just under 15 million VCRs will be sold in 2002 -- that's a solid 15% replacement factor at near-saturation penetration."