New Computer?

As to be expected the number 1 question I get asked most often is something in the veins of
      If I buy a new computer what should I look for?
Here is my reply, verbatim and as I have saved it as a template:

Hi xxx,
Thanks for asking.
It may be best to look for a new computer during sales events. For computers I recommend to look at Newegg.com or Amazon.com. Both definitely have a MUCH larger selection than any brick-and-mortar store can possibly offer.
Any new computer IMHO should go through my Set-Up job to be safe and protected on the Internet and to be free of unwanted, unneeded and sometimes outright malicious programs.

Here are some of the important technical details to currently look for:

• 8GB or more of RAM (main memory)
  
• Windows 10 Professional or Windows 10 Home
  (Pro is in some aspects more flexible than Home)
• Buy only a computer(s) with a SSD! SSDs are MUCH faster than HDDs!
  Storage capacity of the SSD is okay if it is about three to four times of the amount of space currently used on your C: drive.
  Classic HDDs are in many cheap offers but it's clearly an outdated technology.

Currently I have the best experiences with computers from Dell and/or HP. And here are two warnings on what NOT to do:

• Do NOT buy any additional warranties or similar!
• Do NOT buy Microsoft Office!
  MS really sells you a subscription with yearly payments; good for MS but bad for you!

Feel free to call me at xxx-yyy-zzzz with any questions you may have.

That's it.
Stay safe.

Why I Don't Like Windows 10 and MS

In quite a few articles on this blog I have referred to, quoted from or linked to one of the web sites I regularly draw information from; I am talking about Tech Support Alert aka Gizmo's Freeware.

Two days ago they published an article titled "Windows 10 connects to these websites after a clean installation". Since many of my customers are not very technically minded let me quote some points that I consider to be the important details. 

IMHO it is, to say the least, misleading to use Microsoft's wording "telemetry" when our Windows 10 systems talk to Microsoft [MS] all the time without ever having asked our permission. They even don't ever tell us about the simple fact that they do that; you have to be a technology geek and read lots of very technical stuff to even become aware of what is going on.

The article lists 20 web sites that Windows 10 connect to when you start a brand new Windows 10 system. All these sites collect technical information about our computers and about us. As a simple example: Why does MS want or need to know where I am? That is information I personally would only disclose to the police if they ever wanted or needed to know that.

Here is list from above mentioned article. I have added the bold typeface in Line 1.

Windows 10 connects to one or more websites in these categories:

• Cortana and Search
• Certificates
• Device authentication
• Device metadata
• Diagnostic data
• Font streaming
• Licensing
• Location
• Maps
• Microsoft account
• Microsoft store
• Network connection status indicator (NCSI)
• Office
• OneDrive
• Settings
• Skype
• Windows Defender
• Windows Spotlight
• Windows Update
• Microsoft forward link redirection service (FWLink)

All this can on slower Internet connections add significantly to the time it takes for the system to start up. I have experienced that quite often when a sluggish or outright slow system all of a sudden works with normal reaction times after all that got turned off.

And to top it off, the program I use to turn off this talking back to MS is from a well reputed company and totally free.

Any questions or comments? Pleas use the Comment feature of this blog.

Please stay safe.

How I Transfer Files From An Old To A New Computer

As long as the "old" computer is basically still working transferring all your user files (documents, pictures, music and videos) is no issue at all as long as they are stored in Windows' standard locations.

After the new computer is up and running I take the disk drive physically out of the old machine, attach it externally to the new machine and copy the files directly across to the new computer.

This way there is only one copy process which saves time compared to copying via an external drive which requires copying the same data twice.

After copying the files to the new machine I will urge you to safely keep the disk drive from the old computer for at least a year as an insurance against data loss.

Imagine you need a certain file after several months, you know the name of the file but it just is not where you thought it should be. It is on the old disk drive because that is the only place files could have gotten stored on the old machine; so that is where we have to search for it.

I hope that clears eventual confusion.

Stay safe.