Replacing my laptop. Seeking advice...

WilliamA

Well, It's finally happened. My venerable old Macbook Pro has gone boots up....Which is to say that it won't...Boot up...
It has been a good companion for many years, faithfully recording my sojourn of many (21?) countries, and tens of thousands of photos, few of which will, sadly, ever see the light of day. I'd go buy its grandson in a second except for the fact that its parent company has slowly, inexorably withdrawn from functional software.

I have been systematically weaning myself from Apple products for awhile now and have already replaced my iphone and ipad with Asus devices running Android. My brother runs a PC repair shop and steered me to Asus as a good hardware platform. So far, I've had zero problems with either. So I will probably get either an Asus or Dell laptop this week, but would love some input on software. I do photos, writing and some basic mechanical drawing (for example, simple line drawings, schematics etc) and browse the net from time to time. I have 2 stand alone hard drives (formatted for Microsoft) of 2 terrabytes each where I archive my photos and writing so the data should be safe.

Anyone have any tips and advice on hardware and software? I'd be glad to hear about your adventures...

WilliamA

sheaoliver

Hi William,

I'm sorry to hear that your Mac died.

As a very long-time Adobe user, I could say think about the Photography plan from Adobe for photos (Lightroom and Photoshop), but I've been using Skylum software (previously Macphun) for a few years and I love their tools. Luminar is their overall photo editing package and much easier to use than Adobe. If you are into HDR photography, you should check out Skylum's Aurora HDR 2018.

For writing, I'm still a MS Word fan, but know many people who now love Google Docs, especially since you can use it offline and its free.

For line drawings, schematics, mind-mapping, flow charts, etc., there is a free site called draw.io. You have to be on the Internet to use it, but it is amazing.

As to hardware, I still worship at the cult of Mac. I run virtual machines for Windows 10 and Windows XP (still the best Windows OS ever). After wasting two days, about three years ago, with an Asus machine and Windows 10, I converted to Apple and have been happier. Through the years, I've also had multiple Dells and Sony machines. I never had trouble with their hardware.

As to your backups, it is always worth thinking about having your data backups in two places - one with you and one elsewhere. If you want to go extremely geeky, consider backing up your data to Amazon Glacier. It's cheap, but you need a little knowhow and a fast connection for big volumes of data.

Best of luck!

Cheers!
Shea

CampHub

Hi William,

Like Shea am in the unix world and plan to stay there after setting up a windows 10 box for a friend a few weeks ago. CNET and Tom's hardware does a lot of reviews and might give you some good insight.

@sheaoliver thanks for the draw site I can see it being very useful. I have some hand drawn electrical schematics I need to convert.

All the best,

TomD

Once you leave the Apple community of products you can go anywhere for the individual tech toys. The real heart of the Apple community is how all their stuff integrates. The issue I had when I migrated to Apple from PC was the PC Virus thing. It was constant and I wasn’t doing anything weird. I’ve not had one problem at all with my Apple products and viruses. I don’t run ANY third party virus programs either. Also, the ICloud storage program with Apple is rediculous safe when talking terabytes of stuff (pictures, music). Stand alone storage drives are just standing by until the house fire. My recommendation is to hang with Apple.

WilliamA

Hey all,
A slurry of research on the dark web about my dark computer has netted me a "fix". I was able to bring Otto back from it's Rip Van Winkle state and get it running....for now. Nevertheless, the handwriting is on the wall. I looked up how long I've had this Macbook Pro and it's coming up on 10 years now. I'll be pushing the replacement for it up to this June at the latest, before it goes completely.

Thanks for the good information. I will now start the arduous task of doing due-diligence research on some (many?) options. To be sure, I am not in the "never Apple" camp. I am a tool user and look for the best/cost-effective tool for whatever job I'm doing. If Apple comes back to the top, I'll get another one.

Shea, I also agree that XP was the best PC platform ever, although I have had good luck with Windows 7, but only in as much as I ran a big, custom rig with a 60 inch monitor, dual graphics cards and a full set of drives to play "Silent Hunter 3" (best computer game EVER!) I've not run it on MS 10 but hope to give it a try sometime. I also agree on MS Word. It's a good solid program. As to Adobe suite, well, yes. If you need high-end graphics manipulation there's no substitute for Photoshop/Illustrator. But it's: NOT intuitive and has a huge learning curve. Takes mountains of file-space on the drive/drives. Costs thousands for the full suite and updates. I use it occasionally when at my son's house. He has the full suite on a giant Mac desktop. It's fun and thorough, but takes some patience and practice. I'm looking for a program that's much simpler to use and am willing to give up a lot of the high-end functionality in trade. Most of what I do is pretty basic and I just don't need that kind of sophistication.

Backups: I run "time machine" onto a Western Digital 2 terrabyte external drive, plus I back up photos manually by drag and drop, plus, I have a pocket time machine of 500 gigs for the basic stuff, plus, I dump important files to my son's external 4 terra external from time to time. I think I'm covered for now.....
I'll keep you informed
WilliamA

WilliamA

I'm sure no one has been able to sleep since my computer problems started so a quick update is in order.
I took it to MacMan today and they worked some dark magic to resurrect it. ("DUDE! THIS BOX IS ALMOST AS OLD AS YOU!!! WHOA!!) Really...it took about a minute and a half. According to Doogie Hauser at the Ministry of Apple, it needed a" prn...something, something reset...something, not unusual when there is a something, something interference with version 2.3.5.11.6.7.100.2-3 of OS something, something."
Well...that's all cleared up. Being the sceptic that I am, I'll just hold off on the party for a few starts to see what happens.

I did spy a new Dell laptop at Best buy that I'm moving up the shopping priority list...

WilliamA

CampHub

Command+Option+P+R glad they got it fixed. Glad your sleeping better too.

WilliamA

@CampHub said:
Command+Option+P+R glad they got it fixed. Glad your sleeping better too.

Yep, that's the one. I was reading all of the potential key combo fixes on the mac forum and ine of them had you doing the key combo routine with the lid closed.... Haven't worked out the physics of that one yet. I just doff my hat and bow to the experts....and their oddly shaped fingers...just sayin...

WilliamA

WilliamA

Well, many thanks to all who weighed in with advice or sympathy, but my venerable old mac is back in the disabled list again. I don't think I'm going to try getting it working. I have been looking at some of the laptop/tablet combos and like what I see. I will miss my music library, although Apple has been helpful "reorganizing" it for me. I won't miss that part. Once I make the switch, I'll get itunes loaded and see what reappears. Til then, it's back to the 8-track. I'll have to stock up on shims for the corners of the tape....
WilliamA

WilliamA

Update:
Well, after too much time spent mucking about with potential systems, I've taken the low road and puchased a new IMac 21" desktop. I just now got it up and running with files transferred across and am taking it for a "test-drive" if you will. So now when I reach out in writing and photos, it'll be coming from here, electronically speaking. Thanks to those who weighed in on my dilemma and offered advice. Browsing through my long forgotten photos and files, I find that of all of them, my writing and projects in motion are precious but I find the surprising solace comes from my formidable music collection. So by way of finding my way back again, here's "A song across the wires" for you to enjoy. It's a favorite selection from that album by BT (Brian Transeau) called: "Skylarking".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCK_yrvKaz4

Enjoy
WilliamA

TomD

Sometimes the “low road” is the right road.

WilliamA

@TomD said:
Sometimes the “low road” is the right road.

Tom,
Why do you think I've got 4 wheel drive?
WilliamA

WilliamA

My "new" 4 month old imac is still in the shop for repairs. It's coming up on a week now. I talked to them yesterday and it's "on the bench".
With most computers, they go in for repairs. With macs, it's more like psychiatric in-patient. "Medicate and observe".
On the bright side, the thing that seems to be wrong (operating system) isn't under warranty. The only thing NOT covered by my 2 warranties is whatever happens to be the problem. No really, it's just a coincidence.....
In the meantime, I will try and keep up with my multitude of forums from my Android 7" tablet.
Grrrrrrrrr.......
WilliamA

TomD

Bummer on your 4 month old IMac. I have a 27 inch desktop Mac that is entering it’s ninth year. No problems over the years but now apps aren’t working with the operating system because it’s old. I cannot upgrade the IOS on the Mac because the guts won’t support it. Sooo....it’s time to start printing money so I can move into a new device. I will go Apple again because as Steve Jobs said about Apple products and my experience has been...”they just work”. I will however keep your situation in my mind and hope it’s an anomaly. I do have Apple IPads and Phones that are newer so down time on the desk top is not really an issue as far as keeping up on stuff. Any down time these days with tech is incredibly inconvenient no matter what!

WilliamA

Tom,
It's just a pain trying to keep up with my posts, photos and all, with my patchwork system. I will adapt. I had great faith in Steve's vision. I no longer see evidence of that...
WilliamA

WilliamA

I picked up my imac on Monday and (shhhhhh...) it seems to be working, although they said they could find nothing wrong with it.....Shhhhh...Don't make eye contact....
WilliamA

rich67

I was a dyed-in-the-wool PC user and Android fanboy. Over the years, after viruses, crashing apps thanks to compatibility issues, dead laptops and desktops with crashed hard drives, sickening slowdowns, etc. ad nauseum, I jumped over to Apple. At first I had some growing pains, and needed to jailbreak my iPhone to make it do what I wanted to do, but as the years went on, the jailbreaking became less necessary, and then when I got my first Mac Mini off Ebay I was hooked. I had my first mini for 6 years ( beat out my longest PC by 4 years), and then had another Mini for another 5 years, and just recently upgraded to a 27" iMac. Won't ever go back. Apple builds quality products, although they are expensive, they are put together well, work incredibly well with each other, and are ideal for videographers and photographers.

WilliamA

@rich67 said:
I was a dyed-in-the-wool PC user and Android fanboy. Over the years, after viruses, crashing apps thanks to compatibility issues, dead laptops and desktops with crashed hard drives, sickening slowdowns, etc. ad nauseum, I jumped over to Apple. At first I had some growing pains, and needed to jailbreak my iPhone to make it do what I wanted to do, but as the years went on, the jailbreaking became less necessary, and then when I got my first Mac Mini off Ebay I was hooked. I had my first mini for 6 years ( beat out my longest PC by 4 years), and then had another Mini for another 5 years, and just recently upgraded to a 27" iMac. Won't ever go back. Apple builds quality products, although they are expensive, they are put together well, work incredibly well with each other, and are ideal for videographers and photographers.

Rich67,
I would agree with everything you said. My Macs have served me well over the years too. What I couldn't abide with Apple was their constant fiddling with my FILES. I lost major projects several times due to their "updates" where they would re-catalogue my files. Thay also enjoy occasionally re-indexing my music library and dropping proprietary software so it no longer supports the documents I was working on. I still have an iMac and like it, but will not get fooled again into using it to its potential because of their obsessive fiddling with my data.

I have been using an ASUS Android phone and tablet and find them to be solid and reliable, if slow. Due to a bicycle accident, I recently switched to a Moto3 phone and like it much more (more memory, much better camera) although it's much more voltage thirsty than the ASUS it replaced.

WilliamA

TomD

Remember “built in obsolescence” by the auto industry in the early eighties? Apple updates achieve the same effect over time.

cricketbird

My $0.03

Apple has some of the longest life expectancies for both hardware and support for software of any brand of computer, and is by far the best at protecting your privacy (at least, from non-Apple folks like advertisers, bots, and overly broad government data requests).

Both the MS/Windows ecosystem and the Google/Android ecosystem track you constantly and load your devices with crapware/spyware, plus they willingly cooperate with all sorts of government searches. Apple at least puts up a semblance of a fight.

That said, I agree Apple has done a terrible job of updating software and forcing unwanted changes on folks. The latest operating system is cludgy and lousy, so I'm also looking to jump ship with my next system.

In the MS/Windows-verse, I have an HP ProBook from work that is 9 years old, has been dropped repeatedly, traveled around the world multiple times, and even got directly hit by lightning once and just needed the motherboard replaced(!). My workplace is exceedingly hard on laptops and these things just won't die. We just pass the older ones along to the interns Look for HP's "Business/Professional" line rather than "Personal". Plus, Windows is just so darn universal and easy these days.

If you like the Google/Android-verse, just want cheap and simple, and you work mostly "in the cloud", the new ChromeBooks are fantastic. Who needs to spend money on all that software and memory weighing down your computer when most of us work in the cloud anyway these days? The computers are light, cheap, and best of all, easily replaceable with no loss in your work if they should die. But of course, all your files and data are tracked by Google. Think about how comfortable you are with a company like Google (or the police if they merely ask nicely) having access to your browsing - search history, bank balances, passwords, private emails, etc. Still, if you have an Android phone, the ability to just have everything "work" across devices, your passwords remembered, etc. is pretty sweet.

And if you are geeky/like fiddling with your computer enough, you can purchase almost any cheap laptop and install your favorite flavor of Linux for a cheap, privacy-protecting, simple laptop that (with a learning curve) will do just about anything Apple, Windows, or Chrome will let you do.

Despite all that, I'm likely purchasing a ChromeBook in the not-too-distant future, but just limiting it to boring work stuff (future-proofing my business), and keeping a separate device for home use.

BBsGarage

I mostly work in a cloud, but I dont think it's the one you are speaking of.

WilliamA

Must be a different one than mine or I'd have bumped into you....

Williama