# Anti-Updaters Are The Equivalent of Anti-Vaxxers



## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

In this somewhat old article, the author argues that people are misguided in their belief that they should use Windows Update manually pointing out that Microsoft released an important security patch that addresses vulnerabilities exploited by the WannaCry malware. He compares people who are inconvenienced by Windows 10's automatic updates to people who believe that vaccinations are not safe when they believe auto-updates should not be enabled. His main argument is that the typical user benefits from automatic updates because they do not regularly maintain their systems, and telling people how to disable these auto-updates is irresponsible.

I just finished up cleaning up a Windows 7 laptop for my great-grandmother to use. I installed updates, antivirus, etc and deleted unnecessary programs. The laptop was plagued with problems such as high memory and CPU usage. It is a relatively weak laptop, with only 2GB of RAM and a low-end AMD dual-core processor. I expect no miracles to come from this machine, but when I first turned it on after receiving it, it froze up within 10 minutes. After doing the usual disabling startup programs, performance was still unacceptable.

What could possibly be the issue? I looked into it using resource monitor and task manager and none of than completely legitimate Windows Services were hogging up memory. I looked further and I learned that all of the offending services were related to Windows Update. What a coincidence! My first response to say, "maybe they haven't updated in a while so it is trying to find a lot of updates." A couple of hours pass, and the computer makes no progress. I looked up the problem on the Internet and installed an update that prevented Windows Update from consuming so much memory. Okay, so I set out again and after over 8 hours of waiting, the computer finds 70 updates totaling under a gigabyte in size and installs them. Fantastic!

I decided to check on the computer today to see how it was doing. During the process of updating the computer, I disable automatic updates to prevent the overwhelming usage of resources by the update services. So I remembered and I decided to turn automatic updates back on as is the right thing to do for some less skilled with computers. Within minutes of making this change, resource usage ramped up. CPU usage jumped to over 60%. Memory usage increased by 400MB.

I checked the resource monitor to see what was going on. It was some of the very same services associated with Windows update that went straight back to work. As always some updates seem to fail, but given that the computer was scheduled to install updates at 3am everyday, it seemed unwarranted for these services to begin consuming a significant amount of system resources at this time, especially on a such a low-end device. I disabled automatic updates again and shut it off.

I've volunteered to look into plenty of Windows computers that had performance issues by my family. Sometimes there were genuine anamolies present, like double antivirus scanners running at the same time or poorly managed startup items. I always do antivirus scans whenever this happens and so far I have not found a malware problem.

It seems that almost universally there is a problem related to Windows Update. My first impression is always that people probably don't leave their computers on all the time so the "update at 3AM everyday" concept doesn't make a lot of sense. But in the current case with this laptop, even if 1 update out of 70 fails, the performance issues continue. My family and friends give me their computers so that I can make them faster. It has never happened that someone said, "I have a virus, help me back up my data or restore my computer." It is always, "This computer is running very slow, can you do a tune-up?" 

WannaCry was a disaster because people didn't update their computers. But the real disaster is Windows Update and its capacity to single-handedly ruin the usability every "troublesome PC" that I have ever encountered. I think the new update client for Windows 10 is probably far more reliable, but it brings its own inconveniences. There has to be a point in schooling where we take a break from creating Powerpoints and resizing images in Word and just say, this is how you defragment a hard drive, this is how you install updates and this is how you perform basic maintenance of your computer just like when you take your car to get an oil change. I think it's not okay that this happening and that automated and unreliable processes replace a small amount of knowledge and effort.


https://alessandrorossini.org/anti-updaters-it-equivalent-anti-vaxxers/
P.S. in the comment section of his own article, the author states that he has not used Windows in 15 years at the time of writing that article.


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## SilentScream (Mar 31, 2011)

The solution to this is that the market that exists for cheap computers simply should be done away with imo. I know there are a lot of people who would rather buy cheap shit, but imo the availability of cheap computers has really slowed down the development of software and progress in computing imo. The cheaper users are also not tech savvy and haven't been incentivised to be tech savvy either therefore they're the ones that are making everyone else's user experience worse. Hardware makers should simply stop selling computers that are too slow for current operating software period. 

The problem is that they just want to push all levels of computing on consumers and consumers aren't educated so they go out there expecting something else, but buying and paying for something else because they don't understand the various hardware components that make up their PC's. This is a failure of the hardware manufacturers ... And another reason why I think that the Cell Phone market and makers are superior in terms of how they think as opposed to Computer Hardware manufacturers. 

At this point in 2018 why would people think they should be able to use PC's with less than 8GB RAM at least. You can have extremely powerful PC's under $500 now that can last you a good 3-5 years.

Look at the TV and Cell Phone markets in comparison. The Cell Phone market is dominated by Flagships where both security updates are pushed on users but at the same time they have much fewer problems with security leaks at the user end as well.

It is also curious to me that the same behavior that people exhibit when it comes to buying the latest and best smartphones has not translated over to buying better PC's. Why would someone have the latest Samsung or iPhone flagship and then combine that with a cheap as Dell Laptop they picked up for 200 bucks ... and then they whine about it being slow ... Well, that's kind of your fault isn't it? People buy computers and expect them to last like 10 years too. Computers aren't sold as "generational" like phones and consoles. They're just sold at every conceivable prive point with all kinds of weird ass hardware combinations ... People are confused and they end up buying shit that they then expect them to do everything the highest levels of PC's are capable of doing. 

Makes no sense at all.


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## Blazkovitz (Mar 16, 2014)

No.

Anti-vaxers threaten public security by allowing their children's bodies to harbour dangerous bacteria.
Anti-updaters merely want to decide how much technology do they want to adopt.


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## Ermenegildo (Feb 25, 2014)

*Windows 10 Update Trouble*










*KB4022715?*

I am always amazed how often people who don’t do much with their notebook replace it due to “heat” and/or “speed problems”. They pay for their ignorance, others pay for their knowlege.



Grandmaster Yoda said:


> There has to be a point in schooling where we … just say, this is how you defragment a hard drive, this is how you install updates and this is how you perform basic maintenance of your computer just like when you take your car to get an oil change. I think it's not okay that this happening and that automated and unreliable processes replace a small amount of knowledge and effort.





answers.microsoft.com said:


> The Windows 10 cumulative update below keeps downloading and failing to install. It's done this 15 or 20 times now and has used up my internet bandwidth. Is there any way to fix this?
> 
> 2017-06 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 for x64-based Systems (KB4022715)
> 
> ...


Unreliable processes should be replaced by reliable processes. Windows should finally be replaced by a long-term support (LTS) release of a Linux distribution like Ubuntu. And family members, friends or acquaintances who solve computer problems *should always be paid* for their services. 

Why Windows 10 sucks
Dealing with Windows 10 update problems


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

Ermenegildo said:


> *KB4022715?*
> 
> I am always amazed how often people who don’t do much with their notebook replace it due to “heat” and/or “speed problems”. They pay for their ignorance, others pay for their knowlege.
> 
> ...


I think a lightweight version on Linux is a good alternative for someone who only uses email and web browsing. It also would probably work better on older hardware.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

and that's the reason why I prefer Mac


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Or you know, Dozer era low clocked AMD dual core doesn't sound great at all, so you either upgrade or deal with it.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

vinniebob said:


> and that's the reason why I prefer Mac


Considering how many problems they have it must be even worse. Some of those are over heating, keyboard failures, stupid designs, disrespectful warranty, zero upgradability... not to mention that those machines are very limited in their capabilities, due to lack of configurability options... I may as well just shut up. Yeah, I think it's a good idea.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> Considering how many problems they have it must be even worse. Some of those are over heating, keyboard failures, stupid designs, disrespectful warranty, zero upgradability... not to mention that those machines are very limited in their capabilities, due to lack of configurability options... I may as well just shut up. Yeah, I think it's a good idea.


I've never had a single problem with any Mac/apple product I have owned
only the hippest of the hip use Mac 
if you don't use Mac then you don't know jack [shit]
once you go Mac you never go back

and on the 8th day god [Steve jobs] created Mac , and he was pleased
then he gave man his only begotten son [iphone] to forgive humans for their original sin
windows


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

vinniebob said:


> I've never had a single problem with any Mac/apple product I have owned


You also haven't bought every Mac model ever too.




vinniebob said:


> only the hippest of the hip use Mac


Well they are hated for their lack of thinking abilities.




vinniebob said:


> if you don't use Mac then you don't know jack [shit]


Knowing that you are V8 guy, it's weird to hear that. PCs especially 'hot-rodded' ones with beefy cooling and lots of power phases are equivalent of V8 cars. Big, fast, not overheating, silent, strong. 






















"if you don't use Mac then you don't know jack [shit]"
Not sure why I should use something from company which just can't make decently priced, quality products, that could last. Does it really make me so clueless? I have seen lots of computer hardware myself and modern Apple production is seriously one of the worst. Apple was good with upgradable, non-overheating, durable Macs. They rocked, but now Apple keeps pushing some horrible designed products, that simply have loads of problems and cost more than anything. It's unacceptable.




vinniebob said:


> once you go Mac you never go back


...because Apple stole all your money and you have no other options.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

Knowing that you are V8 guy, it's weird to hear that. PCs especially 'hot-rodded' ones with beefy cooling and lots of power phases are equivalent of V8 cars. Big, fast, not overheating, silent, strong. 




...because Apple stole all your money and you have no other options.[/QUOTE]

I could fill this page from videos that are anti non Mac too
I've owned other high priced non Mac and hated every one of them
I gave them my $
you get what you pay for
my current lap top is Mac book pro with touch bar
it suits my every need perfectly


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> Or you know, Dozer era low clocked AMD dual core doesn't sound great at all, so you either upgrade or deal with it.


This PC could benefit from having 4GB of RAM. 2 is too low. But in this case there's really no reason to care since its just an old woman going on gmail which is completely possible. If they went out and bought her something dumb like a low storage SSD laptop designed for just browsing the web, they would probably have a lot fewer "it's not working right, too slow" problems.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

vinniebob said:


> I could fill this page from videos that are anti non Mac too


Bring it on then?




vinniebob said:


> I've owned other high priced non Mac and hated every one of them


As I said Apple used to be better some time ago, but it isn't now.






vinniebob said:


> I gave them my $
> you get what you pay for


Sort of. This rule or tip has so many exceptions now.





vinniebob said:


> my current lap top is Mac book pro with touch bar
> it suits my every need perfectly


Good for you then, but content creators weren't too happy about it and computer geeks called touchbar a gimmick. It looks like Apple in recent years have been pushing too questionable products:
touchbar with limited usage
animojis 
1000 dollar flawed phone in design
no headphone jack 
overheating production with questionable benefits
failing keyboard with questionable benefits
removing essential ports without any benefits
extremely questionable gimmick like face ID as one of the most important feature in phone

Previously Apple has some seriously genius ideas like:
"so you have keyboards in phones, why not just touch the screen?"
"So you have limited software on your smartphone, why not have apps?"
"You want intuitive gyroscope in phone? Here take it!"
"Your Palm Treo is big and ugly, here we are introducing sleek, thin and even more functional phone than there ever was"

I guess you see the idea. They were undisputed leaders in their own field and everyone was copying their ideas. Now they make questionable decisions, often poor decisions, often poor ethical decisions in warranty process and documentation, ramp up their production price tags for barely zero "something new and something great". Apple is no mare like that. They are even failing in just not failing, for example heat issues, keyboards. These are things that almost no one fails now and do them better than Apple does. So they put i9 in there, nice, but laptops already had overclockable unlocked Core i series processors with more power. Big punch of power was also possible in slim form factors, but for some reason only Apple couldn't do it properly. They always have to fail at basics, which is embarrassing and in tech world unacceptable for the time. Why people should buy that? 

Not to mention that lots of Youtubers are always putting Apple to shame for their arrogant repair policies. No other manufacturer has it so bad. Many manufacturers, besides having written that "user damage may not be fixed" still accept those things and fix them. For some reason only Apple has to be zit in the spotlight. 

Well maybe that could be acceptable, but you are paying for their production more than any other manufacturer and that makes it even less acceptable. It's common in computer world to sell products with failures or some mistake cheaper, but no Apple doesn't do that. 

Also it's worth mentioning how Apple sometimes claim to be first introducing new feature in their tech, which already have existed in less popular devices. People notice that and they think it's not honest act. That's bad. 

Also in Windows laptop world you pay more for premium stuff, most often you can upgrade parts of your lappy if you are ready to initially pay more. CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD or SSD, WiFi can be upgradable, but Apple charges more and
"well sorry you are fool and we can't trust you in our computers, why not get our another expensive device?"

Removing standard ports isn't good idea, but Apple could get out if they introduced their own and superior ports, but did that happen? No, not even professional equipment from Apple have enough needed ports for professional work. My PC for example has 10 or maybe 12 USB ports. Well it has expansion card too, but I could just toss it out and have way more ports that I could ever think of usage scenarios for them. But Apple also removed 3.5mm jack, which is industry standard for analog audio and something that professional workers use, too bad Apple chopped it of and decided "well you need your laptop to be slimmer", which doesn't really make much sense as slimness only matters until they aren't too fat for their purpose and they could have put bigger battery inside, but did they ever did that? And really 3.5mm jack isn't big at all, so excuses, excuses, excuses... which just don't make Apple the best for consumers. 

There's also a weird obsession with screen on front only designs or bezel-less fronts, which exactly make what better? Nothing, it just looks kinda modern, but no one cares about in hand comfort and completely eliminating bezels reduce comfortability and besides that they increase accidental touches of screen, which you don't want. 

What about notch. Eh what a fail. They couldn't just make something awesome to hide camera for their face ID gimmick, so they decided to make that notch. At least software side of it could have been better, but it ain't:





Remember iThings were said to be easy to use, but are they now like that? Are they? Nope, they aren't, they became more complicated. They tossed one of their selling points into trash can or maybe trash can looking Mac Pro.

So, to finally conclude it all, me and many people are optimistic about innovative features, but Apple just can't get things right. There always have to be deal-breaking gimmick in their products, to make them too questionable. Most often totally not worth getting. Some things that should be intuitive, for them aren't and their embarrassing failures have to be exposed on media, because they wouldn't fix them otherwise as they aren't very honest and trustworthy company.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> This PC could benefit from having 4GB of RAM. 2 is too low. But in this case there's really no reason to care since its just an old woman going on gmail which is completely possible. If they went out and bought her something dumb like a low storage SSD laptop designed for just browsing the web, they would probably have a lot fewer "it's not working right, too slow" problems.


I know it, I know how you feel. But really that era for AMD was extremely bad. E series laptop stuff was more made to compete with Atoms, but Atoms didn't appear in low end market then. AMD actually kicked Atom's ass back then as I found on Anand tech's article. Too bad poor position, too high price and not met expectations ruined AMD E series processors. I'm not really sure if RAM would help, but if there isn't SSD, then it will totally help. I have Turion X2 TL-60 machine alive and 2GB RAM was enough for browsing and many tasks. I seldom use Pentium P6200 machine with 2GB RAM in 2018 and it does simple things really well. 

Have you ever tried AMD APU? It looks promising, but low end dual core ones don't. Imagine that thing down clocked to what you have and it's what E series things were. Really slow things. 

I know that Windows here are to blame and all, but machine you are talking about isn't really great and maybe even barely passable. Too bad upgradability of it is almost nonexistent as much as I know, but if it's possible to upgrade CPU, I would do it. RAM upgrade would be nice, knowing how cheap DDR3 is now, I would do it in heartbeat. In my country DDR3 is so cheap that you can buy 16GB RAM for the price of 8GB DDR4 and 4GB kits are extremely cheap, so cheap that 2GB kits are totally not worth it.

I still am working on "Mild Velocity" project to see how well does APU perform and to be honest, it's lowest of the low you can still get. It does simple things well, but not great. It's capable, but power limited. I can say that it's the cheapest thing too. This time I think you did the wrong choice on platform or maybe you was given the "not very high performance" platform. Not much can be done in such case. Sorry.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

vinniebob said:


> and that's the reason why I prefer Mac


Barring everything that is wrong with Apple recently, yes.

I think their latest software is full of problems. From the security issues that I talked about with High Sierra to the general trend where Apple doesn't care about old devices much at all and doesn't let you downgrade. RIP every iPhone that has gotten past its prime when it never had to.

Software updates are far more reasonable on Macs. All you have to do is go to update and they all appear instantly. The hardware fulfills basic expectations these days, good battery life, good display quality and SSDs. Not gaming or configurability though. 

PCs falter in every area here. If you want a laptop, you can get some good specs for a cheaper price, but except some other horrendous weakness to come with it. Take my laptop, quad-core i7, 16GB of RAM. It was affordable and is more powerful than an MacBook Pro and a lot cheaper. But the battery life is unreasonably poor, the screen quality is passable, the screen is flimsy you can bend it with your fingers. Overall, in spite of the great CPU, RAM and good GPU everything else sucks and feels cheap. The thing is falling apart, some of the rubber stands on the bottom came out. Probably worst of all is the fact that it is not immune to anything I discussed in this thread. It is isn't up to par with the basics that people get with smartphones like good camera quality, good screen quality, good battery life, streamlined update system, and so on. The only reason it works so well is because I intentionally avoid installing new software on it and leave it at a baseline.

It is no surprise that people care about their smartphones and tablets more than PCs. For most people who aren't tech-savvy, laptops and desktops are only needed for certain tasks. Tasks like paying bills, typing documents, printing and using spreadsheets. I've never seen someone use AirPrint in my life. Most of the gimmicks and features that smartphones have are explored as fads. Look at Apple's AirPlay or that thing where you can touch two Samsung Galaxies together. People find out about, think it's the coolest thing ever and then that's the last you'll ever hear about it.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> PCs falter in every area here. If you want a laptop, you can get some good specs for a cheaper price, but except some other horrendous weakness to come with it. Take my laptop, quad-core i7, 16GB of RAM. It was affordable and is more powerful than an MacBook Pro and a lot cheaper. But the battery life is unreasonably poor, the screen quality is passable, the screen is flimsy you can bend it with your fingers. Overall, in spite of the great CPU, RAM and good GPU everything else sucks and feels cheap. The thing is falling apart, some of the rubber stands on the bottom came out. Probably worst of all is the fact that it is not immune to anything I discussed in this thread. It is isn't up to par with the basics that people get with smartphones like good camera quality, good screen quality, good battery life, streamlined update system, and so on. The only reason it works so well is because I intentionally avoid installing new software on it and leave it at a baseline.


Notebook check website has extremely detailed reviews of lots of notebooks. You should check it out. They always mention those things. You can avoid poor purchases. Look at this review for example:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Blade-15-i7-8750H-GTX-1070-Max-Q-FHD-Laptop-Review.305426.0.html

It's really good and they check out many budget oriented devices too, I just picked something well known to just see how detailed their testing is.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> I know it, I know how you feel. But really that era for AMD was extremely bad. E series laptop stuff was more made to compete with Atoms, but Atoms didn't appear in low end market then. AMD actually kicked Atom's ass back then as I found on Anand tech's article. Too bad poor position, too high price and not met expectations ruined AMD E series processors. I'm not really sure if RAM would help, but if there isn't SSD, then it will totally help. I have Turion X2 TL-60 machine alive and 2GB RAM was enough for browsing and many tasks. I seldom use Pentium P6200 machine with 2GB RAM in 2018 and it does simple things really well.
> 
> Have you ever tried AMD APU? It looks promising, but low end dual core ones don't. Imagine that thing down clocked to what you have and it's what E series things were. Really slow things.
> 
> ...


It is crappy laptop, no question and old.

The laptop definitely needs more RAM, because you can see in the resource monitoring that there were a lot of swaps going on to the hard drive. Of course anything could benefit from having an SSD, but this thing was like partially loading elements of Windows on the screen like an old 1980s computer drawing elements to the screen. That was because RAM was being consumed to a ridiculous degree. I think 2GB is "enough" to be the minimum requirement now. The spec sheets still say 1GB for Windows Vista and above, but I have never seen something run well on 1GB. 2GB is passable assuming you cut down as many greedy services like Windows Update and strictly run one moderate program at a time.

The thing that bothers me is the Operating System has functions. One of those functions is manage memory between programs. Filling up the memory with a background process is not right and without consent. But yeah, this would be a lot less annoying on a more powerful computer yes.

It seems like every computer they gave to her had an AMD E-series too. I don't actually remember what the model on the laptop was, but on the 2013 Windows 8 PC they gave to her, (my first desktop of my own) it was an E-1200 series or something. But it had 4GB of RAM and the hard drive was qualitatively decent. Lol the computer played my old games okay, with AMD Radeon integrated graphics. Except, it could barley play Halo Combat Evolved with my enemies on screen which is pathetic. 

I think they gave it to me because she forgot her password though, which doesn't make sense because of those Microsoft Internet accounts. Apparently something was wrong with it, but all I did was refresh the PC. Come to think of it, Windows 8 and above are much nicer in that you can do this. You can just do a factory reset which basically what my family wanted me to do to the laptop but I had no means to do so so I deleted programs and updated things. A lot of computers around that time that we had been giving to "low-end" users had those CPUs and were generally problematic.

My mom's newest computer is quite high end as far as I could see. Even having dedicated graphics but not gaming level. But the only problem she has with it is that Windows partition is tiny and there is a separate partition (or even hard drive for all I know) and everything was being downloaded to the main partition. But she also ended up being more careful about installing things in general.

I wonder how Windows 7 original would perform on many computers. Remember Windows XP was released minimum requirements were 64MB of RAM (in classic theme mode basically mimicking older windows) and recommended 128MB. But you also never would use anything lower than 1GB on XP SP3 as people say it has gotten more intensive after the upgrades. I wonder how the requirements may have changed for Windows 7 as well, because I'm not seeing the 1GB thing.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> Notebook check website has extremely detailed reviews of lots of notebooks. You should check it out. They always mention those things. You can avoid poor purchases. Look at this review for example:
> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Blade-15-i7-8750H-GTX-1070-Max-Q-FHD-Laptop-Review.305426.0.html
> 
> It's really good and they check out many budget oriented devices too, I just picked something well known to just see how detailed their testing is.


I was about to make a really broad reaching statement about PCs, but then I thought there are high quality ones that you have talked about. Things like the Yoga laptops and so on. If I were to get a new laptop, I would read reviews first, going into the store is generally not as good an idea. You aren't going to see anyone say, "oh btw the battery only last 3-4 hours on a charge." A lot of signs are usually vague, like they will say Intel Core i5, but not which one. It could be a 1.6GHz dual-core i5 suddenly it doesn't sound so good anymore. 

In terms of desktops, I think the story is different. You can have whatever display you want on your desktop. They usually don't throttle and the hardware is stronger than in laptops. An iMac or Mac Pro I don't understand why anyone would buy except for niche reasons like music or video editing. But there's a famous video where a musician gets rid of his Apple products because Apple made their software less intuitive and their hardware completely static. I personally dislike the Magic Mouse and the apple keyboard and prefer traditional inputs.

I would rather buy a desktop whose value has deprecated despite the fact that the hardware hasn't really become much worse.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> It is crappy laptop, no question and old.


I wouldn't judge it as crappy, but point is valid. It's low end from too many years before.





Grandmaster Yoda said:


> The laptop definitely needs more RAM, because you can see in the resource monitoring that there were a lot of swaps going on to the hard drive.


I kinda had once experience of 1GB RAM and one tab was fine, but two meant huge slow downs. That's with Sempron mobile 3400+. On Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.





Grandmaster Yoda said:


> Of course anything could benefit from having an SSD, but this thing was like partially loading elements of Windows on the screen like an old 1980s computer drawing elements to the screen. That was because RAM was being consumed to a ridiculous degree. I think 2GB is "enough" to be the minimum requirement now. The spec sheets still say 1GB for Windows Vista and above, but I have never seen something run well on 1GB. 2GB is passable assuming you cut down as many greedy services like Windows Update and strictly run one moderate program at a time.


You can run more programs at once with decent speed, just not too memory consuming. Powerpoint and web browser is totally fine on 2GB RAM for example.




Grandmaster Yoda said:


> It seems like every computer they gave to her had an AMD E-series too. I don't actually remember what the model on the laptop was, but on the 2013 Windows 8 PC they gave to her, (my first desktop of my own) it was an E-1200 series or something. But it had 4GB of RAM and the hard drive was qualitatively decent. Lol the computer played my old games okay, with AMD Radeon integrated graphics. Except, it could barley play Halo Combat Evolved with my enemies on screen which is pathetic.


A4 6300 can handle UT 2004 with maximum setting at 1080p without problems at around 40-60fps. Those damn things have some power. Basically the only thing that matters in graphics cards are cores. That's very rough measure, but it kinda works most of the time. It explains why some old card like Radeon HD 7950 are still alright.





Grandmaster Yoda said:


> I think they gave it to me because she forgot her password though, which doesn't make sense because of those Microsoft Internet accounts. Apparently something was wrong with it, but all I did was refresh the PC. Come to think of it, Windows 8 and above are much nicer in that you can do this. You can just do a factory reset which basically what my family wanted me to do to the laptop but I had no means to do so so I deleted programs and updated things. A lot of computers around that time that we had been giving to "low-end" users had those CPUs and were generally problematic.


If only they spent a bit more they could have got IPS screen, decent build quality, faster and upgradeable hardware, but no one cares.





Grandmaster Yoda said:


> My mom's newest computer is quite high end as far as I could see. Even having dedicated graphics but not gaming level. But the only problem she has with it is that Windows partition is tiny and there is a separate partition (or even hard drive for all I know) and everything was being downloaded to the main partition. But she also ended up being more careful about installing things in general.


That's nice that she gets more careful with time, honestly that rarely happens nowadays.





Grandmaster Yoda said:


> I wonder how Windows 7 original would perform on many computers. Remember Windows XP was released minimum requirements were 64MB of RAM (in classic theme mode basically mimicking older windows) and recommended 128MB. But you also never would use anything lower than 1GB on XP SP3 as people say it has gotten more intensive after the upgrades. I wonder how the requirements may have changed for Windows 7 as well, because I'm not seeing the 1GB thing.


Such low RAM requirements never made sense for me on XP. Athlonium 64 idles at 360MB with nothing opened. That's far away from recommended specs and even then I am not doing anything at all. 

I only remember some nVidia drivers ate like 200MB RAM, but that's with GTX 650 Ti.

I have 16GB RAM now and I really can just ignore how much of it is being used as I have so much of it. Even with 8GB it was the same. Windows 10 as I know can make use of not used RAM to make starting up programs faster, so RAM usage meter may be skewed a bit. It's hard to know how much you really need and how much is just nice to have. Now I have some tabs in Opera opened, random Libre Office document opened and file manager opened. 6.5GB RAM used. I'm pretty sure I can have 4GB of it and everything would work just fine without going into page file. It was only 120 euros for this 16GB kit and it was extremely good value, so I got it. DDR4 costed much more, like 180 euros for low end 16GB kit. Now I see kits of DDR4 16GB for 142 euros for absolutely cheapest kit available. It's Team Group Vulkan 2400MHz kit of 2 sticks, CL 14. For 8 euros more same model kit, which runs at 3000MHz and has CL 16 latency is available. Even if it is cheapest 16GB kit, it still has nice grey heatsinks or red ones, depending on which you want. Now cheapest DDR3 16GB kits of 2 costs 112 euros, 1600 MHz and CL10. DDR3 still makes more sense than DDR4 in terms of pricing.


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## Handsome Dyke (Oct 4, 2012)

Arrogantly Grateful said:


> At this point in 2018 why would people think they should be able to use PC's with less than 8GB RAM at least. You can have extremely powerful PC's under $500 now that can last you a good 3-5 years.


because Linux and because some people need only basic applications


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