Windows operating system for new team laptop

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by MikLast

Word of warning, be weary of Lenovo, as they are notorious for adding malware (like Rootkits and superfish,) which will mess with your usage on the internet and the data it takes. If you get one, make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary on it.

I would do a full reinstall anyway regardless whether I'm buying new or used. Lenovo is one of the better ones have you ever opened up a stock HP laptop. Asus and Gigabyte are 2 of the only brands that ship their laptops clear of bloatware.

[Chris_Ely]

Originally Posted by MikLast

Word of warning, be weary of Lenovo, as they are notorious for adding malware (like Rootkits and superfish,) which will mess with your usage on the internet and the data it takes. If you get one, make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary on it.

They supposedly kept their business-grade computers clean, but any manufacturer will add bloatware. If you order from the Microsoft store, you will get a clean Windows install. If not, you can use the reset feature in Windows 8 or 10 to get rid of the bloat.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

www.arrowdirect.com

I just priced a nice Dell I5 with 8 gigs of ram for $200.

There are definitely some good deals here. Thanks for sharing! One thing I dislike about the site though is it does not seem to mention screen resolution anywhere. That's a deal-breaker to shopping here for me. I would also not go as far back as a GEN1 processor if buying a refurb. There were significant performance (and battery life) gains seen in GEN2 and onward.

[ratdude747]

I'd go for a used/refurb Dell Latitude E6xxx unit if durability is of concern. While Lenovo T series is good too, I've always had better luck with latitudes (less fussy with hardware changes, etc.). They're very durable and will (probably) only need replacement due to obsolescence.

I'd avoid Dell latitude E5xxx however... I had an E5530 that went through screen hinges and lids like potato chips. The E6430 I moved the guts to has been a lot better.

Last, Just my opinion, but I'd be wary of anything HP, acer/gateway, or Lenovo. I've never had good luck with any of those.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by Chris_Ely

...you will get a clean Windows install.

Windows 10 (assuming you get the latest version) is not exactly clean by any means. I know im stretching it a bit, but i dont think i need candy crush on my computer.

Back to the thread, you have some great options here. Make sure you pick a good computer for your team!

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Foster

Oh you kids with your new fangled Win 7 Did steam powered XP go out of style?

HomeDepot and Target had point of sale systems based in Windows XP - all you had to do was look at the POS back in 2014 to know they were using an OS which had gone end-of-life years before. HomeDepot's IT department even went so far as to blame Microsoft. The IRC channels had some pretty funny memes at that point. Subway also had issues but that was more due to them not updating the point of sales since the hack happened while XP was still receiving a few security updates.

So yep, XP went out of style.

Originally Posted by MikLast

Word of warning, be weary of Lenovo, as they are notorious for adding malware (like Rootkits and superfish,) which will mess with your usage on the internet and the data it takes. If you get one, make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary on it.

... Also, this ...

[MrForbes]

I'm not alone in using windows 7 still....

[Tparbotmail]

Thank you all for replying on this thread. This is very helpful to choosing a laptop. My concern was the 2016 DS and supporting software would be windows 10 only. Apparently that won't be the case.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

I'm not alone in using windows 7 still....

Most of my machines are Windows 7.
I also have three XP's still in active service.
I even have a couple of Mac OS 10.4's

The 2016 s/w works great on Win 7, too. Not so much XP though.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

I even have a couple of Mac OS 10.4's

Way back to 10.4 eh? I still have a few machines running 7.5, although I pulled those from active service in 2005. Shoot, I still have my Apple IIC+ I should fire up, and a family member has an Altair 8800 fully functional, but kept in storage.

Although we're diverging from the thread's original topic, a good lively discussion of operating systems is always a fun one. I still have two frequently-used XP systems running very well. It's incredibly fast on an old Pentium D with 2 Gigs of RAM. One is on a network, the other is not. The use of USB flash drives in each does scare me a bit. Both are CNC machine controllers, and I find XP better suited to this task, especially on the older hardware, than a more modern OS. One of the CNC machines used to run MS-DOS, and even that worked pretty darn well, and was incredibly fast even on a Celeron 400MHz machine. In fact, my little CNC mill at home still runs MS-DOS, although if I were to do it again today, I'd go for LinuxCNC.

I ran XP daily in my Intro to Engineering class up through June of 2014, and it still worked quite fine for our purposes at that point. We still have middle school tech classes and computer labs running XP, but we've essentially eliminated it from our high school campus, aside from the aformentioned machine controls. The problem with XP was that around 2014, software companies stopped supporting new versions of their software on it, and XP's days were quickly becoming numbered. The other problem was that it was 32-bit, and could really only practically address 3.5 Gigs of RAM. There was 64-bit XP, but it was never really a thing for the typical desktop user.

These days, it's getting kind of difficult to install a fresh copy of XP from scratch and fully patched, since I believe they've taken down the update servers. Last time I did it was a couple years ago, and it took a few days to install and update everything, even starting with an SP1 install CD. There was a total of something like over 600 updates between SP1 and a fully patched SP3 system.

As for 8.1, I have it on a Surface Pro 3 and although I consider myself very proficient and fast in 7, I feel like a bumbling idiot trying to use 8.1. People say it's not that different, and it isn't, but some of the simplest tasks are so convoluted to do or access in 8.1. It's UI is honestly a huge step backwards. I do wish 7 had the same Window snapping and resizing that 8.1 had though. Other than that, 7 is excellent. I used 10 only once on a laptop on demo in Costco. It seems okay, but the start menu still does not provide the power and function of the Windows 7 one.

Anyhow, OP, please let us know if we can help you any further with your team's specific needs in specifying a new system.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

[i]Although we're diverging from the thread's original topic, a good lively discussion of operating systems is always a fun one.

Fun is a matter of opinion. I work with a mission-critical system having client software deployed at many locations across North America that will not function on anything more recent than Windows 98. A need for hardware access to the serial port keeps an important part of it from working in a virtual machine.

[MrForbes]

That sounds like fun! Like the fun the guy had who bought my Tektronix 4010 so he could have a hot spare for a system that still used one...and they didn't want to spend the money needed to redesign the system to use something modern.