Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2022/11/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Go to the Dell Outlet.? I suggest, because I have a predecessor, a XPS8930, 8940, or 8950.? Get a I7 processor, any age/version will do.? Get as much RAM as you can afford.? Or buy the least RAM and upgrade it yourself. Now about your choice of SSD.? It is old and small.? Buy the Dell with a small cheap HDD.? Immediately upgrade it to a 1-2TB SATA SSD. Or, if you have a need for speed ( and who dies not) get a NVME 2TB SSD.... $200 or so.? This is optional but nice. Forget the second HDD from Dell.? Get something like a 1-5 TB hdd.? Cost $100. Now that you know what you want, search out Dell Coupons.? That gives you another discount. When you are done, for about $700 -900? you will own a screamer! Note that Thanksgiving is the time when all the HDD, and SSD go on big sales.? !!!! Here is an example.... https://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7Udc5%2fg3ieQ9YOe4hfunuwrHfS5jdxXGAcNgXYYkqGZg6ouRYWyy9Cr7A6hQFVQ2UrR%2fsHoHiizjLIDBItW8vPbocz1Zpl587av795DjAjLURbf%2bkjQptVkp6OwwTuDgDIDppS2nJP76mkxIk8sgPoEDl8NJNE1dJd2mjxTEF0IABL Frank Filippone BMWRed735i at gmail.com On 11/3/2022 11:25 PM, Peter Klein via LUG wrote: > OT but relevant: > My faithful, almost 10 year-old Dell Optiplex 980 is doing two odd > things. I do plan to replace it after Christmas, when (if?) > unload-the-inventory sales kick in. But in the meantime: > > 1. Whenever the power goes out, I have to crawl under my desk, pull > the CMOS battery, and put it back. I can't just hit F2 and fix the > configuration because the internal error checks kick in before "Press > F2 for setup" happens. They display lights on the PC front that Dell > does not document meaningfully. Once CMOS is reset, I find that the > date and time are forgotten, and more important, the disk > configuration forgets that it is a non-RAID AHCI SSD disk. Once I set > those two things straight, all's well. No, it's not the battery, which > reads slightly over 3v on my multimeter. And I've replaced the battery > twice, with the same results.? Everything else in the BIOS is as I set > it previously. > > 2. I cloned the original disk to an SSD a couple of years ago. Since > then, the PC runs significantly faster in general. But every so often, > there is a long hesitation when loading a program, or when switching > from one program to another. > > Gruesome details: Win10 professional (which was upgraded from Win7, so > the registry has all old installation remnants on it).? 8 GB RAM, 433 > GB Crucial SSD system drive with 268 GB free, 1.81 TB conventional HDD > data drive with 1.23 TB free. The latter has all my photos on it. The > motherboard doesn't have a fast/broad enough path to take full > advantage of the SSD, but it still helps. The SSD is trimmed and the > HDD data drive is defragged weekly. I back up my data to both an > external SSD and a conventional drive regularly. > > Questions: > 1. Anything simple I could do to improve things? > 2. Recommendations for a new PC?? I've not kept up with hardware in > the last few years. > > I wouldn't mind something smaller than an under-the-desk tower. I do > want 16 GB RAM. I don't need a "screamer" gamer's PC, but low end is > too low for me. Aside from the usual Web surfing, writing and email, I > do three things with the PC: > > * Photo editing, up to 24 GB Raw files. > * Music composition. Editing is not hugely resource intensive. > Playback is comparable to photo editing. I don't do video except to > occasionally trim the "dead air" at the beginning and end of a video > musical performance. > * Amateur radio.? Mostly digital signal processing, which is sometimes > heavy on the processor, not really taxing the rest of the system much. > And my log, which is a SQL light database. > > Thanks for any input. > --Peter > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information