Newsletter Archives

• So I opened up an HP and where’s the hard drive?

  Posted on January 19, 2021 at 22:35 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  We just got two new workstations and opened one of them up and went… uh… where’s the hard drive?

  

  I had to call the vendor I bought them from and ask… okay I see that that’s probably the hard drive but how does one change it should it die (SSDs do die, plan on it)

  “It is a chip that comes out. That is a NVME SSD. Those are super-fast compared to the older SSD drives.  There is one screw holding it in. Take the screw out the chip then comes out”  (The screw location is circled in red above)

  The view of the entire motherboard is here.

  Who knew.

  I do know that one can’t image a “normal” SSD and restore it to this drive style.

  Buying New Hardware Patch Lady Posts

• PC bargains: Buying a laptop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

  Posted on November 11, 2019 at 01:00 CST by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  PC BUYING

  By Michael Lasky

  Shopping for a new PC this holiday season? The best bargains are almost always on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and the following Cyber Monday.

  While Cyber Monday’s online shopping binge might have lessened the Friday brick-and-mortar crowds — and extended the time we have to look for bargains — it hasn’t reduced the seduction for impulse buying.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.41.0 (2019-11-11).

  Buying New Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Black Friday, Cyber Tuesday, USB

• Why I won’t buy a new Surface Pro: Battery problems and support

  Posted on August 29, 2019 at 06:50 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  With new Surface Pro(s) and Surface Laptop(s) likely coming soon, a friend has asked me if she should plan on buying a new one.

  My answer? A resounding no.

  Yes, I know that thousands (millions?) of people are very happy with their Surfaces. But many are not. The biggest complaints I hear are about the batteries and TypeCovers.

  According to Barb Bowman, Surface Pro 5 and 6 and Surface Laptop 2 batteries are going down the tubes. If you’re using Win10, open the Feedback Hub and type “battery drain.” You’ll see what she means:

  .@NorthFaceHiker further to our conversation yesterday (and not even triaged into a collection). pic.twitter.com/n9ga3uHk2H

  — Barb Bowman (@barbbowman) August 29, 2019

  It isn’t just the bad batteries or dead Type Covers. The over-arching problem: The way Microsoft is handling the problem.

  In short, they aren’t.

  Complaints on the Microsoft Answers Forum go unanswered. Complaints on the Feedback Hub go unanswered. Complaints from key players – MVP Barb included – go unanswered.

  Every hardware manufacturer has battery problems. Keyboard problems, too. Most of them at least take a swing at customer support. From Microsoft these days, it’s just crickets.

  That’s no way to run a support organization. And that, more than anything else, is the reason I won’t buy — and won’t recommend — a Surface Pro or Surface Laptop, of any version.

  Buying New Hardware, Microsoft News Surface Book, Surface Pro

• Optane disappointment leads to a ‘Plan B’

  Posted on June 24, 2019 at 01:10 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  I was in a bit of a pickle: The performance of my brand-new PC was awful — it simply couldn’t handle my peak workloads!

  Worse, it was my own fault: I’d spec’d the wrong drive setup for my particular computing needs!

  Here’s how I got back on track with a hardware/software combination that’s blazingly quick on both hard-drive reads and writes!

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.23.0 (2019-06-24).

  Buying New Hardware, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Buying a PC, Optane, performance tuning, Windows 10