When is the right time to buy a Windows 11 computer?

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HARDWARE By Susan Bradley The other day, I retired the last Windows 7 computer in our office, the one that had been used by our office manager. She di
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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fisher75, Casey S, lmacri, Norio, geekdom

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The comment about using a hammer to completely destroy a hard drive made me smile. One installation I managed for a large non profit organisation here in the UK, I employed a guy who had been in the British military. As we were in a semi rural location, he spent a lot of time huntin’, fishin’ & shootin’. The one way we had of making sure about all old drives  being unusable, was give to him & he would return same with a couple of bullet holes  (more usually fairly substantial dents) in them.

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Susan,

Good well reasoned article!

I’d add just one thing, I always take an Image of a new machine BEFORE I ever boot it.
That is I boot from a Macrium Reflect recovery USB and take an Image immediately. That way if the machine needs to be returned for any reason I just wipe the drive and restore the image so it’s factory fresh. This can also be useful if your are selling the machine as it removes the need for any passwords for the new owner.

Just my 2 cents.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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TheFamilyIT, JohnW, TechTango, a, WSBirdLady, cyberSAR

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I do the same.

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I’ve done that for laptops I have bought in the past, but more recently, I’ve preserved the OEM setup by removing the factory SSD and installing the one I intend to use. I did that with all three of the units that appear in my .sig, even the XPS which came with Linux from the factory. I still have the original 250 GB SSD with Ubuntu on it tucked safely away.

That kind of ties in with this line Susan wrote:

I may not purchase a computer with a 1TB internal SSD, but I guarantee you that I will purchase external hard drives of at least that capacity or more to ensure I have space for both storage and backups.

I am certainly an enthusiastic back-upper (but I am not an Aomei product). That’s what has allowed me to get by using a rolling release Linux (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) as a daily driver. If something bad happens, I am back in business in a few minutes. Usually, all I need to do is restore a Timeshift snapshot from before the most recent software update.

I consider 2 TB to be the minimum SSD storage now, and I will probably increase that to 4TB once NVMe SSDs (PCIE 4) of that size hit the sweet spot price-wise. That’s just for my own use… not everyone fills space as quick as I do.

Unless I am specifically purchasing for a PC that can’t use NVMe, that is the only way to go… the price differential between that and SATA is minimal, so there is little reason to go for the slower option if you have a choice. I also would not buy a NVMe/PCIe 3 drive now, even for a PC that can’t use PCIE 4. The current PC may not support that, but the next probably will. And when the next generation hits the price sweet spot, the cycle repeats!

My XPS 13 and my Xenia 14 each have 2TB SSDs (NVMe/PCIe 4.0), while my Xenia 15 has 3TB of NVMe/PCIe 3.0. A Samsung 980 Pro right now costs less than I paid for a smallish (even then) 40 MB hard drive in 1990 for my first PC, in unadjusted dollars! I got that drive for about $250, while you can now get a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB for $180 now.

My desktop has 3.5 TB of storage (most of it HDD), but it has more or less been mothballed at this point. I just don’t need it… my Xenia 15 does it all.

And for backups… between my “backup server” and external drives, I have more than 20 TB of storage (all HDD).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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 I always take an Image of a new machine BEFORE I ever boot it.

Love this!  Easy.  Why didn’t I ever think of that?  AskWoody is great for nuggets like this.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Watch out For Windows 11 22H2 if you buy a new computer especially if you use it in the office.  I have worked on 3 separate Windows 11 computers recently and all have the same issue with a BSOD KMODE EXCEPTION error.  They also all have an Intel Core i7 12 gen processor.  My boss also has a WIndows 11 computer with an 11th gen Core i7 processor with 22H2 that has no issues.  I rolled back to 21H2 and am hoping to spend a few months with it before even contemplating a major update.  These are from 2 manufacturers: Dell and HP.  The HP by far had way more issues.  2 of the computers were all-in-one devices and the HP not only weighed a lot but but was prone to overheating.  This led to a BSOD almost hourly at one point and a BIOS update got it down to 1 BSOD per day.  That was the best I could hope for on that computer.  Anyway, if you have a 12th gen Intel processor, I would stay away from 22H2 for now.  That was the main commonality between the machines.

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TaskForce141

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leland wrote:

I have worked on 3 separate Windows 11 computers recently and all have the same issue with a BSOD KMODE EXCEPTION error.  They also all have an Intel Core i7 12 gen processor.  My boss also has a WIndows 11 computer with an 11th gen Core i7 processor with 22H2 that has no issues.

Did you read the return policy before buying ?

Just send the PCs back.

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Yes, we knew Costco had a 3 month return policy.  I am just glad I got to the bottom of the BSOD issues.  Returning to 21H2 and using InControl to keep it there for now.  If anyone is looking for an all-in-one I would stay away from the 32 inch HP that Costco sells as it overheated pretty bad.  Even rolling back the OS might not salvage that computer.

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I long ago gave up announcing system and software maintenance and upgrades.  I found anecdotally like Susan mentioned, user’s always presumed whatever their problem de jour must have been caused by that upgrade.

Instead, updates are installed without fanfare or notice.  What happens?  Much better identification and resolution of update-related issues.  If users don’t know the when,  their complains lack the bias to blame the change, and it makes my job better at identifying actual patch/update related issues.

The usual flow of “my printer…”, “my Word mail-merge…”, etc. just roll in like normal.  However, when a misbehaving patch or update is pushed, causation and correlation are easier to identify.

At least, that’s been my experience…

Casey

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Your office manger must be very non tech savvy.

My office manger is very tech savvy and she will not give up her Windows Xp and 7 computers. She would beat me up for taking it away. She even request and approve the office department’s discretionary budget that we get at least 6 backup for Xp and 7 (total 12) computers if her computers breaks. She has so much pull that IT department had to do it.

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TaskForce141

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So your office manager is cool with putting your entire firm at risk?  XP in particular – I’m surprised a firm with an IT department can get cyber insurance coverage.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Unbelievable

https://borncity.com/win/2023/01/28/european-data-protection-day-2023/

* _ ... _ *

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leland wrote:

Yes, we knew Costco had a 3 month return policy.  I am just glad I got to the bottom of the BSOD issues.  Returning to 21H2 and using InControl to keep it there for now

You should send the PCs back. There is no excuse for BSOD on new PCs nor holding back on security updates.

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When is the right time to buy a Windows 11 computer?

For me, with Windows 11 current state, never.

I’ll wait and see what Microsoft’s Windows 12 will bring.

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