Buying a Harker. Have some QuestionsPost Date: 2015-08-24 |
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kalaban
Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 27 |
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Topic: Buying a Harker. Have some Questions Posted: 24 Aug 2015 at 4:42am |
Budget:
3K Expectations: fast for FPS Usage: Mostly FPS, Some MS Office Special Needs: None Saved Ticket #: 1267546 Specifications: I am struggling with whether I go with Win 10 or Win 7 Pro? any suggestions? Also, I'm thinking of making my OS drive a 500GB SD drive, with a 1 TB for storage. 500gb SD should be sufficient? Edited by kalaban - 24 Aug 2015 at 4:54am |
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DS Veteran Joined: 28 Oct 2014 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1674 |
Quote Reply Posted: 24 Aug 2015 at 10:28am |
Win 10 Pro is a free upgrade from Microsoft with Win 7 Pro.
Drives depend on what you want to store on your computer. If you have many media files (or some big ones) or a lot of games or host of other programs, you may want to opt for more storage. But if you only have a few programs and games and rely on streaming services for media, the smaller drive should be fine. |
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Roykirk
Senior Member Joined: 26 Sep 2013 Online Status: Offline Posts: 951 |
Quote Reply Posted: 25 Aug 2015 at 11:28am |
I took a look at your build and it looks like a really solid one from the outset. It's set to Windows 10 Home right now, so you're asking if you should move up to Pro? If so, I'd say yes, just because you have a few more features and more options regarding Windows Updates with Pro than Home. I see Windows 7 Pro is $7 cheaper than 10 Pro, but I'd say that's worth the cost not to have to deal with an upgrade and instead get 10 as a clean, fresh install if you're going to move to 10 anyhow.
500GB SSD is a good start, but if you plan to install and have a lot of games sitting on your drive, then 1TB might be a better choice you'll have a lot more room to store the games, especially if you do modding as well, which can start to really take up the drive space. You indicated that you do MS Office work but were mostly concerned with gaming, so what is the kind of data that you're wondering about having enough room to store? 750GB might well be enough with room to spare depending on your answer. |
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kalaban
Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 27 |
Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 2015 at 7:35am |
Thanks for your feedback Roy. I was hoping to use SSD drive strictly for OS and program updates, with most of my games and word documents on the second drive. My Bolt has a 180? SSD drive and is almost full. Even with having games installed on my second drive, so I'm trying to avoid that. I mostly will purchase games via Steam.
I tried Win 10 on my home computer and it was a mess. Icons were huge and made my desktop almost unusable. I reverted back to Win 7. So I am guessing I should go with most current version (Win10) with a clean install like you said. I'd love a 1TB SSD, but trying to keep cost down. If its a must, I may have to. I'm open to suggestions, as I have no desire to upgrade components later. Maybe I have the storage backwards? |
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FrankW
DS Veteran Joined: 22 Feb 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2254 |
Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 2015 at 9:54am |
Hi kalaban,
In regards to your problems with Win-10. You can resize tiles if that was a problem for you. You can use the Win-10 Start homepage or use the old desktop that you are accustom to on Win-7. I am using my old desktop with the same Icons I had on Win-7. Frank Edited by FrankW - 26 Aug 2015 at 9:56am |
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Roykirk
Senior Member Joined: 26 Sep 2013 Online Status: Offline Posts: 951 |
Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 2015 at 1:22pm |
I tried that for a while, but was much happier installing all my games on SSD rather than platter drives. Everything seemed smoother, even if load times in some games didn't change. But if you can't afford it now, an upgrade to a bigger SSD is one of the easiest upgrades for a laptop, so it's not critical immediately. |
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DS Veteran Joined: 28 Oct 2014 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1674 |
Quote Reply Posted: 26 Aug 2015 at 1:32pm |
When you update from Win 7 or 8.1 to Win 10, you'll have an option to do a clean install. That will remove everything on the old install and start over. It may save the old stuff to an old windows file, but the stuff in there won't be indexed and that file can be deleted.
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kalaban
Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 27 |
Quote Reply Posted: 27 Aug 2015 at 7:55am |
Well, I think I am going to order today. I decided to go with the 1TB SSD and Win 10. Cost is nominal.
Any laptop specific software I should consider besides what I use now Malwarebytes, Webroot Secure anywhere?? Thanks |
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Roykirk
Senior Member Joined: 26 Sep 2013 Online Status: Offline Posts: 951 |
Quote Reply Posted: 27 Aug 2015 at 12:02pm |
If you decide to buy an external optical drive, with Win 10 you need to buy software for DVD/Blu-ray playback. Win 10 will not play DVDs out of the box and MS is selling some pretty bad DVD software for $14.99 on the Windows store which I would avoid. WinDVD or PowerDVD are the best options, and if you're playing Blu-rays, make sure you get the version of the software that will do so. The cheapest versions of the two I mentioned will only play DVDs. Your laptop will likely come with very little pre-installed software as DS likes to keep their PCs clean for the customer to install only what they need rather than other companies that load them with bloatware. Because of this, there may be software that your laptop actually needs to work its hardware at peak features, so check the discs that come with the laptop when you receive it for some extras that you might want. I had to do that with my Krypton. I can't think of anything really laptop-specific, however. |
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kalaban
Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 27 |
Quote Reply Posted: 28 Aug 2015 at 7:33am |
Roy: Any "must haves" that you find yourself using more often than not?? I don't remember using anything from the discs that came with My Bolt a few years ago. Then again, it's a desktop.
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OneEyeRed
Newbie Joined: 20 Aug 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 63 |
Quote Reply Posted: 28 Aug 2015 at 2:08pm |
Congrats on your Harker purchase. Anxiously awaiting mine. 1 week down hopefully 1 more to go!
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Roykirk
Senior Member Joined: 26 Sep 2013 Online Status: Offline Posts: 951 |
Quote Reply Posted: 28 Aug 2015 at 11:16pm |
On the Krypton laptop at least, I had to install the SoundBlaster X-Fi3 software, as well as the Hotkey software that allows me to control a lot of things like fans, audio, lighting, etc. Non-DS-specific must-haves for me are Lastpass and several instances of Mod Organizer for all my modded Bethesda games. |
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