FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Buying a Harker. Have some Questions

Post Date: 2015-08-24
 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
  Topic Search Topic Search  Topic Options Topic Options
kalaban View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 27 		  Quote kalaban Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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
Back to Top
 View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 28 Oct 2014
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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.
Bolt II Review (and now some modifications!)

Configuring a Computer
Back to Top
Roykirk View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Sep 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 951 		  Quote Roykirk Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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.
Back to Top
kalaban View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 27 		  Quote kalaban Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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?
Back to Top
FrankW View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran


Joined: 22 Feb 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2254 		  Quote FrankW Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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
Back to Top
Roykirk View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Sep 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 951 		  Quote Roykirk Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 26 Aug 2015 at 1:22pm
Originally posted by kalaban

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...


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.
Back to Top
 View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 28 Oct 2014
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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.
Bolt II Review (and now some modifications!)

Configuring a Computer
Back to Top
kalaban View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 27 		  Quote kalaban Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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
Back to Top
Roykirk View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Sep 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 951 		  Quote Roykirk Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 27 Aug 2015 at 12:02pm
Originally posted by kalaban

...Any laptop specific software I should consider besides what I use now Malwarebytes, Webroot Secure anywhere??...


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.
Back to Top
kalaban View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 27 		  Quote kalaban Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet 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.
Back to Top
OneEyeRed View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 20 Aug 2015
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 63 		  Quote OneEyeRed Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 28 Aug 2015 at 2:08pm
Congrats on your Harker purchase. Anxiously awaiting mine. 1 week down hopefully 1 more to go!
Back to Top
Roykirk View Drop Down
Senior Member
Senior Member

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Sep 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 951 		  Quote Roykirk Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 28 Aug 2015 at 11:16pm
Originally posted by kalaban

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.


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.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down



This page was generated in 5.175781E-02 seconds.