Installing linux

[Simon]

In otherwise your usual troll self, you make wild claims but never willing to back them up or explain the detail.....

And there you go again  Not willing to learn anything.

Been trying to learn but you just claimed voodo, turns out you just have a decent spec system with over price hard drives.

[Mechatrommer]

I've never ever in all my life built nor owned nor used any Wintel 'PC'. Nor even at work. 100% Apple all my life since 1977!

good for you and good for them. dont be like us, because once you be, you'll never look back...

This is the reason why China cheap crap HW like DSO or FG etc dont gain popularity in hobbiest market, let alone professionals.

LOL. Watt?

i mean the open source or USB PC type, with retarded SW/API or nonexistence at all.

Why spend $100 on a cooler where (for example) Dell just adds a $2 duct which optimises the airflow to the same level. The thing is that you'll need to spend $100 just to make a pig look pretty. Don't start with a pig and life is much easier.

i recently got a HP brand Z800 because it dropped down to affordability. yes it has nice ducts and wind deflector but i wont say its as quiet as a whispering wind, in fact i feel at home since noise level is about the same as my old brandless PC. the funny thing is i upgraded it with another old radeon RX580 card and the wind deflector doesnt fit anymore. i guess those brand name PCs are not meant for limitless upgrade. and i dont think those ducting cost $2, it was simply unaffordable. and i have a decommissioned yet a working DELL OptiPlex 745 unit here that i got basically for free, that is simply not worth my time improving, ready for scrapyard or for kids to learn. albeit i guess a cheap line up in DELL, i believe this Dual Core machine can easily costs much more than my Quad Core setup 10 years ago.

IIRC the price was around 2k euro including 1TB SSD and 2TB regular hard drive.

with that money, i can get 5 usable multicore PC new, maybe 3 if complete with monitor and descent wireless keyboard. afaics, only gamers need 1TB fast type storage to store 10s GB of CODEXes. 2TB only can be filled up with years worth of HD movies/videos. with those overpriced overblown storage, lets say i can build 2 machines incl monitors. btw currently my old PC has 3TB+ total storage capability (expandable to sky limit if needed) with 120GB SSD for OS. the 2TB are on externals, 2 drives because i dont want to shorten their usefull life by sitting dormant inside only to heat the PC and eat electricity bills. they only for long term storage when less used data start filling up my internal storage. the old PC has been running cool faithfully for 10 years now with your so called crap cooling system. otoh the Z800 requires 250GB SSD because its on 64bit W7 and i was going to install some CODEXes maybe not for too long..

[rsjsouza]

My $0.02

I regularly use multiple Linux installs on VMWare and I can recommend if you are interested in learning more about the OS or doing work in parallel with whatever you do on the host OS (building kernel or SW components, for example). My VMs are also placed in an external USB3.0 HDD as the main laptop does not have enough space on its SSD. Performance is great for my needs.

For a better experience, especially if you are interacting with non-standard hardware connected via USB (certain logic analyzers, JTAG Debug Probes, etc) there's also the chance to get an older hand me down host (things complicate a bit more if it is a desktop due to space). I also have this setup for these special cases and regularly connect to it from Windows via VNC, but you need to have a spare keyboard and mouse for the offending maintenance/recovery task.

A separate hard disk could also work, but the dual boot is disruptive if you are constantly switching between the OSes. I have done this but you are limited to desktops (rare are the laptops with multiple disks).

Also, dual booting on a single system was never for the faint of heart, even in the old times. I still remember using the OS/2 bootloader (the best in my opinion) and booting to the three OSes: Slackware, Windows and OS/2. It was quite good but a dog to properly setup. Newer UEFI systems can still present issues.

Overall, there is very little argument against configuring a Linux host to experiment, play and see if it works well for you. Yes, you will need Google for gobs of things and will occasionally find the hardcore idiot that thinks everybody else is stupid, but we all have some thick skin and can take it.

Good luck in your ventures.

[nctnico]

IIRC the price was around 2k euro including 1TB SSD and 2TB regular hard drive.

with that money, i can get 5 usable multicore PC new, maybe 3 if complete with monitor

But they will all be crap, slow and unreliable. For starters the Xeon CPU has double the memory bandwidth compared to it's i7 counterpart. ECC memory helps stability and repeatabilty. Among other things I use this machine to compile large firmware builds which can take up to several hours. It has to be error free and reliable. It also serves as a file server. Part of the idea behind buying this PC is to have one machine which does everything instead of having several PCs running (which take maintenance, make noise and cost electricity).

and descent wireless keyboard. afaics, only gamers need 1TB fast type storage to store 10s GB of CODEXes. 2TB only can be filled up with years worth of HD movies/videos. with those overpriced overblown storage, lets say i can build 2 machines incl monitors.

Try to run some VMs and do development work. You'll run out of space quickly. Meanwhile I have added a 2nd 1TB SSD because I ran out of space. No, there isn't a single game or video stored on the SSDs. It's all business related data.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I've never ever in all my life built nor owned nor used any Wintel 'PC'. Nor even at work. 100% Apple all my life since 1977!

good for you and good for them. dont be like us, because once you be, you'll never look back...

Be a Windozes user? Thanks but no, thanks.

[Mechatrommer]

no, be a diy PC builder. choose whatever hardware we like and snap them together. thanks to people like you to keep competition going, so we can dig what HWs used in those brand name, improve the spec ie strip away what we dont need or unsuitable to our taste, beef it with what we really need at a reasonable price, the factory price with minimal middle man charges. i wont ask people in the island to buy car, nor to ask people on the land to buy boat, but i know what vehicle that i need and which bolt to loosen or tighten.

[Mr. Scram]

In otherwise your usual troll self, you make wild claims but never willing to back them up or explain the detail.....

I was at least expecting some hastily dug up benchmarks that were obviously not that relevant but this is just an outright self elimination.

[Mr. Scram]

But they will all be crap, slow and unreliable. For starters the Xeon CPU has double the memory bandwidth compared to it's i7 counterpart. ECC memory helps stability and repeatabilty. Among other things I use this machine to compile large firmware builds which can take up to several hours. It has to be error free and reliable. It also serves as a file server. Part of the idea behind buying this PC is to have one machine which does everything instead of having several PCs running (which take maintenance, make noise and cost electricity).

Try to run some VMs and do development work. You'll run out of space quickly. Meanwhile I have added a 2nd 1TB SSD because I ran out of space. No, there isn't a single game or video stored on the SSDs. It's all business related data.

Both Xeons and ECC RAM is for sale and regularly used to build computers. Certain Xeon models were popular for a while as they offered a good bang for their buck.

[nctnico]

In otherwise your usual troll self, you make wild claims but never willing to back them up or explain the detail.....

I was at least expecting some hastily dug up benchmarks that were obviously not that relevant but this is just an outright self elimination.

Why would I? Just take a professional workstation apart and you can see the result of using ducts and clever placement (and the engineering that went into it) to direct the airflow yourself. Clinging to the idea that you can do better with a self built PC is just stupid. You know what they say about horses: you can guide them to the water but they have to start drinking by themselves. I did look at the Puget systems to see if they came up with something new but it is just more case modding compu-phoolery mixed with marketing wank.

Look at the thermal impedance versus airflow of a heatsink and you'll see that at the low end the amount of airflow has a huge impact on the cooling effect. Now take a fan which just blows into a computer case like in a standard PC. Without a duct 95% of the air doesn't get where it has an effect. With a duct you can increase the airflow over a hot component many times so you need a much smaller (quiter!) fan to achieve that airflow. Is that so hard to see? It is pretty obvious to me.

[Mr. Scram]

Why would I? Just take a professional workstation apart and you can see the result of using ducts and clever placement (and the engineering that went into it) to direct the airflow yourself. Clinging to the idea that you can do better with a self built PC is just stupid. You know what they say about horses: you can guide them to the water but they have to start drinking by themselves. I did look at the Puget systems to see if they came up with something new but it is just more case modding compu-phoolery mixed with marketing wank.

Look at the thermal impedance of a heatsink and you'll see that at the low end the amount of airflow has a huge impact on the cooling effect. Now take a fan which just blows into a computer case like in a standard PC. Without a duct 95% of the air doesn't get where it has an effect. With a duct you can increase the airflow over a hot component many times so you need a much smaller (quiter!) fan to achieve that airflow. Is that so hard to see? It is pretty obvious to me.

Show us some numbers instead of hot air. Any prebuilt PC is cost optimised which is a friendly term for cutting corners to the point of being just acceptable. That's pretty obvious too. That's fine and results in serviceable machines catering to common denominators. It also leaves room for improvement or fulfilling specific needs. You make it sound as if custom PC builders don't plan for airflow and just slap parts together in an open feedback loop. She'll be right!

Attempting to casually dismiss Puget Systems shows you haven't actually looked at what they do and how they do it. Coincidentally those guys actually do testing and have numbers backing their claims up.

[Simon]

There is not a lot you need to do for a quiet system these days. The power consumption are much lower and most decent cases have good airflow. So long an the processor has a stream of fresh air towards it "she'll be right" indeed.

[Mechatrommer]

even if you do need extra cooling... big quiet like 12cm fan can be had for as cheap as $5...

But they will all be crap, slow and unreliable. For starters the Xeon CPU has double the memory bandwidth compared to it's i7 counterpart. ECC memory helps stability and repeatabilty. Among other things I use this machine to compile large firmware builds which can take up to several hours. It has to be error free and reliable. It also serves as a file server. Part of the idea behind buying this PC is to have one machine which does everything instead of having several PCs running (which take maintenance, make noise and cost electricity).

Try to run some VMs and do development work. You'll run out of space quickly. Meanwhile I have added a 2nd 1TB SSD because I ran out of space. No, there isn't a single game or video stored on the SSDs. It's all business related data.

Both Xeons and ECC RAM is for sale and regularly used to build computers. Certain Xeon models were popular for a while as they offered a good bang for their buck.

i'd be willing to do some exercise for nctnico on currently brand model and active cpu/mb/ram parts, but i cant do it right now as i have job outside... if we take into account used part/ discontinued model... i have 12 cores 3.46GHz xeon 96GB DDR3 at crap load consumer grade price here. but i dont think used part can be counted in price competition. one funny thing i realized when browsing these brands name is they dont provide exact price for an exact spec, at most they will provide price range like $1000-$10000 range for example. my guess is they are afraid of price competition, like the rest who are not willing to publish the price plain clear, we need to PM just to get it my -2cents.

[rsjsouza]

Show us some numbers instead of hot air. Any prebuilt PC is cost optimised which is a friendly term for cutting corners to the point of being just acceptable. That's pretty obvious too. That's fine and results in serviceable machines catering to common denominators. It also leaves room for improvement or fulfilling specific needs. You make it sound as if custom PC builders don't plan for airflow and just slap parts together in an open feedback loop. She'll be right!

I fully agree. As a user of Dell systems for about 20 years, initially they brought something really good to the table, but seeing my home built 10 year old PC with a gigabyte EX58 Extreme and running a quad core i920 for most of its life (upgraded last year to a six core Xeon W36something) still going strong, I really think the edge is simply not there anymore. Oh, and it is silent as well on a full tower Antec case with a Corsair 600W power supply (forgot the model).

Sure, there were fiascos with the fragile Latitude C610 or the crap Nvidia chipset on the otherwise excellent Latitude D620/D630 series, but the norm were excellent laptops and workstations such as the Latitude D400/D410 and the Precision T3500 and T5500. Nowadays, my experience is much less impressive with the otherwise "full custom optimized" Optiplex 7010 with its flimsy connectors or the Precision 5500 with its bulging batteries after 1-1/2 years of use.

[rsjsouza]

even if you do need extra cooling... big quiet like 12cm fan can be had for as cheap as $5...

But they will all be crap, slow and unreliable. For starters the Xeon CPU has double the memory bandwidth compared to it's i7 counterpart. ECC memory helps stability and repeatabilty. Among other things I use this machine to compile large firmware builds which can take up to several hours. It has to be error free and reliable. It also serves as a file server. Part of the idea behind buying this PC is to have one machine which does everything instead of having several PCs running (which take maintenance, make noise and cost electricity).

Both Xeons and ECC RAM is for sale and regularly used to build computers. Certain Xeon models were popular for a while as they offered a good bang for their buck.

i'd be willing to do some exercise for nctnico on currently brand model and active cpu/mb/ram parts, but i cant do it right now as i have job outside... if we take into account used part/ discontinued model... i have 12 cores 3.46GHz xeon 96GB DDR3 at crap load consumer grade price here. but i dont think used part can be counted in price competition.

I think it is fair... The Precision T5500 is discontinued and my upgrade Xeon processor (bought on eBay) may be at around half of its lifetime, but if it goes bad I can go to eBay and fix that for $40~$60. That or spend $0 and go back to the i920.

Try to run some VMs and do development work. You'll run out of space quickly. Meanwhile I have added a 2nd 1TB SSD because I ran out of space. No, there isn't a single game or video stored on the SSDs. It's all business related data.

That I fully agree. VMs can become quite large. IMHO it is a small price for the huge convenience.

[techman-001]

Get a Dell T5510 for example. It makes the same amount of noise whether working at full load or sitting idle. I had to get used to the absense of noise in my office after I bought it. And it is not just about being quiet but also maintain low noise while working at full load AND keeping the temperatures low at all the places with hot components. Standard casings and standard motherboards are sub-optimal by definition.

Those are baseline goals when building a properly quiet PC. There's nothing about standard casings and standard motherboards that make them suboptimal by definition. Choosing from a vast library of available parts means one can emphasize exactly those qualities most valued instead of a one size fits all. HP obviously isn't going to drop $100 on a single cooler for anything consumer or office grade whereas the sky is the limit when building your own. There is obviously also more room to mess something up which is where prebuilts come in with a reasonably balanced package without too much fuss or effort spent. Though it should be noted prebuilts aren't always flawless either.

I have to agree with troll-boy here.

I've worked with PC's and computers since the 70's and I've seen good and bad cooling in everything from my own units to factory units by all the manufacturers.

You people wouldn't believe the things I've seen, I've seen HP factory servers on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... ok, slight exaggeration 

I don't get why people assume that because hardware was made by HP, Dell or IBM that it's in some way perfect. Commercial companies build to a price and if the price won't allow decent quality or design, then you won't get it. End of story.

This workstation is a 8 core i7 with 32GB of ram and 12 TB of ZFS Raidz running FreeBSD.

It's in a brilliantly designed Enthoo Pro case and the CPU is water cooled. the box is sitting next to my left shoulder right now, and I can't hear a sound except a small buzz when a drive decides to work hard. This unit with the current hardware has survived a 46 degree C (114.8F) summer here in Australia and is not in a air conditioned area, but rather on a workshop bench in my steel factory shed.

I built this unit in 2012 using the latest tech at the time and I still don't need or want anything more. I probably paid around $2000 for all the parts, but can't remember exactly as it was nearly 8 years ago. However it has run 24/7 since the day it was built, it *never* gets turned off.

The Enthoo Pro case has air 'strainers' and is built for easy maintenance and cleaning. I open it up about once a year to clean the filters and vacuum out any dust. I live in a really dusty area and there is a sand blasting company down the road (their grit is *everywhere*), but this Enthoo case is like a clean room inside when I look.

My point is that money and skill *always* beats commercial offerings in PC's in every way you can afford, providing you have the skill.

[brucehoult]

I agree that there is nothing special in the cheap HPs and Dells in a retail store and you can easily beat them on quality yourself, and maybe even on price.

Apple is a different matter though. They actually do care about things such as acoustic design and reliability (with a few prominent failures) and are not any more expensive than the other big name brands when you compare machines with comparable components -- they simply do not play in the cheap low quality end of the market.

I personally haven't bought an Apple desktop for over a decade, but that's because they put components in them that are targeted at graphics and video professionals that I, as a programmer, don't get any benefit from.

In late 2009 I built an i7 860 (Nehalem) quad core box and Hackintoshed it. Apple had an iMac with the same CPU just a month or so later, but as it necessarily included a (lovely) screen, it cost far more. Screens are one of the things I buy and then use for a decade -- and at that stage I already had an Apple 30" 2560x1600 screen that was well depreciated.

In July 2014 I built an i7 4790K (Haswell) which I also Hackintoshed. I could have reused most of the parts, but in fact I found a local buyer for the old machine. Again, Apple came out with a 27" iMac with the same CPU in October that year.

Same again in late 2017. I built a machine with an 18 core i9 7980XE in November. Apple again announced an iMac with an 18-Core Xeon W-2191B at the end of December for an eye-watering $7400 base price in the US (mine was about $4500 fully loaded with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD, and that was in Russia with 30% import duty and 20% VAT).

My current home office work machine is a 32 core ThreadRipper that I built in April. Apple announced a 29 core Xeon W Mac Pro in June but I think hasn't yet shipped it. I haven't Hackintoshed my Threadripper because I'm doing more work directly with Ubuntu these days, and my 2011 17" i7 MacBook Pro does everything I need MacOS for.

I want to be clear that in each of these cases I think Apple's prices were entirely justified by the hardware they sold you. It's just that I didn't want to buy all of that hardware, every time. And I was more than happy with an ugly traditional PC box under my desk instead of everything built into a monitor on my desk.

[brucehoult]

As for quality...

Last month I visited my parents in New Zealand. Among other things, my father (who will be 80 in January) complained that about 600 photos had gone missing from his iPhoto (now Photos) library. I took a look at his 2018 MacBook Pro (touchbar) and established that the photos in question were from between May and December 2009.

I looked at his TimeMachine backups (he actually had backups!) and found that the photos in question were already missing in the oldest snapshot, in January 2011.

I took the old 2001 model PowerBook G3 400 MHz "Pismo" off the shelf. It started up no problem. The last photo in its iPhoto database was the same as the last photo still present in Photos before the gap. Aha!

I took the 2009 Core 2 Duo 17" MacBook Pro off the shelf. Sadly, it went *bong* and the screen showed the Apple logo but it did not boot. I think that's why Dad replaced it with the current machine. I turned it off and back on, holding the T key and sure enough it came up in FireWire Target Disk Mode. I found a firewire 400 cable in a box and connected the 2009 Intel machine to the 2001 PowerPC G3 machine. Boom! The disk mounted fine. Sadly, the same photos were missing from its iPhoto database.

My suspicion is that the missing photos (by date range and camera DSC* id) may simply have been on a memory card that was never uploaded to the computer. But I don't know :-(

The 2009 machine didn't boot. But it looks as if there's not much wrong with it. I could mount and browse the disk fine from the 2001 machine using FireWire. And the screen and KB and trackpad worked. Maybe reinstalling the OS would revive it.

Impressive I think that the 2001 machine is still absolutely fine. It's just ... you know ... 400 MHz. And worse with a Rage128 mobile GPU. I myself have a 1998 266 MHz G3 PowerBook that also still works perfectly. It's just even slower (and FX9200...). And hard to connect to these days except by ethernet (build it) or WIFI (I have a very slow PCMCIA card pluged into it). At least these machines run OS X so you can ssh etc.

[gnif]

My current home office work machine is a 32 core ThreadRipper that I built in April. Apple announced a 29 core Xeon W Mac Pro in June but I think hasn't yet shipped it. I haven't Hackintoshed my Threadripper because I'm doing more work directly with Ubuntu these days, and my 2011 17" i7 MacBook Pro does everything I need MacOS for.

Ever thought of running a Hackintosh in a VM? It's pretty easy these days with QEMU. If you need decent GPU performance you can use VFIO to pass a Vega 56/64 through to the VM.

My point is that money and skill *always* beats commercial offerings in PC's in every way you can afford, providing you have the skill.

I agree mostly with this statement, however you also need to factor in time and maintenance. If a HP/Dell/Whatever has a failure within it's warranty period everything is handled for you, no need to rip the machine apart and start pulling/swapping parts to diagnose what has failed. Sometimes you simply don't have the spare parts on hand to swap for testing, or your life is already simply too busy to have the free time to spend researching parts, building the machine, diagnosing any faults.

I am all for building your own PC, and I have never owned a brand name PC, but I have serviced enough of them to know they are generally well built (usually Dell are pretty decent) even if they are expensive for the parts they contain. The consumer range of HP/Compaq equipment, especially laptops, I avoid like the plague as they are some of the cheapest built junk there is, however the business range is far better, but you pay for it.

I've seen HP factory servers on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... ok, slight exaggeration

Interesting, I'd love to hear the details on this as I work in this industry. That said however this is like comparing apples to oranges, the enterprise server market is completely foreign to the home computer market. Many enterprise servers are designed to be in actively cooled racks (industrial air conditioning & humidity control) due to their size constraints. Cooling considerations for a rack server must be taken into account or the lifespan of said device is likely to be very short.

OTOH, a general mass produced home PC must be designed to just work, even if they are in a room with a heater keeping grandma warm while she browses eBay smoking a cigarette filling the PC with sticky tar dust that blocks all airflow.

Regarding Apple's value... I am sorry it's just not there. And then when they do stuff like this it just reinforces it:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/3/18651001/apples-mac-pro-xdr-display-monitor-stand-expensive-dongle-not-included-wwdc-2019

[techman-001]

I've seen HP factory servers on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... ok, slight exaggeration

Interesting, I'd love to hear the details on this as I work in this industry. That said however this is like comparing apples to oranges, the enterprise server market is completely foreign to the home computer market. Many enterprise servers are designed to be in actively cooled racks (industrial air conditioning & humidity control) due to their size constraints. Cooling considerations for a rack server must be taken into account or the lifespan of said device is likely to be very short.

I used to be the guy repairing and configuring servers and networking gear in server cool rooms, the guy with the woolly jumper and noise canceling headphones.

There is nothing special about commercial servers, it's all just hardware engineered for a price. In fact because the server room is always filtered and air conditioned, the actual cooling performance on server gear is usually quite pedestrian in my experience.

Most commercial servers wouldn't last long on my desk because they don't have the cooling for my hot shed, even at their usual 180 dBa noise levels!

Ever bought a second hand commercial server from a server coolroom ? They're like new inside, but after 12 months in a home they're filthy, rusty and just yuk!

[Simon]

what really pisses me off is that virtually every laptop ships with only one stick of RAM even though every processor now is dual channel and with integrated graphics you really need that extra channel. Often the RAM speeds are lower than those supported.

I use a HP laptop but I bought it off a guy on ebay that souped up standard machines. For less than HP would have ripped me off for he shipped a machine with full speed dual channel RAM and an SSD. Very happy with it and has been going strong since 2016. I can even do some light 3D CAD work on it for electronic design.

[brucehoult]

My current home office work machine is a 32 core ThreadRipper that I built in April. Apple announced a 29 core Xeon W Mac Pro in June but I think hasn't yet shipped it. I haven't Hackintoshed my Threadripper because I'm doing more work directly with Ubuntu these days, and my 2011 17" i7 MacBook Pro does everything I need MacOS for.

Ever thought of running a Hackintosh in a VM? It's pretty easy these days with QEMU. If you need decent GPU performance you can use VFIO to pass a Vega 56/64 through to the VM.

Yes I've done that before and have XP and OSX images for virtualbox sitting around somewhere. I haven't actually run them on this machine yet...

[Electro Detective]

what really pisses me off is that virtually every laptop ships with only one stick of RAM even though every processor now is dual channel and with integrated graphics you really need that extra channel.
Often the RAM speeds are lower than those supported.

It's where they try save a buck to meet a marketing dept. price point,
and other stupid penny pinching **** they get up to, that just succeeds to scare off future customers to look around for 'better value' 
not that any coffeeholic marketing team of iced fools would ever pick that up 

Ram speed aside, I usually hunt down an exact matching ram stick for cheap on Ebay from another frustrated owner  that's upgraded to some killa ram, and wack it in.

Dual channel, twice the ram, -CHEAP-
hey, I can live with any speed downsides 

[Simon]

Thing is my laptop although a few years old is perfectly fine for me. But it was souped up to the hilt on arrival. it will last twice as long as a cheaper laptop two of which would have cost more than this one anyway and i have a more pleasant experience for years....

[Mechatrommer]

since i cant build a laptop from zero (no generic hung low casing and generic hardwares for that), so its always a brand name, not the high end though. i wont pick the name, but the spec and affordability (bang per buck). it just happened recently Acer Aspire 5 was picked for the wifey due to latest Intel gen among whats around the shopping mall. what i did i will go round the mall looking at the best at each shop, compare and go back to the shop who got the best option among them. since SWMBO cant catch up i asked her to stay put where she is and later drag her to there to make the purchase. there's empty slot for RAM and upgradable to nvme but thats for later. whats nice is laptop brand or hung low will always/usually have panel with a screw to easily open to make the upgrade. so i'd rather laptop with empty slots than full beefed laptop but expensive. though, i never need a laptop, but i can recommend to others and point to someone who can repair it since i dont repair laptop since its a dog arse to dismantle wholly, please dont ask me to repair spilled keyboard and btw, my old Q9400 running XPx86 runs much faster than the wifey's Aspire 5 running Win10x64 i guess due to bloatwareness of Win10.

[Simon]

Well mine was upgraded by a third party so was cheaper than what I would of paid HP for a fully speced machine