New 'Puter Arriving Today

[Eupher]

My 8-year-old Dell's motherboard got fried about a week ago (along with the modem), so after going through getting a replacement modem and having the AT&T tech replace the line going into the house (it was fried too), I ordered a Dell Inspiron 3880 desktop.

I thought the stock primary drive, a solid state drive, was way too small at 256GB, so I ordered a 1 TB SSD drive to replace it.

That drive came in yesterday. I was expecting it to be in the standard sort of electrical box with a power cable and a data cable.

Nope. This "drive" is really a card and it measures 1" x 3". It's a so-called "M.2" drive.

Cramming that much data onto a card that measures 1" x 3"? Whoa. I can't keep up with this stuff. 

[enslaved1]

SSD drives are essentially slightly better flash/thumbdrives.  Similar tech, able to move data around faster so they can run programs better.  No moving parts like our old platter HD's. 

Storage is getting insane.  The amount of data we can cram into small amounts of space blows your mind fast.  I've got a 128 gb flash drive on my key chain, and most of it's size is the USB and USB-C connections on it.  Unfortunately, software developers think everyone just has that much space readily available on their PCs and laptops, so games and apps and OS's are getting huger too.  Windows 11 takes up 64 GB to start with, and will no doubt bloat up quickly as time goes on.  Upgrading the HD was definitely a good idea. 

I'll hold off the rant about how much storage Google, Apple, Facebook and the feds have to store everything they know about us, and how it is possible to easily search and analyze all that data....

[FlaGator]

My 8-year-old Dell's motherboard got fried about a week ago (along with the modem), so after going through getting a replacement modem and having the AT&T tech replace the line going into the house (it was fried too), I ordered a Dell Inspiron 3880 desktop.

I thought the stock primary drive, a solid state drive, was way too small at 256GB, so I ordered a 1 TB SSD drive to replace it.

That drive came in yesterday. I was expecting it to be in the standard sort of electrical box with a power cable and a data cable.

Nope. This "drive" is really a card and it measures 1" x 3". It's a so-called "M.2" drive.

Cramming that much data onto a card that measures 1" x 3"? Whoa. I can't keep up with this stuff. 

I remember when I bought and installed my first 10 meg hard drive. That and my 2400 baud modem and I thought I was the big cheese.

[Eupher]

SSD drives are essentially slightly better flash/thumbdrives.  Similar tech, able to move data around faster so they can run programs better.  No moving parts like our old platter HD's. 

Storage is getting insane.  The amount of data we can cram into small amounts of space blows your mind fast.  I've got a 128 gb flash drive on my key chain, and most of it's size is the USB and USB-C connections on it.  Unfortunately, software developers think everyone just has that much space readily available on their PCs and laptops, so games and apps and OS's are getting huger too.  Windows 11 takes up 64 GB to start with, and will no doubt bloat up quickly as time goes on.  Upgrading the HD was definitely a good idea. 

I'll hold off the rant about how much storage Google, Apple, Facebook and the feds have to store everything they know about us, and how it is possible to easily search and analyze all that data....

The new machine came with Win 10 installed, but with a link to upgrade to Win 11. I did so, and was dismayed to see that Bill Gates and his thugs require you to have a MS account (I had avoided this for years) in order to install their OS.

Well, OK, but that doesn't mean I need to USE that MS account.

They push Office 365 (I hate software subscriptions) though I understand why they (and Quicken) resort to that. Even though a software package like Office 97 continues to run just fine and get the job done, the MS bastards force you to subscribe to their latest and greatest when it's "new machine time." Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

But if the truth be known, the only MS products that I would regularly use include the OS and MS Publisher. They can keep the rest of their garbage, including "One Note" and "Outlook" (hey, I'm retired and don't need your email browser any more). Don't even talk to me about Access (though I've developed databases with it -- a long time ago) and in a pinch I might need Excel.

Whatever happened to Lotus 123? LOL