I am absolutely amazed at how unbelievably crap they all were.
Problem 1.
Some had old fashioned mechanical drives. So slow to load windows or anything else that I literally COULDNT use them. I forgot what I was attempting to do and fell asleep at times. Those are worthless. One of these was just a year old.
Problem 2.
They didnt have enough memory. The majority had 2 to 4GB ram. Thats OK to make windows boot once you "fix" it so its usable. But thats about it. You cant for e.g use the thing to edit a photo. Because a decent photo editing program or raw editor uses up all the memory. And then starts trying to use the hard disk thats too slow to catch a cold. So again unusable.
Problem 3.
SLOW single or dual core CPUs like the terrible ATOM or celerons.
Problem 4.
Windows 8.
or windows 10 in noddy bedroom mode where its also unusable. And then about 30 unwanted "bundled" junk programs and the manufacturers own junk be it from dell or acer or whatever.The operating systems are spending around half the time doing updates, running shit in the background or trying to get you to sign in to one thing or another. Or to sign up to pay versions of everything.
The result of all this, is that NON of these laptops and some were pretty new had actually had any real use. No work or anything useful on them. And as such were basically abandoned.
It should be illegal to sell laptops like this list above. It takes advantage of the gullible ignorant masses. These things were literally all junk. Not usable in any sane way. You could and I did waste hours and hours just trying to clean up the mess. But its so slow that even this gets to be impossible.
So I now have a rule.
Anything with an old hard disk or no SSD of 256GB or above goes straight in the bin.
Anything with less than 8GB ram, bin...
Anything that has less than a fast 2 core or decent 4 core, CPU goes in the bin.
No anything will be kept as far as software is concerned, and I will put a clone of my own PC on it instead with everything properly setup which means LTSC, Adobe everything, Corel everything, DXO everything, and about 100 utilities etc all at once. All latest stuff. And no phoning home, asking to update, buy nags, or anything else. And no ads anywhere!
Seriously these slow laptops, and junk operating systems and preloaded junk trial software etc should all be illegal to sell. Most of them are little better than doorstops. The real reason of course is that if it LOOKS like a pretty laptop, and the price is cheap, a few hundred, people think it is one. When you show them a 2k or more price ticket for a decent one, they are horrified. So they buy completely unusable junk. Needs some kind of regulation.
The difference between my own laptops and all the ones I see that most people are trying to use is enormous.
Mine just boot fast and then go silent. Programs and web browsers are all pretty much instant. Never any ads, pop ups, or anything demanding attention or updates or safety warnings or nags, or anything else. They do only what I ask them to do. And I am never asked to log onto, into, or buy any software or subscriptions or anything else. No nags of any kind. No autorun and no background stuff that isnt wanted.
