Me too!
Something to do with the West Virginia coal mines ? . . . . .
Caves of Kentucky??
Who knows.
The 85 pounds is an issue and needs reducing to 3 - 4 oz.

Don
🤠
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Mark in Portugal said:

I'd like to know more about this; never heard of such a thing.
The neighborhood all buys gas directly from a local well? Metered I assume?
is the gas also sold to the grid or trucked away?

Is the gas usable in standard devices, direct out of the ground?

I find it fascinating.

Click to expand...

I forgot to hit the post button, I think. If this is a duplicate make it go away.
I find that interesting too. No idea how they happened to be so fortunate. I am sure others in the area are aware of the source and are also taking advantage of the resource.
What a nice thing to have.
Especially after my gas bill doubling last month and at my 7 day usage notice from the gas company, I am at $65 bucks for one week.
Today it warmed enough that I left the front door open for the boys to do peep outs.
Don
🤠
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Mark in Portugal said:

I'd like to know more about this; never heard of such a thing.
The neighborhood all buys gas directly from a local well? Metered I assume?
is the gas also sold to the grid or trucked away?

Is the gas usable in standard devices, direct out of the ground?

I find it fascinating.

Click to expand...

That Cat rebuild was amazing! There was a few torques that I didn't see the bolt/nut turn when it clicked. They could possibly be over torqued, but at those values, it probably wasn't much. At least those guys weren't working in sandals. I did notice that they only used manual hand tools. Nothing battery or air powered and I was amazed that all the work was done outdoors.

Mark in Portugal said:

I'd like to know more about this; never heard of such a thing.
The neighborhood all buys gas directly from a local well? Metered I assume?
is the gas also sold to the grid or trucked away?

Is the gas usable in standard devices, direct out of the ground?

I find it fascinating.

Click to expand...

I'm kinda interested in this also. How do it work?

i'm also for dell for a desktop yet for what you can afford your not going to get the performance you need you can check out the link below to see a lot of specs, sadly this company fails to have a store anywhere near you, but the site is very informative
laptop i'm using a HP gamer 6 core amd ryzen 5 cpu, nvidia video, that i swap'ed in a larger 2 tb M2ssd hard drive, changed the memory to max, installed win10 pro it sure can do a lot,

I failed to mention, as far as moving on to a new computer, I would advise you to get a SSD for a backup and spare. I bought a 1TB SSD that is the NVMe M.2 SSD, new one we all want plus a stand alone case and USB connector for $18 bucks, the drive was $50 bucks. Then find AOMEI Partition Assistant 8.9, or more recent. open the program and follow the choices. This is a simple to use program that does it all, clone drive create new partitions, format new drives and many more. There are dozens of programs out there and I have used several from simple to huge programs, this is for everyone to use.



Choices abound. I am going to format the new unallocated disc 2. Then partition it into 2 - 3 partitions. Then I will clone my working disc onto the new and have tow other drives that I can create as the "C" drive and make it bootable.
If you buy a Samsung SSD, it will come with or you can download their program for moving/coping data. It's highly rated
Don

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Steamguy said:

I need to raise a hand and ask for help from you PC wizards...!! I need to change computers.

The Request:
I want to get a desktop to replace my +12-year-old-laptop. It was my wife's computer, and worked great for everything she needed it to do. Meanwhile, I had a series of hotrods for work; they were the darlings of the IS folks, because I used to edit video and create podcast material, plus I'm a Technical Writer and I do all my own illustrating. I use a whole bunch of the Adobe Creative Suite stuff, plus FrameMaker for all my work.

The laptop has been adequate, but lately it's starting to give me the willies: occasionally when restarted, it will report, "No Operating System Detected". Power OFF/ON always fixes it, and it starts normally. I have a full backup in hand, and am ready to put the work into switching machines.

But I need recommendations. You guys are far more spooled-up than I am on PC things, and I need to get some recommendations. Budget is key here, I'm looking at $500 (or less) because I now have no income (see below), but I need to get work done. I can stretch this if needed; especially if you guys think you've found something special.

Currently HAVE:

• External monitor(s) with differing resolutions, although this laptop will only run only one, and not the newest one
• Keyboards/mice for my specific hand-needs (arthritis)
• Good backup & drives
• Dell Inspirion 7110 (+DVD R/W)
• Space for desktop unit to stay out of the way

Needs:

• Something faster on boot (this waiting for five minutes is making me more gray)
• Stay with Dell
• No more dinky laptop display for second monitor
• No more laptop keyboard in the way
• Enough USB ports for camera, mouse/keyboard, backup drive
• Something economical with DVD R/W
• Speakers, if the desktop doesn't have built-in; but I have good headphones for sound work
• A way to transfer all my ...stuff... over to the new machine

Explanation:
My job ended the week before Thanksgiving, and I've had more people than I can count say to me, "So! Are you going to work on your book, now?" And so I've decided to go that direction with my life. I need to concentrate on my writing, and really need help picking out a replacement PC, because I'm in the middle of what I hope is my first book.

All the IS guys I've dealt with over the last 25 years have been big Dell fans, and so I think I'd like to stay with Dell.

Thanks to all who are helping, here.

Mods, if I should start a new thread, please let me know.

Click to expand...

Holding you guys to that, typically no problem here on MTF! 😆

I do appreciate the help, I'm trying to concentrate on the book, not on one of the aspects my old job which was market research. It's too easy to run 'down the rabbit hole' and get pulled way away from creating the story...

So after doing not an inconsiderate amount of thumbing through stuff, I've found this one in my price range:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2DT66S...olid=1V1DIJRVOG2IW&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Seems to have most of the stuff I'd look for, off the shelf - plenty of available RAM, SSD for booting, HDD for data. Decent grafix card, not some built-in bow-wow. DVD R/W. Sure, it's a Win10 machine, but at least it's Pro-level OS.

Donewrken said:

Come on back with the ones your looking at and we can all add our 2 cents.

Click to expand...

Donewrken said:

Thank you for asking, I appreciate that. Remember too, we all have our own opinions, none of which are the right one, just our own.

Click to expand...

I can't tell you guys how much I appreciate the help! I'm trying to NOT spend a bunch of my grocery and gas money...
Might be able to check in later; if not, then tomorrow morning.

Oh, my!!

You found a great buy in my opinion!
You would have an almost new but just as good as a new computer that will be faster and capable of doing most anything you would need from a PC. It will boot in seconds, not minutes. It has all the goodies I have mentioned plus the WiFi 6 I mentioned in earlier posts, that is the latest in the WiFi world and faster than everything else giving you gigabit speeds. Plus the latest Bluetooth. 2 TB drive is twice mine. Ram is twice mine and 6 core processor two more than mine. I'll be checking this out myself when my box says good by.
Amount of USB ports is great and three ways to connect your monitor. Use the HDMI when you connect your Samsung LCD TV, as I said jokingly, I don't know how I ever got any work done on those little bitty 28" monitors, but I really do enjoy working on the 43 inch, it is such a beautiful display. It's just really really nice and I would suggest having one, even a smaller sized one, but get the current year for all the goodies. Here's a 32 inch for $400ish, there are several more for $100 less.
Speakers, nice set here for $100, Klipsch set here for around $100 bucks, Logitech for $60 bucks,Cyber acoustics for under $40 bucks. Even Amazon Basics for around $20 - 30 bucks.
The only reason I can think of to not buying it is because it beats mine up!! Haha!!
I would say it looks like a nice one.
Best of luck with it and I would still buy another SSD and a case, you could clone the small drive onto a 1TB SSD and keep the original as your back up. $70 bucks for this 1TB and this case.
Don
🤓 😁
.

I have a new program to suggest, it can be run as a portable app, just unzip and run. Both 32 and 64 bit. Does not need to be installed, it could run on a USB stick. I ran it from the directory I created for the download, just unzipped and it created two folders one for 32 bit one for 64. I just initialized a one TB SSD hen created a primary drive to match the laptop's drive size. Then created two more drives out of the rest. It has a simple right click on the drive you want to work on or a menu you can follow. It will not change anything until you click the commit button, so safety is there so you won't make anything disappear by chance. It worked fast and no reboot required. You can "open drive again" to see the changes.
It's free and has features like clone disc, copy and move drives, create combine and delete partitions. It also will convert or create MBR and UEFI formats. It's called MACRORIT PARTITION MANAGER. Google it and download the standalone or the install versions.

Don
🤓
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Well... it's on order. <deep exhale>
And thanks, everyone! I can finally get back to two usable monitors for working.

And that's really good advice. I happen to have a few USB sticks around, of a size big enough to clone the small boot drive. I'll use one for the clone, one for the recovery. Should cover me okay, I hope. I'm out the door for just under $430, which will strain the gas and grocery budget, but I'll still be able to live and drive. Can of chili for dinner...

@charles g, thanks for the help, but no more laptops, unless I have a specific need. I needed a machine with a grafix card that will run two monitors via the DisplayPort connections at full resolution. My old work laptop was capable enough, but it was a pain because I couldn't run both monitors at high resolutions at the same time. You could run one at low rez and the other at full rez, and that worked OK most of the time. But when I was editing video, it made it difficult to see my clip bins, for instance. It was a $4500 unit, and I was so surprised to see that they ignored that capability. I suspect that it was due to the onboard grafix card or chip not being capable enough, or the speed of the connection through the Thunderbolt box.

Donewrken said:

Oh, my!!

You found a great buy in my opinion!
You would have an almost new but just as good as a new computer that will be faster and capable of doing most anything you would need from a PC. It will boot in seconds, not minutes. It has all the goodies I have mentioned plus the WiFi 6 I mentioned in earlier posts, that is the latest in the WiFi world and faster than everything else giving you gigabit speeds. Plus the latest Bluetooth. 2 TB drive is twice mine. Ram is twice mine and 6 core processor two more than mine. I'll be checking this out myself when my box says good by.
Amount of USB ports is great and three ways to connect your monitor. Use the HDMI when you connect your Samsung LCD TV, as I said jokingly, I don't know how I ever got any work done on those little bitty 28" monitors, but I really do enjoy working on the 43 inch, it is such a beautiful display. It's just really really nice and I would suggest having one, even a smaller sized one, but get the current year for all the goodies. Here's a 32 inch for $400ish, there are several more for $100 less.
Speakers, nice set here for $100, Klipsch set here for around $100 bucks, Logitech for $60 bucks,Cyber acoustics for under $40 bucks. Even Amazon Basics for around $20 - 30 bucks.
The only reason I can think of to not buying it is because it beats mine up!! Haha!!
I would say it looks like a nice one.
Best of luck with it and I would still buy another SSD and a case, you could clone the small drive onto a 1TB SSD and keep the original as your back up. $70 bucks for this 1TB and this case.
Don
🤓 😁
.

Click to expand...

That's great.
Hope it all works for you.
Canned soup is another alternative to beans. LOL!!!

Don
🤠
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Steamguy said:

Well... it's on order

Click to expand...

I had a chance to try out the new SSD and adapter/case and it works great.
Then I took what was to be my new a couple of years ago SSD and plugged it into the adapter/case and found out I have a new Samsung SSD 1TB. It was what I suspected, a new NVMe M.2 SSD in a SATA adapter to use as a 2.5 inch disc.
New SSD my 2 year old SATA SSD and new case/adapter, in that order.



I am getting ready to clone the laptop to the first partition on the Samsung SSD that plugs in to a USB port. Then install it as the new hard drive and convert it to Windows 11 Pro.
Piece of cake.

Don
🤓
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I was a Dell man for a long time but I gave up on them now.
I never liked the last Dell laptop I got with the "mouse" buttons integrated with the touch pad. It drove me bonkers, my thick old fingers need physically separate buttons.
Dell is mail order only (here anyway) and I want to see the thing before I buy from now on.

So I ended up with an Asus with Portuguese keyboard... things you never have to be aggravated about in the US.
No expansion slots, no disk drive, no COM port.

Dell desktop died too, the power supply couldn't handle a little power surge, and replacement was more than a new pc.
New one is HP with SSD and it does ok. I use it mainly for video downloading.

I like the new HP also, except surprise!! When I entered Bios setup HP program was there. Finally was able to set boot options.
Sucks
not like good old raw bios! LOL!!!
🤓 😝
Don

.

I chose HP after careful consideration, and because it was the only desktop they had in the shop.
It seems everyone buys laptops now, or uses their phone.
It was only a few hundred euros, no monitor.
I now need a new monitor actually; are the new TVs mostly good monitors?

😄
I can only speak for the Samsung "QLED". It's comparable for my cable company and streams thru internet, has programmed in their own channel and several others, Netflix, Amazon etc. it makes a great monitor for a computer. Has the best picture I have ever seen. I can't tell you what the rest are like, I'd imagine most all of them would be able to be used as a monitor. There is an app to download that can be set to always turn on with the computer or not. It simply starts with the computer and no input needed.

Don
🤠
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Mark in Portugal said:

and because it was the only desktop they had in the shop.

Click to expand...

desk top. i've never had a factory built box i liked, my last 6 have been self built ,really hot game boxes that work at editing music from the band more than anything else, asus mother board fast AMD water cooled cpu's huge amounts of ram, 2 slot video card with 3 fans to cool it, 850 watt power supply.

laptop brand wise HP seems to offer more for the price, to me are bulky and heavier. this new hp gamer they made easy to open and modify, m2 ssd , memory and room for a second 2.5 inch SSD right with the mounts are inside. all under 6 screws on the bottom cover ,
video it has a unboard the cpu and a second nvidia that rocks , not bad for a $550.00 unit

My HP is 3/4" thick, I finally found two tiny screws holding the back on. I turned it over four or five times looking for a way to open it.
My eyes are tired.

I would recommend a docking station with a laptop to give you dual monitors. Makes it easy to plug in the one cord and have all your peripherals in the dock.

Speaking of laptops,
I was able to complete the upgrade project.
The biggest battle was cloning the active partition that was labeled as "Windows" C drive. Not only do you need to turn off the "Bitlocker" protection, finding a program that could copy an active, working partition to the new drive that you might be able to have in one of the several programs on the market. Naturally, opting to use a free software was a priority, in keeping with the old ways of computer nerdyness. The old saying was pay for hardware, software should be free. I found one that does most everything the big brand names do and it is freeware. Old programs I used in the past for 32 bit systems always wrote a script, rebooted into a Dos base program that loaded into ram and then painfully copied the old to the new. It sometimes took hours. The program I tried method one which did the reboot but stalled likely due to it trying to run like the bios was set as MBR. Three or four restarts later, Windows started and I tried the second method which ran without the reboot but failed also. I tried the last method which copied the working system and it worked. All of this happening to the cloned drive with contained four partitions that were cloned initially with three hidden partitions with the recovery partition, one to hold a copy a boot section and the unallocated remaining portion of the drive.
Then it was a matter of opening the case and installing the new drive. The new 1tb drive looked the same as the original 250mb and held in with one screw.
It booted up as normal as usual, then the upgrade from Home version to Professional, It initially tried to install the Home edition which I stopped. Then found out what needed to be done to force it to install Professional, not for the faint of heart. The windows key had to be changed to the key that came with the new software, once that was done it went on to install and update.
Like I said, piece of cake. . . . .
NOT!!!
It's all happy now after several hours work.
Like a brand new laptop with all of the old software intact, including the updated full MS Office.

Don
🤓 🤠
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While my wife is a phone person I'm a desktop guy. I preferer the big screen so i don't strain my eyes. (they are bad enough as it is)
I bought a tablet for the business but have yet to use it because i don't know how to link it to my desktop or phone. 😪
With my phone I can take pics and transfer them to the desktop. I don't know how to do that with the tablet. I guess I'll have to go to an elementary school and have one of the kids show me how. LOL......... 🤣

I bought my wife a striped down basic HP laptop and she likes it. I buy used refurbished desk tops every 4 years for $150. LOL.......... This one is a Dell, the last one was an HP, and i think the one before was a Dell. They all work the same for me because i don't game or do crazy stuff with them. Just check emails surf the web, and buy stuff. 😁

I wish I had the brain depth to understand all this PC stuff you guys talk about but i don't. Then again I can mix up a can of paint and spray a car or truck with a finish better than it came from the factory with out of a 2 car garage with no paint booth, finish drywall as smooth as a baby's bottom, lay a vinyl floor, stretch out some carpet, or trim out your house among other things.

I'm a hands on, see it do it person. Life is not binary to me it's not 1's and 0"s Life is sunlight, trees, grass, streams. My life is a living screen not a virtual one. I love being able to chat with people all over the world but what is real is right where i can touch.

That being said, I love you guys.
In the words of Spock "live long and prosper"

Tony