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Ask Slashdot: What Should A Mac User Know Before Buying a Windows Laptop?
New submitter Brentyl writes: Hello Slashdotters, longtime Mac user here faced with a challenge: Our 14-year-old wants a Windows laptop. He will use it for school and life, but the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming. I don't need a recommendation on which laptop to buy, but I do need a Windows survival kit. What does a fairly savvy fellow, who is a complete Windows neophyte, need to know? Is the antivirus/firewall in Windows 10 Home sufficient? Are there must-have utilities or programs I need to get? When connecting to my home network, I need to make sure I ____? And so on... Thanks in advance for your insights.
Is a Macbook Pro running Bootcamp.
ask your son he probably knows more about computers then you do
...Windows sucks.
You will have a lot of money saved, if you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison on the hardware.
Also, it's on you to make sure OS updates are installing, the firewall is running, and the antivirus is updated, and running. Also, don't trip over the power cord or you'll destroy the entire laptop. You may be used to this, with the "innovative" new Mac design.
Seriously. There aren't any that come close to even a decade-old Macbook Pro.
There are small differences in UI, but nothing that's gonna stop you dead. Windows isn't a *nix and that's gonna be the biggest hurdle - culture shock.
I think the biggest problem you may have is getting things out of Time Machine - that's about it.
Frankly, I may be going back to Windows myself as a Mac guy of 5+ years.
give em Linux and tell them to figure out how to run Windows games
And then tell the rest of the world how he did it.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
That is the main thing you should know.
On my windows box defauld firewall has been fine, but I don't download and install every random piece of crap software that shows up in an ad either. As long as you don't give the kid admin access you should be good(ish) - he'll have to come to you to install stuff. If this is literally "his" machine and you don't want stuck micromanaging apps, tell him if he breaks it he has to fix it himself. Good learning experience.
Check the hardware for linux compatibility.
Oh, and based on another recent slashdot topic about Intel's running minix secretly, you might also want an AMD machine (though they may have their own secrets.)
Get a machine with at least 16GB of memory
Install VirtualBox
Install Linux on VirtualBox, and take a snapshot.
Tell him to do all web related things inside the Linux VM, and only use Windows for gaming.
If Linux ever manages to break (unlikely), use the rollback.
And everything is in the ribbon. Somewhere. If you can find it. Before you die.
They're all the same. I always recommend that unless you specifically need special hardware, to just get a $300-$400 refurbished laptop. The market is flooded with them.
The OP specifically said that they don't need a brand recommendation. Just software.
YSN that if you buy a Windows laptop you won't have to pay $400 for an entire bottom deck when one key on your keyboard fails. You just pull the keyboard out and put in a new keyboard.
give em Linux and tell them to figure out how to run Windows games.
The result of such will be that the user will run into third-party digital restrictions management and anti-cheat software that explicitly forbids use of Wine.
One reason pc laptops get a bad rep is the good deals are full of crapware. Pay a bit extra for a Microsoft signature edition (usually less then $100 more then same hardware) but these have ZERO crapware and have had extra driver testing.
You can play solitaire on an iPad. A game rig worth having is a desktop PC. I'd seriously consider getting him an Xbox instead and a Mac if he really needs a laptop for something.
Given a kid and Windows and the stated need for gaming, the main thing I'd concern yourself with is the fact that the app store is an integral part of the operating system now and you need to turn that business off or explicitly set limits or you'll suddenly have a credit card charge for $10,000 worth of Metal Gear armor (is that still a game? I'm old.)
Opinions probably differ but my personal belief is that you're better off doing firewall stuff at the router level. By the time the laptop firewall is doing anything, whatever's getting into your network is already in your network.
How to install linux.
the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming.
I always recommend that unless you specifically need special hardware, to just get a $300-$400 refurbished laptop.
The problem is that you need to be careful in order not to end up with Intel integrated graphics, which isn't always suitable for the newest games. It'll take a while for Intel's deal with Radeon to bring products to the market, and it'll take another while for those to end up on the refurbished market. Therefore, gamers "specifically need special hardware." If gaming weren't the reason, he could just buy a Windows license to run in Boot Camp.
Don't run as administrator - create another user account.
Treat yourself to a cocktail to celebrate.
I would recommend the Windows 10 Field Guide by Paul Thurrott : https://leanpub.com/windows10fieldguide
That's what counts, is the hardware Linux compatible so you can dual boot.
Because next to that gaming OS you want to have a prime OS for all else.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
God help you. I'm been through this, and it's ugly. My daughter destroyed her machine in minutes, multiple times. By the 5th wipe/reinstall she started to learn to avoid the crudites. (she started on linux, moved to mac, then Windows... for games of course)
1) no admin rights, and make sure no one ever runs as admin
2) firewall shit up
3) turn on windows defender, and grab a copy of webroot
4) remove IE, install chrome
5) get steam, only let games install from there
And force him to play tux.
IMHO antivirus/firewall on Windows machines is not enough to mitigate the attack surface... especially with a teenager behind the keyboard. If we are going to be honest about it, they are going to access websites we are not going to approve of. Strictly from a network security standpoint I would segregate the Windows machine into an isolated VLAN and prohibit him from doing any financial or other sensitive activities from that PC.
Windows gives the user copious power to screw things up if they don't know what they are doing. No, the anti-virus / firewall is not sufficient. But then again, it's not sufficient on OSX or any other platform either. It sounds like your home network consists of a wireless router, and that's it. When connecting it to your home network you are going to opening up the laptop and network to similar problems as when you connect any other device.
If he wants a 12" screen, X220s can be had for about $150 refurb. Plop in an SSD, 8GB of RAM, price is under $250. Fast, solid, indestructible laptop.
If he wants 14"-15", the Thinkpad T4x0 and T5x0 series are great.
These machines aren't sexy or "cool", but they'll last him 4-5 years, can run Linux or even MacOS if he wants to tinker, and (with an SSD), will take a lot of abuse (falling down dorm stairs, etc).
Check the hardware for linux compatibility.
Since when does the packaging of mainstream* laptop PCs include a penguin logo or other notice of compatibility with X11/Linux?
you might also want an AMD machine (though they may have their own secrets.)
AMD kit includes the analogous AMD Secure Processor, which runs ARM TrustZone. (It used to be called the Platform Security Processor until people who bought AMD-powered PS4 consoles were disappointed that they couldn't download and play purchased PSP games.) But at least ARM TrustZone is a multi-vendor standard.
* By which I exclude the more expensive, mail-order-only products of System76 and the like.
Get a
"Signature Edition" - comes with no bloatware.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/pcsignatureedition
This is silly. Give your kid a chromebook, a bare system with no GPU for linux, and a library card.
He can buy his own windows box with the money he makes working at his after-school job. If he does waste his money on that, then set up a network outside your home router for his windows box, so he has access to the internet but all the viruses he gets can't screw with your machines.
...get a console. Are there really that many PC-only games that are worth: A) dealing with Windows overall and B) dealing with Windows? Seriously - keeping up with the latest drivers, etc - even, yes, in Windows, plus add Direct X versions.. - just.... why???
Here's what I recommend for Windows laptops/PCs:
Software: .rar and .zip files
Winrar - for unzipping
Coretemp - useful if you want to monitor the cpu temp on the laptop
Adobe Reader - good for reading pdfs
Chrome - best browser out there
Spotify - best streaming service out there and free!
Java - evil but necessary
Teamviewer (free version for remote monitoring and access)
Winamp - great media player, been around for ages
Microsoft Office - Evil but helpful for when you want to open and edit Office files
Itunes - built into Macs but you'll need to download on Windows
CPUID - great for seeing info on the laptop processor
GPUZ - great for seeing the gpu specs
Malwarebytes - great 'free' Malware scanner, will find most things.
Adwcleaner - another great adware remover/scanner
Ultrasearch - use this once and you will never use Windows search again
Things to do upon receipt of new laptop:
-Clean out all of the crapware - even today most HPs, Dells, Acers, etc will be loaded with them. Only gaming laptops seem to cut the crap for the most part.
-Be sure to check the power setting in the Control Panel - if it's on battery saver mode your laptop will run like crap. I leave it on balanced which offers good performance and battery saving for when the load is lite on the laptop.
-Turn of Windows updates and Search services. Go to the search bar and type 'services.msc'. Scroll down to each and right click them and choose 'disable'. You can still update manually, just turn the service back on and update when you feel like it. Otherwis, both will slow you laptop to a crawl and Windows update has the habit of making you wait at the worst possible time for updates to install.
-Go to the search bar and type 'taskmgr'. Go to the 'startup' tab and see what's starting. I'd disable most things as they are usually not needed and slow your start times down. Many new laptops are laden with crap that vendors will stick on there for no good reason.
-Don't enable Cortana. It's shitty, consumes computer resources and you will hardly ever use it.
Have fun!
These are all platform agnostic tips for how to deal with the overbearing nerds whom assembled the machine.
#1 Any program that came preinstalled has defied your authority by doing so and needs to be uninstalled and beheaded immediately to herald the reign of the new superuser
#2 Chastise that whore of a UI until it looks like windows classic
#3 The battery can be removed to vent heat, it can also be calibrated and replaced with new lithium batteries. For more information on batteries please consult The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
#4 Kill all the hippy features that weaken your wifi signal power and lock them in registry Guantanamo.
There's probably lots of "Windows for Dummies" type of books out there, but something specifically for Mac users is what you're asking for. Actually, a quick search just now uncovered dozens of books and articles for Windows users moving to a Mac, but almost nothing in the other direction. Hmmm? I did discover THIS article, however.
Give em a Mac, if he doesnâ(TM)t want it, give em Linux and tell them to figure out how to run Windows games.
Why would you intentionally use the wrong tool for the job? The answer from the platform evangelists is always simply because it's their platform of choice, which is moronic. People don't give 2 shits about the operating system, they want to run their programs so they will run whatever operating system is required to run those programs.
Whatever your motivation is people like yourself have a clear vested interest in pushing the wrong tool for job.
The great thing about multi-booting is that if you do require multiple operating systems you can do that, you dont' need to develop an attachment to one operating system. But that said pretty much any program you need that runs on Linux also runs on Windows, hence the reason most people just run Windows. It's not that it's a better (technically) operating system or anything like that but it does the fundamental job which is to run the programs the user wants to run. You can have the technically best and most secure operating system in the world but if it doesn't run your programs it is completely useless.
First up gaming laptops have a real problem, overheating to death. Basically whilst they last they last, but once warranty is over don't expect them to last more than say three times the warranty period. They run hot, real hot and system elements will fail. That is a high powered gaming laptop. Reality is for gaming get a good desktop and for school and other stuff get a cheap near disposable notebook. Cheapest notebook pretty much anything running Linux and a range of free open source software will be good enough (for computer learning experience they now have a foot in both games, windows for gaming all it pretty much can sort of be relied on for and Linux for everything else). So desktop to play games and the cheapest possible Linux notebook for school work, some of the work can still be done on the desktop. Just remember to remind them M$ will be spying on them and not to 'you know' in front of the microphone and camera that M$ is monitoring.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Don't
Windows probably isn't as bad as you have heard, or at least it hasn't been that bad for the past decade or two. The default anti virus is fine. Or just don't install tons of random applications from dubious websites and you wont get viruses. Stick with open source software or things from well-known publishers. Even well known publishers like to bundle spyware though, so carefully read installation prompts whenever you install something to make sure you dont agree to installing some useless crap.
The default start menu interface might be annoying, but for someone who has never used windows, maybe its fine. The program "classic start menu" is great for changing the start menu interface back to the way it used to be in older versions of windows. But if the interface feels fine to begin with, don't both, I suppose.
I would also really recommend a desktop pc for gaming, as laptops are generally more expensive for the same power. Also a good gaming laptop is probably going to be pretty huge and heavy anyways, so its unlikely to be comfortable lugging around anywhere. With a desktop, your kid can even learn how to pick out components and build it himself.
... running Linux. Especially with some desktop trying to imitate macOS (which, nowadays, is all of them, sadly for me, but luckily for you.)
What is "a Windows laptop" anyway.
It's not like the OS and the hardware form a holy bond of matrimony.
And installing an OS, nowadays, is too easy for even a grandma.
You'll be doing fine. :)
Macs can dual boot Windows, nowadays, can't they?
Tried making a hackintosh just to see if I could do it, but getting it working properly on a laptop is quite a challenge (you can't swap components out with more compatible components) and I didn't have much success.
... don't get a laptop for any serious gaming (or even casual gaming beyond casual 'facebook type'). laptops that can play the "AAA" titles (e.g. the titles you buy in the store for $50+ each) are expensive as hell and can't be upgraded as games demand more and more out of the hardware over time.
get a desktop.. aka a "tower". custom built, as the prebuilt oem stuff (from dell, hp, etc) these days is either a) overpriced for what you get (gaming systems) or b) full of proprietary shit that makes them hard to add a video card to (the cheaper ones).
see https://www.reddit.com/r/build... for help and configuration ideas within your budget.
alternatively.. if the desired games are not "pc exclusive", get a console instead of a laptop, or even a desktop, especially if budget is tight. you cannot build a desktop (including things a desktop would need such as an operating system, input devices, and monitor) for less than the cost of a console you can hook up to your already-existing televisions. it can't be done. period. already have a ps4 or xbone? great. you're done.
for school work, whatever chromebook or laptop the school uses or recommends is enough.. perfect, even, because it's what *they* use or recommend.
keep school and 'play' separate, as you would also keep work or financial stuff separate from the gaming/play system.
For all the things Microsoft has done badly this idiotic notion that they sell your personal information is just the mental defectives parroting any garbage they here. I could tell you Microsoft was full of kiddy fiddlers and you would believe and tell that to anybody who would listen.
Whatever you think of Microsoft or Apple or Google the fact is they don't sell people's personal information, that is just a clear mischaracterisation or fundamental misunderstanding on your part.
They should know they'll be using Windows.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You will need to know self control.
1. Don't download and install every update blindly. Not sure you can even do that anymore on Win 10.
2. Don't download and install anything and everything because it sounds cool.
3. Don't assume you can uninstall everything easily.
4. Last and not least, you'll need self control not to throw it out the window when it runs amuck. And it will.
CLONEZILLA IMAGE ON DAY ONE. When its wormed and broken reimage and run updates.
Yeah! And teach them how to sanitize their input before posting to slashdot instead of crying about unicode! Use an ASCII editor dammit!
The Mac Resource Forum is a good community for this kind of question.
http://forums.macresource.com
Hopefully highlighting them here doesn't bring too many trolls...
Windows and Mac are the same, the only difference is you will pay 1/2 for a Windows laptop.
The only real advice I have is that any of the big box stores and Apple are just flat out lying to you about the CPU/HD/GFX needs. They are vastly overselling products and ripping people off. I consider BesyBuy and Apple etc rather immoral for their completly unreasonable suggestions. Grandma does not need a 32 gig octocore desktop to stream netflix . Your kid will be able to do just fine with something around the $500.
Also gaming on a laptop is nonsense. I know I made that mistake a few years ago when I went away for collage. The ergo dynamics are simply not there. Gaming on a laptop is like taking a go-cart on a street race
I would worry about giving a too expensive laptop to a teenager to haul around with him. A cheaper 2-in-1 tablet or laptop could work fine for portability. Desktops are for more intense work.
They are also a lot easier to fix and are upgradeable; you also don't get stuck with an awful chiclet keyboard. They do probably cost the same as a gaming laptop, though (laptops start at ~$700, desktop is ~$500 + $200 for GPU); and you'd need a display for the desktop (~$100 or less). It is possible to build cheaper, though. (It is possible to save money here and there by going with a 2C/4T Pentium or a slightly cheaper GPU.)
Things you should know about buying right now:
* GPU prices are starting to come down after a burst of cryptocurrency mining. They are still elevated (AMD got harder hit by this).
* Using two sticks of RAM is better since it enables dual channel (some games benefit from this).
* Cheaper Coffee Lake motherboards are coming in January and that might cause a drop in prices. (Maybe better stock of CPUs as well.)
* Ryzen is getting a refresh in February, March, and April.
* The i3-8100 and i5-8400 are probably the best budget CPUs... assuming they sell for MSRP. And assuming that those cheaper motherboards come out.
* Windows OEM can apparently be transferred if you register it to you Windows Live email/account.
Check out /r/buildapc and pcpartpicker for ideas.
The number of RFP's sitting on my desk for 7/8 to 10 conversions says you're just wrong when it comes to enterprise applications.
ArcGIS anyone?
"Science is the power of man"
If cost is not an issue, why not just get him any thunderbolt-equipped MacBook and an eGPU box with a GTX970(unofficial) or Radeon RX580 (official support) in it? all I do is reboot into windows and game in bootcamp, then reboot into MacOS for everything else. it's super easy to do and solves all my problems.
You missed the point. Instead of letting your kid just sink hours into video games, make them work for it and learn something in the process. Installing Linux when I was 12 helped set me up with skills that I now use frequently in my career.
a. Install Chrome and Firefox
b. Remove or block IE
c. Get a good realtime AV like Sophos or ESET - schedule a daily scan
d. Install Malwarebytes - run it weekly
e. Install uBlock origin on both browsers
f. Talk to him about sketchy websites like free movies, apps.
g. Tell him most (or all) the free games from Pirate Bay will trash his PC
h. Basically all "free" Windows software will give his PC AIDS - avoid
It'll still be terrible but at least he'll have a shot at surviving.
Yeah, I agree: do not buy a Windows laptop. If you are a security conscious person, do not buy Windows.
1. He can game on a Mac.
or
2. Get him a System76 (Linux) gaming laptop and he ran run his Windows games inside the WINE program. It is not hard. It is vastly more secure than a Windows laptop and he can still play his games without compromising the whole system.
macs are thin, overpriced and hard to fix he made an good choice and that is just for gameing but for all.
Surface
Greed is the root of all evil.
The great thing about Windows is that it will do exactly what you tell it to do.
The terrible thing about Windows is that it will do exactly what you tell it to do.
Compared to the Mac, you gain a lot more flexibility and power. But for some (most?) people that's just giving them enough rope to hang themselves. (OS X is actually the same - it runs a modified version of BSD Unix under the hood. It's just that the GUI you know as OS X limits what you can do, akin to guardrails on a road which prevent you from driving anywhere where your car might get stuck or fall off a cliff.
IMHO the biggest difference between OS X and Windows from a UI standpoint is that the Windows desktop is a representation of your computer. Your programs and files sit on a drive, and if you wish you can put a shortcut (aka an alias, or a link) to them on your desktop. In fact the desktop is just a folder sitting in a special location on your drive. In OS X, your desktop is your computer. Your desktop is like the root directory, which contains your drives, which in turn contain your files and programs. (It's the same UI difference in Android vs iOS. Android apps all sit in the apps drawer, and you can arrange links to them in your home screens as you wish. iOS has no such abstraction, and the apps on your home screen(s) are the apps themselves.).
The Windows/Android method is more flexible. You can put multiple copies of the same app or file in multiple folders/home screens, or even create links to two completely different folders to each other so you can quickly navigate between the two even though their paths are completely different. OS X/iOS lacks this abstraction layer (except as an advanced topic - aliases), which makes the files and programs behave more like physical objects (can only have one copy of each). More intuitive, but less flexible.
That's what you get when you run games with DRM. Too bad.
Tell him to buy DRM-free games only and he will never have that problem.
Here are some actual tips versus the fan-ism going on.
> Microsoft signature edition
Someone else said this and good advice. You could also reload a clean-slate Windows yourself if you feel you know how to reinstall an OS. Would save you $100.
Antivirus - use the free one that comes with Windows or your ISP probably even gives you one for free
Firewall - the build-in one works just fine even for gaming. Modern game installers will add their needed rules, if any, for you.
7-zip is a great GUI tool.
Notepad++ is handy for programmers, but you'll probably just want Office.
Backup - for photos you can get free backup storage via Google Photos and the Backup & Sync app.
- for documents if under 15GB you can use a free Google account with Backup & Sync desktop app
- If just looking to backup the 100GB+ of game files consider an external USB (unless you have gigabit internet)
- If you need to backup lots of data (other than gaming files) consider something like Backblaze for cloud backup at a cheap monthly unlimited price. Nice in the event you ever have a fire or other event that destroys your usb backup drive.
VLC Media Player - plays every video & audio format
You'll bitch about how crappy windows is compared to OS X until you start getting used to the GUI. The reality is that it's neither better nor worse. It's just different.
1. I use all Apple routers (Airport Extreme, Airport Time Capsule). Set up a guest network, and connect the Windows machine to said network ONLY.
2. After creating the Windows machine, create a clone of the software and config (you'll wipe and restore several times).
3. Use Symantec or some other anti-virus/protection software on the machine.
4. Stuff from Steam is the simplest way to stay....(safer??)
5. Use each wipe and restore as a learning experience for your kid. They'll eventually get better/smarter.
There you go...5 steps to (somewhat) better safety :-)
Rob
Buy a Mac laptop, install Bootcamp and a copy of Windows 10. If they discover they hate Windows it's easy to go back.
Wipe Shitdows 10 for privacy reasons, feature bloat, and UX inconsistency. Install Linux Mint Debian Edition and Steam. (Take it from a former Windows 10 "insider" that complained for over two years.) Done.
If you have a Mac and like it, you will never be able to live with Windows. You say it's for gaming; be very very careful.
W10 Home is adequate. Pro mainly gives you a few things that are useful for business, like Group Policy and Domain Joining. If you don't need those, you can live with Home. The main thing Home-wise that Pro gives you is the ability to control updates somewhat - delay feature updates for a few weeks to a few months, and a little more control over when things get rebooted.
Any version of Windows that you can get as a consumer has automatic updates that you can't turn off (control, yes, but only on the margins), and very intrusive "telemetry" on the order of what Google does on the web or on an Android phone unless you spend some quality time with the Settings and probably add 3rd--party stuff like W10Privacy and Spybot Anti-Beacon to get and keep things under control.
Finally, if you're used to Mac and the way everything seems to just work, be prepared for a rude awakening in Windows. W10 really is a permanent beta, and stuff that works fine at one point will stop working fine at another. And the visuals of the flat user interface will probably be at least annoying. That said, W10 works (most of the time) - it's just fiddly and maintenance-intensive.
If you have a recent Mac, you should be able to dual-boot it with Windows. Might save getting a whole separate bit of hardware. OTOH, maybe you don't want to pollute a perfectly good working Mac with Windows in a VM or dual-booted. Your choice.
That it isn't made by Apple
That you don't have to go to a 'genius bar' to get it fixed
That the USB audio drivers work correctly with high end audio production software
That there are real function keys instead of a touch bar
That you can (on quite a few laptops) use your fingers on the screen to interface with it
That it is reasonably priced
That there are games available to play on it
That Jonny Ive had no hand in ruining it.
Usually, the solution is: use a cracked copy (even if you have a DRM-encumbered one).
Not running adequately in Wine is in most cases self-inflicted.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
He will use it for school and life? Macbook.
He will use it for school and no life? Windows laptop, because he will be fixing a lot of problems that comes with it.
What does a fairly savvy fellow, who is a complete Windows neophyte, need to know?
Key item(s) to know:
-How to have privacy in Windows 10. You don't. You have no privacy and no control of the computer the moment you connect to the internet.
-How to copy files to a usb (aka the basic of backups. because he will want it after getting virus)
Other items(s) to know:
-How to search on the internet (type in google or any other search engine and hit enter)
-How the internet works (the internet is filled with random jerks and trolls, the web is not yours so you don't have piracy, virus is something too good to be true, etc)
-How to create a live linux usb (because that will be all he has left after getting virus)
That's all.
If he is willing to learn how windows work, he is given the opportunity to search and learn. For laptop, just find one with 2+GHz cpu and let him see for himself. If he is willing to learn, he will learn about graphic cards, ssd, ram, browsers, overclock, reformat, shutup10, cookies, software installation, task manager, cold restart, games minimum requirement, etc. If not, you've already done your job.
If you want you could also give him a Macbook and tell him to learn to install windows on it.
So minimum hardware requirement:
- laptop with 2+GHz cpu (disregard ram, cpu cores and brand. If you're a nice person, then get one with a discrete graphic card for gaming)
- 3 x usb sticks (one for data backup, one for linux usb, one for everything else like windows re-installation)
DO NOT USE WINDOWS 10. IT IS SPYWARE. Windows 7 is not so intrusive and it is secure.
Buy a laptop that's a signature edition. They are listed on Microsoft's store. Note, make sure it says signature edition. This will prevent the manufacturer from installing junkware/spyware on the computer. At least in theory as it would violate their license with Microsoft.
Buy the pro version of Windows 10 or upgrade to it immediately.
Disable Cortana through group policy editor. This should get rid of junk-ware being suggested on the app store every-time he types something in the start menu. Disable all "privacy" features in settings.
Disable all suggestions in settings,
Change the default search settings to something more age appropriate. Bing is terrible for kids.
Most importantly. if possible get a laptop WITHOUT a built in webcam and/or microphone. If it has them built in disable it in device manager. Try uninstalling the drivers if possible.
Get a cheapo clip on webcam with microphone, and a separate microphone when the webcam isn't necessary.
You are totally wrong, unless you have no money to spend. Modern gaming laptops starting at about $1200 will do just fine handling most of the games. And if you step up to $2000 or more, they would happily compete with desktops. They have the same graphic chips and just as much memory. For most gamers they are good enough, unless you are using multiple gaming cards and such.
Or wait a few years for the hardware to improve, then run it in virtualization of the Windows system. I provide just that support for Mac users as a policy, to allow them access to Windows specific software.
Last virus I got on windows was about 15 years ago.
I run with a lower priv user and do not do stupid shit. Use a VM for the unsafe things or experimental. You know the exact same things that you do on a mac and linux. My wife also runs in a lower priv user account also and has several hundred games she plays. Only one or two need admin rights. Run with no-script and some sort of ad blocking for surfing (where 99% of the viri come from). Have them run it by you when they want to install something. With an eye on them becoming independent and able to make the judgment call themselves. Make sure all updates are turned on (MS is fixing your computer let them do it or suffer the pain). Security is only as good as the user of the computer. It takes personal discipline with an assist from the computer.
Give the kid what they want. If you want them to not play games with their friends and be the odd one out then give them a mac. Which is what they really want it for. Then let them explain to their friends how you are a douchebag and have no clue. Or let the kid have what they want and enjoy being a kid with their friends.
To the original poster get virtualbox or parallels and put windows on it and give it a spin. Read up on locking it down a bit then show your kid how to do the same. Read up on how to do a restore. Which windows is pretty good at. By default windows ships in a fairly unsecure state. It needs a bit of work to make it usable and 'locked down'. Once you get it in that state it is just as good as the other OS's. It launches the programs you want to use. All of the open source is just as open and available. Learn how to get around the control panel and the registry. Currently in windows 10 the settings are split between the old windows vista/7 way and the newer win8/10 way. So it is a bit painful there and a sore spot.
You are going to get a lot of advice to not do what your kid wants. Ignore them. Give your kid what they want. Eventually if they are actually interested in computers (which may or may not ever happen) look into getting them a mac or show them linux or a MSDN license if that is what they are into. For example my niece wants an apple. Me being a windows guy is helping her mom get her a nice mac. If you get them what they do not want they probably will never develop any interest in it and just resent you.
Basically, either the laptop will not really be able to play modern games well or it will be so expensive I would never let a 14-year-old leave the house with it.
For one thing, DRM-free multiplayer games can still require Wine-incompatible anti-cheat software. For another, two players cannot play a multiplayer game together if they are using different games, and if only one member of a circle of local friends plays DRM-free games exclusively, he is unlikely to find other players of the same multiplayer game in the same circle in order to set up a LAN match.
What is this, AOL? This such ridiculous FUD I can't believe it.... the shame!
- Good computing practices are good computing practices, regardless of which platform you use
- Teaching your kids safe computing practices, again, irrespective of platform
- I don't consider MACs significantly more or less secure than PCs running Windows, but I doubt we will ever know...
- How fast were MACs hacked in the last hacking contest?
- If MACs had a 90+% market share, they would be under attack too...
Now, I am in the Windows camp, because that and VMware is what pays my bills, but I am just as likely to recommend MACs, I have been using computers years before either came along. It all depends on use case.
So, for "safe computing" advice, and again, regardless of platform:
- Practice least privilege, so yeah don't run as admin regularly, only when you need to, and only when you initiate it
- Use "defense in depth", don't rely on any one method
- Run a good anti-malware / anti-virus program, possibly more than one, (Malwarebytes, etc.)
- Run an ad-blocker, which has other benefits as well
- Run a good router / gateway / UTM (like Sophos), rather than the one from your ISP or Best Buy so you can filter the Internet for your kids and so forth
- Use a password manager + physical two-factor authentication
- Learn how to properly secure your wireless networks
- Back up your data, with one copy preferably off-site
- Run the latest supported OS you can, keep up to date on patches
- You might want to use a local firewall, especially if it is a laptop
- I am sure others can chime in with additional suggestions....
And separately from this, for this use-case:
- Get a laptop if you must, but for gaming Windows Desktops are still at the top of the food chain
- But, which games are we talking about specifically? MACs can run more than they used to... (again, use case)
- If you have a Windows desktop/laptop, but you like MacOS, run a nice hackintosh, only use Windows for the games if you like
- How about just dual-booting your MAC into Windows? Not perfect, but might do the job just for games
- Lastly, you will save a fair bit of money, I don't think anyone really disputes that MACs are more expensive, unless it is a very high end Windows box
- Plenty of Windows laptops with sexy hardware similar to or rivaling MACs
-RoS
So he's a "fairly savvy fellow", huh? Savvy by what definition? Street savvy? You aren't tech savvy if you can't even set up / use a Windows machine. You do realize that 90% of the computers in the world run it, right?
Just because you've decided to wall yourself into the delusional world of Fisher-Price-computing that Apple foists upon unsuspecting noobs doesn't mean you know *anything* about computers.
Seriously, it will be torture.
look for one with a trackpad you are comfortable with. the vast majority of windows laptops i have used dont even come close to the usability that apples trackpads have.
You should be aware that a laptop you pick up at the hardware store comes preloaded with of bunch of crap software that you wants to get rid of as it makes the device slow/unstable. Download Microsoft Media Creation Tool and put windows on a USB stick, boot from it and install a clean version of windows. It is not a big task. You will find the machine to run way way more smoothly. Alternatively, buy your device from a Microsoft Store that comes with a signature edition of windows without any crapware or crappy third-party drivers. Up to you, but get rid of the install that comes with the device is the best advice I can give you.
If you decide to keep install that comes with the device, then at least update the touchpad driver so the touchpad works the same as you know from a mac.
https://www.howtogeek.com/325347/how-to-enable-microsofts-precision-touchpad-drivers-on-your-laptop/
I know you're asking about laptops, so I will get to that, but I genuinely recommend building a desktop from scratch together as an after school project.
Laptops do get very warm while gaming, and you'll be wanting to look for a fairly well cooled machine. I've used Acer's with GeForce graphics cards, and they could hold up pretty well for an hour or two of gaming before getting too hot for me to trust it anymore.
Now, build a PC with your child, and they'll learn a lot about all the pieces involved in modern day computing, and they'll be able to maintain the computer for years if it has problems. Windows 10 Home is a very decent OS, and you shouldn't have to worry too much as long as you teach your kid about the dangers of malware, viruses, and just common web browsing safety. Good luck!
The menus don't float at the top of the screen, they're attached to the window. Closing all the windows will quit the app.
The filenames are case insensitive. This can cause some problems if you're moving them back and forth between the OSX and Windows machines.
Microsoft will try to convince you to get a hotmail account to use your machine. This isn't necessary, but I don't recall how to avoid it. Play around on that screen to keep your accounts local (unless you want them tied together).
Your ad here. Ask me how!
They should know better.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
14 is a kid. He needs a disposable high school laptop, NOT a gaming laptop.
Gaming laptops are expensive, large, heavy, have shit battery life and attract thieves when in the hands of 14 year olds.
An obsolete toughbook might be just the ticket, not disposable, useful as a weapon in case of zombie apocolypse.
Kid likely already has newest console and gameable phone. Let the kid learn to build his own gaming desktop. Cast off desktop parts will be faster than almost any laptop. Find a PC person. You want a Core 2 Duo (or better) motherboard, a Nvidia graphics card, a fist full of RAM and a good power supply (last item to save kid from himself). Let the kid take it from there. (He'll find a better graphics card himself, horse trading etc.)
Software? Nothing will really help. The kid will roast the OS monthly. Obviously avoid the software that comes on it (McAfee/Norton).
Whatever brand you get, run PC decrapifier or similar. All the vendors crapify their machines for profit. None of the demo crapware is worth what you pay for it, much less what it will want in 30 days.
Sit down with him and let the machine get updates, pick your antivirus, install, then image it. Discuss where you can find mostly malware free software, start his mental whitelist.
Consider getting him a portable drive and teaching him to restore windows and backup his data himself.
Never look there. You're happier not knowing. Remember being 14.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming
If you want your kid to use the laptop for school and life, but he wants a PC primarily for gaming, the clear solution would be to get him a Mac. If there's one thing I regret about my teenage years, it's the hours I wasted away playing Starcraft. Get your kid a guitar, enroll him in sports, buy him books, get him a chemistry set. There are all sorts of intellectually stimulating activities that aren't a total waste of the human brain.
I know this opinion may not be popular here, but I firmly believe that there are two distinct types of behaviors that both receive the "nerd" label. One is a pursuit of intellectual interests while the other is an obsession with games and fantasies. While there are many individuals who represent an overlap of these two stereotypes to varying degrees, the former traits are commendable while the latter are not. The nerds portrayed in The Big Bang Theory, who fully embody both of these stereotypes, aren't realistic.
Video games, like casino games, are designed to be addictive. Teenagers are especially susceptible to this addiction. The most hilarious thing about the video game critics who try to demonstrate that video games lead to violence is that it doesn't matter. No studies are necessary to demonstrate that they're a waste of time—especially for children, who have such an aptitude for learning.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Get him a tower and a job or an actual gaming console. He's 14. Tough cookies.
That thing on the right hand side of the mouse, that's called "right click". If you ever value your Mac experience again turn away now...but if by chance your are enticed by the dark side you will wonder how you ever thought 1 mouse button was enough.
I so agree. Hell, that's what I do for myself. Virtualization on my macbook pro works like greased lightning.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Try being nice, no one calls you a retard for posting anonymously.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
You missed the point.
No, you missed the point. Trying to make Windows games run on Linux is a pointless effort, even if you manage to get things working through something like wine you'll end up failing due to anti-cheat systems anyway. There are much more productive ways to learn Linux than the pointless, losing proposition you present.
Instead of letting your kid just sink hours into video games, make them work for it and learn something in the process.
How much time are you going to force them spend on the futile effort to make those games work on Linux?
Installing Linux when I was 12 helped set me up with skills that I now use frequently in my career.
Great, nothing precludes you from doing that but it's a completely different thing to what the OP asked. There's plenty of opportunity to do that and what the OP asked.
They should know not to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Since there's a lot of useless fanboy nonsense going on, here's a reasonable answer.
"What do you need to know?" It's a computer, and good practice is good practice, and this is good advice regardless of OS.
Step 1: create a non-administrative account. Something like 90% of windows security issues are caused by people willy-nilly using administrative-level accounts and turning off warnings. Don't do this. Created a limited account, and enter admin account EVERY SINGLE TIME that you REALLY need to make a change. If you don't know what the change is, then don't enter your admin password. For a 14 y/o, it's not unreasonable to not give them the admin password until they get used to the system.
Step 2: Windows defender is just fine, and it actually works pretty dang well, BUT. If your kid is going to download a ton of random sketchy BS software (kids tend to do so) then you may want to go a bit more heavy duty with something like Mcafee. (and people will argue this forever) TBH, you probably should be running an antivirus on your macs too... Avast is free, and last I checked it was "fine."
Step 3: Steam is your buddy. Steam is the big dog app-store for PC (mostly games) and using it instead of downloading a bunch of sketchy stuff from sketchy places will help keep the pc mostly safe. Also recommend Office 365 or whatever the school uses instead of the bootleg BS that people all seem to find. Bad mojo there.
Step 4: Keep a "clean" browser and a "dirty" browser. Having your computer "hacked" is much less common than having a browser compromised in some way. Keep the browser you like better for normal day-to-day shit, then have a second browser that you can lock down and ONLY use it for important stuff that needs to stay secure. (not sure what qualifies for a 14 y/o) Alternatively you can create another limited account, but that's a pain. By "lock down" I mean things like NOSCRIPT that really break a lot of things, but keep you safer.
Step 5: Gaming on a laptop is generally awful, but it can be made better with a few little things. If you are cost constrained, get the best, biggest screen. It's the best upgrade you can do for gaming assuming you have a moderately powerful GPU. More RAM (>8gb) or a marginally faster CPU doesn't really accomplish much. An SSD is a MUST, so opt for speed over capacity, you can fit a LOT of games in 240gb. Big magnetic drives eat batteries, are slow as hell, and weigh a more. "Serious" gamers use keyboard and mouse, but they also don't use laptops, so get a gamepad. Most games work with the Xbox 360 controller, but you need a dongle for wireless. The PS4 remotes do work, but may take some finagling. (http://www.gamesradar.com/how-use-ps4-controller-on-pc/)
Step 6: Most utilities are scams. "Cleaners" and "boot optimizers" and "defragmenters" are 99% snake oil. There are some neat things too, but less (software) is more. Windows does most of the normal things you would likely want to do, and "free" tools usually aren't worth the cost. Lots of laptops come with some level of pre-installed software, but you can get rid of basically all of it.
Dude, this is slashdot. Are you really surprised that the people here are trying to get more people to not use Windows and instead get them to spend their time pissing around trying to make shit work on Linux? It's a different mentality: it isn't about getting something done, it's about resenting the fact that you can't get that thing done on Linux.
Compared to Windows, Linux is fucking incredible for a *LOT* of things and the Linux community are more than happy to trot out that fact, but then they get all upset when you point out that for a *LOT* of things it is also garbage compared to Windows. Desktop hardware and software compatibility is far far better on Windows than on Linux, but of course amount of available malware is far far higher on Windows than on Linux.
Ever notice how they always get viruses
Spare me this tired meme from 20 years ago.
We've got five Windows 10 machines in our family, used by me, my wife and my two kids. I just let Windows Defender do its thing and I haven't seen a virus in years.
boy, i left windows for greener mac pastures in 2009, and never looked back on the SW side (on the HW side is another matter). Having said that, I keep a Windows BootCamp partition for work, but my "windows skillz" are fuzzy, so I do not know if I'll be much help
Here are some basic sugestions in no particular order:
Get Windows 10. As long as he is going to windows, my as well go to the newest one. Do not heed the siren chants of "Downgrade". You know what happens to those sailors who heed the sirens chant...
Use Windows Defender as antivirus, is light on resources, good enough, and updates through the same mechanisms as the rest of the OS. Schedule scans agresively.
Do not let the guy be admin.
Set up some backup solution. Having said that, windows backup solutions do not hold a candle to timemachine, so expect to work your ass out on this one.
Make a full image of the HDD every 4 moths or so.
Configure defrag if you have an HDD. Completely disable defrag if you have an SSD. (it should be done by the OEM, but, check nonetheless)
Windows has a niffty feature (that MacOS does not have) which allows you to mark a connection as "Metered", meaning that is charged per GB, or subjected to Data caps. use accordingly.
Get Windows Pro. Enable Updates. DO NOT DISABLE updates, but Deffer updates.
Do not unistall ie11 and Edge, but HIDE them.
Install CCleaner (is analogous to Onyx or Yasu on OSX), use it bi-monthly. Aaaaaand install Recuva (allows you to recover files even after they are purged from the recycle bin/trash) on day one. You will thank me (eventually).
Restrict telemetry. There are tons of guides on the net on how to do it.
Just like on a mac, install a better compression/decompression uttility than what comes standart from the OS. WinRAR, 7Zip and Winzip are popular choices.
Install VLC (but then again, you do that on OSX too).
Install irfanview as a complement to the preview utilities.
Put at the very least uBlock Origin, EFF privacy Badger and HTTPS everywhere in the browser (browser being chrome or Firefox ESR).
Configure the browser as you would do on a mac from a privacy standpoint.
Windows has very rich parental controls (richer than mac's). Use them as you see fit (I am not a parent, so, aside from knowing they exist, and thart are better than mac's, can't say much more).
Install window on a bootcamp partition of YOUR mac, and make it so that this partition can ALSO be used from your Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox. Many of the parental controls benefit from a second machine for control and supervision.
Do not trust the parental controls on Windows alone. A determined 14yo looking for porn will defeat them on ANY OS. Do something in the router as well (and he will defeat that too, but at least make it hard, so that he learns something along the way, trust me, I was a 14 YO once, I got my porn [also, talk to him about sex and porn, before "the internet" does the talk]).
Install some office suite. Libreoffice or Office 365, HIS choice (not yours, HIS).
Unistall all the trialware/bloatware, including antivirus trials, office365 trials (unless the guy wants office 365 and you want to save a few bucks), and all other shit. (Macs also have bloatware, we just do not think of it as such, if you do not believe me, check how much space garageband takes on your SSD. Yes, for musicians, garageband may be great, but for nonmusicians, just check how much space it takes).
Win10 has built in PDF readers and PDF generators, but those are crappy. Depending on his usage, that will suffice, or you will have to install something different.
Since the laptop is for gaming, I assume you get a dGPU, update drivers and enable whatever autoupdater is there for graphic drivers.
As soon as you get the laptop out of the box, update all manufacturer utilities.
Enter the Bios (is like a primitive conbination of UEFI/NVRAM/PRAM) and do a quick sanity check.
Install DosBox (good games a
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
You'd be surprised how many games now run on Linux. So give him a Linux computer and pray that he doesn't become an engineer.
Give the kid admin rights. Don't coddle your kid. If he bricks the OS he better learn to fix it or format and reinstall or recovery. There is so much to learn. And part of that is fucking your own shit up, repeatedly.
There's very little chance of hardware damage, so let the kid go nuts.
Yes, the built in protections are fine. I mean I disable them, but I am my own security suite.
You don't need anything else. Anti virus software is typically useless. Firewalls are helpful. Most anti malware software is complete and utter garbage. Snake oil. Learn how to surf the internet safely! That's the golden ticket. And it's basically the same guidelines no matter what your OS is. Don't click on dumb shit.
"..if only one member of a circle of local friends plays DRM-free games exclusively.."
Nothing stops the other members from acquiring a DRM free game, even if they also use DRM games.
Other than that they've already blown their game money on buying the popular games, rather than the unpopular games that the "weird kid in that anti-DRM cult" is buying.
He can buy his own windows box with the money he makes working at his after-school job.
I don't have kids, but that seems inefficient, given that an adult earns several times more and has 4x more time available for working. That's like a marriage between a millionaire and an average joe where the millionaire demands the other guy contribute 50/50 to vacations.
Like a parent (usually) brings a kid along for vacations, some reasonable amount of entertainment is something a parent should also pay for. Perhaps offering a cheap laptop, or just giving the money to be put toward a better laptop? Or offering to match the kid's monetary contribution, up to the price of a computer that doesn't totally suck, which incidentally is the same price for Linux or Windows.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
it's spelled gaming, not gameing
Go with a Linux laptop from Dell or a vendor like System76. Ubuntu is super easy and most software is free.
Our 14-year-old
the money he makes working at his after-school job.
In other words, you're making him sit on his hands until age 16 when he becomes legally eligible for an "after-school job." Though many jurisdictions allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work as an employee in occupations free of hazard, at least one duty of most entry-level unskilled jobs is 16+ by law or by insurance policy. In fast food, for example, every position other than cashier is 16+ by law because of hazards involved in food preparation, and cashier is 16+ because the business insurer doesn't think children under 16 can accurately handle money. That leaves newspaper carrier, but with the contraction in print news following a decline in readership and the relatively jobless recovery, grown-ups tend to crowd children out of those few newspaper carrier positions that remain.
In addition, the school's principal needs to issue a work permit for any employee under 18, and as I understand the law of my state, he can refuse to for any reason.
I learned long ago that laptop power supplies are the weakest link. Get a spare power supply immediately and/or a laptop with USB-C charging. Having a lost or damaged power supply means the laptop becomes an expensive brick in minutes or hours. Don't let that happen. I've had that happen and it sucks. The bonus is being able to keep one charger at a desk at home and another in the bag the laptop is carried in. There's no forgetting the charger at home because it never leaves the bag at home. If one gets home and finds the charger was left at school/work/wherever then the laptop still works and the other supply can usually be found the next day.
I don't have a laptop with USB-C charging yet but from what I've read it's almost hard to find a USB-C charger that doesn't "just work". The usual caveats apply, buy a quality charger and with sufficient output for the load. If the the laptop comes with a USB-C 45W charger then getting any USB-C charger that is specified for 45 or more wattage should work. If you don't get a spare right away then at least you know one can be found at most any big box store or ordered online from most anywhere. Even a smaller charger than what comes with it should still allow it to limp along or charge up overnight. Some people have successfully used cell phone chargers to charge up their laptops... S L O W L Y.
I'm also a fan of ThunderBolt. If this is a laptop that will be used for a while then go with ThunderBolt as it grants a much faster interface for drives and such than USB. The newer ThunderBolt 3 uses the same USB-C connector as new phones and USB 3 and gives backward compatibility with USB. There's ThunderBolt adapters and docks for most anything. The laptop will most certainly also have USB ports (type A and/or C) and some video output so it's not like you'll be tied to ThunderBolt, it just gives options.
If this is a gaming laptop then ThunderBolt is the only way I know of to add an external GPU.
That said, I also use MacOS and Windows. I haven't had much difficulty in moving between the two. My laptops have been Apples with some virtual machine software and a Windows virtual machine. I can switch between the two operating systems with just a key combination. If the extra software cost and/or effort doesn't bother you then I suggest that as an option.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
the primary reason he wants Windows instead of a MacBook is gaming.
You install Windows in the VM on a Linux host, not the other way around.
How efficiently do games that tax the GPU work in a virtual machine nowadays?
Setup:
Admin access is necessary for a lot of the more advanced functions on Steam; keep it enabled first time around, if they keep screwing up, wipe and take it away.
Windows 10 is a much better out-of-box setup than windows once was; 75% of the hurdles that will catch you are from shitty manufacturers pre-installing malware, which can effectively be bypassed by wiping and installing with a vanilla copy of Windows 10 from a USB drive (MS has very simple utilities for this, the license is hard-coded in the BIOS so it's automatic). The other 25% are the damage from people who mindlessly click without any awareness of what they're doing, regardless of age.
Buying from reputable manufacturers (HP, Lenovo and Dell's business models, or Microsoft directly) is the safest bet.
Wiping a Windows PC is a rather painless affair nowadays, if shit goes wrong, it doesn't take much as long as you approach things presuming you will wipe the PC in 6-12 months (dropbox/google drive for schoolwork etc.). Windows has changed a lot, it's really a mature and solid OS now (admittedly with an immature layer on top with the app store, but that's easily avoided).
You can get the best of both worlds if you use Parallels to run Windows on your Mac.
get a console
Fan-created game mods do not install on PS4 versions of games. Indie games* also tend to be PC first or PC only far more often than PS4 first or PS4 only.
* As defined by ceoyoyo: video games from studios with no access to venture capital.
What is "a Windows laptop" anyway.
It's not like the OS and the hardware form a holy bond of matrimony.
A Windows laptop is one whose hardware has working Windows drivers. A Linux laptop is one whose hardware has working Linux and X.Org drivers. Many Windows 8 and 10 PCs, especially tablets with a detachable keyboard, have had serious incompatibilities with X11/Linux. And in most parts of the United States, you're unlikely to see a penguin logo on a laptop in a showroom. (Instead, you see the logo of Chrome OS on laptops designed to run one application and one application only: Google Chrome.)
And most of all do not click on ANY link you get in email.
I agree with respect to links in emails that the user isn't expecting to receive. But your shouting of "ANY" connotes an absolute rule. When you sign up on a website, how do you go about confirming the ability of the address associated with your new account to receive emails (especially password reset tickets) at a particular address without clicking the confirmation link in an email?
Gaming on a laptop is like taking a go-cart on a street race
On that note, what's a good Mario Kart clone for a laptop? Is there something better than SuperTuxKart that's widely played?
Virtualization causes a severe slow-down, while Wine is exactly as native as WinXP/7/8/10 (ie, they implement WinAPI atop POSIX and NT respectively).
Optimizedness may differ, but there's no reason one would be markedly faster than the other, at least in principle. This can't be said of full virtualization.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It isn't all that different. It really depends on the child but you can just give it to your child and see how he will break it.
Actually, Windows 10 isn't that bad unless you have some legacy Windows thing you still need to use. Microsoft Edge is good enough for most uses. You can always install Chrome, too, but I didn't even bother installing Chrome since Edge just works on the websites I visit. The default Antivirus and Firewall apps are decent enough. For school, he/she will get enough help from the school anyway, so he/she will figure out.
Just be prepared to reimage occasionally especially if your child has an habit of installing things in random - probably he/she will notice first as the games will get sluggish (usually laptops comes with some recovery image built-in so it won't be hard). One way is to keep all personal documents (e.g., homework) on an external drive so that the whole thing can be nuked quickly. However, with good hygiene habits (e.g., don't install suspicious-looking or pirated software, don't open every suspicious email, especially attachments) you won't even need to reimage at all. I have two Windows 10 laptops but didn't need to reimage it since I first bought it.
I guess the hard part of parenting has nothing to do with the OS. How will you prevent him/her showing hostile behavior on the net e.g., trolling, harassing? How will you deal with it if he/she ends up being a victim of such behavior? How will you prevent him/her from visiting websites that he/she is not supposed to visit? These things... I think you should make it clear what kind of behavior is unacceptable, since no software will able to solve the 'user' problem anyway.
Acrobat Reader? ... Really?? ... Itâ(TM)s the worst of them all.
And LibreOffice+Thunderbird and Vivaldi would be a better recommendation than MS Office and Chrome.
With uBlock and all the good lists pre-installed.
All the other crapware is unnecesaary.
Perhaps except for a good all-encompassing malware solution in case of a hopeless user.
A better file manager (Total Commander?), an image editing tool (Paint.NET?), a sound editing tool (like Audacity), a good plain text editor (like Kate) and a good calculator tool (like Qalculate!) would be fine additions though.
Plus Jitsi for secure XMPP/SIP needs, for lack of a better alternative.
I'm Windows-free for too long to recommend specific ones though. And I assume a user who's not afraid of being overwhelmed by power and freedom, so not exactly the Apple target group.
alternativeto.net is a great websitr to find them though.
Gaming? 14 year old? Get a console - any console - and get them used to playing on the console and working on the laptop. Blur that line and near-enough-to-zero work will get done on the (desktop | laptop | tablet | phone) and you'll be shoveling against the tide to get it back.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
That you've made a terrible mistake.
Virtualization causes a severe slow-down
With kvm+gpu passthrough it's now native performance. It's still not completely trivial to set up and needs extra hardware(if you want to run X/Wayland in addition to Windows), but it's doable. Not something I'd recommend, but it's still more pleasant than actually dual booting. Linux for productivity, Windows for games.
-- Linux user #369862
Just buy one of the macbooks and install Windows there, natively, single partition (i.e., leave no MacOS on the machine), with Bootcamp drivers. Fresh install will be totally free of bloatware.
I'm happily typing this on such machine. Bootcamp drivers are not polished to perfection but they generally work. There is no better designed notebook for Windows, otherwise I would have purchased it already. (Price does not matter.)
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
I haven't seen a virus in years.
Then you couldn't possibly have one!
Just install Windows 10 and try it. I moved from mac just under a year ago and my last experience with Windows was Win95 on a machine which mainly ran Linux. Win10 is far more mac-like than I was expecting. While interfaces are not as well thought out and designed as mac everything tends to work very well and it's easy to google what you need if you can't find it.
I can also recommend the Windows Linux subsystem which gives you a full Ubuntu installation running under the Windows kernel which gives a great approximation to the mac terminal.
Windows and Mac are the same, the only difference is you will pay 1/2 for a Windows laptop.
There exist Windows laptops that are 1/2 the price of Apple laptops. Apple target a pretty narrow band, however within that band, Windows laptops are a comparable price.
I'm not really fond of macs (have one for work, wouldn't buy one myself) but if you compare spec numbers, plus build quality, weight, size, screen quality and battery life, Macs are pretty comparable to PCs. It varies up and down a bit but it's not that big.
If you only compare CPU speed, RAM and storage, then you're not comparing specs, you're comparing a subset of specs. If those are the only specs that matter to you then that's fine and a PC is the better choice. Or, if you want something of the sort that Apple simply don't offer, then a PC is the better choice. If you're in the market for a mid to high end laptop with a lowish weight for the specs, then Apple are in the running price wise.
Personally if I were currently in the market for a laptop of that sort I'd go for a Zenbook or a Lenovo Carbon X1.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And you are not being payed by google, ms or Apple to write that?
linux mint + steam
I agree. Mod +1
I wish that more computers came with linux. Since steam it would make sense to shop both office and gamer laptops and desktops with linux
You're going to get Trojans and / or viruses. You're going to have to pay for all sorts of extra stuff. It's not going to be fun for anyone.
If it's an option, get a Macbook and a Playstation 4 and forget about Windows for gaming.
"fairly savvy fellow" and "mac user" in the same breath, LOL
As an adult you may have 4 times the amount of available hours to work but the teens wages are 100% his own. After taxes and bills you may have 5% left. He'll still have most of it, (what he didn't spend on bootlegged liquor) , to spend on a laptop, and have learned some money management and responsibilities in the meantime. At min. Wage in Canada a teen could make enough to buy a high end desktop after 100hours of work. It would take me 3 months to scrape enough together without altering my lifestyle to save up for his laptop. Fuck that.
You are going to *hate* it.
N/T
Most PC owners have these things called "screwdrivers".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I take it youâ(TM)re not a parent then.
Just buy her a console for gamming. It will work much better, and will last far longer. For the rest, she can use an old Mac or a Chromebook. You will be much happy this way.
Thatâ(TM)s right, such a child will grow up smart and well adjusted. Who needs a childhood anyway? Send them down the mines already!
We have Windows machines in the house, also mostly for gaming. Really, it's not that dramatic. My list for you:
- Don't visit dodgy sites offering free games. As long as you install games and DLC from reputable sources, viruses and adware really aren't a problem. Windows Defender is all the defense you need.
- To be safe, figure out how to restore the machine to its factory defaults. My kids both have Alienware machines, and they offer an option to nuke-and-restore. If your child goes off and installs all sorts of awful stuff, and does manage to fill the machine with adware - having everything erased is (a) safe and (b) a really good lesson.
- If you value your (theoretical) privacy, follow any of the zillion online guides for turning off the Windows 10 telemetry.
Really, that's it. You will find some of the UI differences really annoying (I go the other way - using a Mac is really annoying), but that's small stuff...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The thing will, of course, need to tap into the multi-billion dollar world of Anti-virus software. Which would not exist without Microsoft's products.
Since he wants to use this as a toy, mainly, provide him with a new toy and be certain it comes with AV installed.
Then tell him he must pay all future AV fees from his allowance/lawn-mowing money.
Likewise for every rebuild every time it gets torn up.
Tell him he's responsible for it now, he needs to figure out how to keep himself in action.
Cost of continued functionality for such systems is the lesson he can learn, and he'll decide whether he is willing to bear it.
If one observes what a newly built Microsoft OS does via packet capture... the amount of traffic generated to Microsoft and various content delivery networks is amazing. Who knows what all is getting pulled down.
So first step probably ought be to image the machine immediately upon receipt, prior to attaching it to a network.
It's been a while since I ran a Windows natively (I now do Linux with Windows in a Virtual Machine), but way back then, I used to use a "clone" tool to make a perfect copy of the hard drive.
Get a big external drive and use a tool like Clonezilla, or Partition Magic (if that's still around) and clone the hard drive once to that external drive before you ever use it. (This lets you reset the machine to "new").
Then get the machine set up "just so", installing all the software, security stuff, settings you like, and then make a clone of that. Then when the machine gets all crufted up, restore from your cloned image, do updates, install new security software, etc., and clone that again. Rinse and repeat.
Installing Windows from scratch and getting all your stuff set up the way you want to takes hours and hours. Just do it once, clone that, and then you have a nice starting point for the next time.
I'm a hardcore GNU/Linux user for over two decades now. Only recently have I had to deal with Windows again (coding a cross platform desktop client), and although the interface is clunky and the continued lack of a usable package manager is a pain you also don't have to deal with all the stupid hand holding and bizarre restrictions OS X forces on you. As far as antivirus and security, just go with something free if you're worried and keep a backup schedule like you should with any OS. That's really all there is to it.
I feel your pain mate...
Why would i buy a copy of, say, assisns creed just to follow the same old story path that everyone else who had the games has followed. I'll stick to Rimworld where you never know when your colonists are going to be eaten alive by a rabid pack of squirrels or your base will be set on fire by some angry raiders, blinding your herd of Muffalo.
Mainstream games, in general, are crap.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
I have a Macbook Air i do everything on. And anything that won't run on MacOS i run through a Windows machine i built late last year. Teamviewer and Steam Streaming are a godsend
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
I bought my first iPhone at 16 when i asked my parents for a smartphone and got a $50 Nokia instead. If they really want it, make the bastards work for it!
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Any garbage they where?
If you want your kid to hate brussel sprouts or the mac, force them to eat them and use one. The iPhone is already a boomer/gen-x thing. Let's kill off Apple entirely.
The URL to download Ubuntu
Or slashdor culd atualy fix their code, It's 2017, is unicode support realy that hard to implement (asking as a non developer)
You should know the same things you knew when you decided to buy a mac.
Or did you just randomly pick one up without thinking?
In that case, you can just do the same with a windows laptop without any worries.
Good laptops for school are useless for gaming. A MacBook can run Windows, so anything that a "school laptop" with Windows can do, a MacBook can do too. A school laptop is light, almost silent and has long battery life, which means it won't have a dedicated GPU and can't be a gaming laptop. It also helps if the device he uses for school doesn't have all the games a mouse click away.
1: Remote access software. My primary recommendation is TeamViewer. It's basically idiot proof remote access.
2: 3rd Party AV. Defender is good, but it's fully integrated into the OS. That can be both helpful AND a nasty liability. I'd trust a 3rd Party AV more. Suggestions. BitDefender, WebRoot, Avast
3: Once everything is loaded up, generate a system image on an external HD or backup drive. If you want to use the in-built backup, fine. If you want to use something like Acronis True Image or Macrium reflect. If you're more technically minded, you could do Clonezilla.
4: 2 External Hard Drives. One for regular backups, one for the initial "Oh Shit" backup.
5: Make sure when you set up the initial user on the machine, it's as a LOCAL user, not one of the Microsoft-tied accounts.
6: Your son's account should be a REGULAR USER and he shouldn't know the admin account logon.
7: Firefox browser, + Ghostery + Adblock and/or a decent hosts file (Google "Windows Host file for ad blocking")
8: A password manager (to which you have the root/master/admin password to the database). This way, if you DO have to reload everything, you aren't having to recover accounts or start new ones because you can't remember the passwords. Keep a copy of the database on your "Oh Shit" backup. Grab a copy every couple months.
9: LONGEST POSSIBLE WARRANTY YOU CAN BUY.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I had 7 Mac then I switched to Windows. Simply Apple ecosystem is too close and price/performance ratio is simply terrible. Please don't listen to all these guys who are telling you nonsenses, Windows 10 now is a stable platform and there are many choices.
My hints:
1- Good gaming laptop not bulky are Asus ROG GL502VM and MSI GS63VR. They are quite expensive (froma PC POV) but they are both fantastic machines
2- I really don't like to trust only on Windows Defenders & Firewalls. They are good but I don't think that a 14 years old boy is smart enough to don't go on strange website and load a malware. Install a good endpoint like Bitdefender or Mcafee ones. Both of the are quite affordable
3- USE A MICROSOFT Account for your son and open also ones for yourself. Then create a family (on microsoft liveaccount website) and entitle yourself as parent and your son as a child. You'll be able to decide what your son is able to do and what not, what kind of sites he can visit and what he can't. Every single time he will log himself on Windows all the system will be checked and his profile will be pushed from the website. So if your son will try to tweak something at tnext login all the security features will be restored
4- Create an account on Prey (https://www.preyproject.com/ ) and install his agent. If the laptop will be stolen or lost you will be able to track it
5- Activate Shadow Copy on the c: drive. So everytime you will install something a shadow copy will be taken and you will be able to recover in case of something wrong.
6- You could buy Office 365 Home and have Office for all your Macs and PC (5 accounts, 2 licenses each)
I haven't seen a virus in years.
you think you don't have one
When Windows tells you it's broken and you need to call some phone number to prevent damaging your files or the hardware. Reboot the computer. The message is spam trying to get you to pay money and install malware. Rebooting will close whatever program is making the message pop-up.
Get a desktop instead of a laptop for gaming. He'll need a new laptop for college no matter what you buy him now. Make him buy it. Have him get a job(s) or do chores around the house for money. There's pet walking, lawn mowing, snow removal, raking, etc..
Your must have utilities are ad-blockers for the browser. Install f.lux too.
Assuming you're the administrator, set up your own account with Admin rights, then give the kid a standard user account with no Admin rights. Any new app installation will require your approval, meaning you can say no to any crapware or viruses that want to install themselves to the system. It's possible that the user account could be corrupted, but as Admin you'll be able to go in, back up his files, nuke the account, create a new account, and restore his files to that.
(this is not a
I use Windows, OSX and Kubuntu on a daily basis (kubuntu for work, osx for laptop, windows for gaming pc). I have no favourite os, but my favourite kernel is unix. Sue me.
1. Remove the OEM supplied bloatware. I know it sounds crazy but seriously, Windows OEM's prepackage their machines with malware (lenovo superfish for example)/bloatware useless apps and games. They are basically adverts. Dump them.
2. Install Firefox, ditch edge.
3. Make sure you disable all the reporting metrics in the privacy settings. There are numerous guides but the gist is, unless you want all your personal usage data being transported to microsoft and periodically hammering your bandwidth you want to disable almost everything in the privacy settings.
4. DO NOT USE THE 1 MONTH FREE TRIAL OF KASPERSKY MALWARE. It is malware, fuck the KGB.
5. Do not be surprised at your own disappointment. Windows 10 is one big black box. If you like to get in to the nitty gritty of terminal commands and custom scripts etc you will be absolutely shocked at how closed windows is to the user and how open it is to malware when compared to unix based os's. It looks and feels clunky because it is. But hey games run on windows so fuck me right.
just say no, no windows pc for gaming. save yourself the miserable hours spend on fixing the inevitable mess that WILL happen.
tell them - want to play games? you can have a ps4/switch/xbox.
i know no windows pc is ever getting into my house, i don't need all the drama that comes with it in my life.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
how much memory? how much disk capacity? battery life?
Well... look for the same on a windows laptop.
The Roblox site says Mac is supported.
I don't know much about it; what doesn't work?
I'm also interested to join my kids.
https://www.roblox.com/#Roblox...
Well there's this extra mouse button on the mouse. It can be used to click on things, you see, but differently than the other mouse button. It's like you're having two Apple Mice combined in a single mouse! So it's actually 50% cheaper than an Apple Mouse, you get twice the bangs for your bucks.
If you can wait a few months, and don't mind spending Apple Dollar$, how about using the new external GPU?
An added advantage could be - lock the GPU gadget in a closet, and give it out for good behavior.
Meanwhile, the Mac laptop itself can be used continuously for normal school purposes.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
buy your son a mac and an xbox/ps4
...How to install linux.
Depends on your definition of DRM-free...
Iâ(TM)ve been hit by the sleep of death with two MS surfaces..... if i shut the screen, it may never wake up even after trying 20 different power/volume key compobinations. Even a restore USB doesnt book up. https://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/180286-quot-Sleep-of-Death-quot-on-Surface-Book-What-the-Problem-Is-and-How-Microsoft-Should-Resolve-It
Besides that, as a fomer Mac user, the MS Surface series is great. But, if i cant expect it to start when i pick it up... whats the use?
Honestly, why worry about any of this at all? Let your son tell you what he wants and let him figure out all this stuff. Maybe give him a brief talking about web security and maybe do something to isolate him from infecting other devices on your home network, but other than that step back and let the kid do his thing. Will he screw up and get viruses? Sure. Will he have to figure out drivers and such? Sure. Will he need to figure out what programs he wants and doesn't want? Sure. That's how he learns.
In other words, think back: how did you become I savvy computer user? I know for me, my parents knew jack all about computers and I was the one learning these things by trial and error.
I know it can be painful to step back and watch people make mistakes when you now have the knowledge to avoid them, but mistakes are an amazing way for people to learn.
That you know of!
Remember that it takes only a few minutes for a machine to be pwned when connected directly to the internet.
The #1 thing you need to do differently is have a top-of-the-line external firewall.
It's not Windows itself, its is that it is targeted 100-n% of the time (where n is exceedingly small),
give him a macbook for real work and a win10 desktop for games. A desktop is still far better for games. I am a Linux user since many years and I have changed my PC this spring. I boot on windows around once every 2 month for a specific application that my entreprise use to manage absences. The experience is awful. I can not use the computer during the lengthy upgrades during which I can not even see what is happening. I get insane notification that I should install software I have never heard of to keep up to date other unknown software. The documentation is shit: after 20 minutes of insane PR, no way to know how to start the proposed installation later if I refuse to do it now. 2 computers will open his mind on the differences and he will be able to work when win10 is updating.
Do you not recommend it because it's difficult to setup? I'm interested because I hate dual booting. I only use windows for my steam games (mainly fallout and mod manager to run fallout.)
A quick google showed this guide
https://forum.level1techs.com/...
Does that look pretty accurate? Looks like the extra hardware is the extra gpu needed - it also says you need an extra mouse and keyboard which makes sense and is trivial.
If the extra gpu is correct, I can probably just get the cheapest one that supports the virtualization since the heavy gpu will most likely be dedicated to gaming.
Its my experience that Apple laptops are physically a lot more robust than all PC laptops. Particularly the cheaper laptops.This is really important consideration when buying a portable device for a 14 year old.
I recently bought my son a laptop - I will never buy a HP laptop again. Nor will I ever buy anything from PC World after the retaining clips on the space bar (2 tiny plastic springs) broke after 30 hours of use and PCWorld/HP said this was not covered by the warranty.Also a "feature of these devices is that the keyboard is integrated into the top bezel - so instead of getting new retainer clips for pennies, or getting a replacement keybaord for around 25 UKP, I need to buy a new top panel at a cost of 80 UKP (for a model not listed on the HP website - but that's another story).
As others have said, no the Microsoft AV is not sufficient. All AV products suck massively but a necessary evil if you must run Redmond's OS.
First up gaming laptops have a real problem, overheating to death.
Crap and uncared for gaming laptops have a history of overheating. Buy quality and as long as you clear the dust* out of it every 6 or so months It'll last years. The biggest problem is that if you buy one with a chunky GPU, it'll be outdated in no time. For gaming the desktop still rules as you have fewer overheating issues (poorly designed airflow + dust* still equals overheating) because you can buy a mid-range GPU and replace it when it gets a little long in the tooth.
* dust is mostly dead skin flakes.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ever notice how they always get viruses
Spare me this tired meme from 20 years ago.
We've got five Windows 10 machines in our family, used by me, my wife and my two kids. I just let Windows Defender do its thing and I haven't seen a virus in years.
This has been the case for years. Mac OS is no more or less secure than Windows since XP SP2. The major cause of insecurity remains the user and almost all Windows malware is now user installed and its worse for the Mac because the Mac user believes it's automagically protected (and the cure for Malware on a Mac is to buy a new Mac*).
Also remember that almost all malware this day and age is intentionally non-destructive. They've taken a leaf from microbiology and if a virus kills its host, it cant propagate and send spam, DDOS or mine Bitcoin.
* OK, you could re-install OSX but having to do this for simple problems is why I stopped doing Mac support over a decade ago.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Seriously, keep that on. If anything goes wrong with the laptop you can always revert to previous state.
And you are going to buy it? What about telling the boy to earn it?
People click stuff. Using non administrative accounts for day to day use is the best advice I can give anyone. (Though, I actually do use an administrative one... ). The Windows UAC prompt system is actually pretty good, but only if people actually understand them, and most people don't.
I'm leaning towards anti-malware oriented DNS servers too, e.g. OpenDNS, but that's not a Windows specific thing.
....figure out what you're going to do with that 20%-30% upcharge you're not spending?
-Styopa
If possible, get something without Windows 10.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
The best advice is to let him learn on his own. Just give the laptop to him and tell him to use Google and Youtube for any issues he comes across. The one thing you can do is to make an image of the hard drive before giving the laptop to him so that if he screws it up too bad you can always reformat it back to factory spec. The one thing to teach him is how to backup his own data or use a cloud storage service to automate backups. That's it. As a teenager he will have far more time to invest into self-learning then you will have to stand over his shoulder. Give him space to grow on his own.
Any device which is connected "wirelessly", can have its communications EASILY intercepted. /s /t 1
Buying a separate AV/anti-malware package? Well there are two aspects to this. Most 14 year olds don't have ANY financial transactions, so aren't vulnerable. MS's should be good enough for that. Then there's the question if his (?) pc is compromised, how vulnerable will that make the rest of your home network? Plenty, I'd guess. A lot of schools have a "technology" teacher, ask them what's appropriate, that's gotta be an extremely common FAQ.
Parental oversight for a 14 year old's on-line communications has nothing to do with what OS is being used, but is by far (imho) the most important piece of any discussion about computers and our children.
Vital is the following:
1. Really THINK before you provide him with your credit card information. It should be a significant decision.
2. Back-up drive (with schedule) AND a crash/emergency boot disk/usb.
3. Each PC vendor uses it's own boot keys. Although they're easy enough to look up on line, I'd recommend you make a note of them while setting the machine up. (These are the keys which force bios into its options menus.)
4. I really hate MS file system. They've pandered to the stupid, and made it more difficult for the rest of us. When installing programs, (assuming you bought a decent sized hard drive) use the default options (as far as which folders to use).
5. MS has done an awful job at implementing Unicode. aside from the keys available on the keyboard, there are also Alt-key combinations which increase the number of keys, some of which are MS specific. I strongly suggest you use only alphanumerics for file names. The use of other keys (e.g. punctuation) may not work - or what is worse, may work with some programs and not with others. Do not use (imho) spaces. The problem is that many characters appear as spaces - so I should say use them with care, if possible/feasible employ the underline_character instead. Alt+200 is but Alt+0200 is È (those are decimal codes).
6. I put MS Paint, MS notepad, MS media player, MS character map, MS calculator on my desktop. I also purchased the Office home/student but no way would I pay $100 a year for it!!! I also have Gimp, wavepad, stellarium, acrobat reader DC and MS wordpad on the desktop. Oh, Google Earth, too.
I don't like Paint3d, and don't use it. I also have a command prompt icon (to cmd.exe) on my desktop and I've written a short batch program (using notepad) called Shutdown.bat which consists of the 5 lines:
c:
CD C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
shutdown
break
end
Which used to speed up the awfully slow Windows 10 shutdown process, but most recent versions seem to be a lot faster.
Any child should have access to a word processor program, a spreadsheet program, an email program, a browser, and a presentation program (PowerPoint), imho. I also think they should have google earth and stellarium on their PC.
As a PC neophyte, I recommend you use the default options as much as possible. I have 2 AVs on my PC, I use IObits almost daily to cleanup. I also use their free Uninstaller program which at least last time I checked (several years ago) was more thorough than the MS wizards were.
Memory is cheap. Perhaps you should have a couple of 32GB microSD cards and the crash USBs kept somewhere safe for all your kids and switched out weekly or monthly. At 14, you need to trust but verify.
He can buy his own windows box with the money he makes working at his after-school job.
I don't have kids, but that seems inefficient, given that an adult earns several times more and has 4x more time available for working. That's like a marriage between a millionaire and an average joe where the millionaire demands the other guy contribute 50/50 to vacations.
Like a parent (usually) brings a kid along for vacations, some reasonable amount of entertainment is something a parent should also pay for. Perhaps offering a cheap laptop, or just giving the money to be put toward a better laptop? Or offering to match the kid's monetary contribution, up to the price of a computer that doesn't totally suck, which incidentally is the same price for Linux or Windows.
I bought my own computer with my own wages. The first was a gift - not from my parents - to both myself and my sibling; but the next I bought myself for about $3300 in total (1997). Still have it. Most don't spend that much on a system any more. My parent's policy was if we wanted stuff (cars, toys, etc) we generally had to buy them ourselves; birthday/Christmas we got a number of toys but not typically anything expensive (>$100 per item). It's a good policy.
And yes - the kid should contribute. Why? He'll treat it better. And yes, when the time is right my kids will have to do the same.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
First, if you do buy a system try System76 or another Linux-oriented vendor/device. Install Ubuntu, turn on `ufw` and install `fail2ban` so that it's secure from the outside. Then give them a Steam account with Valve for gaming. The number of titles won't be as expansive as on Windows, but you'll (a) be more secure, and (b) save a butt load of money, and worse case you can install Windows in a VM (VMware, Virtualbox, etc) and run titles from there, via KVM hypervisor, or simply dual boot it.
Second, as far as Windows goes - you have to be extremely careful of which *version* of Windows you get. There's 10+ skews of Windows 10; not all are good for gaming. You'll probably need to the more expensive version ($200-$400 for the Windows license alone). Then see the rest of the comments here about securing the Windows system - though AV tends to get in the way of performance for gaming, and often you need an admin account b/c of the games doing special things with the hardware a normal user can't do...yeah. It sucks.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
"Windows laptops are a comparable price." I understand and agree with your general statements about the need to compare apples to apples (pun intended). However, I simply disagree that Apple apples and Windows apples sell for anything close to the same price. If you go via the traditional rip-off sales channels, IE Best Buy and the Apple store or the Microsoft store, perhaps they are closer. However, If you go via newegg, tigerdirect, amazon or any of the multitude of other slaes channels from my experience you can find Microsoft equipment that has equivalent "spec numbers, plus build quality, weight, size, screen quality and battery life" etc etc etc for a fraction of the price of Apple equipment.
I've been in this exact situation recently. I regularly go back and forth between macbook pros, microsoft-oriented work laptops, and microsoft-oriented gaming laptops, and hacking-project chromebooks.
I am sure there are exceptions anyone can point to but as a general observation data point from someone who has "been there":
Apple laptops are a known, very high quality, quantity. They don't always have the features you want-- top-of-the-market GPU capability and larger screens is mine, but what Apple does have, they do very well. If apple laptops do deliver everything you really need, then get one, even if you put VMware/Parallels/Other/Bootcamp of it to get solid MS compatibility for everything but high end games. Even if you have to put up with silly dongles.
High-end PC laptops have very good specs but, in general, come with more risks. The more cutting edge features you buy the less likely it is you're going to get good, long term support, and the more likely that you're going to develop some issue a few years out that never showed up in the manufacturer's time-limited testing. The one exception to this may be the MS Surface Pros.
In the midrange prices from reputable manufacturers, support is more predictable, but there's often some performance compromise being made-- you can discover too late that your great price came at the cost of a certain component that's dragging the rest of the system down. Could be wrong CPU for your workload, poor cooling, sub-par screen, KB placement, loud fans, slow HD, inadequate GPU cooling, etc.. It's hard to know what compromise may affect you without doing a lot of review research, and the best, most reliable reviews will be for product that has been out 6+ months, and you may be tempted to get "the latest new model" instead. It's a balancing act.
At the low end you can find some really great values in PCs laptop. If these fit your performance envelope you can get something that's cheap and looks good too.
The above is just on the hardware side. On the software side it goes without saying that there will be a learning curve and a host of annoyances, particularly around driver behavior coming out of sleep mode & hibernation, privacy, and possibly juggling multiple possible audio inputs and outputs.
On a laptop?
Where changing the GPU is mostly impossible?
What does he want to play?
Enemy territory?
Apple Users who will use a Windows pc?
No one will be holding your hand anymore...
Turn off indexing (right click the drive eg C:, select properties, uncheck the box at the bottom that says 'Allow files...').
Install Malware bytes.
Install a free always-on AV (using Bitdefender now, but have used others in the past).
Google 'Win 10 services disable performance' or 'Win 10 services disable for gaming' and then follow it.
Configure updates to always install.
Done.
The price of windows is always baked into the price of the laptop. It cost the vendors more to remove it and put linux on the thing. Windows is perfectly capable of doing virtualization and linux (ubuntu) now ships as a windows service. Your advice is basically to throw money away because of zealotry.
Sad.
I know you stated you don't need recommendations on the laptop itself, but why not setup bootcamp on a Macbook? I have one setup today and game on it just fine. When I just want to use it casually, I boot into the OSX side. It might help you with less troubleshooting to do if they are only using Windows to game. If you are worried about a non-mac gaming laptop overheating (which I have rarely seen) just get a cooling pad with fans. Otherwise, just make sure there isn't crap surrounding the laptop and not letting it ventilate properly.
Someone else mentioned it but Thurott's guide will be decent. Wipe whatever system you get and start from stratch. Install latest drivers and firmware. Use ninite.com to easily install common applications. Chrome, notepad++, Teamviewer, Skype, 7zip, VLC, Java, and CutePDF are typical things I have installed from there for everyone. Steam is also on there to install. Sophos Home (setup an account) is what I use. Free and decently secure. It can alert you about possible infections, etc. You can also use it on your current Macs. Sign up for Office 365 Home if you haven't already. $100/yr for latest versions of office and up to 5 people/accounts can have their own installations. Everyone gets 1TB of OneDrive storage as well. If not yet already setup, have them use a password manager like Lastpass.
Here's the thing. On a mac, apple has made decisions as to how things will be paired, work together, and generally function as a whole. There's user-level customization, of course, but the inner workings are pretty well configured for you.
On a Linux box, it's a good bet that nothing works at all until you configure it from scratch. Whether it's "make"ing / compiling programs, or just weeding through conf files, there's a world to learn.
Windows is neither.
By default, windows is configured to work in a certain way, but you're able to, easily within the GUI, change the way it works.
If mac is the independent consultant that knows what it's doing from the start, and Linux is the in-house employee that you can train to do anything, then windows is the independent contractor that will do, very well, what you tell it to do. And if you don't provide any direction, it'll only do what it thinks might work.
With a windows machine, you're expected (by me) to spend a half-day clicking through every setting and making a decision for each checkbox. There are about four hundred tiny decisions to make. It's a process, not a puzzle, and it's totally worth doing.
We're talking about settings like disabling Bluetooth because you don't use it. Removing permissions that you don't want apps to have. Choosing default behaviours at every turn. This is true for major software too -- generally takes me an hour to configure something like photoshop, or open office, or ultraedit. Ok, two hours for ultraedit, but that's my primary tool.
And don't think it starts with the control panel. It starts way sooner. Even if you aren't selecting the hardware (balancing bottlenecks, as I like to say), you'll still want to decide which storage device houses which files. OS files, temp files, swap files, work files, media files, personal files.
Do it right and the system speeds along smoothly forever. Do it wrong, and it can certainly eat itself alive. But I've done well. My '98 machine lasted 9 years as my primary work machine, my vista machine lasted 10 years, and would have kept going had IE9 not been its limit.
Funny story. I just built a windows 10 machine. With the OS and all background-accessed files (and triple-a games) on the m.2 drive, user-triggered access to my work and applications (and normal games) on the sata ssd, and the directly-accessed files like media and backups on the large spinning hdd, I routinely (three-ish time a day) wind up waiting about 12 seconds to save a text file to my sata ssd!
It's a six thousand dollar workstation, and I'm waiting 12 seconds to save a 10KB text file to an SSD drive. It reminds me of thirty years ago with a floppy drive, so it makes me nostalgic.
If you haven't followed along closely, my issue is actually by design. I've configured my three storage systems based on access, and so if I don't access work files for a while, the drive goes to sleep, and I get to wait 12 seconds for it to wake up.
This is the perfect example of going through the settings that I mentioned before. This is easily changed by adjusting the sleep behaviour of the storage systems in windows. I could make the drive not sleep so quickly, or at all -- which is really fine for a desktop ssd especially -- but I like it this way. I like knowing that most of the time most of my machine is asleep doing nothing.
So, that's the lesson. With windows, it's your choice, for everything, and every choice is easily specified if you spend the hours going through every "properties" and "settings" menu. Do it once, then never again. You'll be able to quickly disable all of the stuff that windows does by default that simply doesn't apply to you. You can always change your mind later.
1. Mac is just as vunerable, you just ignored that being an apple tax idiot
2. learn about computers, you have been using a walled garden toy
3. stop being a mac pussy, stop panicking your about 7 years out of date
If your child has a .edu email address, they can get office free.
https://products.office.com/en...
For hardware, I have some thoughts.
I just bought my daughter (13) a used Surface Pro 4. She loves to draw, and the touch+pen were killer features for her. She takes care of her kit, and it's in a case so I don't worry about her breaking it.
I, on the other hand, am a klutz. If it were for me I'd buy something that could take more physical abuse. I used to have a Lenovo W520 and W540. I loved those, with the exception of their weight, and would probably look in that family.
Back to Software, whatever browser you choose, get an adblocker. Ad Networks are the primary distribution mechanism for malware now.
Fourteen is old enough to teach them to use a password keeper, and keep the file on dropbox or onedrive. Build that habit now and their future self will thank you.
Create a personal email, e.g. deathlord982 at somedomain.com email and a realname email now. Teach them to use the personal for fun stuff and realname for School stuff. Separating fun and work is a good habit to get into now too.
Teach them to put a post-it over the webcam. Yes, that's a thing.
Other Free software worth getting:
Gimp, Inkscape, VLC, and Paint.Net
You'll probably want the Steam and Origin clients, Discord, and TeamSpeak.
If you want to teach them 3d modeling, ZBrush and AutoDesk Fusion 360 are amazing. I think that both are free for hobbyists.
Good luck.
I've done this. I have half a dozen macs (my kids all use mac minis), quite a few more Linux boxen, and exactly ONE windows box. (It's a gaming laptop. I've had it for 6 or 7 years now. Still going strong, though the graphics card is starting to show its age. To say nothing of the battery!)
Your windows box will get compromised / infected on a regular basis. You will be amazed at how easily that can happen! Definitely go with Chrome over IE, but, really, go with a Chromebook rather than risk webbrowsing & drivebys on a windows box.
One thing I cannot recommend highly enough: Get a CD/DVD drive, external if necessary. Boot off a Linux disk. Good o'l Redhat Fedora in "rescue" mode will suffice. Have an external drive, formatted for Linux, that you can hook up. Use "ntfsclone"! (Or, alternatively, even good o'l dd.) I've had to restore my windows box several times now. Being able roll it back to a safe place has been a lifesaver! It's also nice to be able to see if the windows restore partition was infected...
Practically speaking, what you want is a Win box for just games, and ideally just Steam at that. And then a Mac or Chromebook for everything else. And I do mean everything!
That said, you may want to install Cygwin on the windows box. Having a decent BASH or TCSH command line is a lifesaver! You might also want Libreoffice. Very useful, compatible with most MSWord files, and a lot cheaper than a microsoft subscription!
not good to admit your an idiot in public
Decide who will solve inevitable problems in advance - yourself, your son, geek squad, etc. Windows is not like OSX/ChromeOS - it routinely gets borked by driver updates, registry corruption, mysterious hangs/slowdowns... I have a gaming laptop myself for Oculus, but keep a Chromebook for daily productivity, as something on Windows is likely to broken or laggy just when I need to send an urgent e-mail.
the school's principal needs to issue a work permit for any employee under 18, and as I understand the law of my state, he can refuse to for any reason.
Indiana is another:
In theory, this gives the principal the power to require an A+ GPA and zero absences, excused or unexcused, since 9th grade.
You're about to find out just how savvy you really are, Mr. Mac.
Chrome. The rest is optional.
Get the machine set up more or less the way you want it, not counting software that you expect to be updating regularly, and then create a disk image.
I haven't used the most recent versions of window enough to know for sure, but from my experience Window will break down over time. Installing and uninstalling one program after another will cause registry bloat that is very difficult to manage. Combine that with viruses, etc, and you've got the makings for having to do a complete wipe and reinstall of your OS once every one or two years.
Before I switched to a Mac myself, that's basically what I did. I set up the base OS more or less the way I liked it, install updates, removed any shovelware, installed the stuff I wanted, and then imaged the disk and set the image aside in a safe place.
If you have a sufficiently large hard drive, you can partition the drive, and then image the main partition onto a file on the 2nd partition, making it slightly more convenient for you.
I know recent versions of windows have a built in "factory reset" option, but that still leaves you redoing all the updates, software installation, etc.
Also, the UI will take getting used to. Windows apps are amazingly inconsistent, for example throwing menus almost anywhere, or using those ridiculous ribbon things, etc. There is zero consistency between how different applications function, even the ones built into the OS, so you can't rely on general consistency to guide you the way you can with OSX.
There are also a LOT of wierd quirks in Windows, such as when it "helpfully" locks write permissions on random files it thinks shouldn't be written to anymore, but that's for you to discover.
Boot Camp gives a penalty of being offline for two minutes, which interrupts your music stream and your text or voice chat, as well as having to sign into all your websites again because your browser session ended when you restarted your computer.
For the benefit of others considering Boot Camp, please answer the following question: How do I cut and paste between applications running in different operating systems in Boot Camp? Or if this is not possible, what should I do instead of cut and paste for such a situation?
I'm not sure that's safe to say. Windows is the platform that STILL has macro attacks in Word and Excel. I'd argue the very nature of osx makes it more secure.
Unicode presents an unnecessary security risk for the sake of emoji. We don't need that crap here...
Period
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Or slashdor culd atualy fix their code, It's 2017, is unicode support realy that hard to implement (asking as a non developer)
Answering as a developer: no, Unicode support is not that hard to implement.
Likely a decision has been made: the modest cost of adding Unicode support will not bring in enough additional saleable eyeballs to make that effort worthwhile.
Be prepared to buy a modern laptop, using current parts and specifications in the current year. Really, that's a thing!
In the Mac world your information from several years ago is still 100% relevant, because the specifications of Macs on the market still use those old parts.
Also, you can put as much memory in your machine as you want and the machine will take. Take a deep breath, I realize this is scary stuff here. As much as you think this the coming of the Zombie Apocalypse, it's normal in the PC world. It's called "freedom".
First thing a User should know how the laptop works, how to design, build and repair them. We recommend a Ph.D. in Electronics.
Second thing a User should know is how the software works, how to design, implement, install and fix it (both programming and system administration). We recommend a Ph. D. in Computer Science, followed by working on Microsoft's kernel team for a decade or so.
Thirdly a User would have to read the manuals for all of the applications and get a copy of the source code.
Fourthly, the User will need a good lawyer or get the necessary degrees herself.
There is one major difference: malware. Whether you want to believe its due to the larger market share or if you want to blindly believe that Windows is somehow inherently less secure than any other OS for "reasons," there's no escaping the fact that most malware is written for Windows.
And no a gaming laptop isn't nonsense. Its certainly not going to be good enough if you want to be a top tier gamer, but as long as you have an external mouse and sufficient hardware specs, laptops are perfectly usable as gaming machines. It takes some adjusting if you're used to a desktop with detached screen/keyboard of course but I've done it before and its not actually terrible after you've given yourself that adjustment period.
The best game of all is the one where you learn *Nix; how to use how to administer it, how to program, compile, debug, etc. If you get him a non-apple computer, best put one together with him, or buy a system, and put a Unix or GNU/Linux on it, and teach him something useful. If you're planning to get him a toy, why not just get a toy computer, like a PlayCube or GameBox or whatever?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
You haven't seen a virus in years... luck, maybe, or you have one and don't know it and your computer is one of millions ensnared in a spam-producing bot-net or your computer is quietly converting electricity you paid for using computer power you paid for into someone else's cryptocurrency, or... or the hackers have simply grown bored hacking into that which is so trivial to hack into, and moved on to more interesting challenges.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
So, just demonstrate being an idiot, instead? (You fucked up "you're")
If you have macro virii in TRUSTED network locations, you've already failed and not Words fault. By default, you can't run that shit.
I wanted to replace my kid's laptop with Linux
The Roblox site says Mac is supported.
I don't know much about it; what doesn't work?
thereitis wants to run the game on a PC running Linux, not on a Mac.
The result of such will be that the user will run into third-party digital restrictions management and anti-cheat software that explicitly forbids use of Wine.
Many games sold on Steam lack a port to Linux. When a particular game neither is ported to Linux or works in Wine, the choices are either A. use Windows in a VM on a PC with two GPUs (one for each OS) and a CPU with VT-d (to forward the guest OS's GPU commands to the second GPU) or B. give up.
Did you write this in the 90's and just get around to posting? Best practices are nothing new. I use Win, Mac, and Droid. Being proactively defensive is nothing new. Stop wasting time telling us your kid doesn't like your OS of preference. No one cares.
Don't waste your time.
Exactly. My son already has a Mac but I want to move away from MacOS. When his computer dies or becomes obsolete, my hope was to get him onto Linux. But the sticking point right now is lack of Roblox support.
I am 2 years in to my second hi end gaming lappy. I put off waiting for the first one to die Cos it was taking to long. It still won't die. I call BS
Good luck running any games or other software as a non-admin. Even Photoshop won't run properly.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
https://www.al-awa2el.com/%D8%...">
60th trimester abortion!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Depends where you live and when. In most 'burbs, dust is mostly dried up animal (dog and cat) shit, blowing in the wind.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How does installing Linux teach you how to suck dick?
For definitions of 'smart and well adjusted' that amount to 'sheltered and incapable'. 14 is not 5.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
unless they gaming, but since they're a Mac user... they SHOULD NOT!
As a lifelong Windows user (and professional designer in the higher education tech support world), my advice is to relax and ignore all the Linux/virtualization/dual boot blather. They're all correct to one degree or another (many are spot on) but unless your son is or plans to be a hardcore geek none of it is useful for you. Lets' talk operating systems first. Despite a well-earned but obsolete reputation for instability, Windows is the preferred OS for gaming and many other pursuits. Windows 10 has a robust firewall, and Windows Defender is excellent virus protection and security. Both are on by default with new software. Defender is so good that it is our recommended solution, so don't pay extra for a third party app. Assuming you purchase a new machine with preloaded software, he will have no problem setting it up and learning the basics if he follows the prompts and takes the tutorials. The documentation is pretty good, some is excellent, and can be consumed in small bites. This is a pretty good round up of advice: https://www.windowscentral.com... Many of our students (we provide tech support to more than 20,000 undergrad and grad students) successfully use a program like Boot Camp to run Windows on their Mac. Generally, though, it's not a serious option for our gamers, whose concern is performance. Our top-end gamersâ(TM) go-to machine is some sort of Windows 10 desktop, with maxed CPU, double clocked, hela RAM, mega cooling (often liquid), large, fast monitor, wired internet connection. I doubt there are any laptops at any price that can perform as well as even a modestly equipped desktop. If a laptop is your preferred route, a cooling stand is an inexpensive and worthwhile addition. There's a good variety of very capable machines at much less than you'd pay for a similarly equipped Mac. The newer high-end MS Surface laptops get good reviews from our students, and so do the Asus and Alienware boxes. Canned air (I.e, DustOff) and a PC cleaning tool (OXO makes a great one) for dust removal are highly recommended). Hope that helps.
I seriously doubt that. You think only jobless kids with an allowance play games?
But there is no need to label people buying non DRM games as a "cult", unless you are being paid to do so. Is that why you are also promoting the tracking of people across the Internet?
Is that why you are also promoting the tracking of people across the Internet?
I'm not promoting it as much as trying to see why phozz bare feels justified in not caring that he is being tracked.
ObTopic: Windows 10 tracks you. Even on the lowest telemetry settings available in Windows 10 Home, Windows sends a list of every application and device driver on your machine to Microsoft.
Thanks for clarifying.
I am aware of tracking in Windows 10, which is one reason I do not use it.
Though it sounds like he being forced to, due to lack of Mac support. Hence my question.