I actually did try to read this thread..... each post in fact. Absolutely another language to The HCP. Thats pretty cool you guys build your own computers. As a MAC person i would have NO idea how to use any of them though. I need some sort of RAID system for all of my media I was told. Might start a thread for advice on that in the future.
I have a handful of computers I use for assorted things. None of them were Windows, and I actually have a need to run things on Windows for testing purposes. This laptop has amazing technical specs at about 1/3 what I paid for my MacBook Pro. In layman's terms, it had a problem that required me to take it back to have repaired. I was without the laptop for two weeks while they examined it and tried to repair it. They finally just gave me a new one. I had to deal with Microsoft support to get software I bought for the old one transferred to the new one. That experience was just terrible. In spite of the technical specs, the company that makes the machine has serious quality issues as many people report the same failure my laptop had. Bottom line: you get what you pay for. What Andalusian said is spot on.
If you want quality notebook for professionals - Apple, Microsoft, some Dells and maybe the top-level Thinkpads are probably what I would suggest. FWIW - We have a lot of macs around here - the hardware is fantastic and they perform real well as long as you like their ui (I do not) - We have some people that actually run Windows VMs in Fusion on Macs. It mostly works fine - there are some things that you have to play games with - but overall, it works well. For consumer grade laptops/notebooks - Asus has been very good for my wife's personal use. I am not certain if it will work for a professional - but something that does not break the bank and is reliable - it certainly works well.
I would be happy to help you customize a raid system. I did the first one about 35 years ago, although I did not call it raid. I don't use that technique any longer, but I can see why you might want to do so. Let me know if you would like some help.
My son builds high end computers....he says simply, laptops will never work on the same level....he does it as a hobby but he puts in lots of fans and they're the size of a large suitcase....my desktop outperforms my laptops...I have had zero problems with windows 10 on my desktop unit...
This is absolutely true. My main machine is a desktop too - but sometimes you need to go work somewhere else. It happens enough that some of us need/want a laptop as well. On the other hand, my wife, a casual user (with the exception of Excel) - is just fine getting along with a laptop.
I hate lap tops. Your son is right. I prefer to have a desktop where ever I need it. Right now that is seven of them.
My main machine is a 5"x5"3" system. It has a core I7 7700, 32G of RAM, and a Samsung 960 NVME drive plus another Samsung 1TB SSD. It's not for playing games. It's got plenty of RAM and CPU power and the fastest storage around. It's faster at doing most things than any of my Macs and also the new laptop. A lot of power in a tiny package (insert HCP joke here). It runs Ubuntu. I sometimes use it directly, with a 40" UHD TV as the display and wireless keyboard/trackpad combo. But much of the time I use the Macbook Pro or 27" 5K iMac. I NFS mount the filesystem to the Macs so the IDE sees the files and works as it should. If it weren't fast enough, I would likely just ssh into the machine and use VI in a terminal window. I went from Windows 7 to using Mac about 5 years ago. I wouldn't go back for anything. Not only do I think the UI is the best there is, and by a LOT, the OS itself is lightweight and uses very little of the machines' resources, compared to Windows. If not MacOS, the next best for me is Linux running any of several desktop environments. My impression of Windows 10 after having been a Windows 7 user for several years is that it's still Windows. C:\ is straight out of CP/M and still there. You still have to (danger, danger, danger) use regedit to do trivial things that every Mac app has in its settings with appropriate UI to view and set. \r\n line endings? That's just bullshit, and only messes things up. I operate in the computers' command shell an awful lot. Speaking of awful, powershell and cmd.exe fit that. Sure, you might get used to it, but the console window itself is about the worst I've seen in any environment and using the shell is like scraping your nutsack with a rusty spoon (thanks braniac!). At least Putty makes the machine useful.
So I set it up to dual boot Windows and KUbuntu. It's been running Linux for me almost all the time. I just really do not like Windows. I hadn't used it in about 5 years, Windows 7 the last I had to use (for work). Windows 10 isn't any different. And it's not gotten noticeably better that I can see. The command line tools are still clumsy at best. The file system is still NTFS. The operating system still uses the dangerous regedit program to tweak things. The file system still natively used CR+LF line endings, which only conflicts with most everything else in the universe. At 4K native resolution, Linux looks beautiful. Windows looks so tiny it's hard to use. For about 1/3 the price, I must say this laptop running linux is competitive with my MacBook Pro. The apps I use are portable across operating systems (but expose NTFS C: D: CRLF bullshit on windows), so those work the same. Gestures and quality of native apps are still significantly better in MacOS. Linux supports the touch screen perfectly, but I never saw the benefit in having my hand blocking the screen or putting fingerprints on it. The thing does fold backward into a tablet, so in that mode the touch screen makes sense. Though I haven't yet used it in that mode, and don't see the point.
Of minor mention:You probably did not get a CD player using media player. Windows media player outright sucks. Don't need tech language to describe that POS.
