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[John L Nobile]

I recommend Dell's from their refurbished store and tell them to wait for a sale. They seem to have those monthly. Here's their US site though I deal with the CDN one.

https://www.dellrefurbished.com/

I buy Dells for our company and I've never been let down for reliability and support. I have one at home for work related things but for personal, I have an iMac. Been an Apple guy since my IIe in 1984 but I've been rethinking that.

[Tim McCulloch]

Aside from my personal opinion that Steve Jobs was the Son of Satan I'm pretty much OS-agnostic.  I've used Mac OS for the 8 years was Secretary-Treasurer of my IATSE Local but my personal machines are Win7, Win10, or either Ubuntu or Suse Linux.

The best tool I've found for the Win machines is Malware Bytes.  Pay them for the real time protection.  For when that doesn't work I've been using Acronis backup software.  A full disk clone to a drive that gets disconnected and stored, and a full c:\  backup set to a different external drive with daily incremental backups.

[Thomas Le]

I currently use a used Latitude e7470 (i7-6600u/16GB RAM/256GB SSD/1080p) for $500 on fleabay that still has dell warranty. A good upgrade from my previous Latitude e6440 (i7-4610m/16GB RAM/256GB SSD/1080p) that was heavy and was out of warranty. Both are w10 pro.

Currently using a used iPhone 6 128gb, contemplating iPhone 7 or 7 plus but the damn omission of the headphone jack...

[Tim Hite]

I used to do desktop support. I hate it. I've owned Macs since 1996. They work when I need to. I currently have a Mac Book Air that does all I need. I now have a Dell Precision lappy that I bought for $300 on eBay with Win10 Pro that I use for QuickBooks Pro, UPS Global Ship, Ease Focus, EAW Pilot, the FCC web site and other Wintel only crap. I am terrified every time I go on the internet with it.

For your entertainment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8

So this has been a rough weekend.  Icing on the cake was my in-laws getting "hacked" with a spam/pop-up/social engineering attack.  Thankfully I don't think any real damage done.  But I am still stuck doing assess and recovery on a couple of computers.  In-Laws are doing the call bank and flag accounts thing.

Part of the fall out is them buying a new chromebook and doing more like my wife and I do.  We segregate computers by use.  Our computers are Windows 10,7 and several Linux variations. I am comfortable with almost any OS and command line is fine with me.  My wife even prefers Linux to Windows, provided it works.

Having said all that, after spending 2 weeks worth of 14+ hour days solving AV and computer problems for demanding clients, I just want my off hours, non-work computer, to just F#%@ work!

I was considering apple till the last years worth of dongle/ no standard ports hell at work.  Micro$soft is more worried about making CandyCrush work than Powerpoint.  Linux was stable as hell. Now even hardened server OS's fail on some updates.  The more home friendly versions, linux Mint, suck at printing on known linux friendly printers.

So, what do you use at home, when you just want to surf some forums and pay some bills?

TL,DR computers suck.

[Tom Bourke]

If you like Linux that much give Fedora a try, let me know if you have any issues.

Thanks Scott.  I was on Fedora for many years, Core 4 to 17.  I think I got off of it about 5 years ago.  I moved to CentOS for more stability and longer release cycles.  Lately CentoOS7 has had problems updating even a fresh install with no add on repos.  Some variation of dependency hell like the old days.

The wife has Linux mint 19 and loves it, other than some bugs in the printing and scanning areas.  It also does not do dual boot with encryption with out some major hoops.  May have to swing back around to Ubuntu.

I am surprised I don't see more people on chrome books.

[Tom Bourke]

For your entertainment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8

That was good, and is still relevant 18 years later.

[Craig Hauber]

After a few full-screen malware attacks I got my Dad a Dell laptop at Costco and promptly overwrote the Windows installation with Ubuntu Linux. Works just fine with his printers, both major-brand inkjets from 5ish years ago.  And tech support calls have been reduced drastically.

I tried out Ubuntu 4 years ago as a dare/bet from I-T pro family members
-on a used HP business class desktop. 
Decided to go cold turkey with it as my only machine.

Well 4 years later I can say that it has worked great and it's now my main system for as much as possible.
-and yes, I also contribute as much as possible to developers of software I use and I'm not afraid of the command-line.  I do feel that for purely passive usage,  linux isn't the best (-for that just get a Mac or tablet.)

Ubuntu seems to be the most popular consumer desktop, Debian-based and is very well supported.  A good solid start for newcomers but with the depth and sophistication that allows you to grow your skills without being dumbed-down.  The server version works solid too.

[Bob Stone]

I have a Windows 10 machine in my home office as does the wife.  I too am in the business and I simply have had no issues with it.  I run all sorts of stuff including Vmware, Docker and two NIC's and swap network profiles.  With 1 - 4k monitor and 3 - 1080P monitors it is stable as a rock. 

With that being said I just bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, with i7, 16G of RAM and put Fedora on it.  It is amazing, superfast I can recreate all of our dev environments on the fly, load KVM's and Docker and even run a local Jenkins server.  It sleeps with no issues at all.  I have a nagging issue getting some older Java to work with IcedTea.

If you like Linux that much give Fedora a try, let me know if you have any issues.

+1 to Lenovo. I also just got an X1 Carbon 6th gen (with the 8th gen i7). It's been great, has Windows 10 on it. Replaced my x230 as my primary home laptop which I used for 6 years with almost zero issues.

At work I've had a T42, T61p, W500, W510, W530, W541 (piece of junk screen on it, I got rid of it in a week and kept my W530 for longer), and P50. Hoping to land a P1 in the new year when the 2nd gen of it comes out, although management has been moving towards Dell (which has pissed everyone off).

My family has a Thinkpad 13, L380, some misc T4x0 models that I can't remember which.

Compared to all the other cheap junk out there that I've used or fixed for people, Lenovo Thinkpads (not their cheaper lines) are worth the money. The hardware is just rock solid.

[Chris Grimshaw]

I have an Asus laptop (i7-3630, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, DVD drive) that I use for day-to-day stuff, as well as a bit of gaming and some playing around with audio recordings.

I also have a Lenovo work laptop that has REW and a load of background music on it. Not much else, and nothing I care about. That's the one that goes to gigs for when people want to play their music from a pendrive.
It's one of those that folds right around into a tablet, which can be handy at a cramped FOH.

Chris

[Frank Koenig]

Thanks Scott.  I was on Fedora for many years, Core 4 to 17.  I think I got off of it about 5 years ago.  I moved to CentOS for more stability and longer release cycles.  Lately CentoOS7 has had problems updating even a fresh install with no add on repos.  Some variation of dependency hell like the old days.

Here's an honest (not rhetorical) question for all you folks who use Linux on your main platform. It appears to me that if all you want to do is email and Web browsing (Internet appliance), Linux is fine. If you want to write your own programs, it's the best. But if you want or need to run widely used applications such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, Smaart, or even just to control your Powersoft amp or Allen & Heath mixer, what do you do?

I know that there are open-source alternatives for many of the big apps, which often are amazing labors of love, but life is finite and I don't want to spend too much of it learning new apps for things I already know how to do some other way. In a work environment, you are pretty much forced to use the big apps that folks you hire know (not a problem for me anymore).

Do you keep separate Windows and Mac machines for those purposes or is the Linux world so rich now that it's sufficient for everything, even commercial apps? And what about virtual machines on Linux? I was seriously considering ditching Windows about a year ago, but wimped out and stayed on the well-worn path. Truth is, I'll probably die on Windows -- cussing the whole way 

--Frank

[ProSoundWeb Community]