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fortytwo

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    Cape Coral, FL (winter base) or anywhere

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  1. Win 11 is Microsquish's gift to hardware vendors. My gmail issue was an old router. My Neat portable scanner won't work with it period. My HP Deskjet 100 mobile printer won't connect bluetooth; have to use USB. MS simply resuffled the menu items. The worst example is that a right click only brings up a few choices and you have to click the "other options" to get the ones most often used. Copy is on one page; paste on another. Inertia is the only reason I don't roll the new laptop back to Win 10. I don't worry about security upgrades. Microsoft updates are the most abundant virus out there.
  2. This morning my LG Gram laptop would not connect to gmail, but was connected to other websites. Had a message my computer needed to restart to do updates, so did that. No wifi connections thereafter. Diagnostics said problem with driver. Couldn't copy an updated driver downloaded to my desktop. Tech support had me disable driver and restart. Other websites, including this one, now connect but not gmail. Gmail works on all my other devices. Did an offline Defender scan. Nothing found, still no gmail. Not a fan of Win 11 home, and hate windows updates. Any suggestions? Maybe a virus? Accidently brushed some key combo with my palm and have a "quote" box below which I can't find a way to close. I
  3. RV, To damn much work! I've been in the web over 30 years (pre windows) and am basically buck nekked. Everything about me has been captured somewhere. Bit late to worry about the barn door. I download financial and health data to a folder and immediately move it to a thumb drive and disconnect it. Otherwise 3-4 laptops and 4 tablets sleep when not being used. The HP AIO desktop only sleeps at night. Don't use (trust) the cloud. I don't own it. Have back-ups on a dozen external drives of various sizes. Some of the old ones are Firewire and I don't have a PC with a port anymore. My 5 1/4, 3 1/2, and Zip cartridge data has likewise disappeared (from me - I'm sure some server out there has most of it). Half of my digital video is in a format no longer supported, but no one wants to see it anyway so I've mostly stopped taking video. I've found that no one but me gives a crap anymore, and mostly I waste time when I look for anything. I've lost more unsaved stuff to Microsoft's updates than to any virus so block them and catch up monthly. Guess I'm a Ray Stevens "streak". Wes
  4. RV, I have the 32". Love the screen, but it hinders multi tasking: computer and one-eyed babysitter. Gotta remount the TV a couple of feet higher. The 32" is not touch screen so would be less attractive for you. It is painfully slow until you've looked at a folder and it is cached. I created a new directory for a batch of my old ripped CD's. Took a loooong time for the song titles to show up so I'm pretty sure it was caching them before sending them to the screen. The stand for mine was attached when it arrived, and there's no way to remove it until the back cover is removed. Looks like it's possible to pry it off with a thin blade. At the time mine failed I was up to my ears in caregiver duties and just sent it off for repair without expending any time investigating removal of the HD & SSD. I know how to back up. Just not diligent about it. Have reached the age of understanding that none of this stuff will be in my casket and none who survive me gives a crap about it anyway. My duplex is crowded with collections acquired by Sally and I, not inexpensively, that lack of interest by our younger family members destines for a Florida garbage can. I now adhere to the philosophy that tomorrow may be my last day and I'm not going to spend it cleaning the garage. Wes
  5. RV, beware the AIO! Mine black screened after 10 months. Had to send it to HP. 1st thing repair did was format the hard drive - totally unnecessary as it booted from the SD. Since it was dead I was not able to get anything off the drive and I had been lazy and not done a back up for a couple of months . The 31" HP AIO weighs over 30 pounds, awkward to handle, and no easy to pull the HD to read it on another device. You lose everything you haven't backed up, unless you use the cloud - which I don't. It does have a super UHD screen though. Spoils you. HP repair was the pits to deal with. Returned mine without the SD (said they were not available - but Amazon had plenty of them.) Then another return and they sent me a "new" one instead of replacing the SD. I had a second similar event within 3 months, but it was out of warranty and Costco support talked me through a restart with a complex series of combinations of Ctrl, Alt, Start, and several F keys. Worked though. Wes
  6. RV, Thanks for the Surface Pro info. I had left it unplugged for a couple of weeks, so was not surprised that it didn't start initially, but when it didn't start after 2 days on the charger I was clueless and assumed I had a lightweight door stop. I'll just use it like a desktop and leave it charging til needed. The battery seems to have good life left. I still had almost a half full battery image after 4 hours and it started after leaving it off the charger overnight. During my wife's Assisted Living journey I bought a large All-In-One. Too big for the RV I just bought, an oldie-but-goodie Chinook to replace the Class A I sold while I was on caretaker duty. I'll need a new laptop for it. Costco has a 16" HP Inspironn with UHD screen for old eyes. $1,300 seems a decent price and most important for me, the heels of my hand on the oversize touchpad do not move the cursor. Every other laptop I've owned does and I have to use a mouse. No touchscreen, but I just leave fingerprints on them. Next year will be my 55th RVing year. Not sure how it will go solo. The old song line "Learning to live with myself is so hard to do" (Waylon I think) is proving very true. Thanks again for sharing your expertise. Wes
  7. Well, the Microsquish POS started. Plugged it in to an outlet in a different room. Left if for 3 days. Today it started when I pushed the button. I had left it plugged in for a couple of days earlier with no result. Sure creates a lot of confidence in using a tablet to replace a laptop ---NOT. Should have mastered Android or Linux years ago. Too old to invest the time to do it now so reluctantly I'll have to add another laptop to the 5 I have now (5-18 years old)😞
  8. RV, Box says Surface Pro 4. Thought it had just discharged while sitting on the shelf a couple of weeks. The little white lite would seem to indicate power is getting to the tablet connection. I've let it sit overnight on the charger but it doesn't turn on. Even if the battery has crashed it should at least light up the screen if it's alive. Wes
  9. My old (think version 2 or 3) Surface tablet will not start. Used it on a business trip in early October, worked then; stored it back on the shelf in mid October. Won't start today. Power cord has the little white light at the tip glowing. The brick is slightly warm. I whacked it with palm of my hand without result. Presume it is now worse than useless. Old desktops could be used as a boat anchor when they died 🙂
  10. Thanks for all the suggested options. It seems vendors have determined that it's not profitable to provide a solution to those of us who have thousands of slides from the pre-digital era. I have an older flatbed scanner that could scan at an acceptable resolution, but don't have the motivation to invest that much time. Revisited the site that was providing drivers on a subscription basis and they are now selling it. https://www.hamrick.com/ They also offer a 30 day free trial so will try that first. Their ad does seem a bit over optimistic though. It's really a need for a driver that works with Win 10. If the Hamrick solution doesn't work I'll probably take the suggested route of a fast, but lower quality solution followed by commercial rescan of a much smaller number of the best slides. 1st though, just realized that tax filing deferment is ending soon, and being one of the great procrastinators I have that to do.
  11. Chalkie, I found a reference to running an XP emulator in Win7, but Microsoft has removed that software from their site. The problem I have is that Plustek deliberately obsoleted their hardware by not developing Win 10 drivers. I found a site claiming to have one but download was a rental with a substantial monthly fee. I have an older HP 2000 laptop/tablet with XP in a dual boot - that won't boot due to a missing driver but I can't get out to a guru shop to attempt repair - and an older Gateway. The challenge with any older hardware is finding one with enough processing power to scan thousands of slides taken over a 40 year period. I have a flatbed scanner, but individually loading 4 per scan and then processing the output is a monumental task I no longer have motivation for. SWharton, All the commercial services I have found would charge several thousand dollars for the volume I have. I may have to concede defeat and buy a new scanner. After all I did give up and retire 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drives (still have a few disks though) and my Zip drive.
  12. I have a Dell laptop with a 4k touch screen, but the colors are starting to wash out in part of the screen. I also have a new Plustek 7600 slide scanner that Plustek never chose to develop drivers for MS OS's beyond XP. Since I'm quarantined thru mid July (caregiver for wife in an Assisted Living joint) I have time to attack my 3,000 plus collection of 35mm slides. I have purchased a CD of XP Professional "For Refurbishing PC's". Can I do a clean install (now has Win 10. I've copied all the files I need) of XP. Win 10 is the only OS that has been on this laptop. One possible glitch could be that this laptop does not have a floppy or optical drive. I do have USB drives for both formats. Alternatively, can XP be installed on a USB thumb drive and used as a boot drive; or can I copy the DVD to a Thumb Drive and install from it? BTW, I replaced the Dell with an HP All-in-One with a 4k 32 inch screen. Fabulous! Except the included KB & mouse are chrome book grade and the allegedly 4 internal microphones are garbled. Both replaceable but shouldn't have to do that. Setting up a new PC reinforced why I hate Win 10's design to obsolete old software. Wish I wasn't too old to have the time to learn Linux.
  13. Seems I somehow have Microsoft Calendar on my laptop. Found that it does not enable access to data after 4-6 months. Fortunately it has synced with my Samsung Note8 and my 3 Samsung tablets, and the calendar data is available on them. However, I would like to ditch the Microsoft Calendar on the laptop and get a calendar for Windows 10 that keeps calendar history on the laptop and also syncs with the Samsung devices. The laptop holds my data and the Samsung devices are mostly readers. I may be able to get a Samsung calendar that works in Win 10; haven't researched that. Recommendations?
  14. For the last few months my Open Office Writer has been crashing when I get several document windows open. Sometimes instead of crashing it simply refuses to let me select a directory to save, or to "save as". It usually happens when I copy something from a network site, paste it into Open Office Writer and then try to save it. I have windows 10 and it's up to date. Time to find another Office clone package, hopefully free. Last copy of Office I purchased was 97.
  15. I received the QVC two 7" Fire tablets. Really glad they were "cheap". Amazon has severely handcuffed them. Won't even let you download a browser. Make you let them have access to read your email and contacts to activate Gmail. Note says you can change later, but they lie. 7 inch screen measures 6 1/2. Facebook presentation is erratic. Hoped to make the second tablet a Facebook reader for my wife who is tablet illiterate but looks unlikely. Screen keyboard primitive' both layout and function. In the era of screens to the edge this one has 3/4" border top add bottom, and 3/8" each side. Weighs more than my Samsung 8" S2. Was able to download Duck-Duck-Go and enter URL's in search box for clumsy browser. It does fit my hand well. Looks like it should do all things Amazon well. Maybe I'll be able to use it to learn the voice assistant and control something. Hope the 10" version is better.
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