Laptop or Tablet computer -- I need a new one.

Although I don't do gaming or spread sheet/math calculations I have a fairly new Dell Laptop and two refurbished laptops that I have used for years without any problems. A Windows 10, 8.1, 7 and even an old Acer with windows vista that I upgraded successfully to Windows 10 works near perfect as with the others. I use the old ones more than my new to me dell for heavy surfing and movie streaming, heavy photo uploading and downloading and word processing and emailing. Cheap to me and so far so good.

coolmom42 wrote:


The Microsoft Surface line is MADE by Microsoft and runs Windows 10. I do NOT recommend Pro. It has a lot of features for working on networks, which you will not. Home is fine.

HP & Dell products come with all manner of bloatware that will need to be removed.

No operating system is going to mine your personal data stored on the device. What they are interested in is the function and usage of the operating system and any proprietary apps.

I come from a company that is deeply rooted in building high tech "healthcare" products using PCs which are "embedded" inside the products. Been at that company for 22yrs, have been responsible for well over 100,000 PCs including servers in the field. Unfortunately due to Non Disclosure Agreement, I am not allowed or at liberty to reveal any more details.

This company takes security of potential PHI leaking out that ALL company PCs hard drives are fully encrypted, only the user assigned to that PC is able to log in.. ALL external devices like USB flash drives and hard drives MUST also be fully encrypted, only the user that allowed the drive to be encrypted can access that drive..

Everything you have said is completely wrong when it comes to PROTECTING YOUR INFORMATION.

Surface may be a "creation" of MS, but it doesn't mean your information on it, used by it is 100% secure. Take away the Internet Cloud from it and it becomes pretty much a useless dumb terminal which means most of it's time to be useful it needs that online connection and that connection is not all that secure.

The OP IS talking of having folks SS AND drivers licenses, would YOU like the fact that YOUR SS AND DL information is floating around a UNSECURE PUBLIC INTERNET LOCATION?

I certainly would not.

I guess you are fine by that, may as well save that hackers time and energy and post your information out in the open?

Data breaches are REAL, data breaches happen all the time and when you have your own personally identifying information spread out over hundreds of thousands of servers to which some may or may not be "patched" and "secured" as well as other, wouldn't that make YOU mad?

OP has a responsibility to those that have entrusted him/her with that information to ensure their information does not become just another data breach.

"Pro" has ENHANCEMENTS and FEATURES which actually HELP with security, you gain security with the fact that you get those features built in. Allows you to customize the PC deeper than Home users are allowed. That customization does include some "networking" stuff, but that stuff IS CRITICAL FOR SECURITY REASONS.

You get Regedit, Group policies and much more. With Regedit, you CAN fix things that cannot be fixed in Home versions, you do not have to directly run Regedit, there are many fixit utilities that NEED regedit in order to fix issues in the registry.. No regedit and those fixits can't work.

Group policies can allow you to granularly set specific permissions and user access rights beyond the basic controls given in Home versions.

And by the way, "Pro" LOOKS AND FEELS just like "home" and "Pro" does not impact, change. or restrict any of your computing experience.

And it typically only costs $50 as an upgrade over the factory "Home" version but it unlocks a lot of SECURITY FEATURES.

One real cool feature is "Pro" version you now can access MS Virtual machines. This opens up the world to you by setting up completely sandboxed virtual PCs. If your virtual PC gets hacked, malware, virus, ransomware, you simply can DELETE the damaged VM file and drop a backup VM file back on to the PC and you are back in business..

You can create a separate HOME and Business VM PC files and then you can control what access and how it is accessed..

Can't do that in "home" versions.

"Home" versions have stripped down and dummied the OS to the point it barely functions, it was done this way for several reasons, MS wants the "Home" users to be their first line "guinea pigs" when it comes to updates and features, they get the messed up "updates" FIRST.

"Pro" version allows you to "deffer" updates up to 365 days which allows time for MS to recall and fix their garbage updates. A very important item since MS has a pretty bad history of badly botched updates..

Some of those include complete non booting boot loops, BSOD, how about the one real cool update that REMOVED ALL USB DRIVERS! That one unless you PC had the old PS/2 Keyboard port you could never recover the OS and was forced to reload your PC back from Factory image..

Another great on was the one that blew up the Wifi radio card drivers, you were forced offline with no hope to ever get it back on unless you had a wired Ethernet port or a USB to Ethernet adapter..

Advanced features, sure, but for $50 (Dell upcharges only $50 for the "Pro" version") it is a bargain to gain much more than being restricted to MS Home versions.

I have been exclusively using "PRO" ONLY versions from XP and up and in fact, the PC I am typing this on is XP PRO..

"PRO" IS what you want, Home is not, even for "Home" usage you might find yourself in a better place having a few extra features enabled.

I find I can recover folks PCs easier with "Pro" versions than the more feature restricted "Home" versions since the TOOLS are there..

I no longer will work on folks PCs on the side that have "Home" versions, telling them it is much faster to simply RELOAD the PC from the factory recovery option than it is to try to pick out the problems with no TOOLS.

And a final word to the OP, no matter what version you pick, BACK THE THING UP!

Make BACKUP IMAGES of the PC, BACK IT UP REGULARLY.

Macrium Reflect has a free version of their imaging software, external HDs are cheap (1 TB drives run about $50).. There are also some other free imaging software out there that work well.

Backups are your only defense and hope when MS laubs a bomb update that blows up your PC, be prepared before it happens.

I would recommend TENFORUMS for all things Windows 10..

Gdetrailer wrote:

TenOC wrote:
I have always stored my data on my home desktop or laptop computer. I do not trust cloud storage. I think it is a plan to get one hooked on the cloud and then "free" become expensive monthly charge or like PhotoBucket you find they have change and your data is not what you thought it was.

My son on the other hand has a Chromebook which does not have a hard drive and all his data is on the cloud. He loves his Chromebook. I can see the advantage of the lightweight Chromebook while traveling.

I mostly use MS Office and some of my Access data is very sensitive with driver license number and social security numbers of about 40 people in the database.

I do not need to share the data with anyone else and I do not use a smartphone. My phone is an old fashioned flip phone.

Your thoughts on a new computer are welcome.

What is a good tablet to run MS Office?

I know others have obviously missed the part I bolded..

BUT, if you are holding very sensitive data like SS numbers and drives licenses, you have a lot of responsibility to PROTECT that information from potential data breaches. In the Healthcare settings that is known as PHI and personal identifiable information..

That data can identify or allow others to use or assume someones identity. While that data can be "hosted" online via cloud companies that do so must take great care in selecting PAID vendors for this.. Not really a job for a freebee cloud host.

Personally you should avoid the typical Chromebook, Android, Ios, Surface devices for this job..

If you want a Tablet device also, I would suggest the "2 in 1" Laptop/tablet, the screen is double hinged to allow you to fold the screen back over the bottom of the laptop.. Keyboard now becomes the bottom of the unit and you have full screen tablet. Win10 can switch to Tablet mode if you want but you can also use Windows in PC mode and use the software screen keyboard.

A real Laptop with well secured Windows is the better choice for the job. I would avoid the MS Office 365 thing and if you have your current MS Office license key, you can transfer your copy of Office to your new PC.. I know Office 2007 and up will install on Win10, not sure about Office 2003 or older since I haven't tried that.

If you can't locate the physical office license key, there are freebee license key finders you can download that will search and extract the key from the Windows Registry file which is where the key is stored.

As far as Win10 mining data, well, that too can be trimmed back, a utility called O&OShutUp10 allows to par back the data MS is allowed to mine from your usage of the OS.

If you hold information that can be used to identify or steal someones identity it is your responsibility to keep it private as possible and letting it randomly fling around on the wobbly web cloud isn't a good idea.

I would also HIGHLY recommend paying a little extra to get Win10 PRO, do not get the "Home version", Pro has additional hidden features over the Home version and allows you the options of better control of the OS.. You will most likely HAVE to order a laptop to get Pro, not normally sold in retail stores.

You can custom order laptops directly from Dell's website.. I have dealt with HP and Dell laptops and to me, Dell is a lot friendlier in the hardware support mode than HP..

The Microsoft Surface line is MADE by Microsoft and runs Windows 10. I do NOT recommend Pro. It has a lot of features for working on networks, which you will not. Home is fine.

HP & Dell products come with all manner of bloatware that will need to be removed.

No operating system is going to mine your personal data stored on the device. What they are interested in is the function and usage of the operating system and any proprietary apps.

TenOC wrote:
I have always stored my data on my home desktop or laptop computer. I do not trust cloud storage. I think it is a plan to get one hooked on the cloud and then "free" become expensive monthly charge or like PhotoBucket you find they have change and your data is not what you thought it was.

My son on the other hand has a Chromebook which does not have a hard drive and all his data is on the cloud. He loves his Chromebook. I can see the advantage of the lightweight Chromebook while traveling.

I mostly use MS Office and some of my Access data is very sensitive with driver license number and social security numbers of about 40 people in the database.

I do not need to share the data with anyone else and I do not use a smartphone. My phone is an old fashioned flip phone.

Your thoughts on a new computer are welcome.

What is a good tablet to run MS Office?

I know others have obviously missed the part I bolded..

BUT, if you are holding very sensitive data like SS numbers and drives licenses, you have a lot of responsibility to PROTECT that information from potential data breaches. In the Healthcare settings that is known as PHI and personal identifiable information..

That data can identify or allow others to use or assume someones identity. While that data can be "hosted" online via cloud companies that do so must take great care in selecting PAID vendors for this.. Not really a job for a freebee cloud host.

Personally you should avoid the typical Chromebook, Android, Ios, Surface devices for this job..

If you want a Tablet device also, I would suggest the "2 in 1" Laptop/tablet, the screen is double hinged to allow you to fold the screen back over the bottom of the laptop.. Keyboard now becomes the bottom of the unit and you have full screen tablet. Win10 can switch to Tablet mode if you want but you can also use Windows in PC mode and use the software screen keyboard.

A real Laptop with well secured Windows is the better choice for the job. I would avoid the MS Office 365 thing and if you have your current MS Office license key, you can transfer your copy of Office to your new PC.. I know Office 2007 and up will install on Win10, not sure about Office 2003 or older since I haven't tried that.

If you can't locate the physical office license key, there are freebee license key finders you can download that will search and extract the key from the Windows Registry file which is where the key is stored.

As far as Win10 mining data, well, that too can be trimmed back, a utility called O&OShutUp10 allows to par back the data MS is allowed to mine from your usage of the OS.

If you hold information that can be used to identify or steal someones identity it is your responsibility to keep it private as possible and letting it randomly fling around on the wobbly web cloud isn't a good idea.

I would also HIGHLY recommend paying a little extra to get Win10 PRO, do not get the "Home version", Pro has additional hidden features over the Home version and allows you the options of better control of the OS.. You will most likely HAVE to order a laptop to get Pro, not normally sold in retail stores.

You can custom order laptops directly from Dell's website.. I have dealt with HP and Dell laptops and to me, Dell is a lot friendlier in the hardware support mode than HP..

AsheGuy wrote:

TenOC wrote:
I have always stored my data on my home desktop or laptop computer. I do not trust cloud storage. I think it is a plan to get one hooked on the cloud and then "free" become expensive monthly charge or like PhotoBucket you find they have change and your data is not what you thought it was.

I have been using Google Cloud storage since it was first offered and I don't have either concern (security or cost). I think you underestimate the motivation for a company to protect its reputation. You might be interested in Google Cloud Security

Cloud storage has so many advantages that being hooked is the usual outcome, but for good reason.

You are way underestimating the "value" of your own personal data.

Your data and usage is the new modern day "gold rush" and YOU AND YOUR DATA are the "product".

Companies like Google and MS and so on VALUE your data, which is why they bend over backwards to give you such "freebees" like "cloud storage".

It COSTS them money to host all that data, it does not come free.

In exchange for the use of these online "services" you HAVE unwittingly agreed to allow them to not only track your movements but you have allowed them the ability to have unfettered access to your personal data.

Not sure how you think they pay for this, but the end game is they take to data that you have freely offered to them and they ARE using it to build MORE ways to get more of your data and/or SELLING your data to OTHER "parties".

READ the TOS, that information IS there.

I keep my sensitive data at home and only what I feel that could/should have unfettered public access is hosted on online storage.

Data breaches are also common everyday issues now, you practically never hear about them since they are so common.. Why make it easier to the bad guys than it is needed let alone give others full access?

Ductape wrote:
For a decent MS experience in a tablet, the Microsoft Surface line is the way to go.

I have similar requirements and decided to stay with the laptop form factor. Got a good deal on an HP at Costco. Has a really good IPS touchscreen too. There are so many good choices in laptops now it's hard to choose.

I second the Microsoft Surface. Solid state drive and super fast to boot up.

The downside is that there is not a huge amount of hard drive storage. You can get around that by using an external hard drive, along with a couple of backups. That keeps it local to you, but also securely backed up.

I find the Surface keyboard very good to use. The touch response makes it easy to type fast. But if you want a numeric keypad, or bigger keyboard, you can get an inexpensive Bluetooth add-on keyboard. You can then use the Surface display propped up on its stand and a keyboard in a convenient location.

MrWizard wrote:
I have a 17" HP laptop, and a 10" Android tablet
I spend my morning forum reading sc some YouTube, in the my tablet
But my serious computing is done with the laptop
I have nothing on the cloud but a few recent pictures from my phone

Same here but I have an iPad.
Nothing serious on the cloud.

There is a 14" Asus Vivo @ New Egg right now for a real good price.

TenOC wrote:
I have always stored my data on my home desktop or laptop computer. I do not trust cloud storage. I think it is a plan to get one hooked on the cloud and then "free" become expensive monthly charge or like PhotoBucket you find they have change and your data is not what you thought it was.

My son on the other hand has a Chromebook which does not have a hard drive and all his data is on the cloud. He loves his Chromebook. I can see the advantage of the lightweight Chromebook while traveling.

I mostly use MS Office and some of my Access data is very sensitive with driver license number and social security numbers of about 40 people in the database.

I do not need to share the data with anyone else and I do not use a smartphone. My phone is an old fashioned flip phone.

Your thoughts on a new computer are welcome.

What is a good tablet to run MS Office?

Hi! I have often encountered a similar problem. First, after going through a lot, I can advise you to buy an external hard drive instead of the cloud. When I first started doing photography and illustrations, I always did not have enough space in the cloud, I often used Google Photos, as a result of which I had enough memory for only a few days, which made it very difficult to work calmly. As for the tablet, it depends entirely on your requirements. I recently replaced the equipment for work and bought a small tablet from here https://www.worldoftablet.com/best-8-inch-tablets, to take with you all the time, very happy with my purchase. The site has a large selection of tablets, can you choose something:))

I need a keyboard so laptops is a good choice. I am now using an Asus P5 CPU and don't remember the rest of the specs. I have it hooked to a 24" monitor so I have two screens. The Asus was less than $500. Related, I recently bought two Lenovo notebooks at Best Buy for the Wife and Son, open box items at less than $250 for both.

If you need the functionality of a notebook/laptop, I'd suggest to browse the Big Box stores in person and see what's on the shelf. Most have good specs and will operate MS office without a hiccup. Good luck on your choice!