I bought an All-In-One PC for the kitchen as a new media player, the old laptop with a monitor on top of it and a wireless keyboard and mouse just wasn't up to the job any longer. (The laptop is ten years old, it has a habit of overheating and shutting down, shits itself with multiple Chrome tabs open, and is generally awful. Really painful to use. YouTube has to be watched at 480p as it can't handle 720p.)
Since I figured I needed the least fancy thing going I got one of the cheapest All-In-Ones Curry's had for delivery, £450 for this thing delivered - https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 8-pdt.html
Got it unboxed yesterday and set up by about 17:30, when I went to bed at midnight it was still doing Windows Updates.
First thing I had to uninstall was a limited time McAfee 'DEFENCE SUITE' which of course immediately wanted to start doing a full system scan and was bogging the thing down dreadfully. After that it was basically a case of trying to get Windows 10 through about a year's worth of updates including at least one major updgrade (Creator's Update, Fall Update or whatever the fuck they call them.) This fell on its arse more than once as updates conflicted with each other and required extra reboots it wasn't asking for.
Got up this morning and Windows had finally finished updating itself, so I then set about uninstalling all the other SHITE that HP pre-loaded it with. At idle after a reboot, it was sitting at 2.5GB RAM used and the CPU was constantly being utilised to a varying degree of 5-50%. (It's a low-power quad core AMD CPU, pretty much half an XBox One CPU in effect, so it doesn't have a massive amount of grunt.)
On top of that there were shitty games suites loaded that even had their own Windows Services associated with them, an awful media player, and all kinds of other bloatware crap that HP were clearly taking money for to infest their own hardware with.
(There were about 10 pieces of HP's own software to remove as well, absolutely none of which are required for the PC to work properly, and indeed it works BETTER once they're uninstalled.)
By the time I'd finished the idle RAM usage had dropped to 1.2GB, and the CPU would basically sit at 0% to 5% across all four cores.
For a final flourish it seems HP had put a shitty WLAN driver on there, which caused the wireless card to drop internet traffic periodically and then resume after a couple of minutes. I asked Windows to search for something better, it replaced it with an older driver that works perfectly.
Oh yes the keyboard and mouse are the cheapest, nastiest things ever which must have had a budget of about 35p allocated to them. I have reused the old wireless keyboard and mouse from the previous setup to get around that.
With all that done what I've actually been left with is a reasonably useable All-In-One PC, arguably a lot better than you'd expect for the money. But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
All that said, if you're comfortable with fettling the thing to a decent state, it's not a bad system for the cash. (Fans inside get quite noisy when it's under load though, so definitely not a quiet room PC.)
Since I figured I needed the least fancy thing going I got one of the cheapest All-In-Ones Curry's had for delivery, £450 for this thing delivered - https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 8-pdt.html
Got it unboxed yesterday and set up by about 17:30, when I went to bed at midnight it was still doing Windows Updates.
First thing I had to uninstall was a limited time McAfee 'DEFENCE SUITE' which of course immediately wanted to start doing a full system scan and was bogging the thing down dreadfully. After that it was basically a case of trying to get Windows 10 through about a year's worth of updates including at least one major updgrade (Creator's Update, Fall Update or whatever the fuck they call them.) This fell on its arse more than once as updates conflicted with each other and required extra reboots it wasn't asking for.
Got up this morning and Windows had finally finished updating itself, so I then set about uninstalling all the other SHITE that HP pre-loaded it with. At idle after a reboot, it was sitting at 2.5GB RAM used and the CPU was constantly being utilised to a varying degree of 5-50%. (It's a low-power quad core AMD CPU, pretty much half an XBox One CPU in effect, so it doesn't have a massive amount of grunt.)
On top of that there were shitty games suites loaded that even had their own Windows Services associated with them, an awful media player, and all kinds of other bloatware crap that HP were clearly taking money for to infest their own hardware with.
(There were about 10 pieces of HP's own software to remove as well, absolutely none of which are required for the PC to work properly, and indeed it works BETTER once they're uninstalled.)
By the time I'd finished the idle RAM usage had dropped to 1.2GB, and the CPU would basically sit at 0% to 5% across all four cores.
For a final flourish it seems HP had put a shitty WLAN driver on there, which caused the wireless card to drop internet traffic periodically and then resume after a couple of minutes. I asked Windows to search for something better, it replaced it with an older driver that works perfectly.
Oh yes the keyboard and mouse are the cheapest, nastiest things ever which must have had a budget of about 35p allocated to them. I have reused the old wireless keyboard and mouse from the previous setup to get around that.
With all that done what I've actually been left with is a reasonably useable All-In-One PC, arguably a lot better than you'd expect for the money. But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
All that said, if you're comfortable with fettling the thing to a decent state, it's not a bad system for the cash. (Fans inside get quite noisy when it's under load though, so definitely not a quiet room PC.)
Attachment:
bagofshit.JPG
Lonewolves wrote:
Any reason why I can't RDC into my desktop from my laptop? Both on Windows 10, I've tried PC name and IP address, checked that the host has RDC enabled, even disabled/re-enabled the firewall rules, but to no avail. I've rebooted both machines, nada. I've tried connecting with credentials and with no credentials, no dice. It's not working.
Any advice?
Any advice?
Open your nat.
Lonewolves wrote:
I was under the impression you had to pay for that. I have had some experience of using it before it was banned at my old place.
If you try and use it to connect to a server for example, it seems to detect that and starts showing banners prompting you to upgrade and then eventually it'll start limiting connection times and putting minimum reconnect times in, but as Grim says, you'll be fine for personal use.
Hearthly wrote:
But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
You'd have been better just pulling the Windows key off the thing then installing a fresh copy of the OS. It's probably actually quicker in the long run and at least guarantees no bullshit bloatware hanging around. It would also mean you'd have a much more up to date copy of the OS on the machine before running Windows Update for the first time.
Bamba wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
You'd have been better just pulling the Windows key off the thing then installing a fresh copy of the OS. It's probably actually quicker in the long run and at least guarantees no bullshit bloatware hanging around. It would also mean you'd have a much more up to date copy of the OS on the machine before running Windows Update for the first time.
Pretty much every OEM machine is similarly bloated these days. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way.
Grim... wrote:
No, it's free for personal use. It's handy to install on a parent's PC, too.
I am pointlessly posting this from my laptop outside while being connected to my desktop inside. Thank you.
DavPaz wrote:
Bamba wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
You'd have been better just pulling the Windows key off the thing then installing a fresh copy of the OS. It's probably actually quicker in the long run and at least guarantees no bullshit bloatware hanging around. It would also mean you'd have a much more up to date copy of the OS on the machine before running Windows Update for the first time.
Pretty much every OEM machine is similarly bloated these days. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way.
Does that still work with the OEM licence keys these days? Aren't they one install only etc...
DavPaz wrote:
Bamba wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
You'd have been better just pulling the Windows key off the thing then installing a fresh copy of the OS. It's probably actually quicker in the long run and at least guarantees no bullshit bloatware hanging around. It would also mean you'd have a much more up to date copy of the OS on the machine before running Windows Update for the first time.
Pretty much every OEM machine is similarly bloated these days. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way.
I bought a Dell box a month ago and it was surprisingly easy to purge the preinstalled shite.
Dells aren't so bad as they expect half of their customer base to be re imaging anyway.
HP are probably the worst.
HP are probably the worst.
Trooper wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
Bamba wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
But I feel very sorry for anyone who's trying to use one of the things 'as supplied' as I'd say it's scarcely fit for the purpose in its default state.
You'd have been better just pulling the Windows key off the thing then installing a fresh copy of the OS. It's probably actually quicker in the long run and at least guarantees no bullshit bloatware hanging around. It would also mean you'd have a much more up to date copy of the OS on the machine before running Windows Update for the first time.
Pretty much every OEM machine is similarly bloated these days. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way.
Does that still work with the OEM licence keys these days? Aren't they one install only etc...
Wait, as in you can literally only install Windows once? So if the hard drive on the machine dies (or for any other reason you want to reinstall Windows) then you're fucked? If that's legal it really shouldn't be.
DavPaz wrote:
HP are probably the worst.
Definitely the worst.
You should be able to reinstall as many times as you need to as long as the hardware doesn't change.
Listen to this guy DavPaz. He knows what he's talking about.
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Lonewolves wrote:
Listen to this guy DavPaz. He knows what he's talking about.
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Don't forget to wind your watch!
I'd concede that a full reinstall would arguably work out less hassle in the long run, but TBH I'm pretty content with where it's ended up. There were no non-MS services running at startup by the time I'd finished (there are now as I've installed things I want on there), and I'd basically uninstalled every last thing I didn't want.
As Trooper notes above, I'd have concerns about a clean install with an OEM licence key not working, I'm not familiar with how MS work all that stuff in the Windows 10 world.
Please do remember it's basically a kitchen media player, so it'll do YouTube duties, I've installed Spotify, I'll listen to things on iPlayer, and do some web browsing/posting whilst I'm down in the kitchen cooking or whatever. (It's got a modest 2:1 set of Logitech speakers attached to it, which again are recycled from the previous setup.)
I've installed the battle.net client and Hearthstone, and it runs Hearthstone nicely at Medium settings.
As Trooper notes above, I'd have concerns about a clean install with an OEM licence key not working, I'm not familiar with how MS work all that stuff in the Windows 10 world.
Please do remember it's basically a kitchen media player, so it'll do YouTube duties, I've installed Spotify, I'll listen to things on iPlayer, and do some web browsing/posting whilst I'm down in the kitchen cooking or whatever. (It's got a modest 2:1 set of Logitech speakers attached to it, which again are recycled from the previous setup.)
I've installed the battle.net client and Hearthstone, and it runs Hearthstone nicely at Medium settings.
Attachment:
hearthers.JPG
DavPaz wrote:
HP are probably the worst
It’s nice on chips.
COMPUTER CHIPS THAT IS.
*waits for applause*
*waits for applause*
Here all week?
Here, all weak.
Lonewolves wrote:
Listen to this guy DavPaz. He knows what he's talking about.
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Don't forget to wind your watch!
How do you know DavPaz's name?
My experience of other people's hp computers has led me to one conclusion : don't buy an hp computer. They're shit.
Hearthly wrote:
I've installed the battle.net client and Hearthstone, and it runs Hearthstone nicely at Medium settings.
isn't hearthstone a bloody card game? i'd expect it to run that on high settings!
Grim... wrote:
Lonewolves wrote:
Listen to this guy DavPaz. He knows what he's talking about.
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Don't forget to wind your watch!
How do you know DavPaz's name?
He told himself!
DavPaz wrote:
Grim... wrote:
Lonewolves wrote:
Listen to this guy DavPaz. He knows what he's talking about.
Don't forget to wind your watch!
Don't forget to wind your watch!
How do you know DavPaz's name?
He told himself!
Spooky eh! What if I were lying?
Mr Dave wrote:
My experience of other people's hp computers has led me to one conclusion : don't buy an hp computer. They're shit.
A whole computer including a 22 inch screen and Windows 10 for £450 though, that's value!
It just takes several hours of fucking about with it to make it not shit.
GazChap wrote:
isn't hearthstone a bloody card game? i'd expect it to run that on high settings!
It's a proper swizzy 3D card game though, with quite a lot of animations and effects and suchlike. I'm not saying it's mega-demanding or anything, but there's more heft required to get it smooth at high settings than you might imagine.
(The All-In-One doesn't overly like it at 1920x1080@HIGH, it gets a bit juddery, 1680x1050@MEDIUM seems to be the sweet spot. I know that's not something you'd necessarily think would be important in a card game, but in a really complex board state where you use most of your 90 seconds to think stuff through, when you finally come to execute the turn plan, you really want everything to go off smoothly and without a hitch.)
DavPaz wrote:
You should be able to reinstall as many times as you need to as long as the hardware doesn't change.
and after a bit of google it turns out you don't even need the licence key either, if it has been installed on the machine once already, you can wipe it and reinstall and "it just knows".
That's actually progress... of a sort.
Can't imagine I'd get a lot of time for card games in the kitchen.
Trooper wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
You should be able to reinstall as many times as you need to as long as the hardware doesn't change.
and after a bit of google it turns out you don't even need the licence key either, if it has been installed on the machine once already, you can wipe it and reinstall and "it just knows".
That's actually progress... of a sort.
Yeah, the combination of your hard drive, motherboard, GFX etc gets given a Microsoft identifier. As long as that combo stays the same, it doesn't trip the activation alarm.
Trooper wrote:
and after a bit of google it turns out you don't even need the licence key either, if it has been installed on the machine once already, you can wipe it and reinstall and "it just knows".
That's actually progress... of a sort.
That's actually progress... of a sort.
Useful to know, although on balance I'll leave the All-In-One as it is, if it gets troublesome in the future it's handy to know a clean install is there as an option - but TBH I'm happy with where it's at for now.
Lonewolves wrote:
Can't imagine I'd get a lot of time for card games in the kitchen.
I was more interested to see if it would run Hearthstone or not rather than actually wanting to be able to play it in the kitchen
I may crack the odd game off down there though, kind of like a sneaky wank in a shared bathroom. Got a HP Laptop recently and it wasn't that bad - even had to install a program that was meant to be on it to get the Pen to work properly. I'd heard a lot of bad things about HP and was expecting to have to reinstall Windows on it, but there was only 2 or 3 things I actually removed.
Hearthly wrote:
For a final flourish it seems HP had put a shitty WLAN driver on there, which caused the wireless card to drop internet traffic periodically and then resume after a couple of minutes. I asked Windows to search for something better, it replaced it with an older driver that works perfectly.
https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... 30#p947730
I have questions
I just went into Device Manager and told Windows to search for a new driver for the wireless NIC, it went off to Windows Update, found something it liked better, replaced the driver HP had provided, and the internet hasn't dropped since.
If you're not sure on any of that I can grab some screenshots when I get home.
If you're not sure on any of that I can grab some screenshots when I get home.
Thanks. I will look later.and then ask for help after I brick it.
Processing grunt is at a premium on the All-In-One PC, so one has to go with the browser that delivers the best experience, particularly in YouTube which is what it's doing most of the time when it's being used.
I was watching a game review video on YouTube before at 720p/60FPS, and Chrome seemed to be struggling with it. A quick look at Task Manager revealed why, with a few tabs open the CPU was spiking up at 90%+ utilisation across all four cores.
So I installed Firefox, and immediately noticed that the multi-tab experience was a lot smoother.
I then distilled it down to having just the same 720p/60FPS video running in a single tab in Chrome, then I closed Chrome and ran the same video through the same section in Firefox in a single tab, and repeated this a few times (with only Chrome or Firefox running at any given time), with no other applications open on the PC.
The results are consistent, Chrome always wants about 200-250% more CPU usage than Firefox to play the same 720p/60FPS video through the same two minute section.
Easy decision to make then, it's back to Firefox on the All-In-One PC. (Incidentally, I even use Firefox on my main PC for when I'm running loads of online slots simultaneously, as Firefox seems to cope really well whereas Chrome starts to struggle at a certain point.)
Remember when Chrome was the lightweight, nimble browser?.....
I was watching a game review video on YouTube before at 720p/60FPS, and Chrome seemed to be struggling with it. A quick look at Task Manager revealed why, with a few tabs open the CPU was spiking up at 90%+ utilisation across all four cores.
So I installed Firefox, and immediately noticed that the multi-tab experience was a lot smoother.
I then distilled it down to having just the same 720p/60FPS video running in a single tab in Chrome, then I closed Chrome and ran the same video through the same section in Firefox in a single tab, and repeated this a few times (with only Chrome or Firefox running at any given time), with no other applications open on the PC.
The results are consistent, Chrome always wants about 200-250% more CPU usage than Firefox to play the same 720p/60FPS video through the same two minute section.
Easy decision to make then, it's back to Firefox on the All-In-One PC. (Incidentally, I even use Firefox on my main PC for when I'm running loads of online slots simultaneously, as Firefox seems to cope really well whereas Chrome starts to struggle at a certain point.)
Remember when Chrome was the lightweight, nimble browser?.....
Attachment:
shitchrome2.JPG
That's eye opening! What about a side by side comparison using Edge as well... You never know, it might be even more efficient.
So, erm, that was unexpected......
This is repeatable and consistent, it's not a freak result.
Remember, this is the SAME two minute section of the SAME video at the SAME settings running in each browser independently with no other applications open on the PC.
There are peaks and troughs in each browser's CPU utilisation, but fundamentally Edge wants far less CPU than Firefox, and Firefox wants far less CPU than Chrome - and not by small margins either!
My initial observations are that Edge is better at offloading stuff to the GPU, (which is a real shit low-end thing in the All-In-One, but clearly better than leaving the CPU to do everything), but more testing will be required for that.
This is repeatable and consistent, it's not a freak result.
Remember, this is the SAME two minute section of the SAME video at the SAME settings running in each browser independently with no other applications open on the PC.
There are peaks and troughs in each browser's CPU utilisation, but fundamentally Edge wants far less CPU than Firefox, and Firefox wants far less CPU than Chrome - and not by small margins either!
My initial observations are that Edge is better at offloading stuff to the GPU, (which is a real shit low-end thing in the All-In-One, but clearly better than leaving the CPU to do everything), but more testing will be required for that.
Attachment:
edgerso.JPG
Edge is the most lightweight browser at the moment (as you've obviously noticed).
Amusingly YouTube is now nagging me on the All-In-One that I should consider using Chrome to watch videos as it's all fast and secure and lightweight and stuff.
I may actually make the switch wholesale to Edge, (not just on the All-In-One), those figures from the All-In-One are really quite startling.
When did Chrome go so shit then? I haven't really noticed it happening but I guess it's been a gradual process.
I may actually make the switch wholesale to Edge, (not just on the All-In-One), those figures from the All-In-One are really quite startling.
When did Chrome go so shit then? I haven't really noticed it happening but I guess it's been a gradual process.
I use Chrome but I really want to start using (and liking Edge). The only problem is that it's just a little different to what I'm used too and I don't have the time, or inclination, to dick about with stuff these days.
All my stuff's in Chrome. Bookmarks, passwords, all linked to my google account. Can't be bothered changing to a slightly more well optimised browser only to then have to kludge my way around all that lot.
markg wrote:
All my stuff's in Chrome. Bookmarks, passwords, all linked to my google account. Can't be bothered changing to a slightly more well optimised browser only to then have to kludge my way around all that lot.
You can import them into Edge from Chrome.
Grim... wrote:
You can import them into Edge from Chrome.
That didn't work so well for me, even though I told it to import everything. I think a lot of that stuff is in the Google Cloud Thingy now so isn't actually stored locally on your PC or something.
Either way Edge didn't have my logon credentials for any sites after the import process, although it did get my favourites and history and stuff. Like, it knew to autocomplete beex.... to the URL for this site, but didn't know my username and password.
Chrome was burying my HPStream netbook jobber so I switched to opera, which has worked a treat for the last year or so. I like it.
I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system. Because if you fail, you can cause serious damage to your computer.you can't even access your computer .the Windows 10 is extremely volatile
You have to find some way to break it just like this .
You have to find some way to break it just like this .
Nalser wrote:
I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system. Because if you fail, you can cause serious damage to your computer.you can't even access your computer .the Windows 10 is extremely volatile
You have to find some way to break it.
You have to find some way to break it.
Yeah! That's right. Those BBS are all abuzz about windows 10
DavPaz wrote:
Nalser wrote:
I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system. Because if you fail, you can cause serious damage to your computer.you can't even access your computer .the Windows 10 is extremely volatile
You have to find some way to break it.
You have to find some way to break it.
Yeah! That's right. Those BBS are all abuzz about windows 10
I dialled in especially!
DavPaz wrote:
Nalser wrote:
I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system.
Those BBS are all abuzz about windows 10
That’s BS!
Satsuma wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
Nalser wrote:
I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system.
Those BBS are all abuzz about windows 10
That’s BS!
No! It's B-BS!