Asus K73TA/A73T laptop - Win 10 installation issues: accept, fiddle, or go to 8.1?

[Sick Puppy]

Well thats brilliant Advise -- NOT.

Older AMD's and some makes /models can give more troubles than Intel, in fact got a Old AMD here, kept dropping a Graphic Driver so just disabled the AMD drivers and adjusted the update setting so it wouldn't download them again and run on the windows basics, cant really tell the difference. Cant complain as I was given the Laptop for free.

With older hardware you just have to fiddle sometimes to make it work with a newer OS as the manufactures only create / support drivers upto a certain point in time.

Being the age it is you don't want to go throwing money at it, the life expectancy of a laptop if you look it up is 5 years, so anything after that you are doing well, of course it all depends on several factors as to how long they last.

True, I didn't like the advice, plan on ignoring it, and smiled through gritted teeth as I paid for the 'service' - total waste of time and money IMO.

I have gotten a good run out of the laptop, 2013 and counting, and with no visible wear, it is in great nick (To be fair, it's kinda my fault lol - I have a bunch of old tech - Note 4, Note 10.1, a six year old laptop, and don't even ask me how many CD players I have!). Using the AMD chipset driver got me a much better start up time, (less than 30 seconds as opposed to 2-3 minutes), what has me scratching my head is the drivers for the second drive and optical drive - I mean, they are generic windows drivers anyway, and work across 7/8/10 right?

[Rod J]

Dare I say the "L" word here ... Linux to the rescue!

I'm running Manjaro Linux on two nine year old HP EliteBook laptops without problems. If you haven't any Linux experience Linux Mint might suit you better but many "newbies" cope well with Manjaro.

OK, I know Linux isn't for everyone, I still can't convince my brother to switch to Linux, but just sayin'.

[wainuitech]

what has me scratching my head is the drivers for the second drive and optical drive - I mean, they are generic windows drivers anyway, and work across 7/8/10 right?

Sometimes depending on make /Models you just cant upgrade any further than the manufactures make drivers for, others are just fine. I got one really old Laptop here, originally had XP on it, apart from the inbuilt dial up modem everything worked. Not exactly quick but worked.

@ Rod J -- Theres no problem "suggesting" like you did.

Dare I say the "L" word here ... Linux to the rescue!

I'm running Manjaro Linux on two nine year old HP EliteBook laptops without problems. If you haven't any Linux experience Linux Mint might suit you better but many "newbies" cope well with Manjaro.

OK, I know Linux isn't for everyone, I still can't convince my brother to switch to Linux, but just sayin'

Theres nothing wrong with using Linux. As much as our resident know all mate may think, many Techs who deal mainly with windows (myself included) use it all the time.

It may not be the main OS as you mentioned about your brother. its just what people want to use. Some may try it and like it others cant get rid of it fast enough and go back to what they are used to.

As again our resident know all mate has found out its NOT 100% perfect, and some things still wont work "Out the Box", sometimes its suck it ands see what happens and what suits the person best. Trying to force a change on anyone usually meets with some sort of resistance. Suggesting like you have is a much better option and way to go

[Rod J]

It may not be the main OS as you mentioned about your brother. its just what people want to use. Some may try it and like it others cant get rid of it fast enough and go back to what they are used to.

Yeah, you pretty much described my brother exactly. He's just so used to Windows and isn't really interested in Linux. Each to their own I guess. Unlike me, he's not a computer nerd.

[wainuitech]

Yeah, you pretty much described my brother exactly. He's just so used to Windows and isn't really interested in Linux. Each to their own I guess. Unlike me, he's not a computer nerd.

Thing is YOU know what you are talking about -Nuff Said.

So along those lines, where you mention Manjaro -- Theres 4 flavours / interfaces Which would you recommend if someone wanted to try it ??? Just like Mint, where theres 3. ( personally I like Xfce better)

[Rod J]

My favourite Desktop Environment for about 10 years now is KDE. Plasma 5 is the latest version of KDE. I've tried most Linux DE's but I've never liked any of them more than KDE. It's super configurable and can be made to look like just about anything you want it to. If you like to fiddle with how your DE looks you'd like it too.

You find with Linux people that they either love KDE and hate Gnome or vice versa. I personally don't like Gnome at all both in its appearance and its design philosophy. The Gnome devs are dead set on making it hard to customise and have said as much. The Gnome community have designed extensions to Gnome to try and customise it somewhat but just about every major Gnome update breaks these extensions more often than not.

Xfce I find too old fashioned in it's design and just weird to maintain. But, each to their own I guess.

I think KDE looks the most like Windows and at least superficially operates the same way out of the box (taskbar at the bottom of the screen and has a proper start menu). I use Icons-Only Task Manager on my panel (taskbar) which gives me icons very similar to Windows. KDE Plasma 5 is much lighter on resources than previous versions of KDE, not much more than Xfce uses and at least half what Gnome needs. Check the screenshot below.

I'd recommend Windows users to try KDE first if they want to try Linux. But I admit I am biased.

The reason I'm switching from Kubuntu to Manjaro is that Manjaro is a rolling release distro and always has the latest software. With Kubuntu I was always having to do a clean install every two to four years to keep current. I guess I'm just getting too old to bother with that now (I just turned 67). So far Manjaro (KDE version of course) has been surprisingly stable although there are a LOT of updates. It's not unusual to have over 1Gb updates every two weeks when the stable channel updates arrive. I'm glad I'm on fibre internet now!

[Rod J]

So along those lines, where you mention Manjaro -- Theres 4 flavours / interfaces

You had me scratching my head there for a while. There are actually three official versions (Desktop Editions) of Manjaro (Xfce, KDE and Gnome) the fourth one featured on the download page is actually a custom installer called "Architect". With Architect you can install the DE of your choice and only download the exact packages you want thereby creating a minimal operating system to your own specifications. But you have to know what you're doing to use it. Check them out here: https://manjaro.org/download/

There are a number of other DE's that aren't officially supported but have been created by the community: Awesome, Bspwm, Budgie, Cinnamon (Linux Mint's official DE), i3, LXDE, LXQt, Mate and Openbox. You can see these by clicking on the "Editions" button on the top of the page above.

We are certainly spoilt for choice in the Linux world which is both a blessing (something to suit everybody) and a curse (fragmented effort).

[wainuitech]

You had me scratching my head there for a while. There are actually three official versions (Desktop Editions) of Manjaro (Xfce, KDE and Gnome) the fourth one featured on the download page is actually a custom installer called "Architect".

Thanks for the unbiased reply. That's one of the big questions that gets asked what version ? As mentioned earlier if Windows doesn't work on the Ops Laptop then maybe Linux Would be an option. Again, as its been politely suggested maybe yes maybe no - up to each persons choice.

It's not unusual to have over 1Gb updates every two weeks when the stable channel updates arrive.

Don't tell our mate that, he'll flip out, doesn't like updates

[piroska]

True, I didn't like the advice, plan on ignoring it, and smiled through gritted teeth as I paid for the 'service' - total waste of time and money IMO.

Then why pay it?
I saw that a lot.

One business I did work for...had that GOW crowd out. Charged $250, didn't fix issue, didn't actually do anything other than poke about....said they were coming back to wipe PC and start over with new install.

I went along before that happened (he had no backups done) and found the problem wasn't PC at all but the modem.
I told him not to pay (imagine if he had got them back to wipe everything....) but he did.

[Sick Puppy]

Then why pay it?

Good question! I'd already paid upfront - sorry, I should have written that correctly - I signed for receipt of it at the end.

Tech has written it off, I can demand a revisit which will cost more, I know I'm not getting a refund.