New Computer, Advice Please

[RobertOZ]

My desktop PC is now 7 years old, still running perfectly but at an age where problems will start and repairs not worth undertaking, in the 7 years have only ever had to replace the CPU fan (about $20)
So I am looking at purchasing a laptop to act as a backup replacement unit when the PC does fail. As price is always a factor I am looking at a Dell Inspiron 15 7th Gen i5 with 8 Gb memory (expandable) Nvidia GTX1050Ti card with 4 Gb GDDR5
My issue is the hard drive, it's only has a 256 GB SSD drive, meaning it will be necessary to store as much as possible on external portable drives, which I do at the moment, but I still have over 400 GB of used space on the PC, have checked over and over to locate what is using all that space to no avail.

So what should be stored on external drives, I read that many users do not use C: drive to install programs but use other drives, are these portable drives or partitioned drives within the PC.I don't have an issue with purchasing 2 TB external USB3 portable drives but what should I look at storing on them to reduce the amount of SSD usage

[Terfyn]

Go to Corel's web site, print off the minimum spec, go to your dealer and ask for a better spec'd machine.

I would never go down the laptop route. A tower system can be expanded at any time and will support more external peripherals. I use two screens, one for the library and timelines and the other for a full screen preview. This second screen is a major benefit while editing.

[Davidk]

Hi Robert,
I'd focus on several things:
- a high clock rate: multi-threading in hardware has improved throughput/speed, but over the last 20 years, the dominant factor in high performance has been a high clock rate.
- multi-core Cpu's; the OS's have learned to adapt to these and running the OS's in one cpu and apps in others does improved things. Most obvious when doing something repetitive like AV scanning your PC
- lots and lots of RAM, which means a 64bit processor. More RAM on the hi-speed RAM bus means less need to use the disk drive HDD or SSD. Note that an SSD is simply a bunch of memory chips behind a standard HDD interface eg SATA 3 or 6. It ought to be much more reliable than conventional rotating devices - but it comes at a cost and the lifetime of a normal HDD is now so long/reliability so good that the cost of SSD isn't really worth it . . yet.
- the best internal graphics card that comes with the foregoing. Unless you are really into HD games, the current generation of integral graphics chips in laptops are more than enough for most purposes.
- focus on internal hard drives. Attaching external ones work fine, and it gives you a flexibility option, but the interface really slows things down: even usb3 isn't as fast as the internal data bus. I would suggest at least 1Tb, and learn how to logically partition it to manage data and non-OS applications. Several tools enable this, and if you don't have any previous skills in this space, look at Acronis Disk Director 12. This image for my May 2017 backup is of my class laptop - 1 internal HDD partitioned for the OS apps and data.

- An SSD may or may not help things. I've read several post on a number of boards - including this one - where SSD has caused issues with apps, especially windows 10 using an SSD.
- make sure you get a laptop with an 802.11a wifi capacity - it's about 10x faster than 802.11b/g.
- if you think you may need to connect to a larger screen, an HDMI port is a must.

[lata]

Hi

but I still have over 400 GB of used space on the PC, have checked over and over to locate what is using all that space to no avail.

Robert I found this free tool quite useful when viewing drive folders as it shows the sizes without having to open folders.
Don’t think I had any issues installing, extra bits etc. which we tend to get with free stuff.

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

[lata]

Robert

Revo Uninstaller has a free version, it will scan pc for Junk files, seems to work very well, although care should be taken when deleting any thing from the pc.
It found my Smart Proxy files, (.upx) so would have deleted those, not that that would be a problem.
You can instruct the scan to ignore certain types.

[asik1]

Trevor,
Since I moved to 7/64 the free revo isn't that good. it fail to see installations, so I use it with CCleaner.
and treesize is my most important houseclean tool for years as I mentioned here in the past.
Regarding the CPU... well since my new i5-6600 I don't see any jump in rendering speed as far as X9.2
Most my projects still render about the same as my old i5-2400. real-time play.
If Robert still indeed have all those VS versions onboard he duplicates few gigs just there.
By removing languages you can clear ~200mb of each VS, and why to duple the content?
Scorefitter alone is ~560Mb ,

**Since April I'm running VS without the content package, only NB stuff , vitascene & boris. and few of my tweaks.
I plan to install X7 on D: , there I'll install the content and import it to X9 libraries.

*** I don't use Office but portable LibreOffice and it can be anywhere.

[aljimenez]

My recommendation is that if your desire is to get a laptop that lasts a long time, you need to get one that is as high end as posible: largest memory, highest performance, largest hard drive.

I don't buy that SSD's are to be avoided. My laptop is the highest end Dell 13" with 500GB SSD running Win 10 with a very high res display. It performs well, except for VS bug handling high res displays keeping me from using X10 regularly.

My additional desire was to get a portable laptop that travels with me, thus the 13" display size.

[TonyP]

except for VS bug handling high res displays keeping me from using X10 regularly.

Curious as to what resolution is the high res display? I'm using a 4K display with no problems so far. Am I missing something?

[aljimenez]

Well, I wish I were missing what you are missing; namely I wish for an absence of tiny menus that are unreadable. My 13" display has 3200 x 1800 resolution.

[TonyP]

Well, while the text is a little smaller as opposed to my 24" 1920x1080, there are some other problems like using NBFX Titler. Text cropping in various menus is one, even when displayed full screen.
Seems like there is some more work that needs to be done .....
I can only imagine the size of text on your screen.

[aljimenez]

Seems like there is some more work that needs to be done .....
I can only imagine the size of text on your screen.

Yes but of all my programs, only VS has the tiny menu problem.