Buying a new lap top

[Major Tom]

I'm buying a new lap top to replace my present one. I tried to upload all my present info to a 'cloud', but it did not complete the job.
The new lap tops I looked at are HP brand. They do not accept discs. So, I need info on how to set up a new lap top and getting all my present info loaded into it. Thank you for your suggestions.

[Allen]

I'm no help here but can share my experiences.

No Windows 11 laptop nor PC will play a dvd. Some PC's (tower) will load and play a disc but not the motion of it. In other words it would show still frames like text book info (no movies). Most if not all laptops now accept no disc.

I ran into similar problems as you. I bought and loaded all my info into a "memory stick" from my old Win 7 and tried to load it into my Win 11 as I'm suppose to be able. The new computer did N-O-T-H-I-N-G. A waste of time and I wasn't surprised at all.

In my case, and I'm not computer literate (I have a life), I sent every piece of info including my pictures (one by one) to my yahoo email then called it up on the new computer and saved or copied and pasted.

I briefly owned a Dell Win 11 touchscreen and lit keyboard laptop. I discovered that I could not drag and paste shortcuts to my screen like on a PC so I returned it and bought a Dell All-In-One, a PC with no tower. It's like a laptop on a stand. No clutter and it performs like a PC. Also a touchscreen.

Along the same time I bought a Chromebook. I love this little laptop and it's what the schools are using now instead of traditional books. It is touchscreen too (I do not and will not use a touch pad). You can install shortcut icons to your screen with no problem but you are limited to just 10 or so. Also, for some reason, Chromebooks have limited storage for pictures. Perhaps enough for most of us but for comparison the CB has 32gb storage vs my PC which has 1TB.

This was not the info you asked for but just a summery of what I discovered that may be ahead of you.

[Major Tom]

Thank you Allen

[Phloating Phlasher]

Thumb drives!
They run on USB ports!
I have a desktop & a laptop that won't talk to each other.
I have a thumb drive bigger than my total memory use, they're surprisingly cheap nowadays.
I copy (not backup) all my files to the drive & the reload it into the laptop to keep them both current.

[barretcreek]

Thumb drives!
They run on USB ports!
I have a desktop & a laptop that won't talk to each other.
I have a thumb drive bigger than my total memory use, they're surprisingly cheap nowadays.
I copy (not backup) all my files to the drive & the reload it into the laptop to keep them both current.

+1. Soon it will be time to take out the retirement account and it will be a totally separate system will copies on thumb drives.
Read up on 'how to make a faraday cage' for storing everything.

[lyman]

if you need a DVD or CD , you can buy a seperate drive that plugs in your USB port,

or buy a cheap used computer and us it for that,

[Allen]

if you need a DVD or CD , you can buy a seperate drive that plugs in your USB port,

or buy a cheap used computer and us it for that,

Yes you can. I looked into that though and they will not work on Win 11 (movies). They will work on all the previous Windows. They will play for text messages but not motion. I suppose this means you have to select the views by page or frame per frame manually.

Cheap, used computers with the older Win versions are plentiful on ebay.

[Phloating Phlasher]

thumb drive will work, no worries.

[Mark in Ottawa]

I just bought a new HP computer this week and when setting it up, the new computer offered to copy the apps from the previous computer. That computer is also an HP and when I pressed the button, the new computer copied everything from the older one, including all of the data. I think that the two computers have to be within a few feet of one another for that to work. In the absence of that option, I would get a large capacity flash drive and copy all the data onto it and then copy it from the flashdrive to the new computer. From experience, I know that this is a fairly slow process but it does give you a separate backup for your data

[Major Tom]

To: Mark in Ottawa: What is a good brand name flash drive to buy? Thanks

[Phloating Phlasher]

Check out the "Staples" in house brand! "NXT", they're economical & I've had nothing but good luck with them.
https://www.staples.com/nxt-technologies-usb-flash-drives/cat_CL142211/ojlbf

[Mark in Ottawa]

To: Mark in Ottawa: What is a good brand name flash drive to buy? Thanks

I have never had a problem with any flash drive that I have purchased irrespective of who made it. Probably the simplest approach is to visit Best Buy or Staples and purchase whatever brand that they sell since neither is likely to sell something that is sub-standard. The one thing to be careful of if you are going to use it as a means of transferring your files from an old to a new computer (and by good luck, also creating a back-up copy) is to ensure that the capacity is sufficient for your files. Obviously the greater the capacity, the greater the price but my experience suggests that it is worth the extra cost to be able to copy everything onto a single flash drive

[Phloating Phlasher]

^^^this.
Look up space used on your HDD on the old laptop, get the same, or preferably next size up in a flash drive.

[PWC]

My computer is 12 yrs old and is not supported for any updates. Yrs ago I bought a Terra Byte external hard drive and moved everything onto it except the operating system. When I open a file it moves from the xternal drive to the desktop. When I'm thru, I save back to the xternal drive.

If I get a new computer, the xternal drive will plug into a USB and I'll have my files and a billion bytes of storage (trillion is larger than a billion). I suppose when I save the file the computer will say do I want to save to the new updated format.

[JohnMOhio]

PWC, what do you do to back up your operating system? I ask since it is no longer being updated.

[PWC]

Never thought to do that. I could open a file "Operating System" on the external drive and copy all to there. If I copy, not move, I don't think the computer would look for it there in normal operation. Since nothing is updated, I would have the "most current" old stuff. Think I will, THANKS!

[Phloating Phlasher]

There should be an option to "create a rescue disc", try that.

[Former Cav]

hire a computer geek (not from best buy either) for about 60 bucks and hour. It'll save you a lot of grief and extra B S and equipment.