Question: How long does it take to install all “recommended” updates to a 2-year-old computer? Most obvious answer is 2 years, if you have a time machine.
We got our quarterly bonus last week. Normally I spend my bonuses on pistols, but didn’t see anything I wanted in my price range. So instead I found this Vizio Windows 7 Ultrabook on clearance in the store. The “ultrabook” was the PC world’s answer to the Macbook Air – powerful, light weight (well, somewhat) and thin, typically with a solid state disk and a metal case. (Hard to be really light with a metal case.) Looking at the inventory tags, this particular unit arrived in the store at the end of June in 2012 – two years ago. Original list price was $898, clearance was $440. Given that I tend to buy cheap computers, it is easily the fastest computer I own, has the most memory – though the 120 GB SSD is smaller than the hard drives of the other computers.
Of course, first thing it did was tell me Microsoft Security Essentials was 2 years out of date – imagine that. No interest in that anyway, I hooked it up to the network and downloaded a real security program. Then I tried to update Windows. Everything downloaded – eventually, took several hours – but when I rebooted it said it was unable to configure updates and was reverting. Tried that maybe a dozen times over the next several days, always the same result. Of course, I could always install an up-to-date OS (Mageia Linux) and be done with it, but I don’t give up that easily. Mind you, I don’t know where the Delorean is (or should that be “when”), so the other obvious answer is out. But I’ll try to work it out myself for a while before going for the alternative OS.
But for the record, this thing has a 14″ (diagonal) screen with a resolution of 1600×900 (not quite 1080p – 1920×1080 – but if you can’t see the individual dots then I don’t care), 1.8 GHz Intel Core i3-3217U processor (not completely sure what that means, but much faster than the Atom-based machines … seems to be quad core), 4 GB RAM, 7 hour battery life (claimed – not yet tested), 2 USB 3.0 ports. So I’ll keep it, even if I eventually switch it over to Linux.
Let me see … SQRT(16002+9002) = 1835.76, divided by 14 = 131.125 DPI – okay, not actually as HD as my netbook (140 DPI), but viewed at a comfortable distance both are quite good,
