Windows Archives - Page 15 of 20

Q&A: How do I decide which programs to install on a small SSD?

Posted on December 25, 2021

Question from Larry: I read your post explaining the advantages of installing an SSD a while back and I’ve wanted one ever since to go in my HP desktop PC.

I ended up buying a 120GB SSD (I got it for $20!) and installed it as the boot drive in my HP desktop computer. I left the 750GB hard drive in there for extra storage.

I installed Windows 10 from scratch on the SSD and now I’m ready to install my programs. The thing is with only 120GB of space on the SSD it won’t hold anywhere near all of my programs.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1 – Which programs should I install on the SSD and which ones should I leave on the hard drive?

2 – Should I leave the original Windows 10 files on the hard drive or is it safe to delete them to free up that space?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Does Linux need a bigger hard drive than Windows?

Posted on December 23, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Marla: I have an older HP laptop with Windows 7 that’s got really slow over the years.

I read your post about replacing Windows with Linux and since Windows 7 is no longer safe to use I’d really like to do that.

I don’t use this laptop for anything but Facebook so I believe it’ll work out just fine.

The thing is this laptop only has a 320GB hard drive in it. Is that enough space to hold Linux or will I need to replace the hard drive with a bigger one? [Read more…]

Q&A: Should I let Windows Update install ‘optional’ driver updates?

Posted on October 29, 2021

Question from William: Every time I check for new Windows Updates on my Windows 10 Lenovo laptop it tells me there are a couple of driver updates available as “optional” updates.

Should I go ahead and let Windows Update install those optional updates or should I just skip them?

I’ve been confused by this for a long time.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Which is better in a new PC, a hard drive or a much smaller SSD?

Posted on October 27, 2021

Question from Ellen: I need to purchase a new laptop. What are your thoughts on an SSD drive vs a regular hard drive?

Costco has two HP computers going on sale both with 12GB of memory. Both come with an Intel i5 CPU.

The difference between the two machines is the first one comes with a 512GB SSD and the other one comes with a 1TB hard drive.

They both are coming with Windows 11 (which I’m not thrilled about).

Which drive do you recommend? [Read more…]

Q&A: Why does Windows 10 use more RAM on my new PC than it did on my old one?

Posted on October 24, 2021

Question from Bill: I have an Acer desktop PC with 4 GB of RAM that I updated to Windows 10 back when the update was free.

When I have all the programs and browser tabs that I normally use open at the same time the Task Manager says there is approximately 1.2 GB of RAM not being used.

I recently bought a brand new Dell desktop with 8 GB of RAM and Windows 10.

When I have the same exact configuration of programs and browser tabs open on the new machine it says there is still less than 2 GB of RAM that’s not being used.

How can this be? [Read more…]