Notebook Operating Systems

[Maybole]

Thank you all for your comments. I should clarify that my granddaughter is in Thailand but I am in Scotland. My granddaughter reports that she has looked at BigC, Tesco-Lotus and Macro so far and identified what she wants but it does not come with an OS installed. Having had another relative cheated by paying for a "genuine" Windows 8 Os to be installed on her laptop and finding out months later that she had a copy, I am wary of allowing sales staff to install any system, hence my son-in-law and my intention to do it ourselves.Linux Mint is the Os we are looking at, but we are still open to suggestions. I repeat, how easy is it to do your own installation?.

I am at present using Window 7 which came pre- installed on my laptop which I bought in Scotland. It work well but is unstable and clogs up with the many updates. It is not as good as Windows XP

Finally, I am very angered that some posters have used a request for information and advice to make vindictive personal attacks on each other.

[casualbiker]

Advice computer is a good computer retailers. https://www.advice.co.th/services/ecatalog/80#page/6

They also sell proper version of Windows if you want it.

[AyG]

I repeat, how easy is it to do your own installation?.

I am at present using Window 7 which came pre- installed on my laptop which I bought in Scotland. It work well but is unstable and clogs up with the many updates. It is not as good as Windows XP

How easy it is to do the installation varies from "trivial" in the case everything works OK to "nightmarish" if one or more devices isn't supported. I never did get my HP 1020 printer working with Ubuntu, and I was not alone in that. That's why I suggested trying Linux distributions from USB before doing a full install.

With Windows, my understanding is that everybody is pretty much being forced to upgrade to Windows 10, so no point installing a lower version.

[StefanBBK]

I take it you are all not too IT savvy. Windows 10 or I OS. Would likely be the best options. Just tell her to choose a Laptop that has Win 10 installed. Runs very well.

You will find something decent for about 15-20 k with pre-installed windows.

[Pib]

Installed Linux Mint onto a Lenovo laptop which was heaving with years of Windows 7 updates.. much better now.

Installed Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on a 2006 laptop last night...a Celeron CPU (1 core), 2GB RAM....used a spare 100GB hard drive I had..clean install. Took about 1.5 hours including the download time for all the updates, etc., which included updates for Firefox, LibreOffice....download time took a while for the updates....I have a good 15Mb internet connection. Before installing Linux Mint, the laptop was running Win 7 with a 240GB SSD....running Win 7 just fine for years.

Taking in account the HDD and SSD speed factor, the computer appears slower (or at least no faster) under Linux Mint compared to Win 7. And it locked up several times under Linux last night....have to hold down the power button for 10 seconds to get the laptop to turn off...but it would boot up again with no problem. But around 15 minutes later when surfing/exploring around in the Linux menus it would lock up.

I'll play with it more over the coming days...but my initial impression of Linux Mint due to the computer lockups is dimmed....maybe this particular Toshiba 2006 computer just has some BIOS issues with Linux....don't know....I'll play with it more.

[Chicog]

Thank you all for your comments. I should clarify that my granddaughter is in Thailand but I am in Scotland. My granddaughter reports that she has looked at BigC, Tesco-Lotus and Macro so far and identified what she wants but it does not come with an OS installed. Having had another relative cheated by paying for a "genuine" Windows 8 Os to be installed on her laptop and finding out months later that she had a copy, I am wary of allowing sales staff to install any system, hence my son-in-law and my intention to do it ourselves.Linux Mint is the Os we are looking at, but we are still open to suggestions. I repeat, how easy is it to do your own installation?.

I am at present using Window 7 which came pre- installed on my laptop which I bought in Scotland. It work well but is unstable and clogs up with the many updates. It is not as good as Windows XP

Finally, I am very angered that some posters have used a request for information and advice to make vindictive personal attacks on each other.

If you don't have a spare PC, you can always install VirtualBox, download the Mint disc image and boot it up in a virtual PC to see how the install works.

It's not completely idiot-proof but it's not massively difficult either.

[crabdog]

I'd suggest, as did someone above to buy a laptop with Windows 10 pre-installed and by that I mean NOT done by the guys in the store. As in when you buy the laptop is has Windows 10 on it already. This will by far be the safest bet in my opinion.

I still use Windows as my daily driver but have used lots of Linux distros and while they are good I don't think it would be the best option for a young student who isn't fairly computer savvy. While some distros work very well for the most part others are very problematic and frustrating. On top of that I'd expect a student to make frequent use of Microsoft Word and whilst Libre Office is a great program there are many formatting errors when opening the files in Windows, particularly if a document has tables or images in it.

[ukrules]

Laptops nearly always come with a genuine copy of windows, this is the mass produced laptops manufactured by Acer, Dell, etc. The ones you will see in a store at a reasonable price everywhere. It's pre loaded by the manufacturer.

That is no longer the case as more are coming with no-os or Linux pre-installed. Look at Invadeit.com and the number of notebooks in that category. http://www.invadeit.co.th/category/notebooks-laptops/no-os/

Even 2 years ago lower/mid end Asus machines and many others in JJB, Banana etc in Pattaya were being sold without OS as I had to purchase one extra.

This is an interesting development, it's been maybe 3 years since I last purchased a laptop.

It's amazing to see so many Linux offerings these days.

You can still get a laptop which comes with Windows though

One thing I will say is : Don't trust the people in the computer shop at all. Install windows yourself if you buy it from them, don't allow them to steal the activation key, that's all they need. I've purchased a few copies of Windows 7 Pro and they came in a plastic sealed DVD. I would only ever buy it from a larger retailer like JIB, Banana or one of the others.

[Pib]

Installed Linux Mint onto a Lenovo laptop which was heaving with years of Windows 7 updates.. much better now.

Installed Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on a 2006 laptop last night...a Celeron CPU (1 core), 2GB RAM....used a spare 100GB hard drive I had..clean install. Took about 1.5 hours including the download time for all the updates, etc., which included updates for Firefox, LibreOffice....download time took a while for the updates....I have a good 15Mb internet connection. Before installing Linux Mint, the laptop was running Win 7 with a 240GB SSD....running Win 7 just fine for years.

Taking in account the HDD and SSD speed factor, the computer appears slower (or at least no faster) under Linux Mint compared to Win 7. And it locked up several times under Linux last night....have to hold down the power button for 10 seconds to get the laptop to turn off...but it would boot up again with no problem. But around 15 minutes later when surfing/exploring around in the Linux menus it would lock up.

I'll play with it more over the coming days...but my initial impression of Linux Mint due to the computer lockups is dimmed....maybe this particular Toshiba 2006 computer just has some BIOS issues with Linux....don't know....I'll play with it more.

Played with Linux Mint for around two more hours today. The laptop locked up again a few times but seemed to only do that when I had an external monitor hooked up or on certain websites. I also discovered I had no sound on the laptop (didn't notice that last night) although the Device Manager says everything should be OK. Drivers are up to date according to the Device Manager checker...ran it two times again this morning. Browsing on the internet was much slower than under Windows...used Firefox while on Mint and Windows.

Swapped out the hard drive which had the Linux installed on it, reinstalled the hard drive having Win 7, and all is fine again...no lockups, have sound, can run two displays, browsing speed back to normal.

Maybe this latest and great Linux Mint just doesn't have the proper drivers for my old machine....a marriage not meant to be. I probably give Linux Ubuntu a try later on. So many different flavors/variations of Linux a person can try...makes Windows look super standardized.

[Chicog]

Plenty to choose from

http://distrowatch.com/

[Pib]

Installed Linux Mint onto a Lenovo laptop which was heaving with years of Windows 7 updates.. much better now.

Installed Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on a 2006 laptop last night...a Celeron CPU (1 core), 2GB RAM....used a spare 100GB hard drive I had..clean install. Took about 1.5 hours including the download time for all the updates, etc., which included updates for Firefox, LibreOffice....download time took a while for the updates....I have a good 15Mb internet connection. Before installing Linux Mint, the laptop was running Win 7 with a 240GB SSD....running Win 7 just fine for years.

Taking in account the HDD and SSD speed factor, the computer appears slower (or at least no faster) under Linux Mint compared to Win 7. And it locked up several times under Linux last night....have to hold down the power button for 10 seconds to get the laptop to turn off...but it would boot up again with no problem. But around 15 minutes later when surfing/exploring around in the Linux menus it would lock up.

I'll play with it more over the coming days...but my initial impression of Linux Mint due to the computer lockups is dimmed....maybe this particular Toshiba 2006 computer just has some BIOS issues with Linux....don't know....I'll play with it more.

Played with Linux Mint for around two more hours today. The laptop locked up again a few times but seemed to only do that when I had an external monitor hooked up or on certain websites. I also discovered I had no sound on the laptop (didn't notice that last night) although the Device Manager says everything should be OK. Drivers are up to date according to the Device Manager checker...ran it two times again this morning. Browsing on the internet was much slower than under Windows...used Firefox while on Mint and Windows.

Swapped out the hard drive which had the Linux installed on it, reinstalled the hard drive having Win 7, and all is fine again...no lockups, have sound, can run two displays, browsing speed back to normal.

Maybe this latest and great Linux Mint just doesn't have the proper drivers for my old machine....a marriage not meant to be. I probably give Linux Ubuntu a try later on. So many different flavors/variations of Linux a person can try...makes Windows look super standardized.

Installed Linux Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS on my 2006 laptop. Installed much faster than Linix Mint and now my dual display and audio work...and no computer lockups after playing with it for about one hour. With Mint I was lucky to get 15 minutes of playing around before it would lockup. But Firefox browsing is very, very slow...puts you to sleep slow. Firefox browsing under Mint was still slow but much faster than on Ubuntu. And Firefox is very significantly faster on this computer when its running Windows. But I did like the Mint desktop environment better than the Ubuntu desktop environment.

I installed Ubuntu on the same hard drive I put Mint on and did a clean install....no dual system with Mint still on the drive. I initially tried to install the Ubuntu on another hard drive (a Hitachi 100GB drive) but it wouldn't install...when it got to the point of creating partitions for the install it would error out...tried three times. So then I tried the 40GB drive I had put Mint on, did a clean install, no problem in creating partitions and continuing on with the install. Just something about that 100GB drive Ubuntu didn't like but Mint had no problem with. And that 100GB drive Ubuntu could not deal with, I just finished reformatting it to NTFS in an external enclosure on my main Windows 10 computer...formatted fine...the drive is working fine under Windows. Yeap, apparently that 100GB drive (around 10 years old) was just not compatible with Ubuntu while being compatible with Mint and Windows.

I've now lost my Linux cherry....tried two different Linux versions, the #1 & #3 most popular, on this 10 year old laptop and so far I'm not impressed. Windows 7 works fine on the laptop and works much faster than Linux "on this particular" machine. However, I'm sure most other, newer machines and Linux probably get along fine and the users' experience are much more favorable.

So, for now I won't be joining the 1.7% of the desktop/laptop market share users that use Linux other than tinkering with it some more...I'll be sticking with Windows. However, I'm an Android man so I'll still be using mobile Linux versions on my smartphones and tablets.

[Pib]

Plenty to choose from

http://distrowatch.com/

So, so many versions....everyone trying to be the next Bill Gates. Like I mentioned earlier, makes the few Windows versions look standardized.

[AyG]

Plenty to choose from

http://distrowatch.com/

So, so many versions....everyone trying to be the next Bill Gates. Like I mentioned earlier, makes the few Windows versions look standardized.

Stupid comment. The various Linux versions cater for different niches, and certainly very few of them make anyone as rich as Croesus or Bill Gates. Microsoft Windows, however, forces people to work its way, regardless of whether it's good or bad for them.

[Pib]

Happy for the niches in the world.

[Tywais]

I've now lost my Linux cherry....tried two different Linux versions, the #1 & #3 most popular, on this 10 year old laptop and so far I'm not impressed. Windows 7 works fine on the laptop and works much faster than Linux "on this particular" machine. However, I'm sure most other, newer machines and Linux probably get along fine and the users' experience are much more favorable.

So, for now I won't be joining the 1.7% of the desktop/laptop market share users that use Linux other than tinkering with it some more...I'll be sticking with Windows. However, I'm an Android man so I'll still be using mobile Linux versions on my smartphones and tablets.

My favorite distribution for desktop use is openSUSE if you would like to give another one a go. I use Slackware for my servers but not as user friendly as openSUSE as it is a server environment.

[Pib]

I'll keep that in mind. I saw that openSUSE were one of the more used Linux flavors. Might try it on that 100GB drive that Mint and Windows is OK with but Ubuntu is not.

[JaseTheBass]

A genuine copy of Windows 10 from eBay for 800b and Office 365 for $99 a year (for 5 PCs). All legit, good value and easy to install.