The lonely tech post thread.

[two sheds]

traditional round here is to take them down the valley over the back and set fire to them mind you that's not happened for a few years I don't think.

But I never know but I might need special format Philips tape deck leads again

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Fucking Microsoft shut my developer's tenancy. I knew they'd stopped doing new ones, but hoped I hang to my old one as I wasn't abusing it and was using it for study. I'll get through the exam I'm working towards without it, but it makes it much better to learn to test things rather then just reading. I can use the products at work, but I can't just set up Intune enrolment policies or Conditional Access in a production environment.

It's frustrating as I thought it was one of the better things about them. Their exams are reasonably priced compared to other vendors, and you can set up their operating systems for testing without too much hassle. Combined with access to their enterprise level 365 stuff free of charge, it seemed my upskilling was a win win for me and them. Their suggestion now is I buy a single licence (I had 25 to play with before), but at 50 quid a month on an annual plan, the words fuck that come to mind.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

 

[PTK]

I want to buy a desktop computer, and I would be grateful if someone would recommend one.

My primary concern is to do word processing, with some drawing of diagrams, and perhaps a little spreadsheeting.

Is it possible these days to have Microsoft Office or its equivalent actually on the hard drive of a computer? I have an antipathy to “cloud computing”.​

 

[Chz]

I want to buy a desktop computer, and I would be grateful if someone would recommend one.

My primary concern is to do word processing, with some drawing of diagrams, and perhaps a little spreadsheeting.

Is it possible these days to have Microsoft Office or its equivalent actually on the hard drive of a computer? I have an antipathy to “cloud computing”.​

Used is probably best for light usage like that.
Not bad for £230: Dell OptiPlex 5070 MFF ("best performance" option)

If you want new, I'd rate the value of this one at £349: | Dell UK

Office can still be had as a one-time purchase, yes.

 

[xenon]

It may also be worth just signing up to Office 365 as a subscription so you always get updates and One Drive cloud storage. I did that earlier this year. Have installed Office on my laptop, I hate web apps. It's about 55 quid a year IIRC.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I want to buy a desktop computer, and I would be grateful if someone would recommend one.

My primary concern is to do word processing, with some drawing of diagrams, and perhaps a little spreadsheeting.

Is it possible these days to have Microsoft Office or its equivalent actually on the hard drive of a computer? I have an antipathy to “cloud computing”.​

I'd also recommend second hand. You need an 8th gen or later to run Windows 11, which is almost essential as Win 10 finishes next year.

£150 should get you a suitable device frok eBay with 16GB RAM. Do you also need a monitor?

I'd try Libre Office which is free and not cloud based. If that doesn't work for you then you can normally find a key cheaply for Office 19. All the 365 products require a monthly sub.

Edit. Happy to look later if your interested in this route.

 

[two sheds]

I've been using LibreOffice for must be about 10 years now, works perfectly fine for me including fairly complicated documents including fair amounts of Track Changes for work that have needed to be in Word format.