k6ccc Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 Well, I just ordered a new computer to replace my rather elderly family room computer - what I do most of my sequencing with. Since you can hardly find anything with Windows 7 (and thankfully Windows 8), that means I am making the leap to Windows 10 Pro. Looking for advise from you experts who have already made that transition of things to know - both LOR related and otherwise. I am looking forward to a massive improvement in speed and in particular, video performance. The new one will have an Intel i7-8700 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070ti. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilMassey Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 It's really up to you. You can have the touchy feely look of W8 ( yuck) or pretty much the look and feel of W7, Turn off all the crap like tiles, put quick launch back and work your way through the control panel until it looks the way you like it. I doubt anyone can tell the difference from 7 at a glance. Talking of the control panel, forget the new, save us from ourselves "new" settings stuff.Do a windows Key R and type control panel to get the old, know where everything is (mostly), control panel, where you can actually change stuff that matters. Once that's taken care of W10 is pretty solid. I personally have had no problems with the auto updates but some have. Just make sure you set it for the middle of the night. Reinstall is much easier, no mucking around with license keys. Download MS Media Creation Tool and create an install bootable USB drive. 16 GB is plenty. First thing I would do is format the drive and clean install, but that's just me. Been On 64 bit W10 Pro since it came out, no complaints, 3 machines and my server. The only catch is the link to specific hardware, which means eventually, when the box dies, so does the license and you have to start again. Not sure if buying a DVD (can you even?) means you can move to a new machine, but I kinda doubt it. Don't remember any issues with LOR, other than different paths but my LOR data is mapped to my server anyway. I don't seem to have the USB issues we used to see Multiple monitors seem easier too. If you have any specific issues I'll be happy to help if I can remember how. Have Fun, Phil 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 If you know 7, you know 10. 10 is what 8 should have been all along . You may see some new dialog boxes that you are not familiar with, but there is almost always a way to get the OLD one to display (the one you know and love) Other than some 'metro tiles' in the start button, and having updates forced on you, it's great and ultimately familiar. Cortana is a little pushy, but you can turn her mostly off. For people like you and I, the built in AV and Firewall is all you will need. For me, the biggest reason to upgrade right now is not Win 10, but hardware. I am in love with M.2 drives (good ones like the Samsung Pro 970). SSD is great, but with the buss speed of M.2 drives, you are flying. Even without fast boot turned on, from power up to desktop it's about 15 seconds for me. The down side is cost. A 512MB M.2 drive is going to run you $230, compared to a high end 4TB spinner at around $170 (WD Gold or Black) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted June 22, 2018 Author Share Posted June 22, 2018 Thanks to both of you. What little I know about Win 10 is pretty much what you two described - you can largely make it behave like Win 7. 1 hour ago, PhilMassey said: The only catch is the link to specific hardware, which means eventually, when the box dies, so does the license and you have to start again. Not sure if buying a DVD (can you even?) means you can move to a new machine, but I kinda doubt it. I generally don't worry about that too much - by the time the hardware dies, the OS is outdated anyway. 1 hour ago, PhilMassey said: Don't remember any issues with LOR, other than different paths but my LOR data is mapped to my server anyway. I don't seem to have the USB issues we used to see Multiple monitors seem easier too. Same here, ALL LOR data files are on my server. I will start with two monitors and likely add a third fairly soon. 1 hour ago, PhilMassey said: If you have any specific issues I'll be happy to help if I can remember how. I will keep that in mind... 12 minutes ago, DevMike said: For people like you and I, the built in AV and Firewall is all you will need. For several years I have just used MS Security Essentials. Seems to do the job , and the price is right. 13 minutes ago, DevMike said: For me, the biggest reason to upgrade right now is not Win 10, but hardware. I am in love with M.2 drives (good ones like the Samsung Pro 970). SSD is great, but with the buss speed of M.2 drives, you are flying. Even without fast boot turned on, from power up to desktop it's about 15 seconds for me. The down side is cost. A 512MB M.2 drive is going to run you $230, compared to a high end 4TB spinner at around $170 (WD Gold or Black) It's coming with an 256B M.2 drive which will have the OS and applications and a 2TB spinner. Funny part is I don't really need the spinner since essentially all data will be stored on the server RAID array. I may end up using the spinner as backup media for the server... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilMassey Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 No question, the SSD is the only way to go for the OS. Next upgrade will be an M.2 for me. I haven't used an AV other than MS Defender in years. Arguably third party AVs open more holes, give a false sense of security and provide little to no benefit to the user and frequently slow things down. Actually there supposedly won't be another version of Windows, just continual updates and upgrades like iOS or Android. So in theory if the box lasts forever, Windows will run on it, eventually, very slowly no doubt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 +1 on Defender. I used to be an AVG Free fan, but like many others, they have become bloated. Maybe some folk need a full time watchdog on their internet usage behavior. I don't. I am pretty good at spotting Scam emails, don't visit shady sites. Too much for Free is a red flag. Never had W8 (fiddled with it in the Demo Room at MS, and hated tiles) On W10 (pro). My gripes: Little control on updates. Many things that worked on W7, don't. Hard to find (system tools) stuff I have been using for years (started with w3.1). Too much 'for Dummies' help What I like: The first release Start Context menu (this last update - fixed some of it). some system level stuff is now 1 click away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 Well, I got the new Windows 10 computer set up and running this evening. Managed to accomplish everything I was trying to do on an initial setup. That primarily related to getting it onto my domain. That also included loading LOR (5.0.22). One of the big things that pushed the need for the new computer was lack of video performance on the old one. The new one blows the old one away. I played one of my 2018 sequences in SuperStar with the visualization window as large as I could make it (about 1200 x 1080). Even on the busiest segments, the video kept up perfectly! I can actually see what it's supposed to look like! OK, I would have been pissed if it didn't. The new computer is driven with a Intel i7-8700 CPU @ 3.2 GHz with 16GB of RAM, and the video card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070TI with 8GB of video RAM - It DAMN will better look good! And it does... Still have some things to learn. Off to bed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMurray Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 3 hours ago, k6ccc said: Well, I got the new Windows 10 computer set up and running this evening. Managed to accomplish everything I was trying to do on an initial setup. That primarily related to getting it onto my domain. That also included loading LOR (5.0.22). One of the big things that pushed the need for the new computer was lack of video performance on the old one. The new one blows the old one away. I played one of my 2018 sequences in SuperStar with the visualization window as large as I could make it (about 1200 x 1080). Even on the busiest segments, the video kept up perfectly! I can actually see what it's supposed to look like! OK, I would have been pissed if it didn't. The new computer is driven with a Intel i7-8700 CPU @ 3.2 GHz with 16GB of RAM, and the video card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070TI with 8GB of video RAM - It DAMN will better look good! And it does... Still have some things to learn. Off to bed... Got my new computer a month back and it is a awesome! I'm adding 13,000 pixels to the display this year so I needed something better than a Black Friday $150 laptop. I have been working my @$$ off getting the props ready. My computer is running with...Intel® Core i7-7700 Processor @ 3.6GHz with 32GB DDR4 (4-DIMM) 2400MHz RAM and a 1TB 7200RPM SATA3 Hard Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive with a 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics card. Can't wait to see how it all goes together and get things up and running this November! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) Billy, looks like your new one is very similar to mine. The increase of pixels had a lot to do with my computer replacement too. I'm adding about 61K channels this year - about 54K of that is a six panel P5 matrix and a 12 panel P10 matrix. This new one will be for sequencing, not running the show. Replaced the ancient XP show computer last fall with a Core i5 that loafed along. Edited July 10, 2018 by k6ccc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 I highly recommend a 500GB SSD and copy the main HD to it, then move your HD as a secondary drive. I did this with my sequencing and show computers and it literally doubled the reading and writing speed and cut the time in half when saving huge sequences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 The C drive IS a M.2 SSD and is BLAZING fast. The D drive is a 2TB spinning drive. In my case, the LOR file storage is on the server on spinning disk - two 1TB spinners in a RAID-1 array that will do parallel read. The LAN connectivity between the sequencing computer and the server is GB all the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 M.2 is the only way to go (ATM until something better comes along). The MB in my dev machine actually supports 2 M.2 drives, and can do RAID on them. I can only imagine how fast it would be with 2 M.2s in RAID 0. I did briefly think about it, but the cost of high quality M.2 at the time was prohibitively high. Today I wouldn't think twice about buying 2 Samsung Pro 970s and RAIDing them. Example: On my development machine, it takes approximately 8 minutes to check out a copy of S4 or S5 source code. On our build machine (with a spinner), it's closer to 1 hour. Both machines are sitting next to me, so it's not the internet speed . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 14 minutes ago, DevMike said: I can only imagine how fast it would be with 2 M.2s in RAID 0. My personal opinion on RAID-0, avoid it like the plague. A real pain if a drive fails (twice the chance of that happening) or as I had happen a few years ago, the computer died. Had to spend a while to get the RAID-0 "lined up" so the data could be read on another computer. RAID-10 maybe, but now you're talking about four of those expensive drives! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dibblejr Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 9 minutes ago, k6ccc said: My personal opinion on RAID-0, avoid it like the plague. A real pain if a drive fails (twice the chance of that happening) or as I had happen a few years ago, the computer died. Had to spend a while to get the RAID-0 "lined up" so the data could be read on another computer. RAID-10 maybe, but now you're talking about four of those expensive drives! Jim, if I only knew what you and DevMike are talking about. You may recall my problems with 3 computers last year. My newest top of the line gaming computer came through for me at Christmas time but I have not even opened it up since. I don't even know where to begin transferring all of my sequences and various files over. I sequence on this cheap laptop and then transfer the sequences over to the new laptop. You may ask "why"? The gaming laptop is way to heavy to have on these diabetic legs. They say 11 lbs but feels like 50 after about 15 minutes. One more note, without Ghost Partition and OS transfer software I have never been successful (other than Army stuff) been successful at creating a useable backup. I guess system backup. I can backup by placing files on media devices but not as the internal system backup. JR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 I use Macrium Reflect, which is totally free, to clone my drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dibblejr Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) 2 minutes ago, Mr. P said: I use Macrium Reflect, which is totally free, to clone my drives. After everything ive done its probably to late to clone the drives, but will it clone just the files and various software? It will probably have 100 updates by the time I open it again. Edited July 10, 2018 by dibblejr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 1 minute ago, dibblejr said: After everything ive done its probably to late to clone the drives, but will it clone just the files and various software? It will probably have 100 updates by the time I open it again. It will completely clone everything. If you clone the HD currently inside your computer to another HD then swap them out your would never know the drives were swapped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dibblejr Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 2 minutes ago, Mr. P said: It will completely clone everything. If you clone the HD currently inside your computer to another HD then swap them out your would never know the drives were swapped. That may be worth a shot since both have same OS. The problem may be the drivers/ any other hardware for the new system. Since im not a guru don't want to screw up the new laptop stuff. Any clue on that. Mr P do you happen to be attending the Expo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 Cloning from an old computer to a new computer is not a good idea, as you stated the drivers are different. A few month ago I purchased a new Alienware 17" laptop that came with a 2tb 7200rpm HD so I purchased a Samsung Pro 860 SSD. I cloned the Alienware original HD to the SSD, put the SSD in the laptop and put the original HD in a drawer as an energency replacement. The Alienware is much faster now even tho it was fast to begin with, but if anything happens I have the original HD to fall back on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) 10 minutes ago, dibblejr said: Mr P do you happen to be attending the Expo? No, I would if they ever held it in Atlanta. I mean, I have relatives in Dallas I just don't like them. ? Edited July 10, 2018 by Mr. P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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