New Computer Equipment Is Headed My Way I will be semi-retiring my desktop computer in a couple of days when it will become a backup for my articles. It is still a very powerful computer although there has been a lot of catchup going on since I bought it. It is what AMD calls a Threadripper 1950X 16 core computer which has served me well over the last few years. It is almost 7 years old now and has Windows 10 installed, along with droves of professional software for different uses. Unfortunately for me Microsoft announced they weren’t going to update Windows 10 after next year and my computer is not equipped for Windows 11. I don’t know why some AMD chips allow for updates to Windows 11 and some don’t. Further more I would have thought a high end computer like mine would have been able to be updated. I have had no luck in this area of updating. My car was made in a year when the manufacturer updated some chips in their cars to handle 5 G. My top-of-the-line model couldn’t and I lost my navigation and other things when the switch to 5 G was made. In case you don’t know what I am talking about 5 G is the wireless system used by many carriers to talk to your phone, car and other devices. I wasn’t angry about the car because I could compensate by using Google Maps which when my phone is plugged into the car since it broadcasts to the screen in the car. When companies know things like this could happen in advance, they should be required to prepare for it and not leave consumers high and dry. As it turned out Google Maps seems to be better than the navigation system I lost. The new desktop I purchased is a Ryzen 9, 7950X 16 core, 32 threads and it is far faster than the Threadripper I am replacing it with. There are new Threadripper processors out there but they are very expensive, many double what I paid for a 16 core and truthfully this Ryzen 9 is so powerful I don’t need a new Threadripper. Changing computers is a real headache. It is just not a matter of hooking up a new machine, that is the easiest part. The problem will be moving much of the software to the new machine. First I have to deactivate it, then move it and install it. You always hope nothing will go wrong when you do this. I used to build all my own new computers but now that I am old, I can’t be bothered. My hand shakes a little, sometimes it is hard to see very small things and when I saw the price for this new computer, the price was not much more than what I would have to pay for the parts if I built it myself. Sometimes you get a piece of software that you fall into love with. Let me tell you about one piece I seems to have been using forever and it still runs. It is Hoyle Card and Board Games. I kept updating it but there has not been an update for quite a while. While some other software which is not even as old no longer runs, good old Hoyle is still running and better than ever. There is one cute thing about it that I have to mention. The characters you play against talk and after about every six months or so a new phrase is introduced and this has been going on ever since I have been playing it for all these years. Another piece of software I use to turn my articles into web pages is Dream Weaver CS6. It was the last version the great company Adobe wrote and makes things a heck of a lot easier when handling html. Today there are many programs on websites for creating pages but while easy to use they lack some of the features included with Dream Weaver. I will probably use this software until I stop posting to the site. There are a couple of pieces of software which are free that I love. One is Core FTP. There is a section on Dream Weaver which allows you to transfer the web pages you created to your website. This is what Core FTP does and I like it so much I have been using it for many years to transfer my files instead of even Dream Weaver. There is another good transfer program which is also very good and free. It is FileZilla. Just because something is free doesn’t mean it is junk or dangerous. The first thing I do if I download a file is examine it before installing for malicious software. Infanview has to be the very best and most handy photo app around and it is also free. I have been using it for many years and it is a work of love for the author. Over the years I have contacted him a couple of times and made a few suggestions I thought would be cool. My software of choice for writing my articles is Microsoft Word and I have the entire Microsoft Office on my computer. Having said that, I have no intention of ever paying to get it by the month which is what is currently the case. If I was ever forced to do that by unseen circumstances, I would switch to Libre Office, a great free choice for office suites. I have to say I love Outlook for email. I have tried many other email programs but they were never as good, but I guess this depends on your needs. There are plenty of free ones out there and I believe Thunderbird is the closest to Outlook. Continuing with the free theme, if you want to know all about your computer such as the chips, memory and even more CPUID CPU-z is a great piece of freeware. In case anyone is wondering what software I use to create the voice files with the British voices, it is Text Speaker and the voice are purchased separately. I have four different voices available to me. The British man, British woman, American man and American woman. I thought the British male voice sounded cool so I use it as my default. On rare occasions I use the British female. This happens when the British male voice cannot pronounce a certain word, because usually the female voice can. I am getting ready for the big change over in a couple of weeks and by the time this article gets posted, the change should already have happened.
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