Tech Teach
– October 2025
Hi Everyone,
It’s been a long time since I did one of
these newsletters, way too long. Sorry
about that. With so many things going on
in my life, it’s been hard to keep track of time unless there’s some
appointment scheduled. Hope you had a
good Thanksgiving with family and friends.
This issue, I’d like to go over a couple
of things: scams and prices.
Being that this is the time of year just
about everyone is buying online, we all need to be very careful of scams trying
to get us to click on links to who knows where.
Keep an eye for the “https” (the “s” is for secure”) in the URL / web
site address. Watch out for intentional
spelling errors, Like a capital I (i) instead of a lower case l (L) in the
name. When you get an email from “your
favorite business,” make sure it’s from that actual business, not from HotMail
or Yahoo or something you don’t recognize.
Amazon is going to send emails from an amazon.com account, same with
other large businesses.
A legit business is not going to use
gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, or even a protonmail account.
Lots of places want you money, make sure
you’re giving it to the businesses YOU chose.
If it looks funky, it probably is.
You can always log in to your account and see what orders have been
places, or call (or better yet go in person) to your financial institution and
look at your account history. They’ll be
able to put a stop to any unauthorized transactions and maybe put a hold or scam
watch on the account.
I don’t need to tell any of you that
prices are going up. From gas to food,
it ain’t getting cheaper (much). Case in
point: memory and solid state drives.
In the last six months or so, RAM
(memory) has tripled in price due to AI (artificial intelligence) servers going
online. The RAM in one of my computers,
2x 16GB of DDR5-6000 (there won’t be a test) that was $80 from Newegg in July
is now $300, if it’s even in stock.
Manufacturers have been trying to hold prices down as much as they can,
but December is going to be some big sticker shock if you’re looking for a new
computer. Also, the TeamGroup QX2 2TB
SATA SSD (solid state drive) I bought two years ago for $65 is now <eeek>
$145 from Newegg.
Even CPUs (central processing units) are
starting to be hit by memory pricing.
They use very fast and very difficult to manufacture memory directly on
the CPU die that’s starting to creep up.
If you’re looking at new computer, I’d
try to do that purchase as soon as you can.
Or wait until well into next year if you can hold out and see if prices
drop. If your needs are modest, I’d
certainly give a refurbished computer a good look. Dell (at the time of this email) is running
some very nice deals, with up to 55% off on some laptops.
Speaking of laptops, and computers in
general, here’s some ideas of what to look for in the way of specs.
If you’re just looking for a casual use
machine (email, YouTube videos, documents) 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage
with a Core i3 or Ryzen 3 CPU should do nicely.
For a bit more snap and less waiting, go for 16GB of memory and 512GB of
storage with a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 CPU.
If you want to take lots of pictures or just store a lot of file in
general (music and video), then look for 1TB of storage. Or buy a nice external USB drive of at least
1TB.
If you want a computer with no waiting,
then a Core i7 / Ultra 7 from Intel (i9 or Ultra 9 is really for gaming, video
editing, program compiling uses) or Ryzen 7 (same for Ryzen 9) will do nicely.
Ideal universe: Intel i7 / Ultra 7 / Ryzen 7 with 16GB of
RAM, 1TB of storage and a screen with 1920x1080 resolution. Your budget may vary and your use case. Not everyone needs a high end gaming rig to
read email. And 1366x768 resolution is doable, but if you plan on watching
streaming content, like Netflix of Pluto.tv, I’d recommend a screen you want
to look at for hours.
I’d strongly recommend avoiding
“Celeron” or “Pentium” or any Intel “Nxxx” CPU.
Just painfully slow. Same with
less than 8GB of memory for Windows 11 in any form. 4GB of memory will have enough for Windows,
and not much else to run.
Also, look for a computer that’s not too
difficult to upgrade or is upgradable at all.
Some companies (looking at you, Lenovo) are fixing the RAM to the
motherboard where the amount can not be changed. Same with storage. An NVME / M.2 slot makes replacing storage
fairing easier, short of taking the case apart.
As many know, Windows 10 has stopped
being supported by Microsoft as of October 15.
No more security updates. What
this means is that as time goes on, Windows 10 will get less secure and easy to
“hack.” I’d probably say to stop
accessing finances and paying bills on a Windows 10 computer.
Pretty much, there’s four options to
deal with Windows 10:
1)
Do nothing and
just use your computer till it stops working
2)
Upgrade to Windows
11 (this is an option I offer, even on older computers)
3)
Do a full install
of Windows 11 (same, even on older computers)
4)
Buy a new or
refurbished computer with Windows 11 installed
If you find this information useful, please
let me know. Always welcome questions
and comments. And please feel free to
forward this to anyone you think might benefit from it. If you don’t want it anymore, let me know
that too.
