Tool Kit: hardware, software, applications, malware removal, etc.

[x3s]

External Hard Drives

If you want to go into higher capacity drives you might want to consider an external drive.

The one above is the Western Digital 4TB drive for around $100. You may find some 1TB drives for as low as $50. I like the quality of Western Digital or Seagate and I don't recommend you get an off brand because sometimes you get what you pay for and if you're paying for big ass storage you don't want to go cheap if you value what you're saving.

Again, I can't stress this enough. If you don't want to lose everything in a crash make sure to have redundant backups. I have two older external drives and several USB drives.

[ViceLikeEye]

I bought 2 USB 3.0 sticks on an advanced, "Black Friday" sale via Amazon. 256GB each for about $50 each. They stay plugged into my PC. They are great for quick access to a file. Essentially it's like having a tiny SSD (Solid-state Drive). I use one for my music so I don't have wear and tear spinning a HDD's disk every time I want to hear a tune. They are large enough to hold my entire music collection of roughly 100GB. I formatted mine to NTFS right off the bat.



I also recommend buying a quality EXT HDD, However, they will ALL fail. It is only a matter of time. Anytime you have moving parts that have to ramp up when access to a file is needed you are causing wear and tear. You're on borrowed time. Some of my drives have an I/O switch some don't; All my EXT drives are on USB hubs that have switches for each port. I keep them off 99% of the time. 1 - Wear and tear. 2 - Security against ransomware. 3 - Redundancy. Those USB hubs are inexpensive. Unfortunately SSD's are still massively expensive per GB when compared to a regular HDD. Otherwise I'd convert all of my storage to SSD. If you're a serious porn-hound I'd also recommend going as big as you can afford. 1080p movies aren't too bad but some of these 4K or 3D/VR movies are fucking HUGE, 10 - 20GB for a 30 minute video! WD sells a 8TB HDD for about $200.

Damn they've dropped the price another $40 bucks since I bought one! If I didn't see everything going the way of SSD in the near future, I'd buy another one now! Under $170 for 8TB! That's a pretty good fucking deal.

So the area in the back of my PC looks like several octopuses having an orgy but I don't care. Not everything can be super fast AND wireless.

[alexora]

This is the USB flash i carry on my key-ring:

[ww345]

for the money the best upgrade for me is always switching out the OS HDD to an SSD drive

i have a Samsung 128 GB USB flash drive that only sticks out about a third of an inch, paid about $60 iirc

also bought 256 GB SD card for extra onboard storage, it was pricey though. i should have bought higher capacity SSD to begin with but at least the SD card is removable so i can use it on another computer in short order

one of the best free software adds is CCleaner and you can make a batch file of only a few lines and place a shortcut on your desktop so that CCleaner runs right before you shutdown your computer

other good programs are avail at http://portablefreeware.com/

[x3s]

Microsoft Office vs LibreOffice

Most people know and use at least parts of Office on a regular basis. When people purchase a new computer they typically upgrade their Office to the newest version. You can buy it or pay an annual subscription fee which would include new updates etc. Prices run from as low as $50 for an annual subscription up to around $250 depending on where you're shopping for Office and which version you need.

When I bought a new computer I didn't want to spend even more money on Office so I decided to search to see if I could find a good alternative. I've tried some programs in the past, but was never quite satisfied. I found some reviewers that recommended LibreOffice as a good alternative. I downloaded it and checked to see if I could open a Word document and found it was a piece of cake. It also easily opened a spreadsheet. I haven't used the entire suite and I still need to check this out thoroughly, but so far this program is a great FREE alternative.

Top 5 Free Microsoft Office Alternatives

You Tube

You Tube

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LibreOffice part 2

LibreOffice 6 is Out...Just kicking the tires here...

You Tube

You Tube

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LibreOffice part 3

If you like the idea of a FREE and pretty great alternative to Office you need to check this out. Once you download it you may not need a lot of help to figure it out because you're probably already familiar enough with Office so you can figure it out easily. However, if you want a tutorial on any part of the program go to YouTube and type in LibreOffice for lots of info.

This is LibreOffice

You Tube

You Tube

[x3s]

I'm interested if anyone reading this thread is using LibreOffice now. If so, what do you think?

[rbn]

I use Office 2000 I have used it cince 2000.

I tried Libre but on my last machine, it didn't work right. I was running Win8.
I didn't bother trying to figure out why bc I already had a program that worked.

As for my suggestions of useful software, for those Networking gurus
Nothing beats Solar Winds - TFTP

http://solarwinds.com/free-tools/free-tftp-server

*edit* YES - cince is a word, look it up

[x3s]

A couple of things about trying it a few years ago ...

LibreOffice is open source software so it is improved and I think if you were to try it today you'd be impressed with the program. I'm using it on a Windows 10 machine and my old Office software was also pretty long in the tooth. I don't disagree if you have an old version and it works why not stick with it. However, if you want a nice alternative this may be just what the doctor ordered. Did I mention it's FREE.

By the way, I think only a tiny percentage of people still using your version of Office. However, cince you're happy with it more power to you buddy.