Tuesday, January 12, 2021

On its way...

My new laptop is out for delivery.  It's...a compromise.  Most of the ones I looked at when I was shopping in a hurry now lack a DVD drive of any type.  I'd rather have one than not, but we do have an external, USB DVD/CD write/rewrite drive...so, compromise.

The new laptop does not have a hard drive disk drive; rather, it's got a solid state hard drive, and 8GB memory.*

I'd been using Mozilla Firefox for the past decade or longer.  I'm going to have to change that.  I get that the piece calling for censorship on the blog was "opinion" only, but that opinion was voiced by someone who hasn't gotten fired, nor has it been made clear that opinion doesn't fly with corporate.  

I will not be downloading iTunes player.  I'll be grabbing MusicBee, instead--which plays the iTunes files, and isn't run by people actively engaging in the suppression of speech and thought.  (It's also easier to download, set up, and has a better interface.)

Hopefully, I'll be able to get on FB again, to check on family that can't or won't make the jump to MeWe.  And so I can download/back up my posts and stuff from there.  I'm not sure how long it will be before they start purging people who don't enthusiastically perform craino-rectal inversion, or perform it fast enough.  

Another thing I'm checking into is whether Open Office has added the functionality I'd wanted to see.  It was almost there with the last version I'd snagged, but not quite.  I will be downloading it, regardless, because it's compatible with, and will open some things Word won't.  

The first thing I do will be to disable Cortana as much as possible, and to disable microphone, camera, and location tracking.  Second will be to use Edge to download something else--I'll be looking into browsers, and deciding from there.  Third will be to download the music player: that has also become unreliable with this laptop, and I miss my music. 

I'm hoping this doesn't take long, but I won't be surprised if it takes me through mid-day tomorrow to get set up and back working.  

*Current system has 6 GB memory (some of which may be failing as well), and 1 TB disk hard drive. 


6 comments:

  1. Brave or Dissenter for web browsing. Based on Chrome but tons of stuff stripped out. Does not do reCAPTCHA correctly though. So you'll need a backup browser for certain things like commenting on blogs...
    Wandering Neurons

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    Replies
    1. Okay, tried Brave. I hate it. Then again, I hated Chrome. I'll keep using Firefox until I find something I like, with as many privacy and ad blockers as I can load into it.

      Delete
  2. Sounds like a smart move all the way around.

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    Replies
    1. It was a fight to get it set up--not because this new laptop was unwilling, but because the old one WOULD NOT let me download my bookmarks to switch over. I had to set Firefox to sync between the old laptop and this one. I'm still looking for a new browser--one that is not based on Chrome, since I utterly hate that, and the ad blockers for it simply don't filter all the ads out, like the adblocker does for Firefox. And I find I have zero tolerance for ads anymore--they purely piss me off.

      Delete
  3. I'm taking the same route. My new Email will be Proton but I haven't decided on
    a browser to replace Chrome. Google is
    pure evil. The ads and data mining are
    bad enough, but the have access to our
    every move via Android and Mac smart
    phones. I do even know if the apps can
    disabled. I ditched Facebook when they
    doubled down on censorship leading up
    to the election.

    Killing your Google account may seem to
    be an inconvenience but you can still
    Access Screwtube and Google Maps through
    your browser. There are many ways to
    get around the new surveillance state!

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    Replies
    1. This is pretty much the only Google account I have--yes, I have an email, but never use it.

      I'm...reluctant to kill my hotmail account. I've had it since I married, back in '04.

      Delete

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