Windows OS what is to like?
 

Today my wife's Win10 laptop threw a wobbler in the middle of a Zoom tutoring session. It became a bit intermittent at relaying both sound and video over Zoom and the software for a plug in graphics tablet bombed and recovered into French, having worked for many months in English. As the machine died bit by bit we decided to shut it down by the only thing we could, holding the ON/OFF button down until all signs of activity stopped.

Then we found that it would not boot up, it gave odd messages from the BIOS and then got as far as requesting the keyboard language. It then went into diagnostics but failed to do anything except open a command prompt window which showed stuff on X: drive, mostly empty files. None of the diagnostics actually worked and neither did others found in the instructional Youtubes. Nothing would persuade it to change to C:

With a great deal of help from a friend we have got as far as getting a fresh copy of Win10 onto a new hard disk in the machine and it now boots into Windows. We still need to reload all of the software used on a daily basis and all of her files. I know that they are all on the original hard disk as they can be read by my Linux Mint machine, a disk caddy is a useful tool. The recovered Win10 laptop won't read the original hard drive as we can't satisfy the file ownership/security in the system. If we read the files into the Linux Mint machine and put them onto a USB stick the Win10 laptop will read them in quite happily. It just takes twice as long plus some.

My good friend, who fixes PCs, has seen this happen before, several times. He always finds that when everything is put back together the machine goes back to working as it did before. There is nothing wrong with the hardware to be found. Nor the software, apparently. it just has a meltdown from which it cannot recover or report the error.

Does anyone know where I might acquire a laptop without a preloaded copy of Windows? I want to migrate all of my activities to Linux Mint........

Rans6...........

Can’t one take any laptop no matter what OS may be on it, wipe it (not “with a cloth or something” as a famous presidential candidate said), and install whatever you want?

Its possible to buy a machine without Windows - just google "buy laptop without windows pre-installed"

It won't be as easy as getting it from H P or John Lewis but ...................

Why not go to a IPad ? You can get OS free laptop from Lenovo but they are not cheap £1800! Go to the laptop page & down the left menu click on the OS free button.

expensive, and not all programmes run on them

What you could do is download Gparted (a free disk formatter) and your desired copy of Linux to separate USB sticks via your new pre-loaded laptop. Then boot with the Garpted USB and erase your HDD. Once done, boot to the Linux USB and away you go!

I know how to convert a laptop from Win to Mint, I have done so a few times to get a bit more life out of machines that have become glacially slow, like windows machines always do. I object to buying a high spec machine and throwing the OS away, must be a way to avoid paying for an OS which is not wanted up front. I tried the usual places such as Overclockers, who used to build really fast laptop machines for gamers and Scan Computers who provided all of the parts for my Core i7 desktop machine 11 years ago. It still does the job as fast as is needed, it has had zero hardware upgrades since 2012. It is fine but not really convenient for carting about to do promo presentations.

Neither company could supply. They went as far as trying to convince me that nobody will sell me a machine without Windows pre-installed...... They told me the same when I bought my desktop machine as a kit of parts.

Just came across laptopwithlinux.com who do what it says on the tin. Laptops with or without Linux installed. Thanks for your words of wisdom.

Rans6.......

In that case I'd buy the cheapest laptop that meets your needs and not worry about whether it has Windows on it or not. A Windows licence to a large manufacturer is a minimal cost and they may not even pay it on a per machine basis. I doubt they’d save money by not including it?

There may be an issue with the warranty I guess. Not sure about that?

I bought a laptop from them a few years ago, good service, laptop still going strong. Try to get them to send you a pdf manual just in case you need to open it up. I had to hunt around to find a manual for a similarly named model when I wanted to open mine up.

Clevo are a Taiwanese manufacturer of generic laptops but they have a shop in Germany if you want to buy from them direct.

There's also System 76, a US based maker of Linux laptops that ships to the UK.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my attempt to break free of Windows by buying a Macbook. I bought it three years ago and have tried to get to grips with the Apple way of doing things to no avail. Things like the odd keyboard layout and the absence of a delete key still frustrate me. I've recently splashed out and ordered a Framework laptop. Mostly because it has an option with no operating system but also because it's designed to be repairable and upgradeable.

I used Linux Mint some time ago and found it was fine so will put that on the Framework. I will try and remember to post something here when it arrives, perhaps a mini-review. Here's a link to the Framework range: https://frame.work/gb/en