Recommended System Requirements with Trollbytes

The guys talk about recommend system requirements, especially now that Microsoft is ceasing support for everything but Windows 11.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Thirteen ten Wiba Madison in the morningand ask the experts hanging out with our
computer experts from troll Bytes. MisterJohn Rivers, John, how you doing
this week? I'm good? Howare you doing? Doing really well?
Great to talk with you. Andof course you come from troll bytes website,
troll bytes dot com. That's trollbytes dot com. Dolphin number six
or eight four three seven fifty fiveninety that's four three seven fifty five ninety

(00:28):
and of course located read at eightninety five Springdale Street in beautiful Mountain Horne.
Do you guys have the bear rollthrough your through your lot at all
over the weekend? On nothing onthe security camera? So I haven't seen
that one? Haven't seen them?Now, well we've got We're gonna continue
this conversation also coming up after eightafter a thirty two. But a lot

(00:50):
of times people when it comes toshopping for a computer or if they've got
a computer, look for kind ofminimum specs and before we kind of get
into some of those minimum require mentionum kind of the recommendations there um.
Just overall with this conversation, notonly do the do the numbers matter,
but the type matters as well.And I think probably one of the biggest,

(01:12):
biggest examples of that is something youguys at troll bytes have been talking
about is the importance of like harddrives and having that solid state drive.
As we go through today and talkabout some of those minimum specs and some
of those things to make a computerperform better, something as simple as as
putting in a solid state drive canmake a massive difference in performance, can't

(01:33):
it very much? Um? Andwe've we've run into this over and over
and over and uh, it isprobably the simplest thing that a manufacturing company
can do nowadays, but they stilldon't do it one percent of the time.
UM. When you when you pickup a computer that is you know,
maybe maybe a few dollars cheaper thananother one on the shelf, Um,

(01:57):
odds are it has a hard drivein it instead of a solid state
drive, and that will just takethe performance of the computer and like cut
it in half. So one ofthe things that we've done, like I
said many many times, is talkto the customer, especially if it's a
brand new computer. Sometimes though theywould bring it in for us to unbox

(02:19):
and do the setup and then transferdata from a different computer and you have
to have that conversation with them thatsays, hey, you know, this
brand new computer, UM, itneeds an upgrade, and it doesn't absolutely
have to have one, but here'swhat's going to happen if you don't.
So. UM. That's that's kindof an eye opening conversation a lot of
times. And I know it's it'sit's something you guys do quite often a

(02:42):
routine work. It's not overly costprohibitive either. It's it's especially with where
solid states are right now. Um, they're they used to be just crazy
pricy. They're they're pretty well pricednow, aren't they. Yeah, very
much. They're very affordable and tothe point where every computer should have one.
UM. And you know, likeI can think of certain situations where

(03:06):
you would want a larger, youknow, larger storage that solid state doesn't
always offer. But in general,every computer should have a solid state drive.
It's just a kind of a nobrainer nowadays. And performance of the
computer is just so much greater withthe solid state drive. Talking this morning
with John Rivers, our computer expertfrom troll Bytes the website troll bytes dot

(03:27):
com that's troll by t Ees dotcom tell phone number six to eight four
three seven fifty five ninety that's fourthree seven five five nine zero. You
can find troll bytes right at eightninety five Springdale Street in Beautiful Mount Horror.
When we talk to about computer speedand overall speed, UM, what
is that? And I even getsometimes confused by this single core, I

(03:50):
get double core, I get startgetting like four eight is Does that mean
like if I have like a twogiga hurt process, sir, and it's
got two cores, or if Ihave a two that's got that's got four
cores, that the one with morecores is twice as fast? Or does
it marginally? What does that meanwhen it's got multiple cores and doesn't really

(04:11):
make that much of a difference.Um, it does make a difference if
you are kind of getting into havingmultiple applications open at the same time,
or or a web browser with tonsof tabs and stuff like that, which
is not uncommon. So the morecores, the more apps that you can
run quickly at the same time.UM. Doesn't make the computer any faster

(04:32):
to have more cores, It justallows it to handle more applications at the
same time better that I you knowwhat I that explains it and I've never
understood it, and now now Iknow why because I was like, well,
good, I can you know Ican retire for the day exactly out
on a high note. Yes,don't go too far. We're gonna we're
gonna need you back. Coming upat eight thirty. Of course, we
check in with John and Sam,our computer actors from troll Bytes. In

(04:54):
the meantime, we even been tothe website troll bytes dot com. That's
troll bytes dot com. Check themout online. Even better, stop on
and they'd love to see you.Read at eight ninety five Springdale Street in
beautiful Mount Horroub. John, we'lltalk again real soon, my friend.
Sounds good. Thanks. Lisa Breaksfrom Bruce Company comes your way next right
here on thirteen ten WIBA thirteen ten, WIBA Madison in the morning and ask

(05:26):
the experts, joined by our computerexpert, John Rivers. Of course,
John comes to us from troll Byites. If you've got a computer question,
if it gets you on the airof this morning six O eight three two
one thirteen ten. That's three twoone thirteen ten will get you on the
air with John to learn more abouttroll bites. They've got a great website
head on overtroll bytes dot com.That's troll byte s dot com. Their

(05:46):
telephone number six O eight four threeseven fifty five ninety that's four three seven
five five nine zero and located rightat eight ninety five Springdale Street in beautiful
Mount Horb and John. We starteda conversation about recommended system requirements, and
we're talking this week about Windows probablymost mostly is Windows, Windows ten,
Windows eleven system requirements when it comesto hardware and some of the other things

(06:12):
you should have on there. Didit change much between Windows ten and Windows
eleven as far as what it worksbest, as far as some of the
specs for a computer and the inthe system requirements for hardware, not a
whole lot for hardware other than Windowseleven has that requirement for the newer modern
processor with the security chip built intothe motherboard, and that is the TPUM

(06:38):
chip, is what that's called,and which is interesting because there are ways
around that and Windows eleven will runperfectly fine on on other hardware that doesn't
meet that requirements, But that wasa decision that Microsoft made. So that's
that's what they're standing by way tosell more things. Yeah, exactly,

(06:58):
I think kind of a hardware havemore than anything sometimes, I think.
But uh, but other than that, the system requirements did not change much
or if even at all for computersthat need Windows eleven versus Windows ten.
So if you have a computer runningWindows ten, it should run eleven just
fine if if you have that TPMchip and you can do the upgrade with

(07:21):
the in and just kind of thinkingWindows ten. I know that there's that
there's kind of the the software itself, the operating system itself has has parameters
as far as how much RAM,process or speed that type of thing.
Is that really just the minimum?I would guess that the recommendation is probably
a little more than than the whatthe software is saying it needs. Yeah,

(07:45):
I think the minimum for Windows tenand eleven is still four gigabytes of
RAM, which would be terrible ifyou had that. Um, there are
some computers that will will work okaywith that, but as soon as you
open a web browser or something likethat, it's you know, you've already
gone, well well passed that RAMrequirement right there. So then your computer

(08:07):
is just gonna kind of struggle tomake some extra space that it needs on
your hard drive and stuff like that. So UM, but yeah, the
the recommended requirements UM that that wehave been working with for a number of
years and this is probably since Windowsten. Um trying to think of what
we used to do for Windows seven, but UM, and we just kind

(08:30):
of skipped right over Windows eight.So that's not a bad thing necessary.
Yeah, but with Windows ten andWindows eleven, if you're just kind of
a general everyday user, UM,eight gigabytes of memory would be more than
sufficient. And if you get intousing the computer, you know, for
a good chunk of the day,and you're you kind of have a tendency

(08:54):
to have a lot of UM webbrowser tabs open and a couple of apps
and maybe dreaming some music and stufflike that, you probably want to consider
bumping up to sixteen gigabytes of RAMand that that would just make the computer
much much happier to do its dailytasks for you. What does RAM do

(09:15):
exactly, John, Um, Sowe'll we'll consider a RAM as a bucket,
okay, or a pail. Andevery time you open an app,
it goes into the pail. Soyou open your web browser, goes into
the pail, and you open anum Microsoft word. It goes into the
pail and then you know, everyapp that you that you open, it

(09:35):
does that. And when the pailis full, your your RAM is used
up. So then Windows will takesomething out of the pail and swap it
out to your hard drive and thento make some some room in the in
the pail. So it's just kindof a holding area for your apps to
live in while they're active. Intheory, all that that RAM gets cleared

(09:58):
out and ready for the next appto use, but sometimes that doesn't work
very well, so it takes areboot. And that's why over over days
and in you know, a weekor so, that's why sometimes your computer
will get really sluggish if it's beenon that long, because sometimes the apps
don't clear themselves out of RAM verycleanly, and you've got all this clutter

(10:22):
sitting in there, and then yourcomputer is constantly trying to make room in
the bucket or in the pail toopen more apps up, and it just
causes this kind of back and forthbetween hard drive and RAM and you know,
talking you know, milliseconds of time, but it actually slows down the
computer tremendously when it has to dothat quite a bit, so is it?

(10:45):
Is it safety? So kind ofusing that analogy is more RAM,
bigger bucket is what you end upwith, right, Absolutely, you get
a nice big five gallon bucket fromone of the big box stores, and
you're good that. I like theway that you describe an I straight that
because I think a lot of timeswe know these things. We hear these
terms, and we know that youknow, as with everything, more is

(11:05):
better, but we don't always knowwhy it's better. And it was.
It's interesting with that conversation about theRAM we had it earlier about multiple chorus,
I've got to guess if you aresomebody that's that's one of those um
and I am one of these.I love having all my different tabs open
with Chrome. I use all thedifferent features of Chrome for tabbed browsing and

(11:26):
organizing my tabs and all that stuff. As a matter of fact, our
engineer, every time I complain aboutmy computer working slow, he walks in,
looks at my computer and says,how many tabs you got open?
But having that, yeah, yes, I think you guys would get along
swimmingly because I see the same stuffis having multiple cores and more RAM if

(11:46):
you are somebody like that really makesyour life a whole lot easier, doesn't
it. Yeah, And almost everyCPU for the last I don't even know
how many years, five, six, seven, eight years, has had
multiple cores unless you've had like anI three processor or even you know,
even a step down from that wouldhave been a seller on processor. Some

(12:09):
of those were single core and thatyou know, the computer seemed to run
okay until until you open a webbrowser and then it was like dim the
lights because that's all it could do. We want a time, and if
you wanted to single core processor,if you wanted to open up another app
and do something actively again, theCPU would have to swap all that data

(12:33):
out so it can calculate something else. And you know, and it doesn't
seem like it takes that long becausewe're talking, like I said, you
know, milliseconds of time. Butover and over and over again the computer
is doing that, and it doesmake a performance difference in how fast it
can handle things. For you,do you still see thirty two bit processors
or is it just everybody? It'sall sixty four now most everything is sixty

(12:56):
four. We do see some olderstuff come in you know, like,
uh, the Intel Pentium chips werea thirty two bit um and some of
the earlier lower end CPUs like theI three and in the Celerons were definitely
thirty two bit, but it's beena bit since we've seen anything like that,
so um for for the last severalyears, it's been sixty four bit

(13:18):
all the way. If you've gotone of those processors too, it's probably
you know, if it's a thirtytwo you're probably well beyond. It's probably
good time to be probably probably beena year or two. It's probably been
a good time to start looking atsomething new, isn't it? Sure?
Yes, because that means that ifit's a thirty two bit processor, it's
got several years on it. Soyeah, you're you've you've already well passed

(13:41):
the Bell curve on on life expectancyof the computer. Okay, And there's
all sorts of aside from just beingslower, there's also limitations for how much
memory they can I mean, they'rethey're just I was reading a story out
nowhere was one of the tech magazinesabout one twenty eight bit processors. Where
are they? Will we ever seethem? And they're kind of like yeah,

(14:01):
it's unlikely whatever, just because sixtyfour is never say never, but
like sixty four is just so soyou can add so much ram to it.
It's it's it can be scaled upso much. That's like pain never
ever happened, but it's for noday. I want to talk with you
about storage because this is kind ofthe one of the big wild cards here
when it comes to your hard drive. How much space should have there?

(14:22):
How does cloud storage play into it. We'll talk with John about that in
just a moment. And if you'vegot a question for John Rivers of troll
Bytes, I love to get youon the air this morning six eight three
two one thirteen ten. That's sixO eight three two one thirteen ten.
Maybe you're wondering, how do Iknow what my computer has? We'll get
that question answered as well from John. We'll do that next the meantime,
I've been to the website troll bytesdot com. Head on overtroll bytes dot

(14:43):
com. That's troll bytes dot com. Even better, stop on it.
If you've got a computer issue ora question, I'd love to see you
red at eight ninety five Springdale Streetand beautiful Mount Horror. That's eight ninety
five Springdale Street in Mount Horb andtelephone number six O eight four three seven
fifty five ninety that's four three sevenfive five nine zero. Conater or conversation
with John will take your call nextas ask the experts with troll bytes continues

(15:03):
writing here at thirteen ten w IBAin the morning and ask the experts.
Hanging out with our computer experts fromtroll bytes. John Rivers the websitetrollbytes dot
com. Let's troll bytes dot comAry tell one number six to eight forty

(15:26):
three seven fifty five ninety that's fourthree seven five five nine zero and located
right at eight ninety five Springdale Streetin beautiful Mount Horror. It's a great
town right in control way, greatplace to stop on in Sam and John
everyone loved to see at troll byteseight ninety five Springdale Street. Um,
when we start talking about hard drivesize and we start talking about cloud storage,

(15:46):
something I've noticed over the years,John is, even though there are
some quite large multi terabyte hard spinningdisks available for laptops and desktops, and
it doesn't seem like people are goingas crazy for hard like it's not as
big of a selling point having ahuge hard drive. It seems I don't

(16:07):
know if that's because of cloud storageor what, but it does seem like
even though it's possible and affordable,and maybe you see obviously you see a
much different thing than I do.Are people going crazy for huge hard drives
and that type of thing, orare we still seeing one or two terabyte
and people just saying that's that's plentyfor me. Yeah, I don't even
see you know, one terabyte storagethat much anymore. So the solid state

(16:30):
revolution has been kind of make thecomputer much much faster, and people have
realized that, well, I don'tneed all this storage locally on the computer
because I really don't store that much, especially with like cloud based email.
If you have a Gmail account thatyou do get some cloud storage with that,
so that takes care of, youknow, some of some of your

(16:52):
critical storage that you might need,and also comes with the convenience of not
having to wonder what computer it's on. I just log into my cloud account
and there's all my data. Soit can be very very very convenient.
Um, but it does come ata cost to and UM, so you
kind of weigh the difference of payingfor the cloud storage or paying for a

(17:14):
little bit of a larger local storageon your device and kind of sticking with
that traditional UM computing model. ButI, you know, to go back
to your original question, No,I don't see a ton of large storage
on getting into you know, likea gaming computer or something like that,
and then you kind of kind ofneed a little bit of storage with that.

(17:37):
They're they're out there though, AndI only know this because my boyfriend
is building a server and it hasfour four tetrabyte spinning disks. Yep,
yep, But well is it he'sdoing a server, so yep. They're
Yeah, they're definitely out there,but uh, it's it's not as common
on a day to day need forfor just a you know, somebody that

(17:59):
grabs a laptop or wants a desktopin their house. It doesn't doesn't necessarily
mean that you're going to have,you know, terabytes of storage that go
with that. What's kind of theminimum then for folks that are that are
talking about a PC, what's kindof the two hundred and fifty five hundred
one terabyt mean? What's kind ofthat that area where you say, you
know what, you don't want togo too much below this even if even
if you plan on using cloud andother things, um, if you're just

(18:22):
kind of a regular user, what'skind of the guidance there, John,
Yeah, we see a lot oflike two hundred and fifty gigabytes solid state
drives, and that seems to bekind of a good happy medium of not
too large because you're not going touse it, so you're not overpaying for
your storage, and not too smalland you're you're none kind of shuffling things.
Um. Some computers come with aone twenty eight gigabyte solid state drive,

(18:47):
and I think that is getting tobe a little bit too small because
Windows itself with you know, onceyou load Windows and get some updates and
get some apps in there, you'reat like fifty gigabytes right there at least,
So that cuts your storage almost inhalf. But the two fifties seem
to be a good happy medium ofprice versus functionality. I know you do

(19:07):
a lot of work with with cloudstorage, and there's, um there are
some that that that you recommend,some that are very common that folks use.
One of the cool things about cloudstorage is is it doesn't require a
lot to change the amount of spacethat that you have on a cloud as
a matter of fact, doesn't requireany any skills to add more. It
just add it requires a little extramoney. Yeah, but that's one of

(19:30):
the nice things about cloud storage,isn't it. Yeah, it requires the
skill of adding that bill to yourcredit card, increasing that bill. Um,
but yeah, that is that isa nice feature of it. Um.
One of our customers deals with iPhonesquite a bit, and you know,
you get I can't remember what theamount of storage you get with your

(19:52):
Apple ID account, but that's kindof a constant thing, is like,
you know, sign up for thatninety nine cent month and get the extra
cloud storage that you need for youriPhone through Apple, and then you know
you're good to go for a certainamount of time until you until you use
that up again. So it reallyis kind of this never ending I've got

(20:14):
all this data and I run outof cloud storage, and do I do
I delete the data, do Iclean it up? Or do I just
say, you know, for acouple of bucks a month, I'm just
going to increase it. So oneof them, I think that's kind of
a nice marketing ploy of some ofthese cloud storage providers too. One of
the things you don't think about.And I've run into this with my Google
Drive. Is I always want tojust, you know, just so I

(20:36):
have it a local copy of everything. And I don't know if it's done
on purpose or if it's done justbecause it's too large. Thing. And
Google as a thing that it's calledtake out that you can use to download
all of your stuff from the GoogleCloud, whether it's your drive, your
email, email, all that stuff. It never seems to work as smoothly

(20:59):
as I like too, And italways takes like days in days of downloading
to get that stuff back. AndI don't know if that's done on purpose
or just out of need, butbut it always seems like you don't think
about that when you're putting all thisstuff up on the cloud. It's like,
if I've after retrieve all of it, maybe I want to switch services
or want to maybe ease back onthe amount I'm spending monthly. Uh,

(21:22):
it can be a little cumbersome toretrieve that data in bulk. It's not
as simple as just downloading one singlefile. It's it's a lot of compressed,
weird compression, weird files that itkind of takes forever to do.
Yeah, and that's that's kind ofone of the pain points that we run
into with cloud storages when when youwant to get all your stuff back,

(21:44):
Yeah, somebody says, give meall my stuff back. That that's a
that's a process. And uh,you know, in on the on the
adverse side of things, when um, when you're when you're looking to sign
up and more storage, it's veryvery easy to do that when you want
all your stuff back, that isa process. And I think they do

(22:06):
that on purpose because you know,who wants to go through all that when
when like I said, it's it'seasier just to say, oh, okay,
I'll sign up for another year andthen I'll deal with it later.
Yeah, exactly exactly. As wetalk about this stuff this morning out real
quick, I think it's important tomention also, John, um, how
do we actually access As we weretalking this morning about how much RAM the

(22:26):
type of processor, I know,it's gotten easier. I remember back in
the days of like XP and visSun stuff. It wasn't all that easy
all the time to know what yourcomputer had hardware wise. It's gotten a
little better, hasn't it. Ohyeah, you can do it really simply
and we'll do really quick. AWindows ten example and a Windows eleven example,

(22:49):
and both of them are going tostart with a shortcut. So here
we go. So on every keyboard, if you have a Windows machine,
you have the Windows logo. It'susually on the lower left side. It
looks like the start menu. Soyou hold that down and tap the letter
X as an x ray and you'llsee a little menu pop up. And

(23:11):
on Windows ten, it's the fourthoption from the top, which is called
system and that will tell you yourspecs right there, your processor and the
amount of installed RAM that you have. Okay, and it also tells you
the Windows version that you're running.Oh that is perfect, so Window and
X and then it'll give you theoption you said, system right is what

(23:33):
correct? You can do that rightonline and again if you ever have questions,
you've got concerns, maybe you've gotsome older hardware, wondering if there's
any life left in your computer,maybe you're looking to upgrade. I know
the team at troll bytes would loveto talk. You'd love to help you
out. It's head on over thewebsite troll bytes dot com. Even better,
stop in and see them. They'dlove to see a right at eight
ninety five Springdale Street in beautiful MountHorb. John, it's always great chatting
with you. You enjoy this beautifulday, snow coming. There are benefits

(23:59):
sometimes not having windows in the studio. John, you enjoy the day.
On the website latrollbytes dot com.That stroll bytes dot com. Daniel Donalds
a chance to one one thousand dollarsnext year at thirteen ten w I BI