New toy

Following a series of problems affecting both my (elderly) HP laptops, I have now taken delivery of a new-to-me HP Zbook 15u G5. Complete with new-to-me Windows 11.

After a shaky start, something over two hours later, I am now more or less up and running, with the small number of programs that I use in a regular way nicely lined up on the task bar. One of the problems was that I had never seen a Windows 11 screen before, but thought that it was about time I stepped up. It will take a while to build confidence, but I am moving ahead. Needless to say, no handy little conversion guide came in the box. The other problem was that my HP mouse did not work properly, but eventually I swapped in my Microsoft mouse and that seems to be working fine.

First impression is that the new laptop is a lot faster than both the old ones.  But it is not terribly photogenic, so I offer instead this snap of CERN's CDC 6600 from 1964, lifted from reference 2.

One lesson is that updating an older laptop which has been in the loft for a couple of years can be quite a business. All kinds of rather basic things seem to keep going wrong. Probably best left to proper geeks.

PS: the following morning, Saturday: the first bug. File rename does not always work in File Explorer (possibly not called that anymore). Plenty of chat available about this, from where I got the tip to go into file properties and edit the name there. All a bit clumsy compared with the right click of old. Odd that sometimes this bit of Windows 11 works in the old way and sometimes not.

References

Reference 1: https://tier1online.com/.

Reference 2: http://hpcpark.blogspot.com/2012/08/first-supercomputer.html.