The time has come to replace the old laptop and we are very confused.
Main use is email, web, documents, photo's, we don't have a huge budget, have been looking at Asus and Acer in Auchun today.
Any advice is greatly appreciated !
Maureen
Maureen - Quite a few people, myself included, have swapped to using the Avast anti-virus rather than AVG. AVG dropped providing website safety ratings unless you used their own search system, and I always avoided their toolbar anyway. Some systems ran significantly more slowly after AVG had been installed & there were also some updating problems. (My oldish Vista system just refused to update about a month ago, even though it was the 2014 version, so it's now running Avast.) To date, I like Avast, and worldwide it has pushed AVG off the top spot. If you've already got hold of AVG, it's probably not worth changing, as it's a good product, but, if not, think about Avast.
No, I think you will find that very easy to do if you know how to find your way to "Add or Remove Programs".
AVG is well regarded, but they don't give support with the free version, but there is plenty of free advice available on the Web, if you should have problems.
But please take care, having a firewall and antivirus can never give 100% security. You still need to be careful about what you download and what you click on.
I have used the McAfee anti virus that seemed to come with the ASUS, now it wants me to pay so I think I will download avg.
Do you see any problems I may have with trying to uninstall McFee.
Thank you
Quite right. The UN 'stewed its own goose' anyway. If you look at the agencies like UNICEF, ILO and WHO where I had working contact then you will find that the working language is English (UK/USA both in roughly equal measure) and that even among the support staff as well as the international specialists there is often only a Francophone minority. Because a lot of staff move around the world over time, carrying on using AZERTY would have been a waste of time.
Back to ASCII and early on when all of the original systems supplied were IBM we all had to either learn the codes or work from a sheet of symbols. That sheet was necessary anyway for the least common ones, plus the other pages for mathematical codes, etc. The diversity was actually far greater than now, in fact people are quite spoiled and also limited if we seriously think about it, but it was also designed for the QWERTY keyboard and was just about impossible with the AZERTY layout. The keyboard designers could have thought outside the box and done something about it, but I suspect it is rather late given how many places have QWERTY for the Latin alphabet now.
Essentially, the UN keyboard was more-or-less the Canadian (French) keyboard, except that it wasn't easy to get hold of (if you didn't happen to be in Canada).
IMHO, most keyboards beat the AZERTY heap of junk every time, but my opinion is biased 'coz no-one (outside France, and bits of Belgium) finds the AZERTY usable in the slightest. Even SECAM found some takers in Eastern Europe & the Middle East (poor s*ds), but AZERTY remains a standard in pretty well total isolation.
Whether or not I have an interest is academic to providing facts and simple truth. Using a discussion forum such as this to relate half truths and innuendo's deserves comment.
This has really drifted off topic. I have already said my piece on the thread "Typing French accented characters." Perhaps the querty/azerty debate should continue there.....
Yes, there are various tricks you can try, but I type frequently in French and feel that the AZERTY keyboard, even with its quirks and faults, is still a good compromise.
I now have a tablet at home and on that I can have whatever keyboard I like. But there I'm kind of forced to use the keyboard for the language - which can be a pain because of constant switching - because the software does auto-correct according to the keyboard in use.
Sometimes we are too smart for our own good.
Yep, as I said earlier all the old ASCII codes. I had to learn the lot years back and now that they are the alt+ codes still use them.
As for the so-called UN keyboards, so few people got used to them that they just faded away. Most UN offices now have QWERTY equipment, which when I am working for them, using their equipment and have my old ASCII codes up top, saves me looking at a sheet of codes every time I don't know an accent.
My French OH is very satisfied with a Swedish-Finnish keyboard. It is QWERTY but with all the accents, and the three special Scandinavian characters åäö.
Another way to occasionally get accent characters, if you have a numeric keypad, is to use the Alt- with 3 numeric key combinations. For example, é is obtained by holding down the (left) Alt key and type 1, 3 & 0 in succession on the numeric keypad.
There are over 250 allowable combinations, but some of the more useful are (Alt - xyz):
é -130 è -138 ê -136 ë -137
à -133 â -131 ä -132
Ç -128 ç -135
Going with the AZERTY abomination isn't the only way to be able to type French accents natively. 20 years ago, the UN organizations in Geneva got Dell to make so-called UN keyboards, which are Swiss-French keyboards, but with the Y & Z in the 'correct' (US/UK) place. (Swiss keyboards follow the German QWERTZ pattern, which are close to the US/UK versions except for the Y & Z.)
At one stage, retail customers, if they knew about this, could order a UN keyboard with a new Dell, but those days are sadly gone. What people do these days is just buy a Swiss-French keyboard over the border in Geneva or wherever. (All major keyboard vendors, such as Logitech, make them.) They then either just put up with the issue of the interchanged Y & Z, or pop off the the keytops and swap them over, modifying the keyboard drivers appropriately. You then get not only the French accents, but German ones as well, should you need them. You also get the ability to add 'standard' accents to any vowel, in the same way as with the French keyboard, i.e. two successive keystrokes.
It used to be that the standard Microsoft Swiss-French keyboard driver had to be hacked in order to swap the Y & Z, but more recently Microsoft have produced software that allows for 'official' keyboard customization. Should anyone like a copy of the customized Swiss-French drivers, I'll happily forward these, but please let me know which Windows version you use.
There is a handy trick for people with UK or US keyboards who have, like most of us, occasional need for accents, This is to install the French or the standard Swiss-French keyboard as an additional keyboard. You then simply swap to the alternative keyboard with a keystroke combination to get the accents, and then back again. You soon learn which key gives which character, and some people stick small labels on the keys.
Sorry, I thought the OP was looking for a new laptop.
I didn't say new, I said I could buy. Earlier in the discussion I also stated don't be afraid of or dismiss 2nd user as Mac owners look after their computers with great deal of care
So you can supply brand new Macbook Pro's for £480?
That's awsome!
Where do I pay?
Asus F502CA-XX114D 15.6 " 4GB RAM HDD 320 Go
EUR 263,26 free delivery from "you can guess who".
And under European law, everyone gets a years guarantee.
I have just checked.
13.3" Macbook Pro unibody. 2.66GHz Intel 64 Bit processing, 4Gb RAM, 250Gb HD, Dual Layer DVD burner. 7 Hour battery life with multi-voltage charger. 90 Day warranty. MacOS 10.9 Mavericks. Will run Windows in native mode (You supply the Windows install disk).
£480 - 575€
Why oh why do Windoze users feel the need to keep on proliferating inaccurate information that Apple product is expensive? It's so depressing to hear the same old same old argument rolled out time and time again. And especially when they are wrong!
If you know where to look Mac product can even be cheaper than PC.
Example. Right now I can buy a iMac 2.66GHz Intel (64bit processing), 4Gb RAM, 500Gb HD, Dual Layer DVD burner (9.3 Gb), 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x Firewire 800 port, Fibre Optical sound in and out ports, multi-voltage power supply, with Sleek aluminium keyboard and 5 button mouse, Running the very latest MacOS 10.9 Mavericks, for just £350 or 425€
Now tell me that Apple's are not competitive with PC.
second what Ian says - moved over to azerty 10 years ago, odd at first but soon got used to it and it's so much easier and quicker for typing in French (or other languages with the same accents) - I think the French were so behind on the whole internet thing that they put the @ where they did because they didn't think it woulf take off, or where waiting for l'académie française to come up with a 100% french symbol, perhaps they just thought that à would do it...!
AVG and avast, both good, never had a problem with either. Always uninstal norton and uncheck the box when downloading adobe updates or who ever it is who wants to instal it!
Have had good and bad HPs, a good toshiba and a good dell.