Buying a new lap top

[Phloating Phlasher]

Check out the "Staples" in house brand! "NXT", they're economical & I've had nothing but good luck with them.
https://www.staples.com/nxt-technolo...CL142211/ojlbf

[Mark in Ottawa]

To: Mark in Ottawa: What is a good brand name flash drive to buy? Thanks

I have never had a problem with any flash drive that I have purchased irrespective of who made it. Probably the simplest approach is to visit Best Buy or Staples and purchase whatever brand that they sell since neither is likely to sell something that is sub-standard. The one thing to be careful of if you are going to use it as a means of transferring your files from an old to a new computer (and by good luck, also creating a back-up copy) is to ensure that the capacity is sufficient for your files. Obviously the greater the capacity, the greater the price but my experience suggests that it is worth the extra cost to be able to copy everything onto a single flash drive

[Phloating Phlasher]

^^^this.
Look up space used on your HDD on the old laptop, get the same, or preferably next size up in a flash drive.

[PWC]

My computer is 12 yrs old and is not supported for any updates. Yrs ago I bought a Terra Byte external hard drive and moved everything onto it except the operating system. When I open a file it moves from the xternal drive to the desktop. When I'm thru, I save back to the xternal drive.

If I get a new computer, the xternal drive will plug into a USB and I'll have my files and a billion bytes of storage (trillion is larger than a billion). I suppose when I save the file the computer will say do I want to save to the new updated format.

[JohnMOhio]

PWC, what do you do to back up your operating system? I ask since it is no longer being updated.

[PWC]

Never thought to do that. I could open a file "Operating System" on the external drive and copy all to there. If I copy, not move, I don't think the computer would look for it there in normal operation. Since nothing is updated, I would have the "most current" old stuff. Think I will, THANKS!

[Phloating Phlasher]

There should be an option to "create a rescue disc", try that.

[Former Cav]

hire a computer geek (not from best buy either) for about 60 bucks and hour. It'll save you a lot of grief and extra B S and equipment.