Dell Latitude E7450 and Win8.1 Pro.

Post #404,220 by Another Scott 8/22/15 1:58:52 PM Reply	Dell Latitude E7450 and Win8.1 Pro. I got this at work to (eventually, after I change everything over) replace an E6400 that has been substantially upgraded (8 GB RAM, 2x500GB SSD) running Win7. It's the i7 version with integrated Intel graphics, non-touch screen (FHD), 16 GB RAM, 512 mSATA SSD, no WLAN, 3 year warranty, smart-card reader. No optical disk. It was a little over $2500 (ouch!). It is supposed to work with my existing docking stations, with 2 each 24" LCD monitors, but I haven't tried that yet. It's substantially lighter than the E6400, has substantially longer battery life (~ 10 h (?) vs ~ 2 h), and is easier to open up (remove battery, remove 2 screws, slide off panel and you're in). It came with a USB stick to reinstall Win 8.1 Pro - there doesn't seem to be a hidden restore partition (yay!). I turned it on for the first time last night and let it finish installing Win8.1 Pro. There's some uneven light bleed on the LCD on the black Dell boot logo, but it's not noticeable most of the rest of the time. Win8.1 seems flat and boring. I did my usual customization: - Move taskbar to right edge - Turn off all the ge-gaw graphics effects (select Performance) except screen font smoothing - Set small icons view in Control Panel - Set folders to Details view, show hidden files, etc., etc. - Turn off "hide and combine icons" in the TaskBar - Turn down the UAC "protection" to the bottom ("Not recommended") - Installed Chrome, Adblock Plus, FlashBlock In addition to that, I turned off the gigantic "charms" Win8.1 stuff that appear when the mouse is at the upper right corner. I couldn't stand the default gigantic blue border around the active window, so I found some links about how to reduce the size and used the Personalization to change the color to a yellow (customization options are only visible on selecting a color). Some other annoyances: - During the install, MS was trying to insist that I give them an e-mail address so they could "helpfully" set up an account to save my browsing history and so forth. No thanks. It took a while to figure out how to get around that (one selects "create a new account" and then near the bottom of that screen is "don't register" or something - then you setup a local Windows login account and password). - During the install the only Windows Update options were (IIRC) to let Windows install updates automatically or do the setup later. If you do setup later then you get the usual many options (I always choose notify and I'll download and install later). - On the reboot after the install, a "pretty" picture popped up as the desktop with a digital clock and a couple of icons but no user login button or whatever. The HD light was flashing a lot so I figured it was doing stuff and would eventually show something. I got tired of waiting and clicked somewhere (don't recall where) and was finally shown a login widget. Maybe that'll change since I've done a login now. - The E7540 was apparently fully charged when I took it out of the box. On plugging it into the charger the white charging LED flashed briefly once then went out. There was no indication whether it was full or empty or doing anything or not. - The hardware mute button didn't seem to work for much of the time I was doing things. Perhaps the customized keyboard driver didn't get installed until later in the install. - There's no indication during the install of how long it will take. All that happens is that the solid desktop color cycles (smoothly) with "Please wait" or "Don't turn off your computer" or similar sentences in a giant font. - On clicking the white "Windows" button (that replaced the Start button), it throws up a different screen with "tiles" of various sizes and colors and tiny text and lots of visual noise. I guess it's that Metro stuff (or whatever they call it now). I'm not interested in it. If you right button click on the Windows button instead, you get a simple list of things you'd expect like Control Panel and so forth. It seems an easy-enough work-around. - The screen resolution is 1920x1080 (vs 1366x768 or so on the E6400) but the size of everything is roughly the same as on the older screen (probably by design, but still). There seem to be only 2 "DPI-like" settings to adjust the size. I picked the next lower down one to get more information on the screen, then "custom" adjusted the font sizes a little smaller for various things. Naturally, some things don't seem to be affected by those settings. I fiddled with the TrueType optimization but may have to go through it again (my eyes were tired and it didn't look too great by the time I was done). - It comes with a Hynix mSATA 512 GB SSD in an adapter that fits in a 2.5" HD bay. There's also a small eSATA bay that holds the WWAN module (empty). In the E7440 that small bay could be used for an additional m.2 SSD. Although there are SSDs that will fit in the E7450 WWAN bay, apparently it's no longer enabled to be used as storage - either the necessary hardware isn't present or it's turned off in the existing BIOS. So this E7450 is limited to a single hard drive (unless you want to use the SD card slot for storage) - there's no "modular bay" for an optical drive either. (Note that if you get the version of the E7450 with nVidia graphics, you lose the ability to use a 2.5" SSD - it will only take an mSATA drive.) - It has Intel WiFi software along with the Windows WiFi software. As with other machines I've encountered with both, they sometimes seem to fight each other. Also, it seemed to drop or lose track of my 2.4 GHz WiFi band and seemed happier with the 5GHz. DHCP grabbed the wrong address (not in the 192.168.xx.xx range) for some reason. J's newish MacBook Pro does these same things too, so there's probably something amiss in my home WiFi that I need to resolve one of these days...) - It seems a little fragile. The back cover is very thin and flexible when removed. I'm very close to ordering a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD to replace the mSATA drive, for extra storage space. Since I'll have to turn on encryption soon, I want the hardware to be configured and stable before I do so, and before I install all my applications and transfer all my data. I see that Samsung has 2TB drives out now, but $750 is way too spendy. Supposedly Intel (and presumably Samsung) will have their superdense SSDs coming out this year, so the 2TB drives will do nothing but get cheaper. Supposedly 10TB drives are coming "soon"... I haven't run any system benchmarks. I don't know if I'll bother (- I know the video isn't speedy, but it's plenty fast for my needs). The CPU is probably not that much faster than the E6400 - it's just mainly a whole lot more power efficient. I will try to benchmark the mSATA HD as I can't seem to find any numbers for that yet. I'll probably keep the SSD as a single partition - a first for me for a hard drive in about 20 years. If I want to run Linux, I'll do it in a VirtualBox VM. I need to figure out and understand backup and data transfer strategies once the HD is encrypted. And how one clones such a drive to a larger HD in the future. I'm dreading all that... :-( In short: - It's a nice, light, modern, quick laptop. - But there's only a single storage bay. - You need to be careful about configuring it if you are interested in future expansion. - Win8.1 isn't horrible, so far anyway. There are ways around many of the annoyances. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,221 by drook 8/22/15 2:13:24 PM Reply	Sounds like how I review hardware now The threshold of performance creeps up, my appetite for fiddling creeps down, more and more things cross into the realm of "good enough AKA not worth my time to bother". -- Drew
Post #404,222 by Another Scott 8/22/15 2:29:53 PM Reply	Yup. Life's too short. :-)
Post #404,226 by Another Scott 8/22/15 7:19:30 PM Reply	HDTune Read Benchmark for Hynix mSATA 512 GB SSD Here. Apparently for the Write benchmark it needs a blank partition. :-/ It's not a speed demon by any means. The 850 Evo should be a nice upgrade for it. (Let me know if there are any issues with the link - I've never shared anything on Google Drive before...) Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,237 by Another Scott 8/23/15 11:20:53 AM Reply	Winaero Tweaker. A handy, free utility for tweaking various settings for Win7 to Win10. It seems to work well. A reboot is required after some changes, of course. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,240 by pwhysall 8/23/15 12:40:14 PM Reply	Life's too short Get the IT department to set it up. I very much like the fact that the care and feeding of my work laptop is 100% Someone Else's Problem. Why do you cripple UAC?
Post #404,245 by Another Scott 8/23/15 12:52:13 PM Reply	UAC seems useless to me. It just gets in the way. How does it make anything more secure to have another popup saying "are you sure" that you just click OK on automatically anyway? (I have never had any indication of something being installed without my consent. Presumably the hackers are smart enough to bypass its protections now anyway.) My IT "department" is swamped. ;-) Just getting them to get the machine on the Domain will take a while - they're tied up with lots of other things. It's better for me to figure out how to most of these simple-ish things myself. Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,249 by pwhysall 8/23/15 1:47:35 PM Reply	headdesk You wouldn't run as root on a UNIX box. No, you wouldn't. No, really. You wouldn't. If you're running as an admin user with UAC turned off, that's exactly what you're doing. Without wishing to be too rude, if you don't understand what UAC is and what it does (and "it just gets in the way" indicates that), you're exactly the kind of user that should leave it switched on. And your IT department is too busy to set up your computer? Wow. That sucks. Your company must have money to burn if installing and configuring Windows is considered a good use of your time.
Post #404,250 by Another Scott 8/23/15 2:14:12 PM Reply	I'm not running as Admin. :-) There's a big audit coming up and our IT "department" is trying to make sure we pass. They don't need any additional work, like setting up a new laptop for me, until that is done. Tell me, or point me to an objective explanation, that tells me how UAC makes me (a user who doesn't open e-mails or click on links from unknown people, who doesn't visit pirate software sites, who has never inadvertently installed software under Winders, who runs SBS&D and Symantec AV, who has 30+ years of experience with computers of various kinds) more secure, please. I don't claim to be infallible when it comes to this stuff. (And once it's on the Domain and the remote admin stuff is installed, it'll probably be locked down anyway, so it really doesn't matter how I feel about it. It's going to be set however they set it (meaning I can't install software without logging in as Admin anyway).) Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,251 by pwhysall 8/23/15 2:59:10 PM Reply	Sheesh If your IT "department" (it's one bloke and it's not his full-time job, amirite?) needs to prepare for an audit, they need to revisit how they do things daily. Seriously. That's fucked up. Being audited is a case of showing the auditor the records they ask for. If it needs "preparation", then someone's not doing their job.* UAC: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.07.uac.aspx I have a low tolerance for excuses when it comes to this sort of thing. Well, I say "low tolerance". I really mean "no tolerance". If I were to not do my job (in the worst case, this would mean missing a governance milestone, such as the final review before the tender goes to the prospective customer, or even missing the submission date - this last would probably have terminal consequences) and I were to present "but I was getting ready for audit" as my excuse, I'd be having meetings without coffee.
Post #404,252 by Another Scott 8/23/15 3:45:33 PM Reply	Re: Sheesh In wildly heterogeneous research environments with a history of researchers being able to do what they need to do on whatever hardware they need to do it on (everything from supercomputers to embedded controllers), and no formal end-user IT support to speak of, things don't always go the way they "should" when it comes to IT practices. Sometimes new requirements take effect with very little lead time as a result of mistakes and poor practices in another (unrelated) part of the "organization" that get press visibility. Adequate resources to implement those new requirements don't suddenly appear along with them. Aircraft carriers can't turn on a dime, so to speak. Thanks for the link. Finally, the bottom slider position turns off UAC technologies altogether, so that all software running in a PA account runs with full administrative rights, file system and registry virtualization are disabled, and Protected Mode IE is disabled. While there are no prompts at this setting, the loss of Protected Mode IE is a significant disadvantage of this mode. I don't run IE so that vector is not available. Several people have observed that it's possible for third-party software running in a PA account with standard user rights to take advantage of auto-elevation to gain administrative rights. For example, the software can use the WriteProcessMemory API to inject code into Explorer and the CreateRemoteThread API to execute that code, a technique called DLL injection. Since the code is executing in Explorer, which is a Windows executable, it can leverage the COM objects that auto-elevate, like the Copy/Move/Rename/Delete/Link Object, to modify system registry keys or directories and give the software administrative rights. While true, these steps require deliberate intent, aren't trivial, and therefore are not something we believe legitimate developers would opt for versus fixing their software to run with standard user rights. In fact, we recommend against any application developer taking a dependency on the elevation behavior in the system and that application developers test their software running in standard user mode. The follow-up observation is that malware could gain administrative rights using the same techniques. Again, this is true, but as I pointed out earlier, malware can compromise the system via prompted elevations as well. From the perspective of malware, Windows 7's default mode is no more or less secure than the Always Notify mode ("Vista mode"), and malware that assumes administrative rights will still break when run in Windows 7's default mode. The answer is to not let malware get on the PC in the first place. The standard user response of Click OK when a popup appears on installing software doesn't protect users any more than not having the Click OK dialog in any situation I've come across on my machines. YMMV. To be honest, this new laptop is the first one that I've turned the UAC all the way down on - I usually put it on the next to last setting. Maybe I should do that now. ;-) Again, the settings for UAC and the rest are going to be out of my hands on the new laptop soon. So don't have heartburn over this. ;-) Thanks. Cheers, Scott. (Who isn't saying that all users should do what I do. And who isn't saying he's never broken his Windows install - that's happened a few times, but had nothing to do with UAC (e.g. breaking partitions on a stretched clone drive).)
Post #404,383 by a6l6e6x 8/30/15 4:08:16 PM Reply	Re: The answer is to not let malware get on the PC in the first place. Read this Register article and tell me you control what threats your machine is exposed to: Malware menaces poison ads as Google, Yahoo! look away Booming attack vector offers mass malware distribution, stealthy targeting It's a long article, but informative. Alex "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -- Isaac Asimov
Post #404,386 by Another Scott 8/30/15 5:39:48 PM Reply	AdBlock Plus is your friend. The first thing I do after installing Windows is install an antivirus, update it, scan the system. Then I download the Chrome browser, install Adblock Plus and Flash Control, and then download and install Spybot Search & Destroy. I close the browser, let SBS&D do a scan, then Immunize the system. From your link: Experts recommend users run advertising or script blockers to prevent random redirection from malvertising. "Advertisers are really going to hate to hear this but blocking advertising for user protection is a really effective way of blocking malvertising," Schultz says. Users can use script blockers or ad blockers to reduce their exposure. This reporter has anecdotal evidence that many in the industry run the likes of Ad-Block for security purposes. The scourge is so bad that Cisco's Schultz and the rest of the TALOS team recommend the blockers as a security measure. Schultz personally recommends Request Policy for Firefox users. An ad blocker and all the rest is no panacea, of course. There's always a chance that "legitimate" companies will accidentally or intentionally infect their customers machines with a virus or a rootkit, for instance. But it dramatically reduces the chances. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,392 by scoenye 8/30/15 9:24:12 PM Reply	AB+ sold out But there is a new player on the field, EFF's Privacy Badger. It does not concentrate on the visual components of ads, but on the background behavior of the sources.
Post #404,394 by Another Scott 8/30/15 10:34:33 PM Reply	Ah. Excellent. Thanks. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Looks interesting. Thanks for the pointer. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,409 by pwhysall 9/1/15 5:24:46 AM Reply	No. Adblock plus is not your friend. Adblock is. AB+ doesn't block all ads. Adblock does. Confusing nomenclature, but there you go.
Post #404,411 by Another Scott 9/1/15 7:04:55 AM Reply	Zooks. I missed all that. I moved to ABP when AB wasn't available on Chrome and haven't kept up with the details. https://getadblock.com/ Gotta reconfigure my browsers in the next few days... :-/ Thanks to you and scoenye for the pointers. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,785 by malraux 9/22/15 3:00:25 PM Reply	AdBlock has a deal as well, apparently I'm currently looking into uBlock. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #404,796 by Another Scott 9/22/15 4:54:40 PM Reply	AdBlock seems to hang on some pages for me. E.g. for a while it seemed to be doing something with Disqus on Atrios's home page - the progress indicator wouldn't stop. (That seems to be fixed now.) It's weird. Oh well. I can't complain as I haven't paid anything for any of them yet... Cheers, Scott.
Post #405,016 by Another Scott 9/29/15 10:11:40 PM Reply	Trying uBlock Origin at the moment. AdBlock seems weird on more than just Atrios's page. I don't know whether the uBlock/uBlockOrigin[] split is important, but uBO has more reviews on the Chrome store so it seems like a reasonable place to start. We'll see how it goes. Cheers, Scott. [] - FF and Chrome(ium) only.
Post #405,017 by malraux 9/29/15 10:28:52 PM Reply	I'm running uBlock on Safari Seems ok so far. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #405,061 by scoenye 10/2/15 9:01:05 PM Reply	And so passes AdBlock... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/02/adblock_flogged_off_to_mystery_buyer/ Within its headline announcement yesterday that it had been bought by an unnamed outfit, AdBlock said it is now participating in German competitor AdBlock Plus' Acceptable Ads program, which sets the criteria for whether publishers and websites can be unblocked by its filter. Fixes the nomenclature confusion...
Post #405,068 by Another Scott 10/3/15 1:17:50 AM Reply	After the front page story in the NY Times about adblockers... It seem inevitable that there is going to be even more shakeouts in the ad blocker market after the NY Times finally lets the masses know about them, and after Apple finally lets them on the iPhones. Since there's so much money at stake in on-line ads, people will try to find a way around the blockers. "Acceptable ads" policies may be a good thing, if the organization behind the standards really is sensible and independent. Web sites do need to find a way to be something other than money pits. But the Devil's in the details. Cheers, Scott.
Post #405,077 by Ashton 10/3/15 3:14:59 PM Reply	Cash-cows and Guns seem to top any list of legislation-proof scams that flourish in countries with religions like vulture-capitalism. This one hits the fantasies of all the more-More-MORE afflicted. A huge group here. So if we cannot alter what's in jelloware in these afflicted tribes? well.. we see what the pragmatists do later: target the mind-containers. Messy but effective. I think it's simpler though: alter the early-inculcaton of what 'wealth' means: and--like the polio virus--much of the later mayhem and massacre can be nipped in the cradle. We train-em-Up early or end up later: shooting-em-Down. a lengthy process, usually successfully inculcated only via active early-on parental demonstration: until mental health inspections verify the principle. Logic alone won't work, which really pisses off the people who like recipes for everything. (Same problem as 'proving' why early music exposure and education seems just as vital.) But if we ended stupid-wars and such, what would dull people do for excitement?
Post #404,305 by Another Scott 8/25/15 10:12:43 PM Reply	HDTune Read benchmark for Samsung 850 EVO 1TB https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B08CdVn28siQUkk2U0NPQmlMQmc/view?usp=sharing It's 1.72x as fast as the original mSATA drive (average 354 MB/s vs 206 MB/s). The cloning was mostly painless, but educational. I downloaded the Samsung transfer software, installed it, let it update to the latest version. Started the software then connected the SSD using an Apricorn SATA/USB adapter I had handy. The software won't clone anything more than the Windows partition (this Dell E7450 with Win8.1 has a small X: partition before C: and a small Y: partition at the end of the disk). On trying to start the clone, it would run for about 20 s then quit and complain it couldn't read the source disk. :-/ Google had lots of suggestions. One I tried was checking the "Troubleshoot compatibility" menu option. Winders said it should be run as a Win8 program so I let it modify whatever settings that requires. Same issue on trying again. I then rebooted. At that point, the software worked fine. :-/ The progress indicator said 100% after ~ 30 min (for 32 GB) but continued to work for another 30 minutes or so when it finally said it completed successfully. I shut the system down, removed the mSATA drive and adapter, reinstalled the 3 retaining screws, installed the 850 EVO (the yellow ribbon cable prevents it from sitting flat, but the cover fits fine and it doesn't rattle). Bootup was fine and seemed a little snappier. I'll hang onto the mSATA drive as an emergency boot drive and hope I never need the original two hidden partitions. So far, so good... Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,345 by Another Scott 8/28/15 7:59:52 AM Reply	Free year of "unlimited" storage at Amazon with 850 EVO purchase. I don't know if I'm "special" or if this applies to everyone who buys this SSD, but I got this e-mail this morning: As a thank you for your recent purchase of the Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM), we’d like to offer you 1 FREE year of Unlimited Everything cloud storage from Amazon Cloud Drive (a $59.99 value). You can store unlimited files, auto-save photos to free up space on your phone, share large files like videos, and more. It might be worth considering if you're in the market for cloud storage. Cheers, Scott.

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