I know, I know. I’ll eventually stop updating about this computer, I swear…

When it stops doing annoying or interesting things. I will, whenever that time actually happens.

So far, I (or shall I say, we) are on the hunt for DDR3 RAM that’s being sold locally at a price that isn’t attempting to fleece someone. Surprisingly, no vendor around here has an 8GB stick of that RAM type available for sale. So the question is… do I want to wait until one does become available, hoping that one does, and then trade my DDR4 RAM for that piece of RAM since it’s technically useless to me, not being compatible with this computer, or do I want to see if I can find one off of a site like Amazon or even eBay, doing the transaction as a guest since I refuse to make an account with eBay again? I’m… not quite sure.

Living near a military base, the pawn shops here are known to be full of a lot of useful things, and here they seem to be failing me on something that I would normally expect them to have given that they have absolutely no shortage of computers and laptops that you can generally turn functional, at least from the vantage point of “a pawn shop will not accept something that does not function” and “if you know what parts to put into it, you can max it out and make it nominally functional”. But for once, they are failing me.

I do want to max this out as soon as possible since it can take 16GB (DDR3) RAM though, I really do.

At least when I can stop mucking about with this for an extended period, my head might stop hurting…

I mean, one can hope. That was a nice thought, or delusion, to entertain for all of what, five seconds? Ten?

The person that was going to lift the DDR4 16GB piece of RAM off of me (and in the process, owe me some computer parts in the event that I needed them) was actually going to buy me a DDR3 8GB stick to put into my computer to max it out, but for some reason… no one around here is selling one. I’m honestly beginning to speculate if everyone has switched to DDR4 RAM and DDR3 is becoming obsolete or being left in the dust, even if plenty of good computers like this one are using it. Because, I mean, this computer isn’t that old. It still has really good specs aside from the old RAM bit and actually outperforms the old laptop whose keyboard wound up starting to go out in a lot of ways if you take the time to compare it to that laptop point by point…

Hopefully one comes in at a shop or store around here soon that can be picked up and put in, because I’d like to max this thing out whenever I can, but I mean… if someone has to buy it online, what with DDR4 RAM being the RAM that everyone wants because that’s what newer computers take, it might be and does seem to be going for a lot less than what it used to go for. Guess it just depends on who decides to grab it first, although like I said, I do know someone in person who I trade random computer parts to that I don’t need to and get random computer and electronic parts back from if I happen to need anything that they may have.

I just want something that functions well enough to do what we need it to do, and being able to play a few enjoyable games on it with my youngest child is always fun, so being able to run Origin and Steam is nice!

I’m currently running 10GB of RAM in this thing with the expectation that I’ll be trading the 16GB of DDR4 RAM stick from our old computer for an 8GB stick of RAM to someone, maxing out this computer as soon as it is put in. This computer can not run DDR4 RAM, which I found out when I ran CrucialScan on it to get a deeper feel as to the specifications (and to confirm some things, like “which kind of RAM can this run?”)… and I’d like to max it out on everything as soon as possible to avoid having to take the bottom casing off of this computer apart again, even if it is almost always for a good cause. But given the specs that this computer otherwise has, the fact that it takes DDR3 RAM is actually really negligible in the grand scheme of things…

I am still impressed with the fact that it has a completely functioning touch screen, though. I really am, heh.

But the one thing that I don’t like is that more and more recent laptops require that you take the entire bottom casing off of a computer to swap parts out, whereas older laptops let you more easily access RAM with the purpose of being able to upgrade (and max it out). I’ve gone through two or three laptops over the course of the last several years that have required that the entire bottom casing come off just to put an additional stick of RAM in, or to swap RAM in and out, and some of them have made the process really tetchy with how the bottom casing sits on the computer. It’s not a process that I like to go through, especially now that almost all laptop manufacturers practically force you to do it. And I’m not even sure why they do it.

Will wonders ever cease? They better not, and this thing better keep working.

Seriously.

I just need to put one more stick of 8GB RAM into it to max it out (it currently has one 8GB stick, and the other slot is empty), and then it’s pretty much as far upgraded as I can get it. I’ll gladly take that, though.

This thing has given me so many migraines alone setting up, especially given that two prior Windows updates on it failed… but somehow, for some reason, this most recent one did not fail, unless I find out at a later point that it did fail, but I mean, that kind of would not surprise me given the track record of how tetchy this computer has shown itself to be. When this computer works well, it works awesomely. When it tries to throw every single possible error under the sun at me, obviously that’s when we start to have problems, heh.

I did manage to make an actual restore disc for it today, though, which is impressively good (that it let me)!

However, I have learned my lesson about buying PCs used, even if the prices on them are magnificent.

I don’t think I’m going to be doing this in the future. I think I’m going to keep on buying refurbished “new”.

I’m also going to continue to buy them from more reputable vendors than pawn shops, even though this one does have an extended warranty on it, simply because of how much time it took to set the whole thing up to functioning satisfaction. And I mean, I did a clean install of Windows 10 on the thing from complete scratch, which it let me do with the recovery partition since I could not get the former administrator’s name off of the computer even though I had their login credentials. So that much I had going for me at the start of all of this.

And I’m not even sure if that was what took the longest to do given these two Windows Update fails.

As far as Hewlett-Packard goes, it’s not a bad brand of computers. This one has just been, well, really tetchy.