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[Truean]

Received a couple hard drive error messages, might backup where I can, but yeah.... Slowly....

Strategy: purchase nice computers, get as much out of them as possible. 2009 Windows 7, 6 GB RAM. About 9 year lifespan and still going.
Hoping to resolve a couple things before I deal with this, but I imagine instability is now a clock....

I realize things have changed. I do not generally like Windows 10 due to built in spyware, cloud storage, and worst of all, Office 365 you basically rent (I would pay more for an excel version I owned or only pay once for, please). I am saddened that windows 10 isn't going anywhere. Used to be you RENTED / scheduled computing time from the university mainframe on essentially a "dumb machine." The PC (Personal computer) decentralized computing power, setting it and us free. Now, we're going back to the centralized model with cloud computing and "software as a service." [shudder, end rant].

A.) Looking for the option of replacement.

Office 365: Again, I hate software as a service. Is there any way I can get a regular license for Microsoft office I don't have to pay a monthly fee for? I will pay for it, because as long as I keep computers, it just makes more sense.

1) Maybe this:

Maybe this:
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/inspiron-3668-desktop/fdcwgam241s

2.) Microsoft Office:
 Microsoft Office Home and Business 2016 + $229.99 <--- Do I need this?
Dell Recommended

As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two is, the more expensive one has outlook.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016 + $149.99 <--- Or, Will this get me Microsoft Office without subscription fees?

Please tell me this will replace Office 365's subscription based model and do everything Microsoft office usually does?

Basically, I will be a higher fixed price now, to make the payment all upfront, rather than deal with monthly or yearly subscriptions. I do not want any software I have to pay renewal fees for, including windows. Please do not let me get stuck with this.

3.) USB ports:
Must have. Line-in access has saved me too many times to do things strictly wireless.

4.) Processor:
This is a long term purchase, meant to last, as its predecessors, for several years.
7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700 processor (8MB Cache, up to 4.20 GHz) <-- I imagine this is not bad?

5.) Graphics card:
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750Ti with 2GB DDR5 graphics memory

Do I need more than this to play most modern games? Do I need more than this to play games coming out in the next couple years?

6.) Dual Monitors:
Can this run two monitors at once?

B.) Possible hard drive repair/ hard drive replacement? Worth it?

Thank you for your time,
Truean

[wierd]

Solution:

Linux live/rescue CD with gddrescue installed.
Additional HDD put on SATA interface.

You can use apt-get to (temporarily) install Linux software when using a livecd. Do that to install gddrescue. It is a very aggressive raw sector copy program, that will keep retrying reads until it hits your defined threshold or succeeds, then will continue copying sectors. It can write either to another disk device as raw sectors or to a disk image for forensic recovery.  It takes lots of time to run, but is completely free.

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html

When it does finally finish the raw copy, power off the system, remove the failing drive and promote the new drive to replace it. Power the unit on, do a filesystem scan, and go about your business.

[Truean]

Interesting option. Thank you. May try. That covers "repair."

As for "replace?" May I ask your opinion on the model put forth above? Namely will Excel NOT be a subscription based model?

[wierd]

The system should work as before, since we are cloning it, basically. Just using a very aggressive disk imager to do the raw copy. One that is more persistent than most others. If you have an older version of office installed, that older version will be there.

As for replacement... I assume you mean the office suite and not the HDD... In which case, your options are limited. Microsoft likes to change the file format every version of office they release as one of the ways they do lock-in, meaning any free alternative you may choose will be constantly playing catch up, and clients sending you Office formatted data will likely not take the time to use an older, compatible format with the save-as dialog.  This means they will be sending you files with the "latest and greatest" format that the free alternatives to MS office will not know how to open, leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth if your clients do not follow your instructions and fail to send you back-compatible files.

 Naturally, Microsoft does NOT see this as an abusive monopolistic practice that leverages their market dominant position to discourage the use of alternatives. Of course not. /s.

That said, the free alternative list includes but is not limited to:

Libre Office (When Oracle allowed forking of Open Office after acquiring SUN microsystems' IP, the community salvaged the project under Apache licensing, under the libre office name. It does not have the bullshit Java dependencies that OpenOffice.Org has, has some unique improvements after having been forked, etc, but is still based on OO.org)

OpenOffice.Org (descendent of StarOffice, owned by Oracle. oracle is even more abusive than Microsoft and treats their customers like toilet paper. Suggest avoiding and using libre office instead.)

Both have an excel clone called "math", which can open and edit older excel files, but is not feature complete, because of MS's evil attack lawyers concerning look and feel, trade dress, software patents, and all that jazz.

If you mean replacing the whole system...  That is a bit overkill, especially if the old hardware is working, side from an aging disk drive, and if the plan is to milk the system until if is a withered corpse to get max return on the investment.

In general, if the system has a " legacy boot" capable uefi firmware installed, it can be coaxed into running windows 7, as long as you can find USB and SATA drivers.

In general, windows systems have been capable of running multiple monitors since windows 98.

Sadly, unless you want to bend over for the rough anal violation of windows 10's metrics and tracking that you cannot actually disable despite the screams of the fanbois to the contrary, you will end up forced off the windows platform as win7 is end of life. The only real way to reign in win10 is to aggressively firewall it to keep it from contacting the mother ship, and aggressively monitoring it after every update to see if MS has found a way around your cockblocking.

I made the switch to Linux quite some time ago for this very reason.  WINE may not be perfect, but it can run a surprising amount of windows software, including older versions of MS Office. There is better compatibility if you don't mind shelling out a few bucks for codeweaver's non free fork, crossover. Mint feels a lot like win7, but is still Linux. 

At this point the only real thing MS understands is a mass exodus from their ecosystem. This is exactly what they are trying to prevent with the like of Office365, by locking you into software service hell. The idea that they should accommodate users, and not themselves, appears incapable of being understood by them. Like any abusive relationship, you should seek other options. That's what I did.

My gaming rig upstairs runs win7, and does just fine.

For actual work, I picked up a cheap Chromebook, hacked the bios on it with MrChromebox, then installed GalliumOS. (An Ubuntu based distro made specifically for Chromebooks.). I have come up with a workable solution to having to use an SD card as /home, where I use tmpfs mounts in /etc/fstab to prevent excessive writes from things like the browser cache from nuking the card.  Works just fine for basic office tasks, and uses local storage. Minor annoyance at bootup since I have to use the legacy boot package on my system, and so have to use a magic button combo on boot all the time. There is a solution to that, but requires taking the thing apart to remove a write protect screw, and I will just deal with the petty annoyance. I use libre office on said hacked Chromebook.

Probably not the answers you really wanted, but MS is not going to stop herding you like a lamb to the slaughter toward their goal of milking you eternally with software as a service.

[martinuzz]

Bill Gates deserves to be eternally grilled on the roasts of hell for MSOffice extortion practices.

[Truean]

If you could make any of this comprehensible to the average end user, then you would be godly and rich.
A packaged alternative to Microsoft, that works with the usual formats people depend on: gold mine.

[wierd]

There IS an actual project aiming at feature complete reimplementation of MS windows..  It is still bleeding edge alpha quality, and ***NOT*** ready for primetime though.

That project is ReactOS, and is LGPL licenced.

Linux is mature software, but is very different from windows underneath. ReactOS is buggy Alpha software, but runs the same (or at least aims to) as windows underneath.  I keep my eye on it; should it ever have a big jump in completeness, and reach real-world levels of usefulness, I would start making the recommendations, has as is, I just cannot, as it is not mature enough.

[feelotraveller]

If you could make any of this comprehensible to the average end user, then you would be godly and rich.
A packaged alternative to Microsoft, that works with the usual formats people depend on: gold mine.

Switch to Linux.  It just works.  Clear enough.   

In the meantime from your current machine download LibreOffice https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ (the 'still' version for your OS) and try to find something it won't do.  The only problem I have encountered is getting micro@#$% saved powerpoint presentations to play properly.  All the other 'usual' formats are fine.  (Most of the usual formats are simply attempts by micro@##$% to hijack the market.)

If you are looking for a new machine and are not willing to install an OS yourself (it's simple, proven by the fact that i had no problems with it  ) then search for one with Linux preinstalled rather than window$.

(The I7 cpu is more than you need.  An I5 will be both cheaper and more efficient. BTW your link just goes to a dell welcome page for me.)
(Quick edit: the graphics card you mention is marginal.  Some current games like/need more than 2Gb on the card, so it depends on the games.  For future proofing I'd look at getting at least 4Gb, but again it depends on the games.  Do a quick check on the Steam requirements for some of the more graphics intensive games you'd like to be playing... then add some capacity.)

[eerr]

A long time ago, in a computer store, a man told me the read/write head on my hard drive was dying.
He sold me on a 50$ hard drive head that clamped down and looked entirely too much like it was gonna scratch the drive.

I replaced the read/write head. After doing this, my computer worked. It even lived for another two years until it developed psu issues.

[wierd]

This must have been a VERY long time ago. (late 70s, to mid 80s).

Used to be that HDDs had modular, replaceable components, like heads, platters, bearings, etc. Not so much anymore.

[milo christiansen]

No way, no how will you replace a HD head. Hard drives are assembled in clean rooms, since a single dust particle can ruin a drive.

Floppy drive heads maybe, but not hard drive heads.

Move to Linux. You will need to learn a lot of new things, but the savings alone are worth it.

[wierd]

Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth, when the fixed disk was a rare and precious investment. Early models used in large mainframes had removable "Disk packs" that were literally replaceable platters.

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Disk_pack#

Among other FRUs, besides the disk packs themselves, replacement heads and bearings were also things.

These days the density of the media is so high and the magnetic imprints so light that the head has to hover less than a micron above the platter, suspended by an "air bearing", and so any slight misalignment or disturbance will make the head icecream scoop into the media. Those old drives? Much healthier distance, because the media sector markings were much beefier, and the media more magnetically active.

So, if this drive had a replaced head, it was a VERY old unit.

Modern disk drive? Not even a pipedream to replace the head. Better to recover the data with something like gddrescue onto a new replacement drive, and move on.

[Tellemurius]

If you could make any of this comprehensible to the average end user, then you would be godly and rich.
A packaged alternative to Microsoft, that works with the usual formats people depend on: gold mine.

Unfortunately within the corporate world it's hard to find alternatives as not alot of programs are 100% compatible with Office files.

You need to have a Office Business license if you intend to do commercial work. Technically there's not a way for them to check. Perpetual license for 2016 Business is 230 bucks.

I know you complained about paying monthly for Office 365, however they currently charge $10/per month ($100 yearly) at the moment for Office 365 Business. That gets you 1Tb cloud storage and allows you to install on upto 5 devices.

As an IT professional alot of products are based on subscription models or yearly renewals, you might not like but i assure you I DONT like it. Alot of products wouldn't require renewals but that puts alot of risk on me since I will no longer receive product updates and alot of companies penalize for gaps in service.

All the hate for Microsoft and the funny part is they aren't even aiming for the consumer market. Office 365 is largely designed for team based business environments, the prices being paid for on the Personal plans literally just covers the onedrive cloud storage space. No doubt Microsoft is making a big move moving most of their services online however consumers will be left alone for much of it. I doubt any of you would fully utilize it unless working with a 50+ employee office.

[wierd]

Truean might* be able to make use of it, being the new kid lawyer that just got hired at a drowning practice (to save their asses), from what I recall recently.

*Asssumes that Truean is doing more than just legal advice, and is having to fix other inter-office shenanigans, because of how inept the practice is.

[martinuzz]

I remember using hdpark.exe to lock the hard drive head into place so you could safely transport the computer. Those were the days.