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Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

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Fencer said:
My laptops slow and old and cheep. It might last another four years but given the projected spike in tech prices for those of us living in America that's not exactly something to bet on. So uhhhh yeah.
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If your laptop has an old HDD (mechanical drive), consider asking a couple of tech shops for a quote to upgrade to a SSD (solid state drive). A lot of old laptops can get a fresh lease on life just by switching that one component (e.g. boot times going from minutes to seconds). If a shop suggests a SSD under 256GB or one with a manufacturer warranty under five years, clue-by-four them or find a different shop. If your laptop has less than 8GB of RAM, ask them if they can upgrade that too - RAM is quite cheap these days.
First rule of backups: make sure you have them. Second rule of backups: have two, e.g. an external drive and a second drive/NAS/dropbox/onedrive/whatever.

Regardless of whether you upgrade or replace the laptop, consider a simple USB external drive that's at least 3x the size of your laptop's capacity (edit: or just of its used space, if that's reasonably consistent). Based on personal experience, Toshiba is good, WD is tolerable and Seagate... nope.

If you're using Apple those have Time Machine, if you're using Windows or Linux then Veeam Agent is free for individual use and almost as easy to use (register, download, install, add a job, go with the defaults or monthly fulls, remember to plug the drive in every so often to do its job).

I really only use my laptop for writing at this point so I don't need high end. So yeah basics, is an apple actual worth the extra money compared to hp? Is buying the cheapest of either a no go for any reason?
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On the plus side, their software security is good. On the negative side, their modern kit is priced at a premium and really pushing the "sealed unit" concept; if any part of it breaks, chances are you (or even your local tech buddy) ain't doing any repairs on it unless willing to mess around with glue guns and/or solder. And even then the parts might refuse to work just because you didn't pay an authorised Apple dealer to do it.

IMO if you want to show off how amazingly awesomely ultra-svelte your laptop is Apple's great at that, otherwise go PC.
The bottom of the range is where they cut all the corners, especially in the consumer market.

Look at the lower end of the mid-range business laptops instead. If you find a nice one, check online to see how repairable it is. Good business laptops are designed to be easily repaired. Also, in Australia you can often buy refurbished ex-biz/gov Windows Pro machines with a warranty for maybe a third of new - see if that's something you can do in your part of the USA?
You're only using it for writing and browsing, not FPS/RTS gaming, so... my two cents:

CPU: Intel i3 or AMD Ryzen3 is fine, i5 or Ryzen5 is sweet, anything more is overkill (and likely a battery hog).

RAM: 8GB is fine (yes even on Windows 11 once you kill the bloat) but 16GB is nice. If you're the type of person like me who tends to have a bazillion apps/tabs open, you'd probably prefer 16GB.

Internal Storage: a 256GB SSD is tolerable, 512GB SSD is fine. Don't get a laptop that only has a HDD (if they even still sell those in your neck of the woods). Just... more and more laptops nowadays use M.2 NVMe chips instead of SATA, and unfortunately a lot of laptops wouldn't know good heat management even if it hit them with the heavy flamer.

Graphics: If you're not a gamer, doing 3D work or similar? Integrated capable of FHD (1080p) is fine, a discrete gaming GPU just means more bits that can break.

Screen: in my opinion 15.6" is kind of the sweet spot for laptop screens, but YMMV and you may or may not prefer to have a smaller screen/laptop (e.g. 13.3") and hook up an external monitor or TV when you need it. Whatever you get, make sure its resolution is 1080p FHD or better; there are still some laptops out there with 768p HD screens. There's also the type of panel used in the screen; TN is the crap tolerable stuff and IPS is (currently) the good stuff, though there's other kinds inbetween.

Form factor: I loathe "ultra-slim" (and similar such buzzwords), give me something thicc that I can open up and service myself, but that's personal preference. YMMV.

Is there a decent antivirus company that exists? Like, life lock makes me feel like I have some security, though who really knows. But Norton slows my computer down then tries to extort me for another hundred something dollars a year for a program that will clear out junk and make it run faster.
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It depends a lot on how you define "decent". Um. Okay. If you want 'free', Windows Defender is actually surprisingly decent (not great, but... good and certainly better than a lot of crap out there that only exists to suck your wallet dry). If you want paid, there's brands like ESET, Bitdefender and Malwarebytes?

Either way, you absolutely should be pairing whatever flavour of AV you choose with a dedicated ad-blocker (such as uBlock Origin). The online ad industry is a tentacled monster of the un-fun kind with no sense of hygeine.

Norton Lifelock: personally I'd erase Norton's AV products in a heartbeat if I got a computer with any, but I'm not familiar with their ID protection offerings (also I live in a country with relatively decent legal protections). So I can only suggest doing a search for reviews of identity theft protection tools, see if you can find one that doesn't need to be bundled with AV or at least comes with a good one. Pretty sure the above brands I mentioned all offer some flavour of it.

Oh, that reminds me, password managers. KeePassXC (local) and Bitwarden (cloud) are about the only ones I'd recommend, as neither will lock you into a proprietary format nor require bundling, both start at free and both support TOTP authentication (former for free and latter for USD10/year).

Finally, if you need a VPN then I'd recommend a dedicated VPN provider rather than using anything from a kitchen sink AV bundle. The former might actually know what they're doing.

Thankyou for the writing!
 
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My $0.02 worth of thought is that despite apples being overpriced in my experience they have longevity on their side. And way better OS on their side. Made the switch after my windows vista laptop got bricked for the third time in a year. I have been using apple since 2011 and I am on my second one right now which I is now 7 years old. And I believe I would be still on my first one if I haven't managed to spill the wine into it. If you go apple buy second hand ms office pack pages from apple are useless and I had a bad run with libreoffice. To AV I have been running on bitdefender and I quite happy with it.
 
NoirDetective said:
My $0.02 worth of thought is that despite apples being overpriced in my experience they have longevity on their side. And way better OS on their side. Made the switch after my windows vista laptop got bricked for the third time in a year. I have been using apple since 2011 and I am on my second one right now which I is now 7 years old. And I believe I would be still on my first one if I haven't managed to spill the wine into it. If you go apple buy second hand ms office pack pages from apple are useless and I had a bad run with libreoffice. To AV I have been running on bitdefender and I quite happy with it.
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In my experience, Apple devices have a habit of getting irreparable hardware problems a couple weeks out of warranty (within a sample size of 3 devices bought within the last 5 years, 2 had irreparable problems once out of warranty, including one being bricked. The approximate cost of the damaged devices is $500-600 per year of use before unexplainable damage. Outside of Apple, I tend to see $200-300 per year of use before unexplainable damage.)

For computer decision-making advice, here's mine:

Step one is to have a good idea of what you want to use the computer for. You seem to have that down (just writing), but there's a wide range of what that could mean. Just writing could mean "Literally only have a word processor open", or it could mean "thirty tabs of research and notes, a tab for music, and a word processor open simultaneously" — these are very different use cases.

Step two is understanding what trade-offs you're willing to make. How much are you willing to pay for familiarity? How much are you willing to pay for repairability? How much are you willing to pay for convenience? These questions are important because there are real trade-offs here.

Step three is turning those decisions into hardware and software requirements. Most people are willing to pay a couple extra hundred for the familiarity and convenience of Windows over Linux, for example, so if you're one of them, you should look for a Windows computer.

Here's where I give advice on how to decide on hardware:

RAM: For the next few years, 16 GB of RAM is probably the minimum that would be considered "enough". If you're planning on using Chrome and having bunch of tabs open as part of your writing process, however, this can easily be eaten up, and you might want to consider going for more. If you're willing to take the risk of going with something less familiar, you might be able to get away with less if you use Linux, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you can't stomach the risk of the computer possibly not having enough RAM for your needs in the next 5 years, you might also want to consider aiming a bit higher.

CPU and GPU: Surprisingly unimportant, if you're buying a laptop. All sellers will package a CPU that's probably more than you need with any laptop with 16 GB. GPU is even less important, because for your stated needs, even the integrated graphics should be enough. You should only consider a laptop with a GPU if you have budget to burn and expect to be running 3D workloads (such as modelling or gaming) within the expected lifespan of the computer.

SSD vs Hard Drive: Definitely SSD, imo. It cuts down the boot time by around 10x, and also the loading time for everything you run. SSDs are also less susceptible to damage from being moved around, which is important for a laptop. The downside is that an SSD is often smaller than a hard drive for the same price point, but even this can be easily made up by buying external storage later if the need arises. As you're only using the device for writing, and text is extremely small, I don't think that the reduced capacity is much of a down-side at all. In either case, aim for 500 GB (or more, though too much more is probably never going to be used).

Screen: You will likely want a 1080p screen, since that's basically the default. If you want a touch screen, go ahead, but it'll probably cost a bit more. HDR is unnecessary for your stated needs, as is any refresh rate over 60. Though they can be nice, for your needs, I think they're unnecessary. If you want a multi-monitor setup, make sure that your laptop has the correct hole to be compatible with the monitor.

Chassis: It's my opinion that a laptop should be sturdy. If you can get your hands on a display model and can pick it up, it shouldn't noticeably flex. Definitely it shouldn't feel like it's bending when you open or close the lid.

Keyboard: As you're mainly using the laptop for writing, the keyboard is very important. There are two ways to go with this: either find a laptop with a built-in keyboard that you like (the keys depress to a depth you are comfortable with, they feel good to type on, and your arms and wrist don't feel strained when using the keyboard, and it doesn't feel like it's flexing while you're typing), or find an external keyboard you like (either wired or bluetooth) and mostly ignore the laptop's keyboard.

Mouse: Your touchpad should be of a quality you're comfortable with. Alternatively, a cheap external mouse can often be gotten for a very low price and can be a surprisingly large improvement to the experience of using even a high quality touchpad. The way you want to go with this will depend on what you're most comfortable with; I'm only bringing it up as something you may wish to consider.

Price: In my opinion, the value-for-money of computers follows a bell curve. For the cheapest end of the spectrum, the computers are barely able to run anything more than a single Chrome tab, and probably won't last long. The lifespan also isn't that great. In all, for a too-cheap computer, you'll have a computer that's not really fit for purpose and it'll not last long, so it'll be rather expensive for what you get.

On the other end of the spectrum, performance hits diminishing returns quickly, and your stated needs don't even need that much performance. Paying for anything too expensive probably means paying for something you're not using anyways, and so the value for money also drops.

Apple vs not: Not Apple. The hardware markup is insane. Apple's RAM alone is priced like 4x market price.

Upgradability and repairability: Relatively important, but not deal-breaking. It depends on how much you want to spend on that. For me, I decided to buy a computer that's somewhat upgradeable, which allowed me to err on the side of "too little RAM" without having to buy a whole new computer to fix the problem. But there is a cost to it, so it's up to you to decide what trade-off you're most comfortable with.

Weight and battery capacity: This is one of the most direct trade-offs in a computer because batteries are heavy. This point is mostly here so that you don't go all-in on a lightweight computer and get shocked by the short battery life.

New vs used: you can get a pretty notable price reduction if you're willing to go with a used computer, though I suggest that you make sure to have a chance to inspect the computer before you finalise the purchase. But for convenience and peace of mind, you might prefer a new computer.

Speakers and audio: "Just writing" often includes music. If you have your own earphones, headphones, etc., make sure that they're compatible with the laptop (mostly, if you need a headphone plug, make sure that the computer has the plug).

Software: in my opinion, if you're just writing, an antivirus is unnecessary, especially if you're using an adblocker (most malware these days come from ads). If you're sticking with Windows, you'll probably want to install a bunch of the bloatware that the manufacturer pre-installed onto it. For your browser, I recommend Firefox, as Google (a company which uses advertising for revenue) crippled Chrome's ability to use adblockers. For your writing software, use whatever you're the most comfortable with.
 
Fencer said:
Is buying the cheapest of either a no go for any reason?
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Be careful, the low end of laptops might have a low-RPM conventional hard drive and only 8gb of RAM.
This results in a computer that seems slower than my Windows XP computer.

A relative of mine bought such a laptop four years ago and it is frustratingly slow without upgrades.
ArchangelCeaser said:
I would actually recommend you go for a tablet. In general, they are lighter and thinner that a regular laptop, have better battery life, and are much easier to set up. Plus you won't need a power brick or a proprietary charging cable, USB C or Apple Lightning will be the port you use.

Some have bundles that include a keyboard, others do not. If you want to use an attached keyboard, and not the onscreen or wireless one, get it in a bundle. Keyboard covers sold separately go for over $100.
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Most Android tablets can use any USB keyboard if you purchase a $10 USB-C to USB-A adapter. The only catch is that you can't charge it/run off the AC and use the keyboard at the same time.
Most Android tablets can use any BlueTooth keyboard you wish. Just make sure it is Bluethooth and not wireless that needs you to plug in a receiver into a USB port. For those you need the aforementioned USB-C->USB-A adapter.

I know my late mother's iPhone 7 can use my BlueTooth keyboard as well. I hooked her up with it when she was doing a lot of texting following her having surgery five years ago. I don't know much about iPhones, but it didn't need any driver installations or anything to use the BlueTooth.

So there is no need to spend a lot of money on a keyboard.
 
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I do most of my browsing and quick replies on my phone.

Longer replies and looking at bigger/more intricate pictures or videos I use my Acer Aspire V5 571. It has a 1.7GHz Intel CPU 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. It's at least 10 years old.

Originally came with Windows 8, "upgraded" to Windows 10.

About a year ago I got frustrated with how impossibly slow it was - 45 minutes to boot up, wouldn't wake up from suspend mode, 15 minutes to open a browser. I copied all my files off of it, wiped the hard drive, and installed Linux Mint. This works for me, I don't print anything from it or need to run anything other than a browser or text editor.

The rest of my family have Microsoft Surface laptops. We're happy with those too.
 
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There will be problems with any brand that require deeper research to avoid. Every low end model is making trade offs to save money. Unless you know or are willing to research exactly what the tradeoff is, the generic advice is buy something a little nicer. Apple is not dramatically more expensive than comparable manufacturers, but their low end units are not any better than other low end units and they don't go quite as low. Dell/HP/Lenovo/Acer/Asus etc. will sell you some real garbage brand new if you only pay $400 for it.

Refurbished/off lease business computers are often underappreciated source of nicer, if older, hardware. They come with Windows (usually pro) with a BIOS license, and are usually a solid platform for Linux. Pick your preferred brand and search their business line, Dell Latitude, Lenovo Thinkpad, HP Elitebook.

Some examples (not recommendations):

Regardless of new or used, features are what you need to look at. For basic word processing you don't need much beyond the OS requirements, and web browser needs. 16gb of RAM, 256gb of SSD, and a FullHD resolution (1920x1080) screen should be considered the minimum because text will look terrible and/or not fit much on the screen at 1366x768 or lower resolutions. Screen size depends on how much you are willing to carry around or desk space. After that consider things like what ports it has and where they are, usb-c versus manufacturer power supply, things like that.

Do not buy a computer with HDD (spinning magnetic) or eMMC (really cheap solid state) storage in 2025, it wasn't worth it 10 years ago. Your stated use case does not need a discrete GPU, but a good screen for text is critical.

Windows defender is fine for antivirus/antimalware if you don't download random garbage from sketchy websites, adblock is much more important (ublock origin is best, and best on Firefox).
 
NoirDetective said:
My $0.02 worth of thought is that despite apples being overpriced in my experience they have longevity on their side.
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That's my experience as well. I have a MacBook Pro that's from 2008 (maybe as recent as 2011) that still works just fine. I just upgraded to a newer model because the programs I need to use aren't available for that far back, OS-wise, and a friend was selling his 2021 model, which is able to take the most recent macOS. I'm expecting this one to hold on for quite a while.

And that's the end of my part of the computer discussion. *laugh*
 
sunsunsunsunsun said:
Also water =/= food.
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I wonder how specific that spell is. to quote a bit of the link

The Refilling Charm (incantation unknown) was a charm that was used to refill whatever the caster pointed at with the drink originally in the container.
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Fair enough. But what if for example the container was filled with soup? Perhaps it might not do the more chunky meat and potatoes kind of soup, but it should be able to do say tomato soup? How about chicken noodle? And where does it draw the line? What about various 'cream of' type soups? Those could be described as liquids.

Not really realivant to the story I suppose, but it makes me think.
 
Guys debating why harry and friends were starving in book 7 is beyond pointless. He had an invisibility cloak and supermarkets exist. It's not like DE's were actually capable of monitoring every town in Britain. And they certainly wouldn't have bothered trying.
 
Fencer said:
My laptops slow and old and cheep.
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If it's really old it dosen't matter if it's the cheapest one in the store. A new one is going to be WAY better in every category. My suggestion is to find something close to the same price range as your old one, and something that's been around for a few years so all the bugs have been kicked out of it.

If you're not interested in buying parts and customizing it's usually not worth the cost for repairing an old computer. Sad, but true. However you should keep the peripherals, cables, disk drives and USB drives and such, so you can transfer information directly into the new machine and hold onto it for future use. Try to avoid downloading things from the internet and keep them on disk. I've kept my old writing programs and games that way so I don't have to keep on buying new ones. For virus protection there's nothing quite as safe as keeping your information in a physical backup offline.

Like a lot of people, I knew this whole 'downloading games and movies online' wasn't such a hot thing. Sure it's convenient, but you also run the risk of the people running the platforms from messing with your stuff. I've got movies that I'm supposed to be able to watch whenever but the platforms no longer exist. Remember Ultraviolet?

Whenever I get a new computer I spend a day or two transferring information from one to the other and uploading all my old stuff. It's a pain in the butt, but I can do that myself.

Some people don't care, but it's something to keep in mind.
 
For the laptop thing, I'd generally recommend about a 15.6" screen at 1080p, Ryzen 5 or so low-mid range CPU with integrated graphics, you could survive at 16 GB of RAM but 24 or 32 is much nicer, a 512 GB NVMe and no less but 1 TB is preferable, an external backup 2 to 4 TB HDD in a USB C enclosure is very good to have but may be a later kind of addition, and also for RAM you don't need DDR5 if you can find DDR4 for cheaper.

On the manner of OS and Antivirus, for just writing going with Linux Mint shouldn't be a huge leap, Microsoft is going Linux so getting ahead of the curve could be useful, otherwise try to hang back on Windows 10 as long as possible, Windows 11 is an utter crapshoot piece of hyper-AI spy/bloatware, the last culmination of the shivering Jenga tower that is the 30 year old Windows kernel. On Windows 10, just use the built-in Windows Security Essentials, it's good enough, but make sure your Windows Hosts File is updated with all the IPs to block, it does a lot to stop intrusions and not many people know about it, sadly. For deeper malware scanning, I run a scan with Malwarebytes free about once a month or when I get suspicious of slowdowns, it doesn't really pop up with promotions or deals stuff anymore. For VPN, I don't actually use any, I just route my traffic through TOR if I need something, and route doubly through the TOR Browser if I need something from the Deep Web, though I imagine you won't need TOR for anything, so Surfshark or Nord might be good if you're willing to pay for them. Oh, also, use UBlock Origin, specifically origin not the other one, that does a hell of a lot to block intrusions through shady ads running scripts on your computer, and I also run a simple extension called ScriptBlock, looks like a red cross through a blue manuscript or snake I think, it needs some micromanaging but over time it remembers what specific sites you're allowing scripts to run from, but ScriptBlock is somewhat of a higher superuser level and not for most, and the inconvenience of having to unblock scripts on new websites or having YouTube block you from watching videos since the shady DoubleClick scripts are blocked makes it think you're blocking ads can be a deal breaker for most, I find the security worth it, I've gone to hundreds of shady sites without any intrusions on my rig in the past year which is nice, and my version of Windows 10 passed its end of service nearly 9 months ago XD

Edit: If anyone wants to know how to update your HOSTS file, this is the best one out there in my opinion. Over 100 thousand addresses are blocked through it, its a 3.4 MB list at this point and growing every week. You put it under C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and replace the empty 0 byte HOSTS or hosts file with the one inside the archive. It also blocks lots of phishing addresses, which helps protect you if you open up a phishing email that tries to run code to access their servers once it sees you've opened the email and the code fails to run when it gets no response back.
Basically, the Hosts File is a master routing table that overrides your DNS (of which I also use OpenDNS Family Shield) and it forces your machine to route any blocked addresses to 0.0.0.0/32 which takes it nowhere. Or on IPv6 routes to ::/128 instead. This is called the Unspecified Address, and it goes nowhere, at most your router might look at your PC funny, its like the networking equivalent to biting your tongue every time you try to say something you're not allowed to, instead making a strange funny unintelligible noise XD

PS, the /32 or /128 on the end means "specifically this address" otherwise it would think anything from 0.0.0.0 to 0.255.255.255 is valid. HOSTS only needs to specify 0.0.0.0 since every address is assumed to be one that is X.X.X.X/32 already. 0.0.0.0/24 means up to 0.0.0.255 as well, 0.0.0.0/16 means up to 0.0.255.255, and 0.0.0.0/8 means up to 0.255.255.255. The tricky thing is that 0.0.0.0/0 means up to 255.255.255.255 which means every address on the internet. Which is funky.

Each number in the IP is called an Octet, since an IPv4 Address is 32 bits, and carries a suffix on the end that defines usable bits. The more above 0 the suffix goes, the more bits are restricted. Theoretically, a 0.0.0.0/1 would go up to 127.255.255.255 and a 0.0.0.0/2 would go up to 63.255.255.255, since an IPv4 Address is actually 00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000/00000 where something like 192.168.0.1/32, which is the most common default gateway address for LAN if my memory serves, is 11000000.10101000.00000000.00000001/11111 in terms of bits, which is further expanded to port numbers that add 16 bits for the 65536 possible port numbers on the end (excluding the restricted ones), which balloons the bits out to 00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000/00000:0000000000000000 for an IPv4 Address. Pretty neato.
 
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Fencer said:
Guys debating why harry and friends were starving in book 7 is beyond pointless. He had an invisibility cloak and supermarkets exist. It's not like DE's were actually capable of monitoring every town in Britain. And they certainly wouldn't have bothered trying.
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I mean it's obvious why they were starving in book 7; because Rowling wanted them to be starving because it fit the narrative of being on the run from the government and thus lacking the benefits of civilization.

If you are trying to come up with logical, non-narrative reasons why things happen in Harry Potter, you have comprehensively failed to understand how Rowling writes stories.
 
Neruz said:
I mean it's obvious why they were starving in book 7; because Rowling wanted them to be starving because it fit the narrative of being on the run from the government and thus lacking the benefits of civilization.

If you are trying to come up with logical, non-narrative reasons why things happen in Harry Potter, you have comprehensively failed to understand how Rowling writes stories.
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While true, that's also the more frustrating answer, since readers and fanfic writers frequently prefer internally-consistent stories.
 
Prince Charon said:
While true, that's also the more frustrating answer, since readers and fanfic writers frequently prefer internally-consistent stories.
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That is very unfortunate, because Harry Potter is not even remotely internally consistent, nor was it written to be.

Rowling actively avoided doing things like worldbuilding and having magic make sense because she thought that such things detracted from the 'whimsical' nature of the story and setting.


Fanfic writers can certainly try to make Harry Potter internally consistent, but doing so requires rewriting and ignoring large chunks of the canon, or twisting the narrative into hoops trying to explain why things like Time Turners aren't used more often, or why they were having trouble with food in book 7 despite there being multiple established ways for magicals to produce effectively infinite amounts of food, and so on.
 
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I can give you a handful of decent reasons to avoid Time Turners, the least of which is something I'll call Temporal Fading (You use it too much, say more than a year's worth of warped time, and you start to become unglued in time and fade away into the void between timelines).

Rowling (Not that I'm apologizing for her, I hate her too. She left so damn many plot holes in her stories that can really only be filled with Idiot objects.) actively cut detail to get to her plot so she could fit it into a 50k-150k word chunk. There's so much I'd rather know about the Wizarding World that she just never gets to.
 
Fencer said:
Yo, I could use some tech advice if anyone's got some time? My laptops slow and old and cheep. It might last another four years but given the projected spike in tech prices for those of us living in America that's not exactly something to bet on. So uhhhh yeah.

I really only use my laptop for writing at this point so I don't need high end. So yeah basics, is an apple actual worth the extra money compared to hp? Is buying the cheapest of either a no go for any reason? Because again I don't need it for much. And since I'm asking tech questions anyway. Is there a decent antivirus company that exists? Like, life lock makes me feel like I have some security, though who really knows. But Norton slows my computer down then tries to extort me for another hundred something dollars a year for a program that will clear out junk and make it run faster.
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If all you are doing is writing on it, then I would say, NO, an Apple is not worth the extra cost. Go on Amazon, and find a refurb Win 10 machine. A fast processor is nice, but get one with extra RAM.

Remember that unless you have a need for a beefier processor, you should be good with significantly less than cutting edge. When you buy cutting edge, a lot of what you are paying for is the advertising to make you think you need that powerful a computer.

THIS would be a very good writing computer for a reasonable price, that should be plenty fast for just a writing machine, or even light gaming. It's by no means a real gaming rig, but that's not what you said you would use it for. Or just search Amazon for 'refurbished laptops' and do your own search.

Oh, and for a Windows machine, Windows Defender, which is free and included in the OS, is actually quite a decent product, surprisingly enough.

All this having been said, you might be able to just upgrade the RAM in your current computer, and be just fine. If it has really slowed down, find a friend who can pull all your files off, wipe the drive, and reinstall Win 10. It's entirely possible your system is just cluttered, and a new install of Windows would make a world of difference.
 
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The real problem with Book Seven is that it insisted on keeping the divide between Muggle World and Magic World. Once he was in Magic World, the plot COULD NOT allow him to bounce back to Muggle World to easily solve a problem. The Rowling Universe apparently had an actual divide between them, at least mentally.
 
Otritzi said:
I can give you a handful of decent reasons to avoid Time Turners, the least of which is something I'll call Temporal Fading (You use it too much, say more than a year's worth of warped time, and you start to become unglued in time and fade away into the void between timelines).

Rowling (Not that I'm apologizing for her, I hate her too. She left so damn many plot holes in her stories that can really only be filled with Idiot objects.) actively cut detail to get to her plot so she could fit it into a 50k-150k word chunk. There's so much I'd rather know about the Wizarding World that she just never gets to.
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Ironically because the fandom kept bugging her about Time Turners, Rowling eventually provided an explanation for why they weren't used more often: Because they were all destroyed in the Department of Mysteries fight when Ron or Hermione, I forget which, was thrown into the shelves holding every Time Turner and knocked them all to the floor. No more Time Turners!

And then when the fans continued to bug her about creating more Time Turners, since they'd been made the first time so clearly more could be made, she wrote Cursed Child to explain Why Time Turners Are Bad And Nobody Should Ever Be Allowed To Use Them For Anything.


It's almost funny really. She clearly had no idea how much she was screwing herself when she introduced time travel on a whim for book 3 and has regretted that decision ever since.
 
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Neruz said:
Ironically because the fandom kept bugging her about Time Turners, Rowling eventually provided an explanation for why they weren't used more often: Because they were all destroyed in the Department of Mysteries fight when Ron or Hermione, I forget which, was thrown into the shelves holding every Time Turner and knocked them all to the floor. No more Time Turners!
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It was Hermione who stunned a death eater and knocked him into a shelf containing all the time turners, which fell on him and broke.
 
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