Did I say “everything?” Sorry, I meant to say this changes nothing, except for me.
The touchpad on my Windows 11 Lenovo laptop started giving me trouble. Gradually, it got worse, until suddenly it stopped working.
The Dell all-in-one with Windows 10 I bought in Arizona for my father, then shipped back home after he died, has TPM 2 for Windows 11. But Microsoft doesn’t support its AMD processor for the update and the system was running so slowly as to be essentially useless anyway.
Hoping the Lenovo touchpad failure was in the hardware, I replaced it. Device Manager says it’s okay, but like the original pad, there is no response. I’m now wondering if it’s somehow a software problem, resulting from an update. More likely there’s a failed component on the circuit board. Checking Reddit, I saw that I am not alone in having this failure. I will never buy another Lenovo product.
Retiring the Dell all-in-one, the Lenovo took its place in the office. For the porch, there is now a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows 11, with a Qualcomm ARM 64 Snapdragon X Plus CPU. So far, its compatibility and responsiveness are indistinguishable from the Lenovo with its Intel i7 processor.
The Lenovo laptop has only one standard USB-A connector. I used it to put an old, long idle, Belkin USB-2 powered hub back into service. It’s fully loaded with a mouse, DVD-RW drive, laser printer, and an Ethernet adapter from a previous project. One less Wi-Fi connection competing for the airwaves.
I’ll give some flavor of Linux a try on the Dell all-in-one, to see if it has some life left in it. What I don’t have is space left for it!