First off, you’ll need to “talk” to me slowly and simply, I have almost no understanding of the world of PCs and Apple products. I’ve had an iphone for 4 years, I can only just about make it function now, it absolutely baffles me – that’s the level I’m at!

OK, our (Windows-based) laptop has gone critical and almost stopped working, it seems yet another hard disc is dying (this one’s just over two years old). I got a repair guy in as everything of ours is on it, in trying to get it to limp on he’s had to wipe off the Microsoft suite so it’s barely functional (don’t see why I should pay yet again to Microsoft just to get it working). Mrs O and I use it for work and all our personal stuff, all on Word and Excel. So fed up with discs dying every few years, we want to get something reliable and have been steered towards an iMac.

Putting aside the upfront cost, my questions are: 1) Will we be able to load up our many Word and Excel files onto it? Will those files then function normally? All our historic stuff is in Windows format and work stuff will continue to be. I’d really want to keep the Microsoft functionality that I know on Word and Excel. I asked these questions at Apple and the lady was unsure – she admitted to knowing very little on the subject but “thought so”, I guess they don’t want to talk about a rival. Do I need extra software and where would I get it if so? Finally, the problem I have with my iphone is that the memory is always full and can’t be increased. Would this be likely to be an issue on an imac in the fullness of time – we have a lot of stuff and I am not willing to use the cloud.

Thanks for any help, apologies if these questions are simplistic but it’s very hard to find a straightforward and unbiased view, you will have to speak to me slowly though……!

Buy a new laptop, that one is killing hard drives.
Don’t drop it…. unless you get a solid state drive only they are the same ones in macs. If you get a solid state only it’s more expensive for less space
Get office 365. It works, it’s also cloud based now

Use the cloud, it’s nothing to be scared of.
Download all the crap off your phone and keep it somewhere else.
If you run out of space on a laptop then use an external drive (or the cloud it’s way cheaper)

Normally laptop drives last more than 2 years – are you drop-testing yours on a regular basis ?

The hard drive in a Mac will be no different to the one in a PC, but it will cost you more.

You have been guided towards something which might improve things but the original issue remains if you select wrong product.
Modern hard disks are very robust especially on laptops so you should investigate whether your power source is unreliable or is faulty (the laptop power brick filters most of the power spikes) or you are using the laptop in extreme conditions.
Now iMac is a nice computer but it is nearly unrepairable so you will need to choose model which has ‘SSD’ and not Fusion drive.

Word and Excel exist on the Mac so unless you’ve used some of the more esoteric features then you’ll be able to use your files. There’ll be a bit of “translation” to the Mac’s file system but other than that it should all work.

Get a backup strategy sorted. The Mac has this built in, when you connect an external hard drive it asks if you want to use it for Time Machine which is Apple’s name for it.

I’ve an eight year old iMac and I’ve not filled the hard drive on it yet. The biggest user of disk space are videos and photos, if you don’t use that then it takes a long time to fill modern disks.

OK thanks – interesting. No, in answer to your drop questions, never dropped any of the they live in the front room on a table or on the kitchen table, we’re both careful. No idea why we kill so many drives. Repairman said possibility was that we are moving them before they’ve finished shutting down – now careful not to do that.

I hadn’t realised that the drive was the same in a mac. mmannerr, how do we investigate the power source point? We do go through a heck of a lot of supposedly long-life bulbs in this house.

No idea why we kill so many drives. Repairman said possibility was that we are moving them before they’ve finished shutting down – now careful not to do that.

He is talking out of his arse, again original drive in a 6/7 year old Dell here and it’s lived on the road with me, in fields, planes and hold bags. the dropping thing was a joke but something isn’t playing right.

To help with the Excel/Word question, I use both MacOS and Windows 10 and frequently work on the same Excel, Word and Powerpoint files on both operating systems. I’ve not (yet) encountered any issues with compatibility. Office 365 is £80 per year for up to 5 devices, and those devices can be Macs, PCs and even tablets.

One solution would be to replace your current, dead HDD, with a solid state drive – SSD. This will speed up things on the laptop and the SDD has no moving parts.

One thing, from the description in the OP – could it be ( wiping software ) that you have simply run out of space on the drive rather than killed it ?

If so, it ain’t dead yet, but you need to either clean up or getting a larger capacity drive.

Going back 20 years to the time of MS-DOS then some hard drives needed their read/write heads “parking” when you shut things down but I’ve not seen a hard drive require the user to do that since Windows came along.

Now iMac is a nice computer but it is nearly unrepairable

That’s an outright inaccuracy. If your Mac fails you take it back to where you bought it and it will be repaired or replaced. I was living in another country when Seagate drives were recalled in iMacs and it just meant clicking one extra option in the online process, which, incidentally was instigated by Apple when the risk of failure was identified.

As per previous answers, Mac-version Office software runs very well on OS X nowadays and you’re unlikely to experience any compatibility issues.

Without wanting to be rude: do the vents in your laptop look very dusty/dirty. Over-heating is one cause of drive failure if the air vents can’t do their job or circuit components are coated in dust

As others said, all MS Office stuff works on both platforms. Office 365 online is great.
A SSD in a Mac or PC will be more robust than a spinning hard drive if thats a real issue.

I understand the concern re cloud stuff but something like Dropbox can take away a lot of worries.
Also, an external USB drive is good for stashing pictures, video and music as it takes a load of space.

Your repair man is rubbish. Get a new one. Hard drives don’t die every two years, that’s bobbins. If yours had died it would have packed up completely, not be limping on when he’s removed stuff.

What PC do you have? How much was it? Many PCs now come with tiny hard drives, so if you filled it up (quite easy) then it would have problems. A large part of the benefit of Apple products is that you are forced to spend £1,500 which means you automatically get good quality kit. A £1,500 PC will have just as good kit and probably a higher spec.

don’t see why I should pay yet again to Microsoft just to get it working)

You don’t. Software is licensed, so you buy a license. You can wipe it and re-install it as many times as you want, you are still entitled to use it.

Pages and Numbers are to Apple what Word and Excel are to Microsoft.

Now I wouldn’t say they are like for like, but then unless you are doing complicated stuff in both (things like mail merge or pivot tables for example), then you will probably be happy with the Mac versions.

Hard drives generally have a warranty of 2-5 years, so I would be surprised if it wasn’t covered. Modern Solid State drives are more reliable due to having no moving parts, but still I would be dissappointed at a drive not lasting 5 years.

Thanks again everyone. To answer questions:

Hard drive on current pc is about half full, so not a capacity issue; the failure mode was that it completely froze and would not do anything at all. Rebooting resulted in the same issue. It had had several instances in the previous week or so of freezing at login and taking (literally) a couple of hours to slowly log in incredibly slowly. I assumed it was some sort of update endlessly going on. Air vents are clean, I do check them occasionally, and use it on a hard surface.

On the Microsoft licence, we can’t find any records of when we bought this licence, so fully admit it’s our error in not keeping paperwork, hence thinking we’ll have to buy another. Laptop is a Toshiba which came from John Lewis. I’m not wanting to try anything with warranty as we’ll have to surrender it and then we wouldn’t know who was trying to get our info off the hard drive (same reason as I’m uncomfortable with what little I know about the cloud) – we’re very sensitive to privacy.

Really appreciate the help, especially on the compatibility point. Thanks again.

On the Microsoft licence

Office or Windows?

What version of Office are you using?

If your sensitive to privacy then you need to learn about it.
If your PC was nicked it all your stuff would probably be off fairly quickly at this point so time to work out how you store stuff.

everything of ours is on it

Back it up somewhere else then. Now. Restoring from backups is easy, recovering from drive failure is hard (and expensive). Why are you still reading this, go and sort it out.

he’s had to wipe off the Microsoft suite so it’s barely functional
…
Repairman said possibility was that we are moving them before they’ve finished shutting down – now careful not to do that.

He’s an idiot.

(don’t see why I should pay yet again to Microsoft just to get it working

As discussed, you don’t need to buy it again if you own the licence. Magic Jellybean will recover the licence key from an existing install (or at least, it would if he hadn’t uninstalled it.)

So fed up with discs dying every few years, we want to get something reliable and have been steered towards an iMac.

Hard disks are hard disks, the ones in PCs and Macs are identical.

1) Will we be able to load up our many Word and Excel files onto it? Will those files then function normally? All our historic stuff is in Windows format and work stuff will continue to be.

Your existing stuff isn’t in “Windows format,” it’s in Office format.

Do I need extra software

You’ll need to purchase a version of Office for the Mac, the licensing will be different. Office online is free, however.

don’t see why I should pay yet again to Microsoft just to get it working

You don’t have to. You can reinstall Windows and Office using the same licences, but if you buy a Mac, you will have to buy a new Office licence. If the hardware you already have is reasonably decent, replacing the hard disk with an SSD and upgrading to Win10 will be much, much cheaper than buying a new Mac and Office licence.

I do not know how much storage you need but for me I would rather keep all my stuff backup away from the laptop itself. I rather use external drive/USB pen drive/Cloud/CDs. In the event you have a HD failure you still have your files to work on.

I am also looking at a laptop for work and this one interests me as it has SSD and 8GB RAM. From John Lewis.

Lenovo IdeaPad 320 Laptop, Intel Core i3, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 14″, Denim Blue £449.95

As for Microsoft Office I think I would go 365.

Just to clear something up for the OP: Microsoft is a company that makes many things. One of its products is Windows, which is the system your computer uses to run itself. Another is Office, which is Word, Excel and some other stuff. They are bought separaptely and independent.

Cougar – I have always backed up our documents and pictures etc regularly on a remote drive (when I can remember how!), and you’re right, I think I meant the Office function when I said Microsoft, but I don’t think Office itself is backed up on the remote drive? (I am now totally out of my depth). That means that in effect we now can’t access them as we can’t get them to open. I will take a look at the Jellybean thing shortly but suspect I will be lost in the opening moments, as I said at the start I have no understanding of this stuff, it’s a closed book to me. It means that I can only take what some one (ie the repairman in this case) tells me as I have no means of critically challenging statements.

Step 1 – find a new repairman. From what he is saying I really wouldn’t trust him with your docs.
If you have the docs backed up then you can do a re install of everything, did you get a box with office in it?

I think I meant the Office function when I said Microsoft, but I don’t think Office itself is backed up on the remote drive?

Office is a program that you install onto your computer. It sits on your hard drive in a special place for programs. You use Word or Excel to open your documents, they sit somewhere else.

Office itself doesn’t need backing up – if your computer dies you can simply download another copy from the internet. To activate that downloaded copy, you need your license key (long string of numbers and letters with dashes in it) which is what you actually paid for. If you cannot find this, it can be recovered from your existing computer. If you bought Office from microsoft online then it’ll be in an email – if you bought software from a shop, it’ll be on the box.

Where do you live btw?

I don’t think Office itself is backed up on the remote drive?

No, it doesn’t work like that. If he’s uninstalled it, it’ll need reinstalling like you did when you first bought it.

I will take a look at the Jellybean thing shortly but suspect I will be lost in the opening moments,

Jellybean is simple, you just run it and it looks at the software you have installed and spits out licence keys. Whether there will be sufficient remnants of Office for it to work in your case, I honestly don’t know and would be curious to find out.

Where are you geographically?

Yeah, he was straight off the net, never tried him before. These things are absolutely trial and error if you don’t know anyone. I will not use the big ones like pc world as I don’t trust them not to take all our personal stuff off.

I asked him if we could reinstall Office from the backup and he said no, we’d need the Office licence stuff (which we can’t find, we’ll have thrown it all out), is that not true then? More confused than ever now, I’ve no idea who to turn to for help with this……I need to lie down!

PC is sort-of functioning now, it has regular mad moments but the main immediate issue is the lack of Office. And that I don’t trust it now.

Thanks Cougar/Molgrips. Chilterns.

Also, +1 for Mike and Molly, they speak sense.

we’d need the Office licence stuff (which we can’t find, we’ll have thrown it all out), is that not true then?

You do need the key, but you can get it.

Which version of office do you have? Open up Excel or Word then click on help and then about.

Yeah, he was straight off the net, never tried him before. These things are absolutely trial and error if you don’t know anyone. I will not use the big ones like pc world as I don’t trust them not to take all our personal stuff off.

If you have files you don’t want anyone to see don’t keep them on the PC, keep them on a different drive then you won’t have this worry.
Assuming it’s just documents etc. that you are worried about?

Oof, you would be at the other end of the country.

Tell you what, would you like me to take a look at it remotely, see if I can suss out what the crack is with it?

Open up Excel or Word then click on help and then about.

The Excel or Word that the “repair man” uninstalled? (-:

I will not use the big ones like pc world as I don’t trust them not to take all our personal stuff off.

Unless you have home-made sex tapes or classified military information, your documents are of no interest to anybody.

your documents are of no interest to anybody.

They’ll almost certainly delete them, though. Which shouldn’t be a problem as they’re all backed up, right?

well I wasn’t going to ask him that…

To try to answer: Nothing “dodgy” of course but tax and money info, and general domestic stuff – all documents. I am just very private.

Yes, Word and Excel are wiped off.

Cougar – that’s very kind indeed, thank you. I’ll send you a private message. He put something on it called Open Office which is very clunky.

Given your uses / techie knowledge, I would say that whilst an Apple product may appear to be the *easier/simpler* option as spouted by many, I don’t think that the expense of one is justified in your case, nor is the new learning curve of an Apple worth it either. They are similar … but different at the same time, and you could easily be out of your depth for a while learning an Apple.

Your uses could easily be served by a cheaper, but still perfectly decent
build quality product that is windows based. ( I’m thinking the likes of a Dell, Lenovo etc etc )

FWIW, I have had an iMac for years, and have just bought a windows laptop. I don’t now feel that Apple’s are that much easier than windows, and in many ways Apple are behind the times with the user interface of handling files. (different topic)

As for stuff in the cloud … your email is already in the cloud … it always has been … the same emails that have been sending your word documents to other people … so its no big stretch to have those documents stored in a filesystem the cloud too. As said above, if your that worried out privacy, then you need to learn about it and not be out of your depth, and manage it fully.

The Microsoft environment is pretty mature now where you’re login into windows will also log into the MS cloud system (onedrive) and emails (outlook.com) etc. The stuff stored in MS’s cloud is also encrypted for security as well. So its fairly OK.

He put something on it called Open Office which is very clunky.

Good grief. That does not make sense to me.

He put something on it called Open Office which is very clunky.

It should still open your existing documents though?

Good grief. That does not make sense to me.

Makes perfect sense to me, I explained this on the previous page. He’s an idiot.

Yes it does open them but they don’t seem to work very well, ie functionality etc.

Thanks fisha, very thoughtful. I do try not to send files etc for that reason. Wasn’t aware the cloud was encrypted, I just assume it is safer not to use at all – one less potential hole. And now I know what OneDrive is that used to keep popping up annoyingly!