The cloud isn’t really a security risk as such. Hackers are unlikely to attack Microsoft directly like that. The only thing you have to do is read the terms and conditions and make sure you agree with them – it’s more about what Microsoft are going to do with the data than criminals.

I’ll go back to the point I made before, you need to educate yourself.
If he wanted to your PC guy could have happily installed a nice cloud program or backdoor to upload all your files.. would take minutes.
Your laptop gets nicked all your docs are out there.

In reality work out what you have? Bank statements? They probably came from the cloud/email etc.

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

I agree with most of what’s written in this thread, but not the above.

Whilst you can use Pages / Numbers on a Mac to do similar things to Word / Excel, I wouldn’t recommend it. The Mac version of MS Office is great these days and has all the functionality of the Windows versions. Pages and Numbers use different files which you (usually) can’t read from non-Mac PCs and the functionality is not as good (especially Numbers). I think Pages / Numbers are free these days so there is that argument for using them vs Office. But if you want everything to work smoothly / simply – get Office.

P.S. iCloud is amazing. For 79p/month, all my important documents and photos are automatically backed up and synced across devices (iPhone / iPad / Mac). Dropbox etc are similar. Well worth it.

EDIT: This will also solve your iPhone’s memory problems.

P.P.S. Typed from my 6 year old Mac laptop which hasn’t skipped a beat and still runs very snappily

P.P.P.S. Agree with the above – you can get a decent Windows PC and avoid most of the issues you’re experiencing.

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.

You would need a good electrician to do the checks.
And as for privacy, if your computer is connected to internet you should assume that most of it’s content might have been compromised already 🙂
Cougars comment about repair shops not caring about your documents is correct, easiest way for them is clear everything. They just ask later if you had backups…

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.

It is not inaccurate. Repairing iMacs is possible but since the screen and most parts are glued in it is really tedious prosess compared even to most cramped mini PCs. If OP is frying hard disks I wouldn’t recommend Fusion Drive / HDD Macs. Even with SSD + AppleCare and TimeMachine it would be slightly risky.

If OP is frying hard disks I wouldn’t recommend Fusion Drive / HDD Macs. Even with SSD + AppleCare and TimeMachine it would be slightly risky.

I can’t imagine it’s anything the OP is doing that is causing hard discs to die. If they even are dying, then it’s either a) bad luck or b) poor equipment. Yes, Macs are hard to fix, but he won’t get into the same situation.

P.S. Does the OP even mean iMac? I think he wants a laptop? I assumed he was (incorrectly) using the term iMac to describe an Apple computer?

It’s possible that the OP is not frying hard disks. Maybe his computer has had problems, the ‘repair man’ has told him the hard disk has failed, and this has temporarily fixed the computer because it’s required a rebuild in the process.

At work we had one guy killing his laptops more often than anyone else, at least partial reason was that he was using them in his country house with energy provided old generator. Bigger reason might have been that his house wasn’t too clean – cat hair and dust balls collected to 1 year old machine is pretty good hint about that.

I’ve just had a quick look at this.

TL;DR, the hard disk is indeed failing. It looks like the repairman uninstalled pretty much every piece of software he could lay his hands on, then handed it back going “the disk is broken, you need a new laptop.” 🙄

I’ve left it running chkdsk and sfc scans, hopefully that should stabilise it for a while if it’s just a couple of bad blocks rather than properly knackered. I’ll check back after lunch.

Oh yeah, and no dice with extracting the Office key, which I kind of expected but it was worth checking.

Good work Cougar!

lol at the irony of someone who was super-concerned about privacy and file security handing over complete control of his computer (VPN?) to someone who approached him on the internet 😆

(I’m sure Cougar is well-intentioned)

Did you at least make the offer…

“Before I take a look, do you have any dwarf-porn on your laptop ?”

“No, of course not, why would you even ask that? Its disgusting”

“Oh, OK, would you like some ?”

A vicar checks into a hotel. “I hope the porn channel is disabled,” he says. The hotelier replies, “no, it’s just the regular kind, you pervert.”

(I’m sure Cougar is well-intentioned)

Of course.

ION, anyone want the OP’s credit card details? PM me.

it’s OK I got that when I told him he needed a new hard drive

lol at the irony of someone who was super-concerned about privacy and file security handing over complete control of his computer (VPN?) to someone who approached him on the internet

Indeed.

Hard to say that the OP did the wrong thing, because we all know how decent Cougar is – but really, probably shouldn’t have done it!

All done.

For those who care: sfc came back clean and chkdsk didn’t return anything of consequence. It’s looking like the disk is sodded though, it’s crunching away. The OP’s going to pick up an SSD in the next couple of days and is downloading the W10 installer to USB.

Swapping the drive on this model looks to be a ton of screws to remove the bottom half of the case, then it’s pretty straight-forward to get the drive out.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCAWOvixJh4[/video]

Apologies to have gone quiet; I’ve been somewhat busy trying to sort the pc and also doing job interviews. Being asked this morning for a revised cv (helpful comments made to be fair) by first thing Monday fried my own personal hard drive in my head!

Right. All thanks to Cougar, I know you all know already but he’s a superstar. SSD ordered (I now know what one is!), deep breath taken and back off and installed……and nothing. Wouldn’t boot as “no driver”. Frantic scramble to John Lewis tech support – “leave it with us, but it’s probably toast”. Another random repair place said the same – and laughed that I’d even tried. Came home, basil fawlty style mad panic, then back off again (thanks Cougar) and I could see that I hadn’t got it on the contacts properly. I’d been trying not to handle the drive so had wrapped it in tissue paper and couldn’t see properly. Turned it on again and……voom! Loaded up windows 10 and Office and it’s away, so fast now, on in seconds rather than the previous 10-15 minutes. A hugely improved and repaired pc for £250.

So thanks for all your help and a huge thanks to Cougar for patience with an IT idiot. I’ve just got to get my head round the cloud now…….!