[Much fancier than the one that I have got, but Bing gave the Latitude brand as a whole a good write up]
Having had an accident which killed the keyboard built into my HP Envy laptop, I have been using a plugged in keyboard for some months. An arrangement which works, but which is not very portable, not very laptop. So over the weekend, I decided that it was time to do something about this.
I did not go in for a lot of research, but, in the circumstances, I baulked at the cost of a 17 inch laptop, new or secondhand, and settled for a something called a 'Dell Latitude 5500 i7-8665U [Quad] 1.90GHz 15.6" FHD HDMI USB-C IR Cam 32GB DDR4 512GB NVMe' from Tier 1 of reference 1, secondhand computer people whom I use from time to time.
It turned up at lunch time today, very niftily wrapped up in a new-to-me sort of bubble wrap, inside a sturdy cardboard box. Both destined for the roof space against some future need.
Rather on the spur of the moment, I decide to go for using the touch pad rather than installing a mouse. To try and move with the times. Which, in the short run at least, is resulting in plenty of minor accidents.
Action started at 14:00. By 15:00, I had found the on switch, connected the laptop to our wifi and installed Microsoft 365. At this point, things started to get a bit sticky. I could see my OneDrive files, but I could not open them. The bit of OneDrive which did the necessary downloads was missing or disabled.
Given my accident with OneDrive, some time ago now, noticed at reference 2, I should have taken backups of the important parts of my OneDrive at this point, but I didn't think of it. Careless of me - although, in the event, I think I have got away with it.
I try Gemini, who treats me to some beginner's geekery. All a bit discouraging. But I pushed on, trying some of the things he suggested, including some Windows updates and several restarts, to little avail. I could create a file in OneDrive and view it, but I still could not open files that were already there.
I turn to Copilot, which I had not made much use of previously, but turns out to know a lot more about OneDrive than Gemini - what one would expect really. He leads me through some much more serious geekery, the sort of stuff I try to avoid. Poking around in Task Manager, using the command line and doing registry edits. I could do the most of the complicated bits by copy and paste from Copilot - but dangerous stuff for the likes of me all the same.
The good news was that Copilot had got my measure, and with a mixture of praise, cajolery and a good dose of 'nearly there', we seem to have got there, OneDrive seems to be working properly on the new laptop and I do not seem to have damaged anything - despite a few finger-nail biting moments. Just a few loose ends to be checked out. Having now got to 17:00, it was time for a break and a quick circuit around West Hill to restore circulation to the lower regions.
This from the new-to-laptop at 19:51!
Tomorrow will be the turn of Google Drive, which I have succeeded in installing, but which is showing a quite different file structure to that which appears on the HP laptop. Maybe this will be a job for Gemini.
PS 1: Copilot got in quite a few remarks about Tier 1 not having properly cleaned out all the debris from the previous occupant. I associate to the builders you sometimes get round to your house, who like to explain very loudly what a cowboy, what a plonker, the one before was. Before going on to do much the same sort of job themselves.
PS 2: a rather more detailed record has been preserved for the record. From which the all important conversation with Copilot is presently missing: unlike Gemini, he files his records by subject and I have yet to find this one. Another task for tomorrow.
References
Reference 1: https://tier1online.com/.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/onedrive-problems-report-no2.html.
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