Not a surprise there. I bought a laptop in 2004 with the laptop MXM standard graphics that could theoretically be upgraded to another card at a later date. Only problem? Later never came. I couldn't even get reasonable driver updates without going through a third party, much less an entire graphics card update. The kicker? The MXM slot proved troublesome. Eventually, the graphics card heat warped the card ever so slightly, such that the machine wouldn't power up reliably anymore. It was an expensive lesson - don't buy a laptop and expect any level of service one year after you buy it.

Still better than a friends Dell laptop. If you used the laptop on your lap, the access panels would crush important ICs, bricking the machine. Again, this happened about 30 days outside of the 1 year warranty. At least he was able to fix it for under $100 from a third party. The third party fix was better than the Dell fix, because they would replace the ICs and fix the lids from doing it again.

Also, if you update your BIOS in Windows 7 instead of Vista, you have voided your warranty. You'd think that they'd warn you on the BIOS page. Nope! You have to check the support forum for that. Ironically, that model of laptop was NOT allowed to boot FreeDOS, and so was actually safer to use Linux to do the upgrade than Windows. For those wondering, the BIOS update erased the boot block and reprogrammed it; unfortunately, Windows 7 blocked access to the BIOS boot-block area for security purposes. Who is going to update their BIOS from Windows, right?

Even the current laptop I have won't suspend unless you use the exact version of Windows 10 and shipping driver. Nothing else works. No Linux support for suspend, either. As an added bonus, the UEFI system refuses to allow Linux to charge the battery while the machine is running.

TL;DR Don't buy any electronics and expect any level of support after 1 year, even from the high end vendors.

Don't confuse CMR (conventional magnetic recording) with SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). CMR works as you describe. SMR uses narrower tracks and a and a CMR cache area to queue its writes so that they can be done in batches. So SMR may have to write the bytes twice vs just one write in CMR, so it has to be at least 1/2 the speed of a CMR drive. Ars says that SMR drives are much cheaper to produce, but WD and Co are not passing that savings off to consumers.

Those tricky researchers can also trick you into posting into the wrong thread. LMFTFY

There we go, back on topic. Quick fix: Pay for your Tesla with a bag o' cash from the bank.
Just make sure you're not stopped by the cops on the way there.

Browser toolbars, OpenCandy, offerware (Gator/OfferCompanion), BHO, search engine helpers and so on is why Ninite is a thing.

Once upon a time it was used to install Adobe products (Flash, Reader, etc...), but Ninite has removed those links from their site. Or maybe Adobe made them remove them. I'm told that there's a way to hex edit your Ninite executable files to restore that feature (assuming that you consider Adobe products 'features').

There are cheap (under $10) cases to disguise the fact that you are using an iPhone. I have seen them with textured sides and a clip loop. Screen protector (almost always) required for best results.

Right, but what if this is his second computer (HD died, new MB, new OS)? Securom games require a per computer authorization. Once you hit 3 or 5 auths (publisher dependent), you have to buy the game again, unless you've de-authed some other copies. However, de-auths off of dead disks/motherboards are tricky to work around. Some protections will be reasonable and tick that counter back up after 3 months or so, but as I recall, Securom doesn't work that way.

Only company that I heard of that will help you with Securom is Gamer's Gate - they'll either get you a new key (lately, Steam) or refund your money (Within reason, I'm sure). Even Impulse did this after GameStop rammed them into the ground. I was lucky to have invested only $100 into the platform, and I was able to most of it back as Steam keys, and the rest back -- as GameStop credit. It definitely could have been worse.

No, for best results: DOS 6.22 with himem.sys loaded high, giving you up to 600K of RAM. But then, 25% of your stuff won't run.
If you wanted to go all out, you could go with QEMM and get up to 620KB of RAM. Of course, half your stuff won't run, but hey, it kind of works. There were even hacks to get you up to 700K if you had an unused Hercules adapter.

I remember it was a bit of technical mastery to get Ultima 7 to run. You had to be sure your mouse TSR was 4kB or less, or you weren't going to get anywhere (the one that shipped with my mouse was 24kB). Oh, and what IRQ is your Soundblaster? They had to move it from 7 (parallel IRQ) to 5 because parallel ports became common. Fun fun fun!

I had a Roland RAP-10 in the day. MT-32 emulation and Soundblaster emulation in one card. Sadly, they dropped support for it right away (less than two years) - I don't even think it had a Windows 95 driver.

It must have stripped out the preview button as well. Or maybe it doesn't exist on mobile? Anyway, here you go, you dropped this. </sarcasm>.

I think you are looking for the &lt;. I drop mine all the time.

Hear, hear. I herby decree that the new 40Gbps USB 3x2 standard shall be dubbed 'Ludicrous Speed'. The next standard shall be Plaid, which will be followed by Argyle.

BeOS 5 was totally awesome for it's time. It was blindingly fast. You could from the BIOS handoff to fully operational desktop in about 10 seconds - this on a Pentium MMX (166 MHz) IBM. You could also change from a static IP to DHCP without a reboot. Only the network module would reboot. For comparison, a IP mode change in Windows 95/98 would require a reboot. I still have a BeOS 5 Pro edition disc in my bookcase. The only issue I personally had with BeOS was the extremely limited hardware support.

Fun Be factoids: originally BeOS ran on its own custom PPC hardware (BeBox, with a pair of PPC 603-66 or 603e-133 MHz processors), and it was eventually ported to Macintosh.
Rumor has it that BeOS was supposed to be the successor of MacOS 9, but that Jean-Louis Gassée wanted too much money. Additionally, BeOS had not yet been ported to x86. So instead Apple turned to Steve Jobs and the NeXTstep, instead, because they had PPC and x86 ports available. Jobs was just icing on the cake.

"The next Android version goes all the way to 11! All the rest just stop at 10, so you know they are inferior."

Aorus = Gigabyte's gaming brand. They've been around for decades, so they are not exactly a newcomer.

Since you are not up on the new gaming names:

• RoG (Republic of Gamers) - ASUS
• MSI - MicroStar International (okay, bad example)
• Predator - Acer
• Ferrari - Acer (older)
• Alienware - Dell (well, Dell bought Alienware, so it counts)
• Omen - HP
• Gateway - eMachine (? or maybe it's the other way 'round)
• iPad - Apple (casual gamers only)

Future headline: Equifax credit monitoring servers hacked, 150M accounts leaked, now with fresh information.

Three years? You got double the expected life if the smart TV had some kind of Android in it. Android seems to require new hardware every one and a half to two years. If you're fortunate, you get updates within the first year, and security fixes for the next 1/2, then you are SOL.

Even if it was one of those Roku TVs, you could still have trouble. I heard one (one of the first) had an issue where it could not steam more than one show consecutively without the Roku requiring a reboot. Oh, and it would also reboot randomly. Roku branded LG, if anyone is curious.

Perhaps the TV makers could get together and make a TV card expansion slot, with a promise to support the slot for 5 to 7 years. Then again, that would make the cost go up. TV makers benefit financially when require us to get a new TV every 4 to 6 years.

There's the boot economic theory that says rich men can save money on expensive boots, but if the companies collude to make crappy boots, what happens then?

From what I understand, StarDock bought the rights to the name 'Star Control' and 'Star Control II' in one of those asset liquidation sales of the old Accolade IP. Accolade was the publisher of the original Star Control, and had ownership rights to the name. Toys for Bob (the company that Paul & Fred founded), retained all the other rights - which is how the Ur-Quan Masters re-release of Star Control 2 came about. Stardock appears to have believed (incorrectly, IMHO) that name "Star Control" meant the whole game, characters included. When they got wind that TfB was making a sequel to UQM, they sued. IIRC, they may have also used a DMCA request to try to have the Ur Quan Masters taken down at the same time (as I recall, TfB quashed that pretty quickly). IMHO, it looks like StarDock was trying to use the legal system to wrestle ownership of the Star Control characters away from Toys for Bob.

As a final aside, Toys for Bob has been around for quite a while making games for other companies. I see that they've created Spyro, Skylanders, and various licensed titles. Activision appears to have an ownership stake in TfB. StarDock may have just bitten off way more than they can chew. Activision has pretty good lawyers - re:Bnetd and other lawsuits. They're not the Nazgul yet, but they're well on their way. While I hate to see things go to court, it appears that Activision is completely justified stomping the crap out of StarDock. I wonder if they'll be better stewards of StarDock's (gaming) IP than StarDock was?

Full Disclosure: I was a big fan of StarDock's Impulse gaming platform, and dumped about $150 into at one point. At which point, it was sold to GameStop, which promptly ran it into the ground (it took 2 years, but still - they could've been a contender!). Thankfully, I was able to get about 1/3 of the money back as GameStop credit. They may have also thrown a couple of steam keys my way as well. So, yeah, not the biggest fan of StarDock. Oh, and StarDock is the publisher/developer of the Master of Magic clone, War of Magic (Elemental). That didn't go so well for them, either.