These are still normal applications you install on your computer. The only "Cloud" is the online storage, and you install the application from the web. The software complains every 30 days for you to authenticate it, but it will run for three months without re-authentication. But you can run it day to day without an Internet connection.

Spending $2k and getting four years of usage isn't a very good deal compared to this new offer.

CS6 Master Collection retails for $2,600, though it's on sale for $2,100 on Amazon. $50/month x 48 = $2,400 so $300 more over those four years. Spreading out the cost of the purchase and getting all updated versions seems like the better deal.

That's true, but they do offer a 30-day trial if you just wanted to check out the software. That $75 for the single month is also access to the whole creative suite, not just a single app.

If they are using Student pricing they should use the $30/month Student pricing on the cloud version though it's on a special for $20/month right now.

This includes access to everything, not just Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign which make up Creative Suite Design and costs the same as the yearly cloud price.

Unfortunate? Anyone who doesn't get the reference should be happy they are fortunate enough to not have watched Dinosaurs.

The Tesla cards were never video cards though. They were just for computing, so there wasn't a reason for them to support DirectX. The Titans on the other hand are amazing cards.

So you don't like features such as vastly superior multi-core support, SSD trim support, being able to use >3.5GB RAM on a consumer supported OS. Not to mention being design around actual security.

When XP came out people hated it and stuck with 98. It wasn't until XP SP2 that people really started coming around to it and for some reason choose to stick with it.

Vista was mainly a flop because it required people to upgrade their old systems to take advantage of all of the features. 7 had the fortune of coming out three years later and more people were upgraded to modern tech. It was also lighter on it's resource usage.

Besides the much hated metro interface, 8 is actually even better than 7. It's even lighter on it's resources, has faster booting (8 sec from hard off to useable desktop with SSD). And it has a fixed scheduler that makes it so threads don't get stuck running on a hyperthread core which would happen in 7.

What does XP have besides "running" on 12 year old hardware?

How do you run this classic interface on Server 2012? I'm running it right now and it has the start screen rather than a start button just like Windows 8.

Totally Games still exists at least on paper. There last game was an iPhone game in 2010 though.

Chris Roberts is also still around, and just did a Kickstarter where he raised more than 8 million dollars to make a new game. It will contain a single player campaign that will be Wing Commander in everything but its name. The game will also have a Buy to Play online multiplayer component that might be any Wing Commander Privateer fans biggest wish.

There have been a few idie space combat games released recently like SOL: Exdous, and Strike Suit Zero. Who knows if Lawrence Holland suddenly pops up out of no where, most of the old Sierra adventure games designers all have new crowd funded projects in development right now.

Yup, you get to wait a year from when it's aired for subscribers.

With many people cutting the cord, subscribing to HBO isn't an option, thankfully it looks like they are open to the idea of allowing a digital only subscription to access HBO-Go.

Your options are currently:
1) Subscribe to cable and HBO and watch on Live TV, HBO OnDemand, DVR, or online via HBO-Go
2) Wait a year for the Blu-Ray and DVD boxset
3) Click the torrent for the new episode posted 5-10 minutes after it finishes airing, and wait 10-15 minutes for the download and play it on any hardware you have.

It might not be legit, but you aren't really giving the consumer choices, having it available on Amazon Instant Video where you purchase each episode or the full season and have a one to two week delay would be reasonable. But waiting for a whole year when illegal option is available all that time?

This same practice hurt the movie industry where a movie would come out and then be available in its country of origin on DVD before it heads across the global for release in theaters. Or PC games released 8 months later due to translation/localization. What happens when the global release is within a few weeks of one another? There is less piracy as people can get their fix.

That just moves the MyDocs folder. There are more folders than that, and not all of them have a GUI set target folder option. My method has all files and folders with the account on the new drive.

That's true, and if you are worried enough to encrypt your user data partition, you should do your system partition as well to make sure everything is being properly encrypted.

This post was to address the fact that that it isn't difficult to separate the users directory from the C: drive. Software throwing files all over the place isn't new, but thankfully most are following recommend procedure which puts everything in the user's directory.

I've kept my system drive and "home" separate on Windows since I've used XP over ten years ago.

The process I used in XP, Vista, 7 and 8 is as follows.
1) Install Windows with only one drive connected to make sure bootldr is on the system drive.
2) During installation, setup a temporary throw away administrative account.
3) Connect another other hard drives to your system and boot into the throw away account
4) Setup the drive / partition you want to have user data on. I recommend creating a root "Documents and Settings" or "Users" folder but you can call it whatever you want, and place it anywhere you want.
5) Open regedit and modify the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList - Change the ProfilesDirectory key from "%SystemDrive%\Users" to "d:\Users" or where you want user data to go.
6) Create a new administrator account that you will keep.
7) Log out of the throw away account and into your new main account. Your "home" directory will be placed under D:\Users\username or where ever you setup for key.
8) Delete the throw away account, and delete user files for it.

This process keeps the Default and Public user folders on the C: drive, but it is possible to move them and modify the registry keys for them in the same location as the ProfilesDirectory key if you want. I never have anything under them so I leave them on the system drive.

I've never ran into any software that doesn't behave correctly while having my user data on a secondary partition. Other instructions to move a user directory have you changing the path in multiple keys in the registry. This method causes the user account to be setup with all of the paths already pointing to the desired location.

What backup software are you using that requires imaging the whole drive with every backup? You will need to do a single full backup for the initial backup, and then only changes are synced over on whatever backup schedule you do, I have my backups setup to do the incrementals daily. You would then configure your backup software how it you want it to keep data, maybe keep the first of the month snapshot for three months, with a yearly that rotates out every other year.

TrueCrypt encrypting a drive has no effect on the backup process. You're running Windows 7 and backups in Windows will use Volume Shadow Copy which access the drive after TrueCrypt decrypts it. For example you fully encrypt your system partition, after booting into Windows you create a backup of the drive. You restore the backup to another drive. The restored backup will not be encrypted. You might be able to find some software that would do a low level raw read of an HDD and backup each sector, but that's horribly inefficient in both backup speed, and required amount of storage for each backup.

Check out Microsoft OneNote. It gives you greater flexibility than just using Outlook at a note keeping tool. The hardest part will be adjusting your workflow, OneNote is free form so it's difficult to jump into as you are learning what organization method works best for you versus adjusting to one imposed by the application you are using.