I've been using the mediocre Intel IGP's for years on the last couple laptops. The GPU on these new AMD chips wipe the floor with the 2 year old Intel IGP on the laptop that I'm typing this on. Even basic home video editing doesn't really use the GPU, those goofy home videos are all CPU work.

Having the fastest computer doesn't mean much for most people. It's the form factor and utility that counts. Heck, we're one hop-skip-and-a-jump away from perfectly adequate ARM based machines that people will use instead of Intel or AMD... oh, wait... that was the iPad and it came out last year.

LOL, and to think that we used to measure computer speed by how fast it could recalculate a "large" Excel spreadsheet.

The other day I was approached by a marketing firm that wanted to buy a text link on the front page of my main website. That wasn't new, any webmaster of a half-busy site will get generic link buying requests frequently. This was different.

It was clearly a specifically written email to the webmaster, me. It wasn't the usual automated scatter-shot form letter email. I was curious, so I asked for a bit more information and it turned out to be a Fortune 500 firm that wanted to rank highly on printer supplies. No, not JC Penny, but it would be every bit as controversial. Anyway, it was tempting, but I didn't bite. Their desired link text didn't really make sense on the site, and just as importantly, I don't want to tempt the wrath of Google.

My revs are up marginally the last few months. My theory was that it's Google doing a much better job of using their DoubleClick display adds to follow users around the web - it might be specific to my main site, it's very niche, and there really weren't that many distinct advertisers. Plus, I've been noticing Google ads following me as I browse the web. It's a little eerie, for example, I was researching antivirus packages for work. A day or so into the process, I'd start seeing ESET NOD32 ads everywhere.

On the advertising side, i.e. AdWords, my costs are up a little bit too. Maybe it's the economy improving or general growth in the Internet... I'm not sure yet. I've been meaning to take a closer look at how much I'm paying per click.

This sounds good to me, as long as at least part of the URL is visible. There's really no need for the address bar to go all the way across the screen.

This is especially good on netbooks since the vertical resolution is annoyingly low. Though, I recently realized that fullscreen mode in any browser is useful to get that extra bit of vertical screen space - that makes a big difference on some sites!

I have some friends who have rent sat-phones to go hiking in remote areas. It's amazing for peace of mind. They actually used it last year after being cut-off from the road by a storm. They were able to use the phone to notify relatives that they'd be late a couple days.

But the # of people who need this is relatively small compared to the immense cost of satellites. Of course, the biggest users of sat phones aren't the occasional hikers. I think it's the government and resource extraction sectors, e.g. mining firms.

I wonder, could someone launch a SMS only satellite service based on only a few geo-sync satellites rather than the 66 (!) that Iridium launched? With texting only, the extra lag and a few dropped packets don't matter (as long as it re-sends them later).

I manage a mailing list for a client - it's completely opt-in, either in the retail stores or via the website signup forms.

To keep current with what other companies are doing, I've signed up for dozens of email newsletters. I would say that at least 3/4 are using the equivalent of web bugs to track email open rates - it's not 100% accurate, but it's far better than nothing. It's a checkbox feature by EVERY major 3rd party email service provider.

Actually, I've also examine a lot of SPAM - they do NOT do web bugs anymore. At least not the ones that I've examined.

I've spent hundreds a month for years on my very niche bingo card generating site. You better believe that I monitor the ROI on the campaign.

Google AdWords is excellent for my needs. When the site launched, naturally it was nowhere to be found on the search results. I paid for 95% of the visits. How do you rise to the top of the search results if no one can find you?

I still run the ad campaigns, at roughly the same dollar value, but the majority of the traffic is now non-paid from searches or direct entry.

Is it possible that the site would have gotten backlinks and risen towards the top of it's important search terms w/o buying ads? Sure... eventually. But buying traffic was faster, years faster.

I build my own PCs for home use since it's easier to swap out parts here and there. I'm not sure if I've bought a completely new desktop in a decade - usually it's an HDD here or a motherboard+CPU+RAM there.

But, for offices, no way.

Stick to the brand names, and even better, the volume mainstream models from the big brands. A couple hundred dollars isn't that much - and an OEM Windows Business license isn't much either - less than 1/2 the price of a retail (not sure what a volume license costs these days). Why? It's in Dell's best interests to minimize repair costs, so they do real testing of the designs. Open up a Dell box and take a look. Only the ports and slots that are necessary are there, and the BIOS is quite limited - for geeks, this isn't so good, but for offices, that implies less stuff to go wrong. It's just not worth the risk that you get some weird incompatibility between your RAM or CPU or MB or PSU that shows up in a reboot every week.

I'm always a little scared of losing my phone. It's entirely possible that the guy or girl who finds it will start making 1-900 calls, or even regular long distance calls to obscure places. In a couple hours, this could easily be hundreds of dollars.

I called my phone provider Fido (in Canada) once to put a cap on this, they said "no". I was rather pissed at the time, because, like others have posted, they have caps on pre-paid plans, and they also have caps on people who have crappy credit. But no, I've got reasonable credit, so my liability is basically unlimited.

Then I forgot about it... until today. Hmm... my contract is due for renewal, maybe it's time to switch to prepaid...

Huh... I didn't know that Intel owned a big chunk (not all) of AVG (Grisoft renamed themselves at some point).

Assuming the Wikipedia is accurate, Intel (and partners?) bought 65% in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_Technologies

If there was a plane faster than an SR-71, there's no guarantee that it would be public knowledge.

That said, a fast plane isn't as necessary for spying as it was in the 60's. Who knows what kind of crazy tech is out there doing the hard spy work now, the geek in me hopes that there's something more interesting than satellites...

Huh, good point... I wonder if down the road you'll have to pay more for DB licenses that run on SSDs.

I've been planning to update my MPEG4 DVD player.

Like the original poster, I want to add web access this time. I've been playing around with an old laptop w/VGA running to the TV, but it's too slow for any HD content... I'm leaning towards a slim HTPC. I realized that those slim computer cases are about the same size as the VCR and other classic stereo components.

For the first time in years (i.e. since I was a teenager pirating computer games from 3.5 inch floppy disks), I got malware on my PC last week. PC Total Defender 2010, I think it called itself.

I couldn't figure out how I got caught. I have the standard firewall and antivirus installed, plus SpyBot's TeaTimer tool. And I tend to browse safe sites, anything questionable is done in a virtual machine.

Anyway, it turns out that my Adobe Reader was somewhat out of date, and I had half a dozen versions of JVM installed. I suspected one of these was at fault.

Crazy. How am I supposed to blame my users now?

I feel sorry for non-geek computer users. It really is tough to tell what is safe software and what isn't.

Personally, I would check sourceforge.net first for an open source equivalent. I'm not an open source zealot, but OSS tends to be malware free, and the bonus is that I can freely give a copy to other people. When that fails nonags.com is where I go. They test for naggy shareware, and I think malware and viruses.

Outside of that? Who knows. I trust my gut based on the website, or I run it in a virtual machine! But other people just don't have that option. Even using Google for the software product + "review" will get you fake affiliate reviews.