$50, not $15!! Silly brain.

They've lowered the street price of used laptops enough that I can buy a workable 15" laptop for $15 and install CrunchBang Linux on it and use it for everything I could need, save for gaming. The project that I did this with is working out beautifully, even using it for work:

http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/12/project-5050-a-low-budget-linux-laptop/

Then again, Tablets Are Not Computers. Not yet, anyway.

http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/12/fictional-currencies-popular-scifi-tv-movies-literature/

I looked up the ones I didn't know, thought I'd share (link).

And I can't get up!

Agreed. You can feel the difference when banging away at the linux shell. *that* is the reason it matters to me.

I can't tell if this is satire or not, but I'll bite anyway. What does the modem matter? 1.5 down, 896 up, does't matter at the modem level. The rest is irrelevant. My ISP won't sell me higher speeds and nobody out here has another terrestrial solution, literally.

Thanks! I do appreciate that quite a lot :)

Streaming isn't the only thing we do here- with my work from home, latency matters, as it does with the gaming we do. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that we're trying to fit 5mbps of usage into a 1.5mbps line.

I was afraid folks would think that. I removed the ads, they're all but ineffective for revenue anyway. I'm sorry you didn't like my solutions, but that's how it goes. If one person benefits from something I wrote, that's enough for me. Plus, I just like getting my stuff out there and being *read*.

I too could work at 500kbps. It would suck for some of the things I need to do (a lot of my work is browser based). The bigger challenge is when my son is gaming, skyping, browsing all at once, and my wife is watching a movie, all while I'm trying to work. Fitting all of that into 1.5mbps IS a challenge, and That is what the article is about.

This is why I removed the ads almost as soon as I put them up. I don't want to be taken for click bait. Ads have their place, but not with this crowd! Even I hate them when they're obnoxious.

http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/10/a-techs-guide-to-a-decent-cup-of-coffee/

I'm loving all these coffee related posts lately.

Adblock plus to keep the ads out, Web of Trust (mywot.com) to keep them from clicking on garbage, and AutoHotKey to keep them from right clicking when they mean to left click and mess everything up. Old folks lose dexterity in their hands, and don't even realize they're right clicking. I fixed this issue with my Grandfather using AutoHotKey to make right click = left click, and then I mapped the + on his num pad to a right click so that the functionality is still there when needed. I detailed it here:

http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/10/using-autohotkey-to-assist-the-elderly-disabled-and-more/