In the US, the "parking lights" on every car I've ever driven lights up all the same bulbs as turning the headlight on, minus the headlights themselves. This includes the taillights, all the marker lights, license plate lights, and even the nighttime illumination for the gauges and controls inside the car. I haven't tried it, but I doubt your average car battery would power all of that more than a few hours and be able to still start the car.

I'm not even sure what the purpose they are supposed to serve on our vehicles. In many jurisdictions it's actually illegal to drive with your parking lights on (even during the day), though I would guess your chances of actually being ticketed for it are pretty low.

One of the reasons you want to run the A/C as close to continuously as possible is that you want it also to act as a dehumidifier. If it short cycles it's not going to be able to pull the humidity out, leaving you with a cool, damp house. With that said though, I'd be a bit concerned if it never shut off as I would want to know I have at least some spare capacity.

My favorite was the Ultrabay numpad that IBM had on the Thinkpad. You lose your optical drive, but instead you gained a super-handy numpad that would slide in and out of the side of your laptop.

/*Make sure we're running on XP or later...*/
if(major_version >= 5 && minor_version >= 1)
{....}

Which was my personal favorite, as I ran across that one a few times. It, of course failed on Version 6.0 (Vista).

What I find curious is that Microsoft has moved away from version numbers to version year for pretty much all of their software products except Windows. Especially since Windows was what kicked off that whole trend back in 1995.

No, what actually happened is that the next major release, which was going to be Windows 9, was shaping up to be a good, solid release. Therefore, Microsoft decided to skip over it and go straight to Windows 10.

One of the things I don't like about Newegg is that thanks to their "Marketplace" it's not always obvious who you are buying from anymore (A similar problem also exists over at Amazon). I generally trust Newegg, but some of the retailers in the "Marketplace" not so much. If I wanted to buy from random people running a business out of their apartment in NJ I'd go over to eBay. Luckily though B&H now carries a lot of the stuff I'd normally go to Newegg for.

Actually, what happened is that Dell partnered with Goodwill to recycle any old computer that was donated to the store. While this isn't all bad, as I'm sure that Goodwill gets a fair amount of stuff that's basically junk, it also means that any newer/good hardware that gets donated also ends up getting scrapped. So the end result is that Dell has managed to eliminate one source of inexpensive used computers out there.

Though your best bet would be to just ask around, check craigslist, or keep an eye on some local dumpsters. I'm sure you could find an old P4 or even some early 64-bit hardware for free without too much trouble.

They can be a problem, but they are one of the few battery types that can be recycled for a profit by reselling the recovered materials. That helps keep them out the of the dump.

I wouldn't complain, but Microsoft claimed that every Vista-capable PC could run Windows 10, and that appears to be false.

That's actually blatantly false. Windows 8 and later require that the processor support the NX bit, whereas Vista and 7 do not. This pretty much excludes most 32 bit computers from being able to run Windows 10, so stuff like Socket 478 P4's and Athlon XP's which can run Vista or 7 can not be upgraded to Windows 10.

Why? The Home and Pro versions are almost identical, except for a small handful of few features that home users would never miss and limits that would never bother a home user*. It's really just a way for Microsoft to extract more money out of businesses for Windows while providing an almost identical product. It's actually pretty clever (or evil, depending on your perspective) if you think about it.

*I realize that Windows 7 Home has a 16GB limit which is pretty easy to run up against nowadays, but it's 5 years old now and Windows 8.1 Home has a 128GB limit which would be hard to hit with "consumer level" hardware.

It's very intentional, as Thinkpads have changed very little in appearance since the first ones came out in the mid 1990's years ago sporting 486 processors. That's over 20 years of laptops that are pretty much instantly recognizable as a Thinkpad by anyone familiar with them.

I for one like their simple, clean, no nonsense styling, and functional design (though Lenovo has been mucking with that a bit more than I like). But each to their own.

Most new laptops now are omitting the optical drive. It's getting to the point where if you require an optical drive your options are starting to look pretty limited, especially since the remaining models with optical drives tend to be the larger workstation/desktop replacement models. This is understandable, as I rarely use an optical drive anymore. On the other hand, the lack of USB ports is baffling.

Given that it's Oregon, there will be plenty of water just "dropping" in. I would invest in some large sheets of plastic and/or some tarps, and some buckets myself. Get a bunch of those chlorinated tablets that treat water, and while it may taste terrible, should be perfectly safe to drink. Now, things like food/gasoline might be a bit tougher to come by.

Don't forget IE for the ActiveX!

You do realize that Chrome comes bundled with its own built-in Flash plug-in, right? Unless you meant you installed one of the Chrome alternatives that strip it out (Opera, Comodo Dragon, etc.).