My wife ran Ubuntu for 6 years while she finished her masters. I NEVER had to touch her laptop for any issue. She was able to figure out every single thing on her own and even did an upgrade on her own.

Granted she is smart enough to know when a professor demands "you must only use MICROSOFT WORD" that they are simply full of crap and she used Open office anyways. No not a CS or IT major ACCOUNTING.

When I bought her a new macbook pro, the first thing she did was ask me to help install Ubuntu to dual boot with OSX. Bootcamp is not linux compatible yet. She has since figured out parallels is more fun and went that route.

If your mom is that much of an evil person, just stay away, you will be happier.

Nope.

The first 4 that comes with a Windows PC is...

Buy MS office, you really need it.

Buy a wireless MS mouse Ignore that the insides say logitech.

Did you know that MS has a online premium cloud service? you should buy that.

Really, most people LOVE metro, you should never ever switch away from the metro interface.

http://iosafe.com/

OR the poor mans choice. Two cheapie external drives. take one to work every friday and bring the other back. Works great but requires the user to not be lazy.

Lightning strikes can fry stuff that is unplugged and in a closet. Had a lightning strike destroy a laptop that was still sealed in the box from dell. EMP's are a harsh mistress when they strike 20 feet from your house.

But I have something that guarantees safety from even a direct lightning strike....

Insurance.

Rural? Hell I live in Urban and you absolutely need one. The electrical grid in the USA is a noise, brownout,spike mess, get a whole house unit and have it installed.

"For all your whining about how the government can't do anything right, you little twits haven't grown up on top of a waste chemical disposal trench."

I remember when Lake Erie was on fire, and I still KNOW the government cant do anything right.

Call me when it's 27" or 32+ inches. THAT is super sized. I personally think the smallest should be 40" and the desk surface.

but at that point it really needs to not be iOS anymore or the nasty windows 8 single task idea. Back to real multitasking where I can slide apps around and slide data to and from, etc.. I should be able to bring up my photos, and pick a photo by dragging it to the app I want to use it in, say Email or whatever.

The biggest problem is that all the OS and software makers need to stop being shiny little babies and use A SINGLE STANDARD for file transfers so I can easily flick photos from my phone to my desk when I set it on it. Stop with this retardation that is closed special ways of doing things to force lock in.

I have not seen this for over a decade. Almost every job change I make, I will come in at a salary that is equal to or higher than the guy that has been there for 10 years.
This might have been a reality in a distant past when management actually cared about employees and wanted them to stick around, but I noticed in the past 10 that most only care about the next quarter profits and to hell with anything else. I watched my company recently let a very good person walk out the door to a competitor because they would not give him a piddly 10% increase.

I really hope that companies come back to having real leadership, but I highly doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

They have far more money for a legal defense than some street rats. Or are you suggesting that the Researchers live in their car's and rummage through dumpsters for food?

Seniority is not always a good reason to give someone more money. There are new guys out there that can show up at the job and be 2X as effective as the guy that has held the position for 5+ years. And this assumes that the CEO is an honest guy and gives out raises every 6 months for cost of living.

Dishonest companies do not do the Cost of living increases.

Poor people MUST be punished to the extent of the law.

If you think there is anything "fair" in justice, then you are incredibly Naive.

If you are rich you get away with nearly anything, if you have the ability to fight back they tend to not push you into the ground as hard. But if you are poor and stole a loaf of bread? Expect the death penalty.

" These are the standard tools of the profession"
IF Twitter is a "standard tool" then no wonder most college grads are morons.

And over several milennia that is a HUGE margin.

You can use the walnut shell "spiked" tires there without a problem.