Personally, I have high expectations for VideoLAN Movie Creator (because my experience with VLC Media Player has been excellent). Unfortunately, it's been in an "under-development" state for almost as long as I can remember. I just hope they get to a complete, stable release sometime soon. http://www.videolan.org/vlmc/

SMART Boards can be used with SMART Notebook (for Education) or SMART Meeting Pro (for business) software from the company that makes the SMART Boards, or they can be used with any software that can run on your computer; if you can control the software with a mouse, you can also control it with a SMART Board.

With both the SMART Notebook (for Education) and the SMART Meeting Pro (for business) software from the company that makes the SMART Boards, handwriting recognition is already included as a default feature. A quick internet search for 'handwriting recognition in SMART Notebook" will reveal many documents and many videos demonstrating this. The SMART Notebook software also supports templates and grids too, a quick internet search reveals many documents and many videos demonstrating this.

While there may be valid reasons to jump to a newer OS, individuals often prefer that with which they are familiar. As for "this day and age", the IS department at my place of employment still has most of the office computers on Windows XP, simply because a LOT of the custom business software that the company paid millions of dollars for several years ago simply will not work properly a newer OS. Heck, we are even still stuck with IE6 because someone thought it was a good idea for a major database's front-end UI to be written such that it runs in a web browser, and will not function correctly in anything other than IE6. It's very nasty state that will be extremely expensive and time-consuming for the company to get out of. Its just one example of a real-world reason why an upgrade may be deemed undesirable, but I'm sure most people can think of many other reasons too.

Why not set up a Linux, or Windows 7 Host machine that only you have an admin account on, and then your mom's Windows XP configuration in a Virtual Machine? WMware supports taking OS snapshots, supports remote desktop viewing, supports automatic USB device redirection from Host to Guest OS, and many other features that will make your role much easier, and more time efficient, while simultaneously not requiring any major re-training for your parent. And I am certain that other VM software has a very similar feature set and appeal.

Well, because the 3.5" screen on my current (and now obsolete) phone has a resolution of 960x640, and I expect my next ~35" desk monitor and ~70" wall-mounted monitor to have a similar number of pixels-per-inch, that puts my expectation somewhere around 9600x6400 for the desk monitor, and 19200x12800 for the wall-mounted monitor. Oh, and don't forget to improve the color-depth too; might as well put that at 64-bits per pixel while we're at it. Bring on the 19K x 12K @ 64-bpp. !

For me, I will not accept the (currently false) claim that a TV or Movie is '3D' until I can view the content from different perspectives. If I can walk around the 3D displayed content and check out all the details from different angles, then it will be satisfying. Until then, this current marketing gimmick claiming 'stereo vision' to be '3D' is just that; a gimmick.

Yes, because we know that's all hard drives are used to store these days anyway. A hard drive crunch just means a little less porn storage space. Time to fall-back to the old-school: magazines under the bed.

There's a mistake in the list of choices, there is one option listed twice under different names; 'none' and 'wep'.

I phoned my ISP last month to ask if my internet connection through them supported IPv6. I know my PC does, and my router does, but when I asked my ISP I got told that "IPv6 is not a fully ratified standard yet, and when it becomes a completed standard then we we look at supporting it". Just goes to show you that one link can break the whole chain.

Things we buy and use all fulfill a need in our lives. I can clearly identify why I need a telephone, and why that telephone needs to be mobile. I can also clearly identify why I need a computer, and why that computer needs to have a decent screen size and a keyboard. But I can not identify any functional need in my life, for which a tablet would fill that need. This is nothing like the option "need fulfilled by other devices". Yes I have other devices that fit identified needs, and yes a tablet can also fill some of those needs in a limited capacity, but there is absolutely no need that I can see for a table.

As an example, lets look at the basic need of human communication. This can be broken down further into two sub-needs; speed and reliability. Verbal communication takes care of speed, and written communication somewhat addresses reliability (repeatable, retrievable later, reviewable, etc). To meet the need of fast communication throughout history humanity has expanded the distance over which this need can be met by creating and improving tools such as signal flags, signal fires, telegraphs, radios, television, telephones, close range mobile phones, longer range cellular phones, and other such tools. Each of these tools have also been used for other, similar purposes (example: fax machines, entertainment, SMS messaging, etc) but these tools are still focused on the primary need of fast human communication over great distances. With tablets, I see they are trying to add such additional purposes, without fist being a tool to meet a clear primary need.

I wonder how many of you read this article's summary and them immediately wrote a quick PHP script to perform this exact conversion. If you did, did you crash your machine or did you encounter a disappointing non-event?

Soon we'll be using this to play Syndicate in real life.

Why should changing the name of a company cause an out-of-memory error? That's just bad usability. What's the user going to assume form this; "I need more memory", which is not truly the root cause of the problem.

This is just one example of common problems with software today; the error messages often do not accurately identify the root cause of the problem. These days I'm a user, not a programmer (although I have done some very simple programming in the distant past), and this sort of thing really bugs me as a user. Uninformative or innaccurate error messages serve absolutely no purpose.

Some of the humor can be found in the familiarity of the situation. Remembering how you experienced a similar situation, whether it was as innocent as this child's, or a bit more adult and experienced, the memories and familiarity help to trigger the laughter.

I agree with the choice of using the 'Wi-Spy' tool. It has been the most useful tool I have ever owned, for troubleshooting 2.4GHz interference problems. While it is not a high-quality directional spectrum analyzer, it is a cheap and useful visualization too. Want to make it directional? Just surround it with something that blocks or reduces RF signals (like a tin can).

Laptop + Wi-Spy + short USB extension cable + tin can = a very useful tool for isolating sources of 2.4GHz RF interference.