MSE isn't a bad product. From personal experience, I'd rate it higher than Symantec's Endpoint Solutions from a usability and end user standpoint.The only gripe I have with MSE is that its script blocking capabilities aren't as good as Avast's - my AV of choice. Every antivirus product seems to have had an issue like this from time to time. In this case, Avira, which normally does very well in testing, probably released an update too quickly and disabled machines resulted. Regrettable, but not all that unusual.

Just to clarify, the CPU that was mentioned (Intel Celeron E3400) is a dual core. I think it's probably a re-badged Wolfdale core, so pretty much a Core 2 chip. 2 gig is generally fine for Windows 7, especially if it isn't running 64 bit. Don't get me wrong, more memory is better up to a point, but especially if it was a 32 bit install, it doesn't seem likely to me that the extra gig and some change if he went with 4 gigs would make that much of a difference so it doesn't seem all that compelling. Agreed about the Hard drive. If he's using 80 gigs then it's probably from the spare parts bin.

There are supposed to $99 HP Touchpads on sale on HP's ebay site. I think I recall hearing the sale was supposed to begin sometime on Sat. Dec. 9.

You think that's bad? I know an older teacher who covers a study hall in a High School near him quite often. He said that the students often ask him what the time is despite there being a perfectly legible analog clock just a bit behind him and up simply because the students can only read digital clocks.

As I think back about a decade ago.... I seem to recall IBM offering an anti-virus app. Didn't it get absorbed by Symantec?

Not all famous adages stand the test of time or the march of technological progress. One comes to mind - "if man was meant to fly, he'd have been born with wings". Of course, many do.

I think there is a lot to suggest that may have been the case. In addition, I've read documents stating that Stalin was in shock for a few days after the initial German offensive, but upon recovering he quickly ramped up for a massive counter offensive. I think Stalin did have a time frame for attacking Hitler, but I think Hitler took him by surprise by moving up the time frame that Stalin had in mind.

From a tactical point of view, his invasion of Russia wasn't obviously bad from the start. He couldn't launch his invasion of Britain until he had air superiority. Until he conquered the RAF, he just had ground troops with nothing to do. From his own published work Mein Kampf, you get the impression that conquering Russia primarily for resource and farming development was on his to do list eventually. From knowledge of previous wars, it would seem likely that he only signed the non-aggression pact to lull Stalin into a false sense of security and prevent fighting a war on two fronts (which up until that point he had succeeded in doing). Certainly, with the benefit of hindsight, the invasion of Russia was a mistake, but his troops did very well initially and if they had actually surrendered when he took the capital, then he would have won. Russian winter and tough citizens then decimated his army (yes, I do mean it in the reduced by 1/10 sense, but it was likely higher than that). If one had to cite a single HUGE mistake, I would say it was signing a pact with Japan and declaring war on the US along with Japan after the Pearl Harbor bombing. Until that point, the US didn't take any official, overt action against Germany.

I can cite once instance. The Japanese studio responsible for School Rumble sent a letter or letters (I can't recall anymore) asking for fan sub groups to stop for that particular title.