Hyperthreading

Many of today's updates configure your bios and selects drivers that the software maker wants on your computer and not what actually works best with your complete line of software and hardware that you have on your computer.
Welcome to the future, your computer, their choices for operational control.
0.02

sucks...more and more I keep thinking of taking at least one of my workstations "off-the-grid". Could a man actually survive working on a computer that wasn't on the internet?

I am taking my XP computers off the internet.

Stand alone like the 1980s, no network, no nothing. I will disable the wifi functionality in the Control Panel.

I bought a Acer Chromebook just to have another internet device. It is fast, has 2gb of ram and 16gb of flash drive storage. It is halfway between a tablet and regular computer. It runs on Chrome O/S and has access to the Google Playstore (app based like Android).

Sorry for the hijack Uncle P.

Dave,
I’m looking into Chromebooks for SWMBO. That woman gets more adware, spam and viruses on her windows laptop than anybody I know. She then starts yelling at me because her computer is slow.
Anyway does yours have a USB port that could be used for printing? I’m looking for one under $500.
TIA B-)

> Sorry for the hijack Uncle P......... She then starts yelling at me because her computer is slow.......

I know; right?

$199 Acer Chromebook at Office Depot, I googled around various websites looking for the best price. I hate Frys, I get there and they don't have it or the box has been opened so I paid a little more at Office Depot because it is close to my house and I got it in a new, sealed box.

Office Depot did not have it in the display area but their website indicated they have them in stock at my local store. After searching on his phone the clerk said they have two and they went back and got one for me. The cheapest one they had on display is a $299 hp.

It does have usb ports. It has a webcam and microphone but I haven't tried them yet. So far the thing works, if the camera is not good, hey I can't expect much. Display is nice and crisp. Not a touchscreen. You can connect a mouse although we are using the touchpad. I installed Chrome on my wife's new Windows 7 computer and made my network hp6500 printer a Google Cloud Printer then the Chromebook can print to it (the computer that was used to set up the Cloud Printer has to be logged on or the printer will show off-line). You can also get apps from the Google Play Store (like Android); they have the Printer Share app which allows you to connect directly to a WiFi printer. My iPad will print to any network WiFi printer without any special action needing to be taken.

It is saying it has 11 hours of battery life fully charged. It is very lightweight. It seems to be a very good, cheap solution for browsing and lightweight typing, etc. It's like a very lightweight laptop. The security is built in like the iPad.

I never heard of it until yesterday, it was sort of an impulse buy because I need a solution quickly so I can get my old laptop off of the internet (don't want anything to happen to it).

That goes without saying and you are required to instantly know the answer without hunting around in there.

I hate computers more every day.

I've got my wife's new Windows 7 computer calmed down, though. She is set in her ways; she wants a desktop computer, not a laptop, not a tablet and the browser has to be Firefox. I'm trying to convince her to use Chrome (I know the evil Google gets your valuable internet habit information that way), log in then you can log into Chrome on any device and it will have all of your bookmarks, etc.

McAfee was pretty useless the first few days and let some stuff through so I switched to Kaspersky Internet Security provided by my ISP for free. I also uninstalled some Adware things that snuck through. Kaspersky is a known resource hog but the new hp W7 desktop with 8gb of RAM and 1T of HD space is handling it well except for a little slow to startup. I will say in the 2 or 3 years I have been using Kaspersky, it has never let anything through. I used to use Avast! until it let a Rootkit just waltz on by so I switched to Kaspersky after the nightmare of cleaning up that mess.

when you are googling around is it any wonder you wound up with a chromebook?

Yes and no.
We have Windows systems that for all intents and purposes are "off the grid". They live in virtual machines on our Macs, and are considered locked down. Nothing gets changed, installed, or tweaked and once the virtual machine is running well, with all software working properly, then the entire virtual machine file is backed up. If anything goes wrong with it in the future we just replace that file from backup.

All our email, surfing, and general computer usage is done with OS X.

The sign in is your Gmail address and password, they have me now.

Really I sorted by lowest to highest price and the Chromebooks were the cheapest. So I bought one. Chrome OS is pretty much the browser as operating system.

I was wrong before, it accesses the chrome web store for apps, not the Android Play store.

I just got turned onto Comodo AV! I think it's the best one out there.

I noticed MS going haywire when automatic updates where being downloaded and installed!