I’ve been using Skype for some time now, and a little while back I decided to pay the $1.99/month fee so I could make unlimited nationwide calls in the US. And no, it’s not a "must buy 3 or 6 months in advance" subscription. Just 2 bucks and no commitments. If I wanted to drop the service at any time, I could with no ETFs or any of that...

A ton of you out there are still using old monitors, some of which are shamefully old. Yes, they still work, but hey, this is your eyes we’re talking about and you should have a display that allows you read everything easily. Before listing the 5 reasons, here’s a quick way to determine if your monitor is crappy or not: Use a laptop under 1 year old...

From the realm of the itty-bitty comes the ARTiGO A1150 from VIA. We’ve seen itty-bitty computers before, but the problem has always been that they’re so darned slow. Not this one. It does have a real-deal 1GHz 64-bit dual-core processor, can do HD video, has both VGA and HDMI, can support up to 4GB DDR3 RAM, has optional Wi-Fi and has 5 USB ports,...

Some tech items for sale simply defy belief as far as their shoddy quality is concerned, and believe me when I say this is not dictated by price alone whether the cost of the item is high or low. There have been some out there (maybe you’re one of them) who have spent $300 on a graphics card only to receive it and it doesn’t work. Or maybe $400 on...

It’s well known that the most expensive part of a laptop is the LCD panel (i.e. the screen). If you’ve ever shopped around for a replacement panel – even if it’s just the thin-film part and not the surrounding bezel – you know exactly what I’m talking about. LCD panels have never been cheap and probably never will be. Because...

I live in an area where there are Wi-Fi routers all around me; this presents a problem because if I’m using the same channel others are using, the signal will stutter/drop for any Wi-Fi device I use. In most wireless routers (at least for newer ones), they come preconfigured to automatically select the first channel available, usually settling on channel...

In the context of this article, "safe" concerning a hard drive means "least likely to have mechanical failure". While true you can buy 1TB drives new for under $150 easily, there are tens of thousands of platter-based hard drives out there that are used and much cheaper – but which are the safest? Laptop HDDs Rich’s...

I think it’s safe to say that out of all CPUs considered vintage, the Intel 80286 will be the one missed the least – if at all. A PC with a 286 CPU was a bit of an odd duck for most computer hobbyists of the time as there was no real reason to own one. Yes, the performance per clock cycle was double that of the 8086/8088 and yes, it could address up...

HP these days is making some pretty good full-size laptops these days. Compared to just a few years ago, a lot more attention is being given to build quality both on the inside and outside. If you haven’t checked out HP laptops recently, here are 3 for under $500 that are worth a look: Note that all these laptops have 15.6-inch screens at 1366×768...

Recently my sister had some good luck and happened to win a $500 gift certificate for Apple products. Per her profession she took an online survey for work-related products, and one of the perks is that if you filled it out you might win the gift certificate. Sounds like a spam, I know, but it was legit and she did really win it. Right after that she texted me...