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...

One of the more annoying parts of putting a PC together is where to put an external USB hub. Many people use the smaller 4-port flavor, and of course whenever the cable connecting it in the back gets moved, it slides all over the place because it has barely any weight to it. Smaller 4-port hubs also have the very annoying habit of leaning because of cable...

The standard color for any computer-related item made of plastic these days (keyboards, mice, monitor bezels, etc.) is black or silver. Black is usually a true black, as in the plastic was molded originally in that color. Silver comes from paint, and to the best of my knowledge the base color before the silver is white or gray. Usually white. Once upon a time...

As I’ve said before, computer geeks are packrats by nature, and chances are you have an old clunky PC (or laptop) somewhere in your dwelling that you would like to put to good use but can’t because the hard drive is dead, and you really don’t want to spend the cash on one given the old computer isn’t worth much. Given the fact that 32GB...

Generally speaking, when most people hear "webcam", they don’t exactly equate that with "high quality image"; the main reason for this is that webcams started out as being very poorly-constructed, awful-image-resolution plastic pieces of crap. In addition, there were scores of higher-priced webcams that shoved in software features but...

I’m honestly shocked at how much lower in price AMD desktop processors are compared to Intel these days. Considering a quad-core from AMD starts at $90 and Intel at $180, you can easily see why so many PC builders choose to go with AMD as their CPU of choice. But are AMD processors any good? Of course they are. Just take a look at some of the reviews for...

There’s a fair amount of people (yours truly included) that don’t own a printer. My reason for not owning one is that since I print so infrequently, the ink would dry out resulting in wasted money. So how do you print when you don’t own a printer? Use someone else’s. Here are 5 ways to do that. 1. Print from work Lots of people do this,...