8/16    I just left my employer. They didn't ask to get their HW back.
        Is is common for employers to contact me a few months/years later
        and ask for their HW back?
        \_ Is it an iPhone 9 prototype? :-)
           \_ as a matter of fact, it is just a 2 year old laptop
              and they don't seem to keep track of inventor
	...

7/8     Suppose I just stopped going to work and stopped communicating
        with them. How many days will it take before they stop sending me
        paycheck (and maybe even try to get back the laptop they gave me)?
        \_ They'll probably try to call your emergency contact first to see if
           you're hit a tree or something.
           you've hit a tree or something.
	...

12/21   In Emacs, how do I make it so that it will resize its screen
        when the maximum resolution of my monitor changes? When I
        use my laptop, my emacs is too big (and I can't resize it
        because the bottom-right corner is not accessible).
        \_ Which OS?  Can't you drag the top border (not a corner) to resize
           the height to be smaller?
	...

5/4     Any thoughts about apple switching to ARM for all machines?
        \_ Could only have happened if the Mac App Store had been a wild, wild
           success, and they were willing to give up Steam. Games/dual-booting
           is strategically valuable to not driving people away from macs.
           A new ARM iOS based device, or opening the Apple TV to iOS apps
           (same thing, really) would be much more likely than sabotaging their
	...

3/12    I am curious what others think of tablets like iPad. They don't seem
        useful to me, but I use my computer for more than web browsing,
        Facebook, and Twitter. Why would I buy one instead of a laptop?
        They seem like a disabled laptop to me, but at a higher price.
        \_ You are most likely a coder.  iPad is not for coders.  They are
           what you get your non-technical friends.  Or musicians.  Look at
	...

9/21    are you guys really all using win7 in some way now?
        \_ Yes.  In my company, we have upgraded all our machines for
           development, QA and other office use (HR, Finance, Receptions, etc.)
           from WinXP to Win7 a few months ago.  Our products now primarily
           support Win7/Win2008 and secondarily support WinXP/Win2003.
           \_ Any weird gotchas support-wise?
	...

5/13    I am getting a new Macbook Pro. Should I get a glossy or matte screen?
        I always had matte in the past. I use my laptop just about everywhere
        and glare is a concern. Should I stick with matte? I noticed
        glossy is the default now.
        \_ It is weird, but I have the glossy screen that goes to the edge of
           the monitor for my 13" PB and it somehow seems bigger than the one
	...

4/4     My macbook is dying. After three and a half years, I want to retire it,
        and get a new one, but I live in constant fear* that Apple will pull a fast
        one on me and update them as soon as I do. Anyone know anything about an
        impending Apple laptop refresh?
        * = hyperbole
        \_ http://buyersguide.macrumors.com
	...

1/22    looking to buy a new development laptop
        needs ssdrive, >6 hr possible batt life, and runs linux reasonably
        Anyone have a recommendation? Thx.
        \_ thinkpad t23 w ssdrive and battery inplace of drive bay
        \_ Ever wondered what RICHARD STALLMAN uses for a laptop?  Well,
           wonder no more!
	...

10/24   How well do you see color? I got 8, how about you?
        http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77
        \_ 7
           \_ what monitor did you use?
              \_ LCD on thinkpad x32, under not so great lighting conditions.
        \_ I scored 101, which seems impossible. Then again, I didn't
	...

11/12   how do i make a fail safe magical backup for my debian box
        that i can quickly boot from if the box explodes?
        \_ keep a linux live boot cd around for just such an emergency
           \_ And learn about 'dd'
        \_ I was hoping there was something as slick as CCC, for unix.
           \_ You can first duplicate the disk offline with dd, then just
	...

12/29   A friend's primary Windows 2000 hard disk got nuked, and her
        backup drive is missing data. I'm looking for any
        recommendations for data recovery software for FAT/NTFS
        (restoring deleted files or corrupted filesystems) or
        recommendations for data recovery services in SF?
        \_ Get an external USB drive enclosure.  You want something
	...

12/27   I'm trying to help out with my mother in law's computer problems. She
        has two Windows XP computers (one desktop, one tablet pc) that she was
        using for her job before she retired. The computers themselves are old
        and her workplace doesn't want them back but they are installed with
        all this corporate Novell stuff that I don't know anything about and
        her account on the computer has very restricted permissions (she can't
	...

6/22    When I burn an iso image using the "Disk Utility" in OS X (Tiger)
        and I then use readcd on a linux box to verify the md5sum of the
        burned cd, the md5sum of the CD doesn't match the md5sum of the
        origional iso file. Is OS X modifying the iso image before it
        burns it or something? Seems strange.
        \_ Does this match on any of your other burned-CDs vs. ISO files?
	...

5/17    My second data backup question. I am looking for a backup media I can
        take off-site. I'll repeat that we've found the failure rate backing up
        to CD unacceptable. She wants to go with an Iomega product but I was
        wondering if people have had good/bad experience with these,
        reliability-wise and if they have better suggestions. I have about
        $400 for this.
	...

4/1     I'd like to play my favorite EA game on the laptop. However, I
        don't have a CD player for my laptop and I'm wondering if it
        is possible to mount the CD on my desktop and access it via
        wireless. I know that EA has really weird CD protection
        schemes, that's why I'm wondering if anyone has successfully
        done this. -ok thx
	...

3/19    Given the choice between a firewire and USB2.0 connection
        (between an external hard drive and my computer), which one is
        better and why? Thanks.
        \_ Firewire is faster and more robust for that application.  USB
           is more widely available if you'd ever want to move the disk to
           another machine.  -tom
	...

2/23    Hi, my girlfriend's mom is in Taiwan.  Her computer stopped booting;
        it shows BIOS, but it won't show the WinXP screen.  So, it sounds like
        a virus (less likely, partial drive failure / OS corruption, but let's
        assume it's a virus).
        She is concerned about recovering her files.
        Normally if I were on-site I'd just pull out the drive, put it in an
	...

2/3     So, I'm really confused about this notion of computer science
        metrics where everything's kind of 2^n, but sometimes not. For
        example, if I have a 4 GIG hard drive, does that mean I have
        exactly 2^32 bytes of space? Does that translate to 4000000000
        bytes, or some number that's close to it? How about megahertz?
        Say I have a 2.5GHz computer, does it run at exactly 2500000
	...

1/18    A bunch of CD-ROMS I have are corrupted. They're in a nice
        CaseLogic case, closed, stored in a temperate (70-85F), dry
        location. I have no idea why they're corrupted, but I know
        one thing-- they've been sitting close my Sharper Image Ionizer
        [plus UV mode turned on], for maybe 6 months. I'm suspecting
        that either the ions or the UV killed them, but is it actually
	...

1/11    Using SATA (serial ATA) as the one and only primary HD, any
        problem with boot up? How about with motherboards built in say,
        2002? Any problem with that? Pros/cons with SATA? Comments?
        \_ You expecting to install Windoze on SATA and have it boot?
        \_ I had to get a special driver floppy to install Win XP on a recent
           box w/ onboard SATA.  It wasn't too hard, though.  YMMV.  --dbushong
	...

11/12   Dual boot question:  I had a hard drive set up with dual boot.
        XP and Linux.  I had problems with the Windows partition.
        I got a new hard drive.  I connected the new hard drive and set it
        as the slave drive.  I went into setup and set it to boot from the
        slave drive (the new one).  I then reinstalled XP on the new drive.
        Oops.  My boot loader on the original drive got overwritten.  The
	...