Maybe if Apple got a patent on spyware, then the amount of spyware would be reduced due to having to pay royalties on those patents? It might actually be a good thing?

I was running OS/2 in the early 1990s, and doing everything people did with Windows 95 before they were. I didn't start running Win95 full time until sometime in 1997.

Back when I was doing a lot more sysadmin work than I do now, I got used to having multiple monitors really fast. I'd have my terminal services window(s) open in one monitor, and I'd have documentation and whatever else I needed (like a spreadsheet to track what tasks I'd done on what server) open in the other. It…

@FriarNurgle: It's hard to overstate the emergency situations. In the midwest, storms that knock out electrical power are all too common, and sometimes it can stay out for days at a time. When the cell phone battery is dead, it's good to still be able to make calls.

@That Guy: It could be they were going for the retro look, or it could be that they just wanted something that's going to work for a long time. I replaced all of my cheap corded phones with the old Western Electric phones that weigh a lot, because they were designed to work for decades without breaking. I have a…

I know it's trendy these days to ditch your landline, but I've never been able to make the numbers work. The free incoming calls are easily worth the $15 a month I pay for my landline. (The secret is to ditch call waiting, call notes, and all the add-ons.) Plus, the line always works, and yes, those old Western…

@englishman: Go to Anandtech.com to see how various SSDs benchmark against the fastest HDDs.

@HitmonInfinity: There shouldn't be. To the BIOS, the SSD just looks like any other drive.

@skraelingshortbus: Agreed. I bought the original Vertex soon after the first positive reviews came out and it's the best upgrade I ever did.

@thepaisano: The individual CELLS have a lifetime of 50-100K write operations before they begin to fail. This is why modern drives do wear-leveling, so you don't hammer one specific part of the drive and make it fail prematurely.

@TouchMyMonkey: And driving the car until it wears out makes a lot more sense. My wife and I spend $500-$1,000 a year keeping our 2002 Hondas running, which isn't much more than we spent on maintenance when they were new. And in the meantime, we aren't spending $4,000 per car just to drive something less than three…

@kettlewhistle: Your boss will assume that you have at least a mortgage payment and a car payment, and make conclusions based on that.

@ffejie: The fear in emptying bank accounts to pay off debt isn't having to turn around and borrow more money if the air conditioner breaks. The fear is losing your job for unforeseen reasons and not finding a new one before savings run out.

Exactly. There is no such thing as good debt. Let's say you have a furniture payment of $100 a month, a car payment of $300 per month, and a house payment of $1,000 a month. Scrimp 10% of your income (or whatever you can afford) and add that to your $100/month furniture payment until that's paid off. Then apply what…

@sweetgreggo: Or you can do it by finding out who the people are who work for you and what they're capable of doing, so you know who to call when you need something done.

@A.Jaswal: Well, at a previous job for a Fortune 500 company (admittedly, it was probably #499), I stepped into an elevator and the CEO stepped in right after me. He introduced himself, asked what department I worked in, and what I did there. Sure, maybe it was an act, but with that 30-second conversation, he at least…

I bought a surplus Asus-for-Compaq Socket A board back in 2001 or 2002 from them, and built a system using that and the spare parts I had laying around. That computer is still running in my basement.

@whatznext28: During the spring and summer, Costco sells a solar-powered attic fan. It bolts onto your existing vent, and the solar panel mounts on the side of the house. I think it costs around $150.

@jcnaquin: Yes. Not only that, get some blackout curtains (Eclipse is an inexpensive and reasonably effective brand, available at your local Kmart or Target) to keep that heat out. And when LED bulbs become more practical, this tip will be that much more effective.

Also, if your router is still using the factory default username and password for some reason, go change that before you reboot.