@MaxellDVD1: In my experience, sc is a little bit better at stopping stubborn/hung/malfunctioning services too.

Even if you're not interested in blocking ads, you should run Adblock Plus and install the Malware Domains subscription for one added layer of protection.

Neat trick. I just tried folding the bag I brought my lunch in. It didn't come out looking as neat as the ones in the picture, but that's fine. I can see how I could fit a lot of them in a drawer that way, and I'm always using plastic bags for stuff. This trick will make keeping them on hand a lot less painful. A…

@gthing: You should get anything in that price range checked out by a mechanic of course, but I'm driving a 2002 Honda Civic with 130,000 miles on it. Edmonds says that car is worth $4,300. I have no intention of selling it for that. I've been driving it since 2003 and it's been incredibly dependable. If a tree fell…

@Homerjay has ABSA Fever: Consider it whatever you spend on repairs and home improvements. Depending on the age of your house how handy you are, and other habits, it could be a small amount or it could be a lot. I keep my appliances until they die, but some people replace them every few years just to stay in fashion.

@freedomweasel: Good tips. I knew about putting the packs in the oven to dry them back out, but the microwave would be faster.

Definitely look locally for it. Pretty much any grocery store or discount store has it in its cleaning aisle, usually right next to Comet. And I don't think I've ever paid more than $3-$4 for a can.

@thinkerer: They do, but the limit keeps getting higher. If you continuously rewrite to them, they'll still last a couple of years. In an MP3 player, you won't be doing that. Under an MP3 player's conditions, chances are the card will be obsolete or wear out from old age (~10 years) before it runs out of rewrite…

@SeraphX2: Two things make me very nervous about IE9. One is Microsoft's past attempts to subvert the web. If they get back to 95% market share, they'll do it again, because that's what Microsoft does. I remember well the days when CNN.com and ESPN.com rendered weird in anything other than IE, and my bank's web site…

Highly unlikely. I stuck with Netscape as long as I possibly could, used IE during the IE5 days, and as soon as Mozilla had a stable browser, switched back over to that. I ran the old Mozilla suite, and was running Firefox back when it was called Phoenix, then Firebird.

@freedomweasel: Microsoft got into web browsers because they were afraid of the web making the OS irrelevant. That was almost laughable in 1996, but it's starting to happen now. And Microsoft's proprietary lock-ins with IE are haunting them now, as they struggle to maintain compatibility and acceptable security.

@Zuzax: Often that's because of some web-based app somewhere on the corporate intranet that doesn't run on anything newer than IE6. And the vendor discontinued it, or went out of business, but the app is entrenched in some department with a lot of clout.

@brc is never late, because of his v8: Ah. So bad news for the guy who bought that Rolls-Royce that I saw sitting at a dinky little indie used car lot down by the river a couple of months back?

@Jim-Bob wants a B13 SE-R, but will settle for working air conditioning in his 353,000 mile Nissan Frontier.: He gets bonus points if he bought the car used, taking advantage of GM's lower resale value over Toyota.

In south St. Louis, over the last couple of years the dealerships have shuffled. Virtually all of the dealers selling U.S. cars consolidated, leaving empty showrooms in their wake. Other dealerships just closed completely. Then the survivors jockeyed for location upgrades, leaving the dregs just sitting there, a sad…

@Ridley: I don't question his constitutional right to burn books he disagrees with, but in this case he's not accomplishing anything productive.

@uppitycracker: You can have both. Buy the $150 SSD and load your critical stuff on it like your OS and whatever else you use every day. Keep your data (photo, mp3, movie collection, etc.) and stuff you use less often on cheaper HDDs.

@avconsumer2: I had similar luck with Seagate drives prior to switching to SSDs. I had a very bad run with Western Digital in the late 1990s/early 2000s, but I understand their drives are pretty good right now. HDD makers can be very streaky.

@Slinkytech: Wear leveling takes care of the individual cell issue, which the same article explains (albeit not very well).

@Skutarth: Not necessarily. I've had two drives fail under warranty myself in the last 15 years. Some people have worse luck than me. I've had coworkers lose drives much more frequently than that. My trick is to ask a desktop support person what brand of drive they see fail least often before making a purchase,…