Retire Your Windows XP Computer

It’s almost time to retire your Windows XP computer. On April 8, Microsoft will stop patching Windows XP with security updates. This means that it could be insecure computer when connected to the Internet.

XP has lived a good life. But if you’re still running it on an old computer, consider upgrading. Now you have more choices than ever. You could get a PC (with Windows 7 or 8), a Mac, an iPad, or a Chromebook. Or, if you  want to save some money, you could install Linux on your existing Windows XP computer for a fast secure web browsing computer.

Buying A TV

TV Advice

Buying a TV can be quite intimidating. When clients ask me what to get, here’s what I usually recommend.

Go to a big box store (Costco, Sams) since they have an excellent return policy, good prices, and they don’t try to give you terrible upsells and warranties. If you want the best value, look at Vizios. If you want the best TV and picture look at Samsungs. They cost more, but are the best displays for most people’s needs.

Projectors

If you want a big TV and you have good light control in the room, meaning that you can make it dark, consider getting a front projector. You can get an excellent projector that will give you a 100+ inch screen for $1400. This takes a little more work since you need to position the projector, get a screen, and focus the projector. But it’s the only cost effective way to get a screen over 75 inches.

Plasmas

The Vizios and Samsungs mentioned above are LCDs. If you are big into sports and you appreciate the more active (slightly less ghosty) look, consider getting a plasma TV over LCD. Modern LCDs are great and have largely done away with the ghosting problems. Most people never notice any image issues. But many video professionals still prefer the look of plasmas. Plasma images are dimmer so they aren’t as good in well lit areas as LCDs.  They are thicker and heavier than LCDs.

Panasonic makes the best plasmas. A couple of years ago Pioneer’s Kurio was the best, but Pioneer stopped making it and sold the technology to Panasonic.

Don’t Fall for the Upsell

Remember that TVs are warrantied by the manufacturer so you don’t need to buy an extended warranty. And you can get great HDMI and other cables at reasonable prices from monoprice.com.

made2dock dock-IN-case

made2dock makes some pretty good docks for the iPhone 4/S called dock-IN-case. There are these two models (Original and Slant) and a desk model that fits neatly in the cable hole in your desk. All models are heavy and well made. The Original is a bit heavier making it easier to pull out of the dock with one hand.

What really sets this dock apart are the sizing options to fit many different sized cases and bumpers.

Seagate Momentus Hybrid Hard Drive

I recently upgraded the client’s old laptop hard drive laptop to a hybrid drive from Seagate:
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB

Hybrid

What’s special about it? It’s got 8GB of solid state drive. That makes its speed somewhere between a standard hard drive an SSD. The drive intelligently moves commonly used files to the solid state portion. The hard drive handles all that on its own, appearing to the computer as just one drive.

With the original hard drive in this 5 year old Mac, it booted up in 55 seconds. With the new drive it booted up in 43 seconds. But after three boots, it had moved the boot files to the SSD and was booting up in 24 seconds. It felt much faster for common tasks and commonly used programs.

If you need a large fast drive, this Seagate is a great compromise. SSDs at 750GB are prohibitively expensive. And standard hard drives are much slower.