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Question from Chad: My laptop has a 13 inch screen, and I’d really like to have a much bigger screen to use when I’m watching Netflix or YouTube.
I’ve been thinking about buying a 27 inch computer monitor to hook up to the laptop through the HDMI port, but I think I might have just found a better (well, at least a much cheaper) option.
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Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell laptop died a few days ago. This has been a great machine and I don’t want to just trash it.
I’d like to replace the bad hard drive with an SSD, but I’d rather not spend a lot of money if I can help it.
After reading your post about replacing Windows with Linux, I’d like to install Linux Mint on this laptop and use it as my primary Internet computer. I won’t need a lot of storage space so a fairly small SSD should be ok.
What I’m looking for a really inexpensive SSD that’s large enough to hold the new Linux installation and maybe a few Chrome extensions. But I’d like the SSD to be as reliable as possible. [Read more…]
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These days it’s hard to imagine taking a long drive without having a car charger on board to keep the battery in your cell phone topped off.
But what about your laptop?
While some modern laptops can be charged with a standard USB-type car charger and a compatible cable, there are plenty of others that can only be charged using the AC power brick that came with the laptop. [Read more…]
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Folks often ask me what they need to look for when they go shopping for a new computer.
In a nutshell, they want to buy the best machine they can get without spending any more than they have to.
In some ways trying to find the right computer is a lot like shopping for a new car. There are always dozens of “current models” to choose from, and they tend to look a whole lot alike.
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Question from Greg: I dropped my heavy book bag onto my laptop’s keyboard several days ago, and when it landed I heard a cracking sound.
The keyboard still works, but at random times it’ll just start typing garbage on its own. It’s basically unusable so I’d like to disable the built-in keyboard and use a cheap USB keyboard
I know I can have the internal keyboard replaced but I don’t want to go to the trouble or expense since I’m going to be replacing this machine in a few months anyway.
So what I need to know is can I disable my laptop’s built-in keyboard? If I can, how do I do it? [Read more…]