Laptop Buyers Should Pay Some Attention to the Chromebook

From David Pogue of the NYT, this enlightening article is well worth reading. When I first heard of the concept of the Chromebook I was very excited and thought I would like it. That was a few years ago and I guess something, maybe the original model's price, turned me off. Now there are two new models, one at $250 & the other at $199 made, respectively, by Samsung and Acer.

I have lots of experience with Acer, I am typing this now on my Acer laptop. However, after reading David's article, I think I would spend $50 more for the Samsung.

If you are thinking laptop or tablet, take a look at these machines after reading David's article.

Be sure to read it twice before deciding. Note that there is no hard drive, but that's okay (maybe even better) because of the cloud space Google includes in the offering price.

Laptop Buyers Should Pay Some Attention to the Chromebook

Microsoft: 40M Windows 8 licenses 'in line' with early Win 7 sales

This is mind-boggling to me. I realize this number must include all new PCs, but still, do the PC sellers really believe they will sell 40 million PCs over the Christmas season or shortly thereafter? I guess the answer must be "yes, they do".

Well, dear readers, it looks like your old PC Doc will be falling behind. I jumped right on the Windows 7 bandwagon in its infancy, but I will not be one of those who can't wait to get his hands on Windows 8. My brand new ZT desktop PC came with W7 but also with an option to buy Windows 8 for around $15. I am not ready, however, to take a chance on messing up my new machine, and I am 99% certain my sole surviving laptop, running XP, won't be able to run Windows 8. Besides, it's a matter of pride with me to make my Windows XP installation and machine last to at least April 2014, the month when XP support is withdrawn by Microsoft.

The title of this post is of an article on computerworld.com today, but I won't bother to include a link to it. It's self-explanatory. It's also unbelievable to me!

Windows XP countdown clock ticks under 500 days

Windows XP is still going strong on my Acer TravelMate 4220 laptop. It is so reliable and fast, it's just amazing. So here we go into the final countdown to April 2014. The 11-year-old operating system will exit support April 8, 2014, when Microsoft serves users with their final security updates. That does not mean that XP will up and die on or soon after that date, it means just what that last sentence said, there will be no more security updates after that date.

For me, and probably also for many of you, the real issue is whether or not this old laptop will make it to then or after. I recently had to replace my IBM ThinkCenter (or a name something like that - how quickly we forget!) with a wonderful ZT machine (see costco.com if unfamiliar with that name). The new machine has Windows 7 and I admit that the newer operating sytem is doing just fine. Of course it is running on a very fast and well-configured brand new PC. (See 10 reasons why the desktop PC will live forever).

So the subject article appears today on computerworld.com. Let it serve as a reminder to all of us that the end is getting closer!

Windows XP countdown clock ticks under 500 day