PC World has a treatise on "good enough" computing. This isn't actually a new trend but it's never stood still for as long as it has now.

Steve Jobs: "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."

Steve Jobs is either lying or lazy. I'm guessing he just doesn't want to play in that space. Of course, you probably already knew that.

Here's how to make a really, really nice $500 computer. All prices are from Newegg.

So one of my coworkers asked about my SSD today, and two others followed up with questions after I talked about how fast it is.

Any time a new technology comes out, there are objectors, of course. Unless it's something they're used to seeing. SSDs aren't. I believe SSDs will go down in history as a disruptive technology, and as such, they'll be misunderstood for a while.

I took a monitor to Best Buy today. They offer free recycling of most consumer electronics, with a $10 charge for things like monitors and TVs. In exchange, they give you a $10 gift card. So in essence, they'll take a monitor or TV for free if you buy something.

OK, it finally works. I have my OCZ Vertex running in my Compaq Evo D510 using a Rosewill RC-203 IDE-SATA bridge adapter.

It's fast and quiet. I haven't had it working for long but I really wouldn't want to give it up. I'm not looking forward to that clunker with spinning disks on my desk at work tomorrow.

My OCZ Vertex SSD arrived yesterday. I don't have it working yet--not completely. In retrospect, I should have just installed the drive and rebuilt the system from scratch. I'd be time ahead by now. But I can tell you a few things.

Anandtech released the most thorough article on SSDs I've ever seen. I'm not sure exactly what it set out to be. It's a review of the new OCZ Vertex SSD, but it also explains virtually every SSD technology on the market today, and the strengths and weaknesses of each--over the course of a 30-page odyssey.

The takeaway is this: The OCZ Vertex, which sells for as little as $128 at Newegg for the 30 GB version, gives the much more expensive Intel X25 series a run for its money.

So my Samsung CLP-300 laser printer developed a fake paper jam. I tried to print yesterday and got nothing but a paper jam message after the click that usually precedes the paper feeding through. I looked inside all the covers, even flipping the printer over multiple times, looking for that stray bit of paper munging up the works.

I found nothing. But I needed to print some resumes. So I fixed it.

I finally got Windows XP installed on what's going to be my mother in law's dual-core Intel Atom computer. I've spent some more time with it, and it's a good board, as long as you're willing to live with its limitations.

I was never able to get my mother in law's computer to misbehave, but my son was. He'd crawl up to it, press whatever buttons he could find, and invariably it would reboot and give beep codes.

So I decided the best bet would be to drop in a new system board. I went against all my usual practices and bought an Intel.