christmas

What to look for in a cheap laptop in late 2014

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

So the sales fliers for the 2014 Christmas shopping season are out, and I’m seeing tons of cheap laptops. If you only have $200 to spend, they have something for you.

Some of them look like they’re even worth having. Yes, I’m shocked too. Here’s how to figure out which ones are worth taking home, and which ones are best left for some other sucker. Whether you’re shopping for yourself or someone else, you’ll probably want to keep the following in mind.

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What it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , ,
What it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s

Since questions occasionally come up, and I remember well what it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s in the United States, I’ll share my recollections of it.

It was very different from computing today. It was still interesting, but it was different. Technology moved fast in the 1980s, so if you blinked, you missed stuff.

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Remembering Dolgin’s

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, St. Louis , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Remembering Dolgin’s

Growing up in Missouri, a lot of my Christmas gifts when I was young came from a catalog showroom called Dolgin’s. One of my earliest memories is going to Dolgin’s with my mom and aunt, who showed me some Tonka trucks and asked me which ones I liked best.

I know a lot of people remember going through Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, but I remember Dolgin’s catalogs the best. Read more

What it was like being a Royals fan from 1986-2013

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If there’s one thing I’ve heard this week, it’s that people can’t imagine what it’s like being a Royals fan through their 29-year drought without playing in a postseason. I can tell you what it’s like. We’ve had some highlights, but mostly we’ve put up with endless parades of really bad players and really bad managers.

Those of you who enjoy looking at gruesome things, keep reading. These are the players we’ve spent 2.9 decades trying to forget. But keep this in mind: My hair started going prematurely gray in 1986, the same year Dick Howser died and the Royals started fading.

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Happy birthday, Rubik’s Cube!

Dave Farquhar 1980s , , , , , , , ,
Happy birthday, Rubik’s Cube!

Rubik’s Cube turned 40 this week. In a reflection of how much faster the world moves today than it used to, I remember Rubik’s Cube from the early 1980s, when it was a big, national craze. I had no idea at the time that it was invented in 1974 and took six years to reach the U.S. market. I asked for one for Christmas in 1981, and so did everyone else I knew. We all got one. And none of us could solve it. Granted, some of that may have been because we were in grade school, and the early years at that. My best friend’s older sister, who was in sixth grade or so, had a book, and she could solve it with the book’s help.

It was even the subject of a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon. I only watched it once or twice. It turns out it’s not easy to make engaging stories about a six-sided puzzle. There were tons of cheap knockoffs out there too, but unlike the knockoffs of today which are generally regarded as better, the 1980s knockoffs were generally worse. After a year or three, the craze died down. We moved in 1983, and I don’t remember anyone in our new town talking about Rubik’s Cube. Mine ended up in a drawer. I’ve looked for it a few times over the years, but never found it. Read more

The world’s fastest budget PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs a few years ago, and there are a lot of them in the refurb channel. We went and got one over the weekend.

“What are you going to do with that?” the sales rep asked. “We only use them as cash registers.”

“Word processing,” I said.

“You sure you want to run Windows 7 on an 8-year-old PC?”

“I wrote the book on running Windows on older PCs. Literally. It’ll be fine.”

I hate calling rank like that, but sometimes it’s what you have to do.

And really, for $99, it’s awfully good. Web browsing is plenty fast, Libre Office runs fine on it, and think about it. Windows 7 retails for $100-$109. So it’s like getting the hardware for free. Or Windows for free, however you want to look at it.

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How I freshened the paint on a Lionel RW transformer

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

I have a Lionel RW transformer that I would like to put on Christmas tree duty next year. I had a KW on that duty last year, which is a nice transformer, but it’s overkill, and my sons find it easier to operate the whistle with a button like the RW has than with the KW’s handle.

Lionel RW
This Lionel RW transformer doesn’t look pristine after my paint touch-ups, but it certainly looks presentable.

I repaired the RW last year, but I didn’t do anything about the paint. The original paint wasn’t in too bad of shape, but it had some scratches and dings in it, as you would expect a well-loved 60-year-old toy to have. But since the paint wasn’t perfect, I could repaint it without offending anyone, which is what I wanted to do, seeing as the original paint dated to before 1978, and therefore might contain lead.

The job didn’t take long. I didn’t do a full disassembly, and I didn’t do anything resembling a professional restoration. My goal was to make the transformer presentable and safe, and I think I succeeded at that. Read more

IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000

On January 29, 1984, two computers hit the market. One was Apple’s Macintosh. It needs no introduction. The other was the IBM PCjr. It was a little less successful. We’ll talk about what this has to do with the Tandy 1000 in a minute.

The PCjr is one of the biggest flops in computing history. Few people know much more about it than that. It ended up being an important computer, but it certainly didn’t meet IBM’s expectations. Read more

The new trend in monitors

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Although interest in 4K television is understandably lukewarm at best–high definition only arrived about 15 years ago, the standard it replaced lasted half a century, few people are itching to replace the sets they’ve bought in the last decade when they still work, and there’s precious little 4K content–39-inch 4K televisions are proving to be popular.

But they aren’t going in living rooms. They’re going on desks, connected to computers.

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Why the Target data breach news keeps getting worse, and what you need to do

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , ,

As you probably know, last year some still-unknown criminals stole a whole bunch of credit and debit card data from Target. And the story keeps changing. First there weren’t any PINs. Then they got the PINs, but no personally identifiable data. Well, the latest news indicates they got credit card numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and for a whole lot more people, and probably from a longer length of time than just late November to mid-December.

There are a few things you ought to do if you shop at Target, which many people do. Read more