I don’t know if you’ve seen the ads on Facebook for a 9″ Windows 10 notebook selling for $120 and up (advertised as 80% off), but if you’re looking for a Windows notebook computer, it may not be for you. And if you’re the PC go-to guy for family and friends, you need to know […]
Category Archives: Low End PC
Life is too short to argue over operating systems. Does it really matter what you use as long as you are happy with it?
SATA standards are all backwards compatible, right? Well, not necessarily. Researching upgrade options for the 2010 iMac on my desk has been a real learning experience. Some SATA III hard drives are auto-sensing and thus compatible with SATA II and SATA I ports, but some SATA III hard drives are fixed speed only and thus […]
It irks me every time someone refers to Low End Mac as a blog instead of a website, and that really begs the question: What is a blog? That’s a simple question without a simple answer.
About a week ago, someone in the Low End Mac Facebook group posted the following question: Obviously we’re all used to the horizontal drive orientation, and the externals tend to have vertical orientation, but is the vertical really a safe orientation? Obviously there’s the chance of it being tipped/knocked over, but even a mild tilt […]
The Intel 80186 is based on the earlier 8086 CPU with the same 20-bit address bus as the 8086, allowing it to access up to 1 MB of memory. Introduced in 1982, the 80186 and 80188 are fully code compatible with the 8086 and 8088, but they also introduced 10 new instruction types.
Although the World Wide Web had been created many years earlier, it was in 1995 that it rocketed into public view. Window 95 shipped in August, and Intel unveiled the Pentium Pro in November. Apple used the new PowerPC 603 CPU in its Performa 5200 and 6200 models, both running at 75 MHz. The 603 […]
Microsoft first shipped Windows 1.0 in 1985, and this DOS shell was content to run even on old 4.77 MHz PCs, albeit slowly. That was also the year Aldus invented the fourth major productivity software category – after word processing, spreadsheets, and databases – by releasing PageMaker. Desktop publishing was born, and Apple found a […]
If you want to create a Linux USB installer on your Mac, then check out Etcher.
Keeping in contact with people has never been so instant, but with so many services available, it can be hard to remember who uses what method.
Powerful computing doesn’t come much cheaper than with a ChromeBook. I take a look at Acer C720 from 2013.
October 21, 2016 will go down as one of the biggest cyber-attacks in the history of the Internet – perhaps the biggest ever. We’re going to learn a lot from this one, and we need to be sure to take steps to avoid it happening again.
Mac users have had networking since 1984 using Apple’s 230.4 Kbps LocalTalk hardware and AppleTalk protocol. However, there was an older networking standard with roots at Xerox PARC (which also inspired the Mac’s look and feel) known as ethernet that was destined to become the networking standard.
The World Wide Web is a vast place, and not all of it is suitable for children. I take a look at the Supervised User option in ChromeOS, aimed at keeping them away from the nasties of the Net while on a ChromeBook.
I take a look at Chrome OS and the 11” Samsung ChromeBook Series 3 XE303C12 from 2013.
Introduced in January 1984, Apple’s Macintosh changed everything – but the world of personal computing was nearly a decade old, and Apple was already successful with its Apple II line. These articles look at Apple before the advent of the Mac, as well as the broader world of personal computing.
In an update to my article, Low End Wireless Hard Drive Review: The EMTEC P600, I have been able to discover some of the more intricate features of the wireless hard drive and how it can fit into a variety of “real world” usage cases. Here are some of the things of note after learning more about […]
I’ve just finished wading through 6+ years worth of press releases from Gartner Group, digging out quarterly PC sales results from Holiday Quarter 2008 through 2nd Quarter 2016. Why? Because the global PC market is in decline, and I wanted to see how Mac sales compared to Windows sales.
I’ve been using a standup desk in my home office, and my recent job manufacturing high pressure air hoses required me to stand most of the day. A standing desk makes it easier to move around than sitting in a chair, but it can be hard on your body in other ways.
When IBM introduced its first PC in August 1981, it created a new standard for desktop computers in the business world. However, IBM didn’t address portability, which created an opening for Compaq and Toshiba to enter the PC market. This is Toshiba’s story.
When IBM introduced its first PC in August 1981, it created a new standard for desktop computers in the business world. However, IBM didn’t address portability, which created an opening for Compaq and Toshiba to enter the PC market. This is Compaq’s story.
I take my son’s Windows 10 laptop with its ‘free upgrade’ version and do a clean install, with a twist. Does it go well?
I take a look at the very popular cross platform messaging service, WhatsApp.
When you buy an iPhone or iPad, Apple makes it pretty clear which operating systems support it, whether Mac OS X or Windows. They also tell you which version of iTunes is required. What they don’t tell you is that this can change with iOS updates, leaving you unable to sync your iPhone, iPad, or […]
There are now a great variety of wireless hard drives available, but so far only one is available at a true low-end price, offering an unprecedented overall value to the consumer, while being compatible with a wide variety of Macs, PCs, iOS devices, and Android devices. Behold the EMTEC P600 Wi-Fi Hard Drive.
In the beginning, personal computers used cassette tape drives. Then came floppy drives, followed by hard drives. And then came removable media drives such as SyQuest, Bernoulli, and – perhaps best know of all – Zip.
Chromebooks are the latest buzz in the tech world, so I take a look at Chromium OS, the open-source version of ChromeOS that you can install on your own hardware.
I was playing my favorite game the other day, Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations. It is, in the words of the developers, “a popular skirmish and multiplayer orientated total conversion modification for Activision’s real-time strategy game, Star Trek: Armada II.” It is a Windows game, and for that I was booted into Windows 7 via […]
The big news this morning was that Firefox was suddenly blocking all Flash content by default. Flash is frequently used for streaming video, ads, and interactive media on the Web, where it is heavily used for video games on Android devices. (Flash is not supported on Apple’s iOS.)
BeOS might be no more, but I take a look at its modern day sibling.
