Good morning everyone, As always, thank you for taking the time out of your day to stop by and read, and being a better part of our online community. As the website continues to grow and evolve into 2026, we want to recognize the reality that visitors will arrive using a broad range of devices; […]
Category Archives: Low End PC
It was a cold, record-setting winter in Late 2009 when I was in the process of switching from PC to Mac, I decided to tinker around with Windows XP in such a way where I decided to call whatever I made.. into “my own operating system”, and gave it a kinda cheesy name. Indeed, I […]
I have already looked at the origins of the computer mouse in Mouse Design: 1963 to 1983, ending the story before the Apple Macintosh was introduced in January 1984, the first affordable personal computer to ship with a mouse and Graphical User Interface (GUI). This is the story of mouse development on personal computers, primarily […]
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 […]
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.
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.