I picked up (for free) a dead Viewsonic VX2245WM 22 inch LCD monitor on Craigslist today, took it home and pulled it apart. It had one bulging capacitor on the power supply. I rummaged around in my basement, found an old power supply, and scavenged the exact replacement using my soldering iron. Bob's your uncle, I replaced it in the monitor and closed it up.

Working now. Not bad for $8 gas.

You saved whoever you got it from the trouble of dragging it to the nearest place that accepts dead electronics. So I'm sure they were happy with the deal too.

Folks with Chromebooks: is there a mail management app like Thunderbird? Tim is switching his dad to a Chromebox (because his PC is a horror full of viruses and spyware because he clicks on EVERYTHING), and his dad has been using Thunderbird for his mail and is having a hard time accessing his mail through a web browser. (Hard time as in, he doesn't like it and doesn't want to do it and wants Thunderbird. Actually, he just wants his current computer, but with no problems ever. And since he clicks on every pop-up, that's impossible. It's really hard to switch the computer system of someone who is developing dementia.)

Remember the dark times? Remember how horrible everything was? How horrible people were? The time before everything changed, the time before the Apple WWDC 2014 Keynote.

Folks with Chromebooks: is there a mail management app like Thunderbird?

I doubt it rather highly. Not that I've really checked. Thus making me useless. A quick google doesn't turn up much. Some people apparently prefer the Gmail Offline extension (which changes the interface to something more tablet-like) to regular gmail. But that's about all I could find. Maybe he'd prefer the Outlook.com interface? It's more like a traditional e-mail client in appearance.

A quick google doesn't turn up much.

I did actually search Google first, and I, too, didn't find much. But thanks for the backup googling! I figured when my first approach (ye olde Google) didn't turn up anything, I'd check and see if any Buffistas -- because I know some have mentioned owning and using Chromebooks -- might be aware of something that I, as a non-Chromebook user, wouldn't have known existed.

Maybe he'd prefer the Outlook.com interface? It's more like a traditional e-mail client in appearance.

I'll point Tim that way. I've never seen/used it, but it might meet his dad's needs.

Some of you may have noticed that I like small computers (even as I try to find uses for them).

This computer is very tiny: Teeny tiny PC fits on the head of an Ethernet port | DVICE

If you like tiny things and being online thanks to them, then there's a new mini PC that you really should take a gander at. It's called the AsiaRF, and as PCs go it's pretty adorable. Supporting both Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, this teeny little sucker measures just 1.06 x 1.38 inches and somehow still manages to run full Linux.

The creators are trying to secure funding on Indiegogo. Only $20.

I've just started with Chromebook. One thing I don't like is that there no choice of autologin on bootup. This is not being carried around to places where it is likely to be lost. Also, I chose the ASUS, which is a bargain brand. In most respects the ASUS works fine. But they chose to print the letters on the keyboard lower case, which makes the keyboard tough for me to read. OK for what we are using it for, but for most purposes I would suggest paying the extra to get an upper case font on the keyboard.

(pay extra in the sense of get another brand or model).

OS-X 10.6.8 question. My work laptop has been giving me curtain of death a LOT lately. I ran disk utility, and sure enough, it needs repairs, which it can only do from a repair disk, as you can't repair the boot disk. I finally get a boot disk from IT. I've run repair disk persmissions several times. Everytime I run it, it says complete. But then I run it again to make sure, and sure enough a ton of permissions pop up. A lot of which are in the "System/Library/CoreServices/..." folder. Given it's in the system folder, it would explain the frequent crashes (??).

So the question. How many times should I run the repair permissions before I say, this thing is screwed?