I love my Toshiba, which was under $600. I had to upgrade the memory from 1GB to 2GB, and that cost me about $25.

Our low end Toshiba laptop and my BIL's low end Toshiba have been good computers at around the $500 price point. Battery life isn't all that great though, I think that's pretty common with the $500 and under laptops.

Oh, I must share with you an email from one of the rugby boys, and I actually don't know the answer.

hey, i know you're into the computer stuff. just got a new laptop, and the free virus stuff that was on it just ran out. If i'm wathcing videos on websites (ed. note- read: porn), can i get biruses from that? if so, what should I get? (free)

Is there a danger? I was going to recommend AVG for protection, but does anyone have any other recommendations?

Actually, I have a question about AVG. Can you change the time of day it does its auto scan? I'm about to dump the whole thing because it clogs up my computer from 8 to 9 am which is a pretty prime usage time for me.

I dunno, I just use the free and unobtrusive Windows defender and keep my computer up to date with security patches and dispense with virus software. This has never caused me any problems, but then my webbing doesn't involve going to dodgy websites.

Yeah. Porn's pretty notorious for viruses.

Which is why i'm sure he asked.

Vortex, his ISP may offer a yearly subscription to an anti-virus program for free. We get basic McAfee through Comcast.

cool thanks. hey, I didn't know that, and I have comcast. I sent him an email saying that if he was watching videos at trustworthy sites, he should be fine. and then I added a p.s. - but we both know the sites you're looking at.

Google Throws Open Rival for Wikipedia — Anon Editors Barred

When not thinking about cartoons, Manber spends endless time thinking about how search can be improved. One big reason many searches don't succeed, he believes, is that despite the 20 billion or so Web pages in Google's indexes -- including the 2 million items in Wikipedia -- the information simply isn't there.

For instance, what if you wanted to learn all about Peter Arno, a celebrated New Yorker cartoonist who died in 1968? You wouldn't get lucky. The items appearing in the first page of results give only the barest information on Arno's life and work.

Of course, it's not just information about cartoonists that's missing -- according to Manber there are thousands of black holes when it comes to things searchers want to know. What people need, Manber concluded about a year-and-a-half ago, is the information that would come "when an expert who knows this topic would tell you, if they had 15 minutes to explain."

So Manber began what he refers to as his pet project -- an effort to generate exactly those kind of answers in the top search results. The product, announced Wednesday, is called Knol.