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I was looking at info on the early PC computers and processors, and I was struck by how the 286 was introduced in February 1982, but the IBM PC/AT did not come out until August 1984, and the 386 was introduced in October 1985, but the first PC to use it, the Compaq Deskpro 386, was not announced...

Thanks, that's the sort of detailed, knowledgeable answer I was looking for. Have you noticed whether laptops will typically (besides the Dell example you listed) charge via USB-C if it isn't as powerful as the supplied DC charger? I ask because the one example I'm familiar with is the...

I appreciate you taking the time to write a well-thought-out response to my question. I understand your concern with 240W, and that's sort of what my question was getting at -- OK, the standards group has declared it, but is it actually practical enough that manufacturers are relying on it...

I'm asking if there are people in this forum who have been following the gaming laptop market enough to be able to weigh-in on whether there are laptops with the USB-C charging I'm talking about, and if there aren't many options yet, based on their knowledge of the industry, do they think such...

It's long past time to retire my 10+ year old PC, and I'm considering replacing it with a gaming laptop that connects a 4k monitor and HDMI surround sound, but I'd really like to do it all via Thunderbolt 4 and powered thru USB-C PD 3.1 rather than yet another proprietary powerbrick with a DC...

Get a separate video card for a server that, when I'm actually using the GUI, I'm doing it remotely 99.9% of the time?? Does the Ryzen not come with some sort of integrated graphics the way just about every Intel CPU does?

Yes.... and there is no such thing as a server at idle... it is always doing something, including the many functions I mentioned above. That's like saying all automobile engines consume no gas at idle, whether they be a 6.2 liter V8 or a 1.0 liter 3-cylinder. The server is analogous to...

Eight years ago I built a home backup/media/PVR server based around a Norco rackmount chassis and an ASUS E35M1-M Pro integrated motherboard/CPU, plus some SATA controllers. It's worked great (just 18W TDP, less than 100W for the entire 60+ TB server) backing up all the computers in the house...

I only recently decided I could really use a pen for marking up stuff on my Switch 12 S, so I don't know anything about what the best pen to get is from Acer or 3rd-parties. Is there a consensus best pen for the Switch 12 S? For starters, according to an Acer website, there are two Acer pens...

I'm looking for a newer/bigger/better version of something like this: https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6488/ravpower-rp-pb14-xtreme-23000mah-portable-battery-charger-review/index.html RAVPower no longer makes their RP-PB14 23000mAh power bank. I have one, and while it does have some...

Which of their gaming keyboards have a power key? I was looking at them all yesterday and I definitely didn't see a sleep key, and I don't recall seeing a power key, but perhaps it is a Fn rather than a dedicated key? Their regular (non-gaming) keyboards have all sorts of special functions...

Nothing happens when I do Windows key + X. Once I hit U it brings up the accessibility screen. Hitting H at that point does nothing. (I'm running Windows 7)

Anyone?

My gaming keyboard just died, and one thing I really didn't like about it was the lack of a sleep key like on standard keyboards. This wouldn't be a big deal if Microsoft gave us any sort of keyboard shortcut to activate sleep, but they don't -- if there's no sleep key, you have to do it with...

Sorry, yeah, it's a type-o.

I keep getting tabs crashing in Chrome, along with the occasional BSoD, so I decided to run a memory stress test using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. During that, the mouse got jumpy -- I didn't think that was a big deal, since the system had "a lot on its mind" with the stress testing, but...

Well said juanrga. Yeah, I'm dumbfounded when I read people saying that we're in a golden age now because the Ryzen Threadripper has been launched, etc. Step back and look at the trends, and the story is obvious -- there was a golden age when Moore's Law and the upward march of clock speeds...

It would have been easier than having to write for different operating systems AND hardware, which was the situation in the 1980's -- applications were written for the Apple II, C64, IBM PC (DOS), TRS-80, and then later the Amiga and Macintosh -- and the market survived all that diversity just...

To be fair, it was the Clinton administration that went after Microsoft, and it was the Bush administration that dropped the effort, although the obvious anti-MS bias of the judge's statements in the case was an unforced error that gave MS an easy appeal. As a former OS/2 fan, I hate MS and...

Interesting. I wouldn't want the inverter -- the CPAP itself is 12V DC, so that's why it has a 12V/5A power supply... there's no point in converting battery DC to AC with an inverter just to have the power supply convert it back to DC again. However, the voltage out of that battery is not...

Because it weighs 24 pounds and has a handle to lug it around, and my RAVPower 23000mAh weighs 1.3 pounds and would fit in a woman's purse (or my travel bag, right next to my CPAP machine, toothbrush, electric shaver, etc.). The other thing I've noticed is that most car-type batteries are...

Yeah, I really wanted something that was more useful for desktop work than 16:9. Although the irony is, after seeing a 64:27 monitor at Costco, I think they will make sense at 5120x2160 with a much bigger screen -- once your screen gets to a certain height, it fills your view, and after that...

I see there are a number of power banks for laptops (i.e. DC output with a DC connectors for every kind of laptop included) with capacities of 20,000 to 50,000 mAh, but none of them provide more than 4.5 to 4.7 amps to their 5V/9V/12V/20V laptop DC output. There are many uses for these power...

After some more research, I agree, the u2415 is the way to go -- better color gamut than the 2412M -- and the 2515 is 16:9. Got for $245 -- amazing what you get for that money.

So, the mileage on my GDM-FW900 is really showing (massive burn-in), it weighs a ton, and is a massive power hog, so I think it is finally time to retire it. I had tried to hold out to replace it with something that was 30+", 4k, OLED, HDR, 120 Hz, with strobing or BLI, but that uber-monitor...

Speaking of runaway pixel count... can anyone explain to me why phones now have higher resolution than most monitors? The problem is, 24p isn't "solved" with higher refresh rates... they need backlight strobing or screen blanking to properly display 24p as the cinema gods intended. Burn-in is...

Wow, lots of great points being made by the people here, much of it I agree with word-for-word. Thanks for posting those plots -- they really illustrate the evolution of CPU's. I hadn't realized the IPC flat-lined so long ago. Then Intel tried to make up for it with higher clock speeds, but...

Yes, there's still progress being made with GPU's and even more so with SSD's -- we're in a golden age of storage throughput like nothing we ever had with hard drives, and it makes a huge impact on system performance. Monitors, on the other hand, are stuck in a dark age. Resolutions flatlined...

Now that I think about it more, I'm pretty sure I got my first aluminum case in 2001 as well, although I had been doing short towers prior to that. I got a 15" CRT in 1991 and used it until 2001, when I got a 21" CRT (IBM with a Trinitron tube) that was my main monitor until 2008, but it still...

I completely agree about LAN parties... went to a lot of those. Back then you never built a steel full-tower PC because it was too big and heavy to lug to LAN parties -- aluminum mid-tower ATX was the way to go, with a 15" CRT. Doom, Quake, Warcraft, good times.

LOL indeed. Yes, I'm aware of the shift to mobile after the iPhone was introduced -- I was certainly conscious of it at the time. My question was restricted to desktop computing, since that can be evaluated apples-to-apples. In 1981 my dad bought the 6th IBM PC sold in our metro area and I...

For whatever reason, Flare X and FORTIS are not available at 2667, only 2400 (1.2V) and 3200 (1.35V). I refined my search on NewEgg to filter for "AMD" or "Ryzen" and both times I got a Corsair Vengeance and 3 colors of HyperX Fury -- any thoughts on those? The Corsair was significantly...

I built my first computer in 1991 -- it was a 486DX/25, which really blew the doors off the 386/33's the other computer nerds in the dorm had at the time. I've built countless systems for myself since then -- back then, it was assumed that clock speed would just keep increasing, just like...

There seems to be some misunderstanding, so I should clarify -- I'm building a system that will start out as my DESKTOP computer for GAMING, and then later in life it will become a hand-me-down for HTPC use. So I do care about performance -- I just don't want to pursue performance regardless...

I try to get the most life out of the systems I build. My HTPC just died -- it was 8 years old and started life as my gaming system. So my 5 year old gaming system will become the HTPC and I'll build a new gaming rig -- just as well, since the old HTPC choked on 4k H.265 playback. Like I...

Sorry, I should have covered that -- both computers are running Windows 7 x64.

So, I got a phone call from my parents asking me to come fix my mother's computer -- she had used it for years and suddenly out of the blue the speakers no longer worked. I go over there and spend some time figuring out what hardware the system has, and I see it has the usual Realtek...

My son's Acer Switch 11 V laptop (running Windows 10 Home) has recently started saying the battery is at 0% and not charging, even when it is plugged in. If I unplug the laptop, it continues to run, so obviously the battery is not completely dead. The conclusion is that the battery itself...

I figured out that the trick is to let the battery discharge completely, then plug in AC power, then turn it on -- when I do that, the Acer logo always appears, and the system will boot in some fashion -- sometimes it runs checkdisk, other times it boots right to the login screen, and another...

OK, I just noticed something strange -- the battery doesn't seem to be charging. I had let the battery completely drain again, then plugged it in, booted it up, left it plugged in for several hours, came back and logged into my account, and I see the battery is still at 0% and "not charging".