computers

Donna wants to know if getting a computer at Costco is a good deal. Leo says that Costco usually carries last year's models, so she can get a pretty good deal, and they have a liberal return policy. For a new laptop, Leo likes the Lenovo Thinkpad. For desktops, Leo recommends Dell, especially for video editing.  Great for business too.

Greg put his laptop in hibernation, and when he woke up this morning, it was on. How did it come out of hibernation? Leo says it's common that if there's an update or some preset network activity (like "Wake-on-LAN"), the computer can wake up. A tremor can wake it up as well. As a rule, Leo doesn't recommend hibernation because it can confuse the operating system, causing issues when waking up. Just let it go to sleep. Users can log out, though, for security issues.

Andy is thinking about getting into day trading. What does Leo think? Leo says to read FLASHBOYS. Trading is now an automated, high volume business, and trades are happening in milliseconds, often before anyone at the NYSE knows what's happening. That is the competition. And it's really easy to lose a shirt in day trading, as you get leveraged buying stock on margin.

He'll need a very powerful computer, but any laptop can do basic day trading. It's quite an investment. He'll also need software and a subscription to wall street's feed.

Larry's computer died and he has to buy a new computer. How can he move data from his old computer to his new computer when the old computer is dead? Leo says to go to Newertech.com and pick up their Universal Drive Adapter. This will allow Larry to take the old drive out of the computer and connect it to his new computer. He can open it as a drive on his new computer and just copy the missing data over. But if the drive isn't functioning any longer, he could be out of luck.

Larry built his first computer in high school, running Linux, and it's 15 years old. Lately he's been having power issues and he has replaced the power supply, but still has the problem. Leo says that indicates a deeper problem on the motherboard. It could also be a failing video card, and the CMOS settings may be corrupted. Removing the battery and putting it back in will reset everything, but he may want to make sure all the cables are seated, and that the RAM is properly installed.

Dennis is looking to get a new computer and wants to know if he can get one without a hard drive. He's got two 8TB SATA drives ready to go, plus an SSD. Leo says that any tower case will have room for multiple drives. He'll need one fast enough to do video editing.

Leo recommends going to Dell. Dennis should return his SSD and get it with the SSD built-in to save himself the time installing it. He could go cheaper, but since Dennis does this for a living, it's worth paying a little extra for a top of the line model.