PCs

David's laptop shuts down while he's playing Call of Duty. Leo says that's a protective measure. If the laptop gets too hot, it will shut down by design. The best thing he can do is make sure the laptop has free flowing air all around it so it can cool itself. Make sure that dust isn't blocking the airflow slots. Look to see if the laptop's fans are working properly. It could also be the thermal paste has been misapplied to the processor. It may be worth bringing in to get looked at.

Gary can't turn on his computer unless he unplugs it, waits for five minutes, then plugs it back in. Leo says that if Gary is turning it off with the hardware button, the computer may be going into hibernation and there are known problems with a system in hibernation. He should disable that first.

Nathan has a computer that randomly turns on. Leo says that when he first boots up, if he's gone into his BIOS setup and selected "wake on LAN," it'll turn on. There may also be a scheduled turn on in the BIOS or even wake on keyboard or mouse.

Leo says It could be a mechanical failure like a shorted on/off button that keeps turning itself back on. If that were the case, however, hibernate wouldn't work properly and Lisa says it does. It's possible that in the BIOS settings, "wake on LAN" is enabled. She should reboot her computer and press the 'f8' or 'esc' key and look in the BIOS settings for "wake on LAN." If it's enabled, disable it.

Alan is buying a new computer and wants to know if it's worth it to pay more for the i5 processor over the i3? Leo says it is. The i3 is essentially an i5 with smaller cache to make it cheaper, which affects performance. So it's better to get the i5. Pay the extra $50 or $100, he'll be glad he did.

Just about any computer will work for this. Leo likes Dell and Asus. Lenovo is fantastic, especially for business applications. She should get at least 4GB of RAM, and a display resolution of at least 1440x900 would be good for Quicken. Does a solid state drive make the computer last longer, like with Ultra Books? Leo says no, but they are faster. They are more expensive though, too, and would give her less storage space. If speed is important, a solid state drive is fantastic.

Doug makes industrial videos and he's fed up with the changes in Apple's Final Cut, breaking of camera's connectivity, and being on Apple time when it comes to updates. So he's moving on to PCs and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Leo says in the office, TWiT has Dell computers, and he recommends paying extra for the Gold support. Dell will let him configure the machines.