it would have been a raffle or the like
i cant imagine them buying it

oh god that thing
the zx 81 ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80
the zx82 had keys but it still wasnt much

then again these days an iphone has more power then those 3 combined .....hell a pocket calculator can outrun them

A non-destructive but maddeningly simple error:

I was once sent a PDF which contained an e-mail address to which I was meant to send something. It was in the forename.surname@domain format, and the surname in question was an Irish one of the O'Something format.

The webmail client told me it was an invalid e-mail address. It wasn't until I'd opened a support ticket that I looked again at the PDF and realised that it must have been created with software that was automatically converting dumb quotes to smart quotes.

' is a legal character in an e-mail address.

’ is not a legal character in an e-mail address.

In the monospace font used by the address field in the webmail client, ' and ’ differed by only about one pixel.

Is there any reason I shouldn't choose the "High Performance" option for both motherboard and OS settings? Any risk of overheating or is it just unlocking my stuff to do what it should be doing?

Any downside to "Balanced" (does it always optimize when it needs to throttle up, or are there times where Balanced holds back some horsepower when I'd rather have it?)

Thanks for the pointers by the way.

I've done the same mistake with a SNES when I was a kid. Switched to 110v and *KABOOM*! Let me tell you, it was better than the disco with the sudden flash & smoke! Thankfully we didn't catch fire... Ahhh, Japanese consoles, too fragile even for home use... XDDD

On the other hand, Taiwanese ones are remarkably resilient. My friend had a similar incident involving a Micro Genius console hooked up to the mains via an adjustable adapter with multiple voltage settings. He must have switched to a slightly lower voltage by accident, and his console stopped working, with a faint smell of burning. He then set the correct voltage and the console worked just fine afterwards.

Haha! I bet your friend couldn't see the difference.

I can tell you one I experienced recently: I own a Toshiba laptop and I wanted to reset it to its factory defaults, but instead I wiped out the entire HDD, along with the recovery partition. How I did that? It seems that I chose W8.1's default recovery option instead of the one of my laptop.

The good news is that you'll get Windows 10 for free! :)

Enjoy your "new" and improved laptop! :)

No risk at all choosing "High Performance", since it just means it uses hardware at their rated specs and doesn´t throttle down even if it doesn´t need the full power, thus, no power saving.
"Balanced" downclocks to a moderate power usage or uses full power when needed, allowing a moderate power saving.

The only way you can overclock hardware (above their rated specs) is either through your motherboard bios or the motherboard/videocard utility programs.
Besides, when you install those utilities they have their own way of dealing with power usage so no need to worry about Windows doing it.
In short, if you choose "High Performance" your hardware won´t get hampered by Windows. Videocards for example have their own throttling features so they´ll save power when not in heavy use, independently of the OS. CPUs have these power saving options that can be activated in the bios.
So I guess those options are geared more towards the mobile branch of hardware where you rely on a battery, rather than the desktop.

It feels like most of my tech issues are due to poor foresight on the manufacturer's / developer's part.

I will and I am. ;)

A few months ago I installed Debian on a computer. Spent an hour or so trying to figure out why I had no sound, before I realized the volume was set to mute in the control panel.
A few weeks ago, same computer, I added some ram. Turn it back on, again, no sound. Took me another hour to find out the audio cable was unplug.

When I was young and foolish I tried my hand at installing a sound blaster sound card. Of course I tried to do this while the system was still plugged in to power. While installing the sound card, my hand touched another card in the computer, I think it was the network card, and I felt a very strange and quite uncomfortable tingle go through my arm. Amazingly, everything still worked when I turned the computer back on.

Yeah, it came with a book, or I bought a book of programs/games. It took forever trying to type in those programs, and those buttons were rubbish. It really wasn't worth it--especially when after unhooking the tape player and then re-hooking it up later somehow made all the saved data "unreadable". That's when I gave up on it. Though I still feel bad I killed the memory since I didn't read the directions first warning me about that issue.
You sir, are quite daring! I used to avoid even breathing while hooked up to an antistatic wristband connected to my electrical socket's ground when installing hardware!

Though, I've had my share of electrical adventures. There was an old strobe light that stopped working, so I pulled out the circuit board, plugged it in, and started troubleshooting. There was this old pre-LED light connected to the board to show that it was working--the kind that was orange and flickered--and I remember when I carelessly grabbed the small board, my thumb ended up connecting the circuit and that bulb lit right up! Of course, I also had A/C current running through my hand at the same time!

A couple of weeks ago my wife asked me to plug in an electric heater. Without second thought I plugged it in and BANG! Weld sparks fly and fade away on the floor in a now pitch dark room. Circut breaker obviously did it's job... or did it? I climb up to check it and all switches are on. Why is there no light in certain rooms, and no power in the outlets? Did the lightbulbs break? Did some wiring burn inside the walls? FUUUUUUU! I can't deal with this right now, I can't deal with the land lord.

"Leave it, we don't need it", my wife beckons. - "No, I have to figure this out. I have to fix this!". -"Fine *roll eyes*".

After wasting a lot of time going back and forth to the circuit breaker with a flashlight I give up, but spend most of my final moments before falling asleep wondering what the hell was going on.

In the morning I go back to the circuit breaker and instantly feel like slapping myself hard across the face. The switches are black and I couldn't see that one of them were in the off position under the harsh light and shadows from the flashlight in the night. I had been going nuts trying to come up with every possible alternative reason why the power was out thinking the circuit breaker had not switched off.

The last part of the mystery was also solved: My 1½ year old son had put a stainless steel spoon inside the heater and left all the switches at max setting. When I plugged it in some 2000w surged across a short circuit. A small part of the spoon was blown off.