Peter's Place

Acer Chromebook Plus C515 I've always said Chromebooks are great for most people, but not for me. I need a machine that can handle serious multi-tasking. Well, enter the Acer Chromebook Plus C515 , stage right. This machine finally handles the workload I require. Unlike Windows, ChromeOS doesn't require huge resources, so the 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD are more than sufficient. I routinely run 25+ tabs and 10 or so apps at once, and this lean, mean multi-tasking machine just keeps up, thanks to the Intel Core i3 "oomph." It even has a quiet fan, so it never gets too hot under a heavy processing load. The "Plus" features are what seal the deal for me. The AI-enhanced 1080p webcam controls are built right into the dock and make me look fabulous. But the real value? It includes a free year of Google's Gemini Advanced program. That's over a $250 value (with tax), which means if you get this on sale, the device practically pays for itself! The hardware is ...

I need a new laptop. All THREE of my current laptops died on me at the beginning of this year. Were it not for a kind and generous friend who gave me his old desktop, I'd be without any computer at all. 😞 I'm looking for a powerful but affordable 8th generation or later core i7 or core i9 laptop. I don't need it for gaming but the laptops built for gaming seem to contain the specs I like; however, they're too expensive. I use a laptop as my primary computing device. I'm disabled so I am on a very tight budget. I do *a lot* of multitasking and usually have a plethora of tabs open in numerous web browsers that put a strain on a system's processing power (think, lots of web apps running in many tabs and windows). A typical computing session might be: having Gmail , Google Voice , Google Duo , Zoom , Google Docs , Google Sheets ™, 10-15 LinkedIn , 25 Facebook , 10 Twitter , my Tweetdeck (that has 38 columns), 50 Pinterest  (usually more though as it...

If you're feeling a little bit old today, I've got the perfect remedy to help cheer you up: A search engine giant was born today, and it's something that might alarm some people because they haven't realized exactly how much time (and how many milestones ) has passed between the birth of this search engine and now. But like it or not, we're now, today, celebrating Google's 18th Birthday!!! I'm not kidding. Really ! That's right, folks. The venerable search engine we all love and turn to in our daily lives is now, officially, old enough to be an adult . In fact, since corporations are people , perhaps it HAS become an adult today? I wonder what would happen if we were to ask Google, " Is Google a person? "—are we allowed to even ask such a thing without it breaking the Interwebs ? In any event, don't feel old because Google is 18 years old today; rather, feel old because you can remember a time when you didn'...