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 ...

Let's be clear--the nation's entire transportation system is deteriorating. While Hartford certainly could do with a restructuring of its disastrous and abysmal transportation options, one certainly could do a lot better than the currently proposed $15 billion plan set forth by the Bronins' cronies, as reported recently in the CT Mirror:  There’s a new plan for realigning Hartford’s highways. Is the third time the charm? If one is serious about fixing Hartford's convoluted, broken road system, then it should be replaced with a better system, not one that's equally broken, or worse, and one that also looks to the future, not just one that seeks to keep current problems at bay. Such a road plan should consider using new materials such as compressed styrofoam, foam glass aggregates such as Glavel , or other new technologies and include the embedding of solar panels (like those employed by SolarRoadways ). It should allow for pedestrian, bicycle, and other eco-friendly...

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...

[Updated 25 June 2017 at 7:20 pm EDT with information on driver requirements and safety features] As someone who's been using ride-sharing technology from apps such as  Lyft  and  Uber  for the past few years, I see a lot of misconceptions and misperceptions about them, especially by people who've never used them. Here are my thoughts, based on my real life experiences after having taken hundreds of rides with both services over the past few years. I'm not merely responding to the hype surrounding them based on stories I've read or heard about but my actual experiences. People are afraid of technology and have a tendency demonize anything new and disruptive to the status-quo. We need to get over our fears of change and embrace new technologies and the world we live in, especially when those technologies make our lives easier. Lyft  and  Uber  are companies that have been operating for years and have had time to work most of the kinks out of th...

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'...