I’ve had fun shopping for graphics cards, especially when a power user is within earshot. I’ll innocently ask the salesperson, “What’s your slowest graphics card?” The reaction is precious.

As I’ve confessed before, I’m not a gamer. Years ago I edited a videogame magazine and didn’t realize how weary I had become of games until the magazine unexpectedly folded. I stopped playing that day and haven’t resumed since. That’s why I don’t need fast graphics. Playing a YouTube clip is the most taxing graphics workload demanded of my computer.

Often, I won’t even buy a graphics card. I’ll scrounge a hand-me-down from a friend or cannibalize a junked PC. My oldest computer in regular use contains a discarded engineering sample of an Nvidia GeForce4 Ti-4200 from 2002.

Are you cringing yet? Mock me no more, power users. I’m reconsidering my wayward ways.

Continue reading after the jump.

I recently bought an Asus Eee PC 1005HA-B from Best Buy. I wanted to upgrade the RAM to 2GB, so I bought a Kingston HyperX 2GB PC4200 (533MHz, 3-3-3-8 timing) SODIMM from Newegg. It received a lot of great reviews, with other netbook owners commending how fast it was with the CAS latency of 3. However, when I installed the RAM, I got a BSOD before Windows XP could load, with an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. I know it’s a problem with the memory because when I stick the stock RAM back in, it boots fine. I’ve checked the BIOS for options to increase the CAS latency but I can’t find any option to do so. Am I out of luck with this RAM?

Read on to see our answer to Jarad's question.

There's an untold bounty of awesome available on the Internet, and it's all free, free, FREE! From applications and games to movie tickets and mattresses, we'll show you what's safe and steer you away from the unsavory.

As inhabitants of the Internet, we’ve become so inured to the hyperbolic advertising and questionable offers that we miss the incredible values that are ripe for the taking. If you know where to look, you can find all sorts of awesome stuff available for the low, low cost of $0. Whether you’re looking for a great image management app, free AAA games, or the proverbial free lunch, we can tell you where to find it. But wait, there’s more! We’ll also show you three things that seem free, but really aren’t.

Continue reading after the jump!

I have an Acer Aspire 5100 with a Phoenix BIOS. It came with an AMD Turion 64 single-core processor; I decided to upgrade to an AMD Turion 64X2 TL-64 dual-core processor. The computer recognizes everything but the processor model: In Device Manager it says “AMD processor model unknown.” The computer recognizes both cores of the CPU and gives the correct clock speed. How do I get my computer to recognize the processor model?

See our answer to Kevin's question after the jump.