zvi likes tv

Here's the thing. My laptop monitor is making me crazy. It is great for watching TV, but the 1366x768 resolution is making me cranky when it comes to reading documents; I have to scroll too often.

So, since this laptop is functioning as a desktop, the reasonable solution is to buy a monitor.

However, because I don't actually care about monitors, except that this one is "too short", I can't make myself sit down long enough to read enough documentation to figure out how to buy one that is taller. (All of the information about monitors keeps being about light. I DON'T CARE ABOUT LIGHT.)

My mom bought a computer a couple of years ago that came with a monitor (Dell ST2010) that is "tall enough". I thought I would just buy that one, but Dell doesn't sell it, nor does Best Buy. (People are selling them through ebay, but I am wary of getting delicate electronics packed by amateurs sent through the US mail.)

Can someone tell me what monitor, preferably for $100 but no more than $150, that I should buy? Or, if not a specific monitor, can someone tell me the monitor spec information that I actually care about when purchasing a monitor, so I can compare just that, instead of, like, blackness levels, about which I cannot be arsed to care.

Also, also, does anyone know what the difference is between a 16:9 and a 4:3 ratio? They should be the same, and yet people list them as different, so I am confused.

So, on a break from work, I went to log into my google account (yes, the IT people can, theoretically, be keylogging everything I do and break into ALL of my accounts. I know our IT people are, frankly, too busy to give a fuck about my bullshit. And, since I do this in a private browsing session, finding out what's going on is beyond the technical knowhow of my boss, because I am one of the two most technologically sophisticated people in my department, and my boss is not the other one.)

Anyhoo, google would not accept the password which I knew was the password because I had kept the same password for way longer than one ought to keep the same password. I freaked out and tried to login to my other google account with the same result.

Then, I went ahead and reset the password on both accounts, for fear I had been hacked.

However (and this is the part that makes me go hmm) my android phone did not complain that it couldn't talk to google until after I reset the passwords. (For those of you who don't know, Android phones have a close, intimate relationship with your google account; it ties into reader, it ties into gmail, it ties into your search history, it ties into your map stuff, it ties into your picasa account. If you are dubious about all of the info google collects about you, get a blackberry.) Also, the program that syncs my work calendar and my RealName google calendar didn't complain that it couldn't sync until after I changed the passwrds.

So, was I hacked, or did my work computer have some sort of bizarre cookie problem? Do I need to reset ALL of the passwords?

(Another data point. That thing where google shows you the originating IPs of recent activity on your gmail account shows several vists from NY, where I am not. However, these NY visits all appear to be mobile, so I think they are actually Sprint's 3G wireless network. If anyone knows more about that, pass me the info, thanks.)

Your advice is dearly wanted!

I want to get a new laptop, and I've been looking at various ones. I can compare the hard drive space and monitor size directly, but I'm confused about RAM and processor chips. Can I directly compare RAM, or does the sort of processor mean that the same amount of RAM has a different performance?

Where do I learn which processor chips are awesome, which ones are weak, and also their relative expense levels?

Two problems with Windows 7.

One) We've lost sound, the autofixing thingamajig isn't doing a damn thing, and when I tried to download the IDT audio drive update, it said my hardware didn't support the fucking update. Does anyone have a step by step by guide on how to diagnose the fucking problem?

Two) Attempting to install TurboTax 2009, but I am getting error 1601 that the Windows Installer is corrupted. I have made sure that the service is set to Manual/stop. I edited the registry to find the msi blah blah thing they tell you to find. I can't find anyplace on the MS website to get the windows installer for Windows 2007, and all of the advice I'm finding on non-Microsoft forums seems to reflect problems with release candidates, not with the final system. Does anyone have any suggestions?

P.S. I hate M$. I know how to find help for Linux, mostly, but trying to troubleshoot my mom's machine makes me a nervous wreck.

Mischief managed.

I'm going to get dropbox for NaNo. I think free users can get bonus storage if they refer someone, so drop me a line and refer me.

(If you know of some other free file backup service that works with both Linux and Windows, you can refer me to that one instead. I'm not wedded to Dropbox, I just know its name.)