Atlantis Word Processor

On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 20:02:58 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote:

On 2/15/2014, Nil posted:
On 15 Feb 2014, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-8:

DESQview! Quarterdeck! (and also QEMM) It's been so many years
that I had entirely forgotten their names. And I had no idea that
any of that was still available.

Back in the '80s we bought tons of QEMM licenses because we needed to
run a DOS app in Windows 3.0 and Windows for Workgroups. DOS Himem
couldn't get enough stuff into high memory for us to to it, but with
QEMM we could eke it out.

Trying to configure stuff to work together using autoexec.bat and
config.sys was a real challenge. I was good at it back in the day,
but I've forgotten all that now.

I've forgotten all that too.


You took the words out of my mouth!

In message , Mayayana
writes:
| Since that post, Firefox twice became stuck in memory and forced me to
| kill it from within the Task Manager. Essentially, the program has
| thrown away the last chance I was willing to give it.

Interesting. I haven't had even one problem
with FF or Pale Moon for years. But you seem to
be on Win7-64, while I only use Win7 for testing
software and such. I mainly use XP-32. Maybe
the 64-bit version is not as stable? I don't know.

+1 - I've not had any problems (not the freezing kind, anyway; I'm
having problems with missing images). Under XP32. FF 25.0.1.

I also don't use tabs. When I hear of people
complaining about browsers it's often the case
that they're never closing tabs during a browsing
session. I imagine that numerous open tabs
updating might be quite a strain on Firefox.

I have lots of tabs - currently 53. Since quite a few Firefox versions
ago, though, they don't autoupdate (at least, not by default - it may be
possible to set them to do so).

One thing I do that also might affect that is that
I set accessibility.blockautorefresh to True.

(That sounded like an excellent idea, but I found I'd already done it.)

Though I didn't choose the setting for stability.
I have two other reasons: 1) It drives me crazy
when I'm reading a news article and it suddenly
reloads by itself. 2) Some sites will load a perfectly
usable page but then replace it, when they detect
I have javascript disabled, with a blank page that
says, "Sorry, this page requires javascript."

Or other reasons - I've had pages where I see a brief view of something
useful but it goes away almost immediately.

(Facebook pages seem to have something that gets round it - they're
continuously loading. Also Google image searches, though at least those
only do so - I think - when you scroll down, which is arguably a
reasonable thing to do.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... the pleasure of the mind is an amazing thing. My life has been driven by
the satisfaction of curiosity. - Jeremy Paxman (being interviewed by Anne
Widdecombe), Radio Times, 2-8 July 2011.

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
Also if you hate Windows 8.xx, they also have tablets running XP,

I think XP ones were quite rare.

Vista, and 7 too. I use them (hard to find a new one now). And if you
want a large screen docked tablet, I forget exactly what they are
called, but they are basically 17 inch and larger screen tablets with

I was going to say all-in-ones ...

docks. And they are generally meant to run as a desktop, with the
occasional short portable use.

.... until you said that; all-in-ones seem to be basically giant laptops
(or tablets, I suppose if they have touch-screen), but in most cases
have done away with the portability altogether.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

Not to be confused with Bill Gates ...
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... the pleasure of the mind is an amazing thing. My life has been driven by
the satisfaction of curiosity. - Jeremy Paxman (being interviewed by Anne
Widdecombe), Radio Times, 2-8 July 2011.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
| ... I would never use IE online, and would never
| use Chrome at all. (I know a great deal about IE...
|
| Just curious, so what do you know about IE? And version(s) of IE do you
| know about?
|

First is the problem that it's tied deeply into
Windows. The higher level internet APIs are actually

Indeed. Not a problem for many, but irritating - at least - for those of
us who like to keep things separate.
[]
are so messed up that I wrote a utility to offer some
basic control to people who are stuck with IE for some
reason:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/iemd.php5

But it's a losing battle.

Thanks for joining battle anyway!
[]
IE is designed so that corporate IT people can control
employee behavior without employees knowing it or
being able to do anything about it.

And also helps lazy programming; some applications with a web interface
only work in IE. (Well, "work" is an exaggeration - but they don't work
_at all_ in Firefox.)

I've also worked a lot with the IE DOM because I do
some web design. (Every version of IE is incompatible
with the last in that regard.)

(What's a DOM?)
[]
IFRAMES shouldn't even exist anymore, now that there

Is that the same as frames?

are scrolling DIVs. Flash shouldn't be running unless

Though DIVs themselves are vastly overused by some generators.
[]
no way to block IFRAMES at all. (Which is part of
why I wrote a mime filter. I have a blind friend who
used to be limited to IE.)

I have blind friends who _prefer_ it, partly through familiarity and
partly that their screenreader software tracks it faster than it tracks
Firefox.



--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... the pleasure of the mind is an amazing thing. My life has been driven by
the satisfaction of curiosity. - Jeremy Paxman (being interviewed by Anne
Widdecombe), Radio Times, 2-8 July 2011.

In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
In message , Mayayana
writes:
[...]
I've also worked a lot with the IE DOM because I do
some web design. (Every version of IE is incompatible
with the last in that regard.)

(What's a DOM?)

I wonder how Mayayana feels about how Firefox leaves the XPCOM door wide
open? That is akin to having ActiveX enabled always under IE.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
Also if you hate Windows 8.xx, they also have tablets running XP,

I think XP ones were quite rare.

All Windows tablets were quite rare until just recently. Although Motion
Computing was one manufacture who only manufactured Windows tablets
since 2002 I think (plenty of used ones on eBay). The first Windows
tablet that I know of was the Compaq Concerto. It was manufactured in
'93 and ran Windows 3.1. I bought two of them last year to add to my
collection (thanks Auric).

Vista, and 7 too. I use them (hard to find a new one now). And if you
want a large screen docked tablet, I forget exactly what they are
called, but they are basically 17 inch and larger screen tablets with

I was going to say all-in-ones ...

Yes, that is it. All-in-one desktops. ;-)

docks. And they are generally meant to run as a desktop, with the
occasional short portable use.

... until you said that; all-in-ones seem to be basically giant
laptops (or tablets, I suppose if they have touch-screen), but in
most cases have done away with the portability altogether.

The one I can think of is the "Dell XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Desktop
with Touch". Lift it off of the stand and it becomes a huge 18.4 inch
tablet. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

| (What's a DOM?)

Document Object Model. It's the object hierarchy for
script in a webpage. The document object, parentWindow,
etc. Each tag is an object with access to attributes
as properties, allowing the page to respond dynamically
to events like clicks, hovers, etc.

| IFRAMES shouldn't even exist anymore, now that there
|
| Is that the same as frames?

No. Frames are multiple windows making up a page,
set up in a FRAMESET. They were once very popular,
but not so much now. A typical frameset would be
a menu window on the left with main content on the
right. Each section is actually a separate browser
window.
An IFRAME is an inline frame. It's also a separate
window, but it can be any size and in any position.
An IFRAME typically loads a remote page. They've
been exploited for years. Unfortunately, they've made
a comeback because ad companies can put an image
in an IFRAME and then set a 1st-party cookie, or do
anything else the main page can do. Facebook even
puts their Like buttons in an IFRAME, mainly for tracking
purposes.

If you look at a typical page structurally you have
the main page at somewhere.com, then you might
have, say, 6 or more miniature browser windows on
the page. They might be ads, Like buttons and such.
But each is actually a webpage that you've been forced
to visit. That allows companies like Google/Doubleclick
to track people almost everywhere they go. (And if you
block Doubleclick ads you'll see lots of little 404 pages
littering the typical webpage.
I block IFRAMES for the most part in FF by using the
userContent.css file. So FF doesn't load them at all.
But commercialism and interactive services are somewhat
in conflict. If you block IFRAMES you'll find some pages
don't work properly. I find it common that images don't
show up on some sites because they're loading the image
in an IFRAME, even though it's a content image and not
an ad.

| are scrolling DIVs. Flash shouldn't be running unless
|
| Though DIVs themselves are vastly overused by some generators.

Yes. I've noticed that. Lots of empty DIVs, apparently
for layout purposes. For some reason most Web designers
now think TABLEs are for losers, but DIVs are professional.

| no way to block IFRAMES at all. (Which is part of
| why I wrote a mime filter. I have a blind friend who
| used to be limited to IE.)
|
| I have blind friends who _prefer_ it, partly through familiarity and
| partly that their screenreader software tracks it faster than it tracks
| Firefox.

My friend uses Jaws. Until fairly recently IE was all
he could use. But now he's finding that FF usually works
better. For instance, IE doesn't handle a dropdown
option selector properly, while FF does. He goes to a very
poorly designed site called Learning Ally, where he can
download books for the blind, but it doesn't work well
for blind people! One of the recent problems was that
IE had trouble with arrowing down a dropdown list to
choose the download format. Pressing the down arrow
would close the dropdown. But it worked OK in FF.

| I wonder how Mayayana feels about how Firefox leaves the XPCOM door wide
| open? That is akin to having ActiveX enabled always under IE.
|

Interesting question. I don't know anything
about XPCOM. I looked at Wikipedia, which
seems to say it's similar to Windows COM insofar
as being a component-based system, but I don't
know whether that alone tends to create
vulnerabilities. Object oriented design is not in
itself risky. Are there known exploits of XPCOM?

In message , Mayayana
writes:
| (What's a DOM?)

Document Object Model. It's the object hierarchy for
script in a webpage. The document object, parentWindow,
etc. Each tag is an object with access to attributes
as properties, allowing the page to respond dynamically
to events like clicks, hovers, etc.

Thanks. All Greek to me, but at least I know (for a brief interval) what
it stands for!

| IFRAMES shouldn't even exist anymore, now that there
|
| Is that the same as frames?

No. Frames are multiple windows making up a page,
set up in a FRAMESET. They were once very popular,
but not so much now. A typical frameset would be

Yes; don't know why.

a menu window on the left with main content on the
right. Each section is actually a separate browser
window.
An IFRAME is an inline frame. It's also a separate
window, but it can be any size and in any position.
An IFRAME typically loads a remote page. They've
been exploited for years. Unfortunately, they've made
a comeback because ad companies can put an image
in an IFRAME and then set a 1st-party cookie, or do
anything else the main page can do. Facebook even
puts their Like buttons in an IFRAME, mainly for tracking
purposes.

Ah. I find ghostery makes short work of those. (I don't use them anyway:
mainly because I'm not enrolled with FB, but also because I object to a
system that has like but no dislike buttons.)

If you look at a typical page structurally you have
the main page at somewhere.com, then you might
have, say, 6 or more miniature browser windows on
the page. They might be ads, Like buttons and such.
But each is actually a webpage that you've been forced
to visit. That allows companies like Google/Doubleclick
to track people almost everywhere they go. (And if you
block Doubleclick ads you'll see lots of little 404 pages
littering the typical webpage.

Ghostery puts its own little symbol for them.

I block IFRAMES for the most part in FF by using the
userContent.css file. So FF doesn't load them at all.

(Do you know of a tutorial on doing that?)

But commercialism and interactive services are somewhat
in conflict. If you block IFRAMES you'll find some pages
don't work properly. I find it common that images don't
show up on some sites because they're loading the image
in an IFRAME, even though it's a content image and not
an ad.

Would that include Google's image pages? (Search for something, then at
the top of the results page click images.) I'm currently not getting
those.

| are scrolling DIVs. Flash shouldn't be running unless
|
| Though DIVs themselves are vastly overused by some generators.

Yes. I've noticed that. Lots of empty DIVs, apparently
for layout purposes. For some reason most Web designers
now think TABLEs are for losers, but DIVs are professional.

I've seen (what I assume must be autogenerated) pages with ten or
fifteen levels of DIVs, usually with _no_ extra formatting or whatever
in them. And often about three levels of nested table for no obvious
reason too. I think a lot of them are from Incredimail (spit!), which
one of my old friends loves.
[]
My friend uses Jaws. Until fairly recently IE was all

(My friends are a married couple - she uses JAWS, he Window-Eyes.)

he could use. But now he's finding that FF usually works
better. For instance, IE doesn't handle a dropdown
option selector properly, while FF does. He goes to a very
poorly designed site called Learning Ally, where he can
download books for the blind, but it doesn't work well
for blind people! One of the recent problems was that
IE had trouble with arrowing down a dropdown list to
choose the download format. Pressing the down arrow
would close the dropdown. But it worked OK in FF.


Interesting! I've passed on that paragraph (to the JAWS user). Yes, many
web page designers, including those ones specifically aimed at the
VH/VI, don't actually try them out mouselessly, or at least it seems
that way.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher von Braun

On 2/16/2014 8:49 PM, Mayayana wrote:
| I wonder how Mayayana feels about how Firefox leaves the XPCOM door wide
| open? That is akin to having ActiveX enabled always under IE.
|

Interesting question. I don't know anything
about XPCOM. I looked at Wikipedia, which
seems to say it's similar to Windows COM insofar
as being a component-based system, but I don't
know whether that alone tends to create
vulnerabilities. Object oriented design is not in
itself risky. Are there known exploits of XPCOM?

Comparing Security Implications of IE and Firefox add-ons
http://unixwiz.net/techtips/browser-addins.html

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

| Comparing Security Implications of IE and Firefox add-ons
| http://unixwiz.net/techtips/browser-addins.html
|

I found that same page when I went looking
for XPCOM info. I'm still not entirely clear about
XPCOM, but I think I get the gist of it. It seems to
be a correlate of the IE Application object -- a
programmatic way to access and automate the
browser program itself.

This all gets confusing, partly because of the terms.
(I have a book on COM where the persnicketty author
spends an entire page explaining sarcastically that
"ActiveX" does not have any actual meaning at all.

The author of that webpage is lumping shell extensions,
like Browser Extension and toolbars, in with ActiveX
controls. I think they need to be looked at separately.
They're both using COM, but they're not both accessible
from a webpage. (My mime filter is a browser extension.
It can control what you see in IE. But webpage script in
IE cannot access the mime filter. Just the reverse. The mime
filter gets the webpage code, to do with what it wants,
before IE even sees it. I can't think of any way that code
running in the browser could exploit a browser extension,
toolbar, etc.)

If we look at shell extensions with XPCOM components,
both are components integrated with the browser. Many
online attacks have done things like using a hacked certificate
to do a "drive-by install" of, say, a BHO or IE browser extension.
And sleazy software will sometimes trick people into installing
a toolbar from Google, Yahoo, etc. Theoretically it might be
possible to replace the FF Find bar with a malicious version,
I suppose. Those are security risks because the component
itself has a great deal of power -- in Windows and also in terms
of the webpages you see. But those things are software running
on Windows. The security hole is when they get installed.

ActiveX controls, on the other hand, can be in the
webpage and accessed by script in the page. I think
the Firefox correlate would be plugins. Flash and the
Acrobat plugin are good examples. I don't know if
the Java runtime uses ActiveX in IE, but all of those
things are vulnerable because they're basically software
on Windows that's running in the webpage. So any
security hole in those things ca be -- and often is --
exploited. *Those things are not safe to have installed
in any browser.*

What makes ActiveX worse is that ActiveX controls
are also used in software and anyone can make them
fairly easily. When browser scripting started out it was
just accessing webpage functionality. Microsoft took the
same script and gave it the ability to start and run
software components. It was brilliant. ActiveX controls
make webpages as powerful as software, with little work
required. And the same script was set up with the Windows
Script Host. Brilliant again. Now script in script files on the
Desktop or in IE can do just about anything by using a
COM component to do it.... Then online security became a
problem. Most ActiveX controls are not safe for running on
webpages. But the means for keeping them out of webpages
is limited. There are two basic restrictions I know of:

1) Code Signing (Authenticode certificates). If you disable
unsigned ActiveX controls then nothing from unapproved
sources can run. The problem with that is that hacked
signing and stolen certificates is a common problem. It's
a common method to *bypass* rather than enforce IE
security.

2) Marking controls as safe for scripting. Unsafe controls
are blocked by default, but marking a control safe is just
a Registry setting. If a control gets registered it can register
as it likes. If malware gets access it can add the settings
to make a control "safe".

So what does all that mean? I don't know enough
about FF programming to know all the possible risks,
but it seems to me that the real threats in both
browsers are script and plugins that run in the webpage.
If you enable script, or flash, or Java, you're at
risk. Flash is a "safe" control. But then there can be
bugs. A lot of attacks are exploiting vulnerabilities in
"safe" controls, like Flash and the Acrobat plugin. (Adobe
just recently issued yet another critical fix for Flash.)
Or they exploit Java, which was intended to be a "safe",
sandboxed solution for interactive webpages over 15
years ago. It just doesn't work. Software running in the
browser is risky. (I don't know, though, how the bug
history of the Flash ActiveX control for IE compares to
the bug history of the non-IE flash plugin.)

Browser automation is potentially risky, but I don't
think that's a common attack. IE as a scripting object
is not very accessible via online webpages. (It wasn't
always that way, but I doubt there's a notable risk now
for either IE or FF. If there were we'd know about it.)

| Document Object Model. It's the object hierarchy for
| script in a webpage. The document object, parentWindow,
| etc. Each tag is an object with access to attributes
| as properties, allowing the page to respond dynamically
| to events like clicks, hovers, etc.
|
| Thanks. All Greek to me, but at least I know (for a brief interval) what
| it stands for!
|

I guess that's getting a bit OT, but here's a simple
example, for anyone who's curious. It shows how
you can write interactive software in IE with nothing
more than HTML and script. If you paste the following
code into Notepad, save as HTML and run it, you can
see how it works. It tells you the location (URL) of the
page and the text contained within an identified tag
on the page.

------------------
HTMLHEAD
SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript"
Sub Doit()
MsgBox document.location
MsgBox t1.innerText
End Sub
/SCRIPT
/HEAD
BODY onload="Doit()"
SPAN ID="t1" some text here/SPAN
/BODY/HTML
------------------


| Ah. I find ghostery makes short work of those. (I don't use them anyway:
| mainly because I'm not enrolled with FB, but also because I object to a
| system that has like but no dislike buttons.)

I'm not familiar with Ghostery. If it removes the
IFRAME that's good. But the point of their using
the IFRAME is that you don't need to click the Like
button for them to track you. You've visited their
"webpage" by loading the IFRAME in the page you're
visiting. That allows Facebook to track most people
to some extent, by correlating IP addresses, nad
perhaps cookies, with buttons loaded on various
websites. It allows them to track *and ID* their own
members a great deal, via cookies and/or matching
the IP they got when the member logged in with the
IP requesting the button image in the IFRAME, etc.

| Ghostery puts its own little symbol for them.
|
Interesting. Sounds like a good design.

| I block IFRAMES for the most part in FF by using the
| userContent.css file. So FF doesn't load them at all.
|
| (Do you know of a tutorial on doing that?)
|
You can look it up to get examples, but it's not
well documented in terms of syntax and options.
In your Application Data\Mozilla folder you'll find
a profile folder containing a "chrome" folder. In there
are userChrome.css and userContent.css. The former
provides a way to add/remove menu items, adjust
the menu font, change the "throbber", etc. The latter
is like a master CSS file for all pages loaded. As a sample
of what you can do, here's what I use in Pale Moon:

IFRAME {display: none !important;}
NOSCRIPT {display: none !important;}
EMBED {display: none !important;}
VIDEO {display: none !important;}
MARQUEE {display: none !important;}
META {display: none !important;}
#divRawLinkBackRow {display: none;}
#sharebar_fixed {display: none;}
#sharebar_fixed_social {display: none;}
..footer_bar {display: none;}
IMG[width="1"] {display: none !important;}
IMG[width=1] {display: none !important;}
IMG[width="0"] {display: none !important;}
IMG[width=0] {display: none !important;}
IMG[src*="1x1"] {display: none !important;}
IMG[src*="0x0"] {display: none !important;}

I don't know whether blocking META actually works.
The rest should work fine in FF/PM. At the top
you can see I've blocked particular HTML tags.
In the middle are specific CSS classes and IDs
that are blocked. For instance, say you visit a page
daily that has an annoying header bar table with
a unique ID: TABLE ID="annoying-top-box" ....
You can add the following to userContent.css
to remove only that item:
#annoying-top-box {display: none;}

The IMG entries demonstrate some of the fine
tuning options possible. What you see above
blocks nearly all tracking beacon images by
blocking anything less than 2 px. The reason there
are 6 lines is because it's very specific. Frankly
I don't remember now what the * does. These
things are very arcane and I often forget them
between edits. The last two lines might have
been to block images that don't specify width. I'm
not sure.

On Sun, 16 Feb 2014 22:19:06 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , BillW50
writes:

Vista, and 7 too. I use them (hard to find a new one now). And if you
want a large screen docked tablet, I forget exactly what they are
called, but they are basically 17 inch and larger screen tablets with

I was going to say all-in-ones ...

docks. And they are generally meant to run as a desktop, with the
occasional short portable use.

... until you said that; all-in-ones seem to be basically giant laptops
(or tablets, I suppose if they have touch-screen), but in most cases
have done away with the portability altogether.


Except for someone who really needs to save the space it takes up, I
think buying an all-in-one is a terrible mistake. When components are
separated, and one fails, you can replace just the failed component.
With an all-in-one, you probably have to replace the entire computer.

I feel the same way about laptops, unless the laptop is used for
traveling. And I feel the same way about all-in-one printer/scanner
combos, for exactly the same reason.

In ,
Ken Blake typed:
On Sun, 16 Feb 2014 22:19:06 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , BillW50
writes:

Vista, and 7 too. I use them (hard to find a new one now). And if
you want a large screen docked tablet, I forget exactly what they
are called, but they are basically 17 inch and larger screen
tablets with

I was going to say all-in-ones ...

docks. And they are generally meant to run as a desktop, with the
occasional short portable use.

... until you said that; all-in-ones seem to be basically giant
laptops (or tablets, I suppose if they have touch-screen), but in
most cases have done away with the portability altogether.

Except for someone who really needs to save the space it takes up, I
think buying an all-in-one is a terrible mistake. When components are
separated, and one fails, you can replace just the failed component.
With an all-in-one, you probably have to replace the entire computer.

I feel the same way about laptops, unless the laptop is used for
traveling. And I feel the same way about all-in-one printer/scanner
combos, for exactly the same reason.

Oh man! I repair laptops and tablets all of the time. And I know some
shops won't even touch them or charge you an arm and a leg to repair
one. But I find many of them are very easy to repair. Take this Gateway
for example. They can run XP, Vista, 7, and 8, plus Linux. Thousands of
these are coming off of lease (some look brand new, some look like they
were dragged through the garbage dump), and no matter what the
condition, I can buy the like new ones for about 50 bucks apiece. And as
many as I want.

Sure the hard drive is probably missing, as well as the battery and
power supply for this price. But that is okay because you might just
need the motherboard, LCD screen, inverter or something. Or easier yet,
just add your hard drive, battery, and power supply and you are all well
again. Plus you have lots of other spare parts for the machine too now.

The only big limitation for laptops and tablets is the upgrading part.
Sure you could upgrade the drive, memory, and the optical drives are
easy enough. But not something like the video card (although my
Alienware laptops I can do this too). And most of mine the CPU can be
upgraded as well. But some laptops and tablets also have a dock option.
That allows lots of expansion options. And these are the ones I am most
interested in.

Printer/scanner combos? Yeah perhaps. But they practically give those
things away anyway. As once they virtually give one to you, they make
their money by selling you ink cartridges for it.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Except for someone who really needs to save the space it takes up, I
think buying an all-in-one is a terrible mistake. When components are
separated, and one fails, you can replace just the failed component.
With an all-in-one, you probably have to replace the entire computer.

On the whole, I agree with you, but the overall reliability of PC
components in general has improved greatly in the last few years. Also,
sometimes it gets the PC into a more-used room, allowing the person to
get over the threshold that actually gets them into using computers.
(And - though I've not looked - I suspect that components _are_
replaceable to a greater extent than you'd think, though you may have to
look harder to find ones of the right shape.)

I feel the same way about laptops, unless the laptop is used for
traveling. And I feel the same way about all-in-one printer/scanner

Well, though I use this (actually a large netbook) mostly here at home
(actually on my lap!), the fact that I _can_ carry it has its attraction
- when I visit friends I can take it with, which I couldn't really do
with a desktop, however compact.

combos, for exactly the same reason.

I'm more with you there - especially as it's the printer part that's
most likely to die. Though conversely, they tend to take up the same
amount of desk as either a printer or a scanner anyway (and cost about
the same as either), so maybe the disadvantages aren't that great.
Still, any inkjet printer is problematical IMO, unless used with a
continuous feed system.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

For this star a "night on the tiles" means winning at Scrabble - Kathy Lette
(on Kylie), RT 2014/1/11-17