Great deal on "Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Full Retail DVD Sealed Brand New"

Too bad the Product Key inside the factory sealed package was invalid.

(Thanks to PayPal, we extracted a 100% refund from the seller. And left bad eBay Feedback.)

Lenovo T510 laptop unexpected shutdown

After you've checked for viruses and other possible causes, download and run CPUID's HW Monitor and monitor the CPU temperature. If it reaches +100 degrees C, then the CPU may turn off the laptop and leave no event logging trace that I could find. In my case, it was as simple as a loose screw on the heatsink.

Old Bell PVR 9200 made obsolete

Bell (ExpressVu) Satellite TV sent us a replacement PVR, and told us to dispose of the old one. I opened it up and extracted the 250GB HDD. Not to mention the power cord and other hardware. After some fettling with Diskpart to Clean and so on, I installed into the free HDD into my PC and I used it to make a backup. UPDATE: I ran some tests on the old recycled HDD, and it may be the slowest HDD ever made. I got 5 Mbps I/O. That's a dozen times slower than any old HDD. Not sure why. Maybe Bell Expressvu or Echostar made some firmware changes to make it better for PVR use.

Apple Mac Mini (an old one) on the way

Used, refurbished, loaded with a bunch of software. About $100 shipped. Should be fun.

Update: Arrived.

Increased RAM from one-half GB to one GB for $9.

Frankly it's a bit boring. The OS is 10.4.9 Tiger from 2007, and it's amazing how out of date and useless the OS actually is. I think that Apple computers go obsolete significantly faster than PCs. We still have a couple of PCs from the same era (2007, Vista) and they're still perfectly usable and practically useful, just a bit slow.

"4K" TVs down to $600

Newegg.ca via eBay.ca again. They had a Chinese branded 4K TV for just $599. At one point, shipping was just $7. One big issue is that there are few sources of 4K (2160p) video available. Even at this price, probably not worth bothering with. But maybe next year... UPDATE: Price went up to $780 plus S&H. No longer giveaway pricing.