Mark77

Basically, yeah, Windows 98 is just an incremental version of Windows 95 with patches and perhaps a few tweaks of the UI. So software compatibility problems should be minimal to non-existent.

Smallest readily available 4K displays are 15.6" I believe. They use eDP, so the adapter required to a full DP is minimal.

Point to point Infiniband setups are very cheap. You can find 40gbit/sec cards on eBay for cheap. Slap one in each system, and Windows (or Linux) can configure them to use IP networking. You'll need a cable to connect them together, but the cost of such is trivial. Not sure if such cards can/would support PXE, etc. You might have to do some custom firmware hacking to make it all work with iPXE. A quick search tells me 40gbit/sec Infinband cards can be found on eBay for $17 a piece. There *might* be a way to tie the PCI-E buses together, but I'm not sure if there's anything neat, clean, and off the shelf to do that. There's IP over SCSI, which you could do for $50-$60 these days (ie: a pair of U320 cards), but that doesn't sound too terribly interesting to me, especially with 10gig-E being much faster. edit: a quick trip to the ipxe website indicates that some of the qlogic infiniband interfaces do support iPXE. So you could basically boot your entire system over infiniband, and put all your storage on one of the two machines. With 40gbit/sec, that's plenty enough.

Such a weak CAD$. I bought my i7-2600 6 years ago for $267 Canadian. Probably still keeps up with that i5 chip, lol.

You're not putting a E5-2670 on a cheap board. Figure $600-$700 for the board and a pair of CPU's. A deal of a lifetime if you really need 16cores/32 threads, but probably not what most gamers would be looking for.

Sort of, sort of not. Basically with CPU's, you have single thread performance versus multi-core performance. You can buy chips with great overall multi-core performance for pretty cheap, but such chips (ie: the E5-2670) will likely be a fairly poor performer on single core performance. Likewise, you can buy very fast CPU's with only a single core or two (ie: Celerons), but if you load them down with multi-thread capable loads, they'll max out fairly quickly. Also, for many SKU's particularly used in laptops, chips are limited not by the physical silicon present, but rather, by arbitrary thermal limits set by the manufacturers in order to ensure proper integration into the rest of the system. Basically, with your software, you need to determine if it is heavily threaded or multi-tasking, or if it is mostly single-threaded. If its mostly single threaded, then you are wasting your money going with a LGA2011 platform, even an entry level one. If you run a load of tasks that simultaneously use the CPU, and have significant requirements in terms of RAM, then you might want to look at LGA2011. I don't exactly disagree. But the other issue is, realistically, are you going to literally be editing video at the same time you're gaming?

Sometimes those slots are also hard-wired to other ports. ie: you may lose the use of a certain SATA slot if you use a M.2 SATA device. Are you sure you've read the manual and made sure these things are in order?

The actual chip, $20 wouldn't surprise me. Most of the 'cost' is in the R&D associated with such. Similar to that of prescription drugs where the actual chemical ingredients cost pennies, but R&D, sales, marketing, overhead, distribution, quality control, shareholder returns, management, etc. consumes large amounts.

Dell certainly does with the business 3-year warranties on the Latitude laptops. Additionally, 'Completecare' takes care of literally everything except the battery -- drop your Dell in a pool or accidentially drop it on concrete and break it, and Dell will ship you a new one. Pretty sure AppleCare doesn't cover accidental damage.

The only things that a Canadian importer of components and systems might need to worry about from equipment that is otherwise regulatorily adequate in the United States is regulatory compliance with respect to telecommunications circuits or RF devices. And potentially placards relating to the same. Most US systems integrators/vendors will go through the trouble of getting stuff CSA and even IC certified at the hardware level. Its just a matter of ensuring that software-wise, things are set up correctly for "Canada". "Canadian" versions of computers sometimes will include a keyboard or documentation that is bilingual. This may or may not be a legal requirement for retail sale in Canada.

Your favourite Internet search tool is helpful here. From the Oracle Linux manuals: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/E37355/html/ol_create_btrfs.html Presumably mkfs.btrfs is on your system because you've built up the btrfs support tools (including kernel inclusions). If you can't invoke mkfs.btrfs directly, you might be able to do it with a -t option, ie: mkfs -t btrfs with traditional mkfs.

You could do a clone, and then use a partition expanding tool. That's what I do, with GParted.

The XPS definitely isn't the highest build quality Dell in the lineup. So why would you compare Apple's top of the line, expensive laptop, to some cheap Dell?

You can get nice brand-new 14" Haswell laptops with 1080p IPS screen for $300. So I'd be hard pressed to pay more than $100-$150 for this machine. Probably needs a new battery. So unless you're hooked on the cachet of the Alienware brand, its not worth much.

Very few people actually buy laptops for their graphics processing prowess. And the Apple notebooks should be compared to Dell's business class machines, not the XPS.

A certain company (suspected to be Facebook) retired a significant number of machines, and the recyclers are putting the chips onto the market.

Before you get too excited, check out the cost of boards for the E5 2670. Better yet, check out some of the boards themselves. They're not very consumer-friendly at all. If that's okay with you, and you don't mind dealing with that, then go for it. But those Xeons aren't exactly just substitutes for the mainstream 'consumer' platforms.

Not really. They use the "consumer" chipsets, ie: H270, etc. No ECC support. No AMT. Etc.

Sure, they look pretty. But I don't see why you'd buy one instead of the business/enterprise grade boards, ie: X11SAE, X11SAT.

Get something with a proper proprietary dock connector so you can add 2 external full-sized LCDs. Dell, Lenovo, or HP basically. Their professional-level machines.

Ubiquiti makes some nice equipment access-point wise. With 5GHz technologies (ie: 802.11n & 802.11ac), you tend to need more than 1 AP. With 2.4GHz, you can usually cover a whole home, but are limited to legacy speeds and have interference problems. https://www.ubnt.com/products/#wireless Some (most) models support PoE injectors, so you can mount it in a ceiling somewhere where people might be using the computers (living room, for instance), and just run Ethernet to it, with your remote PoE injector.

Most IT jobs except for the very trivial or the insanely specialized receive 50-100 local applicants, even if only minimally advertised, in Canada. As a white person from out of the country, unless you have a special contact with someone prior to arriving in Canada, forget about finding employment in the sector. Work permits aren't that hard to obtain, and the government really doesn't check on employers to see if they're lying about trying to find Canadians or not. But the employer has to be on-board. Typically they do this for candidates from India because they can pay them little, but I doubt they'd do it for a European.

There can be time-delayed kill switches in patches. Lots of ways of sneaking stuff in that might evade detection in a 'cyberwarfare' sort of scenario. The whole thing might be, as well, an effort to reduce foreign currency flow to the US. If Russia and the US are 'enemies' once again, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for Russia to pay for US software.

Of course they're using Windows Update or very similar "enterprise" tools supplied by Microsoft to keep their machines patched.

When they have their 'public' days and tours, I'm sure they have to lock away anything that's under any sort of NDA and secure valuable equipment accordingly from thieves. So there definitely would be a lot of trouble with random visitors. Unless you've been specifically invited, or have legitimate business with them, the polite thing to do is stay away. The more time they spend dealing with riff-raff, the less time they have to bring the world more content. Some people get their kicks trolling on-line (I don't), but seriously, keep it online. I'm sure appropriate donations through Paypal with a note such as "pizza money for the gang for a job well done" would be appreciated and respected, but sending your own, even if pre-paid, is kind of freaky and stalker-like.