Grumpy Mac

We are remodeling our Kitchen and many of the upstairs drains and water pipes go through the currently exposed ceiling. One rafter had some mold so we had them replace it. But since things are exposed, would it help to do a preventative painting of all the wood around all the pipes with anti-mold primer?

I know there is an out-gas problem but why not try to head off problems by using primer on ALL wood near water pipes while things are exposed?

I saw this computerworld article:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3109895/appli...

Google is going to close down the Chrome store and start removing apps from Chrome.

I use several apps in Chrome almost daily. I may have to switch to FireFox. Has anybody tried the new Maxthon MX5 browser?

Apps were one of the great things about Chrome. Does anybody have a source for stand-alone apps for Windows?

I already have Minecraft, Terreria and Witcher 3, Fallout 4.

One site suggested these were top picks:

Firewatch $14

Witcher 3 $25 (already own)

Doom $36

Civilization V $13

Fallout 4 $30

FTL $4

Life Is Strange $10 (But I have seen Felicia Days playthrough)

Dying Light: The following: $30 -- looks good

But what other good titles are you guy suggesting? I like FPS and crafting/survival games.

My company sold a dozen or so Macbook Pros to employees and I won the auction for one. It will be freshly formatted and latest OS-X installed.

What do you recommend I should do for first day to setup / protect the laptop?

(The mac will be used for light tasks, surfing while watching TV, some programming, perhaps some light video editing. I use another work Mac for more serious Java/programing and I am comfortable with Mac/Windows/Linux.)

Should I go to the Apple store and buy AppleCare?

My Day 1 plan includes:

* Setup an Admin account with a strong password, then a user account which I will use for day-to-day.

* Go to "getmapapps" and use it to get a bundle of programs like Chrome, GoogleDrive, VLC, PathFinder, Caffeine, CoconutBattery.

Is there other must have utilities?

Is there anti-malware, virus, disk defragment, cleaning utilities you recommend?

I am OK with for-pay software.

I have seen a few videos/posts talking about great deals during the Steam summer sale. They appear to have some sales on now - but the discounts are not that great. (They bumped the price of GTA V to $80 so they could claim it is on sale for $59). Is this the sale they are talking about or is it up-coming?

This CPU seems to be everyones favorite for a gaming system. Frys Electronics has a 1-day sale (Today Friday) on this CPU. Normally $240, it is $195 for walk-ins today.

I just built a new desktop and it had a bottom-mounted PSU. The weight dug into the carpet so there was no airflow.

I looked at my other CPU - and same problem. So I resorted to putting a game box under the feet at the back to give some vent room.

What do you guys do with bottom-mounted PSU's to give some vent room?

I am building a i5 CPU with a SSD boot drive and HDD. I want to install steam on the D: drive so the games & files don't fill up the SSD.

Is this easy to do?

Steam used to annoy me with 1-2 minutes added to boot times while it 'checked' things. Is there a way to NOT start steam automatically but on demand when I am about to play a game?

Any other advice for a once-burned Steam user to have a sane experience?

The goal is to run Steam & play games on this PC. The budget goal is $1,000.

I bought the i5-4690K CPU for $197 and I am planning on a MSI GeForce GTX960 4Gig card.

I wanted to try an MSI motherboard, but they have had quality control issues (lots of refurbished units at NewEgg). I am happy with my main PC using a Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard so I am looking at ASRock for the new machine.

With the NewEgg rebate prices below, I cannot decide between these three motherboards:

ASRock Z97 Extreme3 $96

ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer: $90

ASRock Z97 Extreme4: $94

I only plan on 1 graphics card. How many PCI Express 3.0 slots do I need? The Fatal1ty has 1, the Extreme4 has 3 -- which seems funny since the Fatal1ty claims to be a 'gaming' motherboard.

Any advice?

Years ago I bought a game that used Steam (FEAR I think or a Valve game). It added 2 minutes to my boot time while it loaded/checked for updates. It tried to add spyware (I read the end-user agreement where I had to agree that my privacy was less important than fair play so they wanted to scan my PC for cheat software)

One weekend I tried to play my game and Steam refused to log me in. Two hours of fighting with customer service made me swear off PC gaming. Later I learned that Steam had some network issues which prevented a LOT of users from playing.

Last week I saw a YouTube video where Steam customer service is rated lower than Comcast by the Better Business Bureau. Steam has responded - they don't care about BBB Ratings.

I would like to purchase some of the games on Steam (Dig or Die, etc.) but I really do not want to do business with another Comcast "screw the customer" attitude. What is your experience?

I think it's cool that you can get cholesterol, glucose and a bunch of other tests done at the company "health fair".

My concern is that this gives the Health Insurance company access to your test results which could get you dropped or harm/delay later claims or increase premiums.

"Insurance Companies are not in the business of paying claims. They take the money each month and invest to make more money." (quote from a relative in the Insurance business).

As long as someone is getting these tests done at their private doctors - isn't doing the tests at work going to harm you in the long run?

I love single player Minecraft but I'm ready to go beyond it's game play. But I love the survival, crafting game.

What is the next logical progression game I should look into?

I subscribe to Paul Soar Jr on YouTube and Rimworld looks fun, but it's only in Alpha. Starbound might be a choice.

What do you guys recommend?

I was in Best Buy to pick up "Hero 6" & spotted the Tivo Romieo on a shelf. The sticker said $49. This was declared one of the Best antenna DVR's available at at $200 price point.

(If you ever wanted to cut the cable or use a DVR on your antenna - go buy one NOW).

The box clearly says it needs a $15/month subscription for the program guide. But - this is the secret-sauce for DVR's, a good EPG.

Now - www.antennaweb.org says I cannot get antenna signals where I live. But any advice for trying it anyway?

NOTE: This question is more about telling people about the huge price-drop at BB.

The last 2 episodes of Defiance have taken a sharp turn for the better. Did they get new writers or did Joss Whedon step in to script-doctor things?

The characters have gotten more complex and .. interesting.

I really hated the show in Season 1. We lost "Eureka" and then "Warehouse 13" to help pay for it and the show. The characters were trite (one female star did tai-chi in a sports bra to try and give her some depth). The only reason I even watched Season 2 was my DVR recorded the shows by default.

In the recent "If you could see through my eyes" - Daytak had sex with his wife's hand maiden, then finds her body on his doorstep the next morning. He summons the snarky Irathian doctor to help.

Daytak: "We have to get rid of the body, Now."

Doc Yewll: "We? There are 2 types of friends in the world. The type that helps you hide a dead Whore, and Me."

Daytak: "I cant manage this by myself."

Doc Yewll: "You're a professional criminal. I have faith." (walks out the door)

It's ... kind of good.

I have a older XP machine that I just refurbished by adding a SSD drive (Kingston HyperX 120g) and a new copy of Windows 7 Home.

I installed but Win7 did not recognize my old Linksys network card. Nothing I did ( update drivers, etc. ) made it work so I shut it off planning to get a new network card.

The next morning the PC was on with an announcement that Updates were performed??? Sure enough - I now had internet access and 7 updates had been done.

I downloaded Chrome, then fired up Windows Update. 144 updates needed. I let it run and when it re-booted: BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK.

The Windows Update - killed the booting ability on my SSD drive.

I tried restoring to a previous system point - but it threw an error. Finally I did a fresh install of Windows 7 and it worked, but no network.

I ran to Frys and bought a $15 generic network card - and this works.

But now I am afraid to run Windows updates. Does anybody have suggestions for how to safely apply updates that wont kill the boot drive?

I bought my last PC from iBuyPower but now I have a lower end Windows XP machine I want to replace. The iBuyPower and PowerPC sites all start with exotic cases, higher end mobos's, etc but I just want a good, basic desktop.

Basically I want this budget build from MaximumPC:

http://www.maximumpc.com/build_pc_recommended_buil...

I could build it myself but when I priced the parts vs letting iBuyPower build it - I saved something like $70 so it was worth it to let someone else assemble & ship.

What site do you recommend? Would Frys do a good job?