Word: pc
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...would-be millennium-insulated community on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. "'Safe haven' is the buzzword," says Trosper. "People want to move here from Chicago, Florida, Ohio." If he can get $50 million in financing, he hopes to accommodate the nervous newcomers with a "smart" community of PC-operated, solar-heated homes...
Another gadget my car won't get is Clarion's Auto PC ($1,200). It's a dash-mounted computer that's designed to accept simple voice commands, and will do everything from tune the radio or CD player to retrieve and read aloud e-mail or dial your cell phone from a contacts list. Sounds cool, but wait for the kinks to shake out; the person who demonstrated it for me couldn't get it to work properly...
...worry if you missed out on a cheap PC late last year. Considering the better deals this month, holiday shoppers may be the ones with regrets. Retailers sold mainly entry-level computers but now are overstocked with higher-powered systems. Radio Shack has a fully loaded 333-MHz Compaq Presario for $999, and Best Buy is offering a similar Packard Bell system at the same low price...
Finally, I admit that I get a fair number of questions about 3-D accelerators. These devices help your PC display three-dimensional graphics. But unless you play the latest and greatest games on your PC, you really don't need one. You can spend many hundreds of dollars, which I wouldn't recommend for anyone but graphic artists. I've tried most of them and can't see a difference, frankly. So my advice to gamers is to spend as little as possible. Now, the choice between a cow and a moose Monimal, though, is something we can discuss...
Filing income taxes via PC isn't a seamless transaction; after slaving away at the keyboard, you still have to sign the old-fashioned way. But in a pilot program this year, a few million e-filers who have software like TurboTax, as well as those who use a preparer like H&R Block, can zap their 1040--paper free--with a code substituting for their signature. E-filers can also pay their balance due by phone with a credit card--for a fee, of course...