The Gadgetry Thread

[odessasteps]

 

[JLSigman]

Need some advice 

 

Mom has a decent HP laptop that suddenly stopped recognizing the built-in wireless - it doesn't even show up in the BIOS or anything. Is there some kind of USB plug in wireless thing? I'm trying to search for it and getting everything from wireless mouse things to weird converter things, but not what I'm looking for/thinking of.

 

EDIT: And as soon as I say that, I finally figure out the right words in the right order. This is what I was thinking of, and it's not too expensive.

Edited December 23, 2025 by JLSigman
LOL

[Raziel]

My last laptop had an issue where the NIC card(wireless adaptor) kept crashing and needed to be restarted.  You can take a look in Device manager under network Adaptors and see if there's an exclamation point next to it.  Then disabling and reenabling usually clears that.

[Travis Sheldon]

If you're feeling extra squirrelly, you could take a look and see if the card has been disconnected physically.

[odessasteps]

 

[odessasteps]

 

[odessasteps]

 

[blitzkrieg]

I have to say that I did not know that laserdiscs went that far back. My dad bought a player in the late 80's or 90’s. As I feel like was common with dads of that era he bought it because "it was better technology than" VHS. It doubled as our first CD player also. As a result of letting my sister and I decide what free laserdisc we got, the Comic Book Confidential documentary ended up being the only laserdisc we owned. We at least rented laserdiscs for a year or two before settling into the more convenient world of Blockbuster.

[Zimbra]

I've been wanting to read more so I got myself a playing card-sized e-reader and it whips ass.  It's even more convenient to carry around and whip out than my phone so I will hopefully default to that instead of just doomscrolling. 

I also bought an mp3 player that's shaped like a little walkman and it brings me a lot of joy. 

Fuck the smartphone, viva la single-purpose device.