Category Archives: computer tips

How 25,000 Junk Folders Were Breaking My AI Doc Organizer (Garbage In, Garbage Out)

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How 25,000 Junk Folders Were Silently Breaking My AI Document Organizer (Garbage In, Garbage Out) Thousands of (somewhat) zombie Quicken folders taken care of via compressing them into one 7z archive: Details: My AI File Organizer Was Fighting 25,000 Phantom Folders (And Losing 😜) For a while, my automated document filer was misbehaving. Scan an insurance card — it suggests filing it in a folder called Q-Final. Scan a bank statement — it wants to put it in Attach. The

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Windows 10 printing to old/offline printer instead of new one [SOLVED]

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TL;DR: Replaced a printer but Windows 10 keeps sending jobs to the old one? Cancel the stuck jobs in the old printer’s queue, then set your new printer as the default. Two minutes and you’re back in business. 👍 So I got a message from a client’s office today. “The printer won’t print.” Classic. We had just set up a brand new Brother DCP-L5510DN to replace their old DCP-L5500DN. The new printer was confirmed working via USB the day before.

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Claude AI Custom Instructions: A Real Example That Actually Works

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TL;DR: Here’s a custom Claude instruction that works well for most people: *Just a note about the “unlimited resources“, Claude tends to UNDER estimate what it is capable of, and maybe even what you are capable of. Like when it estimates a task will take 4-10 hours or multiple days of sessions and then proceeds to knock it out in a few minutes. SO, sometimes it helps to be a bit aspirational in your instructions. 💪💪 Why this works: Claude

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Best Computer for Claude Code in 2026

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Updated July 21, 2026. Originally published February 6, 2026. Summary: If you are looking for the best computer for Claude Code in 2026,  these are some top contenders in bang for your buck: the MacBook Air M5 (16GB/512GB, $1,199 to $1,255 on Amazon as of July 2026, depending on color). If you value RAM, additional ports, or don’t want Mac OS then I recommend a 32GB ThinkPad instead, $1,300 to $1,750 for current-gen. If you are on a tight budget:

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RTX 5080 vs. RTX 3090: Is It Time to Upgrade in 2026?

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Is the Upgrade Actually Worth It? The internet loves a clean upgrade narrative: Old card bad, new card good, spend money. But the reality of the NVIDIA RTX 5080 era is messier and more interesting. If you are currently rocking an RTX 3090, you’re still packing serious heat. That card remains a 24GB monster. The big question: Is the 5080 a meaningful leap forward, or just high-end hardware FOMO? Let’s break down the data. Raw Gaming Performance: Faster, but is

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Alienware / RTX 5090 Laptop — Quick Spec Dump (Reference)

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I lucked into a super deal on this laptop (in-store only) about three months before RAM prices started getting crazy, and my wife was awesome enough to pick it up for me at Micro Center while she was in the city. 🙌 So far it’s been an absolute beast: coding, compiling, LLMs, image generation, and basically anything else I’ve thrown at it without breaking a sweat. It lives on my desk most of the time, but it’s pretty great being

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AMD APU (CPU+GPU) Review: From 7840U to the Monster “Strix Halo” 395 AI Max+

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I’ve been getting some comments lately about the current state of AMD’s mobile processors. It’s a bit of a jungle out there with the naming schemes (looking at you, AMD marketing department 😉), so I wanted to put together a guide as I regularly use these CPUs/APUs in my daily work. Specifically, we are looking at the evolution from the popular “Thin & Light” 7840U (like in my trusty T14) all the way up to the beast, the Ryzen AI

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ThinkPad P14s AI 9 XH PRO 370 w/96GB RAM & LLM benchmarks

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Running Big LLMs on a Little Workstation: My Adventures with the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD I’ve been experimenting with large language models (LLMs) lately, and I wanted to see how far I could push things using a (relatively) inexpensive laptop. Enter the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD—a slim mobile workstation that set me back about $1,600. On paper it’s not exactly a “supercomputer,” but with the right configuration (and my go-to tool, LM Studio), it turns out this little

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