I showed my mom Chromium OS and she really likes it want wants to use it on her computer, so I put it on a flash drive. The flash drive will boot and work fine in my laptop, but not in my mom's, which is an HP Probook 4525s. I've set the boot device order correctly, but the computer won't boot from the flash drive, it'll just go straight to Windows, even if I manually select to boot from the flash drive. I've tried a 4GB flash drive, a 8GB flash drive, and a 4GB sd card, and none of them will work on her computer (but they work on mine, which is a Samsung r540). Can anyone help with this?

My current computer, a laptop, isn't very good at playing my favorite games (Minecraft, Starmade, Sanctum, ...). Whenever I even go near a planet or space station in Starmade, my FPS drops to 2, 1, or sometimes 0 . Even just going near shops can cause noticeable lag. The computer also overheats fairly easily (and yes, I have cleaned out the fans) if I do too much graphics- or processor-intensive stuff. So I've been looking for a desktop computer, because I was led to believe that they generally run better, cooler, and are mostly cheaper than laptops. However, the only ones I've seen so far that could just match my current comp's specs are over $550-$600. Main Question of Post: I noticed that a lot of desktops at Best Buy have Pentium, i3, or AMD A1-something processors in them, and a lot of them have Intel HD graphics cards in them, and most of them have 4-6 GB of RAM. My question is: will desktop computers with these kind of specs run my favorite games faster than a laptop with an i3 processor, 3GB of RAM, and an Intel HD graphics card?

An R-2R resistor ladder is a nice little method of doing digital to analog conversion.
The one I made is 8-bit, so it can output 256 different voltages from 0V to 3.3V. Here are some pics:

http://i.imgur.com/GPynZsR.jpg
You can see on my oscilloscope that I'm generating a saw wave. All I'm doing is counting from 0 to 255 really fast over and over again, and putting the number onto the 8 pins of the PIC that are connected to the resistor ladder. You can also see on the oscilloscope that the wave isn't perfectly straight, and that's because of the resistors' tolerance that is differing the resistance slightly. There's nothing I can do to fix that, except use resistors with smaller tolerance.

Here's a close up pic of the ladder:
http://i.imgur.com/VObI1xr.jpg

If you want to learn more about this take a look at the wikipedia page here.

I just watched a review of the Cassiopeia a-20E pocket computer, and I thought it was a really nice device, but it's really really outdated. What are some good, inexpensive, modern counterparts of the A-20E? (Tiny computers with physical keyboards that run Windows) (a netbook, perhaps?)

I'm making an 8-bit computer. It won't be like your average computer; no screen or keyboard. Instead it has 8 switches and 3 buttons for input, and 16 LEDs for output. 8 LEDs show the current address you are looking at, and the next 8 show the data in the address. The computer has 256 bytes of RAM. Since the programs are stored in RAM, and the only way to store data is to edit RAM, the program can re-program itself There are no registers, instead everything is done with direct RAM addresses. To edit RAM, you put in an address in the 8 switches then hit the ADDR button, which changes the currently open address to the one on the switches. You can press the STORE button to store the number on the switches into the currently open address. The RUN button starts the program from the currently viewed address. I'm not finished with this, I'm still writing the programming, but I do actually have everything breadboarded. It will all be run with a PIC18F46K20 processor. I know it's a bit overkill to use a powerful processor, but it's nice to have four 8-pin ports.

So I have a question for you all: since the programs are stored in RAM, when you turn off the computer, everything in RAM is lost. The PIC processor I am using has an internal EEPROM. When the computer shuts off, should I auto- backup the RAM  to the EEPROM, and then load the EEPROM contents into RAM when the computer is turned back on? Or not? Or maybe do it some other way?

Here  is the planned assembly language for the SP-10 computer; try writing neat programs! When I have the system finished, I will run your guys' programs and make videos of them!
In this table, X and Y just represent arguments.
The table is here (UPDATED TABLE!!) : http://withg.org/spyro543/sp10/index.htm

Youtube Video:

Anyone remember the little Minecraft clone I made a while ago (MCL)? Well, I'm making a 2D Minecraft clone in CASIO-BASIC. Here it is:

In game controls:
ARROW KEYS: Move and Jump
EXIT: Return to Menu

Main Menu controls:
[1] Key: Make a new world
[2] Key: Load world from Matrix C
[3] Key: Exit MClite

Some info about the save file:
MClite saves into a 7 tall by 21 wide matrix, always Mat C. The data values for the blocks are as follows:

Data value	Block
0	Empty (Air)
1	□ (Empty Square)
2	■ (Filled Square)
9	I (Player)

DOWNLOAD BELOW!
File is MCL.G1M (attached to post)

This is a little program I've been making for those times when you're playing DnD and you have no dice with you. You can "simulate" dice rolls for D2, D4, D6, D10, D12, D20, and change the modifier. No screenshots or binaries yet, but they'll be coming tomorrow! For now, here's the controls:
F1-F6: Select dice to roll
Add, subtract: Change modifier
DEL: Clear modifier and results
EXIT: Stop program execution
EXE: Roll die

I *might* make a TI version, but don't count on it. I might also make a graphical Add-In version later.

Let's say I have a variable that is char type and is equal to 'A' which is 65 in decimal and 01000001 in binary. How can I access the individual bits in that variable? For example, accessing bit 0 would result in 1. How can I do this in C?