I see AI could replace people in call centers.

Not such good news for the Indian economy then.

You could always use a union, no need to even cast then (: I wouldn't want to program in C targeting a PC these days; but it is good for 8 & 16 bit embedded work, where you need to get at hardware registers and only have maybe 2K RAM and 16K or 32K ROM.

The operative word there is 'laptop'. Windows assumes you want low power on a laptop; and they do default back to enhanced power saving after some updates. It's not unreasonable though, the point of a laptop is to provide mobile computing, not act as a static server. IMO applying updates is sensible, using a laptop to run 24/7 systems is where you have gone wrong; use 'tin', ideally with a server OS.

Unless you need fancy graphics or something more esoteric, even £1200 sounds excessive. You can get a pretty decent workstation for 700 to 800 quid, add a decent SSD and call it £900 to £1000; forget the VAT and save yourself 600 to 700 notes.

That presumably dates from when one of the Hapsburg's - AKA Habsburg - ruled both Spain and the Low Countries.

Indeed, I switched to Kubuntu; so thank you Microsoft for finally pushing me to make areal effort with Linux.

But I though Windows 8 was the new name for Vista... (:

What's a bonus? - Oh sorry just remembered, I work in the UK...

Then you really would need AV! Have you seen MS's App Store? You can pay for lots of App's that 'download' Firefox, and various other publicly licensed free software? Mmmm - Malware heaven.

Should get yourself to the UK then; the Postman puts it through the letter box in your front door here. :)

If your code installs on multiple OS's and / or outside the 'Anglo Saxon World', then access to all the different Windows versions in multiple languages can really help in traking down OS and localisation specific problems. As a mater of course, I now test install my releases on Virtual Machines running x86, x64, XP, Win7 and at least one non-English languages.

I expect it wants a carriage return followed by a line feed - 0x0d 0x0a Reading a byte array is not that low a level; the SerialPort class gives you a method to read byte data - SerialPort.Read Method (Byte[], Int32, Int32). You can use the BytesToRead property to see how many bytes there are in the buffer.

I suspect your problem is with how ReadExisting() handles the carriage returns; it may well be expecting a carriage return line feed pair of characters, to indicate a new line. If I am using Serial port for text data, I get the data as a byte array; and then convert it to a string, either using Encoding - Encoding.ASCII.GetString(myByteArrray) or manually processing each character if I need to handle specific bytes individually. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if GetString will convert a striaght carriage return to a new line; but if not you can process each byue of the array in turn, detecting the carriage return and adding Environment.NewLine in it's place to the string. Hope this helps.

Small problem with the servey. if you do not answer "Currently in use" in Q1 which answer do you select in Q2? If you leave the Q2 selection blank you get a warning! Q1. Is Microsoft SQL Server currently in use or planned to be used in your organization? Please choose an option Currently in use Plan to use in next 3 months Plan to use in next 6 months Plan to use in next year No plans ot use in next year Q2. Which versions and editions of Microsoft SQL Server are currently in use in your organization? Please choose 1 or more options SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 R2 SQL Server Express SQL Server Standard SQL Server Enterprise SQL Server Developer