Because they have to pay Amazon and instead of absorbing as a cost of business, it's passed along to the amazon customer. Not unlike having to pay more if you use a credit card instead of cash. I have found numerous instances where it is cheaper to go direct to a company's website rather than bu through Amazon.

I'm a big fan of the Signal Stick. I'm standardizing on it for HTs.

The Baofengs' biggest advantages are that they're almost disposable in price. Most of my friends have one or two. I don't have an FT-60R -- my one Yaesu HT is the FT-3DR that I got a couple weeks ago and I haven't had much opportunity to use it yet.

Note that in the past, the Baofengs have been reported as failing FCC spurious emission tests.

If your philosophy is, "Get the best tools you can afford," then you might want to choose a different brand.

If your philosophy is, "A tool of questionable quality is still better than nothing," then a $20 handheld might have a place in your collection - especially if it is a collection and not the only one.

I remember a long time ago when I rode a motorcycle, there was an ad that had the headline, "If you have a 10 dollar head, wear a 10 dollar helmet." Well that convinced me. I got a Bell helmet

On the other hand, I've bought plenty of tools of "single-use" quality. Although at least a 75 cent screwdriver can be promoted to the job of paint-stirrer after it's all chewed up!

I got a desktop and a laptop. Both on Win7

The desktop is not hooked to internet. I use it mostly with Word and Excel filesm plus seeing some movies. Laptop is connceted to internet and I use it for visiting ETS and such .

Do you think my e-stuff is doomed ???

A month a go, the laptop harddisk was replaced and the tech guy told me the Win10 cannot be installed on the laptop. Too old.

So, are my computers going to survive or die ???

Thanks

You may be surprised just how much life your laptop has left if you install a lightweight Linux distro on it. For use with Windows, yeah, it is probably long dead. What is the Windows minimum hardware for installation now? Something like a 512 core, 800 bazigahertz CPU and 256 petabytes of RAM?

There's still plenty of useful life in them IMO.

A Windows 7 machine will keep running fine for as long as the hardware holds out. But it must never connect to the Internet.

What are the specs for your laptop? There's almost certainly a version of Linux that would work. Linix is a free, open-source operating system that replaces the Win7 operating system. All versions come with basic software like a web browser, file manager, office suite, etc. etc. But here's the kicker: you need to convince a friend to download it for you and burn it to a DVD.

Edit: Before you install, take Chaos's advice and double back up any files you want to keep. And when installing, it's best to connect to your router with a cable. Otherwise, the wifi drivers seem to be a little bit unstable; I don't know why.

It's always best to use a cable over WiFi for any installation. Personally, I have installed Linux many dozens of times on many different computers, and never once had a WiFi issue. Generally you find missing driver issues for the latest, greatest pieces of hardware. Once you're installing Linux on an "older computer", you just don't see problems. At least that's been my experience. I have had more issues trying to install Windows than trying to install Linux.

Most Linux distros can run off of a CD or thumbdrive. Then after you've tested like that to see that everything works, you can tell it to install on your hard drive. Do not judge the speed of Linux based on running it off of a CD or thumbdrive however. Those are way slower than a hard drive. And ridiculously slower than an SSD. A lot of Linux distros can be booted off of a CD/thumbdrive and instructed to install totally into RAM (you need to have a lot of RAM to do this). In that case, Linux runs like a scalded ape! Of course, if you power down the computer, everything in RAM disappears, so running 100% from RAM is really mostly for testing or specialized applications.

I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to ham radio HTs. About half are Baofengs. After testing I put them in car kits and other places where if they get lost or suffer from rough handling I won't lose my mind.

Some PCs don't do well if both the wifi and the wired connection are connected; it's best to turn your wifi off when connected via a wired network.

I would be very concerned about any Internet-connected Win7 device being compromised and your data stolen, if not also having your bank account(s) drained and your identity stolen. The other machine, if you never connect it to any network and never move files between it and other machines, will be fine.