I use Duolingo for German but I’d happily switch to something else if they’re going to pull this shit. I’ll often times take things from Duolingo and run them through the Translate app on iOS to see if there are differences. It’s not ideal, but I also have no allegiance to companies.

I can’t explain it either but it happened with 2 different CD-ROM devices until I put in an HP model one. The GPU could’ve just been a random thing, but the CD-ROM was a pretty weird coincidence. Trust me, it made no fucking sense to me either, but it’s only ever happened to me with that HP tower and I’ve built a handful of PCs myself. If someone had a better explanation (2 faulty non-HP drives in a row?), I’d accept that too.

For context, this was probably around 2001 or 2002.

HP has been doing this shit for ages in other spaces. When I tried to put a non-HP burner in one of their desktop computers years ago, the burner spun out of control and refused to open. Same thing happened again when I got a replacement burner. When I finally got a HP burner, it worked fine.

The same tower also refused to acknowledge an aftermarket GPU, despite changing the jumpers like guides suggested.

Don’t buy anything HP. Don’t support them at all.

An old 286 (I think) running MS-DOS. It was a pretty tall tower. Had the CD-ROM drive where you put the disc into a cartridge and then shoved the cartridge into the slot. My first foray into the internet was Prodigy.