-=> Quoting Green Dragon #35 @1916006 to Jonnycarson #217 @1419016 <=-

 GD#@> Re: Proprietary

 > It means a component that is non-standard.  It's usually made by one company
 > and you have to pay a premium price to replace it.  IBM, Packard Bell, Acer,

 GD#@> Oh!  So that's what it means..  I've been advising my friends from
 GD#@> buying those kinds of systems for a long time & never knew the name of
 GD#@> that type of system..  thanx!  L8r!  GD

Yep, ran into this with my IBM PS/1 a while back. In short, one of my cats
"wigged" out and ran across the top of my monitor. A waether station that was
on the wall behind the computer was knocked off and hit the video plug.

This broke the socket off the main board! I could not disable the onboard
video and simply add a new video card. Proprietary stuff!

I could either replace the main board for $300 or mess with finding a video
card that would override the on-board VIDEO BIOS. Luckly a Diamond SpeedStar
Pro did the trick. It was real hassle!

So, you're doing good. Tell them to look for systems that are not proprietary
and affords them to mix-n-match later if they're thinking of upgrading.

... No Silicon Heaven? Well, then where do all the calculators go?
--- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10