Being a newbie can create other problems... instead of posting in the proper forum, questions get posted in here.   

I've got some great questions I want to ask about hardware, but would probably not be suitable for the Newbies section.

These are valid posts from a REAL person, but I cannot use these questions to get to be a "qualified" user of this board by increasing my post count 'cause I want to pose these questions in the correct forum.   

Catch 22...