Gabi, Yes, when anyone says "big mac" I just assume (incorrectly) that the person is speaking of Hoya macgillivrayi. Yes, I love the leaves on macrophylla var. too. The plant never needs to bloom since the leaves are so stunning (well, flowers would be nice, but not necessary - oh, who am I kidding? I want flowers, too!!!) I just ordered macgillivrayi from DL so I'm excited to get one. I think I ordered the Massey River Queensland form with dark red flowers. With all of the hoyas I've purchased recently, I need to put a cardboard box out in the yard so I have the room for the hoyas in the house! Whatever it takes to have the room for the hoyas! I have a spreadsheet with all my hoyas and if I get everything from DL, I'll have 57. Back in the late 70's and early 80's I had almost 70, so I'm almost back to where I was. The plants I have now are so much cooler than the plants I had back then (lots and lots of carnosa hybrids), but there are so many cool hoyas available now. I just need to win the 10+ million in the HotLotto and I'll be set! Greenhouse, here I come! Mike

Personally I would not put it out to pasture that is not really a big investment in a machine that is still capable of working well. Doing some maintenance on it, cleaning out the old junk that is taking up space and resources etc should be done anyway. You can use it plugged in to the ac, I use mine that way 90% of the time. the lot of work you mention is work that needs doing on any machine we have to keep up with all that or we end up in these situations. Help! My computer is slow! and run the Secunia software inspector to make sure all your stuff is updated too. I have a couple of xp machines, a windows 7 laptop and some linux machines, they all take maintenance just have to dedicate the time to it.

Yes, my interest is more sentimental than technical. I also have my just previous HP Notebook, it had an HDD crash. I installed a new larger HDD and re-installed Windows XP and Linux SuSe. Both work fine, and share the 80 GByte HDD, partitioned into two equal drives. I still have my first PC, and Commadore (Spelling?) 64, that's right it has 64K of RAM, and a floppy disk. It worked great on DoS, amaizing what can be done when the OS is simple. I then purchased a desktop, AT&T again, that had dual floppy drives, but no HDD. I'd guess it had 128K RAM. It had MS Word for DoS and worked great, windows came later. I don't plan on spending any money on the subject Laptop. The battery indicator shows full charge, but I'd bet the capacity of the battery is way down, this has sat on the shelf for at least 10 years. Well the good news form the point-of-view of my basement, I got rid of two large old fashioned TVs, a Microwave, an old computer CRT, three printers...so now there's room to keep the old Safari notebook for a bit longer.

>>>> "All of the various computer sellers (Apple especially) would like you to think that the value of the system you are purchasing reflects not only the hardware but the pre-installed software as well. It is a fallacy to fall into this trap. You're much better off considering each "ifree and pre-installed" software title a liability in so much as you will have to take time and trouble to get the #&$^� off your system." Bought or started up an OEM/MSWin Pc lately? Boot up a new Dell sometimes and just take a quick look at what comes that you didn't ask for..... Otherwise, having run PC's (Win DOS-XP-SP2/Linux/the Open & Free BSD's) and Macs (MacOS5(?) thru the sons OSX.4) and being a committed (maybe commitable?) Linux user who likes to play with FreeBSD and has a nice new copy of Solaris X86 to play with.............. Well, were someone ask me should they get a MacOS machine or a WinPC or a Linux box...AND ESPECIALLY if the person asking is primarily interested in "consumer/personal" type IT ie: browsing, email, music, photo's, email, schoolwork I would have to say get the Mac....Nothing simpler easier or more "user friendly" As for total system quality and value..... We still have a IIe, a Performa 5200, an original IMac with OS9 and OSX, a red IMac, and a white IMac, all of which still work. All of them. And the son has that G4 PowerBook that I (and the S.o. too) lust over. Though my limited personal experience with APPL tech support is quite limited, I have none but positive exepiences with them, but know others who have a less than stellar opinion of the same....BUT the online help via forums, FAQs and tutorials and etc. that's available to/for MAC users is IMNSHO, second to none, it's at least as good and useful as for Linux. I have a 32 pound i386 Compaq "portable" too, It sill works, but is no longer useful for much more than anchoring a small canoe in a stiil body of water. The Performa5200 (only reason we bought it was because we were getting it almost for free) running OS7.5 is still my very favorite mchine, that 32mb of RAm and that ("newly installed" LOL) 56K modem just don't seem as fast and robust as they used too....... Damn, I must be getting old..... Next I want a Cell Processor based PS3 machine (Anybody wanna sell me one real cheap?) to turn into my own personal Linux based super-computer, unless/until C.P. motherboards and processors start becoming commercially available at a somewhat resonable cost. HAGD..........I headed out to check out the rose bushes and take the dogs off in the woods over an hour ago, but haven't left yet. I am going now though, gotta beat that rain you know.....