Thought I would come back and update. Well, in the end, I decided to go with the Apple. :-) There were so many reasons I wanted to get one and quite a few reasons I didn't want to get another windows machine. Two of the issues that were keeping me from getting the Apple resolved at the last minute and I was very happy to see no obstacles to getting it. I have had a MacBookPro for two weeks now and loving it! Almost have everything moved over from the old computer and Monday got the new printer installed and connected. Tech support has been great as expected. There have been some issues with changing over from the windows system to the Mac. I was using MS Works on the old Dell and converting those to iWorks was not straightforward although in the end most of that is done. Going from MS Office is easier. Changing over from Windows Media Player to iTunes...if you are importing your music to WMPlayer in the wma format, well, come to find out it is a proprietary format to Windows and it is not easy to switch over to mp3 that will allow the iTunes to play it. I had to convert 800 songs to mp3 before moving it to the Apple which was not so great. Time consuming. Had to download four programs on Tuesday and only one of them actually made the conversion. Plus converting the files does lower the quality some. So, I am planning on getting as much off of CDs to replace them as I can, but they are fine for the time being. Just for your information, you can set your WindowsMediaPlayer to import into it in the mp3 format and that will make your life so much easier if/when you want to move them or use another player. Photos were a breeze to move and using iPhoto is just a treat! Such an improvement over my previous photo software for organizing photos. I have never used Photoshop software, so maybe that is as good at organizing as the iPhoto? I do plan on trying photoshop at some point. So that's my story. :-) Jane, I hope you have made the change over to whatever you liked the most and have a new machine that you are happy with. :-)

You guys are funny! If he was sneaking around my computer, it would be divorce court. My husband and son are terrified to go near my machines (2). Both are used for work and if things got messed up I'd have to fix it. He obsesses over his photos. He belongs to a photo group which meets weekly and they have competitions. They also display their photos in hospitals and libraries. He's actually sold a bunch (shocked). I have no interest in photos except to look at them. He will spend weeks working on one photo. He's not a photographer, just a hobby which he loves to do. The computer he uses is really a great machine. It has taken such abuse, I still stand in awe that it works. Hubby knows absolutely nothing about computers and doesn't want to. Leaves all the problems for me to fix. He has numerous photo programs on the machine and will have them running at the same time. He uses AOL and his photo buddies will be emailing back and forth sending each other photos to critique. Plus he has Media Player booming with all the flashing colors across the screen (he has 6 speakers hooked up to the computer. He's a classical/ jazz lover and copies music to the computer and also burns CDs. All this is going on while he's working in photoshop. Oh, I forgot Quickbooks, that's always running too. Best part, when he's through for the night, he doesn't shut anything down. He shuts the computer down without closing anything. The computer freezes and stays that way until the next day. Or he does a manual shutdown complaining about the machine. Its truly a sad state of affairs. I've given up on him and leave him to this poor, abused machine. Someone tell me why it still works, buried under the table surrounded by speakers and wires? And I'm thinking of adding Ram... Jane

I didn't have any special problems turning up my Gateway Laptop with W8 a few months back. The biggest problems I had was learning (trial and error) to make one of the W8 tiles a start for Firefox (browser). When this is done the desktop converts to a W7 look. Yea, there's a lto of other "goodies" and I slowly started using them. In spite of the fact that it sometimes facilitates my crashing a dialog via my browser I love the "smart" touch pad. I find it hard using W7 laptop not being able to scroll using two fingers on the touch pad - I guess that's the feature I use the most. The last and only time I was ready to throw out a new notebook, an Acer, was when I couldn't get Vista to set up an network interface (best I can recall, these years later). But as I had purchased it from Walmart I just took it back and said I didn't want it - they refunded my purchase price. I found a demo laptop with XP and purchased it - that was my first Gateway.

Okay, using the Firefox "troubleshooter" I went to plug ins and set and changed "shock waver" from always on to ask. All seems much better - so far. Right now the CPU Utilization is so low the processor speed, a slow 1.4 Ghz is backing down to slower speeds to save power, this is a Laptop and does what it can to extend battery life even if the A/C is attached, or so it seems. I tried to view a video on Youtube and it asked me to enable Shock Wave, I did and the video play normally and the CUP utilization was still well below the old 90% level. This my be the culprit - I wonder what IE does about Shock Wave, I'll try to find out later. Another mystery: HOW DO I BOOT IN SAFE MODE in W8? Yes I know I'm shouting but that's how I feel about Microsoft at the moment, maybe a Mac is in my future, when I'm "rich and famous".