Hello arthrum! TY for reponding. Maybe part of my repotting fever is because I figure my previous orchids may have died due to a potting issue. (Frankly I am not even sure what I did/didn't do with those plants/pots anymore). Also one of the orchids I just bought had very wet, really hard packed, and perhaps a bit degraded sphag. The other was in sphag that was just nicely packed and looked to be in a relatively good stage of freshness. I live in a mobile home near San Jose CA. I only have one window that isn't seriously shaded due to over hangs of about 8 foot wide on both long sides of my home and one other side has a dense shade tree. That leaves me with a huge kitchen window. It faces north, which might not be totally bad but there is a light colored awning with slats (which probably lets in a little more light) over that window. The kitchen is pretty bright in the daytime. There is also another window on a perpendicular wall. If forced to, I realize I may end up needing supplemental lighting but I'm hoping to try without first. I am concerned about things being potentially too wet with sphag and am thinking about 'peanuts' or bark to keep the center a little dryer. There is so much variation in what people find successful that all the reading I've done on the net may actually be making me more confused than anything. And so may kinds of pots. And I'm finding to order pots on line the S&H is rediculous for little plastic pots. I'm searching for pots locally but it looks dismal so far. Sorry to be so long winded. I appreciate your willingness to help and that of the other kind people in this forum. I hope I don't drive you all crazy with my questions and confusions. By the way, could you define the terms 'over-potted' and 'under-potted' for me? :)

Thanks all, I have ordered from both TigerDirect (mostly in my days of build your own from motherboard up) and Newegg. They have always delivered on component parts, may have even purchased some systems). I don't travel much anymore, still I like the idea of downsizing to no more than a 14" screen... the 13.3 looks attractive too. Then when at home, I use a Samsung SyncMaster LCD and full keyboard. My driving reason for looking continues. I am still using the troubled Gateway - subject of another post that I haven't visited lately - and last night when I shut down I first noticed I couldn't access my "Maxtor USB HDD" to do a data backup, I gave the shut down command anyway. The computer again hung up, but rather than force a manual power down I went to bed. This morning when I got to the Computer it had shut down. I hit the power button and it started what looked like a normal boot then hung with the (light) "blue screen of death". I decided to just ignore and go about some other work, but did put the Gateway recovery CD in the bay. I noticed the CD indicator come of briefly, but nothing more happened. Then, perhaps 3 to 5 minutes later, the computer booted.. and I am now using. Does this behavior suggest other than hardware problems? I had concluded the computer has an intermittent problem with the the internal HDD. Sorry for changing the direction of this thread, but it all hangs together in my mind.

Found this on another forum which may help\; Microsoft has a free download for Vitural PC. With this program running in your Windows Vista 64 bit environment, you can run a Windows XP 32 bit environment, and launch an MS DOS environment from there. Additionally, you can create as many of these virtual environments as you want. Unfortunately, Microsoft requires you to have both a Windows XP licience iand a Vista Licence if you are going to run both Vista and XP (even with one in the virtual world). If you own a regerestered copy of XP, I'm told that a work around to this potential problem is to reinstall your virtual XP environment when the preceeding one experies it's 30 day registration requirement. Or; Download virtualbox from Sun for free and run a virtual instance of win xp 32bit, win vista 32bit ...I would suspect licencing for whatever os you choose ie XP or Vista would also apply after the trial period. I have never tried this , just reporting what I have found

My usage is probably similar to yours Nancy. 95% of the time I spend on this computer is spent browsing the Internet, checking email, shopping, and researching. I don't play games except Mahjongg, which is not cpu intensive. This computer does have a quad core but it just happened to be the cheapest on the shelf when I walked into the store to buy one. At the time, I was too impatient to shop around. It fits my needs fine though. It's an Acer with a 3.1 GHz 32 bit AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 645 Processor, 4 gig ram and a 1 terabyte drive. It cost about $399(?) at Walmart without monitor. My other desktop is used as a personal server. Using a high-def TV as a monitor, its time is spent mostly streaming videos from the net and playing my old TV/movie collection. It also runs a web server but it's mostly for my own light use. Such as serving video to my bedroom netbook-TV setup. It also serves a single public Shoutcast stream. It's an old(?) Compaq with a 2600 MHz 64 bit AMD Athlon(tm) Processor LE-1640. It does fine for what it's used for. I suspect my bottleneck is my ISP so even though I run a cheaper computer, I pay for the fastest connection I can afford. Personally, if I were looking to buy another right now, I'd probably be tempted by something similar to this. Not necessary that one but something along that line.