I have no experience with Vista other than what I read occasionally. There is an interesting article linked below about the new MS firewall compared to Zonealarm and XP2. Spybot Search & Destroy plus Spywareblaster are both compatible with Vista. Three things I see on your latest message Grannie deserve comment for your consideration. Look around and ask more before taking any notice of me though. 1. From my scant knowledge I wonder if you are short on RAM with only 1 gig. That said it also depends on how much intensive work you do. Emailing and surfing would not, should not, require more. Photo editing with many photos opened or intense gaming might be improved with more RAM. 2. Vista comes on a DVD and is no doubt compressed or zipped. I am curious to know how much free space you have on your hard drive. I only question this because you have stated you computer is slowing and I wonder if this is due to adding your programs and reducing the free space for the swap file to work. Click Start and My computer and you should see this on the right side of the screen. 3. You mention your computer has slowed plus you are on dialup. What is slow, are you experiencing the slowness when offline or online? Here is a link that might be useful: Zonealarm vs Vista firewall vs XP2

I opened the TopSpeed tab, but it only had 3 choices. They were "compress graphics when I don't have a high-speed connection", "always compress graphics" and "never compress graphics". I had already made sure the "never compress graphics" box was checked. I couldn't find an option to turn TopSpeed off, so I searched for "turn off top speed" in AOL help. There were instructions for turning it off, but at the bottom it said this: "Note: The TopSpeed® / AOL® Web Graphics Compression feature on AOL® 9.0 VR cannot be turned off or uninstalled; the client will not function properly without it." This notebook came with Vista, and AOL 9.0 VR is the only AOL that will work on it, so I guess I'm stuck with sorry graphics. I should have looked for an old one with XP, I guess. On my regular computer with XP I have the "never compress graphics" box checked and it's fine.

As expected, trouble. On the first attempt to update the BIOS the computer froze-up, no display updates (clock continued to show the start time) or response to keyboard or mouse, including keyboard on the notebook itself. The installation seems to have done the checks on the new and old BIOS, but froze when it started to "flash" the BIOS. I called Toshiba TS, I'll give them a passing grade as it took only about 5 minutes of voice prompted filtering to get to a person, who had to transfer me to a specialist on the BIOS update. After some discussion of the situation he told me to hold the power button down for 10 seconds (it takes about 5 second) so that the computer would reboot. The computer did reboot with the old BIOS. He said try again, and after dinner I did. This time there were some error messages on the screen, but the process continued forward with blow-by-blow reporting to me on the installation dialog box. When all done the new BIOS was as wanted (F2 pushed during boot to get to BIOS setup) and I hit F9 to set defaults and F10 to save changes - as instructed by Toshiba. All seems well, for now. Related, how can I see what version of BIOS is being used without going through a reboot and F2 trigger? I thought that information was available on the device manager or on the properties of my computer. I couldn't find the BIOS version using those facilities. I have Windows 7 Home Premium.

I also found a couple more options for you these are quotes A better solution to the problem is going to start >> Programs >> Toshiba >> Utilities >> Settings for Flash Cards From there you can change around a lot of things about the flash cards, primarily disabling the drop down menu by deselecting bring up flash cards with mouse. That way, you can keep the functionality of your fn keys... If you disable flash cards you lose your fn keys, I have no idea about resolution though... I didn't notice a difference. end quote quote Go to Start > Programs > Toshiba > Utilities > Settings for Flash Cards. Then deselect (un-check) the box that says "Bring up Flash Cards with Mouse". This hides them completely when they are collapsed and only brings up an appropriate one whenever you use a Fn key. For instance, when you hit Fn+F6 or F7, the Flash Card about brightness comes down (or up, depending on where you have the Flash Cards set to display), and shows you the slider for brightness, which can then also be manipulated with the mouse. In effect, this option makes the Flash Cards completely hidden when you don't want them, and only pop up when you do (by hitting the Fn key). end quote and this from a Toshiba repair person I am a certified Toshiba Repair tech. I work on them all day. Flashcards can go totally crazy and turn things off and on. Like say the the touchpad. Only way to reenable the touchpad is to use a usb mouse and actually click the icon on flashcards to enable the touchpad. Recently we have seen the units being set to use only external monitors. Just going back in and using flashcards does fix it if the OS is in good shape. If its not you will need to repair the OS/reinstall everything to just click on the stupid flashcards app. I'm in that spot right now. Seems the Flashcards app is corrupt(cant uninstall or reinstall - Runtime error) and I can't get the LCD to turn back on. I may have to just replace the hard drive and motherboard due to not having any restore media for the unit. Terrible...terrible application. end quote all from Toshiba FlashCards Annoying