I am so upset by what I am reading and what I have experienced over the last 12 years .. I am in the process of two major kitchen remodels and have 6 more to complete before I have them all done. Based on what I am reading here and on the internet blogs, I have ended up unwilling to order ANY new appliances. Over the last 12 years the only things I have purchased that have had great customer service are my Jura Capressa coffee makers and my Tempurpedic mattressses. All other purchases have been major headaches or outright nightmares. I am at the point that buying anything at all literally makes me sick at my stomach (and this is not just because I am a guy who does not enjoy shoppping in general). I have noticed that I have become openly hostile to sales people in general. With very few exceptions, I have never met a "sales" person who had even the scant ethics of even a democrat politician. The fact that I am now expected to buy appliances from one of these ingenuine sociopathic sales types is so upsetting that I have my two kitchen remodels on hold. I have great inset all wood custom cabinets with great custom granite counters ... and no appliances. Friends of mine in CA hate their Miele, friends in Henderson Nevada hate their Subzero and Dacor, friends in NY hate their Monogram, friends in Naples Florida hate their AGA and Viking, friends in the Netherlands hate their Miele, friends in Carmel Indiana hate their Traulson and Miele, friends in Arizona hate their Kitchen Aid ... and it goes on and on with nightmare after nightmare of new appliances defective out-of-the-box, incompetent installers, unethical distributors, sales people that grab the big commissions and then can't even return follow up calls, manufacturers that don't honor their warranty committments or try to stong arm the very customers that their business should be treating with dignity and integrity. To add insult to injury, many regional better business bureaus rate these retailers and businesses A+. No wonder consumers have stopped purchasing ... it is not the recession that has stopped people from making major purchases, but, rather, the expectation that after-purchase headaches will take months and months to resolve with stress levels higher than paying for your childrens' college educations. Short of having an attorney produce a contract that the appliance supplier has to sign and be held to legally, does anyone out there have any other magic process. A process that assures the customer won't be setting themselves up for an extremely stressful experience with underpaid customer disservice departments trained by the Insurance claims industry to intimidate and wear down the customer to a point of having to just give up? signed - a potential appliance customer in limbo

This is an update to the sp1 info. Susan Bradley in the latest windows secrets newsletter said there are 2 new updates to do to prepare for sp1 if you have not done it yet, this is to help prevent some of those issues that were listed above. from her article Quote: "Microsoft released two patches to fix problems with Windows 7's infamous first service pack. Both should be installed before updating to Win7 SP1. KB 2533552 corrects a flaw that produces a failed SP1 update, leaving users with a cryptic error code (shown in Figure 1) and a difficult recovery. Systems that received SP1 through Windows Software Update Services were hit particularly hard, as noted in a TechNet blog. KB 2534366 fixes an issue with multiple language packs; some systems would hang at a black screen after SP1 was installed. If you haven't already successfully installed Windows 7 SP1, install both KB 2534366 and KB 2533552 first. And if Win7 SP1 is already installed, accept KB 2533552 for future service packs. Yes, it's true; I'm finally ready to give the all-clear for Windows 7 SP1 but only after you've accepted KB 2533552 and KB 2534366, as noted above. Rather than using Windows Update, I urge you to download and install the SP1 update manually to make sure it's successfully added." and the latest list of her recommendations for windows patches list Regularly updated problem-patch chart and the link to sp1 direct download SP1 she mentions to allocate about an hour for this.

PK, yes there is a lot of junk on it. I google the ones I don't recognize and the ones that make you set up an account and delete them. I won't even set up an MS account the only reason I didn't have to...to use the new PC is because for some reason it didn't connect to the wifi. It told me to set up a local which of course made me use a password. The local couldn't connect either, but something told me to push the button on my router or use the key #. The button on the router did the trick. I also found a way to bypass the password. I was locked out of my PC a few years ago because the password wouldn't work and it was the right password. I love the laptop and it is really, really fast. I thought my desktop was fast but it's nothing compared to this one, especially on start up. About W 8: One of the reason I bought the laptop/tablet was because I wanted to see what the new OS was like. As I said above, I downloaded the shell because I couldn't even find away to turn it off. LOL After I set up my security and updated I went back to W 8. Now I found a way to flip back and forth between the shell and W 8 start screen and I worked on it for a bit. FF says you can't pin a site on W 8 system yet but I did manage to pin this one but it just shows up as the blank white page with the words "web site" below. I won't use it, I just use the desktop icon to take me to what I need. I am enjoying it but I still like the old fashioned desktop so I can play with the wallpaper. It really makes me angry to buy a PC then are forced to tie your self to services like MS just to use the thing. Sorry this is so long.

So nice to get up and see so much feedback! Kim and Red, thanks for the kind words. Val, we just moved into a new subdivision and the yard really isn't very nice. No trees or shrubs yet and we can see directly into the neighbors back. Just met them saturday as they were having a fence built but we can still see each other. Glad we have similar concerns about privacy. DH has always been intrigued by pergolas so maybe that WILL work. Thanks for understanding about the right side of the fridge. That does bug me and you have given me great ideas. Lynn, the wall color is SW Blonde, the cabs are made by a Chicagoland company and are maple, stained in a color called cafe, hardwood by a company called Muskoka (Tembec?)out of Canada and are ash stained in chestnut. I have the builder's decorator to thank for the floors. We kept choosing a warmer color and she said with the windows we have that they would be too red. The sample looked sooo cool toned but once down she was 100% right. Sadly, the housing recession caused her to be let go and now design help is being offered by the sales staff after one day of training. I wouldn't let those girls design a dog house.