jim, no worries and thanks, second or third or fourth opinions are what forums are all about and I agree w/ u somewhat that is to say I love my crispy green jals and serranos, but I also love them red ripe and smoked or roasted, the flavor is awesome, but if u r gonna eat them fresh green is the way to go, anaheims, and big jims are other peppers that I like green much better than red, but I will let some ripen to red for red enchilada sauce it seems to me that only the super hots need to be ripe before they are picked, almost all the rest I have grown or tasted are good green or ripe! paul

Certainly Open Office is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office depending on your needs because the two platforms are not 100% compatible. Certainly you can try Open Office and see if it meets your needs. I don't know about Quicken but I would imagine there is some kind of "export" feature. Whether you use that in a newer version of Quicken or move on, is up to your. I hear good things about Mint (.com) but haven't used it personally. Microsoft has discontinued Money.

You can "export" your email addresses to a USB drive and "import" them on your new computer File->Export->Address Book->Text File-> using "Browse" find the location of your USB drive. Name your file and follow the steps in the wizard to finish. On your new computer go to File->Import and follow the steps to import the data from your USB drive You can do the same for exporting/importing your Internet Favorites. It is located under File->Export. Just follow the wizard. I have never had any luck moving the actual email files. I am sure there is a way - but every attempt I have made has failed. I know there was a software you could purchase to "back up" OE, and then restore it on a new machine. I didn't want to buy anything though. You could try forwarding the emails (from your old machine) that you want to keep to yourself - then retrieving them on the new machine.

I think we have been jumping back and forth between specifics of my particular post and questions posted in general. I don't have enough experience in this computer forum to really add anything to any general discussion beyond my own personal, very minor experiences, so I will go back to the specifics of my post and my own situation. In the past, when I was a Windows PC user, I was an intermittent visitor to a number of computer forums, not this one very often, because of low traffic here, but all the forums had very friendly people who were generous with their time and expertise and seemed happy to help. Since switching to an Apple computer, I have barely stepped foot in a computer forum. I have not needed to. My laptop just works 90% of the time and when it doesn't, I have a 3 yr tech support policy in place. Something I've had with every computer I've ever had since I first started getting on the computer in 1995. It has been a big relief, because maintaining a computer and straightening out technical problems even with help was a very frustrating task that I never enjoyed. It always felt like a 'big black hole' of wasted time when some issue would present itself. Even with an 'expert' to help figure it out, you'd never know how many hours you'd have to take away from whatever task you were trying to do, to stop and figure out why the computer wasn't responding right, 'again'. Or how many days your computer would not be working. Even with a tech support policy, I might call and get the wrong information and no fix with two techs, and have to call back again and then a third tech might know just what the problem was and fixed it in about 10 minutes. So, even though I was less technically literate, it seemed like even among the technically literate, there were a lot of people who seemed as confused as I was. I always tried to understand what I needed to know. Always tried to find out what I could do using the computer that would be preventative and avoid problems. It didn’t seem to matter, tech problems always seemed to present themselves regardless. So again, I can’t even express how relieved I’ve been not to have that experience with my computer any more. My husband has a windows based computer with Vista on it and I don’t even want to touch it. Which brings me to my thread that seems to have triggered this discussion. I wasn’t even asking for help with a problem with my computer. I had already been working with my own situation for 3 days and taken steps to resolve it not only with GW but with my own Apple tech support. I was not satisfied with the responses or information that I was getting from either about whether this ‘downloaded file’ was a problem or not. That was why I posted here. And from the information that ravencajun offered, it would seem that I had reason to remain concerned about the ‘possibility’ that it could be a problem and one I wanted to take steps to avoid in the future. Even if the file that was downloaded onto my computer was not a problem, it might have been. So, what was it about my thread that has caused a negative response? What did I do or say that was wrong? I’m still here defending my thread, why? Have I even done any of the things that some of you are expressing you have a problem with? I was very appreciative for the help ravencajun gave me and I even tried to smooth over my initial response to Mike, even though I still think he was wrong in both content and attitude in his response to me, I was more than willing to give him a break and overlook it. At this point, I am at a loss to understand how what seemed like a simple question has resulted in my feeling like I have to defend myself for asking it and now defending all people who come to forums and ask questions. That doesn't seem right to me.