our ISP is having the same problem....have been with them for over 10 years...plan on sticking with them. Here is an excerpt from their last email.... Hello ISP Customer, Recently, the internet has suffered a dramatic increase in the overall amount of junk email, or spam, that has been sent out. In the last year alone, there has been over a 120% increase in the amount of junk email, to the point where there are 9 pieces of spam email out there for every 1 piece of legitimate mail. Here at *********, we think that this is an unacceptable amount of unsolicited email to have to sift through every day, which is why we have used our PureMessage spam filter to help cut down on the amount of unwanted emails that make it through to your email box. While our filter does a good job of keeping out unwanted emails, we want to take things a step further to help filter your email even more effectively. Together with Google, we are going to be transitioning to a new system for email delivery that will help to ensure more accurate email filtering with faster delivery time. This will prevent delays between when email is sent and when you receive it, while still keeping all the unwanted emails out of your inbox. One of the great things about my ISP, is that when I call, I usually get right through to a tech and they address any problems I may have in a timely and courteous manner.

I have EI7 on it, and I have AVG free antivirus that is up to date. I have only used the laptop maybe 20 times because of all the trouble I have with it. Toshiba had to put a new modem in it right off the bat. It wouldn't connect at all when I first got it. Then the other two times I sent it back was because of what I mentioned above and they sent it back saying it was fine but they did reinstall everything for the third time! They told me they don't replace them even though I had only had it a month or so and only had it on maybe 6 times. Just their policy and I told them what I thought about their policy too!

The laptop's all set up - and dd received it on Tuesday. For now we'll try open office. She does have a desktop pc with word if she needs it. And at school they use Mac's. So no matter what we use at home, it won't be quite the same as in school. abreeze - thanks for the link. It's beyond anything she or I will do now - but one or both of us might get more versed in powerpoint over time. That's a helpful comparison. I created recovery disks - but when I went to create a password reset disk, the laptop kept asking me to insert a disk. There was a disk in there. I even switched disks in case one was bad. But it was birthday day - so I figured I'd get to this later. Well - it came back and bit me in the butt. Birthday night had some trauma. After dinner, my mother fell backwards and hit her head on the sidewalk. I took her to the ER. My daughter was distraught - and the parent controls had logged her off at 9pm. Husband thought this was a reasonable exception - so he logged into the admin account for her. She immediately eliminated the time controls. No big deal, I thought - I'll reset them another time. Somehow she tricked my husband into entering the admin password again - told him she'd restarted the computer by accident. Well - that sneak had gotten him to enter the password in a field that allowed her to change it. She changed the passwords and locked us out of the laptop. So this is where that password reset disk would have been helpful - to override what she did and reset a new admin password. So this is partly a note to people about the important of creating a password reset disk (or set up on flash drive). I'd never even heard of this before. We're at the beach with my daughter and friend - it's instead of a birthday party. So we're not having the confrontation with this weekend. Monday - we tell her she has to hand back the reins for the admin account (or no laptop). The joys of parenting preteens. It took her less than 24 hours to violate most of the terms of the contract she signed. Sure wish I'd had that reset password disk. When I get admin control back, I'll be sure to create one somehow. (I assume at this point my only option is getting her to give me that new password she created.) Thanks. Lynn.

Thanks, Grandms. I couldn't reply right away because I had to go out for several hours. I go directly to the web mail via my browser, connecting to each type of e-mail separately by clicking on it in Bookmarks (=favorites). I never use Outlook E. and although I do use Hotmail, I decided not to have it gather all my e-mail in one place. I use one e-mail program for one sort of business, and other programs for friends, or i-Tunes receipts, and so on. It simplifies life somewhat. Hmm, although over the past three days or so, I had to give up on many of my attempts to bring up Lycos, this morning and again, just now, it came up with no problem. I can't help connecting the trouble with their switch to Zimbra, but on the Zimbra forum that I visited in hopes of a cure, Zimbra told someone else that it is entirely a Lycos problem and, in effect, washed their hands of it. When I was searching here for a solution, I came across a post I made in Dec. about something similar, but not as bad as it was this time. I guess if no one else is having this trouble and it doesn't start bothering me again, I might be smart to just let sleeping dogs lie!