Many local governments (city, county) in the US offer subsidized compost bins to their residents. I've seen the Biostack, Earth Machine, and at least one other model offered. Sometimes you can even get a worm box from these offers! Prices here in the Bay Area for subsidized bins run approx. 1/3 of retail price, give or take, so definitely check it out. I think the Biostack is retailing for $99 to $129, depending on where you want to purchase it, so $200 should get you some nice goodies, even if you have to pay full prices. Enjoy! Cynthia H. El Cerrito, CA

It sounds like neither monitor or video card to me. First thing I'd do is set screensaver to "None" right click on desktop/ propeties/screensaver. For some reason windows is loading slowly, could be a corrupted program trying to load in the background at startup. Click start/run/type> msconfig and under the startup tab, see if there are any programs that you don't need running and uncheck them. If you have the XP CD, click start/run/type> sfc /scannow, *note the space between c and / If worse comes to worse, you may have to do a repair install of XP, but it could be something as simple as your anti-virus program or some other program is messed up and not loading correctly at startup.

Go to the Newegg site linked below, they have them listed from about $33. You could Google craigslist or kijii for your area and check out the computer and/or computer components sections for a used video card. Be sure that if you use this method you arrange to meet in a public place or take someone with you for safety. Here is a link that might be useful: Newegg AGP video cards

I'm not an expert so probably can't help but... I think you have enough speed you shouldn't even need to let it buffer, but know how to do so, so it's probably not Internet speed. Your system seems fine specification-wise. To me anyway. I don't think or know much about video cards but I wouldn't think it would be the physical card, but I don't really know. My wild guess would be the driver. :) This is what mine shows when I go to "System settings"--->"Additional Drivers": If it were me, I'd try a different driver if there's any listed there. Maybe you already have? Other than that, I don't have a clue. I'm running 12.04 and youtube's and other videos play fine for me. If someone else here doesn't have the answer, there's always the Ubuntu forum. Just a thought. Edit: Just out of curiosity, does the snow in my "My Page" fall smoothly or does it stop and go as it falls? This post was edited by chuggerguy on Thu, Jan 3, 13 at 20:40