Barbra- So good to see you on this forum as well. Glad you are up and running again- that would drive me insane! am so dependent on my PC, I would have to go to the library every day if mine went down! Merry Christmas!

Roselvr, it is interesting that you are so thorough. I often try to email people privately if I think things have been resolved, and that others don't have the same issue. We did take our computer to Circuit City. The Mother Board was dead. Since it was an E Machine, they said that many people only get about 4 years out of an E Machine. We bought the HP computer, and they copied my pictures onto the new computer. My husband disliked the old machine the most because we could not use a CD for pictures, but had to put in that little thing. According to the Techs at Circuit City, there was no evidence of a Virus or anything else harming the computer. I am happy with the new one since it has a larger screen. We did purchase a printer scanner since that is very important to me. Our biggest problem is that our old Router doesn't like Vista, so even though we paid Circuit City to "fix up" the computer so we would just have to plug it in, we now must buy a new router. My computer here at school has XP, and I hope I won't have troubles going back and forth with information. Even if I bought XP, the school would probably upgrade and there would still be a difference. We had them put in Norton's Security with anti virus and anti spy. We had odd things happening to the old computer probably because it was going out. I do appreciate all of the responses I have received from everyone. I am also glad that roselvr brought to my attention the fact that I haven't returned on some questions. Sometimes when it goes to your own computer, and you read the responses, it seems excessive to write back and thank everyone. I will try to be more careful because I am very appreciative, and even if I disagree with a response, I appreciate the time the person has take to respond. The man said he liked the new Norton's and that he also had trouble with them a few years ago. We'll see. Both of them warned me about free programs like Spyware Blaster. They said that in some of those pages that I would not have read, that I agree to allow them to give or sell some of my information to third parties. Frankly I have'nt a clue what I did when I signed up for it. He said I should be very suspicious when I use free programs - not free trials, but free programs. Sammy

Give me your old computer, or give it to someone you trust , i wouldnt risk giving a hard drive to the trash without a hammer. I have been using Avast on Vista laptop here as it seems to be the most popular right now... but that could change fast with a new version. Unless you live in a multifamily building its seriously doubtful anyone will want to steal your wifi connection and the connections with your bank and such will be highly encrypted,, no one will be cracking into that quickly in the short amount of time you're going to be using it. Follow proper security recomendations and you'll be fine. New solo browser window for your banking or other secure financials... highly recommended if you have wifi or cable network of any kind ;) And close it and clear cache when youre done,,, unless youre positive all youre sharing is blocked. Public hotspots ,,, Vista has a special public place security feature you can use... great for single stand alone non networked computers in the home too. Wifi is cool and 'nearly' totally secure - it would be unusual for someone to gain access to yours unless you have a crook for a neighbor or a stupid kid. ,, im fixing to unsecure mine now for a few days... if I see someone using it ,, I'll block them if its not one of my freindly neighbors accidentally connected. Not a big deal to me if I know the user. But easily secured so youre the only one that has access without some hacking. Hacking into wifi is a serious crime in most communities. my two pennies anyways.... if you dont have wifi now call your isp before running out and buying something,, they maybe will sell you something cheap,, or give it to you and then support it too if you need help setting it up.

The Toshiba A135 received a Very Good rating from cnet. Cnet doesn't give very many $1000 affordable laptops that high of a rating. I recently bought the A135 2877, I believe is the model, the one with 2 gs of mem. (would recommend 2 gigs minimum for vista, from what I hear. It has a 180g hard drive, actually two seperate hard drives, a 100g plus an 80g. Great for backing up your system. With this much memory and hd space, you could collect a sizeable video and audio library (were talking hundreds of songs and movies). It runs Vista flawlessly. Yes, there are faster systems out there. I would have loved one with the Nvidia graphics card, which would give you a whopping 512m of shared graphics memory. The Intel that comes with the A135 has 256megs, acceptable. For about $1100 at costco online, I thinks it's one of the best deals out there. It was about $300 more than I wanted to spend on a laptop, but I'm just thinking where technology is going today, with streaming video, tv and music becomming more and more prevailant, before too long, anything less that 2 gigs of memory and a harddrive less than 100 gigs will probably be obsolete in the next couple years. I think this will be sufficient for our needs for some years to come. -- john